#indara you were wrong for that

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

I need mae to have a happy ending next week.

She did not deserve anything that has happened to her and the fact that she was blamed for all of it is appalling

[ripplesinthesand]

the character work with sol in this episode was SO good. the way the show has built him up to be this ideal jedi, and then this episode strips it away, showing his hubris, showing how quick to judgment he is. throughout the episode, he insisted on interfering, over and over, because he was so sure of himself, so sure that the twins were in danger, that he knew what was best for them; he killed mother aniseya because he assumed that whatever magic she was using - magic that presumably was meant to transport mae away and save her - was violent in nature. and then she tells him in her final moments that she was going to let osha go, and there's all that guilt, that crushing realization that his assumptions were wrong, and at the end of the episode he wants to purge it all by telling the council - but indara is the one who points it out as selfishness; by confessing, he would be assuaging his own guilt while also destroying osha's chance to fulfill her dream of being a jedi. and so he takes osha on as his padawan, and he carries that guilt with him, every single day of his life. "i've accepted my darkness; what have you done with yours?"

[bereft-of-frogs]

Apparently my quest is not at an end.

‘Indara was able to counter the possession spell, so clearly she’s trained in the dark side—‘

😂 no I think my part in this journey is done. I got my answers, so I’m happier to just let these interpretations sail past me

I got a HYPERSPACE DISASTER MENTION???

and I DON’T HAVE TO GO ON A REDDIT APOLOGY TOUR FOR AGGRESSIVELY DEFENDING INDARA FOR THE PAST MONTH???

This was a good night, friends. Oh, this was a good night.

[mayhaps-a-blog]

OK so the thing is

The path to the Dark Side isn't just kriffing up. You don't just go "whoops!" one day and start murdering people for fun. You make decisions. You make choices. And when those choices go bad... instead of standing up and admitting your mistakes, you double down.

Sol's Fall perfectly hits the beats that I think many people lose track of with Anakin - his first Fall wasn't with Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith, but with the Tuskens in Attack of the Clones. Anakin goes from sobbing in Padme's arms that he killed the women, and the children too - he killed them all - to screaming that they were monsters and they deserved it. Instead of facing his mistakes - the lives that he took in anger, in rage - he insisted that you know what, he was right to do that. He did the right thing. He's glad he did it. And he'll do it again.

Sol kriffed up. He was too emotional on Brendok - Indara called him out on it, and she was right. The witches DID love their children, he DID get the wrong end of the stick, and however weird they were and worrisome the bits they saw with the kids were, the answer to that is to find out more information or, I don't know, wait one kriffing day, not charge in, lightsabers drawn.

(I don't blame Torbin, really. He was also totally out of balance, but he was the Padawan learner - the student who needed guidance, not the Master supposed to deliver it. Mother Aniseya had gotten into his head and thrown him for a loop, and Indara needed to sit on him a bit more - but if she'd been on a speeder instead of Sol, I think things would have worked out very differently.)

Instead it was Sol, who dragged Torbin into a dangerous situation without thinking of the consequences - without even considering that he might be wrong.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I blame him for swinging at Mother Aniseya. Mae had said some pretty worrisome things and was literally dissolving into midair. I blame Sol for being there in the first place, where he had no place, and for putting everyone on edge so far that Mother Aniseya felt the need to move to protect her children, and he felt the need to retaliate unthinkingly.

And then. And then.

Hard to say if Indara did the right thing. She was thinking about Osha, and I don't think she was necessarily wrong. She gave Osha a chance to have the life she dreamed of, a chance she would never have had otherwise.

But Sol.

Sol should never have taken Osha as his Padawan. He was too close; the hurt was too painful to hide. He couldn't tell Osha the truth, so he buried it, papered it over with justifications and excuses - he'd done it for Osha. For the girls. To keep them safe. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. He did it for Osha. And that gave him the means to look Osha in the eyes and smile, and pretend everything was fine.

But of course, he couldn't let her go, either. He'd done it all for her - he couldn't fail her now. Couldn't admit that he'd failed her. He had to make this right - (but it was right already it was it was) - but the closer he bound them together, the harder it was to let go of his attachment to her. After all, if he told her now... what if she hated him?

Sol loved Osha too much from the very beginning. He couldn't let go of his attachment to her: to his idea that he could save her, could train her, to be the master he wanted to be for her. He couldn't face his own failures, so he refused to see them; insisted that they were correct, right, justified, to the last. And in the end, that's what poisoned Osha - and himself.

He was afraid. Afraid for her; afraid for himself. And his fear led to anger - at the Master, at himself. And his fear led to anger - Osha's, at him, for papering over his fears with lies, lies to her. And anger led to hatred. And hatred? Led to suffering.

No one walked away from Brendok without suffering. Not Osha; not Mae. Maybe Qimir; maybe not. But definitely not Sol.

Sol had to make a choice. And he made one. But he didn't just make one choice; he made many choices, over and over again. And no matter what excuses he gave, what justifications, he could never bring himself to admit that maybe, just maybe, he'd made the wrong choices.

Sol's lightsaber may not have been red. But I think, if he'd finished that swing on Khofar? It might not have been all that far from it.

[david-talks-sw]

The biggest problem in "The Acolyte"

I think I've given this show a fair shake. There are parts in it that I really like, and I think this sits in 3rd/4th place in my ranking of favourite Disney - Star Wars shows.

But here's the thing. It felt underwhelming. The only time I was genuinely excited was during the fight scenes, any of them.

But when I think about the events that take place in the show... they're not so bad! There's nothing really lore-breaking, I like flawed characters doing their best. It's okay!

So why was I almost always deadpan, while watching it?

Structure.

The show doesn't have the same issue as other Disney Plus series, wherein they treat it as a 10-hour movie and thus lose all momentum every time. Headland knows how to raise the stakes properly... but unfortunately, the result is the same!

Because this series was structured and marketed as if it was some kind of investigative thriller, a noir movie about Jedi being murdered and needing to find the killer. And when you look at the events, and at the story it's telling... it really isn't that.

So when you're trying to make these twists... they're all predictable.

How could Osha have killed Indara when she's working as a meknik-- she has a twin.

But who could the Sith in the mask possibly be-- iiiit's Qimir, y'know, the guy who's literally quoting the Sith code and is trying his hardest to seem harmless.

Why is Mae going around killing these Jedi-- they had it coming, they likely wronged her in a way that was unintended and now she's in pain because of it.

What's the mystery behind the twins-- they weren't conceived biologically, they were created using the Force. They're Anakin 1.0.

Were the witches really killed by the fire? What did we miss, why are the Jedi so guilt-ridden over it-- the other side of the story, showing the Jedi probably killing them all through some big well-intentioned-but-misled accident that could've been avoided, which the Jedi now feel guilty over and try to cover up.

Osha seems to be fine with the Jedi arresting her sister-- her heartlessness makes her the perfect Sith, by the end of the Season, she'll be an apprentice and Mae will be on the good side.

Who is Qimir's former teacher-- Vernestra. His scars look like they come from a lightsaber whip.

Is Qimir the Sith master-- probably not, just an apprentice, a self-proclaimed non-Bane-lineage Sith, or an acolyte himself.

Will Sol survive the show-- no, he's gonna die, because of course he is, by Episode I, the Sith have been thought to be extinct for a millenia.

If you're a casual viewer, maybe these wouldn't be as obvious. But if you're a fan, it's like it's written on a billboard. And like, clearly Leslye Headland knew that this would be the case:

"I think a good twist is not about hiding everything from the audience and then throwing it on them like, 'Hey, this is what you didn't see! We hid it so well that you didn't see this!'" says Headland. "I think a good twist is telegraphing what's going to happen, and then once it does, executing it without an ounce of pity or sentimentality."" - Leslye Headland, Entertainment Weekly, 2024

But here's the thing.

You can't make an audience feel as if the stakes have been raised, when we can tell where this is all going.

Because then we're not watching, we're waiting for what will inevitably happen to finally occur. If most of these "mysteries" had been structured as simple plot points in a more straight-forward story about...

Two sisters trying to get back to each other after an incident in their lives caused by the Jedi.

The Jedi Master coming to terms with the fact that his flawed decisions led to tragic consequences.

A Sith Lord trying to appropriate the sisters' powers for himself.

... then I think that I wouldn't feel as underwhelmed.

Instead it's a murder mystery, and we already know the murderer, what motivates said murderer, how said murderer was wronged, etc... and they're feeding us the information by the breadcrumb to build up to these twists, but we can basically guess what these twists are.

Don't treat obvious plot points like a secret. You can get away with it a couple of times, but not with every single one of them. C'mon.

ADDENDUM:

[gffa]

I have never been so glad to be wrong about being suspicious of Sol's connection to Qimir. I wasn't married to the idea, was more willing to put money the other way instead, but the idea haunted me because I felt like I could see it drawing the connections together in a potentially really cool way. There's still an episode to go and we may not even get full answers about who the hidden Sith Master is (assuming there even is one)(I think it's prooooobably most likely something we'll get at the very end of episode 8 if we're going to get it), there's still room for more reveals, but I feel like this episode really crushed the idea that Sol could be the Sith Master, or that Indara might have been it. They were reasonable theories to be suspicious about! I'm still a little worried for my lady Vernestra! Hell, I was ready to put money on Sol being Qimir's Jedi Master and that's pretty well shot to hell now, so I sympathize with theorizing things that don't pan out, but thankfully most of the people who were like "NO THANK YOU THAT IS A DO NOT WANT" were really nice to me about it and we're all sitting and waiting for how things are going to turn out. It's been interesting to wait week to week as a mystery unfolds, one that the show has been deliberately teasing us with, and mostly I think I've enjoyed the pacing. I think episode 5 was a big misstep in the structure, it took a huge hit to my interest in the show, but episode 7 had me genuinely having a good time again. Maybe the show will nail the ending, maybe it won't, we don't know until we get there, but I'm glad to have been on this ride with the cool people I've managed to find in this fandom, that we can find the things we like about the show and leave the rest as best we can. That's the way Star Wars should be enjoyed imo. And I consider myself lucky to have found a lot of you that we either vibe with each other or are chill with vibes differing.

[bri-the-nautilus]

Come To the Dark Side, We Have Hot Guys: A Star Wars Story

Spoilers below for S1 of Ahsoka and the first six episodes of The Acolyte.

