#putting this to many tags so everyone can see this

[orewing]

the lies of suou hayato

following my previous post noting the association of suou to hanazuou and its meaning in hanakotoba, I wanted to expand somewhat on what I said in the tags regarding suou's quote-unquote "deal" and also share my own theory as to why he is the way he is and where his story might go from here.

this might be a bit of a long one, so buckle in.

the lie of composure

suou is seemingly unwavering. he is poised, refined, and polite at all times. he puts on an unflappable facade, but I think he actually has pretty poor control over his own emotions—he often acts in petty ways, as evidenced by the way he toys with his opponents, but he also has a vindictive streak—more on that later.

the lie of vulnerability

suou does not show weakness. he is strikingly perceptive and highly responsive to the needs of others, but expresses no wants or needs of his own. he insists quite clearly that everyone is the same, but treats himself as the sole exception in refusing to divulge his weak points—and when someone else discovers one of them, he panics.

I do think he means the words he's saying. I just also think he's automatically disqualifying himself from them. he seems to be trying very hard to maintain an image of someone without flaw and without weakness; someone who wants for nothing and who can be relied on for anything. I have an idea as to why that might be the case, but there's more groundwork I'd like to establish first.

the lie of kindness

this is a lie hiding a kernel of truth.

early on, during the shishitouren arc, sakura notes that suou has a rotten personality. I think this moment is sakura seeing past the mask of a "kind gentleman" to the layer just underneath (the layer that contains suou's more ugly, turbulent emotions), but deeper than that, I do think suou does genuinely care for his friends. if he didn't, I don't think he'd be so eager to assist sakura as his vice-captain, or to help nirei train in secret... no, I think there's something else going on there. which leads to...

the lie of connection

this one has already been covered in detail in this post (kudos to both @goatedgreen and @squish--squash for their wonderful insights on the topic), but in short, suou does not participate in connecting with others.

there are two significant narrative themes that this involves: "fighting is a conversation," and "eating with others".

suou is never shown eating in the manga (we're ignoring the taiyaki), and as far as I can recall, the only time we ever see him try to throw a punch is in a moment where his opponent is already unconcious; in other words, anything that could have been conveyed through it would have fallen on deaf ears anyway.

suou is seemingly uninterested in connecting with his opponents in fights. I believe he's also deliberately keeping his own friends at arm's length. why? I do have an idea—it's spitballing, really—but before I can get to that I need to talk about...

the lie of maturity

this is the big one. this is the lie that ties all the others together.

suou acts like the Adult in the room. he is poised, refined, and polite at all times. but as mentioned prior, he is, in many respects, immature. he is petty and vindictive. he is quick to anger when faced with perceived injustice. he seemingly considers sakura someone he can never match up to—and I think that's primarily because his own emotional growth is stunted by personal circumstance and suou himself is aware of this.

suou is, I think, jealous of sakura's ability to grow and flourish as a person outside the boundaries his own life is restricted to.

what boundaries?

this post is being written under a couple of decently big assumptions.

first, I'm writing it under the assumption that suou's backstory has no ties to the triads (or the yakuza, or what have you). while organised crime is a topic touched upon in canon during the roppo ichiza arc, it feels like something which is kept at arm's length by the narrative in favour of a narrower focus on personal trauma and stories with personal stakes. while I don't doubt that nii-sensei has the writing chops to pull off a story where suou's family is involved with organised crime in some way, I'm putting that idea aside in favour of something a little more grounded.

second, and this is really the crux of my post: I think suou hayato was raised in an incredibly strict family environment.

what made me consider this as a strong possibility was actually a dialogue I encountered while reading another manga, medalist:

I think it's possible that, growing up, suou was never really given the opportunity to Be A Child. I think he was raised in an environment that placed incredible pressure on him to perform as an adult from a very young age, and that caused him to grow up with a warped sense of maturity.

too often, it's easy to forget that this is a 15-year-old boy. he's far from a fully-grown adult—and I think, most likely, he's just a kid with too many expectations placed on him at too young an age (he might also be suffering a pinch of chuunibyou delusion, but really, it'd be hard to blame him for that if I did turn out to be correct about his upbringing).

I think it's also worth noting that nirei was very surprised by suou's demeanour the first time they met. it's possible that he was expecting someone more mature, based on the information he'd previously gathered; someone better suited to the image of a person who was treated as grown up from a very young age.

this could be suou actively defying other people's expectations in order to hide his true self. or it could be a genuine lack of maturity showing. or it could be both! who's to say?

spitballing

I believe that, unlike someone like kiryuu (who we see actively at odds with family members), suou probably wants to live up to what his family expects of him. I think this is also going to be the thing that causes him the most trouble further down the line. there is very little canon basis for this theory, so please take it with the whole salt shaker:

it's possible that suou was sent to fuurin for a purpose.

I'm not sure what, exactly, that purpose could be—possibly as a punishment for failing to live up to his family's exacting standards—but I think there's a timer on his life at fuurin, and I think suou is aware of this.

he isn't planning on saying no when he's asked to leave (I don't think he'd turn his back on fuurin of his own free will, but I do think he's the type to say "it is what it is" and leave it at that while quietly dying inside), and that's why he's so adamant on not partaking in the customs of fuurin. but there's a problem with that.

even if he's been actively avoiding connecting with others in the most narratively significant ways (food and fighting), suou has still formed relationships with others, whether he likes it or not. and I can think of at least two people who won't let him go quietly if they find out he's trying to leave...

[gnohomotho]

May I play with you? 「✦Pt.5✦」

Pairing: The Salesman // The Recruiter x fem!reader Summary: Well, folks, it's happening, everyone stay calm. He's lost it (not the game, you lost that one). Flowery shower leading to a bed. There is some fluff, because of course there is. Bit of an emotional rollercoaster, is he still playing? Are you? How many times have you lost? Is he counting? What exactly does he have in mind? How much of him is true? Is anything really? ⭒˚.⋆˖➴༯ Warnings: 18+ MDNI, heavy intimacy, rich sexual inner monologues, description of naked bodies, biting, choking, bondage, abuse dynamics, accurate depictions of trauma responses, very questionable consent, razorblades, heavy snogging, groping, grinding, fondling, power imbalance, near-smut, the man's in love, what can I tell you. (❀´ ˘ `❀) Word count: 8.7k A/N: I'm aware the water bill will be astronomical. ˙ᵕ˙ Again, I'm so grateful for the fans and the people requesting this, tried quite hard and tried to write the saucy scenes very saucily and plan to give them a fully fledged scene in the next part. Just wanted to deepen the characters and relationship, rather than just fucking. But please put "describing the Salesman's nether region while trying to study for a state exam" under things I did not expect to be hard. Wait. WAIT NO--- Gorgeous gif by: @phantom-evil Tag list: @storytellers-randomshortstorys @ingstadstarlight જ⁀➴ Link to previous Link to next If you like my work, I cherish every like // reblog // follow // message - thank you for helping me boost visibility and writing! ♥ Masterlist ฅ^._.^ฅ

The shower water beat down on your delicate beating head like drops on a hot tin roof. Your eyes refused to blink. The water kissed your lashes and blurred the never changing abject scene before you.

There he was.

There he was, the enigmatic salesman, in his entirety, just under the tender curve of your breasts, his dark hair, thick with wetness and heat, his face, slick and never changing, fully focused into you without a single touch. Droplets running down his face but seemingly making way for his engulfing features.

Let me revere you.

Your breath could not catch up, your hands were remotely, unnoticeably shivering, and though the warmth covered your naked body down to the hem of your tights, you felt so very, very cold and exposed.

He was a mirror, the mirror you could not stand to look at yourself in at home, and he took all he reflected.

And, perhaps worst of all, the unwavering stabbing uncertainty dragged through your mind as the steam made the small space ever suffocating.

Curling softly and sliding down your nose and throat.

Sliding the tiles from under you like hands gripping a veil of consciousness from under your toes.

If he was like the others, you could have managed. If he took and grabbed, if he defiled, you could breathe. Bitterly, but you could. But not this.

Your eyes move to the heels of his shoes, perfect spades glistening and getting ruined by water. You try to focus on him, his form breathing under the heavy soaked suit, you don't want to acknowledge what he's seeing. Nor you. Nor the damage. But you don't move.

You watch.

Heavy shoulders so light against their surroundings. A large form lithe enough to jump at you if you make the wrong move. Eyes darkened by the water caught on his eyelashes, a perfect backdrop for the lingering darkness you know is there, barely subdued.

His shirt, soaked through.

His suit, weighed down by dark fabric.

His sleeves, stained.

His hands---

His hands.

Large, meticulous, open hands.

So close to the places you don't wish to recall, harbouring a touch that both holds you here and holds you apart.

You unwittingly, as invisibly as possible stiffen and force your thighs together; how similar are your moves to the dreadful night he bestowed that burning touch on you the very first time.

Heart beating madly, you pray he didn't notice.

His eyes seem focused on your body now, piercing your navel and hips, unmoving. Focusing. You wonder what he sees, what caught his attention and held...before you remember yourself checking the damage even before this nightmare of an evening.

Oh.

Oh no.

His hand suddenly moves. Veins like highways delineating its trajectory. All along down to the wrist you cannot quite see. The electricity between the steam and his light motion plays between your skin and his touch.

A gentle but methodical cut begins to pull each sleeve down just a tad, revealing his entire wrists and you almost gasp - almost - at the concentration imbued in them.

He's either struggling or preparing, either fighting or dreadfully at peace with whatever is running through his mind and intentions.

Even the way he did that - he didn't pull away from you, no. He wouldn't grant you that kind of impersonality.

No.

The salesman instead dragged his open palm gruellingly slowly with each fingertip lightly burning through you across your stomach. Inch by inch.

He slid along your ribs and simply rested there, letting your body pulsate into his firm touch.

Not only mine, the touch seems to say.

One with me.

When he does move, it's to tend to one cuff that he visited by travelling across you. As slowly as it is torturous, he then repeats the motion the other way, gliding across your prickling, responsive skin, to his other hand. Never once hurting or pushing into you, so methodical are his movements - even as his wrist touches your skin and the hand returns to its open palm possession.

Slow, everso slow, so lightly against your navel, soft as transparent cloth, deliberate as the hand of a dealer who knows the house always wins.

Never once letting you go without his touch.

If it was possessive, you couldn't tell. You did not wish to think. To make sure it's not a reaction, you let yourself be still for a time too long before exhaling and closing your eyes.

You feel a new sensation, warm and almost comforting - but bathed in a sense of dread.

Gently he began to lather soap and foam across your stomach, soothingly travelling up to your ribs. Across places that screamed in pain and need. Your breath, your mind was holding onto its last confines of stability not to react, not to give him an inch. But every breath sent a shiver through you, you knew if you dared open your eyes, you'd see him watching you with one eye pinned each time you tried to avoid the charcoal depths.

You feel his momentary focus on your quivering chest, as the droplets fall slower past the tender hills. Circular motions caress your sternum, along each side of your breasts, under them, stopping only for places that visibly hurt. Places you know don't hurt only because of tonight and you dread him reading you like a book.

The foam gathers in heaped warmth and hugs your chest, lazily falling down onto your stomach and he catches it - lathering every inch anew.

Sometimes he lingers. And you swear you have to be imagining the place grow warmer, warmer, then hot - as if the steam gathered there and moulded into you.

You thought you were imagining it until a soft yet rough small surface, wet and warm, momentarily, only for a breath - - - brushed a particularly tender spot.

Are those...is that...

Your eyes flutter open and thankfully, you see for yourself without him seeing you.

And you are not thankful to be gazing into a flurry of dark hair not even a clandestine inch away from your skin.

❥❥❥

As gentle and soft as his hands were - they were methodical. Deliberate. Never lingering without reason. He focused on your bruises and stayed there.

"This one's old," he hummed nonchalantly, but there was a cold edge to the whisper even the shower couldn't heat.

His breath kissed your skin and bathed it in warmth as the whispers enveloped every inch of the soft spot under his lips.

"And this one wasn't done by a fast, brutal, unbecoming drow of emotion."

He didn't have to move to connect the surface you had already suspected to your skin, to your body, to your soaked shivering tenderness.

