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iwriteforthetincanman · 4 years ago

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Mandoctober Day 9: Darksaber

A/N: OVER 3K BABY!!! This is the longest thing I have written in a hot minute so please give it a read. Thank you @dindjarindiaries for motivating me today with ALL of your content. If any of you are lost towards the start of this that’s because Day 8 is part 1! If you have trouble looking for it just use the iwriteforthetincanman writes hashtag on my blog! THANK YOU!!

This is for @leo-moon ‘s Mandoctober!

Something was wrong. That was a fact you clung to as you roused from slumber, a headache brewing behind your eyelids. It was like real life had become the dream and sleep, a reality that had slipped away. An echo ghosted through your mind, a feeling that you knew who it was came and went...it sounded so familiar?

It was highly unusual to wake up in pain, unless that's what woke you in the first place. Although you had a sneaking suspicion that you had been in pain since you had passed out too. Then there was the cold...everything else was warm but you could feel the cold on your cheek.

Beskar.

Din.

“D-Din?” A wheeze left your lips as you reached out to your Riduur. It was like he was asleep himself the way he sat, still as a statue. As soon as he heard your voice, he startled awake, his hands carving through your hair.

“Cyare...you scared the life out of me, I thought-I thought you were dying.�� Realising he was no longer wearing his helmet gave you a weird helmet. It was a rare sight to see the rest of his armor on his person whilst missing the helmet. The only reason he would’ve done that is if he was giving you CPR.

“I’m okay...I think.” Brows furrowing in frustration, a hint of a thought wove its way through your brain. “I...I think I know why this is happening…” Trailing off, you saw the panicked look in Din’s eyes grow into an inexplicable fear. Were you dying? The thought shocked you into damage control.

“I’m not dying but...I think someone is trying to kill me.” The accusation itself confused you, but then again you had no idea how right you were. Din’s expressions morphed into so many different emotions, it was difficult to keep track. Without the helmet, he was just a man...to you at least. That didn’t make him any less dangerous.

“Are-are you sure? It was like you were having an extreme panic attack, or someone was…” Realisation dawned on your lover’s face, all other emotions falling away. It scared you how still he was, fingers no longer stroking your hair. Faintly, you could hear his heartbeat under his armor, otherwise you wouldn’t know what to think.

“It was like someone was strangling you.” His voice was much deeper now, sinister in a sense. Not to you, you knew he was angry but he was angry with the force that was trying to kill you.

...The Force.

Someone was trying to kill you through the use of the force!

That’s when it hit you.

“...Moff Gideon.” Your face matched your lover’s. You were afraid, apprehensive and yet angry with the events that were occurring around you, to you.

“Moff Gideon is trying to kill you, without being anywhere near you, using the force. It’s the one thing we can’t fight against.” Din’s grip grew tight around your body, as if he were protecting you just by willing it to happen. Part of the force worked like that, you knew that much about it.

Right now...you were powerless to stop it. The child could only do so much, but reaching through space? To another person? It was next to the impossible.

“Din...right now. All I need is you by my side.” Trying your best not to cry again. You knew the inevitable was approaching. All you wanted was for him to be near you, even if it was coming to an end.

Silently, you watched as Din’s anger broke, revealing how torn up he really was. Tears flooding into those sweetly intense eyes, he refused to let them fall. Scooping you up in his arms, he carried you to your bed.

---

Sleep was also inevitable. Which is why you weren’t surprised to find him there, waiting for you. Like he had never even left.

“Y/N Y/L/N? Isn’t it?” He smirked to himself, he sat in some sort of throne, legs crossed. He was comfortable. What got on your nerves was how smug he was about it. Glaring into his soul, you restrained yourself. You were in your mind and the force was on his side. If anything, he could easily do more harm to you than you could to him. The whole situation was insanely unfair.

“Is it even worth answering? You’re in my mind. You could learn anything you wanted about me!” Shouting across the void, angry reverberated back at you. It was like anything you did, reflected on the storm clouds brewing above. Anything Moff Gideon did, had no such effect.

Glancing around, all you could see was the emptiness. It was like you had stepped into a room with no limits. All you could see was him and that dumb throne, like he had taken control away from you.

“Looks like I have all the control when it comes to your mind Y/N.” He continued to smile down at you before standing, stepping down from his throne to walk across the void, towards you. Although he was walking at a leisurely pace, the cape that swished behind him highlighted how menacing he truly is.

“But I’m not here to hurt you. Not this time anyway…” At this, you growled. Confirming everything you and Din had suspected. Chuckling to himself, he continued “I’m here to make a deal with you.” Immediately your anger vanished at this, concern overtaking your whole body as you tensed. There’s only one thing he could possibly want from you…

The baby.

“I will never let you have him.” You were determined to stay strong, but the whimper you let out was pitiful.

“No? Not even if I turned my control over to your husband? Made him suffer the way you did? Perhaps even kill him? And leave you all alone with the child instead?” Gasping, the clouds above reflected a blue hue. Your true emotions were on full display to the enemy. You were backed into a corner. Either he could kill you and expect Din to break, give him the baby or you could listen to what he has to say and let them both live.

“...Fine. Please, leave the Mandalorian out of this.” It felt like you were begging, but in reality you knew you would do anything for Din. Even if it meant fighting for a warrior’s death.

“Very well. Next time you land, I will send a ship for you. You will find a way of escaping the Mandalorian...and bring yourself to me.” This proposition surprised you...he didn’t want you to bring the kid?

“Do this...and I will leave your husband and child alone...forever.”

Now why did he have to go and make it an offer you can’t refuse?

---

The unforgiving metal you were resting against made you want to cry. It was nothing like the beskar you were used to. Your body kept reminding you of all the differences between now and then. It was like a backwards game of spot the difference. Except this was much more dangerous.

Moff Gideon no longer had a grip on your mind. That was only because he was standing in front of you...in person.

Earlier you had woken to find Din happy that you were still alive. He was apprehensive yet grateful for the next day of life the Maker had gifted to you. You had managed to lie, telling him you felt so much better, before somehow convincing him to land the Razor Crest on a peaceful planet. One where you could get as much sunlight and fresh air as you wanted.

It was all just a farce. An act.

It hurt you so much to lie and betray your Riduur. It felt like you were going back on your vows. Throughout it all you reminded yourself, you were doing this for him and the child, to keep them safe for the rest of their lives.

That all came crashing down when the ship collected you in the middle of that flower field. It stood out violently and you were certain Din had seen it as it came into land.

This theory confirmed itself as you stepped aboard, turning back to spot your Riduur, the child in his arms as they both just stood there and watched. You could sense the horror behind their eyes as tears fell from yours. Mouthing the words that you were sorry, the doors shut and you flew away.

It took all the strength you had not to fall onto your knees when you arrived, not in front of that much evil. He had already gotten what he wanted, you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry as well.

Now, he had you in this complicated contraption that was somehow a mix between a chair and a gurney. The metal, a bitter reminder of what you had given up and in exchange what you had received.

It had only been a couple of hours, but the torture was relentless. Moff Gideon had put your mind through hell to see how far you could go before you snapped. He had the force, you knew that beforehand, yet you underestimated just how powerful he was. He didn’t want any information, he just wanted you to suffer.

No physical harm had come to you, but it felt like you were close to death. You were so tired and a myriad of dots danced before your eyes as you glanced around the room. It was a cell despite how many buttons and controls were placed on the walls. If Din could see you now you knew he would be horrified, you must’ve looked like a corpse.

You weren’t dead yet. But you knew you were pretty close.

---

The sounds of a distant battle were the next thing that woke you. For a moment you thought you had finally succumbed to the darkness, all the hurt and pain had collapsed on top of you, forcing you to sleep. But a battle could only mean one of two things, either the rebellion was attacking the Imperial ship or…

Din was here.

Just the thought of your husband made you move to get out of the chair, pain screamed back at you in retaliation. It gave you a clear message, you weren’t going anywhere.

But if Din was here, here for you and he might die trying to get to you. You sure as hell were going to fight for him. Even if it meant you were only going to see him one last time.

Imperial soldiers were many things: treacherous, hypocrites and sometimes, if you were lucky, they were very stupid. Which is how you came across your tools stashed in your belt. They weren’t the kind of tools that were visible. No, these were lock picking tools that were hidden on purpose.

It took a couple of minutes, thankfully no one came in to check on you at that time but finally, you were free.

---

No guards were stationed outside your cell, which meant they must have been called away towards the fight. Din had been a part of many battles, but aboard an Imperial ship? You couldn’t begin to imagine how severely outnumbered he was.

Limping down the endless hallways, you followed the sound of the fight. Knowing that at the other end of it was your husband, you only hoped that your limp wouldn’t keep you from a fatal mistake. This whole decision was a mistake, you knew that now.

It was a trap Moff Gideon had set for you and you only.

Din’s grief was just an added bonus.

Finally reaching the room of the fight, you discovered that all the soldiers had already been taken out. The only reason for that must’ve been a weapon of immense size and had enough ammo to take on an army. Well, in this case, it kind of did. The Razor Crest was parked at the other end of the hangar.

All that was left was Moff Gideon and Din Djarin in a vicious fist fight.

...And Din was losing.

You knew that if you didn’t act now, Din was going to get himself killed and all of this would’ve been for nothing. The only thought you had was that if this was going to happen, you wouldn’t want your mistake to take Din away from you in its wake.

Limping into the hangar, Moff Gideon didn’t even notice your entrance as he held out a weapon you didn’t recognise. Not until he activated it at least.

An ominous black blade shot out, made of light and outlined by a white glare. A darksaber.

Only hearing about them in stories from the past, you knew lightsabers were flashy but they were twice as deadly. They could kill you in an instant, cauterising wounds as soon as they were made. Din didn’t stand a chance, even with the beskar. None of his weapons matched the darksaber’s intensity.

Launching forwards, the both of them clashed as Din used some sort of a shield. Part of the ship, you recognised. The sinister sorcerer retaliated, lashing out with the darksaber searing through the shield. By some miracle it held up.

“HOW DARE YOU TAKE HER AWAY FROM ME!” The sound of Din screaming out in pain scared you to the point where you thought he was dying, not you.

“She came of her own free will, Djarin. To protect you!” Sneering down at him, you couldn’t help the strength that returned in the form of pure rage.

“SHE WANTED TO PROTECT THE CHILD! FROM YOU! YOU-MONSTER!” He was so infinitely angry, he was blind to his actions. You were scared for him. Sprinting back towards Gideon, Mando attempted to bring part of the ship down on his head. It was a stupid act, a rare kind of mistake for the Mandalorian to do.

Yet, he prevailed.

In shock, Gideon let go of the saber. With it falling out of his grasp, it clattered to the floor. It was almost like the whole scene was taking place in slow motion before you.

“I loved her...and you killed her. All for a child?” Din’s voice was broken, if all he did was look up right now, he would see that you were still alive. Broken in places, but alive and right in front of him.

“I wasn’t after the child...not this time.” Moff Gideon panted in agony, blood gushing from a gash on his head. You could see that much. But now was your time to act, while his guard was down.

Three things happened in the next moment.

Firstly, whilst they were talking, Moff Gideon’s hand moved towards a blade he had hidden away in his robes, fully intending on driving through the space between the bottom of Din’s helmet and his neck.

Secondly, you felt a deep and complicated feeling overtake you once more, causing you to reach out this time. Not fall to your knees in agony. Now was no longer the time for pain. You were a lion that had been kept in a cage, prodded and poked at. This time you would bare your fangs and lash out at your captors.

Thirdly, as Moff Gideon swiftly got to his feet, running at Din, the Mandalorian stumbled backwards in surprise causing him to trip over debri.

In the moment he fell over, all he could do was watch as you drove the dark saber through Moff Gideon’s chest.

As you retracted the blade, a wet gargle left the man’s throat as he fell sideways. Revealing your worn and beaten from to your Riduur.

Despite everything that had just happened, you were so happy to see him.

Falling to your knees, you collapsed into his chest.

“It’s over, it’s over. We’re finally safe.”

As you sobbed, you finally slipped away, in the arms of the man you loved.

---

Over a week later you awoke.

“Din?” This time your voice croaked from not using it. Not because you had been screaming in your sleep.

“Cyare.” Turning to your side, you observed the scene before you.

You were all in a hut, the sound of children playing outside bringing an unexpected amount of normalcy.

What gave you peace of mind that you were all well and truly safe was the sight right in front of you.

Din was dressed in simple clothes, a tunic and pants, no shoes and no helmet. His hair was freshly washed and had dried in the sun, letting his curls be shown freely to the world. He smiled down at you, immensely grateful you had woken.

As he made his way towards you, you grew aware of the warmth tucked into your side. Looking down you spotted the child curled on top of the blanket and you, fast asleep.

“You’re awake.” He whispered, crouching down at your bedside.

“I thank the Maker that I am. I wouldn't have missed this wonderful sight for the universe.” You joked, combing fingers through his hair. That was when you noticed the countless bandages winding up your arm, no, your arms.

Noticing the light flicker in your eyes, Din explained what had happened.

“You were gravely wounded Cyar'ika. The healers said you were lucky to have pulled through at all.” Moving your hand to his cheek, you looked upon the face of the man you married.

“I’m here now. We’re free. We can...start our lives as a family, together.” Din beamed at this, his pearly teeth on full display as he leant down to kiss you, gingerly at first.

As the kiss deepened, you remembered how long it had really been since the two of you had shared any form of affection. Yet, something else popped up in the back of your mind.

“Din-wait.” Pushing him away, it pained you more than the wounds that littered your body.

“What is it?” Confusion laced his features as his eyes flickered across yours.

“I think...I think I’m like the child. That was how I killed Moff Gideon...I used the force.”

As you spoke these words into the air, it disturbed the peace you two had created in just a few short moments. Din Djarin turned his face, his eyes landing on the object that had been resting on a table for the past week, untouched. Sure, you two were free and about to start a new life all together.

But now was the time you and the child would train.

Two Jedi and a Mandalorian.

It sounded like the start to a bad joke.

#moff gideon #mando #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction #din djarin x reader #din djarin fanfic #din djarin x reader fanfic #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin #pedro pascal mandalorian #pedro pascal din djarin #the mandalorian fandom #iwriteforthetincanman writes #mandoctober #mando x reader #mando x reader fanfic #mando x reader fanfiction

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mst3kproject · 4 years ago

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The Ship of Monsters

Check me out, I’m being topical! I had another review almost finished for today, but when I saw the news I knew I had to set that aside and find a movie about life on Venus. This one is a ridiculous Mexican film starring Lorena Velazquez from Samson vs the Vampire Women (looking only slightly less like Cher) and one of those amazing cardboard robots you only get in the very worst of late 50’s and early 60’s sci-fi.

An atomic war on the planet Venus has killed off all the males, so an expedition is sent out in search of replacements, consisting of a native Venusian named Gamma, her Uranian navigator Beta, and their robot Tor. After promising the Empress that they will bring back only the most manly of men, they wander the solar system a while collecting creatures with penises before an engine problem forces them to land on Earth. The first human they meet there is Laureano Gomez, a singing cowboy with a well-earned reputation for telling tall tales. One might assume one could predict the rest of the movie from there… but then Beta turns on Gamma and reveals that her true mission all along was to conquer a planet to feed the vampires of Uranus!

I gotta say… I did not see that coming.

The Ship of Monsters is supposed to be a comedy. It’s seldom funny when it’s trying to be, although it mercifully avoids being the kind of desperately unfunny a lot of bad comedies are… possibly this is because it’s in Spanish, and by the time I’ve realized something is stupid there’s another subtitle to distract me. The jokes, such as they are, are pretty standard. Tor the robot was created by an alien race, who were aware of Earth but never bothered exploring it because they thought the inhabitants weren’t very intelligent. Laureano is in the habit of telling ridiculous stories to his drinking buddies, so of course when he claims the Earth is being invaded by space monsters they don’t believe him. That sort of thing. The movie is much funnier when it’s just showing us absurd situations, but to nobody’s surprise, The Ship of Monsters is at its funniest when it’s trying to be serious.

This hilarity comes in many forms, covering just about all the possible bases for a dirt-cheap 1960 sci-fi film. We have spaceship sets made of cardboard, covered with buttons that don’t actually press and levers conveniently placed so people can bump into them during fight scenes. We have Tor, with his tin can body that’s always a little dinged up but never in the same places, giving us clues as to what order the scenes might have been shot in. He also has wiggly spring antennae and makes a little whirring noise every time he moves. We have space babes in silver bathing suits and glittery high heels. Vampire-Beta, sporting plastic fangs that look like they came from the bottom of a cereal box, could be the female counterpart to the guy from Dracula vs Frankenstein, and the puppet used to represent her in flight is nearly as bad as the one from The Devil Bat.

The ‘monsters’ of the title are a bulging-brained Martian prince, a scaly cyclops, a spidery creature with venomous fangs, and the mobile skeleton of what appears to be a *damn worwelf (he tells us that his race has Evolved Beyond Flesh... apparently not Beyond Bones, though). The costumes are all terrible, particularly the warwulf puppet, whose backbone extends into his mouth and who has to be carried around with his feet dangling in any shot that’s not a close-up. It’s nice, though, that a little imagination went into them, and somebody gave a bit of thought to the idea that a monstrous appearance is relative. The Martian tells Beta that he admires her ambition and might even marry her if she weren’t so ugly by his planet’s standards.

At the end, naturally, this alien invasion is defeated by Laureano, his twelve-year-old brother, and a cardboard robot, while Gamma just stands around and screams. With a movie like this I expect nothing less. The denouement contains my favourite intentional joke in the whole thing, in which Gamma stays on Earth with her True Love, and Tor the robot takes his, the Jukebox, back to Venus with him! Tom Servo would have given a speech to congratulate the happy couple, and I can just see him breaking down into happy tears before he got five lines in.

(The wirwalf skeleton is not present at the climactic fight, by the way… no explanation is offered, and I strongly suspect that they broke the puppet trying. I rather enjoy this omission, because it lets me imagine him getting lost or maybe buried by an enterprising dog, and finally finding his way back to the landing site only to learn that they’ve left without him.)

I called Laureano a cowboy but he only has one cow. Her name is Lolobrijida and she is the very first time I have ever seen a movie spur a hero into action by killing his cow. She gets a proper Teenagers from Outer Space death, with her skeleton left behind propped up by metal struts like a dinosaur in a museum!

I also called him a singing cowboy, which he is – there are several songs, including one in which he tries to explain to Gamma and Beta what ‘love’ means. The songs have pleasant but forgettable Mexican pop melodies, and none of the lyrics make a whole lot of sense. Being translated over-literally from Spanish probably didn’t do them any favours (my own Spanish tops out at yo no tengo dinero), but I still can’t imagine that the What Is Love song clarified anything.

Laureano himself comes across as kind of a fool, but he’s not actually a full-on idiot, which is quite important. If he were the kind of one-dimensional ‘comedic nitwit’ embodied in characters like Dropo, or the janitor from Reptilicus, he’d be insufferable. Laureano is no genius, but he’s got personality traits besides being stupid – he cares deeply for his little brother Chuy and for his animals, and he doesn’t treat Gamma and Beta’s appearance as two women for the price of one. Very quickly he decides that Gamma is the one he loves, and he sticks to that, doing his best to let Beta down gently even when she offers to make him a king. He’s also smart enough to trick Beta into dancing with him so he can steal the device she uses to control the rocket and Tor, and to listen to Gamma when she tells him about the various monsters’ weaknesses.

Gamma and Beta, on the other hand, don’t have a lot to them besides the basic fact that Gamma is the Nice One and Beta is Evil. Gamma starts out in the story with a strong sense of duty, and it’s a bit disappointing to see her abandon that because of Tru Luv. I would have liked the ending better if she’d taken Laureano home with her so that the two of them could be the Adam and Eve of the new Venusian race. Meanwhile, Beta shows no sign of any loyalty except to herself and her own ambition. Her original mission, to secure Earth as a blood supply for the Uranians, falls by the wayside as she decides she’s going to conquer and rule the planet herself.

