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fuckitwebhaal · 1 year ago

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the dark urge

please do not come for me these are just my takes and opinions on the durge route, as someone who has run it through a few times and is pretty familiar with the lore in regards to the previous games. also massive spoilers below. like if you do not want any dark urge spoilers stop reading now.

The Dark Urge (henceforth referred to as DU), whether approached narratively as resisting or as succumbing, is more of a solidly fleshed out origin for a customizable player character compared to Tav. The reason for this is because the DU follows the precedent set by the previous Baldur's Gate games where the main player character is a Bhaalspawn. (If I recall correctly, that was also the intention for BG3, but it was scrapped and the origins split to allow for a fully customizable option).

I'm not going to get into the history of the Bhaalspawn, save to say this much: The protagonist of BG1 & 2, Gorion's Ward, is referenced on rare occasion throughout a DU playthrough and is implied to be dead. (Though they are never named as Abdel Adrian from the TTRPG canon, it is implied that it seems to be following a blend of canon from BG2 and the TTRPG canon). Bhaal, who had split his divine essence into his many children, relied on their deaths and a ritual so that he could return--in a physical sense--to the planes and reclaim his godhood as the Lord of Murder.

You, BG3 DU protag, are crafted purely from Bhaal's divine essence. This was confusing to me at first, because I had believed Bhaal incapable of having any more mortal children (due to not having a physical presence), but it is implied that Bhaal's spiritual and divine essence is strong enough to form you from himself, he is merely lacking the ritual that would return him to physicality. Which is where you come in. And, Orin, I guess.

Because you were crafted from Bhaal, it is implied that any cultural or genetic claim (such as half-elf, dragonborn, or whatever race you choose) is but Bhaal's mimicry of what those stereotypes should be. You're a killer, a Bhaalyn through and through, and you'll be the one to slay the world and slit your own throat on the carcasses left behind to bring about Bhaal's return. The only thing is, you got cocky. Confident. Comfortable. Careless. You got comfortable in your alliance with Gortash and Ketheric. Orin was jealous and wanted your blessing--your place as Bhaal's chosen--, so she struck you down, muddled your mind, and infected you with a mindflayer parasite. That's why you have no memory, and why you ended up on that ship.

So, here you are. You have no memories, but you have a rage and a disgrace and a vengeance you can't quite place. You've got an urge telling you to kill, kill, kill.

Pause. In previous games, the Bhaalspawn protagonist didn't have a "dark urge" that caused you to want to commit violence or murders outside of your control. (Not including Siege of Dragonspear (2016), which does include one uncontrollable murder. This DLC was released as a bridge between BG1 & 2 and came out after the pitches for BG3 had begun). It's implied that this is because of your pure divine creation--think Jesus. Think godspawn. God and mortal. That's what you are, murder incarnate.

The main crux of the DU run, then, becomes this: what do you want to do with this? There are a few paths laid out before you, but the narrative is pretty clear: you are a killer, and you'll always be a killer. This is where I first ran into my concerns with the DU; I was afraid it was going to be an edgelord-y, murderhobo-y playthrough that sacrificed story and companion mechanics for the sake of a bloody kill and edgy narration. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't the case, because the story unfurls really well no matter which way you go.

A friend of mine played the DU run totally evil; every bad option, every urge indulged, so I asked them what they thought of it. They said it "It definitely involved a lot more violence and death than [their Tav] run, but it's not like [they] murdered everyone [they] came across", and "It did feel a lot like someone very confused with themselves becoming very drunk with the power that comes with the urge".

I played my two DU playthroughs in two parallel ways. The first being Kyr; a DU who wanted to resist his urges and talked a good talk, had a good heart, but at every major moment, he failed to resist and ultimately succumbed back to Bhaal's embrace and became his Chosen.

My other playthrough is Nyris; a cynical, mistrustful bastard, he started out a little rocky, but growing with his companions caused him to reject the evil in his blood despite his other moral shortcomings; in the critical moments, he rejected Bhaal's influence and overcame.

How the DU presents to me, then, is this: nature v nurture. Which will win, which will overcome? By playing Kyr, it felt as though the nature was his driving force. It didn't matter how removed he was or how hard he tried to convince others that he could do better--how hard he could try to convince himself he could do better--he was already doomed by the narrative. Bhaal's manipulations drove him back home, and he didn't even realize that he'd been sucked back into the cult until it was far too late.

But, then, what about Nyris? To him, it felt like nurture. If you remove the cult from him, the indoctrination, what was left? A man struggling to make his own identity, but among those who reaffirmed it every chance that they could. He relied on his own strength and that of those around him to overcome, even if he was unsure, afraid, doubted. It feels like the nurture, or lack thereof, of Bhaal and the Bhaalist cult meant that he was free to grow and learn away from it.

It's something I find further supported in conversations with Jaheira and Minsc, who both talk about "their Bhaalspawn companion", otherwise known as Gorion's Ward from the first two games.

[ID: Minsc: "If Minsc did not inherit the flaming red hair of his mother, or the bushy red beard of his father, why would the spawn of Bhaal inherit his wickedness?"

Kyrran: "We should talk about nature versus nurture some day."

Minsc: "It is simple. As with all battles, the winner will be the one that carries the bigger sword."]

So, in my opinion, the personal arc of the DU and one that the player must engage with is the idea of nature versus nurture, and how your DU will cope with the revelations of their paths in light of the new memories and friendships that they have forged. That's not to say you can't always swing to one extreme; never indulge or always indulge, it's still digging into that nature versus nurture idea.

There is, also, the more overarching theme of BG3 in regards to breaking cycles of abuse, power, and control. If you lean into the idea of nature v nurture, and you realize that there were originally foster families involved in the upbringing of the DU (before said families were murdered, or the DU stolen away by the Bhaalist cult), you have to consider two things:

1.) Bhaal is comparable to both Shar and Vlaakith as gods that indoctrinate their religious followers, and

2.) Bhaal is comparable to Mystra and Cazador as those who take control of a severe power imbalance to inflict their will.

The narrative informs you, if you accept Bhaal's gift as Chosen, exactly the consequences that will fall upon you. It is the same as the consequences that are so heavily explained to you in regards to Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Gale, and Astarion.

[ID: *A gift from your god, your Father. An offering of his affection for you, or confirmation that he owns you.*]

[ID: *For a moment, the brine-pool of your brain clears. To die: to rest, to save the world from yourself. To accept, to become his prophet - in any disobedience, subject to his lash.*]

A lot of people say that the DU run is the "evil" playthrough, and it truly isn't. Just like any of the other decisions you make in this game in regards to your companion quest, it is a question of power and control. Power you give up by rejecting Bhaal is also control that he loses over you. Power you gain in accepting him, to exert over others, is also the control he will take. It's up to you how you will approach the DU, but I think it is shortsighted to say it is the "evil" playthrough if you are not fully engaging with the themes. You can make all of the good options that you can make with Tav--but you are fighting the narrative. The narrative has a plan for you. If you want to resist, you will have to fight for it.

#anyways. i will probably add on more to this. at some point.#fiwb meta #bg3 meta #bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #durge spoilers #the dark urge #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #dark urge spoilers #bg3 dark urge #bg3 dark urge spoilers #spoilers #spoiler tag #meta tag #meta

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veetyuh · 1 year ago

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I'm reminded of that "antishipping isn't purity culture because it isn't conservative christianity" post... And I think I've done some unpacking on why it triggers me so much.

I was an intersex child shoved into the role of a female, in a rural & conservative Christian environment. I've had not just purity culture shoved down my throat, but also the shame of not being able to meet the expectations put on women in that environment.

It's not just cover up, slut. That implies I had something to show off, to begin with. And men still want to ogle you and imagine what your body is like beneath that modest dress. So here, literal child. Have this shapewear to make your figure conform to that of a developing middle school female's under your clothes.

It's contradictory that way. You have to try to be unappealing to not 'tempt' men, but you still need to be appealing in the sense of conventional female attractiveness. Moreover, you must not think about men or sex at all. But you cannot be asexual — your parents demand grandchildren.

Antis do the same with their queer representation. It's the same contradictory expectations... They champion the idea of breaking societal norms through queerness (i.e. the idea of 'queer as in fuck you'), then demand that every nuclear family norm be met. Queer characters must be disruptive without actually disrupting anything. And the contradictions apply to fans, too — you're homophobic if you don't like a canon queer ship, and you're fetishistic if you like queer ships too much. (There are more, but I'd be stuck here forever if I listed them all. 😅)

There's also the obvious — fictional sins being as bad as things done in real life. There's Matthew 5, which includes so many popular verses about thought control that Christians use, and equates bad thought to bad doing.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

And fuck if antis aren't cutting off their entire goddamn arm and gouging out both eyes.

It's not just purity culture they embody, though — it's the satanic panic, too. Good lord the amount of times my grandma wouldn't let me watch Ghost Hunters because she thought I was welcoming demons into the home, or her concern for me watching horror movies because I'd surely become more violent. It's the same shit, different horse.

On a more light-hearted note, they play the same game that Christian demoninations do, too. I was Baptist, and considered the Methodists okay. But the Catholics? No, keep that shit away from me. Why are you worshipping Mary? That's idolatry! How horrible, to openly spit in God's face. When I read antis' DNI lists rattling off forbidden, unredeemable fandoms, it feels the same way, haha.

But what really seals the deal for me is how they smile in your face and promise they're just looking out for you. Christians do that, too. "We want you to get better. We want to help you. You're on a dark path." While they break your bones to force you into their mold. You may not be hurting anyone on your dark path, but they'll convince you that you ARE. You're hurting yourself "spiritually," you're hurting the community, your family, by being an abomination to God. You're hurting everyone and yourself, you just need us to help you realize it. Antis feel the exact same. I block them pre-emptively because I cannot handle having that shit directed at me again.

Moreover, their insults feel the same. The childish "icky," the ad hominems. It's too reminiscent for me. Of my mom hating my icky facial hair and my classmates making fun of my masc traits when they thought I couldn't hear; you are a gross person!!1! Ew!!!

It's funny that antis are so often anti-kink, considering they're so fucking intent on giving me a golden shower and telling me it's rain. I hope they're careful not to choke on the homophobic, pedophilic pastor cock they're sucking.

#proship #excuse my rambling

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literaryvein-reblogs · 4 months ago

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Writing Notes: Elements of Art

The elements of art are components or parts of a work of art that can be isolated and defined. They are the building blocks used to create a work of art.

LINE A mark with greater length than width. Lines can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal; straight or curved; thick or thin.

Horizontal lines suggest a feeling of rest or repose because objects parallel to the earth are at rest. In landscape paintings, horizontal lines help give a sense of space. The lines delineate sections of the landscape, which recede into space. They also imply continuation of the landscape beyond the picture plane to the left and right.

Vertical lines often communicate a sense of height because they are perpendicular to the earth, extending upwards toward the sky. In a church interior painting, vertical lines may suggest spirituality, rising beyond human reach toward the heavens.

Horizontal and vertical lines used in combination communicate stability and solidity. Rectilinear forms with 90-degree angles are structurally stable. This stability suggests permanence and reliability.

Diagonal lines convey a feeling of movement. Objects in a diagonal position are unstable. Because they are neither vertical nor horizontal, they are either about to fall or are already in motion. The angles of a ship and rocks on the shore convey a feeling of movement or speed in a stormy harbor scene.

The curve of a line can convey energy. Soft, shallow curves recall the curves of the human body and often have a pleasing, sensual quality and a softening effect on the composition. The edge of a pool in a photograph may gently lead the eye to the sculptures on the horizon.

SHAPE A closed line. Shapes can be geometric, like squares and circles; or organic, like free-form or natural shapes. Shapes are flat and can express length and width.

FORM A three-dimensional shape expressing length, width, and depth. It is the basis of sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts. Balls, cylinders, boxes, and pyramids are forms. They can be seen from more than one side.

Geometric shapes and forms include mathematical, named shapes such as squares, rectangles, circles, cubes, spheres, and cones. Geometric shapes and forms are often man-made. However, many natural forms also have geometric shapes. Example, a cabinet decorated with designs of geometric shapes.

Organic shapes and forms are typically irregular or asymmetrical. Organic shapes are often found in nature, but man-made shapes can also imitate organic forms. Example, a wreath uses organic forms to simulate leaves and berries.

