#tl;dr: the secret ending is them finding each other in death finally at peace

[kaban-bang]

/SIGNALIS SPOILERS

FUCK, I LOVE THEMES AND SYMBOLISMS

[hatercube]

sunnflower hot take >:)

okay, okay so. i know that sunnflower is a rly popular OMORI pairing, and don't get me wrong, i like it, too,,,, HOWEVER. here is a post-good ending headcanon that will smash all of ur sunnflower dreams into a million bits and pieces <3

[edit: just want to let anyone else who sees this post that it is 10000% okay to ship sunflower, and this whole post is purely a headcanon that’s been stewing in my brain since last month, and it is only my interpretation and my opinion !]

TW // suicide, anxiety, mental institutions, childhood trauma

Sunny and Basil *cannot* see each other

i have been up for 24 hours and don't know if anything i'm about to say will make sense, so bear with me. it's not uncommon for people who shared trauma to have intense reactions that manifest in their relationships with each other. some people become hyper-attached to each other after the traumatic event, while some people are the exact opposite, and if these people come into contact with each other, it can be extremely detrimental to their mental healths. the latter is how i see basil and sunny (especially basil).

throughout the game, a lot of their interactions come off as stiff and awkward not only because they haven't spoken in years, but also because basil is too emotionally dysregulated to keep up a conversation. he's stuttering, he's sweating--WE ALL SAW HIM. he is an anxious. wreck, and this anxiety directly stems from mari's death and sunny's presence. especially after kel breaks the news that sunny's moving away, we can see that any major changes sunny makes are going to heavily affect basil on a psychological level. this isn't just a problem with basil clinging to the last bit of familiarity in his life, but it would also affect sunny's personal growth if these patterns were to be perpetuated in any future relationship between the two, platonic or romantic. imagine trying to move on from the most traumatic experience of your life, and an old friend you haven't talked to in years, begs you to stay. it isn't healthy for either of them.

FURTHERMORE, in regards to the secret true ending with the special SunnFlower cutscene, i think that it's okay to say that these two are beginning the healing process and are working towards finding peace in their lives separately. this ending doesn't imply really anything other than a mutual understanding that everything they'd been holding onto for years had finally been released, and that they were now beginning their journey of recovery.

i don't think they talk for a long time after the good ending--i don't think they really want to. for sunny, basil is a painful reminder of not only the death of his sister, but also the incident that landed him in the hospital. you don't just automatically make amends with the person that gouged your eye out during a psychotic episode. i think that sunny understands and forgives, but i do not think he feels safe.

for basil, on the other hand, sunny is a reminder of the terrible thing he did to mari's body and also his abandonment issues he got from his absent parents. in my opinion, being the person who strung up your best friend's dead sister into a tree to make it look like a su*cide is worse than being the one who pushed her down the stairs. you can push someone on accident, but you definitely can't hang someone on accident. i imagine there's a lot of guilt in there mixed with a whole lot of other childhood trauma from his neglectful parents that is a cocktail for mental instability. (also would like to point out that basil having the idea to hang her up in the first place is an early sign of extreme mental illness,, that isn't normal and also hints at some kind of emotional codependency or unhealthy attachment he has to sunny.) the fact that basil was pushed so far that he had a psychotic episode which resulting in him stabbing his friend--which by the way was triggered by sunny's mere presence, not an immediate physical threat of any kind--is so telling of his mental state, and i honestly believe that best thing for him would be hospitalization. for a while. if he cannot be safe to himself and others, then he needs to begin his recovery in a rehabilitation center, and who knows when it would be safe for him to be discharged.

to put that last bit in perspective, i've been hospitalized before due to a pretty half ass attempt that i didn't follow through with because i was drunk out of my mind and that landed me five days. five days, and i didn't even do anything, like no physical harm came to me. also, during my time there, i was really adamant about how i was feeling better and said i had reduced SI which is also how i got out of there in that small amount of time. i have no idea how much time someone like basil would have to spend in an institution, but it would probably be more than a few weeks.

if seeing sunny was the final trigger that led up to basil's psychotic episode, then it is completely possible that seeing sunny would only bring up similar dysregulation problems in the future, even after he's well on his way to full recovery.