So The Ship of Monsters isn’t exactly a feminist manifesto, but neither is it complete misogynistic garbage like Project Moon Base. The whole premise, after all, rests on a planet of women being able to develop space travel all on their own! This is a fairly surprising plot point, because in many ‘planet of women’ movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Cat Women of the Moon, the ladies need the virile Earth Men to come to them.

There’s also a little bit of actual science peeking out of the cracks. The moment for launch of the rocket from Venus is determined by when ‘the elliptical orbits coincide’. Launch timing is, indeed, a delicate art depending very much on what’s orbiting where. There’s also the moment when, trying to land on Earth, Gamma and Beta worry that the friction, combined with our oxygen-rich atmosphere, will set their ship on fire. This stuff is pretty impressive coming from a time when the moon landing was still nearly a decade away. There are even a couple of scenes in zero gravity that honestly aren’t totally terrible. I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen much, much worse.

There’s also one weirdly prescient moment when Laureano, telling one of his silly stories in the pub, describes being surrounded by dinosaurs – only to get a laugh a moment later when he mentions that they had beautiful plumage. I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a joke in that Laureano is exaggerating an actual encounter with an angry bird into something more fearsome (I think we’re to assume that the whole story is totally made up), or whether it’s just supposed to be funny that Laureano thinks dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales. Either way, it’s the equivalent of the moon Fornax in Menace from Outer Space being so reminiscent of Io. There’s no way the writers could have known that, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The Ship of Monsters is very cheap and very dumb, but it’s good fun for those of us who like crummy old alien invasion movies, and I recommend it to anybody in that demographic. As for actual life on Venus… I feel like a lot of the people getting excited are too young to remember when Bill Clinton told the world that we had totally found life on Mars. Humans have been discovering life on other planets for about two hundred years and every single one of those ‘discoveries’ has turned out to be either a mistake or an outright lie. We have plenty enough to panic about this year without a Venusian invasion.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the ship of monsters #cows in fridges #60s #tobor is robot spelled backwards

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tonystarkbingo · 4 years ago

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3 Prompt Summaries

Ransom Note, Royalty and Lending a Hand - suggested by @polizwrites

@rebelmeg - what do you get when you combine elite royalty, a mob boss with a reputation for being ruthless, and a ransom note that tells them both that their child is being held hostage? well... nothing good, that's for sure, because this team-up is going to be the stuff of legends.

@deehellcat - Prince Tony is promised in marriage to King Obadiah of a neighboring realm so their lands can be merged, but marrying that creepy old man is the last thing he wants to do. he confides in his best friend and bodyguard Sir James Rhodes who pledges to lend him a hand, Rhodey pens a fake ransom note that the prince has been kidnapped then helps him sneak out of the castle in disguise.

@somesortofitalianroast - Prince Steven of Brooklyn should have known it was a bad idea when he decided to tour Philadelphia by himself. At night. By the Schuylkill. Yeah, it wasn’t his best idea. He also should have known that the Family that still [still!] ran Philadelphia would send a ransom note to his family. And he should have known that the Duchy of Brooklyn had an inside man who was happy to lend a hand.

@27dragons - Barnes doesn't generally work kidnappings -- he's a homicide detective, so if they're calling him in on a kidnapping, it's because something went terribly wrong. But when Prince Tony is kidnapped off the street in broad daylight by a crew leaving no clues whatsoever other than an encoded ransom note, Chief Fury told him to get over there and lend a hand. The problem is, the note seems to suggest that the kidnapper... is Barnes himself.

@celtic7irish - We have your prince. Four words on a ransom note with no ransom demands. James sighed. The royalty around here caused him no end of grief. He turned to his best friend and Captain of the Guard. “It’s him again. Want to lend me a hand on this one?” Steve grinned, fierce and proud. “When do we start?”

@polizwrites - When Tony disappears leaving only a couple of face cards from his favorite deck laid out on his desk, Jim thinks it’s a joke - that is until Mr. Stark gets a ransom note. And as much as he despises Tony’s dad - Jim knows he has to help.

@Magicadraconia16 - When he complained to his Captain of the Guard that he really needed a break from his princely duties - and Howard - he wasn't expecting to end up staring at a random note . . . for himself.

@rise-up-ting-ting-like-glitter - Ransom Note, Royalty, Lending a hand In sickness and in health. That was the promise. Tony hadn't meant to break it. He certainly hadn't meant to wish Bucky away. Now he's got a ransom note sent by some 'Goblin King' and ragtag troupe of labyrynth dwellers willing to lend their hands...and sometimes paws.

@jacarandabanyan - Royalty AU, Prince Anthony Stark is kidnapped! His parents are searching the realm for him, and offering high prizes to anyone who can return him to them safely. The only clue they have is a ransom note written in Tony's own handwriting, and a claim from a servant that the Prince was seen approaching a rough dubious-looking man with one arm with a request that the man 'lend him a hand' getting out of a marriage contract…

Keep reading for more!

Sunflowers, Starlight and Lollipops - suggested by @magicadraconia16

@polizwrites - Morgan was never quite sure whether her father had made up that lullaby, or if it was something that someone had sung to him as a child, but it was a tune she still hummed to herself whenever she was feeling sad or lonely.

@celtic7irish - Tony had no idea where he was, trapped on an alien planet and lost in some sort of flower field, but with no flowers he’d ever seen before. He was pretty sure those were sunflowers, but they were sparkling in the starlight, making the whole field light up like it was coated in fireflies. Checking around in his pockets, Tony sighed as he pulled out one of Morgan’s lollipops and popped it into his mouth. “Great. Let’s go find the fairies and see if they can get me back home,” he muttered, striding off across the field.

@rebelmeg - art summary - stark family lying out under the stars in a field, sunflowers bobbing over their heads, and probably holding big colorful carnival lollipops because i've got no better idea + @newnewyorker93 - that, but daytime and they're looking at clouds, one of them is definitively lollipop-shaped

@somesortofitalianroast - It was the weirdest offering Tony had ever seen on his desk. A bouquet of sunflowers, a copy of Muse’s Starlight, and a bag of Dum Dum lollipops. There wasn’t even a card to explain who it was from, or who it was too. Huh. Maybe Pepper had put the items there and forgotten about them…

@27dragons - It's late by the time Tony gets home from work -- so late it's early -- and he's exhausted beyond belief. He navigates the house by the starlight coming through the windows and hopes desperately he won't wake anyone. He just wants to sneak into bed and curl up against his spouse for whatever few hours remain of the night. But he has to stop when he gets to the living room, where a lamp has been left on, shining on a carefully-arranged bouquet of sunflowers, Tony's favorite. Stuck in between the flowers are a handful of lollipops, proving that more than one person had a hand in this. The note says, "Cleared it with Pepper, you have tomorrow off. Come to bed." Tony's family is the best. [There, managed to write it so it can be whatever ship you want.]

@jacarandabanyan - One of Tony's less-publicized hobbies is funding off-the-wall science proposals made in jest at scientific conferences. The more outrageous the project, the more willing he is to pitch in money, supplies, networking help, etc. This time, he's even agreed to do the research himself. Which is how he found himself up on the moon of an unfamiliar planet in an unfamiliar galaxy, studying botany papers and trying to find what happens when you grow sunflowers by the light of a different star than Earth's sun. As ways to avoid the press and the Board go, it's original at least. Two months into his experiment, two little girls claiming to be "daughters of Thanos" pay him a rather menacing visit. He offers them a lollipop.

@rise-up-ting-ting-like-glitter - Once a decade, under the light of the full moon, and across the three dark nights of the winter solstice, the Starlight games are hosted. Sunflower has won the last four games running, but that was before Lollipop had Bucky fighting for them. This round they're out for nectar and Bucky intends to be MVP. Of course, the prize this year was extra sweet: a kiss from Starlight prince Tony-and a chance to win his hand.

@deehellcat - the last thing Morgan remembers is her mommy screaming as the car careened off the road and crashed. she sits up and looks around but she isn't in the city anymore, instead in a grassy field. a man comes toward her, a man she recognizes, and she runs into his arms yelling DADDY. they go for a walk thru a field of tall sunflowers (he says they're his favorite) and up a hill, they lie in the grass sucking on lollipops and looking at the stars. then he kisses her & tells her to give her mommy his love, before the world around her fades and she finds herself waking up in a hospital with Pepper hovering over her.

@summerpipedream - "What's this?" The book was frayed at the edges, but had a beautiful sunflower on the cover, a lolipop sticker on the edge. "Ana's cookbook," said Jarvis. "With all your favourite recipes as a child. " Now that omega Tony is expecting, and forced into bedrest by the doctor and his worried mate Steve, Tony vows to learn how to cook, one recipe at a time.

Hallmark, magic, and brunch - @somesortofitalianroast

@somesortofitalianroast - It’s not like Tony was expecting his Sunday brunch to be something out of a Hallmark movie, but he could have done without his fairy godmother showing up and telling him that he was the sole heir to a magical kingdom and it was time for him to claim his throne.

@polizwrites - Tony knows how to conjure up exquisite dishes with the wave of a wand; but to prove he truly loves his partners, he makes them a meal from scratch. It’s not his fault he really, really likes cinnamon…

@summerpipedream - "Nat, how the hell are pancakes supposed to solve anything?" Natasha rolled her eyes and tapped on the sign behind the counter. "Pancakes solve everything." Bucky glared. "You literally just put that up." Natasha waved her wand with a flourish. "And if I did? Eat up Barnes. Your destiny is about to walk through that door." Bucky was about to complain, but then the bell to the diner rang. Tony Stark walked through the door.

@27dragons - This isn't some sappy Hallmark movie. Bucky knows that. He's not expecting some magical force to make Tony fall in love with him, really. But he's going to try, anyway. Starting with brunch.

@rebelmeg - "tony... these are the most flawless eggs i've ever seen. how did you do that?" he grinned to himself as he slid the two perfect sunny-side-up eggs onto the waiting plate. "just magic." rhodey was watching from the table, a smirk on his face. "yeah, that or the hallmark movie you watched last week that made you cry." rhodey kind figured he deserved the piece of toast that tony threw at him.

@newnewyorker93 - Unfortunately for Stephen Strange there isn't a Hallmark card that quite covers apologizing for ruining brunch with Tony when a chaotic interdimensional beastie follows him through his portal (next time he'll take the subway)

@celtic7irish - Stephen glared at the man standing next to him. “What makes you think I can just I this away?” he demanded sarcastically. Tony shrugged, trying to hide a shiver. He wasn't dressed for this weather. “I don’t know. I mean, we were just supposed to be having brunch, and now we’re in some sort of freaking Hallmark Christmas thing, and I’m pretty sure that magic caused it. Because it definitely isn’t science.” He grimaced; Tony hated admitting that things like magic even existed, but when one had the Sorcerer Supreme for a boyfriend, one learned to accept that magic was probably real. Stephen sighed, summoning a portal to the Mirror Dimension. “Well, at least our first anniversary date isn’t boring.” Tony glared.

candlelight, window, vampire - suggested by @rebelmeg

@celtic7irish - The slender figure standing in the window, his profile lit only by the flickering candlelight, turned to look at him, and James shivered. So this was Anthony, rumored vampire and lord of the castle. And James' new patron.

@somesortofitalianroast - They’d all heard the rumors: an honest-to-god Vampire had set up in a moldering castle in Transylvania and was passing himself off as Dracula. After several sets of negotiations, Steve was chosen to go and check out the rumors. He was expecting… Well, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he certainly wasn’t expecting to see the most beautiful man he’d ever seen through the window, shaving by candlelight.

@27dragons - Bucky was starting to get a handle on this whole vampire gig. He'd figured out the best ways to hide from the sun, how to hide the death-pallor of his skin with candlelight, how to mask the scent of blood on his breath with wine. What he hadn't figured out was what to do about the stunningly beautiful man who was currently climbing through his window.

@rebelmeg - it had practically been a challenge, and Tony never backed down from a challenge. The whole world at large had managed to make vampires unsexy for pepper, but danged if he wouldn’t manage it before the night was through. The candles by the window had been placed strategically, putting a soft golden glow over the two of them as they looked at their reflections in the glass.

“Okay, tip your head back on my shoulder. A little more. Just like that. Now look.” tony saw it on her face when she saw them, framed in the window, his hand resting delicately on her jaw as he lowered his mouth to her throat.

“You win,” she said around a bit of a gasp, her pupils dilating as her heartbeat skyrocketed. “You as a vampire would definitely be sexy.”

With a pleased hum, tony gave her a playful nip. Just a little one.

@summerpipedream - You have 3 new messages. Press one to playback.

"Hey Tony, it's Steve. I'm sorry to interrupt your honeymoon with Bucky, but uh- do you remember Count Dracula lookalike last month? The guy who tried to take over the city? Well he's sent some sort of wedding gift to the tower. It's uh- hanging out the window. Hold on-"

"Hey Tony. It's Steve again. Uh any chance you know where the spare candles are? That's stupid why would the tower have candles- never mind."

"NEVER MIND. IT'S BAD. WE"RE RUNNING. DON'T COME BACK TO THE TOWER-"

End of new messages

@gavilansblog - Tony stared at the candle on the windowsill. Or rather, squinted. "What were you thinking?" He demanded, slurring around his fake vampire teeth. "How is this supposed to look like a haunted house when the lights are making it bright as day in here?" Bucky winced. "How was I supposed to know they even made 1000 watt candle shaped bulbs?" (Brought to you by the conversation I was having just now with a friend whose brother made this mistake)

@Magicadraconia16 - "Leave a candle in the window," they said. A load of superstitious old nonsense, if you asked Tony. As if he's really going to leave an old-fashioned burning candle in the window where Dum-E could knock it over (although, that would give him an opportunity to use his brand new fire extinguisher...) It was just a shame that nobody mentioned that the candles weren't to scare the vampire off - they were to feed the light-vampire, and without it... well, the next nearest source in Tony's house just so happens to be his arc reactor.

@polizwrites - As a creature of the night the warm glow of the candle on the windowsill was a bittersweet reminder of the world he’d never see again. “I’m sorry, my love.” James reached out as if to snuff the flame, but Anthony stayed his hand. “No need to apologize, dear one.”

Cats, Sandwich, Chaos - suggested by @celtic7irish

@somesortofitalianroast - Very little had changed since Steve had brought Bucky in from the cold. Except the lunch meat disappeared from the fridge at a rate that not even JARVIS could explain. And that Bucky brought a cat with him. It was a small, white thing that loved Tony’s workshop and loved the bots. It caused more chaos than something that only weight five pounds should have been able to cause, and it loved his sandwiches.

@celtic7irish - Tony stared at the chaos in his living room; overturned tables, toppled lamps, and were those claw marks on his drapes? “What the-?” Tony trailed off, his voice faint, sandwich halfway to his mouth. “Daddy!” Morgan squealed, her eyes wide and face innocent as she held a squirming, wriggling bundle in her arms. A moment later, a small kitten stuck its head out of the blanket, meowing pitifully. “Can we keep her?”

@27dragons - Tony likes to think he takes a lot of weird things in stride, as an Avenger. Magic? Sure. Random visitations from a god of chaos? Old hat, these days. Insane robots and/or aliens trying to take over the city? No problem. But he had to admit, even he was having trouble maintaining his calm in the face of a trio of superheroes sitting at the kitchen table, eating sandwiches and sporting cat ears. Real ones. Oh, and tails. Yeah, he's... going back to bed.

@rebelmeg - “BUCKY!”

“What?”

“Your cat stole my sandwich again!”

Bucky watched as alpine skidded around the corner and dove under the couch, tony’s beloved 3-bacon sandwich clamped tight in his jaws.

“Yup. he sure did. Why do you keep leaving it out?”

“IT WAS IN MY HAND!”

Just another tuesday...

#tonystarkbingomarkiv #tsbmiv #tsb discord party #3 prompt summaries game

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gabriel4sam · 5 years ago

Text

Reluctant wedding bells, a Obi-Wan/Satine story

When Duchesse Satine learned that the Senate would force the Jedi to marry, she immediatly sent a proposal for General Kenobi's hand, fearing every world would try to snatch him. Asking Obi-Wan before would have been a nice idea, perhaps... Now, two people who thought they would only have their duty until the end of their lives must learn to navigate married life. And that's without the proud Mandalorian tradition to try to murder their leader!

The story under the cut .

It was with swearing that Obi-Wan learned of his nuptials to be. Swearing so colourful, so original, that Anakin covered Ahsoka’s head with his hands, protesting:

“Master!”

“That’s not where my ear canals start, Master,” Ahsoka informed him helpfully.

“No, really?” Anakin asked, distracted for a second.

“Also, when I will be fully formed, the part of the montrals where you have your hands will become an erogenous zone.” Anakin took his hands back with a horrified squeak and Ahsoka giggled.

“Snips! Is this…are you pranking me? Please tell me you’re pranking me.”

“Really, Anakin, do you need to go back to interspecies sensitivity training?” Obi-Wan quipped and Anakin suddenly remembered how it had started.

“Don’t swear around my Padawan!”

“Your Padawan have been on battlefield. And in the Senate. I’m sure she had heard worst.”

“Master!”

“But I will make an effort to express myself with the proper decorum of a Jedi Master.”

With a sigh, he seated down heavily next to Anakin. His former Padawan nudged him with his shoulder.

“Would it be so horrible? To be married with Satine? You are very close. And as the Jedi expert on marriage –“

“Because you’re the only married Jedi. Because you wed in secret against the old rules without even inviting your poor Master.” Obi-Wan snapped in answer.

“- yes, that, well, I’m still the only married Jedi you know. And I can affirm married life is awesome. Especially since you won’t have to hide and lie like Padme and I had in our first years.”

“Once again, because you wed in secrets breaking your vows and didn’t even tell me!”

“Do I sense a little rest of animosity about that? Snips, stop giggling right now or you’ll do laps around the Temple with me chasing you with a training saber.”

“It’s been long since you stopped being capable of running faster than me, Master mine.”, the Tortuga answered immediately.

“I get no respect, why, but why, you used to be such a nice Padawan,” Anakin tipped his face up, studying the high ceiling of the room of the Thousand Fountains and the sky outside like it would answer his question.

Obi-Wan grinned, all saccharine sweetness.

“I feel avenged,” he remarked and Ahsoka had another fit of giggle and leaned down over Anakin, offering a high five that Obi-Wan took, with a glee totally unsuitable for a serious and stern Council Member, in Anakin’s opinion.

Peace had been good for them, Anakin thought. For the entire Jedi Order, in fact, and laughs were now a common sound in the Temple. “It’s like dodging a bullet,” Captain Rex had remarked, “you can be angry people shoot at you, or happy they missed. And all of you are happy you’ve not been brutally murdered by brainwashed violations of your slavery laws.”

At that time, there were a few grimaces, but Captain Rex had no intention to relent or to care about other people feelings until his brothers had full sentient rights. Something that shouldn’t be too long: in a week the new Chancellor would be sworn in and he was a smart man, understanding they would all have been doomed without Fives.

The new Chancellor still couldn’t work miracle and he had a choice to make: push for the clones’ right or derail the idiotic laws some dumbass Senators had passed during the chaos after Sidious’ death, a law that called for Jedi’ s marriages, as a way to integrate them better into society.

With a sigh, Anakin let his head against the trunk of the tree behind him, his thoughts running in his head. A moment later, Ahsoka remembered her remedial courses in Galactic history and flew to her classroom in a hurry, with a choice of words that made Anakin cringe.

Against him, he felt Obi-Wan’s warmth and in the Force, he felt the inner peace of this former Master struggling against the news of his impending marriage.

“There are exceptions in that law,” he said to cheer him up.

“Yes, but it would be disrespectful to pretend I’m something I’m not. I’m not going to tell the commission I can’t marry because I’m asexual, or aromantic, or anything in those lines, when it would be a lie. And I hope the Senate will relent a little if a Council member is married. Let the other Jedi have more time…or even let them alone.”