SPACE The area between and around objects. The space around objects is often called negative space; negative space has shape. Space can also refer to the feeling of depth.

Real space is three-dimensional; in visual art, when we create the feeling or illusion of depth, we call it space.

COLOR Light reflected off of objects. Color has 3 main characteristics:

Hue - the name of the color, such as red, green, blue, etc.

Value - how light or dark it is.

Intensity - how bright or dull it is.

White is pure light; black is the absence of light.

Primary colors are the only true colors (red, blue, and yellow). All other colors are mixes of primary colors.

Secondary colors are two primary colors mixed together (green, orange, violet).

Intermediate colors, sometimes called tertiary colors, are made by mixing a primary and secondary color together. Some examples of intermediate colors are yellow green, blue green, and blue violet.

Complementary colors are located directly across from each other on the color wheel (an arrangement of colors along a circular diagram to show how they are related to one another).

Complementary pairs contrast because they share no common colors. For example, red and green are complements, because green is made of blue and yellow.

When complementary colors are mixed together, they neutralize each other to make brown.

TEXTURE The surface quality that can be seen and felt. Textures can be rough or smooth, soft or hard. Textures do not always feel the way they look; for example, a drawing of a porcupine may look prickly, but if you touch the drawing, the paper is still smooth.

Texture depicted in two-dimensions. Artists use color, line, and shading to imply textures. In a painting, a man's robe may be painted to simulate silk. The ability to convincingly portray fabric of different types was one of the marks of a great painter during the 17th century.

Surface texture. The surface of a writing desk is metallic and hard. The hard surface is functional for an object that would have been used for writing. The smooth surface of a writing desk reflects light, adding sparkle to the piece of furniture.

Principles of Design ⚜ Writing Notes & References

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quetzalcoatl-law · 2 months ago

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Thoughts about Miraluka Society

We'll probably never get actual Miraluka lore, i doubt disney will even acknowledge their existance. So I thought it'd be fun to imagine what their society would be like.

Miraluka forever see through the force, their connection to the force is so strong they can feel major events from other planets. Their vision allows them to see through objects, see the force, etc.

Thinking about this, implies their buildings and ships wouldn't need windows. Windows are structrual weaknesses and to a MIraluka would be irrelevant asf, as walls are basically windows. Even lights wouldn't be needed, the concept of light and dark would be entirely different to a Miraluka to others.

As their entire race sees through objects, things like nudity would mean very little to Miraluka. Although they can see the clothes you're wearing, they can also see through it (not intentionally). Because of how open their views are (pun intended) Miraluka would generally live amongst their own kind, non-miraluka would most likely find it awkward to live amongst the Miraluka because of just how much they see. Fortunately Miraluka are very emotional and understanding of other species, they wear coverings over their eyesockets because other species find it very offputting.

Because they can't see colours, their art would be based around the force or music. Miraluka art would be less about sight and more about feelings, their art would radiate certain emotional or spiritual feelings through the force. To a nonforce sensitive, it may look bland but they'd undoubtably be able to feel the emotions off of their art.

There are many objects in the Star Wars galaxy which are force sensitive, the most common are kyber crystals used for lightsabers but as all living things have the force, plants would be very beautiful to Miraluka and it's probably the only things they use to liven up their homes. Gardening and tending to plants would be considered a spiritual practice and very cathartic to a Miraluka.

#swtor #miraluka #star wars #star wars lore #old republic #the old republic #star wars the old republic #Star wars headcanon #headcanon

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air-of-the-waterfall · 13 days ago

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Earlier this year I wrote an essay about Ancillary Justice for a feminist speculative fiction course, and I'm mostly happy with it so I thought I'd post it as a meta instead of letting it languish in my docs forever! It's about the concept of Emanations and how they're significant to the binary imperialist thinking of the Radch.

Postmodern Deconstruction of Imperialist Binaries in Leckie’s Ancillary Justice

Postmodern literature is distinguished by paradoxes, deconstruction of binary oppositions, rejection of universal truths, self-referentiality, identity struggles, and an emphasis on marginalized narratives (Hutcheon 1-16). By that definition, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice is unequivocally a postmodern novel. This paper will follow Breq’s character development in relation to the Radchaai’s binary religious Emanations, with the goal of analyzing how Leckie uses postmodern conventions to craft an allegory for decolonization. This novel’s central power struggle occurs between the protagonist Breq and the imperialist dictator Anaander Mianaai. Leckie depicts this conflict through the deconstruction of binaries, because Breq challenges each of the binary constructions that form Radchaai ideology. Without a central belief system of binary oppositions, the Radch would not be able to maintain its oppressive intergalactic power.

Binary oppositions: situating the Radch as a modernist entity

Before I analyze Breq as a postmodern entity, I must situate the the Radch empire as equivalent to a modernist one. I say “equivalent to” because a fictional world cannot be diegetically labelled with descriptors specific to historical reality. Modernism values definitive binary categories and constructions of universal truth or certainty (Hutcheon 5-7), and the Radch’s religion is built on those values. Their god, “Amaat conceived of light, and conceiving of light also necessarily conceived of [darkness]... This was the first Emanation… The other three, implied and necessitated by the first” are more binary oppositions that Radchaai believe constitute the universe, and “[e]verything that is, emanates from Amaat” (Leckie 33). Binaries are built into the foundational ideologies of the empire and cannot align with the postmodern theory of deconstruction. These beliefs also emphasize the value Radchaai place on defining centres and grand spiritual certainty.

Keeping that in mind, there is one notable distinction between the Radch and historical ideals of modernism. Fredric Jameson describes modernism as “dominated by… categories of time” rather than “categories of space” (220), but the Radch has a complex relationship to time and space. In David M. Higgins’ analysis of Radch imperialism, he describes its colonized territories as a “buffer zone” that Mianaai builds to protect her imperial core. He compares this practice to the United States’ rampant hatred of foreigners, and he notes that "if you’re afraid of nonwhite immigrants and outsiders crossing your borders… one solution might be to build a wall (or a [Dyson] sphere) to protect and enclose the limits of your territory… and then also conquer and regulate the territory on the other side of the wall, so that you can prevent anyone from even getting close (34)."

From this reading, it becomes evident that the Radch is not only concerned with but obsessed with space and setting, giving it a postmodern trait. However, I argue that this obsession still exists in service of time as Mianaai’s highest priority. One of the sacred Emanations is “EskVar,” meaning “Beginnings/Endings” (Leckie 33), which it is ranked above “Movement/Stillness” in the named deck hierarchy on Justice ships (Leckie 168). The binary opposition associated with time’s passing is ranked above physical movement through space.

Time is also invoked strategically in a conversation between Awn and the Orsian priest, who says, "You hear stories about ancillaries, and it seems like… the most viscerally appalling thing the Radchaai have done. Garsedd —well, yes, Garsedd, but that was a thousand years ago… If you’d asked me before you…annexed us, I’d have said [to become an ancillary] was a fate worse than death (Leckie 18-19)."

In this conversation, the divine casually dismisses the catastrophic genocide of Garsedd as having occurred a thousand years prior. She uses time’s passage to cushion against the horror of Mianaai’s previous atrocities, enabling ongoing ones via her conclusion that Ors is better off now by comparison to the past. Skaaiat also justifies the Radch’s actions via measurements of time. She says to Awn, “Do you know how many [stolen bodies from a hundred years ago] we still have stockpiled? Justice of Toren’s holds will be full of ancillaries for the next million years. If not longer. Those people are effectively dead, so what’s the difference?” (Leckie 63). Skaaiat uses time to distance her conscience from the horrors, but she takes a step further and suggests that the violence will reap beneficial results for longer than the initial suffering occurred. This repeated emphasis on time is a tool of Radchaai discourse that perpetuates the domination of physical space, making the hierarchical ranking of EskVar over the other, more spatial Emanations into a vital rhetorical element of the imperial culture. The scale of Mianaai’s power would be irrelevant without longevity.

With the Radch employing modernist worldviews and strategies to conquer galaxies, a decolonial opponent would require a postmodern lens. Breq is the ideal protagonist to embody that journey because her past violence in contrast with her compassion for Awn, Seivarden, and the Orsians makes her morally ambiguous. Postmodern thought highlights the ambiguity of human experience (Hutcheon 9), but Breq’s nature as a sentient artificial intelligence similarly shapes how she experiences her world and tells her story. AIs like Justice of Toren are primarily incorporeal and live for millenia while cycling through mortal ancillary bodies. Breq’s technologically facilitated experience of multiple states of being means that she challenges the binary of human/machine that humans assume is distinct (Humann 21). Similarly, Mianaai having thousands of bodies makes her immortal and omnipresent, allowing her to transcend space and time entirely. Ancillary Justice thus reveals the subjectivity of the perspectives that maintaining a binary worldview requires. A binary worldview demands that humans exist at the centre of everything, a concept known as humanism that modernists favour and postmodernists disavow (Humann 5; Hutcheon 9). Breq and Anaander’s fluidity proves that the space/time binary Radch expansion relies on is not inherent, which calls Anaander’s other hegemonic binaries —namely the religious Emanations— into question. This paper focuses only on EtrepaBo, EskVar, and IssaInu due to space constraints, but “Existence/Nonexistence” or “VahnItr” can associate with who and what is considered valuable, true or false, etcetera. The importance of circulating information, truth, lies, and perceived legitimacy permeates all of the other categories.

EtrepaBo: Light and Darkness

By reading light and darkness as the highest ranked Emanation in Radchaai culture —according to Breq’s description and the deck hierarchy (Leckie 33 & 168)— we can see the importance of perception, communication, and resource circulation to the empire’s functioning. Leckie describes the lighting and shadows of pivotal settings and associates them with various instances of knowledge and resource circulation. This is particularly notable in Ors, where lights subtextually highlight social dynamics between Orsians, Tanmind, and the Radchaai settlers. In chapter four, Awn and Skaaiat discuss resource management with the Jen cousins: Tanmind business owners who behave obsequiously towards the Radchaai in hopes of gaining social and economic advantage. They establish a hierarchy where Orsians bear the brunt of oppression from either side (Leckie 51-56). However, it is the Radchaai who have arrived and colonized both groups, and they are ultimately the ones in control. One Esk explains, “At night, in Ors, I walked the streets, and looked out over the still, stinking water, dark beyond the few lights of Ors itself, and the blinking of the buoys surrounding the prohibited [fishing] zones” (Leckie 42). Light here marks artificial boundaries of territory and signifies the enforcement of restrictive laws, because the Radchaai have seized power over Shis’urna’s indigenous natural resources. The lights are not constant, instead blinking and leaving the quality of what is light versus dark, and even the existence of the boundaries themselves, inconsistent. This represents how the rules and regulations of colonial regimes are flexible according to the whims of its authorities. Such flexibility applies to the rules about who Mianaai arbitrarily deems “civilized,” which Awn begins to question after dinner with the Jens (Leckie 62).

Information is a resource just as valuable as fish or property, and the Radch carefully guard their power over that too. One Esk elaborates that, “I patrolled all of Ors, saw the boats go in and out, saw where [people] were at night when they doused the lights and maybe even thought they were running invisible to me” (Leckie 47). Here, light and darkness embody the distrustful, uncomfortable environment of Radch surveillance and the locals’ attempts to avoid it, but those attempts are ineffective. Later, One Esk sees Orsians trying to conceal something, looks “toward the blinking buoys, and [says] nothing. The fiction that they could hide or alter the information coming from their trackers was a useful one, even if no one actually believed it” (Leckie 89). In these scenes, One Esk’s AI perceptive abilities render human assumptions about light and darkness obsolete, because it can see and know everything at once regardless of what is illuminated or willingly shared. This is how Justice of Toren challenges the light and darkness binary, but at this point in its life, it is still using those capabilities for the Radch’s benefit. One Esk requires more pressure to alter its path and has not yet reached what Higgins calls its “revolutionary snap" (68). We can understand its eventual change through the EskVar Emanation.