SO TL;DR

1. basil stakes his emotions too heavily on sunny,

2. for sunny, basil reminds him of his sister's death and incident that brought him to the hospital, leading him to feel unsafe around basil,

3. for basil, sunny reminds him of the guilt in shame of what he did to mari's body (which i think we can all universally agree is much worse than accidentally pushing her down the stairs),

4. sunny's presence pushed basil to a point where he was not safe to himself or others in an extreme manner that borders homicidal,

5. BASICALLY WHAT IM SAYING IS THAT THEY TRIGGER EACH OTHER AND WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HANDLE HANGING OUT FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME BC OF THE PTSD AND POSSIBLE PSYCHOSIS

so yeah. there it is. if you made it this far, im so sorry.

[mccncrane]

INTRODUCING — KALANI "MERCY" AHUNA

“ I WAS EVERY WORD IN EVERY LANGUAGE, AS LONG AS IT TRANSLATED TO BLOODSHOT. ” is that JASON MOMOA? oh no, that’s KALANI “MERCY” AHUNA, born on the 15th of APRIL, 2004. i heard HE/HIM (CIS MALE) is a MOST TRUSTED of the IDAHO HUNTERS.  apparently, they can be WARM and HUMOROUS but also known to be SELFISH and UNPREDICTABLE. spends most of their free time (TERRORIZING) PRANKING THE PRISONERS FOR ENTERTAINMENT, probably smells like STRAWBERRIES AND SMOKE. is that a bite mark i see?

HISTORY: (tw for death, the usual) (me starting this: i barely have anything to say! / this in the end: probably the longest intro i have so far)

Kalani Ahuna was born under difficult circumstances. He lost his father very young, and his mother even younger, which left him to be raised by his fraternal grandparents. He never felt like he was missing out on any parental figures growing up, but there was the undeniable fact that they were much older than most parents -- Kalani always knew he wouldn't have much time with his tūpuna.

They lived in a small town in Nevada, and when the apocalypse started, they were moved into a qz on the northern area of the state. Fedra wasn't doing a great job. Kalani's grandparents were already much too old to be living in these conditions; while the quarantine zone kept them safe from the monsters roaming outside, they couldn't afford the lack of resources. Kalani was a big guy, even as a teenager, he could handle sharing his own rations with them for as long as he could, but eventually, it was too much.

By the end of 2025, their qz was a warzone in itself. Fedra was losing control and starting to abandon the area, food was almost inexistent, clean water and medicine were also hard to come by. Kalani's grandparents, now too old and fragile to continue, passed away. One after the other, barely hours apart on the same day. Kalani believes it was simply their time to go, and they went together.

He was sad, but he knew they went as peacefully as they could. And all things considered, maybe this was a better death than being torn apart by an infected. He greeted their death with grace, and decided to leave the qz. He took their bodies out with him, buried them somewhere pretty and covered them with flowers in the woods.

He roamed alone for about a year, freshly twenty-something, until he found the Idaho Hunters. They were just planning their final takeover of the city, and he proved himself a worthy ally when he helped them.

He got his nickname by talking a big talk about forgiveness and the belief of not holding onto any grudges or bad feelings, as he'd always been close to his Hawaiian culture. Someone probably jokingly said "yeah okay, Mr. Mercy" in a teasing tone, and he laughed so hard at it that it stuck. He likes it.

About ten years later, one day when he was roaming the outskirts of their town, Mercy stumbled upon a woman in danger. He felt compelled to save her, and once he did, things made sense. It was like there was a gravitational shift on the Earth itself, it felt like all of the energies in his body realigned. Meeting her changed him, immediately, even if he couldn't quite put a finger on how. They talked as if they'd known each other since forever, and he became easily convinced that their souls had been each other's companions for many centuries. It didn't feel like meeting someone knew, it felt like finding an old friend again; a reunion.

He managed to convince the Hunters to take Aylin in -- by being dramatic about it and saying they could either take her in or he'd be leaving with her, which he definitely meant. She is the absolute love of his life, they got married at some point, and he will kill and die for her, thank you.

At some point in the last couple of years, while he was outside with Aylin, they got themselves into a troubling situation with a couple of infected. Mercy is good at combat and has brute force, but he'd gotten distracted and one of the things sunk its teeth into his side. It was a gnarly bite, and the only reason he didn't lose a chunk of meat around his ribs was because Aylin managed to shove the infected off.

They sat there for a while that day, with Mercy trying to convince her to kill him before he turned, which she refused to do. It was for the best, in the end, since hours passed and he felt none of the symptoms. Hours and more hours, and he didn't even feel tired. He patched up, eventually, they went back to camp, and they kept quiet about it. After the initial shock had passed, Mercy started to believe this was not a normal bite. He wouldn't turn.