“But you aren’t obligated to be the one taking the fall”, a new voice intervened and Mace Windu came to sit near them.

“Master Windu,” Anakin said with a nod, when the “Mace!” of Obi-Wan was much warmer.

The Korrun Master searched for his words for a moment then he pointed out: “Just because Mandalore offered a…” He seemed lost already and Anakin completed:

“A dowry, like it’s the dark time of bought and paid for brides? Not that Obi-Wan wouldn’t be delightful in white satin.”

“I think I would be much more a lace man,” quipped the red head.

“You two are a menace. But yes. Just because Duchesse Satine seemed determined to not let another planet snatch you, you’re under no obligation to answer it. We have other allies who would offer their hands to a Jedi in some sort of white marriage to protect us from rulers trying to snatch themselves a Jedi as if we are some sort of pet. Let one of us handle it.”

“But,” Obi-Wan observed, red rising on his face, “ Satine… I love Satine.”

It was the first time Anakin heard him speak the words and it was still a shock. Mace himself didn’t seem surprised and only touched Obi-Wan’s shoulder in support.

“I know. But wouldn’t it better if you were to wed, to go to that point on your own? To not be strong-armed into it. I fear what it would do to your relationship.”

It was a good thing Anakin was already seated, he would have fallen on his butt listening to Master Windu. Not for the first time, he asked himself how much the Sith had tainted his vision of the other Jedi.

Obi-Wan smiled, and even in this circumstances, there was real happiness in his eyes.

“I will contact Mandalore myself to accept. I will become Satine’s husband.”

*****

Obi-Wan had meet a lot of officials in his life, so much that they had a tendency to blur into each other. He was still pretty sure he would have remembered the obnoxious Umbaran, an envoy from the Republic Senate, which was currently having an aneurysm at the idea that the wedding of the first Jedi could be something other than a lavish affair, complete with ambassadors from three thousand words, fireworks and more protocols than a coronation.

On the other side of the table, Satine smiled to him. They hadn’t succeed in meeting without half her court since the two days Obi-Wan had arrived and conversation in public were stilled and awkward, empty of their usual banter. It was more difficult that he thought and his meditations had become a struggle, only helped by Mace’s presence, the older Master playing the role of a calming anchor in their joined meditation. Something Anakin, dear Anakin, could never do, no matter his desire to help. Meditating with him was like trying to swim in a flooding river.

Obi-Wan touched his beard to hide his smile, the Umbaran’s words more a background than anything. He was blessed, he thought. Blessed by friendship. So many Jedi had been lost and he had grieved for friends, but he still had Mace, who was playing statue on his right, the perfect picture of a Jedi Master, and Anakin, who wasn’t even trying to muffle his yawns on his left and had insisted to come, even if Luke and Leia were only two months old.

Whatever would happen, his friends would stand with him.

He had the Force and his friends…and soon, soon, perhaps Satine? He looked at her from the corner of his eyes. If he could only have two minutes alone with her, a real discussion…

Satine suddenly stood.

“This is ridiculous. Ambassador Deechi,- and Obi-Wan wanted to face palm because of course that was the Umbaran name, he had met him a few times already and once Ahsoka had earned herself lapses around the Temple by falling asleep during a meeting with him- “Ambassador Deechi, Master Kenobi and I will be married at the new moon-”

“In two weeks, really, your Majesty…”

“-And if the ceremony is not ready to the Republic’ specifications, I will kidnap him and marry him with Mandalore’s old laws, in the mountains, with only my sister and a wise man, as it was done in the time.”

The sister in question, who had seemed as bored as Anakin, punched the air with a cry of triumph. The officials, Mandalore and Republic alike, had paled, and were still spluttering when Satine walked around the table and offered her hand to Obi-Wan who raised from his chair to take it obediently.

The fire in this woman….He was smiling like an idiot, he was sure of it.

“Come,” she said and he followed unquestioningly, his hand in hers.

Bo-Katan Kryze turned to the Republic officials and smiled, with too much teeth for her specie.

“So, with the happy couple out of the way, if we talked about details? Like money?”

More spluttering from the officials but she found an unlikely ally in the quiet strength of Master Windu.

“After all, it would be against all civilized behaviour to exile Master Kenobi here, far away from his way of life. A Jedi contingent would be logical and since the Senate quite insisted about Jedi marrying, it wouldn’t be fair if Mandalore payed for said contingent.” He explained.

Mace Windu wasn’t the sort of man who took pleasure in making people pay for his frustration and anger, even in something as temporary as money. But the Jedi were his to protect and the Senators would have happily thrown them to the Rancors. And Obi-Wan had learned more about the diplomatic game from him than from Qui-Gon. The dear man had been has discreet as a Bantha in a state dinner, trampling around on people’s pride in the name of the will of the Force. Mace was much more discreet in negotiations than poor Jinn had ever been. And much more lethal.

“Her excellency Kryze is well within her rights,” he continued, very matter of facts.

“Oh please,” smiled Satine’ sister, “call me Bo-Katan.”

And together, they extracted every cent they could from the Republic, Anakin watching and cheering them on.

During that time, Satine had taken Obi-Wan into her apartment, deep into the palace, into her quiet rooms arranged around a small garden.

“Satine?”

“I wanted you to see them. I…You need to decide if you want to share them with me.”

“Aren’t married people traditionally living together?”

She touched his cheek and he closed his eyes in the caress.

“When I heard about the law…the idea that they could ship you to a foreign world like a prize made me so furious…”

“So, you offered for me.”

“I jumped into decision guided by my anger, without asking you. And I never, ever, would force your hand. You’re not a prisoner. If you want to never see me again after, never think I would impose myself.” Her sharp blue eyes were scrutinising him so fiercely that for a second he asked himself which one of them was really into the mind reading business.

“You could never.”

Feeling bold, he took the small hand on his face, kissed her wrist. Were they not engaged? He shuddered at the idea that old rules didn’t apply anymore and kissed her wrist again, eyes closed too tight. She smelled of some flowers he couldn’t identify.

“Obi-Wan, look at me.”

He obeyed. She was so close, alive and breathing and smelling so good.

“May I kiss you?” she asked, breathless, and he nodded and closed his eyes again when he felt her mouth on his. Something painful, so usual that he didn’t note it anymore, loosened up in his chest. The second their lips touched, a good part of his worries vanished. With Satine, there was nothing he couldn’t face.

It was only the third time they shared a kiss, and it was so different from the first one, a terrified Padawan and the young Duchess he protected, or from the second, a Master Jedi incognito and the Duchess he had rescued from Maul. It stayed chaste and tender but it was enough to make him weak in the knees.

“I will never ask something of you that you don’t want to give”, Satine whispered against his ear and he shuddered again.

“And if I want to give you everything I am?”

“Then, I will treasure it. I can be greedy, my Obi-Wan. I will keep it and treasure it and claim to the entire world that you’re my beloved.”

Obi-Wan felt a shiver along his nerves and something must have passed in his eyes.

“I will be yours and you’ll be mine,” Satine swore and he closed his eyes, overwhelmed and so thankful.

“Kiss me again?” He asked.

Her lips crushed against his again, less chaste this time, with a hunger he didn’t totally understood. She certainly knew what she was doing and it was a relief: that one of them had more to guide them that two kisses years apart and the stories told by Quinlan!

That third kiss was followed by a fourth, and a fifth. He felt desire rise in him and immediately send it in the Force, an old habit, before remembering he could now embraces it. It was almost too much and he broke the kiss and hid his face into Satine’s neck.

“Will you marry me?” She asked and he smiled and whispered his yes.

“Were you serious about marrying me in two weeks, without all that pump?”

“Would you prefer it?”

He made a face.

“I could do without all the politicians trying to earn points by being invited,” and they were so close that he felt her laugh inside his ribcage.

They couldn’t escape the pump, of course, it would have been too nice. He suspected Bo-Katan ran as much interference as she dared, because she liked the idea of her sister stealing herself a Jedi, in the old ways, but at the end, there were politicians and holoreporters and too much people.

He knelt in front of her, dressed in a Jedi uniform in Kryze colours and felt the weight of the circle of gold she placed on his head like an oath. All his friends had come. Dex and Anakin were crying tear of joys and Bant’s colour around her gills was almost ruby, her skin tone reacting to a strong emotion. Padmé was trying to cover her yawns because the Senate was working fourth time more that it had under Palpatine. Quinlan was wearing his most formal attire, something Obi-Wan would have deemed deeply suspicious if the attire hadn’t the highest collar possible and Quinlan a tendency to like lovers who marked him….

It was a nice ceremony. It was something he never knew he would have. He swore to himself he would do his best to become a good Mandalorian’s consort and stood back, taking her hands in his, smiling so hard it almost hurt.

He was her husband.

And then the problems started.

When you marry a ruler of Mandalore, the problem is that with the marital life came a full planet of Mandalorian….

*******

Bo-Katan had been happier that she could have imagined at her sister wedding, despite the years of bad blood and silence between them. She was quite proud of them, mending their relationship like that, working together to make their planet united again. She was also so proud of Satine, taking her man out of Republic’s hands and making them pay for it, too. She would have preferred an old ceremony, traditional, in the mountain with only as elder as officiant and herself to represent the clan, but perhaps for her own wedding, if she ever found a man wanting to be kidnapped by her from his clan?

The Jedi thing was clearly unfortunate, really couldn’t Satine have chosen someone a little less controversial with the Jedi-Mandalore history, but nobody was perfect. Most of the Jedi contingent which had accompanied him seemed bearable. She could come to like Kenobi, if he made Satine happy. She had been less convinced at the beginning by the addition of the clones of Jango Fett, but it was evident that even heavy artillery wouldn’t separate them from their former General.

She was whistling when she went around the corner in the familial wing of the palace, ready for bed, already in a nightshirt after a moment in the private sauna….and found a fully armoured Mandalorian wearing gold for revenge, kneeling on a ventilation shaft exit. There were only dark possibilities for that being presence there, and most of them was of the murder of Satine and/or her brand new consort sort. Yelling the Clan Kryze traditional war cry, which hadn’t been used in the palace since some good fifty years, Bo-Katan charged.

She was of the punch first, ask question later Kryze-model, like Korkie father and a long list of ancestors had been and what followed was an epic brawl. She regretted she hadn’t worn her jet pack and full weapon set to bed. The small knife strapped on her tight was clearly not enough as a Beskar'gam opener, even if she cut a tendon successfully, just at the knee, where one of the weaknesses of this type of Beskar'gam was.

A machete. If she survived that one, she would go to bed with a machete strapped to her tight and a blaster under her pillow!

Despite her disadvantage, she was winning, when in a desperate move, the other started his jetpack and thrown the two of them through a window.

That was it. She was dead. That Jedi better protect Satine and Korkie or she would haunt his Coruscanti ass. She closed her eyes against the vision of the ground coming …and opened them a few seconds later because it took too long.

Apparently, because she was floating.

Floating in direction of another window, a little to the right, which opened like it was holocommanded.

She touched the carpet and almost fall down, her knees weak, but strong arms helped her. Strong arms dressed in Jedi tunics.

Come on, a death protecting her sister, even in her nightshirt, would have been better than being saved by one of those…

“Are you alright, your Excellency? Can you stand?”

There was more real preoccupation in the words that she would have thought, and the voice was female. She looked up and her saviour was a Moon Calamari with enormous black eyes and a tattoo around one eye socket, which she was sure had been clone-designed.

Even if the Jedi was keeping Bo-Katan standing up with a strong arm around her, her other hand was extended in direction of the open window, where the would-be assassin was still suspended, too far away to grab anything, head down, trashing like a fish on a hook against the strength of the Force gripping him.

“What’s your name?” Bo-Katan asked, without moving from the Mon Calamari’s arms. The other was smelling salty and was running colder than Bo-Katan, but even then, the red head felt like she had burrowed under a warm blanket and for a second, she asked herself if the other was using the Force to comfort her after that near death experience.

“Bant Eerin, your Excellency.”

“Bant, you definitely should use my first name.”

*****

To the new lovers, intimacy had come naturally. Obi-Wan had been raised in a chaste culture but Jedi took to chastity like a way of life, not like a moral judgement. Once he knew he could look, touch, share… And with Satine? The woman he loved guiding him, he had taken to physical love in her arms like he had been clay shaped to be the perfect lover for her.

They had waited decades for that, in a way, and at the beginning, it was difficult to let go of each other.

Mandalore was too unstable for them to take a honeymoon, but Bo-Katan and the officials were supposed to take care of the planet for them for five days and they had every intention to use those five days.

So, when Satine woke up from their latest session of love making and let her gaze embrace the room, she didn’t immediately realized what had woken her up. The moon was high and letting see every details but she was pretty sure she hadn’t slept more than one hour, so why was she awake? She looked at her bedside. Her holocom was an angry red, a muffled sound coming of it. She looked at her message, then immediately woke up Obi-Wan.

“Someone tried to murder my sister,” she explained, “help me”. With awkward fingers he zipped her, tied, and buttoned, struggling against meters of taffetas and so small ties that he cheated and used the Force, his fingers too big.

“Do you really need all of that stuff?”

“She’s alive and will stay that way if she knows what is good for her. I can’t take the time to dress. I can’t appear weak, and running to her bedside without all that stuff, as you said, that would appear weakness. But I can’t appear too long after, or her own position would be weakened. I never should have given the week to all my handmaidens…Tighter, darling.”

“Tighter and you won’t breath!”

“No, but I will stand straight and proud. Not every Beskar'gam are metal, cyare.”

*******

There was a delightful small garden, deep in the palace, which had been the late Duchesse, the mother of Satine and Bo-Katan, personal domain. Here, she had escaped the dangers of the court and most of his intrigue, which she hadn’t been really built to endure. The two sisters more precious memories of their parents and their dead brother, Korkie’s father, took place in that garden.

It had been destroyed during the civil war but when it had been possible to use credits for something other than urgent matters, Satine had it remade. That had been the first renovation work in her familial wing.

Not her apartments, not the throne room, not the gallery of old Kryze portraits and holos, that frankly she found creepy, but this garden.

And now, it was only used for family and very close friends. A place without the cutthroat politics of the palace, without the constant need for Satine to watch her tone, her words, her posture.

Satine was half sitting, half reclining in a deep ottoman, Obi-Wan sitting on the floor on a thrown pillow, his feet in the small fish pond. To her great pleasure, he had immediately loved this place and they were already in the habits to come here when they had a little free time.

Obi-Wan was leaning against his wife’s legs and had such an expression of peace on his face, he probably would have purred if he had been physiologically capable of it. He was wearing some tunics in the Jedi’s traditions, but he wore them in Kryze colours, and she loved how he marked himself as hers in this small way. They were still exploring, slowly, the wonders of their newly found intimacy. Satine was finding in herself more joy that she could have believe possible in this exploration. She loved how Obi-Wan slowly unfurled under her guidance. He had come to her curious and a little cautious, deeply unaware of the reality of a relationship.

And she had been, so, so careful, realizing more than him how he could have been hurt in his naivety, how she could have taken from him pieces he didn’t even realize he was losing before it was too late.

The reward of their relationship growing stronger every day had a sweetness that made her heart sing. Every day it deepened, brought them closer and closer. There were so many things to explore together and she wasn’t thinking of sexuality, even, if yes, that would be fun too, to offer to Obi-Wan the multiple nuances of human sexuality and to explore them with him.

They would be so happy, she was sure of it, like they couldn’t have been if he had renounced being a Jedi for her. They would be so happy, like they already were, but every day a little more.

She put down her datapad. Right now, her mind was busier with the wonders of her dear husband than it was with their social life. They needed to choose between the celebrations on Coruscant of the latest Chancellor’s elections, or the second Jedi wedding celebrated since the war, which would happen on Saleucami between a clone Commander and his Jedi. She was sure Obi-Wan would prefer the wedding and if the former would have been more politically smart, making Obi-Wan happy ranked higher than scoring political point.

Like he had heard her thoughts, Obi-Wan turned to her, kissing the hand that had been playing with his hair. Adoration was making his eyes shine. She leaned down for a kiss and perhaps she would have initiated more, cajoled him into going into their bedroom, if not for a noise on the other side of the garden.

The Darksaber had always held a special place in Mandalorian history. It had go from families to families, a symbol of power and duty. In some periods of history, it had also been seen as cursed. The Jedi who had meet their demise by it, less numerous than Mandalorian pretended of course, because trying to kill a skilled Force user with a proximity weapon was a terrible idea, those Jedi were supposed to jinx the saber and those who bear it.

It had been almost six generations since a Kryze had possessed it and Bo-Katan had taken to it with great pleasure and the over eagerness of a murderous Aak puppy.

Nevertheless, even if the Dark Saber had been possessed by the Kryze before in his history, it was certainly the first time it was used that way. To teach a Mandalorian lightsaber combat techniques.

Bo-Katan lost her footing and she would have fallen into a bush, if Master Windu hadn’t caught her with the Force, and with half a smirk. Her opponent today was Anakin and he was without mercy in training. Around them in circle, Mace, Ahsoka, Bant, Quinlan, Aayla and Siri were commenting and offering advices. Siri was leaning on a crutch, she was just coming back from a hard mission, but the rest of them seemed more rested that they had been in years.

“For a woman who profess to despite Jedi, your sister likes to collect them,” Obi-Wan remarked to his wife, “ and I’m pretty sure your security officers will soon resign if she doesn’t stop asking the Jedi for help in testing their security measures.”

Satine had a smirk and she drawn in his head against her legs again. He had come to bed late all week, negotiating with some exiled Mandalorian structure, one of many, to reinstate them in Mandalorian society. He was a fine negotiator, he was after all THE Negotiator, but Mandalorian had hard skulls and he was pretty tired.

“Bo likes dangerous people,” Satine admitted, starting again to pet his hair,“I think it was only a question of time.”

On the other side of the garden, Bo-Katan had asked for a respite and was drinking some energy drink, as Bant fussed over some minor graze the red head had received.

Satine put her head against the back of the ottoman and closed her eyes, savouring the last rays of the sun on her face. Tonight, there was another dinner with too much small talks and too many people she despised. Tomorrow, there would be politics, internal to Mandalore and also on the galaxy scale, there would be the problems of the latest extremists and their refusal to join Mandalore again unless it burned on their terms, but in that moment, with Obi-Wan safe and happy against her, and Bo-Katan with her again, as happy as she could be, Satine could savour peace.

A few months after Satine and Obi-Wan had tied their lives together, a bomb went off in their apartments in the middle of the night.

The bombers were good bomb makers, but terrible gossips readers. When the Duchesse’s rooms were gutted by an explosion, said Duchess and her husband were on Coruscant for the wedding of Master Ima-Gun Di and Captain Keeli, a fact that had been announced on every tabloid on Mandalore. In fact, the exact minute the bomb went off, they were cheering with the rest of the assistance as the happy couple kissed for the first time as married couple.

There wasn’t any loss to deplore and the couple found the message when they came back to their rooms in the Mandalore embassy late in the night, and immediately contacted Bo-Katan.

“Don’t change your plan,” the young woman advised, “I’m more than enough to handle that and you rushing back here would be read as you not trusting me enough to kick their asses.”

“Please, don’t maim anybody,” Satine asked, then seeing her sister’s expression, she corrected “please, don’t maim anybody too much.”

“Do you think we should still go back?” Satine asked her husband after, while he was busy with her corset. He had developed quite a talent with her complicated clothes, he would do a good handmaiden. And if sometimes, she loved to see him in said corset, it was between them.

“Let’s take a decision tomorrow,” Obi-Wan said. He kissed the newly unveiled skin of her shoulder, before adding: “We’re tipsy and tired, it’s not the best moment for that. And Bo-Katan isn’t alone, the Jedi contingent on Mandalore will offer its help in her search of the guilty party. And…well, they will stop them if she try to execute people in a moment of anger. Perhaps there is even some she likes enough to listen to them.”

“She respects Knight Eerin,” Satine admitted.