His lips brushed the surface of your skin - just barely - over the place he had tended with his breath.

The electricity. The touch. The need in you gathers and you almost quiver into him.

Your heart. Your heart is racing and he must feel it through your form, your stomach, your ribs.

But he left you cold once more as his lips departed.

He moved ever lower.

Circling soap and smooth warmth just under the curve of your breasts, never touching - making his presence and his absence the same gruelling pain. And you felt everything.

He is travelling up between them, up your sternum. Slowly. Pressing each centimetre of your skin into memory.

"And this one...these ones..." the breath that left his lips lingered hot on your skin but held nothing but contempt.

His lips closed around the tender place and for a while, only lay there. The contact giving life alone. As he pulled away just enough to speak but so close you could no longer tell what is hot water and what are his lips upon you...

"These ones...my little flower...my dear little bird shielded by a pair of broken wings..."

His hand had stopped and your eyes cannot focus, the eyes you're explicitly not meeting are burning into you. You almost gasp as you feel his finger glide against the soft skin of your ribs, to your hip, sliding along the dip and laying against your side. It slides down ever further and grips your thigh.

"These ones make me wish to lay you down and invite a few more players to the game for you to merely watch."

The knife of his intonation cut through the steam, yet ended on a jovial little chuckle.

"Watch them lose."

The grip on your thigh grows, and you know what that does to him, you know how his thoughts must be spiralling through each and every scene from the tapestry of your skin he's putting together like a full picture. And you shiver straight through.

You must not let him see.

You must not let him see that you are falling apart, and your body is growing into a cold carapace to shield the damage.

Hold me, don't touch me, hold me, don't touch me, ruin me, make it stop, please hold me, make it safe...

Your left eye begins to do something you truly cannot afford right now, and you would almost curse at both it and the thought that forced it to glisten.

...love me.

His thumb leaves the grip of your upper thigh only to softly slide inside the vice-like grip between your legs, rubbing the tights and smoothing them over. Not taking them off. Not roughing them up.

Smoothing them against the water and against your burning skin.

Stability? Possession? Need? Obsession?

Play?

Please let it be that.

The drip leaves your eye as the words leave his lips bathed in pretentious honey:

"You want me to hurt you, don't you, little flower?"

❥❥❥

He gazes up at you, the question hanging in the air, one open hand rested upon you but unmoving. His other firmly gripping your thigh enough to remind you of the poor chair. Is this a test? Or a genuine question? His face is a wet, beautiful, striking vision politely asking each drop of water to pass so that it may be burned into you without barriers. His smile is small, but his expression harbours little warmth.

Reverence.

And detachment.

And...something you cannot quite point to nor comprehend.

Like a snake smiling up at you, and you don't know whether it's satisfied with a meal or about to strangle one.

And your body is giving him every answer he should desire before he even opens his mouth. You almost caught a glimpse at your chest, and something in those eyes that glistened.

Awe.

No.

Self-satisfaction.

But...

No...

Your head is swimming, warmth and heat pooling against his touch, your sense of wrong and yet - safety - dragging you to him, dragging you on each drop that falls down on him, dragging you into his arms but you won't.

You won't.

You're not losing to him and you're not getting devoured today.

The salesman's softer eyes watch the droplets gather on your breasts and kiss each tip, before falling against his hands which twitch ever so slightly with each shared contact they bring to him.

You barely notice his lips move, but the voice kisses your ears past the droplets:

"You would prefer I be like them."

It's not a question.

Please don't.

"You would have me hurt you, wish to hurt you."

The polite soaked figure is only reading each page in front of him like a slow bedtime story. The dripping head lulls so close to your skin you almost lean into the crane of his neck for him and stop yourself - entirely wrong, all wrong, offering him refuge? What is wrong with you?!

His voice is so soft, but his grip on you isn't, and it reminds you of the game once more. His head leans into you, as if ready to kiss a bruise right under your ribs, hidden in such a sensitive spot. Which he surely realises.

Please don't go there.

But the sensation never comes. Only hot breath circling your skin as the words kiss it instead.

"So that my tender flower could loathe me. Discard me. And forget me...even as the poison pulsates through her veins."

He pulls you closer with one slow move, your legs momentarily teetering but you steady yourself. His other hand holds itself outstretched, finger by finger, on the skin below your ribs, just above your stomach where they disconnect into delicate softness, letting you fall into him and letting him feel you in your entirety - but you won't let him know that. You know he's playing.

You know he's playing.

The soft frown as he gazes at you, eyes wide, does nothing to dispel the thought. Lips turning softly, pityingly, patronisingly, he hushes into you:

"Poor thing. That's not how this works."

As he concludes the sentence, he lays his other hand to your side, gliding down the soft curve of your hips and just slightly around, not teasing, but trespassing - stopping at your bone to slide back down the navel and narrowly miss what you expected him to wish to violate first. The salesman instead lays his other hand on your untouched thigh and simply...

Pulls.

Steady, against him, his hands firmly holding you from both sides, you would almost let your guard down and fall. Let your aching muscles rest into his grasp and warm hands, his fingers dispelling lingering pain.

You are pulled into him, meeting both the soaked fabric and his hot body underneath. Firm as it is adaptive, strong as it is fast. Meticulous as it is brutal.

Elegant as it is cruel.

His lips burn into you straight through as their touch travels from the spot he breathed life into, trails down the bruise, and brushes the skin to the very end of your navel. Where his lips rest. Not a kiss. Not quite. Yet not even letting water run between your body and his.

As he pulls away and watches you with detailed satisfaction, studying your face, his eyes follow the little errant drop on your left cheek.

Voice like smoke and velvet, harbouring both hunger and patience, breaks the shower's hum:

"That's a flinch."

❥❥❥

As he pulls away, you're left burning alive.

Shaking. Infuriatingly cold. Pried open. Left to hang.

Helpless.

And ready to move into his arms and kick him at the same time. Your breath makes a sharp inhale and you force it to steady, and of course - he notices.

And he smiles.

It's not a smirk, nor is it triumphant.

It's worse, and you shudder.

It's soft and it is…worshipful.

It is the look of a man who has pried open the most precious of locks inside of you, waltzed straight inside and didn't disturb a single exhibit. Waiting for you to realise just what a heap of kindling is left of your locked doors. For him. And no one but him. Knowing you almost held your arm outstretched with the key as he did so.

The space between you should feel like a reprieve, but it feels like a wound. A void. A chasm. Something terribly missing, and you hate yourself down to the core you don't believe you have, that you want him to close it again.

And...

He does.

He takes your shivering hand and lays it back on his chest, just as you did to catch him in his own game. You feel the hot fabric; you feel his heart. It's pounding.

A knowing smile underlines your surprise, as if reassuring you that you are correct. You may just have an upper hand if you play your cards right.

You may stand to win, look at him, kneeling there, pulse mad, eyes barely concealing their own darkness.

But the salesman moves again and closes the gap. That dastardly gap you'd give anything to close. Closes it by pressing his cheek to your stomach. And he exhales.

His hands grip your thighs and for a moment you wonder if he's steadying himself or tricking you. A softly planted, deliberate kiss right above your navel almost makes you throw the game away entirely.

As you listen to his steadying breaths, hands gripping your thighs, your own gaze softens against your better judgement.

The kiss as a gesture is so very twisted.

So very reverent.

So very...him.

❥❥❥

As you swallow on a dry throat, hard - his eyes flick up, dark lashes wet, and the voice teasingly letting you feel a remnant of warmth it would positively beg for.

"You think I'm cruel?

The salesman's palms skim the inside of your thighs, but stop just before anywhere indecent. Just pressing, not parting. Holding. Knowing you're losing the game and keeping them clasped even as his fingers manage to slide around.

"You think I'll take?"

A single fingertip traces your lower spine, up, slow, deliberate. You're not sure if it's brand, a promise, or a threat. As it slowly teeters down, drawing a shaky breath out of you and leaving electricity wherever it brushed, he speaks once more.

"No, sweet flower, that's not at all how this works."

A single finger slips into the hem of your tights, leaving you just long enough to realise what he's doing before the other mirrors the action on your other hip.

"If I tie you down, if I leave you whimpering and begging for me, it won't be because I made you do so."

The fingers tickle your skin, playing with you, but you feel his own breath quickening as his words are underlined by what he is surely gladly imagining.

"It will be because you sit down freely, bound by the rules of the game, so entirely mine that you offer me the rope through tears streaming down those gorgeous doll eyes."

You feel your stomach pulsate as your heart cannot keep up. He looks up, as if he said nothing at all - relishing surely how much you're regretting every single moment leading up to this one. Cold envelops your mind. Fuck.

"Whimpering, begging, kissing the air with your hurried, strangled breaths...mine from the limbs you won't be able to move to the lips I could tear apart and leave cold. My little lady. Broken by herself. Held together by me. Her will bent like the tender flower stem waiting for its poison to work. Begging for peace."

The fingers dig into each of your hips, surely leaving indentations. Your jaw tightens and your chest does too - and he notices. Oh, he notices the tender skin drawing in on itself, the soft points of your breasts catching his eyes and serving that self-satisfied, leisurely smirk. Though he is under you, he is nothing but towering over you. Just as he surely planned. Just as he intended to play.

His voice comes so unassuming, as if reciting a particularly odd verse he cannot seem to fully wrap his tongue around - so sweet it turns to cyanide on his lips.

"And the poison won't come...hm, my poor little flower...? Can you feel it?"

His eyes close like that of a satisfied cat resting a paw on its caught mouse.

"Because it's too late."

As if to make sure you realise the ramifications of your displaced trust and faint self-assuredness, both of his fingers make the same up-and-down motion, caressing the naked skin he has not touched yet and enjoying the new sensation with polite delight.

As they find every piece of fabric they can, and safely hook themselves under it, the salesman slides down your tights with gruelling, torturous slow detail imbued into each inch of your newly exposed skin. So gently as not to burn your exposed nakedness, but so deliberately it feels like you're being sentenced.

Each new exposed inch is tended to with his lips. Though his fingers are not gripping as you would expect, their pressure is palpable, and they glide slower upon each spot that stings. His lips follow, breathing into you. Kissing the exposed place as if he were burning it into his mind...and yours.

As the tights slide down to your ankles, he traces both palms up your shins, around them, slowly up the inside of your legs you are now vibrating with to keep closed. But he, politely, without explicit force nor a move of the brow apart from his shoulders visibly stiffening, pries them apart just enough for his fingers to glide through.

You're giving him the sensation of your grip and hold without even realising. You quiver further, unable to move - if you know anything...it must be intoxicating for him.

He steadies himself against you, looking up with that small smile but not meeting your eyes, oh, no. He's entranced by your form. Bare before him. So many more avenues to explore and tend to.

So many more petals to pluck.

You merely step out of wet heap and try to nonchalantly slide it away. There still is a part of your brain very, very much concerned about something glistening in the wet clothing.

But you're shivering and you are burning.

And you would collapse around him and hold him to your naked chest, so that you are both enveloped, so that even the gentle water cannot enter the closeness between you.

"My gorgeous little lady," he humms, eyes fixated on your legs and entirely naked beauty, "you're as perfect as you are terrible at this game."

❥❥❥

And you finally move. Never taking your eyes off him, you kick the fabric of your tights away, knowingly giving him your thighs opening on a silver platter.

But as much as the opening captivated him, and as much as his hands squeezed themselves against them – his palm letting fingers envelop the inside of your inner thigh and softly gliding up and down against the water and sliding with it, his eye darted to your movement.

The metallic glint.

You slid the tights away, but the water washed their darkness and let the tiny object half-slip out of their torn hem. Gleaming in the light of the shower and droplets gracing its surface.

And the little glisten caught his one watchful eye. Less than a second, and still – his head stiffens.

The realisation hit you just as it hit him. Though yours was focused on regret and a past life that was washing away with each second with the salesman.

Why didn’t I drag it across his throat, carve out an escape and be done?!

“Oh?” His inflection is curious, but low, his hands don’t stop touching you. One softly brushes fingers just a tad too high and you close your thighs again. But he’s already there and only relishing the comfort of your warm naked skin against his fingers. The smile widens as you make contact with his harsh skin.

The salesman leans towards the wet heap, reaching by your ankles, and takes out the small object that caught his eye.