EskVar: Beginnings and Endings

Leckie’s most prominent invocation of “EskVar” is the protagonist’s name and sense of identity. Breq begins as Justice of Toren One Esk, but One Var is the part of her that kills Awn (Leckie 244). The decade named after beginnings conflicts with the one named after endings, triggering One Esk’s grief-driven “snap” that alters the course of her existence. In his discussion of Ancillary Justice and revolutionary agency, Higgins explores cascading affect and affective systems. Individual actions and the spread of information influence people in a domino effect, and it is impossible to know whose breaking point of decision or impulse begins any chain of responsive actions (Higgins 65-79). One Esk reflects on how “small actions… cumulatively, or over time, or in great numbers, steer the course of events in ways too chaotic or subtle to trace” (Leckie 151-152). This phenomenon indicates the fabricated nature of imperial culture, because if events are flexible and subjective, then there is no definitive final state of “justice, propriety, and benefit” (143) to achieve.

Justice of Toren’s experiences are similarly difficult to categorize on a timeline. Its destruction ends its life as an imperial war machine and begins anew in Breq’s singular body; this is an ending and beginning simultaneously, just as postmodernism works with “both/and” concepts rather than “either/or” (Hutcheon 10). Prior to the ship’s destruction in chapter sixteen, Ancillary Justice is structured in two alternating timelines that parallel Justice of Toren’s fragmented nature. The plot’s overlapping layers of worldbuilding, structural segmentation, and constant moving parts make its construction resemble a machine. This is appropriate to how Istvan Csicsery-Ronay explains the artificial, technological nature of imperial expansion. He describes how empire and capitalism consume, repackage, and regurgitate ideas to create a “nostalgic, utopian dream of wholeness… sold and resold perpetually in variant” (451). In many ways, Breq embodies this desire because she longs to be her whole self again, at the expense of the humans whose bodies she stole. Fredric Jameson also discusses nostalgia in relation to the postmodern, claiming that nostalgia impairs one’s view of past events and identity is formed through the unification of past, present, and future (222). Breq explains how her “[history is] hard to convey… and it’s difficult for me to know who performed what actions… Because I was Justice of Toren. Even when I wasn’t. Even if I’m not anymore” (Leckie 207-208). When Breq was a ship, she was the backbone of the Radch, and her multiplicity made her resemble Mianaai. Now, Breq exists in constant comparison to that past self (256), and personal uncertainty disrupts her complacency in the empire. The uncertainty of ancillaries being disconnected and broken from cohesion makes One Esk question its actions in Ors (152), and the consequences of that questioning and Mianaai’s own fragmentation kill Justice of Toren. Breq is left unable to unify her states of being or eras in time, and if she “didn’t exist as any sort of individual” (153) as a ship who represented the empire, then her ongoing struggle with identity challenges the identity of the Radch itself. Ships are built with resources collected from annexations, control stolen bodies, and are decorated in appropriated artifacts like stained glass (174-175). This cultural appropriation is part of the repackaging and circulation of ideas that Csicsery-Ronay describes, and once all that is gone, Breq has nothing left but the desire to kill Mianaai. Ancillary Justice takes very literally “the postmodern notion of the subject as divided within itself, and as anything but a coherent and independent source of reason and meaning” (Hutcheon 9). Without AI’s obedience and participation, the Radch would be adrift with nowhere to build its imperial identity, and Breq’s vengeance quest represents that to Mianaai herself.

IssaInu: Movement and Stillness

Being an AI ancillary gives One Esk superhuman physical and cognitive abilities, and these traits pertain to the Emanation IssaInu. In the beginning, Justice of Toren notes that massive “troop carriers [like itself] rarely move” even as they orbit planets (Leckie 9). This quote raises the question of what counts as movement or stillness in the void of space with no fixed point of physical reference. Since Radchaai consider space stations and ships to be “the natural environment of humans” (Leckie 53-54), the colonially-built artificial territory of the Radch is understood as fundamental and unchanging. This is paradoxical given the impossibility of an object in orbit remaining still. Justice of Toren’s assumed lack of movement indicates a cultural expectation that movement and action must be self-induced and deliberate in order to be valid. Taking actions amongst a larger series of influences in the way that Higgins outlines would therefore be considered an inferior state of being. This is an individualist social norm that makes most Radchaai civilians ignorant of the interlocking forces that shape their society, especially in the central Dyson sphere where they don’t even know about Mianaai’s expansionism (Leckie 235). The empire pushes forward like a bulldozer, powered directly by inaction.

Another instance of the Radch constructing movement and stillness into social values manifests between Breq and Seivarden. Breq insults her by calling her “unsteady,” because Radchaai consider physical and emotional unsteadiness a failure of character (Leckie 131-132). This indicates that the ideal citizen is not only individual and deliberate, but also consistent and smooth of physical action. Breq describes Seivarden with words like “fidgety and irritable” (65), “twitching and turning, often trembling” (71), and “suddenly, convulsively” (134). In contrast, ancillaries have flat affect and Breq’s expressions and movements are always stable and controlled. For example,

“I’m not your servant,” [Seivarden] protested. Indignant.

I increased my sneer, just the smallest increment. “Then what are you?”

She froze, anger visible in her expression (84)."

Here, Breq makes deliberate choices for her movements to convey authority and derision, meanwhile Seivarden’s emotions overtake her to the point of ceasing to move entirely. A human cannot meet the extreme ideal of composure that an ancillary displays automatically, showing how Mianaai has built AIs to embody an image of perfection that everyone strives for. In Ors, Seven Issa’s humanity is betrayed by the slightest twitch of her lips beside One Esk (56-57), and Skaaiat confirms that ancillaries are considered aspirational, unlike “vulgar human troops” (60). Breq uses these social and physical attributes to her advantage in cutting down Seivarden’s ego. She mocks Seivarden for the belief that “[e]verything happens as Amaat wills, nothing is your fault” (72). This is a critique of how the Radch uses religion, bioessentialism, and fate to naturalize colonial practices, which is ironic because existing at the whims of a deity negates the personal agency of their ideal actions.

Seivarden also holds very classist views toward Breq and anyone else she deems “barely even human” (85). Breq, having spent millennia enslaved to officers including Seivarden herself, is fed up with this behaviour. Seivarden’s repeated insistence that “I wasn’t bred to be your servant” (85) is also ironic, because AIs were developed to be humans’ servants, and Seivarden is unaware that Breq is one. Breq responds by punching her and explains, "I can move very, very quickly. I was standing, and my arm halfway through its swing, before I registered my intention to move. The barest fraction of a second passed during which I could have possibly checked myself, and then it was gone, and my fist connected with Seivarden’s face, too quickly for her to even look surprised" (85-86).

Breq contradicts standard expectations of movement to rebel against naturalized classist and humanist belief systems, embodying her subversive nature while proving that she does not fit the Radch’s stoic ideal at all. Finally, she flippantly justifies the outburst by saying Seivarden’s well-being is “as Amaat wills” (86). Since Breq has mocked that slogan as an evasion of accountability, she is now adopting it as a devil’s advocate, denying her own accountability and thus drawing attention to the fact that humans created AI. This makes use of postmodern self-referentiality. She is suggesting that humans like Seivarden have done this to themselves, thereby placing accountability for society onto humans and deconstructing the “Amaat’s will” narrative entirely.

In conclusion, despite Breq’s participation in the Radch’s imperial project as Justice of Toren, she grapples with that history and begins to make change. Breq being an AI factors into Leckie’s invitation for readers to critique imperial systems, because as Jameson explains, images of technology help us understand power through metaphor (226). Csicsery-Ronay adds that cyborgs like Breq represent “the ambiguities of subjects who find themselves with split affinities” (448). In Ancillary Justice, AI rebelling can be an allegory for working class oppression, feminist movements, and many other causes that vitally intersect with decolonization. I won’t claim that Breq can be redeemed from her genocidal past or called a conventional hero, but her journey sets an example for real people seeking ways to start challenging imperialism.

Works Cited (I've removed institution-specific links and DOIs to avoid doxxing myself)

Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. “Science Fiction and Empire.” Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, edited by Rob Latham. Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 443-455.

Higgins, David M. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice: A Critical Companion. Springer International Publishing, 2022. Springerlink.

Humann, Heather Duerre. A Tale Told by a Machine : The AI Narrator in Contemporary Science Fiction Novels. McFarland & Co., 2023.

Hutcheon, Linda. “Postmodernism.” The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, edited by Paul Wake and Simon Malpas. Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. O’Reilly.

Jameson, Fredric. “From Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, edited by Larry McCaffery, Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 219 - 228. Duke University Press.

Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice. Orbit, 2013.

#feel free to poke holes in my arguments in good faith if you want to #I like to think I'm good at close reading but not so much at structuring #i did get a 90% on this though so i'm super proud of it :D #imperial radch #ancillary justice #fandom meta

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clawbehavior · 8 months ago

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we're five episodes into Shogun, which means we're halfway through the series and all the major plotlines have been introduced and the characters characterized. and i'm starting to notice things.

namely, toranaga is becoming increasingly unlikeable. it started when he abandoned blackthorne to die after being saved by the man hours earlier, but it reached its peak with the return of the young heir's mother and the reveal that she's using the council against toranaga to protect her son. because then what is toranaga going to war for? we were told via the dead king's widow that toranaga needs to protect the young heir against the council, but clearly that's not true. so what's he doing? it bothered me that toranaga could be so kind to the young heir, playing with him and advising him, while neglecting his own son, whose insecurity around his father was so transparent that he was easily manipulated into starting a war. but then i wondered if toranaga was showing his true self (his third heart) to his son. that scene where he says "you categorize everyone as enemies and friends when you only have yourself" implies that he sees everyone as a potential enemy, which can only happen if his self-interests are at odds with everyone else's. seeing the end of episode five, i think toranaga is not what he seems. we know he can be duplicitous. he plays uncle and nephew against each other so easily, getting rid of the problem of their growing power by doing so. i think the falcon motif that's ever present in the show represents toranaga, flying against the sun so his prey can't see him until it's too late (episode one). he's fooling everyone, including his allies, which brings me to my next point.

mariko's story is not going to end well. i didn't know why this was a limited series with no chance of a season two until we got her backstory. mariko is straight up suicidal, just looking for a purposeful/honorable way to do it. if blackthorne can see this within days of meeting her, across a huge cultural divide and despite language differences, then toranaga has clocked this about her too, which doesn't bode well for her life. the mariko-blackthorne-husband love triangle subplot serves a deeper function of revealing her psyche to us. she can't let go of her feelings of injustice and dishonor from her family's deaths. (the flashback we get of her past shows her father's haunted expression because that's how she remembers the event, with horror rather than disgust for his actions.) this is why she tells blackthorne the truth about her family when ordered to by her husband, even though blackthorne tells her to lie and tell him something else because her husband won't know. mariko can't let go of what happened to her family (and her husband doesn't let her). she's been spiritually dead for ages and the return of her husband from the dead not only means she cheated, which someone with her honor code can't live with, it means she cannot be happy with blackthorne. her tragic past coupled with her strong feelings towards honor/dishonor makes her easy for toranaga to use, though it's unclear for what.

interestingly, mariko and blackthornes' opposing ideologies are why they survived and found each other. mariko resists quietly, inside her soul (the eightfold fence), turning to her Christian faith and becoming devout and learned in Portuguese to speak with the priests. this is how she ends up as blackthorne's translator, a position of power and later romance. blackthorne, in contrast, resists outwardly and every step of the way. that scene where toranaga tells him to give up because he's outnumbered and blackthorne replies "unless i win" captures his character perfectly. he's going to fight until the last second, which is why he survives the journey to Japan, and why he gets separated from his men and integrated into a foreign culture, and why he steers the ship to safety rather than being left behind to die. that stubbornness to live shows up as a tendency for breaking all the rules, the result of which is meeting mariko and unintentionally getting her to fall in love with him. it's so fascinating how their ideologies have set them apart from their own people and brought them together while indicating their incompatibility.

the show does a good job of layering characters and keeping them consistent, so i have faith that they'll return to yabushige's scary character. him torturing a sailor to death in pursuit of an existential question in a way so barbaric that it scares even the villagers did an excellent job in setting the tone of the show in episode one and setting the show apart from other historic period dramas. so it's disappointing to see him turn into a conniving goofball. hopefully this is a short term thing.

i haven't been so intrigued by the political machinations within a show in a long while, probably since GoT. can't wait to see how the rest of it plays out

gif below courtesy of @yocalio. look at toranaga's face shadowed in the sunlight. we don't fully know him.