Surely enough, he's immune. He still hasn't told anyone else besides Aylin, and if anyone notices that he doesn't take his shirt off in the summer anymore, no one has said anything, either. He keeps the obnoxious scar on his side a secret -- the only thing he hides from his beloved group of Hunters.

TL;DR:

raised by his grandparents, they died of old age. he roamed around for a bit, found the idaho hunters, joined them. then he found aylin, his soulmate, his wifey, his boo. they live a chill life with the idaho hunters. he gets bit, finds out he's immune, hides it from everyone but aylin. nowadays he's out here chilling, being a most trusted and protecting his fellow hunters. as well as terrorizing some prisoners for Funsies.

PERSONALITY:

an absolute goofball idiot. he has a childish sense of humor, he likes to mess with people and he doesn't have a solid understanding of boundaries when it comes to pranks. he's your older cousin who made you cry when you were 5 because he showed you some traumatizing horror film while he laughed his ass off. probably slaps his bros' asses lovingly.

despite being painfully between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil, he is not all chaos, he's pretty emotional. he's open and honest, he's a romantic, he loves love, he wears his heart on his sleeve. he thinks there's beauty in pain and sadness, he's just very peaceful in that sense, and very in tune with his feelings. we love an emotionally stable man.

that being said he is not above slaughtering an entire village if someone hurts his loved ones 😌bc he's protective of all of his hunter family and aylin (of course), and he doesn't see anything wrong with killing people sometimes. broken moral compass energy, but like, it is the end of the world. mr mercy will still kill u if u deserve it. he will forgive your soul and then still chop your head off bby.

EXTRAS:

im not gonna make y'all read any more, i'll think of connections some other time !! if you got any ideas, yes, come give me anything !!

[nyxelestia]

What I Didn’t Write in 2017

So thanks to a confluence of limited time and resources, I had to put a moratorium on starting any new fanfics. That said, I'm still getting plotbunnies. I've found that the process of writing out and talking about a fic is a surprisingly good way to get it out of my system.  

Hence, this tag/this series of the posts. Basically, a little bit about my plotbunnies, and what it was about them that intrigued me - whether it was a premise, a theme, or even just a particular scene or two.

(And if anyone finds themselves intrigued by an idea and wants to give it a shot, I absolutely encourage them! :D Please just make sure to drop me a line if you do.)

This particular post is over a year late, and I will be making a separate "what I didn't write in 2018" post soon enough.

Quick list:

Mermaid/Siren+Banshee!Lydia. Lydia as a Siren/Mermaid as well as a banshee (or rather, all three are the same creature at different "stages").

Accidental Mob Boss Scott. Scott gets mistaken by the FBI for a criminal prodigy and he kinda runs with it because reasons. :)

BBC Merlin "Crossover"/AU. The Core Four (Scott, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia) are reincarnations of the original medieval Core Four (Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and Morgana).

"Bitten!Melissa AU". Canon divergence from Season 1, where Stiles wasn't able to get to Melissa in time when she went on that date with Peter, and he Bit her.

Dark Scott/Deucalion fic. After Season 5, Scott starts sleeping with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking some of his more traumatic memories involving his loved ones.

CSA!Survivor Scott. Rafael molested Scott, and everyone finds out because nogitusne. Scott still resents Rafael more for leaving him than for abusing him in the first place, but also still loves him - so he tries to protect his father from all his friends.

Boyd/Malia, bonding over their guilt about being responsible for their little sisters' deaths, and finding a new family in their pack (and each other).

bb!Scott and Stiles brushing up against the supernatural. "I've got a prompt for you, Can you write a story about Scott and Stiles as kids exploring/getting in trouble in Beacon Hills with a bit of supernatural throwed in because it's Beacon hills but they don't really realise it ?"

Sheriff Stilinski as a LEAP Officer. How that influences him being a police officer to such a crazy town as Beacon Hills, and how that's why he encouraged Stiles to become a detective/go the FBI route instead.

Expansions and elaborations below the cut.

1.) Mermaid/Siren+Banshee!Lydia. Lydia as a Siren/Mermaid as well as a banshee (or rather, all three are the same creature at different "stages").