You should stop him. You should do something. Move!

But you cannot move as you hear his quiet, almost amused breath.

And the expression, as he holds it in his one free hand, is almost ethereal in its captivated fascination. And there is something in his voice that lingers even above the steam of the shower, but heavy enough to pin your feet to the ground and bind your thoughts. Though you detest the thought, as your heart pounds and your vision clouds, you wish it were mockery or judgement, even amusement – but it’s not. It’s something that binds him to you in wire and fishing line, something that is too deep for comfort.

Understanding.

Something close to…admiration.

“The flower came prepared.” Without warning, he kisses your navel and lets his lips rest there. His hand finally releases your thigh, but glides along their side, up your hip, and clenches your behind. And you almost gasp, not expecting him to wash away a boundary he seemed to be respecting most ardently until now.

“Get your hand off my---”

He chuckles into you, moving his head from side to side. He trails his lips up your belly and lets his chin rest in you as he speaks.

Without warning, you snatch at the blade. Without a shiver, without a doubt, taking back something yours, a part of you, your own protection, and you feel…

A sharp snag of your wrist, mid-motion, even as his head never stops resting against you, never leaving your gaze. Both your hands hold the small blade, you move yours to not touch his, he moves his to grip over yours. You don’t let go.

Once more he tilts his head, watching you. Watching you with that infuriating patience that could disappear at any moment. He already knows. And still, he wants to watch the scene unfold.

“If you want to use it, dear flower, why don’t you use it now?”

The salesman cranes his head, slowly, watching you like a snake. Smile still there. You are his one and only project that he’s studying every nook and cranny of, delighted at every gear moving of its own volition…under his control. Until now.

You feel a white-hot frozen anger growing in your chest and step away, leaving him without your flesh. His hand grips your flesh behind you.

Not moving away from me, little one.

You think. You try to think. Shivering even as his hand firmly holds your behind, his other still gripping yours.

And he…grins and guides your hand closer to him, slowly, letting the weight of the gesture sink in with every inch traversed. The razor rests against his throat as he looks up to you, holding your fingers, but leaving his own limp enough in his grip for you to move.

I could cut him. Just add pressure. He’s kneeling before me. He’s drenched. His suit is ruined.

Your heart begins to feel against your will.

He’s still in control. But he…he killed for me. He didn’t hurt me. Yet. He didn’t use me. Yet. And he’s offering his neck to me. Trusting me. Or is it another game? Does he think I won’t do it?

You add pressure to alleviate the thoughts. It feels foreign and wrong to you. Like desecration. Not of him, but of you. This is not you. This is not the girl who tried to save her friend. This is not the hand of the girl who held the detective.

He looks up at you, like you’re truly that flower. Truly beautiful, untouchable, not to be harmed. Worshipping you on his knees at the expense of himself. Playing with you. Testing you.

Each time the thought enters, you wish to push and drag. Drag across his skin. He wouldn’t stop you, that much you know.

But your fingers grow still. And your face saddens into closing your eyes, letting the errant tears drop in full view. Your fingers tremble.

He leans into it.

You almost shoot the hand away for fear of hurting him, instinct doing its job.

Because this is not you.

You feel his skin; his pulsating neck almost touches your hand. The water cascades over him and doesn’t touch your entire palm. His warmth brushes your own. And the pulse beats into the blade that trails the sensation through your fingers up your arm and to your own heart.

Steady. Unafraid. Trusting.

Why do you trust me?

The unspoken question gets a reply as his quiet whisper circles the blade and kisses your fingers down to your wrist.

“If I was like them, I’d already be dead,” he smiles up at you, unmoving.

His fingers softly ease your own off the blade, one by one, stripping you of its cool surface until you are left…

Vulnerable again.

His.

His hand closes around the blade, hiding it, but you see his resolve and the pressure that built up through the scene in the veins on the back of his hand and the grip with which he envelops the blade.

“You’ll cut yourself, don’t hold it like that…” you hush against the shower, voice breaking. You begin to lean to him, hair falling past you, water shaping around your breasts and tummy, softly as you guide your hand to his. But no blood comes out of his palm as he opens it for you.

So you see everything, so close he himself could now slice your neck as you rest above him, exposed, naked, worried – he lifts the blade.

But he lifts it to his mouth.

The salesman presses a slow, deliberate kiss against the flat side of the blade and then…

Lets it fall.

The softest metallic sound against the wet tiles, a clatter, and…

It’s gone.

Just like your resolve, your armour, your weapon.

Just like the safety of placing him in the role of all the others.

And you know the innocence of you, the helplessness he might have imagined, is gone too. He sees you now. And he…is delighted.

And still, he didn’t hurt you. He took your weapon. Gave you his throat. And then didn’t hurt you.

The salesman leans back from you, resting on his heels and studies you anew.

❥❥❥

As if something clicked in his head, he finally stands up to his full height, soaked suit dripping on the tiles, face closing in the distance between you both until you step back at the feeling of his suit brushing against your skin. But you step into the cold wall and wince. And he towers above you, expression unchanging, full of mischief yet frozen condemnation, the snake finally zoning in on its prize and its meal. With no further need for theatrics or dances.

You feel his hand ghost your hip, and his breath kiss you – restrained, slow, but shallow. Too shallow.

As you move once more to avoid his hand, naked skin against the wall, his other grabs the small of your back, squeezing you tight. Before you can gasp, the other glides up your side, from your knee up, and as his face buries into your neck and collarbone, he grips your thigh and hoists you up against the wall as if it was nothing to him.

Instinctively, both your legs wrap around his waist and squeeze for balance, for safety, and you feel his head pull away from your skin just enough to let breath through.

You're blushing, you're almost overwhelmed but feeling everything, and the wetness of his suit against your naked skin, him holding you and being so, so close…The salesman lifts his head from you, water gliding past his hair onto his face, eyes sharp and entranced with you being locked in and gripping for dear life while he is standing there, looking down at you, having nowhere to go – dark eyes pinning you to the wall, just as he is with his entire body.

His smile is tender as it glides from your lips to your eyes, where it turns to pure hunger and restraint, something akin to a high off losing control. His large hands are gripping your flesh, but they jitter – even though the wall keeps you steady. He can't stop squeezing you, so hard he’ll leave marks, fingers brushing and exploring what they can.

As he leans into you, his eyes close, and the crane of your neck is kissed, softly, then simply rested in.

Such a false calm before the storm.

He's taking you in. All of you. His inhale is shaky, his breath hot. His hands firm and almost desperate in their pursuit of every inch of you he’s yet untouched. You feel his hot breath and you feel him nestle in, taste you, feel you, inhale you. Like he wants every sense enveloped in you. His thighs move and you feel him – truly feel him – truly no way to avoid his excitement. Each time you grip your shins or thighs for stability, he moves a bit more into you, until you could swear he was naked too for the sheer closeness of his own body.

"Clever girl," he coos into your shoulder, kissing the spot he knows must be tender.

"My good, obedient, clever girl..."

And you couldn’t control the feelings any longer. Between the tears forming in your eyes, heart beating out of your chest, and legs shivering around him as the roughness of his soaked through suit left nothing of your skin to yourself, you whimpered and let out a gasp as his teeth grazed your throat, sinking into your collarbone again. Your whole body twitched against him and your legs inadvertently squeezed him tighter.

It was like you flipped a switch in him. Time stopped. Even the water seemed to slow its drops. He pulled away just enough to rest his forehead against yours and pinned you down with his eyes alone. His face slowly distanced itself, his lips half open, head craning everso slowly to one side as if studying you for the very first time.

And in that small second that it took you to realise he’d pulled away, he hoisted you up against himself and pushed you into the wall, his hips crashing with yours and his excitement pushing against you with all the fervour he was hiding until now.

He pulls his head back slowly, drifting across your face and looks above you, a small, almost unnoticeable breath of a chuckle escaping his lips before he lets the wall hold you, one hand still gripping your thigh.

He looks fond. Calm. Steady as his other harshly grips the back of your head and grabs a handful of hair straight at your scalp – and pulls your head back. One last whisper swallowed by the shower caresses your ear, as his lips form around the words like soft nudges of air:

"You lose."

And his lips crash into yours. The kiss is anything but gentle – it is hungry, desperate, full of unspoken yearning and need – his tongue gives you no warning, he invades your mouth and tastes every little part of your mouth, craning your neck back with each pull of his fist. You cannot move, you are utterly exposed, and he’s inside of your mouth, against your body, exploring, invading, tasting, taking, owning you. You try to pull away to get air, but he only leaves your lips to explore lower – guiding himself to your neck and biting down, all the way down to your collarbone.

“Beg me,” he growls into your throat, and you pull your arm out of his grasp and grip his chin. You don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t quite know why, but it was on instinct – and he freezes.

Oh, you made a mistake of a lifetime.

Your lips curled into a bitten through kiss, you taste blood as you hush against the shower:

"You first," and you kiss his forehead in a gesture both tender and devastating.

The way he gripped your thigh that pulsated straight through your leg to your toes.

The way he stilled, but his breath remained ragged, slowly collapsing into that calm you knew and feared so well. A snake shedding his skin to reveal a shining new one underneath.

The way his eyes refused to blink and the way his gaze remained frozen on you, a million horrendous scenarios drifting across his pupils the further he drank you in.

That was your only warning as he wordlessly stepped out of the shower with you, traversed the room in only a few deliberate, heavy steps, and clutched you in his fingers so hard your back arched into him as he stood above the bed. You shiver and try to remain stoic, but he has you outplayed.

No more kisses, no more taking you in. Something broke and you don't understand what direction the carnage is falling in. The salesman easily flicks your hand away, and you let it fall – he does the same to your arm, as if suddenly detesting your touch.

"Bad girl," he states, voice nonchalant, but you hear him holding the equivalent of a dam back behind the two words. And it's cracking.

"Very, very, very bad girl. Let go. I'll show you what you can and cannot touch."

If you were a betting person, you'd place it all on him doing a bad job at hiding something, something important, something big – but you don't have time to study his shifting eyes or his suddenly harsh cold hands. You're growing cold, the suit stings, his touch seems foreign.

Still his hand lifts, while still holding you up with his other, and he touches your face – as if doing so for the first time.

As if doing so for the last time, you try not to think as you swallow on a dry throat.

And there's something dark, solemn in that touch, just as his eyes seem blank and his breath too calm.

"I'm going to have to hurt you, little flower," he softly coos, caressing your cheek and brushing your skin as if he were telling you something gentle, "I'm going to have to hurt you very badly."

You start shaking your head, but his hand lifts a finger to your lips and stops you.

"Ah ah ah. You've forfeited the right to beg. You lost. And then you tried to play dirty. Little flower little flower...you have no idea what you've done."

The salesman kisses your lips softly, everso softly, but his hand holds your cheek far too harshly.

So you grip his waist with your legs. You move your face on your own. If he doesn't wish for your hands to touch him, you don't lift them.

You crane your head to him, brushing the hair from his forehead with your nose, and kiss his forehead again, so gently, so lovingly that you forget how sealed your fate is. Because you're kissing the man who wasn't like the others, and the man who almost lost his composure in you – the one who held the blade and could have sliced your neck open, the one who kissed each bruise and didn't stray. The one who broke something in the man who's holding you now the moment you gripped his face.

"Please," you whisper as your lips pull away just enough to let words through, "please."

Come back.

But he doesn't.

You only twisted the knife further.

He shakes his face as if trying to rid a thought and looks at you anew, eyes cold, something wild and uncontained dancing in their dark pupils.

"Too late," he whispers, "too late, little flower."

❥❥❥

And he throws you on the bed, with such force that your legs don't get a chance to unravel on their own, and your arms fall beside you and by your head, your body bouncing on the mattress.

Before you can adjust or move, you close your legs on instinct and try to take a few heavy breaths, as you note you're not hurt – just shaken and your trembles vibrate through your entire body. But you wince at the sudden realisation of just how much of you he was holding together.

The salesman doesn't give you time to think, he climbs above you, sealing your limbs one by one – both of your wrists get pinned down before you can lift on your elbows, your midsection is left under his weight and he is above you, shielding the light, eyes wild, mouth closed, no smile.

"You think you're special?" His voice coils around your ear as he gathers your wrists above your head and pins them to the headboard.