“Is that was the kids call it now? Respect? Because I’m pretty sure we used another word when I was a Padawan and you the newly crowned Duchess. I hope your sister is serious. Bant is a serial monogamist.”

Without answering, she turned in his arms, “Enough talk about Mandalore for tonight. Do you know it’s traditional to have sex on a wedding night?”

“It’s not even our weeding night,” Obi-Wan remarked, amused.

“Will you let that stop us?”

“Certainly not.”

When Obi-Wan and his beloved wife were on Ryloth for the weeding of Knight Secura and Commander Bly, Bo-Katan cracked open like a nut a small cell of nostalgic Mandalorians who thought Satine had nothing to do on her throne since she hadn’t killed anyone for it. Fortunately, Anakin was with her to stop the arrests of becoming illegal, which they would have become if she had bashed them on the heads enough to make them spit the names of their sponsor, as was her first idea.

“You shouldn’t do that to me,” he had half-whined to the red head after, “I can’t be the voice of reason, it’s too much pressure!”

Despite his words, he followed her everywhere in her long search. His former Master had never been happier, the shadows in his eyes had never been lighter, and if Bo-Katan needed to play nice for Satine to be happy and safe, then she would play nice, even if Anakin had to follow her everywhere like an overgrown, well-armed puppy.

It had brought about a slight problem between him and Padmé, who couldn’t understand why he couldn’t give that job to a Mandalorian officer, or to another Jedi.

How couldn’t she understand that Obi-Wan’s happiness couldn’t be in the hands of just anybody?

“Pretty sure it’s supposed to be in the hands of the Duchess,” Ahsoka remarked when they talked about it, “Or best, in the hands of Master Kenobi. Because he’s, you know, an adult and even an adultier adult than anybody else we know. Except perhaps Master Windu.”

“Adultier adult?” Anakin had asked, an eyebrow arched, “Should I send you into remedial grammar class, and she had stuck out her tongue, in a childish moment that he saw less and less frequently in her. His heart had squeezed painfully in his chest. His Padawan wasn’t anymore the young Tortuga of their beginning. She was an adult. Soon, very soon, she would be a Knight.

An awesome, awesome Knight, but it seemed to Anakin that Yoda had send her to him only days ago, and now she almost towered above Obi-Wan.

Surprising her, he kissed her brows in a paternal gesture.

“Master?”

“If anybody try to throw that stupid marriage law at you against your will after your Knighthood, we’ll run away together and become pirates,” he simply answered.

“Padmé wouldn’t like it.”

“Sad but true. Doubly sad, because she would make an awesome pirate Queen.”

Bo-Katan and Anakin were on the same opinion about one fact: the ducal couple was safer away from the planet. They insisted, very logically thank you even if later Obi-Wan would pretend they had whined, for them to continue their trip, since it’s was wedding season in the Jedi Order, and to let Anakin and Bo-Katan handle everything else.

Since Obi-Wan didn’t seem convinced, Anakin used his last card and swore he would ask for Cody’s help. The Clone Commander had refused prestigious postings to follow Obi-Wan to Mandalore and was now a member of the Ducal guard, it wouldn’t be complicated to bring him into the investigation, it would even be logical. Of course, it was also a little like offering to bring a baby-sitter with them, but he wasn’t above the slight embarrassment of it, if it kept Obi-Wan safe!

So, Cody, Anakin and Bo-Katan investigated, and Satine and her husband went from wedding to wedding, from worlds to worlds.

Some of those weddings happened between clones and Jedi, most of the time on the worlds of their first missions together, something Satine found half romantic and half creepy, since a lot of those first meetings had included explosions, battle droids and a body count. Some of those weddings happened between officials and Jedi, some in the Senate, some meet in missions, all of them people who had meet the Jedi before that infamous law, and who had saw them leave for another assignment with sadness in their hears. Now, they had a second chance and Satine was happy to see Obi-Wan’s face at every of those weddings. His quiet joy at seeing his friends and brethren found, if not the love the two of them had, but strong, good pairings, full of respect and trust. He even cried a little, when Mace Windu married Bail and Breha Organa.

They let all those celebrations of love lure them into a dangerous sentiment of safety. It was quite a shock when a Rhodian tried to stab Satine, during the ceremony of Garen Muln’s wedding.

“That’s it,” Obi-Wan snarled, his knee on the back of the would-be assassin, his lightsaber, turned off, just pressing against the Rhodian’s neck as a very successful warning to stay down, “We’re going back to Mandalore. I’m going to handle those factions myself.”

In most people’s minds, dangerous beings are supposed to dress in black and lurk in the shadows. An exotic name/past/dead lover whose soul need revenge and / or an interesting scar help.

Obi-Wan Kenobi fit none of those criteria. Force Healing and bacta had stopped the multiple wounds of his past to scar. He was happily married, and not mourning a long dead princess/stripper with a heart of god/ childhood sweetheart for who he had sworn to clean up the world, as classical romance holodramas tropes demanded. Obi-Wan was the most common first name on Stewjon for a male human of his generation, and Kenobi the third most common last name of the archipelago in the Northern hemisphere of Stewjon where he had been born. He left the black to Anakin, preferring traditional Jedi colours, or more and more, Kryze colours, all blue and grey. His past wasn’t more exotic than any other Jedi, and for lurking in the shadows, he wasn’t a drama queen like Xanatos, may the Force have misery of his soul, had been.

So, Obi-Wan looked mild mannered most of the time, and exasperated by the world’s attics the rest of it.

He didn’t look dangerous, or perhaps just for people’s pants when he went full flirting in the name of the mission. But not dangerous, could remove limbs at the smallest provocation, dangerous.

Which definitely prove people shouldn’t be judged on their appearance, because Obi-Wan was probably the most dangerous Jedi.

Oh, he wasn’t as powerful as Anakin in sheer puissance. He wasn’t as skilled with a lightsaber as Master Windu. Not as apt to mind manipulation as Master Mundi, or as good in diplomacy as Master Gallia.

But he was good, very good at all those things, and it was because he was powerful and at the same time pretty good with a lightsaber and pretty good with mind tricks and so good in negotiations they gave his name to some new ideas in that field, that he was the most dangerous.

Also, he reached a point, sometimes, when he was out of fuck to give and just broke things in his path until he reached his goal, no matters the collateral damages.

Mace blamed Qui-Gon. The man had been a horrible influence and a young Jedi could only spent so much of his formative years using ruffians’ methods and horrifying protocol officers before bad habits took hold.

This is why Mace wasn’t surprised when, a month after his weeding, he was woken up by his private communicator. Extracting himself from his spouses’ arms was quite a challenge: Bail was quite the octopus in bed, and Breha liked to use his shoulder as a pillow. He was forced to cheat and to use the Force to be sure they continued to sleep. Ruling a planet was a challenge, when you wanted to do it well, and marrying the Master of the Jedi Order had only put more problems on the Organa’s plate: they needed all the sleep they could have.

“Skywalker?” Mace asked, once he was out of the bedroom.

“Oh, I forgot about the difference of hours with the capital of Alderann, sorry Master” Anakin said when he saw he was shirtless. Even in the blue of the holograms, Mace could see him blushing. The younger Jedi had been married for years, what did he expect exactly, Mace sleeping in full Council regalia?

“Now that I’m awake, tell me why you called.”

“I’m so sorry, Master!”

“Anakin!!”

“Hem,yeh, hem, it’s about Obi-Wan, Master.”

“Force, did something happen to him? Why didn’t you start with that?”

“No, no, he’s fine, totally, I mean physically. Not that I think he isn’t fine mentally!?”

“Skywalker! If you don’t start telling me why you called, I’m going back to bed. What happened to Obi-Wan?”

“Nothing happened to him. It’s more that he’s the one happening to people, Master.”

Mace pinched the skin between his eyes. He had a better relationship with Skywalker now, no that the bar was very high before, but that didn’t mean being waken up in the middle of the night by a hysterical Chosen One who didn’t make sense was a pleasant experience. In the Amidala-Skywalker household, the Senator was definitely his favourite.

“Start at the beginning.”

“People are trying to kill the Duchess.”

“Not to sound blasé at the idea of murder, but people have been trying to kill the Duchess for longer that you have been alive. Most of them are dead, and she’s still ruling Mandalore. And probably half the Neutral Systems underhand. And she would rule half the Republic if she didn’t fear it would annoy Obi-Wan. My money is on her.”

“I know, but I think Obi-Wan has reached a tipping point! He crashed a ship on a Death Watch’ stronghold on an abandoned moon. It was evacuated, but you could still see the fire from the other end of the solar system! He cut three arms this week! He made four Judicials officers and the Education Minister cry yesterday! Even Bo-Katan thinks he’s perhaps going a little strong and I spent three months stopping her from decapitating people in public as an interrogation technique! Master, I’m very bad at being the voice of reason, I don’t know how he did it all these years. And the Duchess seems to think it’s all fun and game and he’s in control, only I’m not so sure and if he kills someone accidentally, pretty sure they will get divorced and he will be infinitely sad. Please, come to Mandalore, Master Windu, you’re my only hope!”

****

That morning, Obi-Wan woke up way later than he had planned to. He searched, still half asleep for the chrono on the bedside table, because there was way too much light in their bedroom for really be the time before the damn thing was supposed to woke him up, and discovered it had been totally disconnected.

Surprised, he tried to roll over, but couldn’t, because someone had tied his other wrist to the head board with a long silk scarf. His first reflex was to tear the thing down, and only the colour stopped him. It was Satine’s colour, and he was in their bedroom, so the culprit was probably not another Death Watch murderer.

He half-turned and here she was, in a chair in a corner of their bedroom, in that long dress of lace almost totally transparent that had made him cross his eyes the first time he had seen her in it.

“Not very prudent tying down a Jedi during his sleep,” he remarked.

“Even if your sleep, you know I’m not a danger,” she answered and he gave her a little nod. He liked that. That despite his nightmares and the hair trigger and the PTSD, his subconscious would let her tie him down. That even that part of him knew he was hers, that everything she wanted to give her, he would take it, and that everything he was she could take and use, and he wouldn’t fear, because he was hers, hers only, and Satine always took care of what was hers.

Satine stood up and made her way along the bed, her gaze a pleasant weight on his skin, then the lace dress was abandoned on the floor and she knelt across his legs.

“The Death Watch,” he said, because she was beautiful and he adored her, but the sun was high in the sky, and he needed to go and make sure she was safe:

“It is handled,” the Duchess, “And now, I just want to hear Yes, or Stop.”

The answer was easy and the untied hand of Obi-Wan went to join the other one obediently on the head board.

Satine said it was handled, and too contradict her wasn’t in Obi-Wan’s power, here, in the safety and warmth of their bed. Not when she was there, the light of her eyes burning every dark thought and doubt.

Satine had said it was handled, so he could let go into her arms.

“Yes,” he said, arching up against her and she smiled at him and leaned down, pressing his wrists against the mattress in an order for staying there and everything else disappeared around them.

*****************

Let’s observe some nameless Death Watch goon. He was middle aged, with beautiful blue eyes, currently covered by his helmet. Good people don’t have the privilege of beautiful eyes, certainly a sad genetic problem in the human species. He had been a sweet child, a faithful friend, and if his parents had been dead for years, he scrupulously visited his aging grandfather.

With different choices, he could even have been considered a good man. But the current situation was that he had made the wrong choice, and then the wrong one again and again and again. The current situation was that he imagined himself for superior, for horrible reasons that could be resumed to the fact that he considered himself entitled to more than other people, and for less efforts.

Greed was the seed of our nameless Death Watch goon’s fate.

So, as he opened the door of another Death Watch’s stronghold, not to go and do evil, but simply for a supply run, nobody in the galaxy should feel sorry for nameless Death Watch goon, as he suddenly felt against his neck the shining blade of a purple lightsaber.

“I have questions,” the man on the other end of the lightsaber said, “And you will answer them.”

“Death to the Jedi!” the nameless Death Watch goon immediately yelled, activating the self-destruct of his pack. Suicide in case of capture had never really been his plan, but to be known in the Death Watch history as the man taking down Mace Windu himself, such things could be supportable.

Sadly for the Death Watch, but to the Republic’s relief, the charge didn’t explode to kill the Master of the Order, no, the buckles on the goon’s torso opened themselves violently and the suicide bomb threw itself far enough than only a whisper of his power passed on them. Mace Windu hadn’t moved a finger, because apparently fear for their lives was a thing that happened to other people. The goon jumped two feet in the air at the voice behind him.

“Like he said, we have questions,” Anakin Skywalker smiled with too much teeth.

“And some official protestations,” a green Nautolean Jedi said behind the Chosen One.

“We heard you weren’t nice to our brother,” a human Jedi in pilots suits added.

“And since the war is done, we have more time for individual planets problems,” a smaller Moon Calamari Jedi said.

“So, we’ve come to kick your ass,” a Kiffar one finished, and he gave our nameless goon a smile even more terrifying than Skywalker.

****

Here they were, again,

In the Temple, in the Room of the Thousand Fountains, just the three of them sitting down at the feet of one of the biggest tree, observing people. But the atmosphere was so different from one year ago, when Obi-Wan had been lost between his love for Satine and his anger at the violence the Senate inflicted on them in forcing Jedi to marry. One year ago, they still had been reeling from the war, still hesitant in their footing in a galaxy where not everyone wanted to kill them. One year ago, Ahsoka was still unsure of her place in the Jedi Order, which she had only joined again when she had understood Palpatine had organized her fall to isolate Anakin a little more. One year ago, Anakin was still angry, lost between the reality of Palpatine’s machinations and years of habits to blame others, especially the Order, for the universe’s problems.

Today, they were in the Temple for a celebration: a little less year after her sister, Bo-Katan was marrying a Jedi too. Somewhere in the Mandalore’s necropolis the two sisters’ fierce-Jedi-hating ancestors, were probably spinning in their graves fast enough to power a small turbine….

Today, there had been no pressure, no hesitation: the law, if not repelled yet, had been buried by the new Chancellor under enough red tapes to protect the Jedi until he could definitely kill it.

No, Bo-Katan had come to the Jedi Temple only for the smile of Bant, because her Moon Calamari lover would live on Mandalore now, and the young Mandalorian had found fair to marry then in Bant’s home.

Today, Obi-Wan was wearing House Kryze’s colours, like he was doing more and more, and slightly tipsy on sparkling wine. His gaze searched regularly Satine, busy cornering a poor politician about the Force only knew what, without shame. And every time, like she knew he was looking, she let her victim a few seconds respite to turn and smile at her husband.

Anakin himself was more than slightly tipsy. Padme had left just after the ceremony for Naboo with their children, where he was supposed to join them the next day, and he had celebrated a little too much the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be a role model in that moment.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a role model to me too?” A very amused Ahsoka had asked, at the third cup of wine.

“Nah, it’s been long since I had anything left to teach you, Snips.”

Ahsoka raised up from her crouch against the tree. The flowers adorning her montrals had slipped way off their careful arrangement, giving her a strange dishevelled air, even without hair.

“Then why didn’t you present me to trial?” She protested. Between them, Obi-Wan smothered a giggle. He remembered quite well a teenage Anakin, his voice still craking down sometimes from puberty, with exactly the same question, the question outraged Padawan believing themselves ready had asked since the dawn of the Order. Obi-Wan himself hadn’t asked, but Obi-Wan had known he wasn’t ready. Despite what Qui-Gon had told the Council.

“Because then, you would go on missions alone,” Anakin protested, “And you could be hurt.”

“You threw me at a Death Watch Death Squad the other day. Threw me! Like a missile!” She retorted.

“And I knew you would kick their asses. And you did!”

“And you think I would do different if you’re not there to watch? You didn’t help! You just gave points to their efforts to escape me.”

“Well, some of them made a good effort. Even if they failed, efforts should be recognized.”

“It doesn’t-“

It was the laugh that stopped their bickering. A full-bodied, irrepressible laugh. It was simply a laugh, but it was Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan who took his boots off before climbing on an exam table when he had taken a blaster shot to the belly, Obi-Wan who never let more than a small dry laugh escape his lips, because it wouldn’t be proper, or conform to what he believed proper Jedi decorum should be. Obi-Wan was laughing, grinning like a loon, without a care in the world, shoulders shaking with the force of it.

“Master?” Anakin asked, then he squeaked when the other man pulled him closer with an arm around his shoulders, doing the same to Ahsoka with the other arm.

“Master?” the young Tortuga asked in turn.

“We made it,” Obi-Wan said, his face hidden his Anakin’s hair, “We made it.”

And there was such relief in his words. Anakin’s surprise face eased and he put an arm around Obi-Wan’s waist, another around Ashoka, who did the same. He wasn’t exactly surprised. The Death Watch and the attempts on Satine’s life had simply delay the crisis in Obi-Wan, a crisis Ahsoka herself had cried on Anakin’s shoulder and Anakin in Padmé’s arms, a crisis every other Jedi had to confront a day.

“We did it,” he confirmed, his voice comforting and easy, “We did it and you can let go, Obi-Wan. We’re safe, all of us, now.”

And, hiding their Master between them, Ahsoka and Anakin let him laugh and cry.

In a few minutes, Anakin would go fetch Satine, and she would help Obi-Wan find a path for the rest of his life, but for now.

For now, just the three of them, their lineage, their family, was enough.

#satine kryze #obi wan kenobi #obitine #star wars #the clone wars #my fics #fix-it

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mudaship39 · 5 years ago

Text

Alpha Centurion War:

Flashback:

Alexander Mack Smith/Alexanderia Macy Smith:

Blue Basilisk (Alex/Lexi) had immediately come home from a night watch for a city under his/her/their jurisdiction. Entering his/her/their suite he/she/they straight away sensed something was off. Letting out a groan he/she/they chucked his/her/their paraphernalia down. He/she/they then spoke to the other attendance in the room. “Come out of the fucking shadows John Ruslo I fucking know you are out there,” said Scarlet Shapeshifter to Cobalt Crow (Jonathan Ruslo a Jewish Romani metahuman) who was like Red Arrow, Cheshire, Tigress, Nightwing, Oracle, Red Robin, Spoiler, Batwing, Batman Beyond, Red Hood, & Hawkfire combined. “You should have been more vigilant.” “I mean, what if I was an adversary,” admonished Jonathan as he stepped into the illumination of the moon light area. “If you were a threat we would not be having this conversation.” Cobalt Crow appeared in the doorway of the room and leaned into the door. “You could always tell it is me.” “Well of course I can dumbass.” “You, Keisuke Tanaka (the Asian Korean person of color speedster with absolute speed), Spectacular Sentinel (Clarissa Patricia Chambers the superhuman similar to Supergirl, Galatea, Divine, Powergirl, & Reign the World Killer combined), & Ruby Raven (Jessica Croft) are my exes.” “After all this time you are even now still a wildcard.” “In spite of everything you are still a partial obscurity.” “Even now your exes Keondr Kojir (a female alien queen who is the younger sister of Kulax Kojir), Harlequin Hawk (Peter Garcia Rodriguez), Arcane Archer (Seo-Jun Jeong a Korean person of color archer) still don’t know your comprehensive narrative.” “We still do not know what country, planet, & solar system you are from.” “We still don’t know what exactly you are.” “We still don’t know who exactly you are.” “We still don’t know what your objectives are.” “All of this omitted classified top secret information makes you a likely threat.” “You used to like me, but then again we both know why.” “It’s because we are so similar.” “We are nothing alike Alexander/Alexandria.” “I still don’t have your eyes.” “The cold eyes of an assassin or a shinobi or kunochi ninja assassin.” “The dead eyes of a mercenary, hitman, or contract killer.” “Ah but only someone who is similarly to us would even perceive that.” “We both observe ourselves in each other and it frightens us.” “You cannot lie to me Cobalt Crow.” “There was always a core of darkness inside you surrounded by light.” “Keisuke, Jessica, Clarissa, & I we all knew just how truly furious and dark you were as an Elite member and all the Paragons saw just how violent and brutal you are.” “I always knew how angry and dark you truly were when we founded the Elites.” “All that rage, all that violence, & all that hatred were beginning to come to the surface but it just needed a trigger.” “You needed a catalyst to unleash your wrath and hatred.” “Your fury was always underneath the surface while Peter’s rage was always obvious.” “That is what makes you so dangerous Jonathan.” “It was only after training with the monks alongside Peter that you became peaceful and calm and he became more tranquil and nonviolent.” “Your fury as an Elite was more than Peter’s when he was an Elite.” “Your viciousness as an Elite was second to only Peter’s when he was a Paragon.” “You all observe yourselves in me and that is why you perceive me as a menace.” “You do not know anything about true horror John.” “The child, preteen, teenage, & young adult superhuman and metahuman spec ops and black ops super soldiers that I command and I, we grew up with it being experimented on that hellhole of a giant black site planet by the Earth Military as part of an intergalactic compartmentalized deep black project.” “That is how existence was there in the Vega and Sol System under the iron rule and iron fist of the Terran Empire.” “Recognizing that all that you had ever treasured could be ripped away in a second,” he/she/they said, “however one day I resolved that my men and I would never again live in fear.” “You are so much like Lori and I.” “Look John I have a high opinion of you.” “I love you unconditionally on a platonic level.” “I really do because before I dated you and the others in a polyamorous unicorn poly quad relationship, we were all friends and comrades.” “After I broke up with all of you we still remained friends and comrades.” “You don’t just remind me of myself.” “You also remind me of conceivably the two utmost men that I had ever had the joy to ever known.” “Something to mull over though, one ended up murdering her whole clan and tribe.” “The other lost all she had ever treasured.” Harlequin Hawk asked, “Is that some sort of intimidation.” “No, not a warning, just a reminder, to both of us….” “We who walk the fine line of hero, antihero, & villain.” “We who walk the fine line of light, dark, & gray.” “We who walk the fine line between evil and good like a trapeze artist.” “Remember I know more than anyone the pain of loss and the pain of anguish.” “I know more than anyone what it is like to look inside you and see an infinite cavity of light and good and I know what it is like to look inside you and see an unending trench of evil and darkness.” “You have both just like I do.” “Sometimes you are a hero as a Sentinel, other times you are a villain as a Paragon, & sometimes you are an antihero as an Elite.”