I'm writing this with The Acolyte most of the way through airing its first season, with episode 6 having released earlier today. Say what you will about the show, but it's really brought out a lot of the uglier sides of the Star Wars fandom. Everyone and their mother has seen videos or Reddit threads dunking on the Critical Drinker or SWT and their mouth-breathing misogynist audiences at this point, so I don't feel particularly compelled to retread that ground. Instead, I want to talk about the... other side of the fandom, the hypocrisy therein, and how we're all being played for absolute fools by the creative team at Disney Lucasfilm.

Yes, this post is about Qimir.

Now I want to say that I have no problem with villain simping/shipping. Far from it. Most of my posts on this account are me simping for Shin Hati (we'll talk more about her later) or various Soulsborne bosses. Hell, my mutuals and I have a running joke about me having a weakness for evil blonde women. While I personally am too gay for my own good and couldn't care less about men as a concept, I absolutely see the appeal of characters like Qimir and Kylo Ren. I absolutely get why people thirst over them and love making fandom content for them. I think Qimir/Osha has the potential to be a really fun ship, actually. The point I'm making here is not "simping for these characters is wrong and bad," and I want to make that crystal clear before we continue.

That said, let's talk about Qimir, and how the landscape of the show and its surrounding discourse has changed since his reveal. Again, I'm ignoring the chud sphere here, partly because their little corner of the Internet has remained remarkably stagnant since then. The podcast bros still think it's woke, fucking Shadiversity is still whining about fight choreography (which as someone who actually has done HEMA/stage combat, Shad annoys me to no end, but that's an entirely separate can of worms), and it all seems to be business as usual over there. No, the most marked changes have been on the Acolyte-positive end of the fandom space. Here's what the top posts in "hashtag TheAcolyte" on Twitter look like tonight:

You get the idea.

Again, no hate to any of these people. This is tumblr ffs, we've all engaged in a little simping for a morally dubious hot person. I love seeing fans having fun engaging with something, and again I kinda dig the Osha/Qimir ship.

Anyways, if you were around for the Acolyte-positive discourse before the Qimir reveal, and especially the show's marketing and the reponse to that, you'll have noticed a marked difference.

Fans quickly began to see The Acolyte as " the gayest Star Wars ever." Showrunner Leslye Headland is an out lesbian, and her wife was cast as Master Vernestra Rwoh. Archetypical girlboss Carrie-Anne Moss was cast as Master Indara, immediately drawing comparisons to her role in the Matrix movies. Leads Osha and Mae Aniseya are played by the nonbinary Amandla Stenberg. The lesbian witches of Brendok were talked about in press releases before the show aired. Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon) stated in an interview that she portrayed the short-haired, serious Theelin as having a crush on Osha, something that fans were picking up on in their first interactions in the premiere before Keen even gave that interview. While Headland said in a post-premiere interview that she didn't set out specifically to make "a capital Q Queer show," it's an objective fact that no Star Wars movie/show has had as much potential in that area, and fans (especially the queer community) took notice. (For what it's worth, in the same interview Headland commented that she was proud of creating something that so many queer fans identified with.)

The show came out, and Master Indara was killed off in the first sequence, which I'm honestly fine with. It was a good scene and works on a lot of levels. Headland's aforementioned interview came and went. Episode three aired. The lesbian witches turned out to be even gayer than was previously thought possible, and people ate that shit up while the Critical Drinker's brain suffered a major cascade failure. Jecki became a runaway favorite in the premiere and episode four, as did lovable himbo Yord Fandar and the wise, paternalistic Master Sol. In Acolyte-positive circles, this was basically how it went. People thought Brendok was cool, the Yord Horde became the show's biggest social media sensation, Jecki and Sol cultivated devoted followings alongside Osha and Mae, there were a wealth of different ships involving various combinations of Jecki, Yord, and the twins... you get the idea.

Then episode 5 happened.

The writing was really on the wall when the Brendok coven was abruptly wiped out. Introducting such an interesting (and queer) Force-wielding culture only to exterminate them in the same episode was certainly a choice that somebody made. But episode 5 was a shock to the system for many fans, as the show's resident Sith revealed himself and killed Jecki and Yord in some of the most brutal recent onscreen deaths in Star Wars. To be clear, I think this was a great sequence. Two beloved main characters being suddenly and gruesomely killed off was a masterfully executed shock to the system, especially after viewers were lulled into a false sense of security by all the redshirt deaths in the previous scene.

This, understandably, completely changed the landscape of the Acolyte fandom. Virtually overnight, much of the simping and shipping involving Jecki and Yord dried up, and once the dust had settled as far as the "rip blorbo, gone too soon" posts went, what remained were the usual Sol/twins offerings and a wave of Qimir hype. Which is understandable. He's a badass emo Sith boy with a cool helmet who brutally murdered fan favorite characters in front of us and has palpable tension with the female lead. Who wouldn't love... wait a minute.

This feels familiar somehow.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

And just like that, "the gayest Star Wars" is all about the (straight) sexual tension between an edgy, murderous Sith boy and a light-side girl plagued by dark thoughts whose friends said boy just killed. This is all eerily similar to how the Sequel Trilogy focused on Rey and Kylo while abruptly dropping Finn and Poe's character arcs. Even the fandom discourse is the same. I mean Reylo was so ubiquitous back in the day that it became a derogatory catch-all for good girl/evil boy shipping. Multiple authors now have either gotten their initial start/fame writing Reylo fics, or straight up published legally distinct Reylo fiction after the fashion of Netflix's After. You had the occasional person piping up to say "hey they kind of just left Finn and Poe hanging after TFA, it would've been cool if they got together but at the very least don't relegate them to being side characters/comic relief in separate story threads," and that was it. The same thing is going on with The Acolyte now, only the sequel trilogy wasn't marketed on the strength of being a queer story by a queer creative team. The Acolyte is, which makes it all the more baffling that by the midway point of the first season, all the gays have been buried and the show seems to be heading straight for Reylo 2: High Republic Boogaloo. And the fans are eating it up.

As an interesting aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to contrast the Kylo/Qimir pattern with the broader fandom's treatment of Shin Hati (told you we'd circle back to that), and the ship between her and Sabine Wren. On paper, Shin is very similar to Kylo and Qimir. Villain? Check. Edgy-looking armor? Totes. Emotionally damaged/stunted in some way? Sure looks like it. Tension with the heroine? You betcha. If anything, the only major difference is that Shin isn't as evil as the others. Compare her actions in Ahsoka (clearing out part of a light cruiser with Baylan and making repeated attempts on Sabine's life) to Kylo (oversees multiple war crimes, kills his fan-favorite dad) or Qimir (orchestrates the murders of several Jedi before brutally executing two fan-favorite characters). She's definitely bad, but I struggle to see her as on par with Qimir, let alone fucking Kylo, in terms of evilness.

Which makes it all the more interesting to me that the Shin/Sabine ship has received so much more mainstream skepticism/criticism than the Osha/Qimir or Rey/Kylo ships. "They have no chemistry!" "She's an evil murderer!" "She's a blank slate!" "Sabine is taken!" I may be a touch biased, but from where I sit a large part of the fandom, even the ostensibly progressive side, seems to look down upon Shin/Sabine shippers while swooning for heterosexual variants with far more evil villains.

This isn't a monolith, and I can't stress that enough. I'm not trying to start shit here. Villain shipping is awesome. We support women's wrongs in this house. You do see the occasional person decrying Reylo or Osha/Qimir as toxic, which I think is fairly unnecessary. Like yeah, maybe it's a toxic dynamic, but these are fictional characters. For these specific characters, part of the crowd appeal is the toxic badboy side of things. I don't think we should really spend much energy attacking any fictional ship (between adults, mind you) as toxic, which is why it puzzles me that an as-yet-unconfirmed lesbian ship in a niche show receives such a large proportion of this sort of criticism compared to the canon relationship between two main characters of a blockbuster trilogy.

At the end of the day, this whole affair has been rather sobering for me on both Disney Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom. For all the support the Shin/Sabine ship has received from Ahsoka cast members Ivanna Sakhno (Shin), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger, the other character people like to ship with Sabine), and Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), I'm rather sour on the prospects of it becoming canon. The sequel trilogy dropped the ball on what many saw as a promising chance for an MLM romance between Finn and Poe in favor of trotting out the "why do good girls like bad boys" dynamic, and The Acolyte, "the gay show" overseen by a lesbian, has seemingly shifted to center a similar dynamic after killing off most of its prospects for a queer relationship among the main cast. Simply put, I think that Disney as an international company based in the frighteningly divided United States is reluctant to commit to anything beyond lipservice in terms of LGBT representation in their movies/shows, which again doesn't leave me feeling optimistic about WolfWren's canon potential. And the fandom takes the bait. People love the damaged evil badboy/good girl dynamic, and when the queer fandom suggests the possibility of a queer ship taking center stage in a show with no other extant relationships, even the more progressive side of the fandom tends to either ignore it or actively push back on its basis in reality until Disney Lucasfilm inevitably puts the kibosh on it. The amount of times I've heard people dismiss WolfWren for the same reasons they now like Osha/Qimir and liked Reylo (before that ship was fleshed out/canonicalized, anyway) is ridiculous, but at the end of the day you kinda feel stupid for expecting anything else. Again, I think Qimir is a cool character and I'm as much of a sucker for villain romances as the next girlie, but seeing how easily the fandom lets dangling heterosexual carrots lead it away from Disney Lucasfilm's broken promises of queer rep is a sobering ordeal.

[tarabyte3]

I've been thinking a lot about the recent episode of The Acolyte and I have some ✨thoughts✨

(The Acolyte Episode 5 spoilers!!!)

I think the narrative is intentionally making us, the audience, doubt the Jedi and paint them as possibly being the bad guys specifically because now Mae is the one that's going to hear Sol's story. We were encouraged to doubt him and believe he's going to confess something awful about that night to Osha, but instead, I think what he reveals is going to make Mae (and us!) have a change of heart in some way and realize we were wrong. I doubly believe that will be the case because the one casting the most doubt on the Jedi is Qimir, the villain that's also been manipulating and using Mae's anger.***

Because how do you kill a Jedi without a weapon? Easy, you manipulate them, too. You make them paranoid and afraid. You make them doubt themselves and each other. You hurt them in every way that matters. Then you step away and let them destroy themselves. That's a basic Sith tactic, and I think that's exactly what Qimir is trying to do with Sol. Either Sol eventually gives in to the anger and hatred he felt and falls (I highly doubt it) or Qimir wants to get Mae or Osha to turn on/kill him (maybe now he wants to try and make Osha his acolyte instead. Emphasis on try). We've already seen Sol is unwilling to activate his lightsaber when facing Mae because he doesn't want to hurt her (that entire confrontation in the streets), and Sol would probably choose death rather than ever use it on Osha. The girl he connected with and saved and keeps a hologram of and smiles at and loves.