You shake your head, fear finally gripping you and enveloping you to your core, and you try to twist away from under him. But his weight replies with a sharp thrust to keep you in place.

"I've plucked flowers like you from the side of the road, and dozens remained in their place. Better. Fairer. More open."

He uses his free hand to slide down your ribs, your side, your waist and stop at your hip, gazing into you the more you shiver, the more you pull away and touch him in turn. He grabs at the skin of your waist and pushes you down into the bed, feeling every inch of you he can.

"You're nothing. You lost. I'll take my prize and leave you to wilt."

As he finishes the sentence, he grinds against you so harshly you feel him in his entirety. Your recoil only made his movement sharper. He lays his body against yours, full weight pinning you down. As he takes in your trembling, he thrusts everso slightly for you to feel just how well he intends to deliver on his promise. Your legs give in and leave an opening which he uses to his advantage.

You gasp and a moan escapes your lips, turning into hurried breath and ending in a small whimper. You almost wish you didn’t hear the hardly contained ecstatic inhale that reverberated through you as he grips you again. He teasingly repeats the motion, harder this time, and stays fixed against you, pinning you down with the full measure of his need for you. You shiver at the length you feel still contained.

He almost smiled the more you coiled under him, the more your body touched his with your every jitter, every recoil, every hurried breath. Every flinch, he caught and returned with force to pin you in place. Every move you made to avoid him; he used against you. The moment he felt your thigh lose grip against his, he dragged his arm up your leg and squeezed your behind, pinning you to him, squeezing you in place and letting him sink further into you.

"Mine," he whispers under his breath as he drags his teeth against your skin, biting down on your breast and suckling the more he feels you arch your back.

"Mine."

And you still. You no longer grip against him, you grow cold. The sensation of his wet suit, his length against his trousers barely contained, feels like fabric and force, not lust.

He fades into the background even as your senses are overwhelmed by the smell of him, mixed with sweat, need, and the lingering softness of the soap he lathered you with.

Just as you thought you’d lost – him, the game, your sense of self, everything, you realised something and hope he didn’t.

His hand.

His hand gave his bluff away.

His hand betrayed him, even as the words sent tears into your eyes and your heart into overdrive. But his hand. The same harsh hand that left prints on your thighs hesitated above them, just next to your tummy and the place he cared for so intently – so gently, the place he rested his head against and lulled into. The skin he smiled into and caressed.

You only watch him, wary to disturb the air. Your eyes follow his chest lifting and falling heavily. The chest that rises with yours and pushes you down. The hand that trails from gripping you and holding you down, to sliding and caressing your skin from your shoulder across your breasts down to your tummy and lower still. You see his eyes drink up your breasts, your waist, your skin, your collarbones, your neck...with each move putting the puzzle of you together and trying to keep the pieces apart all at once. He rests his hand against your most tender place and remains there, unmoving.

In stark contrast to the rest of him, it’s his hand that doesn’t let you leave entirely.

He's losing.

Without warning his hand moves down and climbs between your knees, forcing them apart. The moment he has an opening, he climbs between your legs, and his own body holds you down, pinning your thighs at each side of him and not letting you curl back into yourself.

As he rests above you, that self-satisfied smile glides across his lips, as if you’re so perfectly in place for everything he promised and more – as if you’re just a chip in a game he never intended to entertain losing.

“Those eyes…” he mutters as his head softly cranes to one side, as if studying a painting. But he’s not admiring its beauty. He’s admiring the ruin in his hands.

“Those eyes crying for help and safety…” he leans down to you and whispers into your ear, breath hot and poisonous: “…how foolish to run to safety to me. I thought you were better than that.”  

As his head straightens, he looks at you anew. Expression a falsity of tenderness.

“All the more beautiful the more you break with every thread you trusted me with. You lost. Flower. You lost each and every game. Did you think it would go unnoticed? Did you think you could ever play me? Unpunished? My dear sweet flower…”

His hand slowly glides up and touches you finger by finger, playfully, coldly across your naked skin until they arrive at your face where he simply dots your lips with each finger and bends down to kiss the side of your mouth. As you close your eyes into the kiss, fear and hope gripping you at once, you feel a sudden sensation on your neck – which turns into a grip. You gasp and try to move away, but he'd holding you tight.

You feel his waist move into you and with each breath you try to take for yourself, his body replies with less space for you to even think of moving. His waist guides into you, keeping your legs apart and grinding against you as his breathing grows more rapid. His chest is heavy as it collides with yours, and your hips inadvertently move with his every time you try to avoid him and sink into the bed. He pushes himself onto you, the full length of his need against you, the heavy breaths against your own chest turning into desperate kisses of every place his eyes drank up.

As if reading your mind, his hand moves from your throat to your mouth, this time, laying his entire palm over it so you don't make a single sound. And you sharply inhale as you hear the sound of a belt unbuckling.

You twist under him, feeling your hips grind into him and your stomach touch his fingers - you move backwards but he pulls you back down and pins you down.

His kisses turn from hungry to ravenous, leaving marks everywhere they touch – moving from your cheek to your chin to your neck and finally, your chest. He's not gentle anymore. He takes your breast into his mouth and kisses it, before biting down and feeling you whimper into his hand.

He pushes it down further and does the same to your other breast, stopping only to look back above you, looking into your eyes above his form, palm still strangling breath from your mouth.

He stops. Lips half open. Eyes wild. Face dishevelled. He stops.

"I thought I told you that you've no right to beg," he whispers in one breath, as if speaking to himself. The hint of anger at the very end of the sentence doesn't fit and you freeze. You haven't uttered a word. You can't.

The salesman guides his hand down your lips to your jaw and grips it, turning your head in his palm and driving his fingers into your skin.

Studying you. Pushing into you.

"I told you not to beg," he whispers again, losing your eyes.

You slowly try to undo your hands from his grip. His fist adds fervour until you tear up again for the pain.

He sees the tear and immediately lets go entirely, pulling away. Breathing heavy.

You lie there.

Before him. His eyes trail you so slowly, as if time had truly stopped.

❥❥❥

The bruise left my someone else, the remnant, fades next to his own handprint.

The tender, soft body still lifts – in perseverance, not defiance.

Her lips are tender, still tender, even after they've been torn apart.

Her eyes don't beg. Wide, gorgeous eyes, full of sorrow and betrayal but still. They understand. They accept.

Her body is scratched and marked where she should have been revered.

Red on skin that should have been tended to.

Petals lying scattered about her like little halos, cracked but not broken. Torn apart.

The light in her eyes is burning through everything, it hasn't faded. She didn't run. She didn't lose feeling. She didn't go numb.

She didn't fight, didn't kick, only tried. She could have. She didn't.

When she should have beat her fists into his back, she clung to him for refuge. Him.

Through everything, she's shivering under him, not begging, not using any poison. As naked as her body.

And he would defile it and ruin her.

To prove a point.

To win against himself.

To discard her as she would discard him.

Shoot first, lest he be shot.

Lest she realises his gun is full of blanks.

❥❥❥

You don't know his mental process; you only feel your tears against his hot skin on your cheek and mouth.

"So soft," he finally whispers to himself, gliding a hand just above your skin, his finger only lightly brushing certain parts as if scared to shatter you. Just as his hand hovers above your navel and your tummy, he rests it there fully. Listening to your pulse. Your breath. Lifting against him. Against his warmth. Against his harshness.

"So...delicate."

You gently, still terrified, but acting on an algorithm you don't recognise and do all at once, softly untie your hands for his fingers. Just as he did yours off the blade.

You touch your neck, your collarbone, and freeze at feeling scratches and bumps, tender places that burn on touch. Wetness and heat. But you don't say a word.

The tears fall to each side of your face. And through it all, you smile.

You smile as you lift both hands.

They seem like those of a stranger, but you fight to keep yourself in them, try to stay here one last time.

And you smile as you softly, carefully cup his face, tenderly as if he were about to flinch or break entirely.

And you whisper, meaning every word:

"It's alright."

And as if on cue, he begins to shiver in your embrace but doesn't pull away.

"It's alright," you smile through the tears, and allow yourself a deeper breath. Which he feels reverberate through his palm still laying upon your stomach. Just as he feels your pulse grow rapid, then...calmer.

His shivering turns harsher, but he never loses your eyes. Lips still semi-open, he's transfixed by you, frozen yet lost in time. Unable to blink away from you. His eyes begin to turn glassy.

You once more, with heavy effort and ignoring the pain pulsating through you, straighten just a tad under him, just enough to pull yourself up to him, clinging to his legs once more for stability.

You pull up to him and gently place a kiss on his forehead that is speckled with beads of sweat, vibrating in your hands.

"It's..."

You move down and kiss the bridge of his nose.

"All..."

You kiss the tip.

"…Right."

And you tenderly lay your lips on his, first merely resting there, then turning touch into a kiss. You feel him hesitate, grip you then...fade in his strength...and kiss you back.

Just as softly.

Just as gently.

And as if you lent him life in that moment, he moves, of his own volition, and lays you back down, cradling your back so you don't hurt yourself. His kiss deepens, but doesn't take nor hurt. You feel your head hit the pillow and envelop you in your wet hair and you swear you feel him smile into the kiss, one hand shakily placing errant strands from your face.

"My perfect little flower," he whispers as he pulls away just for a moment.

"Now I'll never let you go."

[xxnashiraxx]

Hey everyone! Kinda a long personal/With Stars to Fill My Dream update, so I'll put it under the cut!

Not sure who will read this, but I'm going to take a bit of a hiatus from writing 🩷 I don't see my mental situation magically resolving itself overnight, so I'm gonna give it some time to sort itself out! I'm not in a bad place, at least I don't think so, but I'm just very tired and I think i need a bit of a break 🩷 I've been writing nonstop for a year, so I think it's time to take a little breather and rediscover what it is that's made me love writing my fic. I have so many plans, but finding the inspiration to sit down and write them has been torturing me lately, and that's not how it's supposed to feel ❤️

I won't be uploading the next chapter this weekend, so I'll update the schedule on my masterlist, but I should still be moderately active on here from time to time! Trying to stay on top of everything in my life has been a real struggle, so I'm going to give myself the space I need to sort it all out. 🫶🏼

Thank you to everyone who cares about me and checks in and tags me in stuff!! I love you guys and hopefully you won't forget about me!! 🩷 I'll be back fully when I can 🩷

[eatinghemlocks]

Dear Supporter,

I hope this message finds you and your family in good health. My name is Eman Zaqout from Gaza. I am reaching you out to seek your urgent help in spreading the word about our fundraiser. I lost both my home and my job due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and we are facing catastrophic living conditions. 💔

I kindly ask you to visit my campaign. Your support, whether through donating or sharing, will help us reach more people who can make a difference. Thank you for your continued support for the Palestinian cause. Your dedication brings us closer to freedom. 🙏🕊

Note: Verified by several people as 90-ghost and aces-and-angels. ☑

Hello! I hope you are in a good state/health! Though I cannot donate I wish that many would be able to help you through me sharing this post. To those who can donate, please donate, thank you!

[luna-loveboop]

Ooook I think this needs to be done

My bet is 16 wins the poll (<Not indicative of my vote)

I wanted to include 11 for both extreme sides of possibility, I ran out of options and I've seen a lot of people suggest he's in the twenties and didn't want to exclude those. If you vote eleven/twelve, or twenty three plus, feel free to specify which in replies or tags or whatever.

Looking in the notes of my posts, I didn't realise everyone in this fandom liked math so much. But a very mention of the number 4, and everyone likes square numbers and math puns. Go figure.

Edit/update section: Hmm I meant to add this

Jojo's words thus far on Four's age- 'not too far off in age' from Twilight (Four's theoretical words?), and grouped in teens with Wind. A bit confusing, there.

Anyways have fun! Maybe the whole fandom can be the apollos dodgeball meme if we get it right :)

Legend

masterpollst⛓️

[crispyjenkins]

mandalore the young cont.

original post/discussion here! it was just getting really long and i for one hate scrolling so far, so. here's this. have also added this au to my masterlist in my pinned post!