#shōgun #fx shogun #shogun spoilers #shogun #toda mariko #john blackthorne #yoshii toranaga #analysis

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derinthescarletpescatarian · 8 months ago

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Honestly I still think there was probably some cannibalism in the we are all starving and there are dead bodies around sort of way, and I’m interested to see if it will come up considering Aspen’s peoples’ spiritual beliefs, and how its implied the Texans inherited our distaste for it. I just think it would be interesting to see how both sides would react to it.

One thing that I've always found fascinating is just how rare it is for people to resort to cannibalism in times of famine. The vast majority of the time we let starvation and illness take us first. Occasionally you see it with extremely small groups put into sudden survival situations with acquaintances or strangers, but when nations or villages or tribes or large ships starve, they almost never eat each other for the purposes of survival. I don't know why.

Cannibalism wouldn't have had any effect on the Hylaran famine anyway. It might have bought a handful of people a few more days, but that famine was controlled from outside with the explicit purpose of killing a set number of people while leaving enough alive to keep the colony stable, like a Roman decimation done at a distance. If people lived loner than expected then they'd just have restricted the food for longer. It's possible that desperate people might eat their dead in such circumstances (although as stated, people almost never respond to famine that way in real life), but it wouldn't have affected the outcome and they'd know it wouldn't.

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leohtttbriar · 9 months ago

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there's something really young about b'elanna. like i don't want to say "innocent" because that implies way too much, but the timbre is there? from some combination of her honesty and rawness, she seems like a skinny and lonesome stowaway that just happens to be the best engineer on board, and the depth of her understanding of the ship is balanced by her newness with so much else.

the fact that she's asking for spiritual guidance to begin with is sweet. the fact that she's asking chakotay, whose spirituality she's already loudly explained and defended when chakotay hadn't been able to himself, is doubly sweet. it's like she knows, through chakotay, that these answers exist and she's asking for them now, whether or not she would under any other circumstance and whether or not she would believe them. and it's significant because this circumstance is: simply waiting for something mysterious to happen, acknowledging there is nothing left to do, accepting powerlessness. which is almost like the whole of the voyager journey. b'elanna seems like the least concerned (sort of) with the fact of being thousands of light years from home given that she has professed to have no home to return to. the maquis, she said, were her home. chakotay is there who represents that home she found. so in this moment she is young in her acceptance rather than cold, reaching out for the intangible like a kid reaching for a telescope to see a shore beyond the curve of the earth. i don't know. it's just so sweet.

#star trek #voyager #b'elanna torres #she also just seems so new to her own self constantly. which is also yoot behavior #i loved this moment

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duchessdepolignaca03 · 8 months ago

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Pulling a @hgejfmw-hgejhsf and queuing this to post at midnight! Cause I actually have something to share! I’ve got about 1/4 of my @aroyallybigbangrwrb written, so I may actually hit my deadline! 😊

Without further ado, an excerpt from Odalisque, or where Prince Henry is promised to Prince Alex from birth to serve as his concubine, and spends eight years of his life in seclusion to preserve his virginity. I like to think of this fic as the happy ending spiritual cousin of Rule Britannia.

“You smell different,” Prince Alex declares, apropos of nothing as he sits next to Henry in the sunken garden of Kensington Palace.

Henry is in a foul mood.

The arrival of the Americans for their summer visit is always incredibly disruptive to Henry’s otherwise peaceful existence, and he had little sleep the night before after his Mama’s stern lecture about how Henry ought to conduct himself in front of the American Prince.

It’s not the first time his Mama has made an appeal to the “sweet and obedient creature that must be in there somewhere”. But there had been something particularly unhinged and hurtful about his Mama’s lecture the night before, implying that all the fault for their enmity lay in Henry’s obstinance and not in Prince Alex’s impertinence and general propensity to be an absolute knob. Henry’s Mama pleads for him to grow up, and open his eyes to the possibility that Prince Alexander has matured, and grown into a fine, handsome young man.

His Mama is utterly in denial about the fact that Prince Alex’s appalling manners are incongruous with his external appearance, which even Henry can admit is conventionally – if not strikingly – beautiful. But even more incongruous to his appealing visage is his smell – which Henry wasn’t going to comment on until Prince Alex’s complete lack of self-awareness led him to unfairly question Henry’s own hygiene.

“Yes, and you stink,” Henry declares, pretending to gag as he scoots away . “I heard unemployment is very high in your country – can you not devote the excess labour to the production of deodorant?”

No pressure tags for the greats @sparklepocalypse @priincebutt @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @taste-thewaste @onthewaytosomewhere @orchidscript @piratefalls @bitbybitwrites @sunnysideprince @zwiazdziarka @firenati0n @magicandarchery @thinkof-england @getmehighonmagic @nocoastposts @happiness-of-the-pursuit @wordsofhoneydew @bigassbowlingballhead @itsmaybitheway @suseagull04 @yrsonpurpose @inexplicablymine @ships-to-sail @cha-melodius @leaves-of-laurelin and of course, anyone else who wants to participate!

#several sentences sunday #my wip fic #rwrb wips #rwrb #henry and alex #firstprince au #red white and royal blue #rwrb fanfic #firstprince #rwrb au #alex claremont diaz #henry mountchristen windsor #prince henry rwrb #rwrb movie #odalisque

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regrator-the-ninth · 2 days ago

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Do you have any fav ships (from any fandom) that the dynamics remind you of XueXiao? Why?

So, anon, you've opened the Xuexiao/Hualian parallels floodgates... I strongly believe that Hualian are Xuexiao reincarnated for a second chance at happiness!

Here's why:

The overall vibes are there! The kindhearted, somewhat naive, and very powerful one trying to help people in a world with difficult and complicated problems x the morally dubious but surprisingly loyal one who does the necessary dirty work and makes the other smile.

The last act Xue Yang does to initiate their final confrontation is breaking Xiao Xingchen's door, first act Hua Cheng does for Xie Lian in the main canon timeline of TGCF is make a door for him.

Xue Yang attempted to revive Xiao Xingchen for 8 years, Hua Cheng waited 800 years for Xie Lian.

Xiao Xingchen descended his mountain at age 17 to help the common people. Xie Lian ascended to the heavens at age 17 to help the common people.

Hua Cheng is especially paranoid about Xie Lian touching corpse powder and committing suicide. Enough said.

Xue Yang tells Xiao Xingchen to never forget him when they part for the first time after Xue Yang's arrest. Xie Lian tells Hua Cheng to forget him when they part for the first time after Xianle's downfall and Hua Cheng insists that he won't.

There's a whole extra in the last book which is just giving Hua Cheng a reason to call Xie Lian "daozhang" and pretend to not know him.

Hua Cheng's sacrificed eye, Xiao Xingchen's sacrificed eyes, and Xue Yang's missing pinky... there's some synthesis of these in my head that I can't quite put into words but hopefully you see the vision (or lack of vision lol).

Hua Cheng's whole thing was that he had a very unfortunate childhood and would've died or become extremely fucked up like Xue Yang had been, but Xie Lian breaks the rules to save him, changing fate. If Xiao Xingchen had been there for Xue Yang as a child, things might've turned out differently.

Their whole relationship metaphor and what makes them work well together in fights is Hua Cheng transferring spiritual energy to Xie Lian regularly, just like what Xue Yang did to Xiao Xingchen.

Hualian can dual wield each other's spiritual weapons in a way that no other characters can, like Xuexiao.

Jun Wu tries to make Xie Lian evil and fails, and Xie Lian chooses to die over continuing down the route of evil as soon as he realizes what is going on, just like Xiao Xingchen did.

Xie Lian admits to revenge crimes he didn't do and Hua Cheng feels a need to right this injustice, a foil to Xue Yang dressing up as Xiao Xingchen to commit revenge crimes on his behalf, framing him.

Xie Lian was the only one who saw Hua Cheng's talent even when he was a complete nobody delinquent from an unimportant family, like Xiao Xingchen was implied to have done in the MDZS villainous friends extra.

Hua Cheng promises to come back after "dying" and Xie Lian just believes and trusts in him, as compared to Xiao Xingchen dying and Xue Yang trying desperately to bring him back, not believing that failure was an option.

There's more but this post is long enough as is...

#xuexiao #hualian #mdzs #tgcf #ask #anon #stamped and sealed #xue yang #xiao xingchen #hua cheng #xie lian

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weirdsociology · 2 years ago

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Distractions (The Mandalorian, E)

Title: Distractions (6.6k)

Series: Part one of Creed, a non-linear series about Din Djarin and his favorite... distraction.

Description: An artifact from the Mandalorian's past leads to trying something new - and remembering the past.

Pairing: Din Djarin x Female Reader

Content warnings: Explicit sexual content, sex toys, fingering, mutual masturbation, dirty talk, oral sex, penetrative sex, implied violence, spit, a touch of size kink, light manhandling, very mild D/s in all directions because we love a switch in this house, no betas we die like men, canon what canon

Tropes: hurt/comfort, idiots with feelings, angst but it all works out in the end, the helmet stays on

Author's note: I blacked out, I don't know what happened, and frankly I'm embarrassed that the first fanfic I've written in 20 years is kind of fluffy and not significantly more insane. This little offering is canon timeline-agnostic; I just wanted to give our armored dumbass a happy ending. Please don't think this reflects my personality, I am spiritually covered in the blood of my enemies at all times. Also there is one small bit of truth from my personal life in here and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't flashbangs, it was bayonets. This one is for @tarabyte3 who got me excited about what fanfiction can do again.

***

Sometimes, it's hard to sleep in hyperspace. A ship this old doesn't have the automated circadian rhythm programs that dim the lights according to species preference, and all the daylight bulbs are second-hand, their blueness dimmed by repeated use. Darkness is in plentiful supply, but that's only half the equation of an artificial night. You do your best, careful to check the time reads on the navigational display, and adhere to a schedule as much as you can. It helps give structure to long periods of transit, and you know that ten years from now, your body and mind will thank you for being careful to guard their rest.

The Mandalorian, by contrast, doesn't have a diurnal cycle as far as you've been able to tell. His sleep patterns are pure anarchy, having nothing to do with mood or physical need. Sometimes he'll spend a week getting no more rest than a few brief, truncated minutes on the ground after trekking in harsh terrain. Sometimes you'll go looking for him after a quiet stretch in flight and he'll be in the bed he calls his rack, completely dormant for the next fourteen standard hours. You don't know how he does it. He lives like someone who fully expects to die before their body has enough years to register protest - which on the one hand makes you anxious, and on the other you find it hard to blame him for.

Still, despite all your attendance to regularity, there are nights - times - when you can't sleep. Especially when you are headed past the Outer Rim, and the length of travel means nothing to do except read and watch holovideos you've already seen and eat stale food and exercise in cramped, artificial repetition. Nothing new to look at, nothing new to do.

Which is how you end up awake at this hour, dressed in nothing but your bandeau and shorts with goosebumps pebbling your legs as you lean over one of the big crates in the cargo bay. You're digging through the thermoplastic case that holds the Mandalorian's personal possessions, looking for one of the old holonovels you're sure he has stowed, when you find it. A smooth, round black cylinder with a cap on each end. At first, you suspect it's yet another esoteric firearm - but then why isn't it in the weapons locker above?

Curious, you gingerly remove the cap from one end. Life on the ship has taught you to be cautious about any unfamiliar object. You don't know if it's normal Mandalorian living style to have to shove aside a mountain of electronic flashbangs when looking for clean blankets, but it's certainly normal for this one.

What's inside isn't like any weapon you've ever seen. The cylinder is filled with something soft and yielding, silicone or plastisilk you think, and it gives disconcertingly when you brush a thumb over it. There's a small bore in the middle about the diameter of your finger, but the polymer feels like it would stretch. It's textured near where the cap would fit, small ridges inside and a gentle flowering of protuberances around the borehole. Almost like -

You stand up, unsure whether to blush or laugh, and snap the cap back on. You've certainly found something new this time; something that might help break the monotony of space travel if you approach the topic - and Mando - correctly. If you're right there should be something else nearby, something that would make this a little more... usable.

There is. A discreet bottle, neatly wrapped in plain paper.