Something terrible obviously happened that night, but I don't believe for a second it was the Jedi's fault. However, it was terrible enough to scar Torbin and make him take the Barash Vow, to make Sol cry, and to make Kelnacca retreat to the woods and hide. Perhaps they all feel guilt for what they couldn't do. Perhaps they blame themselves, which looks like actual guilt from the outside.

But hey, I'm prepared to be wrong and say so, I just don't think it would be very good *Star Wars* storytelling if I am. For 2 reasons:

1) It wouldn't make sense in the existing story. We've seen that Indara, Torbin, and Sol are compassionate, kind people. We saw how soft Kelnacca was with little Osha. Sol radiates warmth, he believed Osha, and he wants to save Mae even after everything she's done. Indara died to protect someone else. For as impersonal and professional as she was when talking to the Coven, I don't think someone that would make themselves vulnerable in a life or death situation to save even one person would be willing to kill an entire community of people unless it was absolutely, completely necessary. I don't think self-defense would even necessarily qualify, I think the Jedi would do everything they could to retreat first. The one caveat I can think of is if someone attacked Torbin. Then I could possibly see Indara as a Master protecting her Padawan, something Masters would give their own lives to do (as we see repeatedly during Order 66), and the situation escalated. (Could be why Torbin is injured and blames himself?)

2) The point of the story in Star Wars has always been that the Jedi are the good guys. They hold up the ideals of goodness and peace, and even though, individually, they sometimes stumble and fall short of it because they're still flawed, mortal beings, they always try to reach for the light. ("Jedi cannot help what they are. Their compassion leaves a trail. The Jedi code is like an itch.") If a group of them has done something unspeakable, unforgivable, and then covered it up (or worse, the Order covered it up), how do we ever trust the Jedi as the good guys again? It goes against everything they believe in. It goes against the story George Lucas created (or has ever said about how Jedi and the Force work). If this is the story being told, it will be a very bad Star Wars story, and I have to hope that's not the case.

***((Side note: The guy that just killed 6 Jedi and a Padawan did not make a good point with "You brought her here." Sol brought Jecki there, with many other Jedi, as her Master to teach her more about how to resolve conflict thinking they were only confronting Mae. And even then, Sol didn't make Qimir confront the Jedi and kill Jecki. Jecki's death is entirely Qimir's fault since he's the one that killed her. Also for a Sith to have "freedom" to be themselves is to allow them to do evil things through the Dark Side, which is ALWAYS evil. Full stop. The Dark Side twists and corrupts. That's how the Dark Side works. Qimir isn't some guy being oppressed because the Jedi are power hungry and unwilling to share the Force. Fascists shouldn't be allowed the freedom to be fascists.))

[calkestis]

maybe i'm a little shook and delulu after episode 7, but since everyone said the acolyte is portraying the jedi as evil, i feel like this episode was all about how the jedi are right in their teachings: you shouldn't let your actions be dictated by your emotions (sol) or selfish desires (torbin). even the most noble person can take the worst decisions when that happens and sol is the best cautionary tale about that. even indara's decision to not tell osha the truth about what happens is driven by emotion - and it's probably gonna blow up in their faces when she eventually finds out.

the problem was always with the jedi as an institution (as it usually is in reality as well). institutions will always try to protect themselves in order to survive, even if that means closing their eyes to their weaknesses (see the irony here?). the jedi institution became arrogant, giving the individuals of the group a justification for interfering when they thought something wrong was happening (were mae and osha in danger in any moment with the convent? not really). it's this kind of superior attitude that led to the worst decisions the jedi order made. and this attitude is in direct conflict with the jedi teachings (mother aniseya makes a great point when telling them that they're not aware of their surroundings). this conflict ended up bringing the end of the order.

[thylacinetears]

I'm still deciding how I feel about The Acolyte ep7, but I think I overall liked it. It's interesting seeing everyone's different interpretations on it. But I'm getting pretty annoyed by people who are like "X did nothing wrong, Y was totally at fault!". Because here's my hot take:

Every single main character in The Acolyte ep7 had good intentions, but made bad decisions that contributed to the tragedy. Every. Single. One. And that is the point of the whole episode.

Starting with the Jedi - Indara is one of the most level-headed characters in the episode. She consistently demonstrated the best values, and tried to defuse the situation whenever possible. But she underestimated Torbin's pain, and clearly did not do enough to make sure her own padawan was okay - leaving a vulnerable spot for Aniseya to exploit. And she should have done more to find out about the coven besides "ask a little kid some leading questions"I also think that her continued insistence on waiting to contact the Council was more of a weakness than a strength - because no good decisions could be made, until it was too late and the situation was dire.

For the most part, Sol really was just motivated by trying to ensure the twins' safety. When he looked at the coven, he saw a dangerous cult - and in a lot of ways, he's right. (As shitty as the Jedi are, at least padawans get other kids to interact with, and get taught other things than just fighting.) But he let his emotional attachment to Osha cloud his judgement, which was the source of many problems. And he was often reckless, especially when talking/testing Osha, and he probably should have tried some other way to deal with Aniseya rather than just stabbing her.

Torbin was thrust into a difficult situation, that his master clearly did not properly prepare him for. That allowed him to be manipulated by a Force user far more powerful than him. All the same, the final confrontation would not have happened if he hadn't run off. It's okay to be inexperienced, but it's not okay to decide that you know better than all the experienced people. (Though evidently they made terrible decisions too).

Mother Aniseya obviously wanted to look out for her kids and her community. Despite her people's history of discrimination, she was willing to let Osha follow her dream, even if it meant she'd never see Osha again. But she harmed Torbin - intentionally targeting the weakest (and least responsible) member of the group. She essentially threw the first punch, and if she hadn't done that, the Jedi wouldn't have been so concerned. Not only that, but her choices in the final confrontation were very much a mistake. It was a tense situation, Sol and Torbin had about 20 archers with deadly weapons pointed right at them, and she decided the best way to defuse the situation was to use dark magic on/with a tearful Mae. There's no way it could have been interpreted as anything other than a deadly threat.

Koril... is probably the least sympathetic character in the episode, but she also was generally motivated by protecting the twins and her community. She decided that the best way to ensure their safety was to teach them defense, which isn't a bad thing in itself. But she was way, WAY too hard on them, which is what concerned Sol in the first place. Not only that, she encouraged Mae's temper, unhealthy attachments, and paranoia, which is what led Mae to start the fire.

And, whilst they can't really be responsible because they were just children, Osha and Mae contributed as well. Osha should have been able to follow her dreams, and in some ways she seemed to be a bit of the unfavourite in her family. But she knew, to some extent, that revealing herself to the Jedi would endanger her family, and that decision caused the rest of the events. Meanwhile, Mae just wanted her family to be together. But she was possessive and unhealthy about it (encouraged by Koril), which of course led to her starting the fire.

It's a perfect storm, a tragedy that seems avoidable to the viewer, but was inescapable to the characters. So it's definitely annoying me when people reduce that to just "Jedi bad" or "Jedi good"!

[highfantasy-soul]

While I am sad that Kelnacca was killed so early and we didn't get to spend time with him, I think people are forgetting how to read into what's not said when thinking about characters. No, Kelnacca didn't have any speaking lines nor did he interact with any of our characters (present day) BUT we saw he was living alone in a forest world that wasn't his own. He stopped responding to the jedi's communications, he drew the coven's swirling mark all over his house, and he seemed to have been killed without even a fight.

This is similar to how much we got from Indara, lore wise. There were no declarations of intent or explanations as to what she was doing on that planet or why - we simply saw her interactions with Mae when she didn't know who Mae was and was killed before we could learn what was going on between them.

I think it would actually be a really cool choice to never fully answer all the questions about intent and the mental state of the jedi who were 'stationed' on Brandok - like a real criminal investigation, there are a lot of open questions and unexplained motivations that just have to be dropped or theorized about without any solid proof of whether your theory is right or wrong. We're only given fragments of lives and we try to stitch together a story that fits - all the while theorizing from our own perspective and experiences in the world.

I like stories that show, in detail, the inner workings of the characters' minds, but it's equally good storytelling to mislead the audience or leave much up to the interpretation of the viewer without a solid answer. Overall, I think the acolyte is doing a great job at making you think about what's happening and opens the doors for you to theorize and speculate about ALL the characters and their motivations in a very freeing way.

[grifonecoronato]

Luke Skywalker / Torbin Parallels

This one a long time have I watched.

All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon.

Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.

Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things.

You are reckless!

...

I was weak. Unwise.

We thought we were doing the right thing.

In an absolutely excellent video titled All JEDI Are Secretly COPS! (The Acolyte) | READUS 101, YouTuber La'Ron Readus covers how the Jedi protagonists of The Acolyte not only behave badly by abusing their power as galactic peacekeepers, but are protected by their institution from facing the true consequences of their actions when things go wrong.

Namely, he argues that Master Indara ultimately decided to cover for the misdeeds of her Padawan, Torbin, when -- spurred by the desire to return home -- he recklessly charges into the witches' home, even when the Jedi Council ordered a stand-down.

Luke Skywalker didn't have a master or institution absolving him from the consequences of his mistakes. Luke had to learn a certain amount of moral fortitude that Torbin was denied for the sake of protecting the Jedi Order.

But even still, in the end both Luke and Torbin decided that exile was an appropriate self-inflicted punishment for all the pain they had caused: Luke retreated to a faraway planet, and Torbin retreated into his own mind.

[bereft-of-frogs]

I'm so glad I have actually stuff to analyze now to defend Indara and I don't have to just keep being like 'um that's not really how narrative storytelling works' and 'I suspect you guys just don't know what to do with reserved female characters who aren't evil' and 'not everyone who isn't a ray of sunshine is a secret Sith lord babes' this is even MORE fun than my reddit crusade over the last few weeks now that I have substance.

anyway, hopping back on the Indara defense train as I have been for a full month, but also talking about her 3 big missteps first:

Mistake #1: not putting her foot down and insisting on going in to talk to the coven alone the first time. Yeah, this was the last moment things could have gone well. I think she was right and going in alone would have looked less intimidating. Also given what she does at the end, she's a pretty strong telepath and wouldn't have had the weak point of Torbin to be exploited. I think if her level head had met Aniseya's level head they could have talked some things out, and the crisis wouldn't have escalated that quickly. There are definitely still some issues - what did Aniseya do to create the twins? why was Koril so afraid of the Jedi finding out? - and things might have come to blows anyway, but I don't think they'd have been as explosive if Indara had had the chance to initially diffuse some of the tension.