@malcontent-crow

#i had a whole wall of tags and it didnt save! lets try this again#i am loving this. the potential for world building and the consequences of knowing more than you should (literally)

#i had forgotten that DW wasnt in peoples thoughts as a threat during the Clan Wars#and the idea that Pre was so far underground with the movement is a very good thing to remember as well! #on one hand you have this driven and spirited young verd that is inspiring Clans to start reassessing who they are fighting and why#on the other you have this clanless outsider that knows waaaaay too much about all the potential major players and is saying#that this major threat isnt really as gone as everybody thought and hoped. sith parallels out the wahoo for ppor obi#and hes standing there watching them all argue over his head about this threat that he KNOWS needs to be dealt with#he is seeing himself as pretty on par or above with the Old Guard in terms of mental age or prowess or large scale battles#so he sees them doubt him maybe even to his face and knows he'll need to get things started on his own

#and becauae everything in the galaxay has at least one person watching it from the outside... how quickly does the news of a jedi padawan#going off the rails on this mission get out? whos keeping track and who points fingers at the jedi for attempting to control the outcome#of the war of their historical enemies in their favor? the senate (read sith) want mandalore defanged before their war but what does it look#like the jedi want? how does the council answer for his actions? do they condemn or condone him? do they try to stay out of it?

#the world building potential of the Manda and the Ka'ra is delicious.#what does it mean to be a mando or darmanda? can you walk around and have people look at you and know you have failed in your oaths?

#and ouch! Obi-Wan considering the fact that he has never been allowed to be his own person.#from padawan to knight/master and then a general and councilor and sheesh. hes really never had the chance to see who he is as a person#outside of his responsibilities to everybody around him and right now hes a war worn adult in a war worn teens body#hes always had somebody else there. as a battle companion a teacher a student as somebody to protect and guard and guide#and now he has this entire culture looking at him and waiting for his next move. and im guess it still feels like less than a burden than#the care and raising of an entire child on his own. sure he had the temple resources and other jedi to lean on but anakin always looked to#him first to solve any problem or teach him something new or cuddle him after nightmares as hes trying to hide his own dreams#and grief and flounding to find his footing as an independent adult

#so right now hes looking around at the entire mando population and realizing thats he might need to reshape himself again for somebody else#to make himself what others need and knowing he can and will do it if it means saving somebody else

#and when exactly did he come back from the war? did he have satine die in his arms and see the ruin that is madalore after a pacifist reign?#does he see the potential for that ruin to happen right now if he doesnt succeed? where does he see himself in regards to the jedi?#has he considered the consequences of stepping up to be the Mand'alor to this culture he has never seen as his own?#has he let himself think about the choices he needs to make and how some things you cant always come out the other side the same as before?

(following the trend of each of these getting longer, this has hit just under 5,000 words, so just a heads up lol? so much world building is happening in this one)

sorry you had to rewrite so much! that last exchange was cursed, it seems lmao

it's so easy to write Obi-Wan as prescient, or the route I'm going with in Dha Kar'ta, so i think it's a fun change-up to have him knowledgeable for completely different reasons! I'm actually going to avoid visions almost at all for this Obi, but everyone else certainly won't know the difference, and he doesn't tell them otherwise (though he won't encourage it either. I do actually have a Naruto time travel where Nart pretends to be psychic à la Shawn Spencer, so that isn't the route I wanna go for this Obi). the consequences of knowing too much, indeed

hmmm many of these questions depend on how deep into Jedi and galactic politics I wanna go, and I'm not sure it's very deep at all. or at least, not very dragged out. i'll explain in a mo

SO first: yes, this Obi is from after Satine dies, in 19 BBY, maybe a month or so after, but before the bombing of the Temple so before Ahsoka left the Order. He was back on the front, no time to properly mourn, though he was doing his best, and was meditating on the whole war, but especially the Sith and their hand in everything that happened on Mandalore. It went deeper than Maul, he knew, had been going on longer than Maul and even Dooku, and it occurred to Obi-Wan that the Sith either wanted a Mandalore that will side with them but not be too much a threat, or they wanted them not a threat at all. He realised his hand in that, in helping put the New Mandalorians on the throne that led to the demilitarisation of the entire sector. Obi-Wan had practically teed Mandalore up for Dooku and then Maul's interference, and if the Republic won the war, he could all too easily see them doing another excision. won't get too much into it to save it for the fic, but he is mediating with something beskar, and he gets a lil too deep into the Force, and of course this is post-Mortis so...... 👀

so this Obi-Wan, back in time, is helping Mandalore to prevent any more Sith machinations in the future, to change the future for the whole galaxy, but even before he's Chosen, he realises he's also doing all of this for Mandalore. for his own hand in its destruction, for the Jedi's hand in the Excision, for his personal connection to Satine drawing Maul to it. it's for atonement, for reparation, and also because Mandalore deserves to be saved, and Obi-Wan is in a place he can help do that. it isn't just about the health of the galaxy, anymore.

I usually shy away from having Obi-Wan leave the Order, no matter what AU I'm throwing him in because I believe in the fundamental goodness of the Order and the people in it, and Obi-Wan is fundamentally a Jedi, one of the best, one of the best. however, in this case, I don't think he can have his cake and eat it too. if Dooku had to leave the Order to accept his countship, then Obi-Wan would have to leave to become Mand'alor. Jedi are (supposed to be) politically neutral, and Obi-Wan is all too aware he'd nullified his own neutrality the moment he decided to go for Keldabe to find Jango.

one of my favorite... tropes? in time travel fic is Obi using his future fellow councilmembers' access codes to get into things he shouldn't, and he certainly knows how to work the Order's internal systems in his favor, so he

wait so i was gonna have him go in and tender his resignation from the Order directly into the systems, and backdate it for before the Mandalore mission, so that anything he's done on Mandalore so far cannot be blamed on the Jedi BUT WHAT IF he just. deletes himself. like completely. from admin to the Archives to the crèche's own internal systems to the Shadow's private servers, Obi-Wan Kenobi was never a Jedi, was never a Temple bastard, was never Qui-Gon Jinn's padawan. his mission records are all in Qui-Gon's name now, his medical file simply doesn't exist, his crècheling clan is listed as simply having been a person short compared to other clans that year. he goes so far as to delete comm histories with him or mentioning him, it's like Obi-Wan Kenobi just doesn't exist anymore.

he does this first thing after leaving Jango, he spends the entire week back to Mandalore ensuring he's been completely erased from absolutely anything relating to the Jedi, and then uses his future councilmember knowledge (and lessons from Quinlan) to erase himself from Republic systems, too. any planet he'd helped as a padawan will suddenly have no records of him as having been there with his master, so the senate or Order can't subpoena them for the info, though Obi-Wan knows he can't have gotten everything (such as any planet not in the Republic, or who don't have holonet access to their files, or both, like Melida/Daan), but he figures he's done enough to absolve the Order if anyone comes knocking about what he's doing.

he buries his lightsaber in the deserts of Mandalore, not knowing that in his old future, he'd have done the same on Tatooine.

so as far as the Jedi are aware: Obi-Wan went on a mission with Qui-Gon that (predictably) went to hell, got separated from his master for weeks to months, then suddenly changed, at the same time their Jedi with the highest prescience collapsed due to his visions, which have also changed. Obi-Wan left Qui-Gon behind to hightail it through the Mandalore sector, and Qui-Gon couldn't catch up or find him, and then Obi-Wan disappeared from anyone's radars for two weeks. then Qui-Gon senses him reenter the Mandalore system, right before breaking his training bond with him, and the Order wakes up to Obi-Wan completely erased from their systems like he never existed in the first place. everything is going so so wrong, and yet. and yet.

and yet the Force is telling them all that this is right, that this is the least Dark course of action, that whatever Obi-Wan is doing is indeed the Will of the Force

so the Order mourns one of their own, and tells Qui-Gon to let him go. and then the Order ups their cyber security because what.

i think he leaves an unsigned letter/comm message for a few people. Bant, Quinlan, Mace, Feemor, his old crèchemaster, Yoda, maybe Jocasta Nu. it's short, basically thanking them for their hand in his upbringing (Feemor hasn't even met him before so is very confused by this), apologising for leaving abruptly, but to follow the Will of the Force, he had to leave; the first part of the message is all the same, but ends with little individual notes. he apologises to Madam Nu for fucking with her archives and hopes she can one day forgive him; he asks her to keep her friends close and to mend the tension between her and Dooku, that Obi-Wan should not know about. He tells Yoda that the future is always in motion but they must move with it; he asks Yoda to meditate on his dwindling lineages and learn to accept all that he cannot control. He reminds Quinlan to wear his gloves and asks him to thank Tholme for looking out for him when Qui-Gon wouldn't or didn't; he thanks him for their years together, and asks him to check in on Feemor every now and then. He apologises to Mace for all the shatter-points he likely caused and will continue to cause, and suggests he put a permanent reminder in his comm to remember to refill his migraine prescription that sixteen year-old Obi should not know about. He asks Bant to look out for a young Togruta initiate that will join in seven years, and suggests Bant might like the healer track rather than the knight corps; he thanks her for being his longest and most dearly-held friend. He thanks his crèchemaster for realising his visions were more than dreams (which will inadvertently lend credence to that theory for why Obi-Wan changed so suddenly), for supporting him when Bruck was at his nastiest, and for always being someone he could turn to even after he became a padawan. For Feemor, Obi-Wan apologises that they hadn't had the chance to meet before then, and for the relationship they won't have anymore; Feemor has no idea who this message is from, until he starts hearing the gossip that Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Order again. He too mourns never getting to know his padawan brother.

and Obi-Wan sends Qui-Gon a message, of course, thanking him for his teachings, apologising for "leading him on" as an apprentice, leaving and coming back so many times only to permanently leave this time. he reminds Qui to reach out to his friends and his support system, asks him to at least consider talking to a mind or soul healer about Xanatos (knowing that once it gets out that Obi-Wan is a planetary leader, it will likely badly trigger Qui-Gon), and asks him to at least try and mend his relationship with Dooku, though understands if that's not something Qui-Gon is willing to do. asks him to keep Satine safe, but to deeply think about why the Republic is so intent on helping her faction, and why Qui-Gon had questioned so little of the New Mandalorian ethos.

so by the time Obi-Wan finds the Old Guard, he's broken from the Order completely, has buried his saber, has broken his training bond, has cut his braid. I think he shaves his head entirely to let it grow out at the same rate, because the padawan cut is *Eliot Spencer voice* Very Distinctive. he paints his armour white for, yes, his men, his vod'e, but also for cin vhetin. he can't be the man he was before, nor the teen he was before, neither are who Mandalore needs, and as long as he can stay true to his morals and upbringing, he will be what Mandalore needs him to be.

okay now onto the Manda vs. the Ka'ra vs. the Force. the Force is a scientific concept of an energy connecting absolutely everything in the universe, and the Jedi have a religious view on the scientific concept. for both purposes, the Force just is. I really like the idea of other non-Jedi ideas just being different aspects of the Force, different religions and cultures based on the same scientific concepts. for Mandalorians, their "aspect" of the Force is the Manda, the collective souls of every Mando'ade that's ever marched on. just what it means to be Mando'ade has varied greatly through history, and is varied between different groups even now, but none of that changes what the Manda is, which is an aspect of the Force only Mando'ade can touch. sort of like their beliefs of it being separate from the Force have made it so?

now I haven't really talked about this before, but from the beginning of me writing Mandalorian related things, i've separated Ka'ra from ka'ra, which was a little bit me misremembering there was another term for "stars", and then it became it's own thing. kar, meaning "star", with it's plural kar'e or kare, to me, means physical stars, the way we'd call our sun a star. ka'ra, uncapitalised, is the more poetic and/or spiritual "stars", the way we might say something is "written in the stars", which actually aligns with how jate'kara is spelled; for my writing, i've used this form for Mandalorian Force-sensitives being Star-touched ka'ra-touched. Ka'ra, capitalised, is that "ruling council of fallen kings", the Mandalorian myth and it, the way I've always interpreted it, is a separate part of the Manda made up of specifically the souls of every Mand'alor already marched on. So, Tor Vizsla could have joined the Manda after death, but not the Ka'ra; make sense? all that ka'ra vs Ka'ra worldbuilding was done very early in my writing for star wars, and has since expanded to include the idea of the Manda as something separate, and I would now actually consider Manda-touched over Star-touched to describe Force sensitive Mando'ade, because that's really what I think Mandalorians would consider causes their supernatural powers: ancestors rather than the stars.