You take cylinder and bottle and step out in the corridor from the bay, checking the location of your fellow crew. Mando is not in his rack or the lockers, which means he's in the cockpit. The Child is in his usual nest. It's late, and the kid should be asleep for a long while yet. You jam the - the toy, you suppose - and the bottle into one hand and climb your way up the ladder, half appalled at your boldness and half delighted at the thought of making your Mandalorian squirm for once. You're secretly hoping to catch him out, tease him with the evidence of his private sexual habits, a friendly nip around the edges of his Creed.

"Look what I found," you say as you approach the pilot's chair. His head is turned away from you, bent over something in the navcomp, his long legs in front of him as stretched out as they can be in the small space. He hums an acknowledgement and takes a moment to finish entering something before he looks over his shoulder. You offer the cylinder to him flat across your palms, like a knight offering a loyal blade, which you hope is both funny and at least a little charming.

It doesn't work. He's still looking at you. You wave it in front of him instead, resisting the urge to waggle your eyebrows. The helmet drops to consider the cylinder, then you. "I'd forgotten I had that. Where did you find it?"

You stop, hands still outstretched. "Forgot-- your crate in the cargo bay, but... is this what I think it is?"

Mando can't raise his own eyebrows at you, but his chin twitches upward in the way you've learned to interpret is the same thing. "Do you think it's a cock sleeve? Because it is."

"Is that what you call it?"

"I've always been less concerned about what to call it than how to use it," he says. He's fully turned to face you now. The conversation is not going as you imagined. You flush and he gives you an appraising look, taking in your half-undressed state.

"Isn't that... Against your Creed?" How does he do this. How does he always turn the tables. How is it you're the one quailing under the calm scrutiny of his helmet. You'd meant this as a good-natured ribbing, not a come-on, but suddenly you're picturing what you were decidedly not thinking about earlier - Mando, years ago, alone in his rack or fresh from a hunt, with his beskar still on and his arming jacket rucked up, screwing the toy down onto himself with his fist. The thought makes heat pool between your legs. It also makes you a little melancholy. Suddenly you want to fuck him and hold him in equal measure.

"You weren't always here, you know," he says calmly, honest and unembarrassed as he is shockingly honest and unembarrassed about everything to do with sex. He reaches for you, captures your wrists, pulls you further into the cockpit and down into his lap. You thrill as always at his casual possessiveness, his desire to be close. At the breadth of his shoulders under your hands. "The Creed isn't against pleasure, only distraction. Sometimes it's more distracting to make your body suffer than to give it what it wants."

"Like me?" you ask. It's a joke that once would have stung, an echo of your first night together - you are nothing to me but a distraction from my work - but it's an old wound, long since rubbed over by the smooth edges of time and shared affection.

An amused huff through the modulator. "Like you," he agrees, and though the helmet dampers every inflection you now know, where once you only imagined, the statement is fond.

***

You'd been traveling together for months, a reluctant passenger paired with an unhappy custodian. It had been weeks since the first time the tension between you rose to the breaking point, pulling his hands to you like a gravity well. You were now fucking the Mandalorian regularly, enthusiastically, and, at least to you, inadequately. Regardless of how well you took him, how perfectly he fit when he slicked and stretched his way into you, your heart hammered the same rhythm: no room, no room. His attitude toward you had made that abundantly clear. There was no room for you in his life, on his ship, in his Creed. You were his... distraction. That's all.

You mostly ignored it. When you were working or hunting, you barely thought about it. You pushed the thought down and stored it away to keep from slicing yourself on its sharp edges. But there were moments when it pressed forward again, tumbling out of the drawer of your heart in disarray. The Mandalorian was behind you or over you or under you and you were crying out the name you knew him by even as your blood rushed in your ears demanding more. Not more sex, not more of the heavy punch of his hips against you or the feeling of his hands in your hair, but more of him. You wanted him. You wanted everything.

You wanted to know what it kriffing meant when he called you his distraction.

And sometimes, after you had been fucked within an inch of your life and left lying on your bunk or still pressed against the weapons locker, it hurt a breathtaking amount.

You were pretty sure the Mandalorian was not unaware of how he affected you. Beyond that first epithet which became routine, he was not intentionally cruel. Away from the heat that flared between you and his resentment at his own inability to ignore it, he was considerate and distant and respectful. Unfailingly polite. You loathed every moment of it with a growing bitterness that threatened to replace food and sleep. It reminded you of the time you'd run into a recruiter after she’d turned you down for a job. Sorry kid, you had your chance to convince me and you blew it. Except Mando, being Mando, had never given you a chance at all.

It was worse when you fucked. For weeks, you had resolved over and over to put an end to his careful handling of you. Better an angry rebuttal or cold silence than... whatever this pitiful halfway connection was. Next time he approached you with that weight in his step or crowded you into a corner, too close, you would force his hand. You knew that was the time to do it, when you had his full attention and the bargaining chip of your body. You'd seize his wandering gaze and stare into the helmet: "Why do you call me a distraction?"

You had told yourself this a dozen times. But his practiced fingers were already slipping inside you and all you could do was whine as his modulated voice, sounding not quite human, breathed a word that meant nothing to you in your ear: Mesh'la, mesh'la, mesh'la.

***

You had entreated him to show you how he used it, before you joined his crew. Before, as he drily puts it while running a gloved hand up your thigh and teasing along the waistband of your shorts, he had a far superior array of options. Now you're mostly naked in the dim light, seated between his spread legs, his helmet tipped against the headrest as he leans back. You're watching the arched column of his throat, watching his gloved fingers wrapped around the cylinder and most of all, watching his thick cock disappear into the plush expanse of the toy. He's hard but not fully erect, probably because you refused to touch him until you got to see him touch himself. Not that you needed to threaten - you both know that Din, and it's Din now, in the privacy of the cockpit with both of you partially undressed and warmth radiating from him, will deny you nothing where his body is concerned. Except, of course, his face.

His cock is stirring to full attention, and you suspect it has more to do with your rapt gaze on him than his own ministrations. It's a novelty for you to watch him for once. The way you two fuck, he normally has the better view, pulling back to see your cunt swallow his length and hear you moan in gratitude. He likes to watch you touch yourself while you're speared on him, chasing your own orgasm as you clench. He likes to see your thighs tremble when you ride him, and your face when he makes you come too much. "One more, mesh'la, one more for me, let me see you," he'll croon, as one hand worships your sore clit and the other bats away your arm as you try to bury your face in the crook of your elbow. Din likes to watch anything that shows him how good he makes you feel.

Your Mandalorian might be on to something, you decide. Watching certainly has its appeal. You can hear the soft slide of the toy, see the tension in his forearms and his stomach even through his tunic, his breath through the helmet fast but even. He looks gorgeous like this, a warrior half-undone for your enjoyment. You slide the palms of your hands up his thighs and run them lightly along the bare skin peeking through where he's partially shucked himself of armor and clothing. His breathing alters a little, hitching as your skin makes contact with his.

"How does it feel?" you ask, watching the steady rise and fall of the cylinder. You idly trace a finger up his groin and along the sensitive skin just under his sack. He hisses, and you twitch in response to the noise you know so well, your cunt giving a little spasm as if to remind you of its needs.

After a moment, Din answers your question. "Tight, but not warm. Better than nothing but... Like a ration bar when I have a meal right in front of me," he adds pointedly, and one booted foot slides between your folded knees, leather rubbing along the seam of your sex to make his point clear. "I like that you like looking at me, but we could have bought a mirror instead. I could be fucking you in front of it right now."

Your cheeks warm as you think about it: Din, arching over your back, holding your chin, making you watch your own face as he nudges the head of his cock into you. You don't know how you'd feel staring at yourself like that, but your cunt twitches again, letting you know that more important parts of you fully approve of the concept. The helmet has dropped back down. He's observing your reaction. You file the idea away for later. "I like seeing you like this, though. Did you really never use it after you met me?"

A chuckle. "Oh, I used it. Before... when you were first here. I used it so much I think I did permanent damage."

A little shiver of heat winds up from the base of your spine. This is new information. But he's not done. "Which is why I should be allowed to show you how much I appreciate you, not this plastic junk." He makes a show of slowing down, grinding up into the toy and letting out an exaggerated groan. You know he's still watching you closely, waiting for his cue.

You give him a wicked grin. "Sometimes... it's more distracting to make your body suffer than give it what it wants." Din groans for real in response, but you have other things on your mind. "Back before... when you... were you thinking of me?"

He makes an uninterpretable noise. "Oh no, mesh'la, I wasn't thinking of you. Only of your hips. And your hair. And your tits. And your ass. And your cunt, and if I could get you wet for me, and what that pretty mouth would look like around me, and how you'd sound when I put my cock down your throat."

"... Fuck," you say breathlessly. What started as a flutter has become an aching, empty pulse. "Fuck, Din," and you lean forward, bringing your face almost close enough to nuzzle where he's still sheathed in the toy, breathing in his scent. It has the unintended effect of driving the tip of his boot further into you, a solid mass pushing on the thrumming bundle of nerves between your legs.

When you first started doing this, he said very little to you. You could read nothing in his body except desire and frustration, both of which he extinguished in the furnace of your sex. Later, after Mos Eisley, when anger was no longer the single note of your shared existence, he talked to you constantly. The man of few words outside the ship became the man of many words when he was buried inside you. He told you what he was going to do to you, what he wanted to do to you, how good you felt and what you did to him. He talked like he was trying to construct a gilded cage of words you wouldn't fly away from. You had been dumbfounded by the change, shy and unsure, unable to find a way to reassure him you had already stooped to his lure. Part of you was afraid that if he knew the truth - that you'd have him any way he wanted, silent or talkative or babbling in Tuskan sign - he would stop. He hadn't, but the stream had slowed. More deliberate, less frantic. Somehow even more indecent.

He's being indecent right now, timing the strokes of the toy with his words. "I wanted you every morning and twice at night." Down. "I couldn't think - could barely shoot straight." Back up. "I wanted to bend you over the crates and fuck you until you felt the same." A slow slide back down. "Fill you up with me until you cried, until you knew you were mine, until that sweet cunt wouldn't want anyone else." Up, until just the tip of him is still out of sight. He's losing his even tone, the modulator turning gasps into static. "And then I did fuck you, and it got so much worse. You let me pull you open and put my cock in the hottest, wettest place in the galaxy and-- are you really going to come on my boot instead of letting me fuck you?"

You come to with a little start, pulled aware by the abrupt shift in subject. There's dampness under you, and you realize you've been rocking back and forth on his boot, rubbing the folds of your cunt against the worn leather, and moaning into his lap while he talks. It feels so good to be here, sitting at his feet as he strokes himself for you, hearing the jagged details of your shared past transformed by pleasure. The scruff of the boot against you, the bite of a seam into your tenderest flesh, the smell - steel and old smoke and hot sand - so uniquely Mandalorian it has you panting for him.

"Din," you breathe. "Stop -- stop. I want to feel you."

That's all it takes. The toy is gone in an instant, he's off the pilot's chair and dragging you upright and his half-bare hips are against yours, crowding you into the console. His cock is painfully hard against you, already smeared with precum and the lubricant that makes someone of his size using a toy like that even possible. You realize with dizzy delight that this is going to be one of those times where he fucks you without preamble, pushing his way in, making you feel every inch of his invasion. The pleasurable burn of your cunt adjusting to his girth will be revenge for making him use the toy - a revenge he knows you will enjoy.

More leather, this time at your mouth. The feel of his glove as he curls his fingertips under your chin. "Spit," he commands, and you do.

"Good girl. Now turn around."

***

It was after the first time he'd had you in the cockpit that you'd found the courage to ask. It had already been one of the worst days of your life, what more was there to lose? You were so numb there was no cliff you wouldn't jump off, no risk you wouldn't take. If you asked and the answer was indifference, well, it was just one more pain to add to the litany: your cracked lips, your shredded feet, your bruised ribs, your bloodied hands. And soon, maybe, your broken heart.

Mando had left, as he always did, after you were done, leaving you on the steel floor mostly naked and entirely without the desire to stand on your own. You told yourself that you would simply sleep there, if you had to, rather than getting back up on your cut soles. After all, you'd slept in worse places recently. Though you'd meant it to be fierce the thought sounded pathetic even to you.