Counterpoint: they might have killed her or at least not let her leave actually. If it had JUST been Indara and Aniseya we're talking about, yeah, the fastest solution is a friendly chat between the two of them, I actually think the Jedi would appreciate some of Aniseya's philosophy, they have a nice little cultural exchange and part ways maybe agreeing to disagree on some of the specifics of the Dark vs Light side of the Force, but at least everyone lives. But there's the rest of the coven to consider. Koril particularly. She is DOWN to murder pretty much immediately, as we know from the advisor scene from episode 3, when she's like 'who would miss them?'

Aside: **Book spoilers, I wish tumblr had spoiler tags like Reddit or Discord, don't read this point if you don't want Path of Deceit spoilers** And eep, yeah who WOULD miss them? I sort of jokingly said this after episode 3 like 'lol well it did work for the Path of the Open Hand, that's not that crazy an idea', but now we have the context and oof, they're even MORE off grid than Zallah and Kevmo were. At this point they haven't even contacted Coruscant about finding the coven, right? So while the Council knows the planet they're on, they still think it's uninhabited and evidently the witches are pretty well hidden, they'd just vanish. Jeez, the Council knew the town and precise location of the Path compound and it still took an absurdly long time to figure out what happened after Zallah and Kevmo started missing check-ins, long enough for the Path to escape. I bet they don't check in as much on a peaceful survey mission vs an active investigation too, the four Jedi really could be missing for a long time before anyone realized something was wrong.

But yeah, Koril seems pretty down for murder, so while one Jedi going in alone doesn't look like that much of a threat and might set Aniseya at ease, Koril might have seen it as a weak point available to exploit. Fearing what Indara would report back to the Council about their presence and the twins, Koril might goad the coven into making an attempt on her life, and while Indara is clearly a formidable fighter, she is drastically outnumbered, fighting all the witches alone might have been too much for her. And of course, that makes things so much worse immediately. The leader and the most level head is gone, the Jedi are now grieving and rightfully fear for their lives, tensions explode even earlier. But that's really not much more than an interesting AU idea lol a slight counterpoint though.

Mistake #2: not being the one to go after Torbin when he ran off. This one is just going to come down to clunky writing, I'm sorry. Because there is zero logical reason for her to trust Sol to bring him back. She should have gone herself. Torbin was her responsibility, she's been reticent about how Sol's imbalance was feeding his the whole time, she should have known Sol was never going to deescalate and was only going to drag him further into trouble. But we can sit here arguing over her thought process and blame her but at the end of the day, it was just that the writers needed it to be Sol for the plot and...I don't know, didn't workshop other reasons to divide them like this. But yeah, in universe, there is no reason for it to have been Sol. Things still might have been escalated due to the events inside the fortress and Sol likely sensing Osha's fear when Mae starts the fire, but Indara could (and should) have stopped Torbin's part in it, that was her direct responsibility.

Mistake #3: suggesting the cover up. Yeah this one's not great. I think most of the 'wow Indara did nothing wrong' people are like '.....ok until the cover up'. And like this maybe also is going to get filed under 'clunky writing' but I'm willing to be argued around on that, I just can't quite figure out why they had to lie about the fire to protect Osha's dream of becoming a Jedi? That's the sticking point for me. They're going to have the same arguments with the Council to let her join, I'm not sure what the difference is whether they tell the truth or not.

On the characterization side though, I can also see where it's like....maybe Indara shouldn't have been making decisions at that point because she did just kill at least a couple dozen people with her mind and is probably kind of freaked out. It was an accident, yeah, but I could see being pretty unnerved by what she'd just done and not wanting to reveal that to the Order. I think a big point has been the way each of these characters (on both the Jedi and the coven's side) act out of fear and that being what dooms them, and this is the moment Indara acts out of fear. She's afraid of revealing this frankly kind of frightening telepathic power, she's afraid the Order will blame her as the leader and call into question her ability to lead, or maybe even to have a padawan. I could see in this moment her being like 'well this is technically true and upsets the status quo the least, let's just go with it.' And then gets locked in once Sol tells Osha, so she can't change her mind after she calms down a bit.

ok back to defending her against two things: 1) breaking the spell and killing the coven, 2) her teaching style.

The issue with the conversation around her breaking the spell and killing the coven that I'm having is I think one of 'authorial intent vs what comes through on screen'. Because in the Nerdist interview that confirmed Indara did not intentionally kill the witches, Headland also said that her mistake her was acting out of 'selfish attachment to save her friend' and not worrying about the consequences. And I just...my brain does not make that logical leap. You could maybe argue that if like...a bunch of other things weren't going on. Like the alternative to Indara not breaking the spell is: Kelnacca continues on his puppet rampage and she has to fight him essentially alone (Torbin is knocked out and Sol's tiring) and probably kill him, which could have also killed the witches, she doesn't know that.

I guess if she 100% knew that breaking the spell telepathically would kill the witches and killing Kelnacca physically would not, you could argue she was stuck in a trolley problem and maybe should have just killed Kelnacca, but even then it's like. Eh. So she kills Kelnacca. She's still vastly outnumbered by hostile witches who could just turn their attention to someone else. Maybe they go for Sol next and she has to do the same thing, then Torbin, until she's alone and Koril can re-form from the mist and kill her. (Nerdist interview all but confirmed Koril is not dead.) I think this is where writers get mired in the weeds of attachment, pacifism, and the greater good. Yes, the philosophy of the Jedi asks them to sacrifice possessive attachment to others so they are not fueled by those emotions and they try to find a nonviolent way to resolve conflict first, but this doesn't equal 'you should just lay down and die immediately rather than fight back against someone who's hurting you'.

TWO the teaching style thing. I've seen so many people over the last couple days be like 'wow she's such a shitty teacher' and call her style 'sink or swim' and imply she's letting Torbin drown. And I agree it's not perfect. Seven weeks is a long time to be stuck in a stalemate with your homesick student over whether he understands the grander purpose of your mission. But also I think it makes perfect sense if you consider that she's trying to teach him patience and also not influence his own line of inquiry (...unlike someone else which I'll get to). But first off, this seems like the perfect mission to teach this sort of patience. I'm even hesitant to call it 'sink or swim' which I'd apply more to like, if she brought him into a high-stakes, dangerous environment and was just like 'good luck.' Up until the last 36 hours or so (or less lol we don't know how long the day-night cycle is on this planet, but from when Sol sees the twins to the fire starting is about a day and a half), this was a safe, low-stakes mission. They're essentially doing a mystical ecological survey, on a planet that seems mostly uninhabited and without significant predators or other dangers. Finding the vergence doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency to it. Part of being a Jedi is listening to the Council, even when you have to do something boring or that you don't want to do. You don't really get to choose your assignments, especially when you're an apprentice and are expected to go wherever your master's work takes you. I think it was a fine situation for her to wait out. Yeah, she maybe underestimated how badly Torbin wanted to go home and should have interrogated those emotions earlier but still this is a pretty low stakes mission, I think without the sudden acute pressure of the situation with the coven and Aniseya exploiting that homesickness, they may have found a healthier resolution to those issues.

And, given what she tells Sol about not wanting to give Torbin answers but teach him to seek them for himself, that she might not want to influence his ideas. The masters clearly know what they're looking for is probably a vergence, but Indara might not have wanted to tell Torbin because he's young and inexperienced and then he might start seeing a vergence everywhere, rather than listening to what the Force is really telling them. (This is another thing where like, yeah if they were on Earth in our time with no psychic powers I think it's fair to criticize her for withholding answers that long...but they're psychic space wizards who are supposed to be able to sense things normal people can't, I think some of the pedagogy for that is a little different than what we're used to.) I think Sol was wrong to step in like that, especially considering the outcome, that Torbin does get so fixated on finding the vergence and going home he loses perspective. And I think Indara was right: this wasn't about what Torbin was feeling or needed, this was about what Sol was feeling. It seems like he was done with their stalemate (that exchange around the fire sounded like a conversation that's been had before, and like, not really faulting Sol for that, I would also probably get fed up with a moody teenager) and he thought he knew what Torbin needed better than Indara, so decided to override her and just spill the answer.

I think it's interesting that before Osha even comes into the picture, Indara has already accused Sol of projecting his feelings onto someone else. It does seem like he's feeding into Torbin's anxiety just as much as Torbin's feeding his, I kind of wish they had used that more in the scene where they head off for the fortress, honestly just a couple sequence changes would probably have fixed a bunch of that. (Indara comes and tells them the Council said no, they go over the results of the blood test, Sol says he thinks something is wrong and the girls are in danger, they decide to head off together, would eliminate the nonsensical 'Indara suddenly trusts Sol and Torbin to be alone together and not cause shenanigans' issue.) But yeah, that feels like foreshadowing of how he's projecting his own feelings onto Osha, like his was projecting his own feelings of being imbalanced and restless onto Torbin.

Anyway. Indara was a fine teacher probably, not perfect, but I wouldn't go as far as to say 'she sucks' or even that they were poorly matched. This was just...a long and tiring mission that ended with a literal explosion. Can't wait for the finale! Especially because ack, the 'Indara is the secret Sith' people have not quit on Reddit and there's still like the absolute remotest chance they pull something stupid like a double reverse twist - because for SURE in those early episodes she was being set up to be the 'mean one' vs Sol, and the twist is that she was actually levelheaded and willing to listen and sweet with the twins - and the final shot of the season is a cloaked Sith figured revealed to be Indara. Like there's NO way but...there is the tiniest way so I will not be fully comforted until the finale's out and that theory can be laid to rest. Though I don't think it will be, they could literally show her decaying corpse to definitively prove she's dead and show her spending the 16 years between the flashback and the present cuddling puppies and saving babies and being the lighty-est-side light-sider in the galaxy and I guarantee Reddit would still be like '...ok but here's how that really just proves she's the Sith...'

[dealingdreams]

The Acolyte s01e01 : Lost/Found

I'm going to put all my thoughts as I go into this one post, and at the end summarize some of my thoughts over the whole episode.

Also before you get any further just an fyi obviously there will be spoilers for this episode but I have already watched the whole season so I'll be referencing things later revealed so proceed with caution.

Notes while watching:

Mae's outfit is so fucking cool. I love the subtle pattern on her cloak.

She does crack me up...she's so dramatic 'attack me with all your strength'

I love this when Indara says 'the Jedi do not attack the unarmed' and Mae's response is 'yes, you do' what an efficient way of peeking interest into what this conflict is about.