so what does that mean for this fic? the Manda is directly influenced by all those that consider themselves Mandalorian, Force-sensitive or not. it is, however, not affected by New Mandalorians, unless they worship the Manda in some facsimile, and I think many, many, many do not, not the way they were raised to. this worship looks different for every clan and every individual, and I've always interpreted it as more of a broad spiritual practice across the whole culture rather than a religion, per se, the way a real-world broader culture might pray at shrines at New Years even if individuals themselves or their family aren't religious. this is what I'm referencing when I say the Will of the People: the alive Mando'ade and their choices and emotions affecting and influencing the Manda, the collective amalgamation of every passed-on Mando'ade, and it's when these two are in tandem that they "pick" a Mand'alor. HOWEVER, such a pick is also up to the Ka'ra, the Mand'alor'e that have all marched on; to one day enter the Ka'ra themselves, a Mand'alor must be "picked" by both the People/the Manda, and the Ka'ra. Tor would be "picked" by a significant part of the People and the Manda, and so would Jaster have been, but (according to me, myself, and i, obviously), only Jaster had been chosen by the Ka'ra. Pre is "Mand'alor" only in name, only in a tenuous loyalty existing in House Vizsla and Death Watch, not even by the Manda; just simple human (et al) loyalty. Jango had a weaker "pick" from the Manda than Jaster did, but was picked by the Ka'ra, meaning if he did not declare himself dar'manda (even just internally; I don't think he's ever said it out loud), he would have joined the Ka'ra after death; if he ever reconnects with himself as a Mandalorian, I like to think he'd have that chance again. Canon Jango, though, who went on to make the clones? Absolutely not.

what does this all mean for Obi-Wan? he'd spent weeks inadvertently drumming up support in the people and therefore the Manda, and maybe most haven't really looked at him and thought "sure I'd follow him as Mand'alor", but they have looked at him and thought "that one has mandokar, that one wants what's best for Mandalore, that one is touched by destiny". I dunno, man, like. Obi-Wan is their hope before he is their leader. That will make all the difference when he does end up uniting them. His searching out Jango had made Jango finally confront that he feels dar'manda, until then he hadn't really lost the Ka'ra's support, but that severs that connection. and now the Ka'ra are without a Mand'alor, but look at that, there's a mandokar'la little idiot right there, already strong in the Manda, already rallying hope and purpose, already so invested in the nurturing and the future of Mandalore, how could the Ka'ra not choose him?

I posed the question previously whether or not Mando'ade can tell who has been chosen to be Mand'alor, and I think I've ironed out what that'll mean for this fic. non-Force sensitive Mando'ade will have this sense when near their Mand'alor, a subconscious and inherent trust in them, and indeed, some will be disturbed by this and fight it. that's alright, that's their right. Some never clock this extra sense, some are aware of it always, some just chalk it up to "gut feelings" and the like. The more spiritual or religious Mandos maybe put a little more stock in this feelings, I think especially goran'e and other spiritual leaders, but the fact that the Manda can technically pick more than one person at a time (like Tor and Jaster, and then Jango), this extra sense isn't a perfect indicator of a properly chosen Manda'lor.

now. what about Force sensitive Mando'ade? Well, the Manda is an aspect of the Force, and is in fact how said Force sensitive Mando'ade connect to the Force, by going through the Manda, first. their relationship with sensitivity is inherently different from others in the galaxy, at least those that connect to it directly. they are the ones that can sense or see if someone is chosen by the Ka'ra, depending on their sensitivity. Some see the ghostly line of previous Mand'alor'e stretched out behind them (like the Avatar cycle lmao), some see a wavering crown of stars around their head, some just sense there is a duplicity (/neutral) to their Force presence that doesn't exist in anyone else. how common is Force sensitivity in Mandalorian space? not fuckin very. Jaster had three in his entire faction of aprox. 2 million (fanon number), at least that were aware they were sensitive. Jango only had a few more, and only because he had gained a couple hundred thousand more followers before Galidraan. so i'll make the nearly-arbitrary number that Force sensitive Mandos are 1 in 1,000,000, across the entire sector. by some calculations, in the whole galaxy at around the time of the Clone Wars the number of Force sensitives is 1 in 5,000,000 but these calculations do not generally include societies and species with a near or 100% chance of Force sensitivity, because we simply don't have the data for it. does this all make Mandos slightly more likely to be Force sensitive than others, by my own numbers? sorta. which i'm making an issue of underreporting, based on Mandalore not being a part of the Republic, and also contention with the Jedi and Sith; they don't consider those Manda-touched to be Force sensitive, and with the way I've built this, they aren't exactly wrong.

for the purposes of this story, there are maybe eight Manda-touched Mando'ade in the Mandalore system at this time, and all but one are goran'e. that single non-armorer is part of the Old Guard. I have the roster for the Old Guard decided, so I'm debating whether the Manda-touched one is Cort Davin (a journeyman protector), or one of the women. Instinct wants Vhonte Tervho, but I have plans for her to be related to the goran Obi-Wan got his armour done by, who I wanted to be one of the seven Force sensitive armorers, soooo. lmao how fucked would it be if Isabet Reau is the Force sensitive one? I like the angst of that, since I definitely do not plan on redeeming her, but I kind of want the only Old Guard that can sense Obi-Wan is Chosen by the Ka'ra to be really quiet and accepting of it, while everyone else is arguing. hmmm I have an unnamed Wren as part of the Guard, that I haven't fleshed anything out for yet; perhaps them?

okay I think I've solidified what it makes a Mandalorian, at least for the function of this fic. it is tied to the Resol'nare, and following it, which does allow those who had Chosen Tor Vizsla as their Mand'alor to technically still be following the Resol'nare, and are therefore not dar'manda. at least not for that. but part of the reason the Resol'nare is even able to determine who has a Mandalorian soul, is because they believe it does. Those alive and those dead influence the functionality and reality of the Manda, which also allows for those pre-Resol'nare to still exist in the Manda. What causes someone to become dar'manda, if they are technically following the Resol'nare?

maybe it's reductive, or over-simplified, or maybe even too broad, but it makes sense to me and allows for many many different types of people to still fail, and this is obviously not the only way to become dar'manda, but one thing that will always strip someone of their Mando soul? treatment of children. caring for children. not harming children. this allows many of Death Watch to still maintain their Mando souls, but still be fucked up awful people in other ways. It allows even True Mandalorians to have lost their souls and not realised it because they otherwise adhered to the Resol'nare, because they'd chosen to interpret "defending oneself and family" and "raising your children as Mandalorians" to not include other peoeple's children. Or maybe they were abusive in the belief they were caring for their children. This would also make every single one of the Cuy'val Dar dar'manda, which I think is a fascinating concept.

to answer your question directly, no, one cannot look at someone and know they're dar'manda, even the Force/Manda sensitive ones. one will only know in death, whether or not they have a place in the Manda.

NOW what does this mean for New Mandalorians?? well, by technicality and the way I've set the Manda up, one can interpret the Resol'nare in ways that could align with New Mandos. Perhaps they interpret "armour" as more than specifically "beskar'gam", maybe they wear armourweave or other protective fabrics. Maybe they interpret "defending one's family" as putting down arms instead of raising them, in order to create a peaceful future for their children. I think there are plenty of New Mandos that technically tick off all the boxes, and believe in themselves and their fellows so much that the Manda is like "yeah sure why not, we'll make that count". I think some tenants are more easily... bent, like swearing to the duchy in place of the Mand'alor, but I think an easy one New Mandos miss, is "speak Mando'a." I think many New Mandos were all too quick to switch to Basic for everything except religious and spiritual ceremonies, and I think those already in the Manda would find that very hard to forgive. I actually get into this a little in Dha Kar'ta very soon, but for this fic, i'll have Satine not outright outlawing Mando'a, but it is socially heavily discouraged. you're not allowed to speak it in the palace unless in aforementioned ceremonies, you cannot fill out paperwork in anything but Basic, you're not allowed to use Mando'a titles (including Mand'alor), you're not allowed to teach it to your children. no outright like. punishments for speaking it in public, but if your kids are caught, there are repercussions, including investigation into how else you're raising your kids, and if you're found to be doing anything else, they can take your kids from you. not every New Mando agrees with this, of course, and go about adhering to the Resol'nare as best they can in secret, but so many do give up the language by convincing themselves it's not as important as the other tenants and, well, the duchy hasn't steered them all wrong yet, has it?

okay so on the subject of what the outside galaxy is seeing. I like the headcanon/trope/idea of like. the one thing all factions of Mandalorians agreeing on is fuck everyone else. oh, the New Mandos will emulate the Core and the Republic, but they aren't the Republic nor want to be, and this animosity extends to keeping as many internal Mandlorian issues just that: internal. no faction can keep news from leaving the system or the sector, obviously, but there also isn't a lot of interest in Mandalorian news? "oh look all the Mandos are fighting again", except that's been the standard for like. actual thousands of years. I like when fic have people outside the sector not evening knowing there are different factions, so I'll be doing that here, too, and I like the idea of non-Republic sectors having their own holonets, separate from the Republic one. so like, if Obi-Wan happens to go a little viral during his mad dash to Keldabe, that would be on the Mandalorian holonet, not the Republic one, so even if Obi-Wan was visibly still a Jedi (and he wasn't), actual news of him wouldn't reach the Mid and Inner Rims until like. possible years after it happens.

could this maybe be expedited by Sith machinations? absolutely, though I'm not sure I want to go that route, since I don't think the Sith are overmuch interested in Mandalore at this point, at least not in any hands-on capacity. I'm unclear on whether them funding Death Watch is fanon or not, but it is a headcanon I subscribe to, and I think they'd have stopped funding DW after Galidraan, to cause worse infighting and prevent DW from gaining enough power to actually restart their imperial conquering days. Palpatine has been senator for about ten years by this point, but has very little political power overall, and Demask would be looking basically anywhere but Mandalore at this point in time, both of them having written it off until they actively need something from the sector. if anyone had clocked Obi-Wan as a Jedi, this all would have gone very differently, news would have spread much further and quicker and I think undoubtedly would have reached Palpatine, but since I have Obi-Wan just... cutting ties to anything Jedi, news of him remains in-sector. is this perhaps unrealistic? maybe, but I kind of want to focus on Mandalore and not worry about galactic-wide politics for once, lmao, actually very much like Obi-Wan is doing. however, he will clock a lack of Sith interference and thinks That's Very Weird.

haven't decided how he finds Palpatine out yet, but I think it'll have to do with his Manda senses being different than his Force ones, maybe the Ka'ra even gives him a few tips or gifts to sense Sith since they've allied and fought with them so much in the past. regardless, that'll be after he's become Mand'alor and united the clans.

now to actual plot progression! Obi-Wan meets up with the Old Guard, they don't know what to make of him other than "he's kriffing weird. and young. and creepy. and probably Manda-touched." whatever other verd is Manda-touched will see him blessed by the Ka'ra, which causes them to look inwards more closely and realise they trust Obi-Wan inexplicably, which means they're blessed by the Manda and the Will of the People, too. they wonder if Obi-Wan has noticed, if any of the other Old Guard have noticed. they are one of a few that notice Obi-Wan sneaking back out while everyone is arguing.

Vhonte Tervho is another. She's at this lil summit to represent clan Tervho, tho isn't the clan head, because her ba'vodu, a Manda-touched goran, had sensed she needed to be at the summit. said ba'vodu is of course the armorer who reforged Obi-Wan's armour (need to find a name for them hmm), who had told their clan they were to cease fighting until their new Mand'alor called on them. Vhonte sees Obi-Wan, realises at the same time as everyone that he's the Kih'Manda, the Mand'ika that the entire system had been gossiping about for weeks, and she thinks of what her ba'vodu said. she looks inwards, like they had taught her to, and finds, yes, she trusts Obi-Wan, just like she used to trust Jango. And, well, her Mand'alor is obviously leaving to go do something, and she isn't going to let him go it alone.

the Manda-touched verd doesn't go with them, wanting to see what comes of this, but they already know Obi-wan is Ka'ra Chosen. they will come when he calls.