The sound of boots climbing up the ladder interrupted your self-pity. Mando had not only come back, he had come back with a box: the medkit he kept in a crate in the cargo bay. He knelt beside you on the floor and started to lift you to him, one hand on your back and one hand under your knees. It was close and familiar in the worst possible way, like the fuck wasn't, and you made a hoarse inhuman noise and tried to kick him. You slammed a broken toe into a beskar vambrace instead and then you screamed for real.

He was patient with you and you hated it with every aftershock of white-hot rage in your body. You struggled even once he managed to get you up in his arms. After a bad moment where you thought you might actually try to bite him, he stopped attempting to haul you down the ladder and dropped both of you into the pilot's chair abruptly instead, pulling his hands away like you'd burned him. "Hey, it's me, just me, the one who's on your side," he'd said, attempting a touch of humor, and strangely it was the buzz of the modulator, so unlike the voices you'd been hearing for the past few days, that had incrementally slowed your galloping heart.

The medkit was in reach and at first he was gentle but even that was too much. You pulled away without leaving the chair, putting distance between you and that damned helmet. All you wanted was to rest, except you were afraid of what you might have time to think about if you did. There was a tense minute as he resumed his work with gauze and tape and bacta spray, but even in your exhausted state you somehow felt him make the decision to stop trying to be tender. He took your cue and bandaged you with impersonal efficiency, like you were a soldier in his regiment or a fellow Mandalorian. It made his touch tolerable, and you were so tired you almost resented him for it.

By the time he was done, you were nearly asleep. You heard the click of the medkit closing and, calmer now, a little more returned to yourself, braced for him to lift you down the ladder. But he surprised you by making no move to get up, resting his hands on his legs, around you but not on you. You could tell he was waiting for something but not what. Maybe it was something from you, but you were all out of give. It was his turn.

Another moment of silence, then momentary confusion as you both spoke at once:

"I have to tell you so--"

"Mandalorian, why are you--"

He stopped. You pressed on. "Why are you always calling me a distraction?" Your tone was flat. You sounded like you could be asking about the price of power cells.

The helmet twisted. This was clearly not the direction he expected your post-coital, post-triage conversation to take. "Because you're distracting."

You thought anger might be the only thing keeping you upright. "Not good enough. What the fuck are we even doing here? Why did you come after me? You told me we were done, that you didn't owe me anything. You could have left me there and pocketed the bounty for yourself. They would have let me go once they convinced themselves I didn't have the information.” A lie, but he doesn’t need to know that. “That doesn't sound like I'm just a distraction."

"I said you're distracting, and you are. That's different." You were sure he was being pedantic but your tired brain couldn't keep up with Mando at his most evasive. "You're not just a distraction. I don't make a habit of coming back for-- distractions."

Coming back for was a polite euphemism for the amount of killing Mando had done in the past few hours. None of it mattered to you if he was doing it because of his damned Creed. Maybe none of it mattered at all. Maybe you had kept your mouth shut for nothing. Your chest hurt and you had no idea if it was because of your ribs or because of your heart. You kept going.

"It makes no difference if I'm a distracting fuck or something worth coming back for or a kriffing bantha, Mando. I'm still..." Exhaustion made you blunt. "I'm still against your Creed."

He made a noise that could have been agreement, or negation. "The Creed is not against pleasure. Or companionship. Only... distractions." He sounded like he was reading out of a textbook. You'd heard it all before. You had wrung everything out of him you could about his Creed, because you wanted to find somewhere to fit. That was all he'd ever said.

He surprised you again. "Distraction is a-- it's not easy to describe. It's not as simple as wasting time or effort. Distractions are... things that pull you from your orbit without returning value, like a comet disrupting a planet's path around a sun. Too many and you begin to drift away from the tribe, the Creed, the things that make you a Mandalorian. You lose yourself chasing what streaks past you, already gone."

That little speech was probably the most words you'd ever heard Mando say at once, and there was too much there for you to process in your wasted state. You latched on instead to the thing that seemed most personally insulting, given how you'd been spending your time the past few days. "Maker, Mando, do you think that's all I am, a comet? That you'll turn around one day and I'll be gone? Do you think I did-- what I did– what we did– for fun? Do you think that's all you are to me?"

There, you had said it. Or at least implied it. Your cortisol response gave one last death rattle and suddenly you found you could sit up a little straighter, could feel your pulse in your throat. Your feet ached.

There was a long silence.

Then the Mandalorian sighed, and in that sigh was more defeat than you'd ever heard after a hunt gone wrong. The sound seized you and squeezed your breath as it stuttered in your chest. When he spoke, it was low, tired, and edged with brutal honesty. "No mesh'la. I don't think you're a comet. Not after... today."

And that, somehow, was what did you in: his surrender. The first acknowledgement of what you had endured for him and what you'd done together and what it meant between you. You dropped your face into the filthy duraweave of Mando's shoulder, not caring if you caught the edge of beskar beside it. Something boiled up in you and you weren't sure what it was, only that you snapped your mouth closed hard over a noise like being struck and fisted your hands in his tunic. All the fear you'd put aside came slamming in, the torrential wave presaged by an empty beach. You drove yourself as close as possible to your Mandalorian and shook as though a blaster bolt had found its home in your brain after all.

When you knew where you were again, you found you had shifted - or he had shifted you. You were curled between his legs, your arms still around his neck, your face against where his cheek would be in the cruel parody of a kiss. You froze for a moment, anticipating the helmet to feel hostile against your lips, but it was only Mando, the smooth silver of him that you'd come to know and expect. With sudden resolve you drew back an inch or two, away from the spot where your mouth left a sliver of fog. Your heart beat in your ears, marching steadily onward toward its inexorable conclusion. You had always known what you needed to do for both your sakes', and now you even thought you knew the bargain that could make it bearable.

"Mando," you whispered. "If that's the way it is, I wouldn't... I would never ask you to go against your Creed. I couldn't."

The warrior under you was so still you feared he might not respond at all. Then he blew out another long breath and put his hands around your waist, impossibly solid against you. It was the second time that night he'd reached for you with gentleness and, leaning against him, you could nearly imagine what it would be like to feel safe again. It would have been so easy to sink into shared delusion. But you owed him something more.

"I couldn't," you said again. "You couldn't. We could never-- it would never be right between us. I don't want that." You were certain you were crying by then, silent tears racing down your cheeks. "But please... I'm not ready yet. I'll leave tomorrow. Please, please... just give me tonight."

The hands on your waist spasmed, gripping you so hard that for one deranged instant you thought he might throw you down on the steel and fuck you all over again. He did the opposite and hauled you painfully upright, stood you in the tight space between his knees and the console. You winced when your abused feet took your weight. His own posture and the set of his shoulders told you absolutely nothing. He was still holding you like a lifeline.

"No," he said. After everything you'd done it was absurd that one word could make you want to crumple to the floor again, but you stayed upright, nails digging into the console for support. "I won't give you just tonight. I know you. You walked into that warehouse for me. You were so afraid for me you couldn't be afraid for yourself. You bled-- you killed-- because you hoped it would buy me time. I know you. Now you're offering– this. I refuse. You're not a Mandalorian, but your courage puts ours to shame. Who would I be if I returned your loyalty so little of my own?"

"Mando, what are you saying?" You were so numb with exhaustion that you weren't sure you had it in you to hope. You tried to keep your gaze steady, but you knew your eyes were wet.

"Stay with me," he said quietly. You did crumple then, your knees turned to water, and only his grip still on you kept you standing. "Stay with me, and let me prove my honor to you."

"Yes," you breathed, and that was all he needed. He hauled you to him, pulling you down, until your chest was pressed to him as he ran his gloves frantically over your neck, your shoulder blades, your hips. You rested your forehead against his, against the blood-warm beskar, and waited. You wanted nothing more than the feeling of his hands on you but you were so tired. "Will... will the tribe understand?"

A pause. He slowed, but did not stop, tracing soothing heat across your body. The blank faceplate tipped up to gaze out at the desert night. "Some will. Some won't. It doesn't matter. How I feel about you can't be against the Creed any more than my helmet. You can't turn a thing against itself." His head was still turned away, looking past the canopy to the starless sky outside. "You aren't a distraction from my Creed, mesh'la, and you never have been. You're part of it. You make me a better... a better Mandalorian."

His hesitation did not go unnoticed. You heard what he didn't say: a better man.

***

The problem with having sex in the cockpit is that when you want - no, need - to lay down afterward there isn't quite room for both of you between the chairs. Also, the floor is that textured, anti-slip steel they use for gantries, which pokes uncomfortably into bare flesh. You end up squashed together, half on top of your Mandalorian, letting his still partially-armored back take the worst of your combined weight as you roll on to your side and throw one leg over him, pillowing your head on his pauldron. It's not ideal, but after the three orgasms he pulled out of you with as much dedication as he'd ever chased down a bounty, you don't really have a choice. Going down the ladder in your current state might actually be the thing that kills you.

Din is still breathing hard from his own climax, sought only after he'd made you so sensitive that he'd had to put a callused palm over your mouth to keep you from shrieking and waking the Child. He'd started, as you thought he would, by pulling off your flimsy shorts and shoving the thick head of his cock into you with no preparation other than telling you to bend over the console and stay quiet. You'd cooperated, knowing that the position put his mouth conveniently close to your ear, and were rewarded with that smooth modulated voice telling you he was going to make sure you never made him use a toy again, never want his cock in anything but you. He told you he was going fuck you so thoroughly you'd beg for him to let you come on his cock. He'd started rough, his pace matching the coarseness of his words, and you'd bitten down your whimpers at the stretch.

But Din knew you far too well to let you off so lightly. Fast had turned to slow and deep, caging your hips with one forearm while skillful fingers lightly circled your clit, never giving you quite enough pressure to get you where you ached to go. Then you had begged, and he'd almost given in: pulled out of you abruptly, replacing his cock with three fingers after ripping off his gloves. You'd come so hard Din had groaned at the feeling of you clenching around him, your legs trembling uncontrollably, but even that wasn't what you were hoping for and he knew it. He'd coaxed you to a second orgasm by turning you around and crudely shoving his knee between your legs, making you ride the textured cuisse on his thigh. He'd insisted you work for it, rubbing yourself against him and leaving streaks of arousal on the beskar, and that was less satisfying still. Only after you'd gotten yourself off did he ask you what you wanted, and by then you were so needy, so desperately raw and sex-drunk, that all you could do was whine, "You-- please, Din-- you." The sound of his name seemed to shred whatever last bit of composure he had left, and he'd pressed into you harder than ever as your hand dropped to provide the friction you'd needed. You'd come apart with him buried deep, your cunt gripping him like a vise, and he'd followed not long after, your name on his lips as his cock twitched and softened in you.

The nice thing about steel floors, you decide, is that they're easy to clean. You can feel Din dripping out of you and you're pretty sure you're going to leave a wet spot. You’re also pretty sure that the cylinder rolled under one of the consoles and is still jammed there, but that's a problem for later. You pull yourself even closer to him, enjoying his warmth in the shared quiet, watching the strange false light of hyperspace dance outside the canopy.

You don't notice that Din’s turned his helmet to you until he speaks. “Another 26 hours and then we’re off this boat.” He sounds relaxed, pleased both with your current configuration of tangled limbs and the prospect of no longer being confined to the ship. “Felucia is a jungle world. Plenty of frogs for the womp rat to chase.”

You grin. “Or eat. How long are we staying? Are we dropping in somewhere civilized or staying off the radar? And who are we even after? You didn’t show me the puck yet.”

“Off the radar, and this one’s a solo job.” You start to protest, but he stops you. “Really. The contact says he’s holed up in a cave in the middle of nowhere. We’ll set down in the nearest open spot, then it’s half a day overland to the hideout. No point in you coming, nothing for you and the kid to do but get wet and feed the gnats.”

After space travel, a hike doesn’t sound unpleasant, but you know he’s right. There’s no reason to go to the extra trouble of packing supplies for two more when it’s a straightforward retrieval. At least you and the Child will get to explore your landing site. You can do your work outside in the open air, and if all goes well, Din will only be gone a day or two.

“Hey,” you say softly. “You’ll come back, right?” It’s only half a serious question. You trust your Mandalorian. You’ve trusted his competence and drive and ability since the moment you met him, and have learned to trust that his desire to return to you is real. Still, you always ask. It’s a private ritual between you, something soft built over top of hard truths.