I also idk. I don't know how to explain this well but...I don't like when shows make their characters unnaturally gifted. Like Indara has been doing this for a long time so her fight skill would have been better than Mae's so I like that it indeed was yaknow. Mae however, doesn't fight fair which also love.

Osha waking up and putting her hand over her heart...right where Indara was stabbed. I think this was the first real sign that Osha might feel like she hasn't been accessing the force she still is very connected to it.

Little hints at what to come there with the trade federation needing shields prepared. Love to see it.

Osha is so snarky.

Osha is doing an illegal job btw

She does seem genuinely happy to see Yord. It kinda what makes him reaching for his saber even more upsetting.

Sol's quote 'close your eyes, your eyes deceive you' really fucks me up when you think about how that's exactly what Sol's eyes did. He saw something he didn't completely understand, he had good intentions but ultimately he let it blind him.

I like the texture they did to Vernestra's makeup

I do like that Sol immediately was in Osha's corner.

I think Osha's kindness is so sweet. she immediately was concerned for that prisoners wellbeing and saved his life when she could have just left him.

Amandla's scream is so good.

Sol saying let me take accountability is interesting. I think he always was caught between genuinely believing he did the right thing and knowing he was in the wrong. I don't think you need to justify your actions if you genuinely think you were right yaknow.

Yord steaming his cloak cracks me up.

'as above sits the stars, and below lies the sea. I give you you, and you give me me' very as above so below vibes. I feel like the twins might be destined to remain on opposite sides.

I don't think Sol remotely thought Mae was dead when Jecki asked him.

Yord is that know it all in your intro to sociology class.

I think Osha slipping was more to show us her disconnection with the force.

"the Jedi live in a dream. A dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon you will fail. Steel or laser are not threat to them. But an Acolyte an Acolyte kills without a weapon. An acolyte kills a the dream."

See, I think everything The Stranger says is layered. He's talking about killing without a weapon but also that it's more than the physical death of the Jedi...but the dream as well. This idea of the Jedi supremacy, that they are so powerful. That only the Jedi can access the force. Anyone Killing a Jedi without the use of a weapon would ultimately show that there are others that are capable of using the force.

Anyways so thoughts:

I think this episode was immediately engaging. I really enjoyed how the set up the characters...layed some hints on what is to come. Overall I think it is a solid pilot episode.

Also I think it's heartbreaking that Osha has so much faith in the Jedi but aside from Sol they all were very much convinced of her guilt from the jump. Sure her having a twin wasn't in her file but they had her convicted before they even really investigated it.

Amandla carried herself just a bit different for Mae than with Osha and I adore that. She is so amazing.

Anyways love it...I also think this is the type of show that gets better with every rewatch it's so rich.

[unhinged-summer-fun]

common grounds (oshamir) - chapter 12

Pairing: Osha Aniseya x Qimir "The Stranger"

Warnings: Heavy emotional themes including reference to past suicidal ideations.

A/N: Divider by me again

series masterlist

chapter 12: visiting hours

“Fun night?”

Osha froze in the middle of taking her boots off. She couldn’t even make sense of what was happening—her mind was still on the doormat outside, damning her dreams and wondering where she went wrong. The burning afterimage of Qimir’s back still rested in her retinas, now fading with each second she stared at the light spilling from the doorway to the kitchen.

She approached Mae slowly, her boots still just a little untied.

Mae must have been waiting a while for her. What other reason would she be sitting at the kitchen table at a quarter past five in the morning?

“Long night. Jury’s out on fun.” She hated that her new instincts dictated that she throw up her emotional walls around her twin sister, but Mae looked just as uncomfortable.

Mae chewed her lip and laced her fingers together beneath her chin. “Who were you out with?”

“What’s it matter to you, Mae?” Osha snapped, leaning on the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed.

“It—” Mae stopped herself, the flare of frustration in her face draining just as quickly as it had come. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, you’re right. And you were right, last week; I’m not owed information about your life. Not after what I did.”

“So why are you here, Mae?” Osha asked, weary. Her feet hurt, and she needed to get a head start on her bedtime stretching or she’d be suffering before her shift at the cafe in a few hours.

Mae rubbed at her forehead. “I wanted to give you time before we talked again, and it wasn’t—it wasn’t right of me to just pile my stuff onto you right as you were leaving for class last week. I’m sorry for doing that. I know it made an already bad day worse for you.”

She winced at the memory.

Can you just drop it, Mae? For, like, maybe an actual week? You had two years to tell me all about him.

That day seemed like an eternity ago, even though it had just been seven days. 

Her apology was, at the very least, sincere. Mae was stubborn; she rarely admitted she was wrong, especially where Osha was concerned. “I’ve gotten over it,” Osha said. “Just… if you want to talk to me about the heavy shit, you could ask me before you just unload it on me.”

Mae nodded, contrite. The silence that followed felt fraught with tension.

“Was that all you wanted to say?” Osha prompted.

Her sister shook her head but didn’t continue.

Irritation flared. She was too tired for this shit. “I’m sick of being punished for not asking you the right questions when you could have spared me all this by just being forthright, Mae.” She pushed off the doorframe, intending to go start her stretches.

“It’s not all I wanted to say,” she said hastily. “And you’re—you’re right, I’m just—let me restart. Please, Oshie.”

She gestured to Mae to continue, to convince her to stay.

She took a shaky breath, knuckles going pale as she squeezed her hands together. “A little over a year after I started training with Qimir, we were leaving the climbing gym near the college one night when Indara saw us.”

Osha took the seat across from her at the table. This wasn’t what she was expecting to hear.

“A… year?”

“Almost a year ago, now. More like eleven months.”

“But… Vernestra only talked to me about it a few weeks ago,” Osha said, frowning.

Mae nodded. “It surprised me when you said Vernestra accused you of that. Because of the time thing, and because Indara knew it was me and not you.”

Not many people cared enough to get to know Osha and her sister well enough to readily tell the difference between them. Sol mistook Osha for Mae about as much as he got it right, and he was their dad. Vernestra could tell them apart, always looking down toward Osha’s ankle before addressing her. In those moments, she wished she would have just been called Mae. For Indara to know the difference wasn’t suspicious, but it was surprising. 

“Did Indara tell Vernestra otherwise?”

Mae shook her head. “She told Vernestra it was me that same night, I think. Because Vernestra talked to me like the next morning, and she said she knew it was me, and I was—” Mae exhaled sharply, frustrated.

Mae wasn’t as concise in her words as her sister had to be. It was so easy for others to misconstrue Osha’s words that she had to be careful about how she worded things, lest it come back to bite her. Mae, on the other hand, was a whirwind of chatter who could sweep herself through five different topics in one breath.

“I’m sorry. The more I realize how deep this all got, the more I realize I should have just talked to you. But then things got so complicated…”

Osha ignored the self-pity in favor of more information. “Okay, so Indara told Vernestra it was you, and then what?”

Mae gathered her composure. Osha didn’t blame her for being so mixed up; it was really damn late. “She—Vernestra called me into her office. She asked me what I was doing with him.”

She didn’t question how Vernestra knew it was Qimir—if Indara could tell it was Mae and not Osha, she could tell it was him even after fifteen years. “And you told her?”

“Of course I did, I wasn’t going to—”

Osha felt cruel when she said, “You weren’t going to lie to her?”

But you lied to your sister.

The silent parts of the conversation sat loud between them. Osha’s eyes burned, half from the late hour and half from tears. She didn’t watch Mae’s reaction, but it was so quiet she could practically hear her sister’s heart break. “What’d she say?” Osha asked, voice a little pitchy.

“She… told me who he was.”

Osha’s stomach dropped. Qimir’s voice rang in her ears from what he told her the first day he brought her to his place.

Vernestra mentored me personally and got me ready for competition and tournaments. I was in the ring with her every single day…

Over the four years I trained with her, she managed to convince me that my pain wasn’t real…

They saw the seventeen-year-old killing himself for scraps…

She was responsible for a completely avoidable mistake. It went down as an accident, and she slipped any blame…

I didn’t hear from Vernestra or any of the other trainers at the Temple once.

“What did she tell you?”

Osha watched as Mae realized in real time that she had only been told a critically small amount of the objective truth. She sounded nervous as she answered.

“She told me Qimir Lohar-nee—”

“Lo-harne.”

“Sorry, Loharne—she said he was a disgruntled former gym member who sought to drag the Temple’s name through the mud because he was kicked out for violating gym policy.”

Something in Osha’s eye twitched. “Which policy?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that’s all she told you?”

“That’s—what do you mean?”

“That is so disgustingly far from the truth I can’t even begin to unpack it. Did she tell you he was a seventeen-year-old orphan when he was kicked out of the Temple?” Osha asked, getting heated.

She had to cool her jets. Qimir’s story wasn’t hers to share, as little of it as she knew. Osha knew what it felt like for her business to be made public for anybody to gawk at. She didn’t want to give Mae anything about him that she hadn’t asked him for. 

Mae looked pained, wincing. “He didn’t��I didn’t know that.”

“What else did she say? What happened.”

“She told me she paid some press agency to keep him from slandering the gym and that he’d been under the radar for a long time—he used to try to break in after hours for a few years after he was kicked out. She told me that him training me was a sign he was trying to get back into his smear campaign. That I needed to—”

“What, did she want you to spy on him or something?”

Mae’s stricken expression told her all she needed to know. It recontextualized a lot of things she’d heard over the last few weeks—from him and from her.

Ask your sister who I am. Maybe you’ll take the fuck off option next time I offer it.

I had been given, more, well, more hours, kind of, at the gym…

Mae never asked and wouldn’t have believed me if I told her. If she did tell anyone about me, it’s unlikely they’d find me. I prefer it that way.

She recalled how his eyes had sharpened when she told him she’d been looking for him two weeks ago, when she’d stumbled into the Unknown Planet fight night. Mae had put that paranoia there, somehow.

“Mae…”

Her sister spoke quickly, thoughts coming out rapid-fire across the table. “I mean, it makes sense, right? He’d use one of the inside members to finally get his revenge or whatever. And it worried me when he started paying attention to you, and I don’t know what’s going on, but he still might be trying to use one of us to—”

Their first drinks at Unplan. He’d been so playful when she asked—

Are you trying to get me to train with you?

Can you blame me?

Osha shook off the paranoia Mae was inspiring in her. “Stop it.”

“Until that point, I didn’t know anything about him. He didn’t talk about his past.”

“He is entitled to his privacy.”