[imerian]

Vr46 academy keychains

Set of five charms that all match in different ways

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　 . ✦　　˚　

Open for detailed pictures of each one

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ *ੈ✩‧₊˚

ִֶָ 𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆★⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.:

˖⁺‧₊˚⭒✮⭒˚₊‧⁺˖

. ݁₊ ✶. ݁ ˖ˎˊ˗

I ran out of tags so I'll say it here but i would greatly appreciate a reblog, especially if you share your thoughts on these pieces in tags (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

(Also i forgot that bez have matching part with luca so I didn’t add that to tags sorry

[nabaath-areng]

I have way too many alts that I keep to myself (which is why I generally refrain from posting them), but I'm going to ignore that habit for a moment just because I'm feeling particularly insane about this guy.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[m1ckeyb3rry]

don’t let tumblr or online platforms in general be your main form of social interaction PLEASE i am begging you all…not to sound like a boomer on main but it is so important that you have friends irl and talk with people irl and are vulnerable IRLLLL LDJDJDJS online friends are still important i’m not saying they aren’t but they are fundamentally different from people off of the screen !!

[purpurussy]

everything Dan said about labels in BIG was so extremely real and personal to me and people really gloss over a lot of it sometimes I need to talk about it more about it when I'm not exhausted

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

request for playlists!

as i am about to finish s3 and begin s4, i feel that i am at a place in which i can enhance my morning commute by putting on txf playlists. so if anyone has spotify playlist recs... pls feel free to drop a link <3

i mean obviously i still have a WHILE to go, but!!! i am well-established at this point. i love individual character playlists AND ship playlists! i love playlists that are “fox mulder would certainly listen to these songs” and playlists that are “these songs are literally about MSR and Phoebe Bridgers CLEARLY was watching season 3 when she penned this"

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[thevalleyoftriumph]

Helloo o/ I'm the anon from earlier who sent you many many questions about your system chosen Very glad that my ask wasn't overwhelming because I approach with yet more questions >:] get ready Does Dark know Chosen is a system? Or a part of a system? Unsure of the correct way to call it. What does he think of each of them if yes? I can see Dark talking excitedly about a shared interest with Killer, Dark loves Chosen dearly but its. Difficult. To get a bit of emotion out of him. Killer though? Once they feel comfortable around him I can see them allowing themselves to become more expressive/ easily excited "Beast had sorta filed them away as one of the very few ""trustworthy"" sticks" <- quote from the answer you gave to my first ask. I'm guessing Dark was also in this list yes? Beast was co-conscious during AVA3 if i remember correctly and so saw Dark was willing to help and defend. Even if Beast didn't trust them 100% it didn't think of them as a threat right? Maybe even considered him an ally And if yes, Dark was on the Trustworthy list, what about the virabot thing made Beast decide "Hmmm no he's an enemy actually"? I wonder how Killer unmasking around Dark for the first time went, and whether that's how Dark found out his brother is a system Has Killer ever jumped 10ft in the air because they were startled by the toaster? And if yes, how long did it take for Dark to stop laughing Has Beast ever come out mid spar? Realises they're mid combat so rushes out to protect and- And Dark realises he's not fighting who he was before, Chosen doesn't look at him with infinite distrust. Killer doesn't stand both ready for combat and to flee at a moments notice (Beast wouldn't flee, but despite that, I think its always ready to). Dark just backs away slowly I think, lowering his hands and doing everything possible to communicate he's not a threat. This allows Beast a bit of extra time to take in what's around, just incase its missed something in its initial assessment and. And they're both wearing handwraps, Dark's taken their bracelet off and whoever was here before Beast tied their jacket round their waist. Beast doesn't need to protect here, but it does now need to apologise I'm guessing Beast remembers it can speak while fronting from time to time right? Even if it feels Odd. I've got the mental image of Dark cooking something for himself, except Beast ALSO likes it alot alot and Dark just hears "Please." from behind him. Turns around to see Beast staring at him like its trying to beam the thought directly into Darks mind. They understand, and Dark maybe even gets a "Thank You" after the foods made. Idk, I like small things like that, if Dark doesn't know Chosen's a system then its just a small couple What-If's or What-Could-Have-Been's Also, what is a Singlet? I cant remember where you used the word but I am unfamiliar with it Also also, VERY happy that my terminology is correct, that whole ask I was terrified that I was aggressively wrong about something and was going to end up being incredibly rude Also ALSO also, I am giving Beast a mug of hot chocolate and a weighted blanket. It deserves to relax Breaking this up into more than one ask because tumblr is angry with me

WOW. HI!!!! OH MY GOD. HELLO. you are literally the most bestest person ever for being so curious and allowing me to speak so much WOW okay let me break all this down.

putting everything once more under a cut, but a breakdown here is i FIRST go through unrelated things such as helping a bit with your confusion on terms and meanings, before getting into the actual AVA stuff, so if anyone wants to skip that, there Is gonna be a linebreak ^_^ a lot of it is just definition talk so its probably boring if you already know this stuff lol. if youve come just for the headcanon, feel free to skip down to it! <3

FIRST ! since you were a bit confused, i would like to say; DID specifically stands for "Dissociative Identity Disorder." It is probably the most well known of the disorders that would constitute as being a "system" disorder, if you will. In the past it has been referred to by other things such as MPD, or multiple personality disorder, but that is since considered inaccurate and incredibly out of date.

OSDD, or Other Specified Dissociative Disorder, is another dissociative disorder as the name implies. In one specific case, is similar to DID in that a major symptom is the forming of distinctive parts - or alters - but has enough differences that it's been classified as it's own thing [though iirc, some professionals are debating if the distinction is necessary? Honestly I'm not a psychologist so I can't really comment on that part, but I felt it was worth noting that this was brought up once or twice.]

The distinction here is this; DID is usually diagnosed when there are at Least two distinct "parts" to a person, often being two [or more] entirely seperate people, and is paired with amnesia. This is not at all everything to do with the disorder, as it's a massively complex disorder with plenty of symptoms, but it is this specific symptom set in its most basic explanation. OSDD however can vary! OSDD-1 is specifically defined by wikipedia as when one is experiencing a "sub thresh-hold" to DID. There's way more "types" to OSDD, and as such I am not nearly equipped enough to talk about 2-4, but chances are if you're speaking to a system who has it, they will usually have either OSDD-1A, or -1B. These two aren't technically real diagnostic terms, they're moreso used to describe a set of symptoms. 1A is defined as having less disticnt alters than DID or 1B. 1B is specified by a lack of complete blackouts, aka amnesia, though they may instead experience grayouts and emotional amnesia. To be fair in at least my case specifically, grayouts are pretty common rrrregardless? But honestly that might just be a My Own Thing issue and a case of overlapping symptoms than anything else, so don't take my word for it entirely lol I get complete blackouts and grayouts and its soooo miserable helppp [I'm being lighthearted in tone on purpose you're allowed to laugh ^_^ /gen]

Lastly, the term "singlet" is an unofficial term that a lot of systems online use to refer to people who do not have alters. I'm like 99.9% sure it's like, never used in a professional setting, but I'm also Not a psychologist, again, so I have no clue if it's ever used offline. It's not anything negative, just a descriptor term the same way many other descriptor terms are used :]

Okay that's about it for explaining things. If anything else confuses you for any reason please don't be afraid to ask! And if you wanna look into it yourself, all I'll say is use literally anything OTHER than social media for research, there's a crazy amount of misinfo, especially on Tumblr or Tiktok.

Onto the questions and scenarios -- for questions, I will once again copypaste and bold them. For scenarios, I'll probably end up putting in a screenshot [with IDs, don't worry] for clarities sake.

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1: Does Dark know Chosen is a system? Or a part of a system? Unsure of the correct way to call it. What does he think of each of them if yes?

For a very long time, Dark had NO idea Chosen was part of a system. [And either descriptors work, I honestly use both depending on which sounds less clunky at the time lol].

Dark had just assumed Chosen had some odd "quirks" here and there for ages, and didn't really push too hard whenever "Chosen" ended up getting really quiet, or more jumpy. I def agree with your HC that Dark probably doesn't have very many interactions [if any at all] with sticks outside of Chosen, so at most he just assumes this is normal.

Of course eventually, they do end up telling him - it takes a lot of effort on their part to build up the courage to do it and not immediately chicken out, because this is a Pretty Personal Thing after all, but like. Dark takes it so much better than they were expecting? And he's also very open to accomodating the other two with very little issue. Even if it takes time for Killer [and even Beast] to relax enough around him, and even if he does still have some trouble telling who's-who at first, he does try his best. At the end of the day, the three are his family, and he DOES care about them.

While we already know [or can at least infer] what he feels about Chosen, he does have different thoughts about the other two. You're 100% right this part specifically:

Dark and Killer do have quite a bit of overlapping interests, they realize once they get to talking to each other! They honestly bounce off each other scarily well, and are the type of people to start a stupid bit as a joke and just keep adding onto it for like, twenty minutes. For the most part, Dark's perception of Killer is positive! He's also gotten a bit into the habit of being A Bit Obviously Noisy around the house once realizing Killer's issue with being snuck up on or surprised - previously, Dark was unintentionally VERY quiet. He's naturally sorta light on his feet, lacking footsteps most of the time, and ends up startling most people. After both a discussion and accidental event, he starts trying to be more purposefully loud in their home, especially if he's somewhere Killer can't see, or has to be behind them for one reason or another. Nothing anything TOO loud - no slamming doors or footsteps, no yelling, just casual noise. Jewelry that clacks together or just humming a song.

With Beast, he's more cautious. He understands its purpose, and why it's there, and for the most part, Dark doesn't really.... saying he doesn't mind makes it seem like something it's not but honestly I can't find a better way to word it. He doesn't mind its staring or its lack of speaking, and I'm also gonna pull up another part you said because honestly while I initially wanted Beast to be 100% quiet I'm a massive fan of this little scenario and so I'm adopting it into my worldview immediately;

So yeah Dark is like, completely on board with Beast's more odd traits, once it actually is able to relax for once. I'd say Beast is probably the one Dark knows the least just by way of it rarely ever fronting outside of the more dire circumstances. He knows enough from what he can piece together from his own memories of it, plus any resulting messages from Chosen and Killer depending on how much they know about it at that point in time. However, if asked personally and privately, Dark would express a bit of sympathy, maybe worry for Beast. He understands what it's like to be seen as a sort of... villainous person - not to the severity that Beast had been treated, but he can sympathize. And while he leans into it, he knows that it's the last thing Beast - or Chosen and Killer for that matter - would want for themselves. He sometimes wishes he could do more to help it, but often refrains from trying, knowing that any pushing could absolutely do more harm than good at this point, no matter how much he wants to try. It's a tricky situation, and it's a very unsteady trust they have, and he's not willing to rock the boat too hard and end up hurting the three. As I love to say about my favorite antagonist characters; he's a villain, not a monster, he's got standards lol

1.5: Assuming Dark DOESNT know Chosen is/ is apart of a system (still don't know the correct way to call it), how does he react to switches? Or Killer and Beast in general?

Switches, in general, are meant to be pretty covert of a thing. If all goes right, no one should be able to tell, at the very least not right away, that a switch occured. Thus, before Dark learned about everything, a few little things did tip him off as to something being a bit.. off with "Chosen." He'd notice a lot of forgetfulness of things that happened literally yesterday, or sudden preferences doing a complete 180 into something else, or, like you mentioned, complete silence all of a sudden. If it's a big enough and sudden enough change then he would definitely notice how odd it is and just kinda file it away for later, thinking "oh that was really strange, maybe I should ask about that?"

Yeah honestly all of this is pretty accurate to how that'd go down pre-knowing. Like I said Dark definitely hasn't interacted with very many people [if anyone at all] outside of Chosen and thus does think this is probably normal to a degree, but the first few times [more like a couple hundred times] it DOES kinda hurt a bit and cause some confusion before they can work something out for it.