Silver Shark (Alexander Mack Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith) and Arcane Assassin (Laurissa Owen Jones) both wearing combat armor and power armor walked up to the weapon station and grabbed a few extra mags of ammo both of their weapons. He/she/they grabbed extra mags of ammo for his/her/their hard light plasma 5.56 mm assault rifle with scope and a few extra drum magazines of ammo for his/her/their hard light plasma ten gauge combat shotgun with red dot sight. She grabbed extra mags for her hard light plasma 5.56 mm assault rifle and extra mags of ammo for her 12.7 mm hard light plasma sniper rifle. Alexander Smith/Alexandria Smith was busy reloading his/her/their ten gauge hard light plasma combat shotgun with drum magazine beside Frost or Winter (Veronica Veracruz a Hispanic woman of color water, ice, snow, & frost elemental) and Inferno or Autumn (Hibiki Hayashi an Asian woman of color fire, magma, & lava elemental). Laurissa Jones was busy reloading her 5.56 mm assault rifle beside Selina (the daughter of Zeus and Hera that was strong as Wonder Woman, Artemis Bana Mighall, Troia, & Wondergirl combined). That was when he/she/they and she both saw a slight shimmer behind them. Confused Jade Jaguar and Mystic Mercenary simply looked at it until realizing what it was. Lori Jones shouted, “Selina!” At the same time Alex Smith/Lexi Smith shouted, “Frost!” Inferno!” He/she/they brought the butt stock of the rifle forward to strike the cloaked alien super soldier while she brought the butt stock of the rifle and struck the cloaked human super soldier. The impacts brought them to the ground. The alien roared a challenge to Alexander/Alexandria and Laurissa as the shapeshifter Alex/Lexi and the demigod Lori dropped the rifles. He/she/they raised his/her/their clawed right hand and coiled it to a fist. He/she/they then punched the alien with a left uppercut and a right hook. He/she/they beheaded the alien with a plasma machete. She then activated their power armor’s arm gauntlets wrist hidden energy dagger and stabbed the human underneath the jaw cutting straight through their shields and through its combat helmet assassinating them straight away. He/she/they stared back at Autumn and Winter while she stared back at Selina who had all seen the kill. But before they could say something they all were incited into action by a metahuman Sean (who was similar to Batman, Catwoman, Batwoman, Green Arrow, & Black Canary). They verified and they got the access geared up to close. Mason Owen Jones (the alien superhuman with short black hair and black eyes was the older brother of his adoptive younger sister the demigod Lori Owen Jones) ordered a retreat. Mason Owen Jones was similar to Superman (Clark Joseph Kent) and Superman 2 (Alexander “Lex” Luthor). Before his/her/their strike team could get it Arcane Assassin turned her arm gauntlets hidden dagger. He/she/they clutched his/her/their kunai and gouged the dead alien and human in the neckline and gullet. Once he/she/they pulled out his/her/their kunai he/she/they snatched his/her/their hard light plasma ten gauge combat shotgun while she clutched her hard light plasma assault rifle. He/she/they twisted around to see Hibiki and Veronica while she turned and saw Selina as Inferno, Frost, & shut the door. Lori Jones set her power armor helmet’s vision of her power armor to night vision as the entire area was plunged into darkness. He/she/they used his/her/their eyes that can see throughout the electromagnetic spectrum to see in thermal vision and night vision as the entire area was thrust into darkness. No one except Thomas Shepard and Jonathan Ruslo noticed the dead alien super soldier with an energy smolder underneath the mandible. They all advanced down a large spacious vaguely lit corridor but encountered no enemy contacts or enemy tangos. This was something that had set Scarlet Shapeshifter’s and Arcane Assassin’s nerves on edge. He/she/they loaded several ten gauge rounds into the barrel his/her/their pump action combat shotgun just in case. Something learned from fighting alien and human slavers that were traffickers of metahumans and superhumans from an organization similar to Nowhere. They always left patrols of human and alien super soldiers. Golden Griffin turned a corner into a single room and spotted the outlines of several bodies lying in front of the holographic 4d mainframe. “Alexander/Alexandria and Laurissa search those bodies,” said Silver Steel Savior (Dean Lucas Chambers the metahuman) with short blonde hair and blue eyes who was the older metahuman brother of Spectacular Sentinel (Clarissa Patricia Chambers) the female alien superhuman and Captain Crimson Courageous (Mason Owen Jones) the older alien superhuman brother of Laruissa Owen Jones. He/she/they and she were staring at both of the visors of their combat armor and power armor helmets when he/she/they and she both heard a sound that brought back recollections that made him/her/them and her experience two things. Fury and hatred since Alexander/Alexandria was experimented on by such an organization when he/she/they were abducted by them in the past. Years, decades, & centuries ago. He/she/they and she both glanced up and saw three aliens and two humans and they were all armed with plasma hard light swords. He/she/they aimed his/her/their red dot sight of his/her/their hard light plasma combat shotgun while she directed her 5.56 mm hard light assault rifle with scope at the leader and opened fire firing ten gauge slugs and 5.56 mm rounds. He/she/they and she saw nothing but the organization known for enslaving, experimenting, & trafficking metahumans and superhumans as the fury and hatred seethed in his/her/their and her veins. He/she/they holstered his/her/their hard light combat shotgun and she holstered her hard light plasma assault rifle. He/she/they then pulled out his/her/their 5.56 mm hard light plasma assault rifle with scope while she pulled out her 12.7 mm battle rifle with scope. The leader slashed at both Hibiki Hayashi and Veronica Veracruz while the second in command swiped at Selina. They were saved by a female superhuman (similar to Superwoman or Lois Lane and Powerwoman or Lucy Lane) forcing them both down to a crouch. He/she/they and she emptied the rest of his/her/their mag into the human and alien slavers known for superhuman and metahuman trafficking as they charged at him/her/them and her with a lariat takedown and tackled him/her/them and her to the ground. Two aliens stabbed plasma hard light combat knives through the torso armor of his/her/their and her power armor infuriating him/her/them and her further. He/she/they and she punched the metahuman and superhuman trafficker in the face with an uppercut as he/she/they and she rolled where he/she/they and she were on top. He/she/they and she pulled out two plasma hard light kunai and stabbed the other alien slaver in the throat. He/she/they and she each removed his/her/their and her two hard light plasma 45 caliber pistols from their holsters and aimed them both at the alien slaver who had taken the soldier prisoner. He/she/they and she pointed both of the pistols at his/her/their and her objective and time seemed to slow as he/she/they and she pulled the triggers. Selina, Inferno, & Frost noticed the alien clutching the injured space army soldier in front of them as a captive and they all attempted raising their hard light 9mm sub machine guns aiming to locate an opportunity when they both heard four shots fired from two hard light plasma 45 caliber pistols. They saw the soldier’s skull burst and the blood and brain matter splatter onto the face of the alien slaver. They were both petrified on the spot as they observed Crimson Changeling unexpectedly flared his/her/their canines, fangs, & saber teeth at the alien and human slaver and trafficker of metahumans and superhumans. He/she/then let out a hiss, snarl, growl, & roar as he/she/they and she both charged at the aliens. He/she/they and she each holstered his/her/their and her two hard light plasma pistols. He/she/they then pulled out his/her/their hard light plasma KA-BAR with his/her/their left clawed right hand with opposable thumb, pulled out her/their hard light plasma kukri knife with his/her/their prehensile tail, & pulled out his/her/their hard light plasma tanto with his/her/their clawed left hand with opposable thumb. He/she/they then wrestled the alien mercenary to the ground. She pulled out her hard light plasma combat knives and grappled the alien super soldier to the ground. In that moment they no longer saw a metahuman and superhuman (Alex/Lexi) and a demigoddess (Lori) anymore but two un-caged beasts, animals, & monsters. They all observed as they saw him/her/them pierce the alien private soldier over and over again with the tanto knife, kukri knife, & KA-BAR over and over again with the combat knives as the alien slavers seemed to whimper out in horror. Unexpectedly the alien super soldiers fell lifeless to the floorboards as Changeling stood up on his/her/their open toed steel toed boots (meant for their clawed feet with opposable toes) and Arcane Assassin stood up on her steel toed boots on their right. He/she/they stood up with the combat knives still clutched firmly in his/her/their clawed hands with opposable thumbs and prehensile tail as extraterrestrial blood dripping off the serrated blades of the hard light plasma combat knives. They anticipated Dean and Mason to do something but abruptly Cardinal Changeling and Arcane Assassin gazed to his/her/their right and her left as they all heard the scream of alien and human metahuman and superhuman slavers. They were about to stroll out up to the entrance when Crimson Changeling and Mystic Mercenary strode in as he/she/they and she stared over his/her/their shoulder and her shoulder and articulated in a sound that made them both immobilize with a sensation they had not sensed since they were teenagers. This sensation was horror. “We got this,” he/she/they and she said, “so fucking back off.” With that he/she/they and she slammed the door shut behind them with a single clawed hand and a fist. They continued to gawk at the blocked exit before Hibiki and Veronica both leaned touching the barricade. They both gazed ahead as what Alexander/Alexandria and Laurissa had done at last caught up to them. Inferno abruptly spoke up saying, “What the fuck is wrong with him/her/them?” “He/she/they and she killed one of our own troops!” A female metahuman Tamara similar to Deathstroke, Malcolm Merlyn, & Deadshot abruptly spoke up in a dreadfully grave tone, “I comprehend why he/she/they did it.” Inferno and Frost both looked over to their teammate as she took off her power armor helmet and they both saw the upset face she wore. Selina asked Tammy, “What do you mean Tam?” Selina appeared to be dazed at what had just occurred as she spoke. Hibiki Hayahsi a fire, lava, & magma elemental and Veronica Veracruz a water, ice, snow, & frost elemental on the other hand were all of a sudden furious. “And what the fuck do you mean you comprehend?!” “He/she/they just killed one of our own in cold blood!” Queen Nessar (the wife of Arcane Assassin and younger sister of Empress Nessar) un-sheathed her hard light plasma swords pointed at her and suddenly both looked at her with an enraged look that said, “I will stab you in the stomach, silently gut you, & fucking leave you here to die if you don’t shut the fuck up.” “Watch your fucking tone Autumn (Hibiki Hayashi),” said Nijah Nadra Nadar (the lover of Crimson Changeling) and Sadah Nadra Nadar (the wife of Arcane Assassin and older sister of Nijah) both snarled and the unsheathed their scimitar Arabian swords and said, “Or we will have your fucking tongue for your insolence against our beloveds.” Samuel said, “His/her/their name is former Major Alexander Smith/Alexandria Smith of the Sol System Space Marine Force Recon.” Colonel Tom Stein said, “He/she/they have many intergalactic deep black classified codenames but the only declassified codename the top brass in Sol System High Command know him/her/them as the Grim Reaper, Shadow Saber, Kobi Kitsune, or Cambion Chimera.” A Director of a classified organization similar to Argus, Checkmate, Shield, or Blackwatch said, “He/she/they are a member of Wolf Pack Regiment, member of Hellhound Company, commanding officer of Dire Wolf Platoon, strike team leader of Werewolf Squad, commander of Fire-team Cerberus.” “Lori Jones was one of his/her/their superior officers.” “Holy fuck who the hell was Changeling and Arcane Assassin,” they thought. She heard a lot of renowned super soldier groups but never heard of Fireteam Cerberus before. “Who exactly is Crimson Changeling and Arcane Assassin,” Frost (Veronica Veracruz) asked. “Laurissa Owen Jones is the silent blade and the swift judgment of leader of the Shadow Hand Nekron my aniki Alexander Mack Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith,” thought Rei. “He/she/they once killed a man by choking him to death with his own fucking small intestine,” said Tom Stein. “I saw actual holo vid evidence of it happening, & I couldn’t eat for a whole week after that.” Harrison “Harry”, said, “He/she/they were fucking ten when they accomplished this as a metahuman and superhuman.” “That man that he/she/they choked with his own small intestine was an SSS class shinobi assassin sent to kill him/her/them when he/she/they were a preteen.” “He/she/they gutted him like it was nothing,” said Hector. “If Alex/Lexi is a god/goddess, then Lori is his/her/their divine wrath.” “She promised him/her/them the severed head of a being more dangerous than Vandal Savage after he captured the Elies Earth after the Battle of Iron City, Steel City, & Hard Light City so the leaders of Forces of Evil could execute them.” “I have confidence that she can uphold that oath for him/her/them.” “If you cross Lori then Alex/Lexi he/she/they’ll bury you.” “But if you cross Alex/Lexi then Lori she’ll bury you.” When Inferno and Frost walked through the doors when it was unlocked and turned the bend they both abruptly sensed a wariness run through them. The walls, floorboards, & ceiling were all covered in the blood and guts of the alien slavers. The floor and walls were covered with the carcasses of the human and alien traffickers who traffic metahumans and superhumans.

Cardinal Changeling (Alexander Mark Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith) was in the stronghold of the Syndicate (who train the agents of the Shadow Hand Nekron) in the Middle East in a place similar to Nana Parbat in Tibet the home of the League of Assassins. They managed to evade detection and capture from a thousand strong Syndicate assassins and shinobi or kunoichi. He/she/they appeared out of nowhere from the shadows. He/she/they unsheathed his/her/their swords. He/she/they wielding a sword with his/her/their prehensile tail pressed an nth metal katana to the abdomen of Nijah Nadra Nadar and he/she/they wielding a sword in his/her/their right hand pressed an nth metal wakizashi sword to the throat of Sadar Nadra Nadar (the younger sister of Nijah). The bodyguards of Nijah and Sadar surrounded him/her/them but he/she/they were undeterred. “So many shinobi, assassins, mercenaries, & ninjas were sent to kill me ever since I was a child till I was a young adult.” “With my kill count they all thought they were sent to kill an adult not sent to kill a preteen or a teenager.” “They were B to S class shinobi and ninja, but I executed them all easily just the same.” “I killed them all and sent all of their severed fucking heads back to each of the mercenary and shinobi ninja leaders as a message, a threat, a promise, & a warning.” “Those metahuman and superhuman child, preteen, teenage, & young adult black ops and spec ops metahuman and superhuman supersoldiers that I led that are now preteen, teenage, young adult, & adult black ops and spec ops metahuman and superhuman supersoldiers are part of my family.” He/she/they walked away letting go of Nijah and Sadar saying, “So let me assure you that if you ever even think about sending Syndicate members after them.” “I swear that I as Prince/Princess of Ethania, rightful Crown Prince/Princess of Bulgravia will fucking bury the entire Shadow Syndicate organization to the fucking ground.” “I will execute each and every single one of you with nth metal bullets or element zero metal arrows in your fucking skulls,” when he/she/they re-sheathed his/her/their swords after they uttered this statement thirty league of assassins ninja and shinobi across the compound dropped to the ground dead from being beheaded. “Regardless of the powers you hold if you are a living being with feelings then you have a weakness.” “I know your weaknesses so you if you dare hurt my family I’ll destroy you.” “No one knew what country or even planet that I was from, no one knew I was there, no one knew who I was, no one knew what I was, no one knew my name, thanks to the superhuman lifespan and healing no one knew my true age, & no one knew where I received my prior training that was so comparable to the training of tier one black ops soldiers, tier one spec ops soldiers, & tier zero super soldiers.” “Death walks amid you.” “I am a phantom, a spirit, a ghost, a spectre.” “I was a mere superhuman and metahuman preteen but already at that point I was a highly trained killer who knew most of the points of immediate death: the larynx, spine, lungs, jugular, kidneys, heart, & liver since I was just a mere child.” “I was someone who was raised from childhood to be the ultimate soldier, hunter, assassin, shinobi, warrior, & killer.” “I was trained in espionage, intelligence, linguistics, assassination, torture, interrogation, hacking, infiltration, & sabotage.” This was the beginning of their top secret classified intergalactic compartmentalized deep black classified codename that is classified top secret SSSS class secret no one not even people like Director Amanda Waller, Director Jeremiah Danvers, Director Vic Sage, Director Eliza Danvers, Director Nicholas “Nick” Fury, & Deputy Director Steven “Steve” Trevor are privy to. The leader of the Syndicate who is similar to the S class shinobi seven hokage of the hidden leaf village said, “Golden Griffin (Alexander Mark Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith) typically most kids your age do not know the proper characteristics of being a true ninja and a true assassin,” his daughter Sadar Nadra Nadar (the wife of Laurissa Owen Jones) who is similar to Tahlia Al Ghul said, “but you, yes I can tell you are different,” Someone similar to Lady Shiva said, “you are not like that at all considering from the jaded, cold, distant, cynical, hardened, calculating look in your eyes.” Firebrick Fox (Alexander Smith/Alexandria Smith) said, “The child prodigies Itachi Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake eliminated and executed people as weapons for their shinobi village since they were teenagers at only teens at thirteen as shinobi ANBU Captains (shinobi black ops spec ops operatives).” Emerald Eagle (Alex Smith/Lexi Smith) said, “Like I told someone similar to Bronze Tiger, I did the same as a metahuman and superhuman assassin and ninja since I was less than six.” Jade Jaguar (Alexander Mack Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith said, “I’ve been silently killing (assassinating enemies: eliminating them with suppressed lethal ranged weapons (like silenced pistols, silenced compound bows, silenced assault rifles, silenced crossbows, composite bows, & silenced sniper rifles), beheading enemies (with futuristic science fiction versions of katana, wakizashi swords, tachi swords, & odachi swords), slitting throats (with futuristic science fiction versions of tanto knives, hamidashi knives, aikuchi knives, combat knives, & KA-BAR knives), snapping necks with my bare hands, poisoning enemies with poisons and toxins, & strangling enemies to death with fiber wire) completing S+ Rank assassination missions across Earth since even before my age even left single fucking digits.” “I once killed a man with his own small intestine when I was only ten years old.” “When I was a preteen to a young adult I was sent on intergalactic deep black compartmentalized top secret classified SSS intergalactic assassination missions across the galaxy, universe, & multiverse.” His/her/their eyes were ancient. They were the eyes of the truly strong. They were dangerous and ruthless. The truly strong did not need to show it. Their actions spoke for themselves. As an assassin, as a bounty hunter, as a black ops private soldier, as a spec ops soldier, as an intelligence paramilitary operative, & as a mercenary. The less known about an intelligence agent, spec ops soldier, as a ninja, or paramilitary operative means they are more dangerous. There is more top secret information about Alex Mack Smith/Lexi Macy Smith than any of this in their deep black redacted dossier, including his/her/their intergalactic compartmentalized deep black classified top secret SSSS class codename that only Mystic Mercenary (Lori Owen Maximiliana Jones) knows thanks to their bond. Not even people like Director Amanda Waller, Director Jeremiah Danvers, & Director and Colonel Steven Trevor is cleared enough to read the whole thing that’s big enough to fill a 2 terabyte USB drive that’s under the constant armed guard of hundreds of SSSS super soldiers. A metahuman similar to Dark Archer (Malcolm Merlyn), Deathstroke (Slade Joseph Wilson), Green Arrow (Oliver Jonas “Ollie” Queen), Black Canary (Dinah Laurel Lance), Batman (Bruce Thomas Wayne), Batwoman (Katherine “Kate” Kane), Huntress (Helena Bertinelli), & Deadshot (Floyd Lawton) said, “You are a true soldier of death and a true warrior of the shadows.” A superhuman similar to Nyssa Al Ghul, Taliah Al Ghul, & Lady Shiva then said, “You child are the epitome and the personification of a true assassin, true shinobi/kunoichi, and a true ninja.” Nijah Nadra Nadar (his/her/their lover who preferred him/her/them in his/her/their female form) said, “You are worthy to become the next secret leader of the Shadow Hand Nekron and your sworn sister Arcane Assassin is worthy to become the next secret enforcer of the Shadow Syndicate.” Nijah Nadra Nadar said, “This was a test meant to test SSSS class ninja and you passed with flying colors my love.” “I was born from the soldiers, warriors, hunters, & killers.” “As a child I was trained to be a soldier, warrior, hunter, & killer.” “However I chose to become something beyond that, a symbol of hope, justice, & order.”