She went on like Osha hadn’t spoken. “He was super professional all the time. He was a pretty strict trainer, but he was never mean. And I felt… when Vernestra told me what he’d done to the Temple, I felt like I understood why he didn’t want me to know. It felt like he’d like, lured me into training with him to attack the Temple or something.”

Osha rolled her eyes. “You asked him to train you. Nobody made you pay him for that. Don’t rewrite history because someone else tried to sell you the truth of someone else’s life.”

Mae halted in her tirade, jolting in place. “You’re… you do know more about him, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. Because I didn’t give him a reason not to trust me, Mae, most people tend to be open and honest when they trust you.”

She took the dig with grace. “Yeah, well. You try telling Vernestra no.”

“That’s not an excuse to spy on him to some random person. He’s a human fucking being, Mae.”

She hung her head. “I know that… but Vernestra had all these pictures of him where he just looked so angry, and she showed me these conversations where he kept trying to get these journalists to lie about the gym, all these attempts where he tried hacking the site and her emails…”

Osha leaned in, the chair creaking behind her. “You thought that pictures of a teenager from more than fifteen years ago were enough of a reason to help Vernestra stalk him? He just wanted to be left alone!”

She felt nauseous. Mae looked equally miserable.

“So what happened? She showed you some bullshit and shared her side of the story. What did you do?”

“He… Vernestra wanted to know anything about him. His whereabouts the last few years, where he worked, who he associated with, his feelings about the gym, about her. I knew he assisted at the college already, that’s how I met him, but he wouldn’t tell me if he worked there or anything. I wasn’t good at it. The asking part. He kinda. It was really weird.”

Osha tried not to snap at her sister to get to the point, but the cold sweat of anxiety was making her shiver.

“A few months before I quit, he—I…”

Her self-control splintered. “Spit it out, Mae.”

“I asked him if he remembered what it was like at the Temple.”

Osha held her breath—no, she couldn’t breathe. This was bad.

“And he… he turned so cold the second I asked. He said yes, I do and… he became such a mean guy, after that. He was so angry. He looked just like he did in those photos Vernestra showed me.”

Osha put her head in her hands.

“He still took my money, and he trained me, but he would, I don’t know, yell at me while I trained with him. I couldn’t ask him the things Vernestra wanted to know. She was fine just knowing he was upset, I think. And it was so weird, he’d show up with all these crazy cuts and bruises and injuries. Like he’d gotten into a fight or something—a real fight, I mean.”

“How long ago did you ask him if he remembered?” Tears welled in Osha’s eyes, and she blinked them away before they could fall. She dreaded Mae’s answer, but she already knew it.

“Like eight months before I quit. So about ten months ago, total.”

Your nine-month reigning champion, here to make it ten…

She was going to be sick.

He’d joined the brawl after Mae had—

Fighters in the cage want to fight so badly that they’ll say, fuck the rules, I want someone to pay for the pain I’m feeling.

That cold fury he fought with, the brutality, the violence—

It haunts you, the awareness that your capacity to inflict violence is so close at hand.

Many of us learn it—in lessons taught by the unkind.

“—and it was difficult, but Vernestra wanted me to keep training with him. She made me a shift supervisor and gave me a raise so I wouldn’t quit. Then she—”

“She promoted you because you were spying on him?” Osha asked, still feeling a little outside her body. “Oh my god. This is—Mae, this is insane. She—”

Vernestra was stalking him. Her sister had taken bribes to facilitate it.

Knowing what she knew about his past with the gym, and the hypervigilance that remained with him years later, she was sure that trauma had unearthed itself from the quiet, content life he’d carved for himself out of rock bottom.

“What else?” Osha said, her voice wavering. She realized she was crying. 

Mae was near tears herself. “I’m sorry, Oshie,” she whispered. “I’m so so sorry. She told me I was helping the Temple.”

“What. Else.”

“I don’t… I don’t know if I should tell you.”

Her despair mixed with a cocktail of rage. “Why not?”

“I don’t know if I’m… allowed.”

“I’m sure we’re past the point of allowed in this conversation.” 

Mae looked pale with stress. “It wasn’t fun training with him anymore. I was tired all the time, and he was so suspicious of me all the time. I think he knew what I was up to—no, I knew, by the end. And then a few months ago—two months ago, I told him I didn’t want to anymore.”

Osha sat with bated breath.

“I stopped us right in the middle of a spar. It was like he disappeared; his eyes went black. I… he was scary, Osha.”

That didn’t sound right. “What did you say to him?”

Mae looked hurt and confused. “I told you, I said I didn’t—”

“Mae, what exact words did you say to him?”

Mae chewed her lip the same way Osha did when she was trying really hard to put the right words together. “I said, ‘This is the last round, Qimir.’”

“You called him by his name?”

Mae didn’t see anything wrong with that, but Osha did.

I never gave that name to Mae.

’Til I was about 20, I went only by Qimir. Then I distanced myself from it as hard as I could, and told everyone my name was Q.

“Yeah, I wanted him to know I was serious. Anyway, he told me he knew what I was up to and that I could tell Vernestra to… well, to go eff herself.” All these terrible actions, and she was still too shy to swear.

“And did you? Tell her?”

“Of course. She accepted that I was done, thankfully. And she…” Misery shone through her eyes like a goddamn lighthouse. “She gave me the junior trainer job to keep me quiet. I didn’t have a choice. She made me sign—Osha, please.”

Osha was pacing the kitchen now. “I can’t fucking believe this. Mae, did you ever stop and think for one second that this man just wanted to be left alone?”

She was a little gobsmacked. “You’re—you’re not mad about the trainer position?”

“Forget about the trainer position, Mae!” Osha leaned on the fridge. “I am so unbelievably—you respected him as your trainer for over a year and threw that all away because Vernestra told you some vague, highly biased story that you instantly believed?”

“I—well, if his reaction to just talking about the Temple was that bad—”

“You asked… you asked him if he remembered what it was like—”

“I didn’t know he’d react like that. I didn’t know!”

“Mae…” Osha felt like she was losing her balance while standing still. All the injuries he must have sustained in the brawls, all the pain he felt—

Fuck the rules, I want someone to pay for the pain I’m feeling—

“Asking him that is like asking me if I remember what it was like in Bestine.”

Mae flinched, face morphing into horror the longer she imagined herself in Osha’s shoes. Osha couldn’t stop, sobbing as she spoke.

“All you technically asked is what it was like, but what I would hear is you asking me if I—” It was hard to get the words out. “—if I remember what the mat smelled like, felt like. If I remember seeing Sol crying. If I remember any of the pain I felt before passing out, and then if I remember any of it after I woke up. If I remember how much everybody hated me for getting hurt. If I remember what an embarrassment I was to all my friends and h-heroes. To my dad. If I remember all the times I wanted to escape it. Permanently.”

“Oh my god,” Mae whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god.”

“Of course he remembered. It was the worst fucking time of his life. Vernestra won’t let him forget it.”

Osha looked at the clock a second before it ticked over to 06:00. Her soul felt like it’d been dragged across glass. Mae cried quietly across from her, and Osha did her best not to stifle her pain. Not this time. Never again.

They both eventually calmed down enough to look each other in the eye. “The man you knew, the professional, the good coach, that’s the guy he fought hard to be. Vernestra doesn’t care; she wants to destroy him.”

“What do we do?” Mae asked, shoulders turned in.

Osha didn’t have the answers. She hadn’t slept, and her emotions were in a fucking crisis. “I don’t know,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do.”

She reached out a hand, palm-up, to her sister. Mae looked at it like she couldn’t quite believe it for a few seconds before taking it, clasping it like a lifeline. Osha’s heart, fractured and bruised as it was, swelled with the familiar muscle ache that meant healing.

It strengthened her resolve. “Thank you for telling me all that, Mae. A lot of it is… misinformed, but that’s not the point. I just need you to be careful. Vernestra won’t like that I know what’s going on.”

Mae shook her head. “She’s… thorough, that’s for sure.”

Osha wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about, but nodded anyway, bleary-eyed and half-asleep. “We can talk about this later. I need to sleep.”

Mae smiled. It was a shaky thing, but it was returned, and that’s what mattered.

She called in sick to work before going to bed. She was not in the right headspace to deal with customers arguing that she made somebody else’s drink incorrectly. This is for the best, she thought as she fell asleep.

Her dreams were fitful, chased in a maelstrom by what she’d told Mae and what Mae said to her. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant as the brief dream she’d had in Qimir’s car.

She felt pretty numb by the time she woke up later that evening. The weight of what Mae had told her sat on her shoulders like a yoke—but not so heavy as the weight of her last question.

What do we do?

The idea of doing nothing filled her with indignant fury. She started there: Vernestra could not get away with this. Qimir had the right to live a quiet life outside the scope of her influence—and so did she, for that matter. Neither of them deserved to have lies spread about them, nor did they deserve to become pariahs for a terrible accident.

The issue was that with every inch of the mystery she peeled back, the conspiracy behind it grew ten times more complicated. She couldn’t keep track of it all, but she knew someone who could—someone who probably already did.

Someone with skin in the game.

When Monday morning rolled around, she knew she couldn’t wait until training that evening. She had to bring this to him sooner.

Two things worked out in her favor: she had Monday off because of the decreased hours, and her car was ready to be picked up from the shop. On her way to the community college, she hit a Starbucks drive-thru so she wouldn’t arrive empty-handed.

The admin assistant behind the welcome desk greeted her with a smile. “Hello! Can I help you find anything?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for…” Shit, what was it he said the athletes called him? “Coach Lo. Is he in?”

The admin halted, looking down at their desk and moving a few things to the side. They flicked their eyes up and down between Osha’s face and whatever they were looking at before they relaxed.

“Coach Lo is on sabbati—wait, not anymore. Sorry about that. A little discombobulated,” They grinned sheepishly. “Today’s his office day, but he stepped out to monitor swim practice. Are you on his schedule?”

Sabbatical? When had he gone on sabbatical? Her face must have said something because the receptionist continued.

“Ah, well. He should be done soon—would you like to wait for him in his office?”

“Uh, yeah, that’d be great, actually. But I don’t… this is embarrassing; it’s my first time visiting him at work, and I wanted to surprise him.” She tried to smile sweetly, and assured herself it wasn’t technically a lie. She held up the two coffees like festive cardboard access badges.

The receptionist just smiled. “I can take you there. I’m Cam.”

“I’m Osha.”

They chatted lightly as they walked through several winding hallways and down a gently sloping ramp. “I can’t believe they sent you on a wild goose chase around campus.”

“That’s what it felt like,” Osha sighed. “If I’d been out there any longer, these would have probably become iced coffees.”