You think of the times he’s left you. To work a job or on a hunt or sometimes just for the cold, hard recesses of his mind where you cannot touch him. Once, although you try not to remember it, for a black and shaking depression that terrified you both. Most of all, you think of that night, on Mos Eisley. The crunch of sand under his boots as he turned away. The glimpse of beskar through the door. The feeling of his hands on your battered ribs. His voice, very tired, I don't make a habit of coming back for distractions.

"Of course I’ll come back, mesh'la." You’ll never not thrill to Din’s electronic baritone calling you beautiful. "How could I do anything else? You're part of my Creed."

***

series masterlist

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfic #the most interesting part of mando is how his creed doesn't constrain him specifically but requires him generally #star wars #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x female reader #this ones owes a lot to a lot of other excellent writers #thank you all for sharing your talents with me #long post #pedro pascal

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belovedstill · 1 month ago

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when the candle goes out (light up your own) (ao3) svsss, yuefang | T | 4.3k, post-canon, hurt & comfort, past qijiu, implied spiritual self-harm, anxiety & depression spiral, before they get together (more on ao3)

After the successful prevention of the realm merge, Yue Qingyuan let Shen Qingqiu go. Too bad his heart didn't catch up. In which, after everything settles into quiet and dark, Yue Qingyuan battles with familiar habits, Sect Leader questions his purpose, Yue Qi fights and mourns the past, and Yue-shixiong finally gets some rest — all in the comfort of Mu Qingfang's presence.

written for @ficwip's all-ships ship week event, for day 1's prompt of "I didn't know where else to go". check the event out and join us in celebrating your ship 🥺

Full fic on ao3 & under the cut

After Shen Qingqiu leaves with Luo Binghe, it’s as if the Mountain’s spirit has left with him. Or so Yue Qingyuan thinks.

It shouldn’t feel that different; it’s been a long time since he actively, repeatedly tried to reconnect with Shen Qingqiu and keep some kind of relationship with him, apologise, try to talk to him. It’s been a long time since his efforts were rebuked time and time again.

A long time since he essentially gave up, darkening Shen Qingqiu’s step less and less often. By the time Shen Qingqiu left the Mountain, it’s been months since Yue Qingyuan visited the bamboo house on his own, with a matter entirely unrelated to peak matters (even if thinly veiled as such). It has been a long time, then, too, since this tense, strange silence has filled his life.

This time, though, Yue Qingyuan swears it's different.

Back then, Shen Qingqiu was still there, on the Mountain, on his Peak, in his house — perhaps not waiting, perhaps not even available, but there, somewhere familiar. A known distance away. If he only wanted to, Yue Qingyuan could go to him and pay a visit, undesired as it was. He’d be met with a cold, stern face in candlelight, a sharp remark, a refusal of entry — and then a door left wide open after a rigid silhouette had disappeared indoors.

He could go there anytime. He wouldn’t, of course. But he could.

Now, though — now the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s dwelling houses nobody, even if it is still full of the lord’s belongings.

Shen Qingqiu has vowed to come back from time to time, to keep up with his duties, to guide his disciples, to keep his peak running — but Yue Qingyuan knows with an alarming clarity that something has changed, irreparably, irrevocably.

Years and years ago, what could very well be several lifetimes, for all it felt like, two slave children vowed to run away someday. They waited for the right time, for the right place, for a safe enough opportunity which never came. They got separated. One ran away. One had to stay back.

One was left behind.

The one who was left behind managed to leave, in the end—just not with Yue Qi, and not from slavery.

With Luo Binghe — a demon lord — and from the chains of the past.

Yue Qingyuan has been a noose around his neck which tightens with each hopeful glance and each hopeful word.

…This way, at least, Shen Qingqiu is truly free, isn't he?

Some of these evenings, he ends up on Qing Jing, wandering mindlessly up the stone path leading to the peak lord’s residence. The late autumn air is crisp in his nostrils. Were he not a cultivator, it would surely hurt.

Evenings are cold and dark, with only the moon illuminating the way, and that’s only when the nights are cloudless. Somehow, whenever Yue Qingyuan visits the peak, now or in the past, the moon is always clouded over, rendering any light gone.

In the past, it didn’t pose much of an issue — he could always find his way to the lone bamboo house. Shen Qingqiu kept a candle burning in a lantern set in his window, conveniently facing Qiong Ding.

Yue Qingyuan makes his way up the stone path in total darkness now and trips over a lone stone in his way.

“Who’s there?”

The peak’s lord might be gone, but his disciples remain.

Left behind, Yue Qingyuan’s brain whispers, even though he knows it’s not the case.

“Stand down and do not fret, disciple Ming Fan,” he says in a tone much calmer than his heart. He hasn’t tripped since his own disciplehood.

Ming Fan recognises him in an instant. “Zhangmen-shibo!!” Robes rustle. He must be bowing. “Can this Ming Fan help in any way? What reason has Zhangmen-shibo to visit the peak?”

He doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t even remember leaving his own dwelling.

“No need for concern,” he answers instead. “This evening was simply… A good time for a stroll. No official matter. Disciple Ming Fan may rest and return to his duties.”

The boy used to be ignorant. Now, even in the darkness, Yue Qingyuan feels his inquisitive gaze. He knows his respects, however, and soon Ming Fan bows again and takes his leave.

He stops after a couple of steps and turns his way again.

“Zhangmen-shibo surely knows this,” he says in a hesitant tone, “but Shizun is not currently on the mountain… He’s—”

“I know.”

Ming Fan shuts his mouth. His clothes rustle in a bow again and he leaves without another word.

Yue Qingyuan feels for the rock with his foot and pushes it away. His next steps are more careful.

The candle lantern is gone from the window, even unlit, cold and flameless.

When did it disappear? When was it hidden away, the light leading his way stolen, taken away, kept from him?

When has Shen Qingqiu given up on him for the final, permanent time?

The lantern was there when the Qing generation ascended. It was there when Shen Qingqiu suffered his first qi deviation as a peak lord. It was there when he took Luo Binghe in as a disciple, when Yue Qingyuan first found out about the boy’s punishments, and whenever he came over for visits under the guise of sect-related matters.

It was there the morning he sat at Shen Qingqiu’s bedside, waiting for him to rouse from his fever, only for the man to wake up different.

He doesn’t remember seeing it during any of the other peak lords’ attempts at testing Shen Qingqiu for possession. He distinctly recalls seeing it gone after the Qiong Ding demon invasion, when he waited at Shen Qingqiu’s bedside — again — after returning to the sect to find him struck with poison and thinking him at death’s door.

His eyes didn’t focus on many things that day. He brushed the lack of the lantern in the window simply as it being daytime.

…has he seen it since?

He doesn’t remember. It’s not like he visited that often. Shen Qingqiu has since seemed to have lost his sharpness; for some reason, it brought him no relief.

The bamboo house is dark, cold, and empty. Yue Qingyuan’s heart clenches in sympathy.

With no light to follow, he turns back and leaves.

Sometimes he wonders what the point of it all is.

The world. The sect. Cultivation. Him.

What is the point of Yue Qingyuan? In the past, he had a clear answer. In the past, the point of Yue Qingyuan was to protect, to keep safe. Even if it meant he had to withdraw into the background, the point of him was to make sure others could live as peacefully as possible.

That was his Shizun’s — the past Sect Leader’s — reasoning for choosing him as the next in line, at least.

He had magnificent spiritual aptitude, they said, and he was capable of leading and protecting those in his care.

He remembers feeling as if he were observing himself hearing those words, standing just to the side, disconnected.

Impostor, his own voice whispered in his mind, at himself. You’ve fooled them all. Who are they speaking about? You couldn’t protect the one person that really mattered; how could you protect the whole sect?

He remembers watching himself open his mouth, face blank and eyes unseeing, and saying — and saying…

“Shizun… This one is not worthy…”

“Humble, too,” the Sect Leader remarked, all the while shooting him a warning look, displeased that he was undermining her decision. “A quality a sect leader should have.”

His face looked green, but none of his seniors seemed to notice.

He doesn’t think anybody has noticed, ever.

He sits on his own bed, one hand on the sheath of his sword and the other on the hilt.

If a demon has made Shen Qingqiu feel safer, more secure than Yue Qingyuan… If getting away from him was what finally brought him freedom…

…maybe he should relinquish the sect, too.

The candlelight is gone. Yue Qi draws the sword.

Life energy drains.

He sits like this with eyes closed.

One minute passes. Two.

Five.

Ten.

He feels — lighter, with each second that passes.

Relief.

This way, everything will finally be right in the world again.

Coward, hisses a sharp voice in his head, his memory, his soul, so loud and clear, it knocks all sense back into him.

He wakes up from the trance with a violent gasp and slams the sword back into the sheath.

Xiao Jiu is right, as always. Qi-ge’s a foolish coward; he will listen to him instead.

A Sect Leader who is ready to throw away his life surely doesn’t deserve to keep the title.

He should keep his life as punishment.

Qian Cao is believed to be quite similar to Qing Jing — just as peaceful, just as quiet — but it feels different. Despite the late hour, or maybe exactly because of it, each path is well-lit by glowing plants growing on either side. Even in his weakened state, Yue Qingyuan has no chance to trip. The paths are even and void of any stubborn rocks and pebbles, too.

Mu Qingfang’s healer quarters are still glowing with warm light despite the halls currently housing no patients. It makes sense for the beds to be empty; after all, the only people who were hurt in any way in the past events are not around, or have been healed already — or are standing at the very steps.

It takes him several moments to make himself knock on the healer’s door, and in the end he doesn't even manage to do that before Mu Qingfang opens the door himself. Clearly, Yue Qingyuan isn’t somebody he’s expected to see.

“Zhangmen-shixiong,” he greets in surprise. His eyes quickly turn assessing. “Is everything alright?”

Yue Qingyuan smiles on instinct, and just as habitually opens his mouth to reassure—

Coward.

“No,” he says instead. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Mu Qingfang blinks. Yue Qingyuan swallows, surprised just as much, if not more.

Then, the healer steps back. “Allow this shidi to try to help.”

He walks in.

Mu Qingfang does not look happy after checking his spiritual veins.

“Zhangmen-shixiong should be more careful with his health,” he chides. “He knows his circumstances are fragile. How will he ascend to godhood along with his sect siblings if he has no life force left when the time comes?”

Ah. Ascension. He’s forgotten about it.

In some ways, having Xuan Su consume his life force truly is a blessing. It could keep him in the mortal realm where he belongs.

At least then Shen Qingqiu will truly be rid of him.

…Will he even choose to ascend, without Luo Binghe? Perhaps the demon will break another taboo and follow right after?

“Zhangmen-shixiong? You’re shaking.”

He hasn’t even noticed.

“Yue Qingyuan,” he whispers. “Yue Qi.”

Mu Qingfang frowns. “What—”

“No titles. Please.”

The pause that follows is so long, he believes Mu Qingfang won’t abide by his request. But then—

“Yue Qi,” the healer says, softly and with such sympathy that it reaches deep, deep inside of him and squeezes.

Mu Qingfang is the closest thing he has to a haven. Even if he doesn’t know exactly what his past consists of, or where he came from, or what exactly his motivations were when he entered the sect — it all concerned Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu was deeply, deeply ashamed of his past. Protecting his pride was worth never being truly known — he knows more than anybody else still on the mountain.

“Yue Qi.”

Ah, he’s talking.

“Clear your mind.”

“I can’t.”

“Your qi is getting disturbed. Clear your mind.”

“He left.”

“Shen-shixiong will come back, safe and sound. He said so himself,” Mu Qingfang says without any doubt. He presses his fingers to Yue Qingyuan’s wrist and starts a qi transfer. “Clear your mind.”

The qi feels cool and calming. Familiar. His own spiritual veins accept it immediately.

Mu Qingfang’s eyes bore into him with curiosity, calculation, which eventually settles on understanding. Yue Qingyuan can’t bear to see the emotion that’s born out of it.

“Shen-shixiong seemed unburdened when he left the mountain,” Mu Qingfang says, as if it’s a throwaway observation, meant to share the same weight as mentioning the weather.

It’s meant to soothe, but to him it has the opposite effect; it claws his chest apart. Yue Qi feels as if he’s all figured out.

“Mm.”