“My sensei was, is, a deadly assassin, mercenary, & bounty hunter that traveled the planet, star system, galaxy and made her trade by killing people whether human or humanoid across the universe and multiverse.” “Soon as I learned how to fight hard light or plasma guns, hard light or plasma swords, & hard light or plasma knives she molded me into a master of all of them.” “Soon as my fangs, canines, saber teeth, & claws on my hands with opposable thumbs, & claws on my feet with opposable toes that can all rip apart even diamonds came in she taught me how to fight with them as easily as I fought with my fists, feet, & prehensile tail.” “Once she learned I could impersonate humans and humanoids and once she learned I can shapeshift into terrestrial, avian, aquatic, extraterrestrial, magical, demonic, mythical, fictional, angelic, & fantasy animals, beasts, creatures, monsters, & humanoids she made sure I could beat even the best of fighters, soldiers, & combatants in each of my infinite forms as a metamorph, changeling, & shapeshifter.” “She taught me how to hunt with a blade, a crossbow, a scoped 12.7 mm hunting rifle, a traditional composite made out of wood, & a compound bow with scope.” “She taught me how to prowl, stalk, & track my prey.” “I hunted animals, creatures, beasts, & monsters using her teaching as a ranger and hunter/huntress.” “I later used it to hunt my targets as an assassin, contract killer, & bounty hunter.” “This is how we wanted to die, at the hands of our protégé, Alex Smith/Lexi Smith, you have exceeded us, as your mentors we pass on our legacy to you, you are now the Shadow Saber,” said a male metahuman, female superhuman, & male superhuman (similar to Deathstroke the Terminator (Slade Joseph Wilson), Dark Archer (Malcolm Merlyn), & Deadshot (Floyd Lawton). Blue Basilisk (Alexander Mack Smith/Alexandria Macy Smith) struck her in the abdomen with an nth metal nodachi sword. He/she/they then beheaded him with an elemental zero odachi sword. He/she/they earlier had killed shot the male metahuman with a 12.7mm hard light plasma sniper rifle. He/she/they dropped to his/her/their knees. He/she/they kneeled there watching his/her/their teachers bodies fall before closing his/her/their prosthetic, bionic, & cybernetic left eye and his/her/their real biological right eye before passing out from the wound from the female superhuman’s nth metal sword, the wound from his nth metal arrow, & the wound from the nth metal bullet fired from his 50 caliber hard light plasma sniper rifle. Crimson Chimera awoke to someone similar to Alfred or Wintergreen making sure his/her/their wounds were healing properly with their supernatural healing. The human (who was similar to Wintergreen to Deathstroke or Alfred Pennyworth to Batman) said, “Ah, young master/young mistress Alexander Smith/Alexanderia Smith I am glad you are awake!” “Frederick, where the bloody hell, am I,” asked Alex/Lexi. “You are in Neo Los Angeles.” “You have been asleep for a several days you lost a lot of blood.” “If it wasn’t for Mistress Samantha Upton and Master Joseph (metahumans and superhumans similar to Ravager (Grant Wilson), Red X (Zoe Torres Lawton), Cheshire (Jade Crock Nguyen), Tigress (Artemis Crock Nguyen), Dark Archer (Thomas “Tommy” Merlyn), & Ravager (Rose Wilson) you would have taken three weeks to heal.” “Wait Sam and Joe are here, does they both know?” “Yes, we watched your fight and quickly got to you before SWAT and the FBI in power armor and mech suits could arrive on the scene. “Let me get mistress Samantha and master Joe they both need to talk with you when you are conscious.” It doesn’t take long for Freddie to return with Sam and Joey. They both sat down on the bed and took out the mask of her mother and his father. “These are now your masks Alex/Lexi,” said Sam and Joe, “my mother and his father wanted you to have it when you defeated them in the battle to the death.” Not many in the world could fight and defeat Deathstroke, Dark Archer, & Deadshot in combat.” “Let alone kill three people who are each as strong as Slade Wilson, Malcolm Merlin, & Floyd Lawton combined.” “So what do I do now?” Alex/Lexi stares at the masks, “My training is finished.” “Do I just take the name Shadow Reaper (a person stronger than Deathstroke, Dark Archer, & Deadshot) and start taking up contracts as an intergalactic assassin, contract killer, mercenary, & bounty hunter?” “Yes that is what it means to be the killer of Shadow Reaper.” “If you had only killed one of them you would have been just an international assassin, contract killer, mercenary, & bounty hunter.” “The planet, star system, galaxy, & universe though expect more from the assassin of the best killers of all time.” “You will have to show the planet, the solar system, & the galaxy what you are capable of.” “Heal and rest, for when you are able to walk, you’ll be doing contracts Shadow Reaper,” Sam and Joey said before leaving Alex Smith/Lexi Smith to continue to stare at his/her/their masks. He/she/they put the masks inside the Elites and Paragons Archives. He/she/they make a new mask (imagine something that is a fusion of the masks of Deathstroke (Slade Joseph Wilson), Wintergreen, Dark Archer (Malcolm Merlyn), Deadshot (Floyd Lawton), Green Arrow (Oliver Jonas “Ollie” Queen), Huntress (Helena Bertinelli), Batwoman (Katherine Rebecca “Kate” Kane), & Batman (Bruce Wayne). He/she/they decided to design new armor (imagine something with an armor that is a fusion of the armor of Deathstroke (Slade Joseph Wilson), Wintergreen, Dark Archer (Malcolm Merlyn), Deadshot (Floyd Lawton), Green Arrow (Oliver Jonas “Ollie” Queen), Huntress (Helena Bertinelli), Batwoman (Katherine Rebecca “Kate” Kane), & Batman (Bruce Wayne). He/she/they then called himself/herself/themselves Grim Reaper. When they came back the bodies of their teachers were gone as if someone resurrected them.

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katrinahood · 5 years ago

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Here’s something 3-2-1 Penguins! related: Part 2

Jenna Moreci has made her best science fiction tropes video! You know what that means! It’s time to see if 3-2-1 Penguins! has any of the tropes she has listed!

#1: Robot Companion: Does B.I.N.G. count? He only appeared in one episode, The Doom Funnel Rescue. He helped to deliver the laughs when needed, although his interactions with the Rockhopper crew didn’t really shine any new light onto what those alien space penguins are like, no exploration of what it means to be a person, no implications raised about B.I.N.G.’s existence, etc. However, I am okay with this. Not every interaction between organic beings and robots has to explore those themes. Sometimes, we just wanna watch a robot get confounded by yet other bizarre organic lifeform habit.

#2: The Tough Guy: Nope, no major 3-2-1 Penguins! character fits Moreci’s description of a badass warrior who can kick your teeth into your throat, who can also be a cinnamon roll on the inside. I know, a bummer, really. But, would you be open to my OC idea of a lady lizard who has the guns for every occasion, both the mechanical and the organic ones? She may not come from a warrior race, because not every person can and/or will live up to that, but she doesn’t have titties to show that she’s a woman because I know of other ways to show sexual polymorphism than just enforcing human sexual dimorphism characteristics onto aliens!

#3: Culture Shock: Now that I think about it, no, no 3-2-1 Penguins! episode has ever had a character experience major culture shock. No Captain Zidgel going, “Wait, those religious services don’t involve sacrificing an animal and eating it after the sacrificial prayers are said? What are those people supposed to eat if there’s no sacrifice?” No Midgel being like “Wait, I propositioned that prime minister just by shaking his hand?” No Fidgel forgetting that idioms don’t really translate well into other languages. No Kevin...actually, Kevin would act weird even within his culture. No Jason or Michelle getting overwhelmed at all the different alien cultures, especially ones that exist within the same species. A real shame, like what Moreci said, this trope has a lot of comedy potential, and it’s an excellent tool to have our cultures shown through the lens of a different one.

#4: Realism: The best I could understand from what Jenna Moreci said about this trope is when a work of science fiction doesn’t try too hard to say “This is the future!”, or in this case, “This is in space!” The best description I can come up with when it comes to the aesthetics is that 3-2-1 Penguins! is all about the retro-futurism, in the clothing, the vehicles, the buildings, etc. So…it doesn’t have this trope? I dunno.

#5: Slang: No, there isn’t any fictional slang to be found. Sure, characters like Zidgel and Midgel sometimes say things like “Sweet spawning salmon!” or “Jumping Jupiter!”, but those are exclamations, not really slang. No one calls the galeezel “the leezle-beezle”. No one says “OMS, that movie was, like, so novella.” Again, a bit of a bummer, but I understand why it wasn’t included. Do any of you understand what something being “so novella” is?

#6: We’re Not Stupid!: Yes, 3-2-1 Penguins! only relays the information that needs to be known in the here and the now, like how the galeezel needs the metric magnetic matter disperser to work when the galeezel goes kapoot in “I Scream, You Scream”. In “Moon Menace on Planet Tell-a-Lie”, the moon of the titular planet is thrown out of orbit because someone pushed a button that they weren’t supposed to, no need to go into deeper detail.

#7: Pew Pew Pew!: Well, the premise of the show is two kids getting recruited by alien space penguins to go on missions to alien planets. And even the episode where Jason and the Penguins go on a vacation, “The Amazing Carnival of Complaining”, had plenty of adventure to go around, since it turns out that the carnival they go to is a cover for a real estate scheme (it’s better than it sounds). So, yeah, there is plenty of adventure to be seen on this show, even though there are episodes where the adventure can be lacking sometimes.

#8: The Twilight Zone: Nope, 3-2-1 Penguins! does not make us question why we hold the beliefs and mindsets we have via telling weird and introspective stories. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if I wanted to watch a show like The Twilight Zone, I’d watch The Twilight Zone. However, 3-2-1 Penguins! does tend to do the opposite, having episodes preach one moral as an absolute and never making room for situations where that moral would not apply. For example, the moral of “Hogs and Kisses” is “friends say hurtful things because they care about you and enemies say nice things because they want something from you”. Hey, what about the prickholes who verbally abuse others and claim “it’s for their own good”? And can’t people say nice things because they genuinely mean it? Yeah, that moral totally isn’t gonna send mixed messages at all.

#9: Pop Culture: Come on, why isn’t there any information on what kind of pop culture the Federation has produced? No movies remade on different planets, no songs that are combinations of popular trends on various planets, no sitcoms about living on space stations, none of that?

#10: Humankind: Since 3-2-1 Penguins! takes place at the turn of the 21st century, humanity is pretty divided. Had it taken place in a time when humans working with aliens is commonplace, would it have this trope? Probably, probably not, who knows?

So, what did I learn from writing this, and the last related post on the matter? 3-2-1 Penguins! may not have all the tropes listed, but that does not make it a bad show. And if there ever is a remake for 3-2-1 Penguins!, I hope that remake has more of the good tropes, and less of the not-so-good tropes. Also, what are considered good tropes and bad tropes are subjective.

#321 penguins #the first series #my post #Jenna Moreci

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fullmetalirin · 6 years ago

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Fullmetal Alchemist OG vs. Brotherhood: On Endings

One more post before the final analysis: as I compared the beginnings of the series, I'll also compare the endings. The ending can tell us a lot about a series and the author's intentions. What things did they want to resolve and how, and what did they want to leave us with?

Fullmetal Alchemist

Let's review the ending of OG first. OG had a climactic final confrontation, but it was a pretty restrained affair: Ed vs. Dante alone, and then Ed vs. Envy alone. It was very personal in nature, with Ed fighting alone to rescue his brother and discover the truth behind the homunculi and the Philosopher's Stone.

The true confrontation was philosophical in nature. Dante deconstructs the guiding principle of the series up to that point, the law of equivalent exchange, and reveals it to be a lie: there's no guarantee that hard work will pay off. There is no justice, she tells us; there's just us. The hero is stripped of his moral certainty and shaken to his core, but stubbornly clings to some hope that there is still some justice in the world. Hohenheim offers a parting gift: that Dante may be right, but by freeing yourself from the logic of equivalent exchange, you can also gain something for nothing.

For our climactic belly-of-the-whale moment, Ed straight-up dies. Al overcomes the hesitance and impotence that has weighed on him all series, and uses the immense power he's been granted to sacrifice himself for Ed's true resurrection in a mirror of Ed's own sacrifice for him at the start of the series.

Ed refuses to accept this. He wants to have it all. But he cannot get it: though he partially restores Al, he himself passes through the gateway, leaving the brothers separated. But meanwhile, the background characters who never bought into this nonsense in the first place are doing great. Rose is healing, Izumi is willing to teach Al, and Mustang's rebellion is a success.

It's a bittersweet ending: the heroes survive, gaining some of the things they sought but losing others. We are left uncertain about their fate, encouraged to reflect on what we've seen and what they've learned. It's a contemplative ending, meant to stick with you: it's on the audience to write the ending of the story, through living their own lives.

Now we'll compare that to…

FMA Brotherhood

Let's catch you up on what happened in the intervening time in Brotherhood real quick:

WINRY FINDS OUT SCAR KILLS HER PARENTS OH NO WHAT'S SHE GONNA DO oh nothing because Ed talks down the hysterical woman. What a relief!

LAN FAN LOSES HER ARM OH NO oh wait we have super prosthetics so she just gets automail and she's fine.

GLUTTONY SWALLOWS EVERYONE but it's okay they get out fine and also Ed finds something useful in there so actually this was good for the heroes.

BRADLEY TAKES RIZA HOSTAGE but does not actually kill her or anyone and Riza is still able to leak information to Mustang and escape when it actually matters so this is totally pointless except for sidelining the female action hero for a while.

FATHER SHOWS UP OH NO WHAT'S HE GONNA DO oh he's going to tell Ed he needs him alive for his plan and for some reason he can't just beat Ed into a coma so actually Ed is free to act with total impunity.

BUT OH WAIT HE TURNS LING INTO A HOMUNCULUS except actually Ling is still alive and will end up totally fine.

BRADLEY TAKES WINRY HOSTAGE WHAT'S HE GONNA MAKE ED DO oh he's just going to tell Ed to keep doing what he was already doing. Okay then.

Mustang was apparently friends with Riza's dad and Riza has the secrets of flame alchemy tattooed on her back, because this is shonen and everything has to have a convoluted explanation.

Envy frees Kimblee and makes him track down Scar who is also with Marcoh because adding more characters into this tangled mess is definitely a good idea.

Pride invites the Elrics into his house and Bradley shows up to menace them but not actually do anything. Pride continues to act like the most precocious kid ever I presume because he gets off on it? Is he already planning on jumping to Ed at this point?

Ed meets Olivier and is immediately imprisoned so Ed can twiddle his thumbs while we watch Olivier take over the plot for the next few episodes.

SHOCKING TWIST that Amestris was formed for the purpose of transmuting everyone into a Philosopher's Stone which is so absurdly over-the-top I cannot even

WHY DOES FATHER LOOK LIKE HOHENHEIM??? Because he tricked Hohenheim into giving him his face and actually Hohenheim is totally innocent because why have complex morally gray characters when we can atomize any possibility of that instead. (Also Father's original form looks absolutely nothing like how historical homunculi are drawn or described except that he's in a flask, even though homunculi's flasks are obviously artificial wombs and not literally part of their bodies why do I need to explain this.)

After several episodes of wheel-spinning the characters suddenly decide it's time for the finale so a hideously convoluted multi-front battle ensues.

They're fighting Envy and SUDDENLY RIZA POINTS A GUN AT MUSTANG OH NO CLIFFHANGER HAS ENVY TRICKED HIM no Envy turned into Mustang for some reason and Riza saw through it because the villains spent all their competence points killing Hughes.

Mustang curbstomps Envy because he's a Gary Stu but Ed doesn't want him to be consumed by vengeance because it was… so much better when he sadistically burned a homunculi to death for no reason at all?

RIZA'S THROAT IS SLIT AND MUSTANG HAS TO DO HUMAN TRANSMUTATION oh never mind she gets healed by the cavalry BUT SUDDENLY THE HOMUNCULI SHOW UP AND FORCE HIM TO DO HUMAN TRANSMUTATION ANYWAY… somehow… and OH NO HE GOES BLIND but he can still fight because he's a Gary Stu so it doesn't actually matter. Nothing ever actually matters.

Up to and including…

FMA Brotherhood Episode 61: "He Who Would Swallow God"

THE BAD GUY WINS! FATHER ACTIVATES HIS TRANSMUTATION CIRCLE! HE BECOMES GOD! ROCKS FALL, EVERYBODY DIES! Except oops, nevermind, turns out Hohenheim spilled the souls of his Philosopher's Stone all around the country offscreen and now they, for some reason, are helping the guy who helped trap them and destroy their country at no benefit to themselves. Somehow, they were not absorbed by the transmutation and can somehow free the souls of Amestrians. Somehow.

Seriously. This series has always been careful to surgically remove real tension from the story, but now it’s just atomizing its desecrated corpse. Everything, up to and including the villain succeeding at all his goals, will be reversed on a dime so the heroes can win. There is no longer any possibility that the heroes might get anything other than an absolutely perfect victory. This is terrible storytelling. It’s sacrificing all narrative coherence on the altar of one cool scene.

Ed shows up for five seconds to yell at Father but is useless because Father deactivates alchemy. This is followed by several minutes of Hohenheim ranting about how awesome he is and how important this confrontation is to him personally because why focus on the protagonist when we can spend all that time on his awful deadbeat dad.

Hohenheim's Stone is activated by the circle of the moon's shadow. Sure. Why not. Nothing else in this show has ever made sense, why start now.

Ed looks on in awe as Hohenheim exposits on the exact effects this will have on Father. Father shoots an energy blast at them and Hohenheim deflects it. Another energy blast, this time May deflects it because alkahestry still works and is perfectly suited to this because it's magic. Another energy blast, and Hohenheim blocks it again. But oh no, he's losing strength, so the protagonists play support for him.