They stopped in front of a door with a nameplate that said Q. Loharne, PT, DPT, CREX, LMT… and a whole bunch of other letters that went right over Osha’s head. Beneath his name was his title: Rehabilitation Coordinator.

Cam swiped a keycard to let Osha into his office, and she tried not to cringe at the utter breach of security she was definitely committing.

“He should be finishing up with practice soon, but you can wait for him in here.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m glad you’re here to surprise him,” Cam said. “He’d been pretty wound-tight for a while, and it seemed like he needed that break two-ish months ago. We were all pretty worried when he took it so abruptly, though.”

“Who’s we?” she asked curiously.

Cam’s disposition went from sunny to summery. Their answer tested their lung capacity, and it reminded Osha of Mae with an aching kind of fondness. “Oh, all of us! We love Coach Lo. Last summer—not like a few months ago summer but like laaast summer—I broke four of my fingers playing water polo and he called me an idiot for like three weeks straight including on my birthday but he made sure I’d be able to play volleyball by the time spring came around. He still asks me how I’m doing with it. He’s like that with all of us. If someone asks for his help, he’ll do everything to help them. I’ve never met another trainer like him.”

It warmed her heart. Qimir had really carved a place for himself here. It made the dark cloud hanging over his current situation that much sadder. She peered closer at one of the pictures on the wall: he was on the sidelines of a sporting event, making a completely undignified face while a giant jug of ice water was poured over his back. Wow, he really is a coach.

“I’ve never met anyone like him either,” Osha said when Cam hadn’t spoken up again.

“Sooo, have you been seeing each other long? Coach Lo doesn’t really talk about himself and doesn’t really get visitors but… if it were anybody else but him, you might make the gossip rounds in the athletics department.”

“Huh?”

“It’s kind of a rule. We don’t gossip about Coach Lo.” That certainly wasn’t the case at Unknown Planet. She’d been practically hounded with questions the few times Qimir had left her alone in the gym.

Osha grimaced. “We… yeah, it’s a more recent. Thing. Us.”

“Ah, so past the talking phase and now you’re going on dates and stuff?”

A laugh exploded out of her before she could help it. The what phase? Cam almost started looking suspicious, but she recovered quickly. “He’s, uh, taken me dancing.”

Their eyebrows flew up. “Coach Lo? Dancing?”

“I was surprised, too,” she said, accidentally taking a sip of his coffee and cursing when she left some lipstick on the white lid—okay, just give up on the lipstick, girl. He’s not gonna fuck it up how you want.

“Well, I gotta get back to my desk, but it was really nice to meet you, Osha!”

“You too, Cam.”

And then she was alone. In his office. Holding two festive cardboard cups of coffee and feeling more than a little in over her head. She hadn’t quite thought this out—honestly, she thought she would have been turned away the second she asked for him. She was 90% sure she’d broken some kind of security protocol by implying she was dating him just to get inside.

Oh well.

Maybe he’d be cool with it.

She set both cups on his desk and drifted around the room to resume snooping.

Osha had seen several spaces that belonged to him by now. His apartment, his dressing room at Unknown Planet, and his car were all neat and organized. Every inch had a sense of gratitude to it and from that gratitude, order. Mae and Osha hadn’t been orphaned long enough to have seen the inside of the FDO, but she could guess that scarcity was the norm there.

She would never have guessed this office was his without the nameplate outside telling her so. This space was more Osha’s speed: chaos. Random papers had been left strewn across most surfaces. The remaining space was covered by a truly baffling amount of reference texts, coffee mugs, and stacked file folders. She huffed a laugh at the sight of the dusty, powered-down desktop computer hiding among a pile of random crap, demoted to nothing more than a strange feature of the desk.

She recognized some familiar things: his black backpack, the laptop bag from his apartment, and the jacket he’d worn two nights ago. Everything else was foreign—but exceptionally compelling. Osha took it all in with hungry eyes.

His accolades were displayed with respect on the cement brick walls. There it was—Qimir X. Loharne, Doctor of Science in Exercise Physiology & Physical Therapy, magna cum laude.

“Hot damn,” she whispered to herself. “I barely graduated high school.”

Framed certificates and licenses neatly lined the space around it, a clear point of pride for him. Past that, there were plaques of achievement, awards given in thanks for his work with different groups, photographs of sports teams, and action shots of games. He wasn’t in all of the photos, but she could see his face and recognized the back of his head in a few.

She jumped nearly out of her skin when she realized two news clippings on the wall were much older than the others: the articles Osha had given him from the Temple and Sol’s apartment. Why did he—

Voices came by from down the hall.

“Cam, what do you mean, my girlfriend is in my office?”

Oh god. He’s here.

Two pairs of footsteps echoed down to her, and panic seized control of Osha’s movements. She sat down in the chair behind his desk, only briefly considering how presumptuous it might seem. Another pulse of insanity had her kicking her feet onto the one empty inch of his desk.

Many things happened at once.

He burst through the door, wearing a stricken expression she’d never seen before. He looked younger, but in a way that meant he looked scared. The moment he alighted on Osha in his chair, the fear left his eyes, and surprise took its place. Osha flinched mid-kick, and the integrity of the desk chair failed, sending her flipping backward toward the floor.

The moment seemed cartoonishly long.

She yelped at the same time he said her name, and within that one dizzying second, he somehow caught her. Kneeling beside her, he held her head in one hand and her shoulder in the other—holding her with a gentle strength that would have made her swoon if she were standing. Only the chair had made contact with the floor, clattering loudly behind her head. She winced and blinked at him as the world attempted to right itself. 

He still wore that dumbstruck look, and she was sure she looked pretty similar. His usual black baseball cap had been knocked askew, freeing some wisps of hair to frame his eyes. He’d gone from put together to disheveled in the span of a second, all because she couldn’t keep her goddamn balance sitting down.

They remained frozen like that for another long second, and then—

He started to laugh.

It started raspy and grew richer the longer she listened. She’d never heard him laugh like that before—he often just exhaled sharply in amusement or gave a single ha. to whatever silly thing she said or did. It stunned her more than flipping ass-over-teakettle in his desk chair. Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop.

Osha gave in and joined him when it became clear he wouldn’t let her go anytime soon. 

The ridiculousness of her blunder and the sound of his joy cleared away the anxiety of arriving here unannounced. When he finally caught his breath, he looked down at her with the widest smile she’d seen on him yet. “Hi,” he said, voice still hitching with laughter. “Just dropping by?”

When he smiled at her like that, it was hard to remember what it felt like to cry.

She groaned at the pun but couldn’t help giggling along with him.“Hi,” she said. “I, uh, I brought you coffee.” Her heart wasn’t just racing; it was doing acrobatic stunts in her ribcage.

He looked up like he just noticed they were in his office. He saw the festive cardboard cups in their festive cardboard sleeves. “You did.”

She let him fuss over her as he helped her stand—until his face took on a more severe expression that told her he’d gone full injury-assessment mode. “I’m fine!” she insisted, batting at his hands.

The attractive pout on his lips undermined his glare. God, he was so close… it could be so easy to—

Cam filled the doorway. If Qimir had outrun them, he must have been booking it to investigate. “Coach Lo! Is everything okay? Should I call—”

“We’re fine, Cam. Thank you for checking, though.” Another setting, another voice of his. This time, he spoke with a familiar, unimpeachable authority that made her heart race. At the same time, it also carried a fond undertone, an undeniable compassion he reserved for any of the students in his care—Cam, in this case. 

She saw him take one of his pulse-taming breaths, a slow inhale followed by rock-steady stillness. Sheesh, you even memorized the way he breathes. Osha, be for fucking real.

She peeked around her stranger’s broad shoulder to wave at them. “Hi Cam!”

The receptionist sighed in relief. “Okay, great. When you took off like that, I thought I’d let in just some random person.” Osha bit her tongue. “But she didn’t match the—”

“No, Osha’s perfect,” her stranger said quickly. “I just didn’t expect to see her ’til tonight.” He tilted his head down to look at her, curiosity shimmering in his eyes. What are you doing here? those dark irises asked.

His expression hardened somewhat at the ‘we gotta talk’ face she made.

“Well great! It was nice to meet you again, Osha!” Cam said. “Bye, Coach Lo! You two have a good day!” They shut the door as they left.

The quiet enveloped them the way it seemed to love doing. He didn’t move from his spot in front of her but took off his cap, just to re-fit it on his head. Fidgeting. Her stranger was fidgeting. “I know it’s a mess in here, sorry.”

“You should see my room.” Objectively, it sounded like an invitation. A very large part of her mind wanted it to be an invitation.

But he rolled with it. “I can imagine.” He leaned back to grab his coffee. He hummed when he saw the plum-purple kiss she’d left on his cup. “This for me?” he asked, holding eye contact as he placed his mouth right over it to take a sip. She couldn’t move—even if she could, she wouldn’t have wanted to. He smirked. “Yeah, that’s for me.”

Was he talking about the coffee or the—

She made herself move; otherwise, this whole conversation would derail before it ever left the station. “What brought you here?” he asked once she sat across from the desk.

“I need to tell you something.”

A flash of worry crossed his features, but he hid it beneath an attempt at humor. “And here I was thinking you just wanted to see me.”

“In your dreams,” she scoffed.

He muttered something to himself, and when she asked him to repeat himself, what he said didn’t remotely resemble what his whisper sounded like. What he first said sounded more like, you have no idea. What he instead enunciated was—

“Can you blame me?” 

It was a phrase they’d exchanged several times, and a blatant attempt at finding familiar terrain between them. Something comfortable to step off of. She looked back at the other pictures of him, casting about for something, anything to delay the inevitable discomfort of this conversation.

“Osha,” he murmured.

She winced through her next words. “I talked with Mae. The way I think you wanted me to at the beginning.”

He set down his coffee and sat in his chair, dread drawing his easygoing expression into apprehension. “And what did she say?”

Osha recounted the terrible things she learned—Indara seeing them, Vernestra using it to blackmail Mae into digging into his personal life, Mae’s terrible question and his subsequent reaction, and the cascading events afterward. She left nothing out except for two things: Mae’s unsure call to action and the mention of that final line that seemed to make him snap.

This is the last round, Qimir.

As she spoke, he grew more quietly devastated. By the time she reached the end of her story, he was hunched over his coffee like he wanted to disappear. The quiet felt loud now, instead of comforting. He hardly moved, hardly breathed, breaths coming out small and shallow. He lifted his head at long last but didn’t meet her gaze. His eyes were vacant and glazed, staring over her shoulder at something Osha couldn’t see.