2: ...I'm guessing Dark was also in this list yes? Beast was co-conscious during AVA3 if i remember correctly and so saw Dark was willing to help and defend. Even if Beast didn't trust them 100% it didn't think of them as a threat right? Maybe even considered him an ally

Oh yeah, for a while after it was able to let go of the constantly moving train of thought that consisted exclusively of just "protect" and "danger," it did for a long time consider Dark trustworthy enough to feel safe around and to relax, even if it was just the tiniest amount. It's almost always on guard, but... well, surely it can let Dark watch its back just this once, right? It was a sort of "well, you're not hurting me, and we are fighting the same guy, so......." sort of allyship at first. It probably definitely helped that for a long time between AVA3 and Showdown, Dark and Chosen probably had pretty relaxed lives outside of the whole tormening the internet thing. They probably didn't really do anything that'd warrent the feeling of danger in their free time, so on the days when Beast would be the one jolting awake at night, it'd be able to, slowly, calm down. Plus, with Dark being so open minded about things that help Beast instead of hurt it, and the way the other two seemed fine with him, it did begin to trust him.

2.5: And if yes, Dark was on the Trustworthy list, what about the virabot thing made Beast decide "Hmmm no he's an enemy actually"?

Oh god, the Virabots. Yeah that whole thing was a complete MESS for the three honestly. It was less the presence of the Virabots themselves and moreso the actions that Dark had made them do against Chosen specifically. Until then, Chosen was mostly cautious about them - he knew they could be dangerous, but at that point still believed he could talk Dark out of his plan. Along with this, Dark is kinda the worlds most emotionally constipated guy ever, and has ZERO skills in talking about his plans and feelings without requiring people to do a five page deconstructive essay to decipher what he means about it. To Chosen, the second that first Virabot ended up trying to actively kill him, was when the seed of doubt kinda bloomed. He was worried then, and had the idea that yes, Dark is still a killer, he is destructive, always has been, and is fully capable of hurting him - or worse, if he somehow got the upper hand. Chosen knows this fact very, very well. It was quite literally their first ever interaction.

But he still wanted to believe Dark wouldn't do that.

Until he got quite literally dogpiled, of course. I'd say the second Dark started actively sic'ing Virabots at him was the moment that Chosen pulled back and Beast shoved itself into front going "okay, this is serious, this is not the person we trusted, because our Dark wouldn't hurt us like this." It was vehement denial mixed with a sort of bitter "I told you so" feeling. It saw this coming, it let its guard down, it trusted someone, and now it was being attacked by something it could barely take on as one, nevermind tens, maybe hundreds. It was being attacked by Dark. So it had to fix that mistake and remove the threat at the same time, if that makes sense.

^ Literally 100% you read my mind anon this has totally happened before, especially more in the early years of the two living together. You described this really well actually, and the way you described Beast's stance - ready for combat AND read to flee at a moments notice - is exactly how I picture it;; it's always ready to fight back and lash out, but moreso in that cornered way where it's obvious it also sorta wants to book it after getting enough hits in to where it'll be confident that whatevers after it Isn't Moving Towards It anymore.

I really don't have much to add to that scenario because you are literally so correct I am shaking you by the shoulders [positive tone] this is SO REAL RAAGH. Yeah ^_^

Honest to god yeah that's probably exactly how he ended up knowing. I think like I mentioned earlier, it's kinda a case of a bunch of little things adding up before they eventually tell him any details that help with understanding, but before that Dark definitely has his suspicions and it's totally because of Killer 😭 Unfortunately bro is NOT very subtle if they're not putting their focus into masking /j

It'd probably be something small and inconsequential and silly, really. Something simultaniously dumb as hell but also a massive show of trust, y'know? I'd have to think more on the details but I like to think that as Killer gets more comfortable, and more sure that they don't have to pretend to be Chosen to still be safe, they let go of the masking little by little, with small things - maybe a preference in food or drink here and there, or small comments about interests that they know are much too distinct from anything Chosen ever expressed liking before. It feels more natural the more they do it, before they eventually forget to mask around Dark, because it feels more comfortable to them being themselves.

Oh yeah for sure. 5 minutes at least, paired with that sorta laughy halfhearted apology for laughing, followed by the occasional snort or huff or laugh every few minutes after that whenever Dark thinks about it for the rest of the day. Killer is not mad at the laughing but they are in fact waiting for the day they can do the same towards Dark ☝ every day they hope he trips stupidly [JOKE]

3: Who was fronting during The Box? You mentioned Chosen during Wanted, and I'm assuming its either him or Killer during the beginning of the box. But once they realise they're trapped? When Chosen turns to Victim in the episode? I can see that being Beast. I know shifts aren't always easy to spot but if Beast was going to come in at any time, it was when they realised they were trapped.

You're pretty correct here; for a lot of The Box, it's primarily Chosen, though Beast is definitely doing the metaphorical "hovering ominously in the back" thing thanks to the chase and injury sustained during Wanted. It's not quite reaching the "feeling like their life is in danger" levels at this point, but it's close and Chosen is feeling very dizzy, thanks.

You're also very correct in your assessment that realizing they're trapped is what, primarily, causes Beast to switch in; collectively, they have a VERY bad history with being trapped or imprisoned. Honestly I feel like they're actually pretty claustrophobic - I don't really see anyone mention this too much, but when Chosen got caught by the firewall in AVA2, he LITERALLY gets locked up inside a little box. It's probably cramped and dark and obviously unbreakable. That 100% left an impact on him - and in this HC, his system as a whole never really escaped that being a triggering thing.

To Beast, it feels very obviously trapped - cornered and contained much like it had been when it first formed. To it, this isn't a fight to JUST protect, but a fight to save their life. It feels genuinely like that, even if it wont die here, it'll just be imprisoned all over again, chained down and used for anothers gain. And it wants anything BUT that. It will fight tooth and nail - quite literally, might I add - to get out of there, because it believes that the second it gives up it is over for them. It has no idea what Victim wants from it -- and so it defaults to that Victim wants to fully and entirely kill them.

4: Speaking again of the box, when they realise that they are NOT beating Victim, does someone elbow Beast out of the way? To try and escape? Because fighting has proven entirely futile? Or is someone co-conning (I assume that means co-conscious) with it and convincing it to pull away, since in the original post, Vic was talking to Beast while 'Chosen' was tied up on the chair

[You're right, co-conning is short for co-conscious ^^]

Honestly probably yes? For a good while it's still fighting back, or at the very least sticking around to take the brunt of whatever Victim is throwing at them - being a protector doesn't only mean physically, it also means mentally. Sometimes things may not hurt someone on the outside, but could wreck them on the inside, and they need someone more equipped with dealing with these things - or, more crudely, Used To dealing with these things - to take over.

When it becomes apparent that Beast cant fight its way out of this, someone - though I haven't really settled on who - definitely tries to front to try other methods of escape. Maybe it's Chosen, maybe it's Killer, honestly realistically they wouldn't even be able to tell either under all that stress. There's definitely someone giving passive-influence to try and escape though. Beast is determined to intimidate Victim, and to keep the others from having to experience anything rough, but... it's a bit hard to stick around when everything in your body - externally, and internally - is screaming for you to get the hell out of there, in one way or another. In short it's having an awful time and unfortunately the others are there for the ride /j

5: Beast comes out when they're trapped or in a fight for their life, but does it (and the others) have any positive triggers that will draw them out? I've heard of music being used, or toys, maybe also food? Idk, but if you have something in mind for these three I'm curious what it is

Oh yeah positive triggers can definitely happen with systems! At the end of the day they do still trigger out an alter so it can still be pretty disorienting at first, so I will say it's mostly [at least and my and my friends cases irl] only used either when we are completely okay with it [both system-wise and alter-wise] or when whoever's in front is having a rough time and kinda needs a break, but doesn't exactly want to stress anyone else out via a negative trigger, if that makes sense.

However comma ! That does not mean I can't give positive triggers to my little guys here. Because I do think they deserve good things.

You're right in that things like music, toys, and even food are really common ones, at least in my experience and from what I've seen. Sometimes it can also be certain people! It really varies quite a bit, so when developing a headcanon that relates to that, there's quite a bit of wiggle room lol

I think it'd be slightly different for these three depending on who it is;

Chosen would probably have some related to music, and maybe a more niche one related to welding. Music because I feel like he's the type of guy to get comfort from listening to songs he loves on loop, and welding because he probably heard the sound a lot while Dark was working in his little workshop, either on the Virabots or on other such projects. [Sidenote, welding as a sound is something I'm actually pretty fond of myself, but if anyone's not a big fan of the sound of sparking, or repetative "buzzing", you probably won't like it if you look it up lol. It's not too loud on video, but I can see how it'd get annoying or give someone a headache.]

Killer is definitely the more food oriented one in all honesty. Maybe even specific books it's read? Certain meals that it enjoys are primarily it though - maybe things that it's made with Dark that it has a positive association with? Or things that it's tried once or twice, REALLY loved, and ended up always snagging front when they eat it because of that association. That kinda thing lol.

Beast is... kinda tricky to think of actual positives for? Not because it doesn't enjoy anything - honestly I think it's the type to enjoy slow and relaxing activities that it doesn't need to put a lot of thought into. Moreso because it's hard to pin down anything that would actively trigger it out just to experience. I am open to suggestions here! But for now I'll probably have to leave it at just, if it has any, it hasn't found out what they are yet </3

6: Can they feel the emotions of the other alters? I'm guessing they can feel the emotions of whoevers fronting, because physical sensations, but if someone was fronting and the other two were hovering over their shoulder so to speak, would they be able to tell how they feel?

Unrelated to this question but I had no idea emotions were a physical sensation that people felt until like, a few months ago, like it was just baffling to me it's kinda funny now that I think abotu it.

ANYWAYS; honestly I'd say yes, to some degree! Passive influence is pretty common in a few systems - you'll probably hear it talked about similiarly to how you asked about it, along with people saying something like, for example, they couldn't decide what to order from a restraunt, but someone else in the system wanted [this meal], and thus there was that passive influence to get it. Not sure if that makes sense but that's basically what that can feel like - and since it applies to things like opinions sometimes, it can also presumably apply to emotions!

It'd be less of a "they can feel each others exact thoughts and feelings about this thing if they're co-conning" thing, and more of a, for instance, "Chosen doesn't have any real strong feelings about the show they're watching, but Killer on the other hand really likes it, so Chosen feels a bit of that secondhand enjoyment and positivity towards it." Sorta an ambigious background feeling if that makes any sense. They do share a brain and body after all, so sometimes things do get passed and shared that way. [This one is super projecty based off my own stuff lol, I cannot count the amount of times someones ended up passively influencing me on accident when we were stuck co-conning. It's almost comical /j]

Okay I think that's all once more, I started writing this literally as soon as you sent these in and it's been nearly 2 hours so I've probably talked your ear off [talked your... eyes out? How does that phrase translate into text. Much to think about ...] but once again literally thank you so much for being so curious, and it's really not an issue that you've sent such long asks!!!

I adore talking about this headcanon a lot. I've said it before but this HC means a lot to me as a system; we don't get a lot of representation [nevermind good representation] so a lot of the times I like to try and find a character I feel it would fit the best, and then delve into it there. This HC is very very special to me and has a very special place in my heart, so seeing not only so many people accepting and positive about it, but also your own massive curiosity and engagement, really makes me happy!

Plus, ever since I posted this HC ages and ages ago in the community I've seen a ton more pop up every once and a while. It does make me pretty happy to see HCs like this be so widely accepted and appreciated. Along with that, I've also seen other systems in the fandom get super excited about this HC!!! And I'm just so so so happy that my silly little headcanon about sticks in this guys head can make other people feel more seen. I think it's the highest compliment to anything I've ever made. :]

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

silly guys that make me lose followers on tumblr dot com

[f-imaginings]

hai!!!!

i know you've already confirmed doing minor what ifs, but have you ever planned or thought of doing a longer one for a happy ending?

(im sorry for asking but these two make me mentally ill in the best way posible. )

The what ifs will be pretty well sized so hopefully they'll scratch the itch for y'all. My goal with the ending is also to make it kind of optimistic to empower other folks who want to write fanfic to give it a shot and make their own content too. I just love the idea of being able to make a positive impact with this story and to embolden others to let their own creativity run free. Plus I'd be cheering if there was a list of "works inspired by" that could sit at the end of the story when it's finished. That way the story (that a lot of people seem to really dig) can live on in everyone's interpretations of it!