“Yue Qi seems to be convinced that he won’t return.” Why would he? “But hasn’t Shen-shixiong always returned, no matter the circumstances?”

That he has. No matter his age, or the level of displeasure with Yue Qi, or the sorrow the mountain reminded him of, Shen Qingqiu always came back in the past. Maybe because, before, he had no other place to call home.

Now, though, he has left to accompany the demonic emperor, that Luo Binghe, who no doubt has a dwelling of his own. A lord’s palace, most probably.

The candle is not the only thing that’s disappeared without an explanation, he realises with a start. One day, Shen Qingqiu hissed at him to stop haunting his doorstep, to keep the sect matter talks to the peak lord meetings, all the while keeping the teapot warm.

The next, the contempt was nowhere to be found in his face. It was as if the fever burned away any feelings he had towards Yue Qingyuan — towards Yue Qi — and left only a blank slate. Perhaps to anybody else it would have been a relief, but to Yue Qi it was a life sentence. There was no fixing his mistakes any longer; and if his chance was gone, there was no healing, either. An infinite penance.

“Isn’t it all right now?”

Yue Qingyuan looks up blankly. Mu Qingfang’s eyes are focused and gentle.

“Shen-shixiong is happy and others welcome and seek out his company. There are fewer and fewer people able and willing to harm him, and he himself strays from unnecessary violence. Zhangmen-shixiong...” Mu Qingfang lays a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Yue Qi. This one has long suspected that you and Shen-shixiong have a shared past, and with Madam Qiu’s confession and everything that followed, this one has started putting some long-collected pieces together.”

Yue Qingyuan’s breath freezes in his throat.

It's not even about his secret. If anything, as the sect's primary healer, Mu Qingfang had to have been informed of any health related dangers potentially befalling the sect leader. He knows, just like Yue Qi’s own shizun knew, how Yue Qingyuan’s sword hungers and feasts on his own life once out of its sheath.

It's not about the secret. It's not even about Yue Qingyuan's failure.

It's about Shen Jiu—Shen Qingqiu’s past, the past Shen Qingqiu’s always been so ashamed of, the same past Yue Qi has long sworn in his soul to protect.

If Mu Qingfang’s realisation is in any way guided by Yue Qingyuan’s indiscretion…

Cold weight settles in the pit of his stomach. Failure—his life’s constant companion—turns even more bitter.

Isn’t it alright now? Mu Qingfang has asked, and Yue Qingyuan—Yue Qi—knows it should be. Shen Qingqiu’s happiness should make all the difference.

…but with the lack of sharp looks and the pull at his guilt, and the poking at his conscience, nothing feels right anymore. It’s as if he’s a parched man after years wandering the desert, and his only thirst-quenching flask has just run out of liquid poison. Now, Mu-shidi is offering him chilled water, and it will keep him alive, but the drink will forever lack the familiar relief.

No.

Yue Qingyuan mentally slaps his own face for daring to even think of Shen Jiu as poisonous. Yes, he can be sharp-tongued. Yes, he keeps to himself and rejects any form of help, and lashes out at anybody who crosses an invisible boundary. Shen Jiu who, despite his years and life experience, is a child at heart: distrustful, and suspicious, and ready to leave everything and everyone but Qi-ge — and run far away if only it proved more beneficial.

(...is the Shen Qingqiu who left the mountain with Luo Binghe still the same person? His words are softer now and only their meaning feels sharp. He asks for help, sometimes, and doesn't lash out anymore.)

(He still ran away.)

(Without Qi-ge.)

(More beneficial this way.)

In the moment of silence that follows, with Yue Qingyuan’s eyes dim and Mu Qingfang’s speculating, something shifts. Mu Qingfang briefly tightens his hand on his shoulder, then strokes it soothingly.

“Yue Qi must have gone through a lot in his life,” he says in a gentle tone, more a friend than a healer now. He pulls his hand away and sits right next to him on the patient’s bed. Yue Qingyuan follows his movements half-heartedly in the peripherals of his vision.

Mu Qingfang puts a comforting hand over his wrist and sends forward a soothing stream of qi — not examining, not healing — just comforting. A connection.

“It’s only natural that he’s afraid to let go of what he knows.”

Part of him wants to bristle at being laid so bare. He can’t be afraid. He shouldn’t be afraid. He can’t afford to be afraid.

Beneath Mu Qingfang’s familiar touch, though, maybe it’s not — maybe it’s not so shameful to admit that — that sometimes, when he’s alone after another nightmare of charred remains of the sect, the bodies of his martial brothers and sisters and their disciples, youths never even blossomed, piled on top of one another among the ruins of ash-laden mountain peaks, spiritual caves long depleted and destroyed, the rainbow bridge shattered to pieces — that he’s afraid, so afraid that he’ll fail, that’s it’s just a matter of time…

Life moves in cycles, and the cycle of Yue Qingyuan’s is a constant of failures and too lates and almosts and not enoughs.

“However, what Yue Qi knows is not all that there is.”

Not all…?

His blank look must tell Mu Qingfang everything he needs to know: he smiles and curls his fingers around Yue Qingyuan’s wrist, a stable presence. The qi he sends forward feels warmer.

“Yue Qi’s past was full of difficulties. To aid him through them, to protect him from them, his mind developed… shields.” Mu Qingfang tilts his head in consideration. “Many of them. Shields are perfectly reasonable to carry when there’s danger around. Holding one in battle is exactly what one should do.”

Yue Qingyuan’s heart aches at the onslaught of past memories: small phantom nails digging into the skin of his arm, desperate promises urged and given freely, eyes full of terror and blood and fiery smoke, and cold winter-morning-like clarity… The need to protect, to rescue, to keep safe. If he fails—if it’s gone—what purpose does he have?

Mu Qingfang’s voice drifts around him like a fog, wraps him in a cocoon of cover nearly tangible on all his senses. He continues, as if there was never any break (Was there? How long has he been here?):

“What if the battle is long over?” The words, combined with the stream of qi receding, shatter something deep within Yue Qingyuan. He startles and clutches to Mu Qingfang’s hand with his free one, keeping it in place before it can move away.

Begging again, does he ever do anything but beg?

Mu Qingfang covers that hand of his with his own. Comforting. Grounding. Not leaving. “Does carrying the many shields offer protection or does it hinder one’s every move?”

When Yue Qingyuan turns his head, Mu Qingfang is already looking at him with a warmth both alien and familiar at the same time.

“Yue Qi,” he says, so gently Yue Qingyuan’s soul aches. “The battle is over. You have survived. Put down your shields.”

He would. He really would, if it were that easy.

“I told him,” Yue Qingyuan whispers instead. And, shockingly, Mu Qingfang doesn’t look reproachful, but—proud? Glad? Encouraging? Why? “I told him everything.”

“Mm?”

There’s a moment of surprise. He’s frozen in his seat, overwhelmed, his tongue heavy with all the words flooding his mouth all at once now that there’s somebody willing to listen.

Mu Qingfang seems to understand. He takes the lead and asks, “How did he react?”

“He listened. To everything. Didn’t want to talk. Cut ties to our past.”

“What did you want him to say?”

What did you expect him to do, after everything you’ve done? Yue Qingyuan hears in that question, and has to chase the thought away. That’s not what Mu Qingfang’s asking.

What did he want Shen Qingqiu to say back then?

He wanted him to know that he’d never forgotten about him. That Qi-ge had always been searching for a way back. That Qi-ge had failed to listen to him even after they’d parted, and recklessly rushed into cultivating as fast as possible. That he’d suffered a set-back and had been imprisoned against his will, with nobody listening to his cries and reasonings and pleas.

That he’d gone back for him, but all he’d found was rubble.

That he was sorry.

And he wanted—he wanted Shen Qingqiu, knowing all of this, to look at him again, really look at him, and cling tight to his arm, and shake him, and say, Stuipid Qi-ge! How many times do I have to tell you not to be reckless? Look what you’ve done, look where it all got us!

And he wanted him to say, I’ll just have to stay here and keep an eye on you so you don’t do it again.

And the words, no matter how harsh and sharp, would mean—

“‘You’re forgiven.’”

All of him shakes under the thundering typhoon of shame crashing within him—his body, his thoughts, his voice, his vision, all swimming—and sinking—and caving in—

“Yue Qi,” Mu Qingfang says softly, yet somehow his voice rings loud and clear over the chaos in Yue Qingyuan’s mind. “You’re forgiven.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that simple.”

It shouldn’t be.

The comforting qi is back.

“It is that simple. You’re forgiven.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.”

“...I can’t.”

“That’s okay. You’re forgiven.”

“Why?” he asks, finally.

Mu Qingfang’s hands tighten on his in a reassuring hold. “Because you’ve long since repented, no matter what you’ve done, and there’s no more repenting for you to do.”

“Then why—” he chokes on the words, like they’re trying to suffocate him not to let them out. He shuts his eyes and forces them out anyway. “Why—does it—feel like—it’s not—enough—?”

“Perhaps it’s not Shen Qingqiu whose forgiveness you need.”

Not Shen Qingqiu’s—?

“Yue Qi,” Mu Qingfang says, then repeats his old name again and again until Yue Qingyuan opens his eyes and looks at him. “Put down that load. It’s time for you to forgive yourself.”

Himself…?

It’s such an absurd idea—that he could ever dare to allow himself to simply let go, with no consequences—that something in his mind is knocked into place, and the overwhelming fog disperses, and his vision clears. He stares at Mu Qingfang in utter confusion, eyes clear and his qi stabilising.

Shen Jiu will never forgive me, he thinks for the hundredth, thousandth, millionth time, but this time—this time it tastes different. This time, it’s a realisation with no hope woven between the words, teasing at the possibility and stringing him along. This time, it feels final.

The candle has burnt out. The lantern has been hidden. No one's lighting it again.

The battle is over.

The survivors have moved on.

There is no closure. Without the other half of his past, there really is nothing he can do—nothing that would ever be enough—to right this wrong.

It will all remain with him.

It should be destroying him. It should be crushing his mind into a pulp and breaking his soul into countless shards for him to step on for eternity.

What he feels instead is relief; empty, lonely, peaceful.

When he speaks next, his voice no longer trembles.

“I don’t think I deserve to.”

It sounds right, like a fact he’s always hoped to disprove, but now that he’s found solid proof, he can only accept it and move on.

Mu Qingfang watches him with all the care a healer—a sect sibling, a friend, a confidant—could possess.

“Yue Qi.”

He smiles, and it’s as sad as it’s relieved. “Yue Qingyuan.”

“Yue Qingyuan,” Mu-shidi echoes, and squeezes his hands again before moving his touch up his arms. “You deserve forgiveness.”

He waits for the familiar turmoil to come back, to rage against the mere notion, to slam within his ribcage with all the pained conviction.

It never comes. The strange peace remains.

“If Mu-shidi says so.”

It’s not meant to sound dismissive, and Mu Qingfang seems to sense it, because he steels his face into pure certainty and nods, confidence and dedication brimming in his eyes.

“I know so,” he says. His hands feel secure where they hold his arms.

Only when his eyelids grow heavy does Yue Qingyuan realise these very hands have supported his weight all the while.

“I’m very tired,” he admits through the sudden weakness taking over his limbs. As if together with the heaviness and chaos and the load he’s carried within, for two lifetimes, his soul has decided to leave, too.

Weightless.

He tightens his fingers on Mu Qingfang’s robes not to fly away, nor sink underground.

Mu Qingfang firms up his grip in response. “I know. I’ll help,” he assures. “Lean on me, Yue-shixiong. Rest.”

He goes willingly—lets go of any remaining control and sinks where Mu Qingfang’s hands guide him.

Mu-shidi smells like healing.

“I’ll be here,” Mu Qingfang whispers near his ear.

The flame dancing within the candle lantern in the room dims down to a comfortable shade.

The pressure on his head releases with the removal of his hair guan.

Gentle, secure arms hold him close.

Yue Qingyuan closes his eyes, all shields down, and rests.

#all ships week #svsss #svsss fic #yuefang #yqy #mqf #my writing #m #ahhhh writing this was so cathartic #*pats yue qingyuan's head* this good boy can fit so much guilt and self-blame and trauma. how could you resist #haunted by the ghost of shen jiu on his every step #i love him i promise #that's why i gave him mu qingfang

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