“Is this you taking the fuck off option?” he asked, voice wrecked by emotions he normally kept reined in.

“No!” she cried. She stood from her seat to step closer to him. “I just… you deserved to know. It’s about you, so it’s…” She didn’t quite know how to finish that sentence.

“You don’t hate me for treating your sister so harshly?” he looked disgusted, though not with her. He was disgusted with himself.

Sometimes, someone faces that part of themselves that thrives in violence, and finds they can look themselves in the eye without a mountain of guilt crushing them for the sin of what they’ve done.

“Hate you?” she said, shaking her head. “What Mae did was wrong. She wronged you. Even if she didn’t know what she was saying. Your reactions are understandable if not justified. I wouldn’t… She… god, I’m so sorry for what she did.”

His expression softened a little, but his jaw remained tense. “It’s not your fault, Osha. And it’s not Mae’s fault, either. I was the one that chose to let my emotions rule me.”

“Hey.” She came around to park her hip against his desk, standing right beside him. “You were the one that told me emotions cannot be controlled or erased. I’m no doctor, but… from what it sounds like, she unintentionally triggered you into a severe traumatic episode. You don’t have to forgive her for it, but… you have to forgive yourself for feeling hurt.”

“You don’t understand, Osha.” He pushed his hands through his hair, knocking his hat off. Nervously, he set it in his lap while he rocked back in his chair. He gestured to the wall with all his accolades. “It’s not a matter of forgiving myself. There are codes of ethics I have to follow for my job. Each code would condemn what I’ve been doing for the last eleven months. It’s… it’s wrong, what I did. What I do.”

“You mean entering in the fights?”

A haunted look filled his face. “Not entering the fights. Walking into the cage, and the terrible things I’ve done to leave it. Done to others, done to myself… I broke promises I wanted nothing more to keep.”

Osha’s stomach sank. The last time he spoke to her about promises, it was to tell her that he’d only reserve his love for someone who could feel as deeply as he did—to protect himself from getting hurt again. “What do you mean?”

His expression was pained. He didn’t want to talk about this, but he had to. “I was in a bad place, when I aged out. I got mixed up with people that normally don’t let you leave once you’re in. I did a lot of fucked-up things to get out. The people who helped me… I can never pay them back.

“But the second I was out, I knew I never wanted to go back to that life—scaring people, stealing from others, fighting for money. I swore I’d never hurt another person if I didn’t have to. I swore I wouldn’t—” He cleared his throat, nervously flexing the bill of his cap between his palms. Flat, curve, flat, curve. “Those promises kept the peace in my soul for more than ten years. I was… good. For the first time.”

Osha’s heart broke at the smallness in his voice. I was good. For the first time.

He wiped a hand over his face, hat falling to the floor. “All of that was upset the second she—” he cut himself off, closing his eyes.

She finished for him. “When she asked if you remembered.”

He nodded tightly, then gave a bitter laugh. It was so different than the laugh he’d given before. She missed it. “The problem is, I don’t… I don’t remember all of it. That’s scared me for a long time. The concussions, the pain—there are a lot of significant memories that cut in and out when I try to remember them.”

“I know what that’s like.”

He looked mildly horrified. “What?”

“I just… sometimes, I have to watch videos of the fight—to remember that it happened.” To remember that it happened differently than the flashbacks. Lights. Crying. Mat. Nausea. Pain.

“You don’t want to forget?”

She shrugged, crossing her arms. “Forgetting, remembering. They’re different pains that make you wish you had the other.”

He wasn’t happy she used his own words on him, but he at least understood where she was coming from. She went on, giving him a break from laying himself bare to her.

“I figured that if I could objectively remember every second of what had happened to me, it would hurt less whenever someone brought it up. Like tensing your core before you take a hit, except you never let your guard down because someone could always strike out at you.” Saying it out loud felt a little damning, a little ridiculous. “I told Mae the other night how fucked up it was that she said that to you. That it was like reminding me of Bestine. Like I’d let my guard down to trust her, and that’s when she started going in, striking me with remember whens. She’s never had to carry anything like the trauma I carry, let alone anything like yours. She doesn’t know the burden of remembering, even as far back as—” She stopped. Too much. Don’t bleed on his wounds. “But I think she understands now.”

He reached out his hand, warm from being wrapped around his coffee. She uncrossed her arms to hold his hand in both of hers, tracing her thumb over the peaks and valleys of his knuckles. He took care of his hands, unlike her. She had scars from years of building and breaking her hands for sport. Fingers that didn’t set right, burst blood vessels between her knuckles, calluses—a hundred self-destructive things she had yet to confront, carried on her hands. Flipping it over, she traced the tip of her finger over his palm. Mount of Venus, heart line, fate line, life line. He let her move and manipulate him, at such odds with the immovable force he was in the cage. These hands were a testament to a life hard-won.

“I’m sorry all of this happened to you, stranger.” It bore repeating.

He curled his fingers to lace them with hers. They look good like that, Osha thought.

“Me too.”

She drew a deeper breath, looking around at the walls. He surrounded himself with the trappings of a respected man in a career he was passionate about. I was good. They were reminders. Precious milestones for every step he’d taken away from the life he’d been forced into. Something he said earlier itched at her mind.

“If someone filed an ethics violation or something… what would happen?”

“I’d lose everything.”

When you lose everything—and I did lose everything—that’s when you’re finally free. Free of exploitation, free of expectation.

This kind of loss wouldn’t be freedom. This kind of loss would be more like a death.

What do we do?

“And there’s nothing to get Vernestra off your back?”

He squeezed her hand. “When I was young and still made of nothing but anger, I did try to destroy the Temple. The things Mae said about me trying to break the website and speak to journalists were true.”

A strange moment passed, where he looked up at her with wide, pleading eyes. The fear in them frightened her in turn. His mouth opened and shut, words bitten back repeatedly, until—“I was…”

He didn’t finish the thought.

Qimir squeezed his eyes shut, his head falling forward. He looked… defeated. Her hand moved as if possessed, coming to the back of his head so she could twine her fingers into his hair. He slumped into her form, pressing his head to her stomach and wrapping his arms around her legs. They held that embrace for longer than she could keep track. It could have gone on forever, for all she cared.

But eventually he did pull back, hands coming to bracket her thighs as he looked back up at her. He was no longer trepidatious, nor did his eyes shine with fear. And he did not finish what he was going to say before. Unease tickled the back of her mind.

“But all of that stuff was fifteen years ago. I can’t even imagine why Vernestra is still so caught on it.” Osha had turned it over in her mind relentlessly over the last twenty-four hours.

He leaned back, letting his hands fall off of her like rain clinging to glass. “I’m a…” he laughed, not in mirth but in irony. “I’m a loose end. She knows if I exposed what she did, it’d destroy her. It’d destroy the Temple, and probably take down another three dozen conspirators who sought to keep things hushed up.”

Conspirators? “Vernestra Rwoh holds grudges like lifelines,” she said, trying not to show her confusion.

“She sure does.” He took a breath. “To answer your question, I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. I certainly tried when I was younger, and it’s… not healthy to let myself think about returning to that mindset again.” His jaw flexed once before he turned a sad smile up at her.

Osha felt like she’d hit another wall. She’d expected Qimir to have some sort of agenda against Vernestra, especially after sending Mae to torment him about the past for eight months. She looked over at the wall again, at the degrees and the photographs and memories of all the times he’d done right. He wouldn’t risk his life any more than he already had, not for a chance to get even.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

[sparrowmoss]

aight back on it. the acolyte ep 7 live reaction. this is going to be so bad

ahhh here we go. the full story (i presume). wonder what theyre looking for

SEVEN WEEKS… i’d be throwing a fit too

oh this concept is cool as FUCK!!!! a vergence… yes… i love it. but i think they may be wrong. idk

sol having beef with indara and her saying well thats why i have a padawan and you do not HFHEHFJEHFKDF

need that speeder bike

bro mother koril just teleported

from what little he saw of that interaction i dont blame him for being concerned but maybe also realize u dont have the whole picture

why the fuck did mother aniseya do this to this kid what the hell. what the fuck is happening

i think. both sides are wrong honestly. only at 15 mins in but sol saying that his assumption that osha is not being cared for properly here does not mean that the jedi order or any singular member of it has any right to come in and take this child from her family by force without some sort of clear assessment of her actual treatment beyond a few glimpsed moments and without first consulting the child as to what she needs at all. to me this should have been handled by someone without a bias of wanting osha to come with them to be a jedi through claiming to feel a bond with her/that she is “meant to” join them

ummm this is getting alarming i would have assumed mae meant in the future but no indara knew she meant. like. Now. like Tomorrow. were they. were they all going to sacrifice themselves in mass suicide

NOOOOO I WAS RIGHT NOOOOO WHAT THE HELLLLL

sol why you so twitchy

bro what the hell is with the jedi order in this time period you all are fucked. council says no you cant take the kids also you cant come home/leave the planet where you have created hostility also you have interfered too much. theyre in danger. it doesnt matter. you formed an immediate emotional attachment. yelling that you arent emotional. can you all please get it together

oh shit they found out. ohhhh aniseya used the vergence to create them. WHAT

one consciousness into two bodies what the fuck

TORBIN ITS NOT FUCKING WORTH ITTTTT

i think aniseya was going to let osha go

ABIGAIL!!!!!!! im so glad she got a couple more lines because for real shes the main reason i got interested in this show in the first place KFJDJFJSF

please use the force to get up that damn wall ill cry if i have to see you climb it again

ohhhh this is all so fucked dude im so nervous for whatevers about to happen

oh no mae tried to put it out and couldnt nooooo NOOOOO

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOO aniseya u dont know how right u are

um. instead of going to help mae. koril decided to fight the jedi?

HUH????

SOL WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK?

this is so fucked dude everything is SO bad

THATS how they died??????? being forced out of group mind controlling kelnacca????

fuck. fuck fuck fuck

indara beat the shit out of this guy please. “i had to make a choice” sol patrol it is so over

man i was prepared for pain with this episode but i was not prepared for how fucking angry i would feel oh my GODDDD im gnashing my teeth EVERYTHING went wrong my GOD. if these people on both sides could have not jumped to violence as a first resort. not both immediately assumed the worst of the other side. these two little girls never would have had to be put through any of that. it makes me so much angrier that the girls were the source of this fight that didnt need to happen and suffered so immensely from it and the jedi can go on with their lives despite that guilt but osha and mae lost everything. every choice was made for them every option was taken from them everyone they loved was killed and every dream they had was ripped away. im so fucking mad