All right, so we already know that many of the supernatural creatures and shapeshifters have multiple shapes - i.e. the werewolves have their largely human shape, their somewhat monstrous shape, and then some change into a wolf or coyote altogether. It's also mentioned that the kanima has another stage of development in which it has wings - and honestly, put wings on the kanima, you basically get a small dragon. We also see that most of the legends are heavily distorted, but with grains of truth to them, and sometimes the different legends get mixed up.

What if banshees are the same way?

We know she has psychic capabilities - which extend well beyond merely detecting people's deaths, as we see in the later seasons. We also see that her voice is her power, giving her powers far beyond what banshees have in legend...but coming awfully close to certain other legends. i.e. Lydia uses her voice to "call people's names" and draw people forward - almost like what sirens and other "water women" in myths (most typically associated with sound, singing, and seduction) also do.

Additionally, what was Lydia and Lorraine's favorite fairytale? The Little Mermaid.

This one, I never wrote because it was more of a headcanon or concept idea, rather than any actual plot or story. I might still incorporate this into another AU entirely. But tl;dr, banshees are just mermaids (and/or sirens) whilst on dry land, so along with being a banshee, Lydia is actually a mermaid.

2.) Accidental Mob Boss Scott. Scott gets mistaken by the FBI for a criminal prodigy and he kinda runs with it because reasons. :)

This one is actually still in the works with @liveandletrain, but it's still mostly a collection of ideas without much plot yet, and it was planned in 2017 but it's now 2018 2019, so it's on this list.

The gist of it is, take a look at all the mayhem in Beacon Hills from the perspective of the FBI. In particular, take a look at Scott McCall. There is all this violence and chaos - and Scott seems to be at the center of it, time and again. There seems to be a long history of violence and bad blood between the Hale and Argent families, for no discernible reason - and yet Scott swoops in and suddenly it gets resolved, with the descendants of those two families making peace with each other, and apparently even working together?

FBI eventually concludes that this must all be secret mob activity, and Scott is some kind of evil teenage prodigy that somehow managed to take over these two different mobs in high school. They start stalking the McCall Pack in an effort to figure this out - and now the pack has to balance preserving the secret of the supernatural, with keeping their own asses out of jail. Clearly, the answer is to actually pretend that they're a mob, without doing so in a way that creates evidence.

They...have a little too much fun pretending to be in a mob. If you don't believe me, I ask you to imagine asking Corey and Mason to be pretend mob henchmen.

3.) BBC Merlin "Crossover"/AU. The Core Four (Scott, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia) are reincarnations of the original medieval Core Four (Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and Morgana).

To be honest, I don't have much more thought behind this than that. I noticed some parallels and ran with them, and I might still make a gifset or something out of this. I just had this idea that everything we see in Beacon Hills is just a "dress rehearsal"/precursor to something far bigger and deeper, something that's going to change the world - a change that will be spearheaded by the original Core Four. But we don't see that yet, we just see what they're up to as kids just warming up for the real deal.

Scott and Arthur are both leaders who have to contend with a lot of warfare, lies, and manipulation, but try to rise above them -- instead striving for peace and diplomacy, though with mixed results. They will both battle if they have to, and their proficiency gives them the capability to end wars. But, while they sure always end fights, they never start them.

Stiles and Merlin are, of course, their best friends and confidantes...and the ones occasionally willing to do their "dirty work" so to speak. I had two ideas, one is that Stiles inherits Merlin's powerful magic...and the other that Stiles isn't magical at all/is no more powerful than any other given Emissary like Deaton. He's just a regular ol' Emissary, because magical power is not his power, what makes him particularly powerful. But things like a certain level of suspicion to counteract their leading friends' whole heartedness, and doing "under the table" work to supplement their friends' best efforts. The kind of magic Merlin had is not all that necessary or helpful in the modern era, but just about everything else about Merlin is, and Stiles has them in spades.

Allison and Guinevere are both beautiful women, but also warriors in their own right - and on top of that, both of them make weapons, too! Ironically, I originally paralleled Allison to Guinevere purely for them both being leaders (Allison as the Argent Matriarch, Guinevere as the Queen of Camelot), and for the fact they both forged weapons/made weapons. I then remembered they both had a relationship with the other leader/the king. XD

Lydia and Morgana can both, in their own ways, see the future. They both also had their early stories marked by people lying to them and manipulating them, and people constantly trying to use them. They both had a somewhat sororal relationship with "the king" (Lydia being somewhat sisterly to Scott, and Morgana being Arthur's half-sister) and to "the queen" (Lydia being Allison's best friend, and Morgana once being Guinevere's best friend).