Then we cut to Scar vs. Bradley. Bradley asks why he's using alchemy if that's against his religion, and asks if he's abandoned God. Scar does not answer.

How is Bradley defeated? He's blinded by the sun when the eclipse finishes and that negates the Ultimate Eye.

Seriously? Seriously? HE WEARS AN EYEPATCH. IF HE CAN SEE THROUGH AN EYEPATCH WHY CAN'T HE SEE THROUGH BLINDING LIGHT. Also how has this never happened in any of the other daytime fights.

Scar gets one hit on him and that kills him when the immortal legion which is explicitly made the exact same way as him have multiple lives because what is consistency. But what's this, Bradley manages to stab him in his last moments! Oh wow, is a major character actually going to die in the final battle??? No.

Then Bradley talks for a straight minute about pretentious nonsense. Wow, and here I was thinking OG had too much talking.

Then what Tumblr has helpfully informed me is our great disabled WOC representation sits there and demands to know if Hitler loved his wife, then she helps Scar over to his transmutation circle so he can learn the very important lesson that it's wrong for him to hate white people so now he's going to save them. Thanks, brown people! Still no answer to Bradley's questions. If they're answered earlier, you are free to tell me about it.

Bradley… ages to death? Why?

Alchemy is powered by tectonic movement, apparently. That is a reasonable but incredibly boring answer that does nothing to explain why soul goop empowers alchemy. (Also I guess they're slowing down the planet's rotation by doing this?)

Alchemy's reactivated so Ed finally does something and it's to… smash Father's throne. Wow. Great contribution, hero. Father throws another energy blast at him and Hohenheim defends.

"When will he run out of energy?" "I don't know!" And this is why I don't like Brotherhood homunculi. There's no sense of progress or scale. They're boss monsters who are always exactly as strong until they suddenly die. The battle lasts as long as the author wants it to.

Ed makes one substantial attack on Father who then shrugs it off.

Mustang is sad he's useless. CAN'T RELATE.

Ed asks what the homunculi's motivation is and gets a non-answer.

Kimblee is still alive in Pride because NO ONE IN THIS SHOW CAN EVER DIE. He nosells the soulstorm because he's just so special. He's mad that Pride is lowering himself to entering a human because for some reason he cares deeply about Pride's honor. Then Ed… turns himself into a Philosopher's Stone so he can enter Pride's mind, kills Pride, and turns him into a human baby? That's bizarre even by this show's standards.

Honestly that whole thing is so random. Pride does absolutely nothing during the battle with Father, then all of a sudden he grabs Ed and everyone else is like "sure whatever we'll leave you behind with the supermonster" because they've read the script, then Ed beats him in five seconds. This really looks to me like the author was going "Crap, crap, Ed hasn't beaten a single villain the whole story, quick, give him some token contribution."

FMA Brotherhood Episode 62: "A Fierce Counterattack"

Why does Trisha's soul have giant boobs in the OP.

Father is just absorbing people directly now because suddenly that doesn't need a circle.

Hohenheim leads the charge and gives a hero rant.

Father frees the souls in his Philosopher's Stone to make zombies. Why has no one ever done this before. What is even the point of this.

Izumi is horrified when a baby touches her because this show just loves hammering in how she's a frail woman traumatized by her inability to have babies.

Father uses Hyper Beam.

We spend another age talking about exactly who's going to go to the final battle. Olivier has to stay behind because she has a broken arm but the blind guy gets to go on ahead.

The Hyper Beam atomized half the building but Al and Hohenheim were somehow able to block it without dying. Ed's automail has taken damage but he can still move it because injuries are for losers.

Father smacks Hohenheim but he's still not dead.

Mustang burns the entire courtyard because what are power limits. (He explicitly says that actually every other time he's used fireballs he's been holding himself back, because this show just cannot stop escalating the Stu Power.) Riza is helping him aim because women get support roles. Mustang preens about clappy transmutation being awesome. Why does he even need to do that? He already has a transmutation circle on his gloves.

Then it's just three straight minutes of everyone blasting Father while Father just stands there looking grouchy. Greed attacks him and Father drops the shield to try to absorb him, but it doesn't matter because he can still raise walls at will without even clapping.

It looks like they might actually get a hit but Father pulls an energy blast out of nowhere. It destroys Ed's arm but somehow not any other part of him. Why doesn't he use his soul drain again? Why is anyone engaging in melee attacks against him when they have a whole battalion of soldiers to nuke him from orbit?

And now Ed and Ed alone is conveniently impaled just enough to immobilize him without giving him life-threatening injuries. This is so Alphonse can make the big sacrifice of repaying his soul to restore Ed's arm, because Truth is just such a nice person who trades so fairly in this. Somehow no one is able to attack Father during the long time they spend discussing this as he slooowly lumbers forward. Where did Greed go? His whole thing is invulnerability, he should totally still be mobile.

Shouldn't Ed's arm be mismatched on account of him losing it when he was way younger? And the fact he has automail welded into his shoulder? But the arm has just grown over that and somehow works fine. I guess Truth took care of that too because he's just so nice.

Ed screams a lot because that's his only emotion.

Yeah Greed is there, just watching this. So is everyone else, including the soldiers.

FMA Brotherhood Episode 63: "The Other Side of the Gateway"

And Ed is just punching him now. Because it's not like this series has "alchemist" in the title or anything. Everyone just stands there.

Then despite being weaker than he was before, Father is somehow able to pull out another nuke and then move super fast to grab Greed. Greed nobly sacrifices himself to kill Father because only homunculi are allowed the sweet release of death. But he still gets to talk with Ling for like a solid minute first about how totally irresistible Father's pull is.

We get a Sad Flashback Montage. Altogether I think it's longer than Al's sacrifice, and more people look sad. This show just has no concept of pacing. Putting noble sacrifices back-to-back diminishes the effect of each.

Then an extended sequence where Father gets a dressing-down by Truth. Last-minute contrived sympathetic moment where he's terrified of being reabsorbed by the Gate because he just wanted to experience the world. Too little too late, show. You cannot fix your complete failure to humanize him at all during the story with a last-minute reversal. Not every villain needs a humanizing sympathetic last moment. Sometimes it's better to just let them own their villainy. Like Dante!

(And given the way this show has handled previous villains I also get the impression we are supposed to laugh at how pathetic and scared he is, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable.)

Then everyone hands Ed a bunch of ways he can get Al back and he nobly refuses them and I'm sorry but I hate this. Him turning down one thing is just barely acceptable, but this utter deluge of possibilities just turns it into a farce for me. OH NO HOWEVER WILL WE SOLVE THIS TRAGEDY well actually there are a ton of solutions but we're going to turn them down to rationally come to the objectively perfect solution. There's no desperation, no tension or emotional weight. Also HE TOTALLY SHOULD HAVE USED HOHENHEIM, LET THAT DICKBAG BE GOOD FOR SOMETHING.

(Also, how on Earth is a Philosopher's Stone – a zillion lives – for one life an equivalent exchange?)

So instead Ed gives up his ability to use alchemy. Credit where credit's due, he does bring up Nina during his long, long speech about how very humble he is, which is a good callback. (Even though he really doesn't have that much reason to remember her in this continuity.)

TRUTH: That is the right answer, alchemist. You have beaten me.

And this is where it really clicked for me. This isn't about sacrifices, or moral choices, or tradeoffs. This is about winning. It's the gamer mentality: there is a perfectly optimal solution that will solve all your problems, and you just have to keep trying until you find it. Anything you lose you can get back if you just try harder. You never have to face any actual loss or consequence for your actions, because the world is fundamentally fair and just and will bail you out of everything if you can just figure out the right cheat code. That is the exact mentality OG so scathingly attacked in its conclusion, and I concur for all the reasons I've already stated. This all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

When Al returns, May is hysterical but Hohenheim keeps a stiff upper lip.

Then Mustang declares he's going to… continue the Fuhrer's wishes? Of "national security" read: genocide?

Then Hohenheim reflects on his history with Homunculus because he's the real protagonist with a real connection to the villain. Armstrong tells him they'd have surely lost without Ed and Al despite all the evidence to the contrary. Y'know, maybe if Hohenheim didn't have to incapacitate himself shielding Ed's useless self he could've just solo'd Father with his superpowers. Also, if they were so integral why aren't they getting told this.

Then we continue following Hohenheim as he gets to calmly come to terms with his own mortality over Trisha's grave. Then he finally, finally dies.

I don't know why they keep doing the pixellated skin cracks. It looks so weird.

And then the ending montage is Hohenheim's entire life, because he was the real protagonist all along.

FMA Brotherhood Episode 64: "Journey's End"

We open with Mustang fixing Ishval. Team Mustang helpfully informs us they are doing this because they were so helpful in defeating Father. See, brown people, all you need to do is shut up and help the white people some more, and then they'll fix everything for you!

Marcoh is somehow still alive. He has a Philosopher's Stone because Brotherhood is just tripping over the things. He explicitly says it's made of Ishvalans and then says he wants to use it to heal Mustang's eyes "for the sake of Ishval". Wow. He instead nobly uses the souls of genocided brown people to heal the spine of a white dude, because being disabled is such a terrible, terrible fate no one could ever live with.

Cut to Scar. He's going to help restore Ishval's culture and religion, which I guess is cool with alchemy now? Also he's gonna be helped by an Ishvalan in the Amestrian military because the series really, really wants to hammer in that the oppressed have to work for the oppressors to get anything done.

Olivier seems to have saved Scar just to punk Mustang and oh my god is she still using kisama for Scar? Why is she such an awful person.

We cut to the Elrics, for once at a relatively reasonable point. Al is still recovering from muscle atrophy. Boy, it sure is a good thing there was an utterly nonsensical Deus ex Machina that prevented him from starving to death. Otherwise the heroes might not have gotten absolutely everything they wanted.

Oh, Fu died? So one character was polite enough to remove themselves from this hideously bloated cast after all. Good on you, Fu.

Ed ships Al and the little girl. Ew. Is this revenge for Al shipping Ed with his surrogate sister?

Ah, Al wants to learn alkahestry so he can save people like Nina in the future. That's good but really just hammers in how ridiculous it is alkahestry isn't common knowledge already.

Winry is being a nag and Ed is being a tsundere. Het culture continues to baffle me. He awkwardly proposes with equivalent exchange. Winry jokingly says equivalent exchange is nonsense. If only.

Ed is taller than Winry now. Boy it sure is great his growth wasn't stunted, that would almost be a consequence.

Ed ends by affirming equivalent exchange.

May is adult height in the ending photo, so yyyyeeeah that wasn't just stylistic, that was a little kid Al was crushing on.

WHY IS YOKI STILL ALIVE

Conclusion

So, uh, yeah, I'm honestly not impressed by the final boss fight. It's more a montage of everyone showing off their best moves than, you know, a fight. OG's battles with Greed and Sloth were much more visually and tactically interesting to me. I also don't like the battle royale aspect, and Al's sacrifice feels so tepid next to actually bringing Ed back from the dead. I did actually mist up a bit at Hohenheim offering to sacrifice himself, but it was ruined when my logical brain reminded me of the context and how yeah, there is no reason not to sacrifice him and he 100% deserves it. Honestly, though, I don't think I would have minded if the show had actually committed to its obvious desire to make Hohenheim the protagonist? He really is better-suited to it. He has an actual personal connection to the villain; he's the one making an actual sacrifice by turning against him; and he's the party member with the most power (except maybe MUSTANG THE MOST SPECIALEST). I genuinely think his death by the grave would have worked as an ending to the series, emotionally, if he had been the protagonist from the start. But then we'd have to have an old geezer as the protagonist of a shonen and that's just unthinkable.

For real, though, Brotherhood's finale is a great shonen finale. It is very prettily drawn and well-animated, and adequately wraps up the massive tangle of storylines with a feel-good bow. Everyone gets what they want and everyone's happy. The heroes' beliefs are affirmed. All problems are solved forever.

It's also all flash and no substance.

I read an interactive webcomic once, called NanQuest. As to be expected from an interactive story, it was pretty spiralling, and had a rather open-ended conclusion that left some mysteries unanswered. In the Q&A afterward, people hounded the author with questions, asking him what was going on with X, why didn't we get resolution on Y. I was right there with them.

In response, the author said something that stuck with me: "[The story is] like life. It's messy, not clean. No last words."

Now, you can say that's a load of crock, just a lazy author covering his butt with some pretentious platitude. And you might not be wrong. I certainly feel the same about a lot of works I feel are too open-ended. But in the case of NanQuest, I thought it made perfect sense, and put some things in perspective for me. Because you know, he's right. In real life, we don't always get to wrap everything up to our satisfaction before the end. Some problems are bigger than us. You can't dismantle a system of racism in a day or even a year. You can't always save everyone. You can't always get a perfect narrative finish to your subplots, a perfect fairytale ending. You don't always get last words.

We love stories because they're a world where we can get all those things. That's a comforting fantasy... but after I'm finished it just fades into the mists as I get up for another flawed, imperfect day in my life. And… maybe I'm just weird, but when a fantasy is too happy, it actually makes me feel worse. It doesn't mean anything to me when you say that these perfect people who had everything stacked in their favor got a happy ending. That makes me say, "But I'm not those people. This happy ending is for people who aren't me, who are better people than me." It's when I see horribly flawed characters go through awful trials and still make it out in the end that I can allow myself to think maybe I'll be okay too. It's through imperfections in stories that life bleeds through, that we are able to take something back with us. And I, personally, think that verisimilitude is worth some visceral dissatisfaction at the imperfection of a narrative.

What were Brotherhood's last words? The things it wanted to make sure happened before the end? A comforting lie. The world is just, it says. As long as you work hard enough, you can achieve your dreams. It doesn't matter how many sacrifices you have to make or how many people you have to hurt, because you can fix that too, in the end.

What were OG's last words? A hard truth. You can give everything you have and still lose. You can't have it all. At some point, you have to recognize that you're better off leaving the scab alone. There was no justice in Trisha's death. In trying to fix it, to assert justice onto the world, they only hurt themselves more. In trying to fix that, they hurt more than just themselves. But maybe, if they can accept that, they can find happiness in what still remains to them; maybe if it's possible to lose something and gain nothing, it's possible to get something for nothing too. Maybe. We don't know. It doesn't pretend to have all the answers. It's on us to complete this story, to take these lessons into our own lives. That's not a fun ending. But it's still, in its own way, a good one.

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fma 2003 #liveblog

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thesquireofcheddar · 6 years ago

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“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too—God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it—no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would—though a man of sixty—offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see—you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams....”

#lit

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head-and-heart · 7 years ago

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Cry With Me - Part 2

It’s been a century but I’m finally back again with part two of “cry-with-me-about-how-ridiculous-book!bellamy-is-and-THIS-is-why-we-can’t-just-”read-the-books”-and-solve-all-of-our-bellarke-angsty-heart-induced-problems-CAUSE-THEY-AIN’T-THE-FUCKING-SAME-JASON!!!”

aNYway ...

If you don’t remember what the purpose of this post is: to put it short, I decided to go through all of The 100 books and pick out all of book!Bellamy’s best (worst) lines that truly show just HOW different he really is from show!Bellamy. At the very least, it cracked ME up when I was reading. So hopefully someone else will find it entertaining too.

You can read some gems from the first book here. This part will be about the second book, “Day 21″ (my personal favourite).

Fair Warning: Potential Book Spoilers Lie Ahead

1. “I think the radiation must’ve finally scrambled your brain.”

2. “You really shouldn’t have done that.” Bellamy’s voice was low and menacing, and for a moment, Clarke thought she might’ve actually upset him. But then he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one swift motion. [i can’t believe him look how dramatic he is]

3. The moon was so large and bright that there was no mistaking the grin on Bellamy’s face as he reached down to undo the button is pants, tossing them aside like they weren’t the only pair he had on the planet. [*sings* it’s gettin hot iN hEre - so TaKe oFf aLL yOuR cLoTHeS]

[Clarke] shivered again, and Bellamy slowly unlocked his lips from hers. “You must be freezing,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her back. She cocked her head to the side. “You’re wearing even less clothing than I am.” Bellamy ran his finger up her arm, then tugged playfully at her damp bra strap. “We can fix that, if it bothers you.”

5. “You should get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty here, and let you know if there’s any change.” [can you imagine bellamy saying this about clarke in the show lmao]

Bellamy twisted her arm behind her back, just like he used to do to the boys in the care center he caught teasing Octavia. “You’d better tell me right now [where Octavia is], or you’ll wish you never crawled out of whatever cave you came from!” [...] He reached over and yanked on the girl’s hair, bringing her face up to his. “You tell me right now, or this is going to get really unpleasant, really fast.” [...] Bellamy didn’t care if the girl was radioactive, or if she had goddamn wings. All he cared about was finding out where she and her friends had taken his sister. [...] “We kill her,” Graham stated [...] “Not before she and I have a little conversation,” Bellamy growled. [don’t you just wish you could maintain your composure as well as book!Bellamy?]

Her friend giggled. “I bet that’s why she smells like the recycling deck.” “And you’re going to smell like a rotting corpse when they finally find you,” Bellamy interrupted.

8. Did trying to choke that piece of space trash who’d been bullying his sister count as an Infraction? [iconic]

9. “That’s a pretty name.” The words slipped out before he realized how stupid they’d sound.

10. “My reputation precedes me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. How could you not talk about someone this good-looking?” [i CAN’T]

11.

“You only brought two [rabbits]?”, Lila asked, trying to exchange a disdainful look with her friend Tamsin, a reedy blond girl who struck Bellamy as a quieter, and somehow even stupider, version of Lila. [ROOD] [...] “Good counting, Lila,” Bellamy said slowly, as if praising an accomplished toddler. “You’ll make it all the way to ten soon.” [...] “You’re an asshole, Bellamy.” “Ever hear the saying ‘Don’t bite the and that feeds you’?” he shot back with a grin. “Or, why don’t I put it to you this way? There are two rabbits, as you so astutely pointed out, and there are way more than two of us.” [...] “Not everyone is going to get a bite. And you just made that decision a little easier for me. So, thank you.” He extended his hand as if offering it to Lila to shake. “I’m very grateful for your help.” She smacked his hand away and sun on her heel, tugging on the uneven edges of her shorts as she strode away. Typical Wal-ditz, Bellamy thought, using the term Octavia had coined for the girls on Walden who purposefully acted like airheaded Phoenicians.

[I’M SCREAMING I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW SAVAGE HE IS]

12.

A curly-haired girl approached him, trailed by two giggling friends. This trio had taken the cutoffs trend to the extreme, and were now tugging at the frayed edges of shorts that barely skimmed the tops of their thighs. “Hey,” the first girl said. “We need a tall person to help us fix the roof on the north cabin. It’s caving in already.” Bellamy barely glanced at her. “Build a ladder.”

13. “There’s the spot where I almost dropped you,” he said, pointing vaguely into the distance. “That’s where I stopped to make sure you weren’t choking on your own vomit. And, oh, look, that’s where you regained consciousness for a few seconds and told me that I had the biggest-” He cut himself off with a yelp as Clarke jabbed him in the stomach with her elbow.

14.