4.) "Bitten!Melissa AU". Canon divergence from Season 1, where Stiles wasn't able to get to Melissa in time when she went on that date with Peter, and he Bit her.

I didn't really have a plot for this, it was just a neat idea. What would change about the ending of Season 1 if Melissa had also become a werewolf? And the rest of the show after it?

The most significant idea I had was that Scott, still believing Derek's claim that they have to kill the alpha who turned them, would realize this means they can't both be cured. In his desperation, he would likely finally cave in and go to the Argents - especially if he finally told Melissa everything, and she assumed that Derek's claims (and the limited conclusive evidence he presented) were exaggerated or unfounded.

The Argents would probably still be quite hostile to Scott and Melissa, but also a little more sympathetic if made to see them both as victims, neither of them willing werewolves and both seeking a cure. They wouldn't have one, but since most of the Argents at least try to stick to the Code, they wouldn't just murder the McCalls on the post.

...except for Kate, who they still don't know really DID murder the Hale pack, despite their innocence. >:)

5.) Dark Scott/Deucalion fic. After Season 5, Scott starts sleeping with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking some of his more traumatic memories involving his loved ones.

Slightly dark AU in which Scott desperately wants to get rid of certain memories - not of the people who he hates hurting him, but of the people he loved hurting him. Ranging from Derek's attacks on him to Allison hunting him down to Stiles' lashing, Scott's been hurt by the people he loves one too many times. Rather than try to do the healthy thing and address those traumas, he figures he might as well take a silver lining in being a werewolf, and manipulate memory - in this case, his own. Especially since he records a video diary of what happened or writes it down, so it's not like he's trying to pretend it never happened - he's only erasing the trauma itself.

Of course, it turns out an alpha can't take their own memory away, so he has to find another alpha to do it for him...and the only one willing to do this is Deucalion.

And he's not gonna do it for free.

6.) CSA!Survivor Scott. Rafael molested Scott, and everyone finds out because nogitusne. Scott still resents Rafael more for leaving him than for abusing him in the first place, but also still loves him - so he tries to protect his father from all his friends.

I ended up not writing this for my mental health/personal reasons, but I actually outlined this entire thing. The nogitsune, when it needs to buy itself some time, distracts everyone by revealing Stiles' long-standing suspicions about Rafael to everyone. Of course, it doesn't significantly change things at the time, save one way: Allison's last plan, made in the car with Derek and her dad on their way to Oak Creek, was to try to find evidence to get Rafael imprisoned for what he did to Scott, and to do so without having to tell Scott what they were doing.

And then she died, but Chris and Isaac are determined to carry out her last mission - even against Scott's wishes - and Derek, finally coming to terms with what Kate did to him, agrees to help. Scott insists that this is between him and his father, and it should be up to him to decide whether or not to forgive Raf or press charges, right? The only one who agrees with him is Lydia - though she argues if there are other victims, they should have the same right. So, Scott brokers a deal - if his friends find evidence that Raf ever hurt a single other kid, Scott would press charges to get the investigation rolling, but if they didn't, they let it drop.

Unfortunately for everyone, they never did find such evidence, nor are they willing to just drop it. They're a step away from just killing Raf to be safe, and Scott has no idea what to do...until someone reveals that this was Allison's last mission, and her effort to protect Scott, or at least get justice for him. Scott walks into the police station himself, after that, with not just an accusation, but video evidence - which it turns out he'd had the whole time, and held onto because he wanted to protect his dad.

7.) Boyd/Malia, bonding over their guilt about being responsible for their little sisters' deaths, and finding a new family in their pack (and each other).

Everyone lives AU, and also one of those premises without a plot. Mostly, I liked the idea of Boyd and Malia bonding because they both felt responsible for the deaths of their little sisters.

Malia doesn't know how Boyd can stand working at the ice rink she went missing in - until she realizes he has held onto that job despite all the supernatural-induced inconsistency due to the rink owners' guilt, and Boyd uses his position to make sure no creeps ever harm a child again. It's too late for him to save his own sister, but he can make sure there's never another case like that again.

Meanwhile, Malia never stops regularly visiting the crashed car where her mother and sister died, preserving the doll she leaves there in remembrance. It's with Boyd's support that she finally tells her dad the whole truth, and indeed he doesn't take it well at first. But he eventually comes to realize that it wasn't Malia's fault, how much she regrets it, and how she was the one taking care of their death site all these years. Boyd helps Malia make a new, proper roadside memorial/grave for her mom and sister.

8.) bb!Scott and Stiles brushing up against the supernatural. "I've got a prompt for you, Can you write a story about Scott and Stiles as kids exploring/getting in trouble in Beacon Hills with a bit of supernatural throwed in because it's Beacon hills but they don't really realise it ?"

This was a prompt, which I promptly lost and sadly am not getting back to because I don't even remember what the prompt was for/from in the first place. In retrospect, that means it probably wasn't an event? IDK

But basically, wolf!Talia's POV taking a relaxing stroll through the forest when she comes across a dog whose leash is tangled in a bush. It takes a bit of cowing to get the dog to hold still, but she's able to untangle the dog and release it, whereby it runs back towards two little boys who are clearly looking for a "Roxy", shouting around in the woods like that.

Boys and dog are reunited, though Talia is a little worried that two unsupervised boys made it this deep into the woods, and she realizes they must've given their parents the sleep. So, she gives a nice, theatrical growl, that scares the boys right back to their parents' sides where they belong.

All in a day's good work.

9.) Sheriff Stilinski as a LEAP Officer. How that influences him being a police officer to such a crazy town as Beacon Hills, and how that's why he encouraged Stiles to become a detective/go the FBI route instead.

This was more of a headcanon than any kind of plotbunny, and thus absent of plot, I'm not writing a dedicated fic for it. But the idea is that Sheriff Stilinski is a member of LEAP - formerly Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and nowadays Law Enforcement Action Partnership. Basically, it's a group of cops, judges, and other law enforcement officials who advocate for community based and less-/non-violent policing.

The group was originally founded by police officers who saw the War on Drugs as needlessly creating more violence and solving almost nothing in relation to drugs. They wanted to end drug prohibition, seeing it as a source of violence and a waste of police resources. They've since expanded to ..."improving police-community relations, reducing and finding alternatives to incarceration, improving access to harm reduction services, ending the War on Drugs, and global issues.".

So how is this relevant? Well, the focus on this kind of policing is about expanding public safety - and not on "justice"/arrest and incarceration. Community comes first, and arresting people is not nearly as important as reducing recidivism. In other words, it's a kind of policing which puts "help the people" first...and "catch the bad guys" last. This certainly goes against the typical image of policing, doesn't it? But while this does change law enforcement priority, both are necessary.

The fic was basically about the Sheriff telling Stiles that he'll make a great detective one day...which is exactly why he shouldn't be a cop. A cop is someone who sticks around in their community and focuses mostly on helping and protecting good guys. Analyzing messy situations, finding bad guys, and taking them down, that's not really a big part of police work - and ideally, the least amount of police work. He thinks Stiles should focus on being a detective, with someone like the FBI, where their entire job is hunting down bad guys (rather than protecting and serving the people).

Given how much Stiles has idealized himself as a beat cop, it's a tough conversation to have - but a necessary one, because putting someone who sees bad guys everyone into the metaphorical blue shirt is a recipe for police brutality. He thinks Stiles has great skills - he just wants to make sure those skills get put to use in the right place, and the streets ain't it.

[ofalltimc]

SO HERE’S A LITTLE META SOMETHING ABOUT QUI-GON JINN (or, why qui-gon would have been the perfect teacher for anakin)

‘CAUSE I’M ABOUT TO TELL A GOSH DARNED STORY

This is split into multiple parts:

the circumstances of anakin’s upbringing

the circumstances of qui-gon’s death and how that fucked everything up

qui-gon’s force-beliefs

qui-gon’s foray into love and subsequently the dark side

first up: the circumstances of anakin’s upbringing

So, Anakin Skywalker was born a slave on Tatooine. Yes? Cool. Know what this means? No? That’s aight, I’mma tell you. This means that he had a completely different upbringing than literally every other child in the Jedi Order. They were all taken from their families as babies and basically indoctrinated into this gigantic cult worshiping the Force but Anakin?? Nope. Homeslice grew up with his mum, grew up with an individuality and identity, likes and dislikes, etcetera, you get the drift.

Of course the kid’s gonna form attachments; they took him away from his family, they took him away from his home, his shitty home but still his home. And Qui-Gon respected the shit out of that. He sympathised with Shmi and he sympathised with Anakin for having to leave all that behind. He fully recognised that he was going to miss them, and that telling Anakin to let go of his earthly bonds or whatever wasn’t gonna do shit, because Anakin hadn’t been indoctrinated into the cult since infancy.