“Jazzed? What does that mean? Like you’re so happy, you’d be willing to listen to jazz music.” [Clarke speaking] “Willing to listen to jazz music? You must mean ‘happy because you get to listen to jazz music.’ So happy that your heart starts beating a jazz riff.” [Bellamy speaking] [...] “So what does a jazz riff sound like?” “It’s more about what it feels like,” Bellamy said, reaching for Clarke’s hand. He began tapping a rhythm up and down her arm. She shivered as his fingers danced on the inside of her elbow. “So jazz feels like some weirdo tickling your arm?” “Not your arm. Your whole body. You feel it in her your throat . . .” He brought his fingers to her neck and tapped along her collarbone. “In your feet . . .” He knelt down and tapped along the side of her boot, and Clarke laughed. “In your chest . . .” He stood up, bringing his hand to rest lightly on the top of her heart, and was very still. [show!Bellamy I-can’t-flirt-for-shit Blake is shooketh]

15. He’d kissed girls before, and it had never done anything except scramble their brains, turning them into a walking mass of giggles who always wanted to hold his hand. [BUT BELLAMY YOU LOVE HOLDING HANDS *betrayal*]

16. “Don’t you dare tell me what I understand,” Bellamy cut her off. “I never want to see you again. Maybe you can offer yourself up to the Earthborns. Wouldn’t that be fun? A whole new population of children to experiment on.” He spun around and strode off, leaving Clarke alone and trembling in the woods. [BELLAMY HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO YOUR WIFE LIKE THAT]

17. Now he was leaving for good. He’d dealt with Wells’s mind games and Clarke’s treachery for the last time. As he stuffed a few protein packets into his pocket, a new wave of anger rose in his chest at the thought of everything he’d given up to bring Clarke safely back to camp. [...] He should’ve left Clarke in the woods, letting her limbs swell and her airway close up so that she’d never be able to utter another lie again. [DAFUQ?? this is like Day Trip except written by Satan]

18.

Was that Clarke really in there? The Clarke who could look so gravely serious one moment and then burst into laughter the next? The girl who found everything on Earth miraculous, and kissed him as if he were the most incredible find of all? “You look creepy standing there. Either come down or get going,” he said gruffly. [way to woo a girl, Bellamy]

19. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go find a blond. Redheads are nothing bu trouble.” Bellamy grinned and reached for the book. “Give it to me. That thing is half your weight . . . Carrots.”

20. “Are you okay?” Clarke asked. “It’s just Jim Dandy.” Clarke reached over and squeezed his hand. “Aren’t you excited? You’re finally going to meet people who understand your weird, old-man Earth slang.” [TBH this isn’t that notable but I just thought it was funny since the fandom always jokes about how Bellamy’s just a soft old-man-teddy-bear]

21. “Half-brothers,” Clarke said for what was probably the twenty-ninth time that night.. She reached out and ran a finger along Bellamy’s cheek, as if she might find some sign she’d overlooked that he and Wells were related. Bellamy smiled as he gently removed her hand, then brought it to his lips to kiss it “I know it’s hard to believe. I’m just so much better looking.” [listen to this cocky asshole]

22. “Look at that,” Bellamy whispered in her ear. “What?” He took her hand, gently extending one of her fingers, and pointed it toward a pinpoint of light moving quickly across the sky. “Did you ever make wishes on meteors on Phoenix?” [again, this quote isn’t so much about Bellamy himself as a character in the book but it just struck me because it’s basically the reverse of “can you wish on this kind of shooting star” in 1x05 so I thought it was interesting to point out]

That concludes all of the main Bellamy parts of book two! He still has some pretty ridiculous (and SAVAGE, holy crap) moments but to be honest this is probably my favourite of the four books in the series (just in general). Hopefully you found this post entertaining - stay tuned for book three: “Homecoming”.

#the 100 #bellarke #bellamy blake #day 21 #kass morgan #clarke griffin #posts by moi #cry with me #otp: maybe together will be our always #bellamy blake: he's the key to everything

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esonetwork · 4 years ago

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Timestamp #212: Victory of the Daleks

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-212-victory-of-the-daleks/

Timestamp #212: Victory of the Daleks

Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks (1 episode, s05e03, 2010)

Subversively, this story is literally what it says on the tin.

The time is World War II. Winston Churchill enters the Cabinet War Rooms and asks about the status of incoming enemy planes. When advised that they are out of conventional range, he decides to roll out his secret weapon. He pushes a miniature Dalek forward on the map board.

The TARDIS materializes soon afterward and is immediately surrounded by soldiers. The Doctor and Amy are greeted by Churchill, responding to his summons. The TARDIS is a month late, but that’s okay even though the time capsule is a bit inaccurate.

Churchill is amazed that the Doctor has changed faces again (even though we’ve never met him before). Amy is amazed at being in the nerve center of London’s war effort. They go to the roof and gaze upon the city, stunned by the sight of history and appalled at the revelation that Churchill is using Daleks to fight the Germans. The Doctor is brought face-to-face with an Army-green, Union Jack-sporting, obedient Dalek, known her as an Ironside.

The Doctor tries to convince Churchill to back down from employing the weapons, but Churchill is convinced that the machines will win the war. Churchill believes that they were invented by Professor Edwin Bracewell, and when the Doctor asks Amy to recall the events of the 2009 Dalek invasion, she tells the Doctor that she has no idea what he’s talking about.

Churchill is not swayed – “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favorable reference to the Devil. These machines are our salvation.” – so, when the all-clear alarm sounds, the Doctor decides to visit Bracewell. He asks Bracewell how he developed them, and the professor explains that the ideas just come to him. A Dalek serves tea, spurring the Doctor into anger. He tries to provoke the Dalek into attacking him, channeling his anger and fury into the effort but is unsuccessful at first. When he reveals himself as the Doctor, the Daleks finally drop the charade.

They transmit the Doctor’s identity to a saucer on the far side of the Moon. Two soldiers attempt to stop the Daleks but are promptly exterminated. Bracewell tries to reason with them but has his hand shot off, revealing that the professor is an android that they created. The Daleks declare victory and transmat to their ship. The Doctor’s testimony is now powering some kind of progenitor.

The Doctor leaves Amy with Churchill and takes the TARDIS to the Dalek ship, claiming to have a self-destruct sequence on a dead man’s switch. It’s really a Jammy Dodger, but it fools the Daleks for the time being. The Daleks reveal that one ship survived their last encounter with the Doctor and that ship located a progenitor device containing pure Dalek DNA. The three Daleks on the ship were created from Davros’ cells, so the progenitor would not recognize them since they are not pure Daleks. As a backup, however, if it detected the Doctor nearby, it would activate.

Forcing a stalemate, the Daleks remotely switch on the lights in London, turning it into a giant target for the German air forces. They all watch as a new Dalek paradigm is born with multi-color Daleks born from pure DNA. Soon after birth, the new Daleks use maximum extermination against the inferior Daleks. When they turn on the Doctor, he brandishes his Jammy Dodger again.

Amy and Churchill realize that they have a way to help. They visit Bracewell, who is threatening suicide since he believes that his entire life is a lie. Amy talks him out of it and convinces him to help save London. Bracewell theorizes that he could send a weapon into space with his gravity bubble technology. Churchill scrambles three Spitfires – Jubilee, Flintlock, and Danny Boy – to assist just as the Daleks figure out the Jammy Dodger ruse.

The Daleks take out Jubilee and Flintlock. The Doctor is forced back into the TARDIS, which proves advantageous as he is able to disrupt the Dalek ship’s shields long enough for the Spitfire to destroy the transmission dish. With London safe, the Doctor dispatches Danny Boy to destroy the ship, but the Daleks reveal that Bracewell is a bomb ready to destroy the planet if the Doctor does not let them survive.

The Doctor reluctantly lets them leave, but they activate the bomb’s timer on their way out. The Doctor returns to Earth and reveals the bomb. The Doctor realizes that the professor’s human memories, particularly the emotions behind them, have the power to stop the countdown. Unfortunately, it fails.

Amy tries another tactic: She asks if he’s ever fancied someone that he shouldn’t. She asks him to remember the pain of a woman named Dorabella and how beautiful she was. The emotion disables the oblivion continuum bomb, but the Doctor is too late to stop the Daleks from leaving.

The Doctor is distraught even in victory. Meanwhile, Bracewell has lost his access to new futuristic ideas and the Doctor has stripped it out of the headquarters. The Doctor hugs Churchill and Amy bids him farewell, but demands the TARDIS key back before they go. Churchill, it seems, has sticky fingers.

Before they leave, the Doctor and Amy visit Bracewell. The professor is certain that they’ve come to deactivate him, but they have no intention of doing so. They recommend that he go find Dorabella or some of the places in his memories, and as they leave, Bracewell starts packing.

Off to the TARDIS go the Doctor and Pond, but the Doctor is still perplexed at how Amy cannot recall the Battle of Canary Wharf or the War in the Medusa Cascade. Regardless, they board the TARDIS and depart, leaving behind the menacing crack in the wall.

I really appreciate the double meaning of this story’s title. On the one hand, it plays well off the allied propaganda from World War II, but on the other hand, the title is quite literal: In a rare move for the franchise, the Daleks actually win by achieving a major goal.

These new Daleks, which will become known as the Paradigm Daleks, are vastly different than the Skaro Daleks (1963-1975), the Renegade-Imperial Civil War Daleks (1975-2005), and the Time War Daleks (2005-2010). They also (at this point) also retcon (establish a retroactive continuity) about the Daleks, effectively erasing the Daleks from the Time War forward except for the Doctor’s memories. What’s not entirely clear is where the Ironsides Daleks come from. Are they part of the army from the human-Dalek hybrids (which tie back to the Imperial Daleks, and therefore, Davros), or are they survivors of the New Dalek Empire? It is implied that they were part of the War in the Medusa Cascade, but it’s not definitive.

The effect is quite literal as Steven Moffat destroys the Dalek legacy created by Russell T Davies. I know that many fans despise the redesign, but I don’t mind them that much. They are definitely more chunky than every other previous Dalek design, but the most garish design factor is the rainbow coloring. In the classic era, Daleks stuck to the standards of grays, blacks, whites, golds, and light blues. In the first five years of the modern era, they went to grays, blacks, and bronzes.

The Skittles variety is a major culture shock.

It’s also worth noting here that this is not the first time that the Doctor has considered exchanging the Earth for the complete destruction of his worst enemy (The Parting of the Ways), which also links to the Doctor’s fury at the first time the Ninth Doctor encountered one of them (Dalek).

Lastly, the Daleks didn’t seem to recognize the Doctor with his eleventh face. In The Power of the Daleks, the Doctor mentioned that they always manage to recognize him. The recognition files seem to not work in certain cases, like the Renegade Daleks being dumbfounded over the Sixth Doctor (Revelation of the Daleks) and the Cult of Skaro not recognizing the Tenth Doctor (Doomsday). So, this matches with previous events, but the connection is not entirely clear.

Moving to the more humorous, the absurdity of Royal Air Force Spitfires engaged in space combat made me laugh. I also loved how dedicated the Ironside Daleks were to the ruse, from serving tea to waiting so very long for the Doctor to arrive. Quite frankly, they deserve their victory despite the ramifications for the universe going forward.

One thing is certainly clear: The Daleks just got less scrappy and a whole lot more menacing again.

(Thanks to The Doctor Who Site for their visual reference guide to the different Dalek types.)

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Time of Angels and Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Doctor Who #Eleventh Doctor #Timestamps Project

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avaford2009 · 11 days ago

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✨3-2-1 Penguins! プラネッツメロディーえいがえほん✨

3-2-1 Penguins! が、メロディーえほんで登場です！バレエ「くるみ割り人形」から、厳選した６曲を収録♪クラシックの美しいメロディーを聴きながら、わくわくする冒険物語を楽しめます！

Vacuum Cleaner (Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn) - こんぺいとうのせいのおどり Bandicoot King (The Cheating Scales of Bullamanka) - ちゅうごくのおどり Uncle Blobb (The Amazing Carnival of Complaining) - ロシアのおどり Lightbulb (Runaway Pride at Lightstation Kilowatt) - こうしんきょく B.I.N.G. (The Doom Funnel Rescue!) - あしぶえのおどり Planet Tell-A-Lie Dart (Moon Menace on Planet Tell-a-Lie!) - スペインのおどり

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alterautomata-blog · 7 years ago

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Destiny Fanfic: Lost Days

Author’s Notes: Destiny fanfiction set months before House of Wolves, featuring my Hunter OC, Ashe Winters, an awoken who begins to question the Speaker, the Traveler and the shadow it casts, even her own paracausal existence.

AO3 link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10342830/chapters/22857783

Tags: Angst, Existential crisis, Snark,

Chapter 1: Fire and Ashe

“I don’t know why you insist on doing this every morning,” a Ghost whined, it’s internal circuitry grinding with irritation.

“You know for an AI, you complain a lot.”

Year 2631, 0600 hours, Tuesday morning.

Earth’s orbit.

Space’s grasp was vast and everlasting, and its view had remained even greater than that calibre for the last eternity. It was an interstellar spectacle of distant worlds, and star stuff, which, even when broomed through thoroughly, not even the most seasoned of space explorers would find every nook and cranny of this all-omnipotent being.

Just off the coast of the distant Planet Earth, not so far from it’s atmosphere was a Guardian class jumpship, floating off in the embrace of space. Inside it was what one would expect; a Guardian herself—Hunter class—and the Ghost who oft criticised her of the many unhealthy decisions she dared to make.

Ashe Winters was very enthusiastic about the sunrise, and viewing it from space at that.

Her Ghost, who she had cleverly given the name of Blink—an odd name from a being from some Golden Age program used for children’s amusement—was barely accepting of her latest escapades, mostly the ones that would land the both of them in trouble with the Vanguard. He would often advise against Ashe’s rash decisions, but alas, she never even considered the consequences. But that’s how she was on leisure time. On missions, the Hunter was often compared to Cayde-6 when it came to getting things done.

She didn’t care how she did it—as long as it was set and over with.

If anything, Blink was the voice of reason in these types of situations, that Ashe had no intention to listen to anytime soon.

The Ghost floated near Ashe’s head, whirring it’s gears in irritation and worry while the Hunter had a big smirk plastered on her face.

“So tell me; are you insane? Because Zavala tells you, personally, time and time again to not linger outside of Earth’s orbit—due to the fact that Fallen ships could easily pick you up on their scans, and are oh-so eager for Guardian blood to be spilled.”

“So?”

“And yet, you continue to do it!”

“Uhuh.”

“Why!?”

Ashe turned her gaze out of her ship’s port window, a resolute curve of her lips still plastered on her face. She appeared to be amazed, enveloped in the type of awe that a child would have. She directed her Ghost’s attention out to space with a point. “Because on Earth, you’ll never get to see something like this.”

The black and white patterned shell turned, and his single eye blinked for a moment.

Through the ship’s window, the sun glared, reflecting from the very surface of the large blue planet before the two. It’s golden view were like brightly shining arms made of pure light, wrapping around the sky. This sight enthralled Ashe; brought out expressions from her no other Guardian or Ghost would ever hope to coax. It was a simple thing to be so fixated with, yes. But in times like these, the small things were all a person—even a Guardian—could ever want before everything turned to shit. It wasn’t out of the ordinary at all, especially for a Hunter, to have an interest for something of nature and science. Warlocks were often the same, even more with science, however, and Titans with their trinkets—items from a distant time before The Collapse that managed to maintain their shape and form.

In particular, Ashe was interested in the sun, and strangely enough, she was hardly a Gunslinger.

The Awoken woman sighed with elation in her voice before her hands reached over, and touched the controls of her ship.

“Sit tight. We’re going back.”

The Traveler.

It was practically within the grasps of those who beheld it’s somber-like presence. While yes, life no longer stirred within it, it remained a moniker of hope to those who beheld its glory—a metaphorical and funnily enough, literal sigil of Light, which spurred on the desires for peace—to drive Guardians and humans alike to fight for the day where Darkness would no longer lust for their lives.

At least, that was what everyone’s beloved Speaker would tell them. And repeat like a mantra.

In truth, the Traveler was only a facade. A lie, and the Speaker along with it. It was only a gargantuan floating ball that smelled faintly of vanilla; casting an overbearing shadow on top of The Last City.

While, yes, it did well to stave off the Dark; as ever-growing and infinite as a plague. With as much as the concept of Light was deconstructed, only to be revealed as something so morbid, Guardians—those who are lost to natural causes, who defy death constantly—it was a necessary evil. Knowing so, must such a wonderful falsehood be broken?

Would it even be insulted to be called something wonderful?

These were Ashe’s constant thoughts, day and night. In space. On patrols. Even on supply runs, such things would not leave the Hunter’s mind, that she figured someone such as her might as well had been a Warlock. Funnily enough, not even their kind questioned this very way of life. Instead, they had their heads buried in a book, wondering why the Moon wasn’t made of cheese, or something along the lines.

Was everyone content with this life, though? Constantly fighting, while knowing that even something as majestic as the Traveler casted darkness as well? Maybe they didn’t know, and continued to go about life as normal.

Was that the life Ashe wanted to lead? Would she had rather been as ignorant as any other Guardian?

A neon glare turned over towards the Hunter, from an Exo from the same class. Rather it was her mentor, a member of the Vanguard, Cayde.

She pretended to not notice him at first, and Cayde pretended to actually be angry. He knew Ashe’s schtick better than anyone else did, that and he had to put on a good show for the other two Vanguard members.

“Look, I’m not saying that you can’t handle yourself,” he began, his geared jaw illuminating for every time a syllable sounded. “But we made it clear that Guardians aren’t allowed to linger in orbit like that. We wouldn’t want you getting fried by the Fallen or, whatever is out there. You’re too valuable an ally to lose, Ashe.”

There was an inkling of a moment where her eyes turned to the Exo, then passed over to Zavala who wore that eternally stern expression, and finally to Ikora, forever to be carelessly buried in her collection of pre-collapse books and ancient texts of dragons and whatnot.

“Is that why you’re sticking me with a permanent fireteam? For the fifth time?”

“Sixth. Franz was only one man, but we thought he could really…” Cayde’s eyes darted behind him so indecisively as he could feel the tension rise. “Keep you in check. Zavala’s words. Not mine.”

As if on cue, the Titan stepped forward and stood adjacent to Cayde, looking down on the wayward Awoken Hunter who quirked an incredulous brow back at him.

“You are a menace to those around you and yourself, Winters. That Ghost won’t last long with this continued behavior,” the big blue statue according to Cayde bellowed. “Show more pride as a Guardian, and perhaps this would be a permanent fireteam for you. But time and time again, your lack of tact either drives them away or worse, get them—”

“You act as if I want to be on someone’s leash.”

She didn’t realize it before, but the negative effect of her reflexes were showcased right there. Ashe was already standing up, staring down the Commander.

Me and my big mouth, the sensible part of Ashe thought, grimacing.

Zavala wasn’t phased however. That stoney-faced Awoken didn’t even flinch when Ashe engaged in a stand-off with him.

If Cayde had sweat glands, he would’ve been soaked.

And there was Ikora, still immersed in her books, a care spared not.

For a moment there, Ashe thought she was going to find her entire body rocked to it’s core from a Storm Fist—and then the Tower would have a fight on it’s hands—but she knew Zavala better than that. He wasn’t your average, everyday Titan, mindlessly punching things that provoked them.

“Your team will be issued to you tomorrow, Winters. In the meantime, you’re dismissed.”

Fuck you, the irrationally angry side of Ashe wanted to say. She really did. With a click of her tongue, she turned on a heel and stormed off.

As the Hunter reached the hall, her Ghost materialized next to her, following the hastened pace she walked, giving her a look of counsel that said a lot without words.

Don’t give me that, Ashe looked back.

“That could have went better. You know Commander Zavala is like a rock on this sort of thing.”

“I know he has more authority than he does brains, and throws that around mindlessly.” She continued walking, towards the Tower’s hanger where she passed by overhung logos, riddled through the place, used as daily reminders to what she was brought back from the dead to become.

“You and I both know that isn’t true—and where are you going?”

“The Cosmodrome.” She let only a second pass before speaking again, not enough time for Blink to ask why she was going to such a place. “I need to blow off some steam.”

“Oh, nothing says blowing off steam like firing lead into the filters of a Fallen Captain’s Ether mask.”

“The ship, Blink.” Ashe’s voice was laced with impatience. She walked past the floating AI, and it in turn whirred with exasperation at her soiled countenance.

With a sigh, the Ghost soon phased out of existence. Ashe did as well once her all-around grey jumpship revealed itself in the hanger, rising up along the platform as if being offered to her by a mechanical host within the Tower. With a pull of the throttle and a few flips of a couple switches, the engines roared to life and the ship took off, the Cosmodrome of Old Russia in mind as it’s destination.

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