He knew that the kid was gonna need a different approach to training than the other padawans; he’d witnessed firsthand the ways that the kid preferred to work and learn, and hell yeah he was here for encouraging it because if you stifle a creative kid all you’re gonna do is foster frustration! Which! Is exactly! What happened!!!

So, yeah, from the get go, Qui-Gon Jinn knew damn well that Anakin would require a very particular brand of mentoring, and he was totally here for it! He gave him tiny pieces of advice, useful advice, that helped him during the pod race, reminded him to trust his instincts, and just!! He’s mentored three Jedi (not including Anakin and Yoda), and at only 60 years old that is some gosh darned doing, okay? He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to interact with Anakin. And that!! is so!! important!!

Additional note: Qui-Gon would Never insist that Anakin call him ‘master’. 

secondly: the circumstances of qui-gon’s death and how that fucked everything up (this one’s more just a personal peeve, not really a ‘qui-gon would’ve been great as anakin’s mentor’ and more of a ‘shit qui-gon you had o n e job’)

So, yeah, Qui-Gon said he’d take Anakin as his padawan without so much as a by-your-leave from his current padawan. His final words were literally him telling Obi Wan to train the boy. Like? That’s on him, fair enough, but his instinct was telling him that Anakin Needed to be trained and the council were so unimpressed so yeah, last wish, had to be done.

Thing was, though, what that did was plunge a guilty, grief-stricken Obi Wan, who had literally spent all of thirteen seconds with Anakin, into a working relationship with the kid, with no idea what he was doing and mostly just going off of ‘I’ve seen people do this I guess?’, which, as we all know, is 10/10 as a method of effectively working with children, let alone children who’re vastly different from the kids he grew up with.

Basically, Qui-Gon had the worst timing in the kriffing galaxy when it came to being impaled, and he probably should have phrased his dying words differently, maybe said, “make sure someone trains the boy” instead, rather than fucking over all the tiny future younglings massacred by a crying man with a scar on his face.

part three: qui-gon’s force beliefs

Y’all ready for this? Y’all better be ready for this.

Qui-Gon Jinn is a grey fucking Jedi. He’s notorious for doing exactly the opposite of what the council wants him to do. Why? Because he follows his gut, all the time, without fail. Does that sound like someone who represses the shit out of his emotions to the extent that they all come spilling out in a slaughter-fest? No, no it does not. Why? Because Qui-Gon Jinn does not follow the Republic’s Jedi Code. Rather, he follows the ORIGINAL Jedi Code:

Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.

See how that’s different? It’s actively telling the follower to experience their emotions and let all this chaos and naturally occurring shit just. happen! And to find peace within the chaos! It doesn’t tell them to ignore all emotion in favour of peace, or pretend it’s impossible to be ignorant in the face of knowledge, or force themselves to never ever feel passionate about anything.

No. It tells them to experience all of this freely, and to allow it to move through and around them, to become one with their emotions, one with their ignorance, one with their passion, and one with their chaos. And this is so important!

Because the thing about Anakin is that he was never indoctrinated into the cult the same way as everyone else! This means that when they were all taking Repression 101 he was baking his tiny lil’ ass off on a desert planet. An approach that actively embraces all the curveballs that life has to offer, and instead shows learners how to deal with that shit and find peace with it, would be!! so!! good!! for the kid!!

finally: qui-gon’s foray into love and subsequently the dark side

Yep. I said it. Qui-Gon was in love. Her name was Tahl and they grew up in the Order together, and they went their separate ways when she went off to be a Jedi on some other planet and he went off to be a Jedi on a different planet and they actually didn’t meet again for some time after that, but rest assured, the time they spent together as children was very precious to Qui-Gon.

When they were both masters though, they came back into contact and he was like ‘woah hot dang she grew up attractive oh no play it cool’ and she was like ‘hot dang that hair he fine as heckie’ and they kinda danced around it all for a long-ass time but they did a shit tonne of missions together and it was so!! pure!! and affectionate!! and he loved her so much!!

It was just. they were both Jedi so they couldn’t do anything about it because neither wanted to put the other in that position. So they kinda...secretly held hands and took full advantage of the fact that Tahl’s blindness meant it was cool to walk arm in arm through the archives. But yeah, alas, this is Lucasfilms we’re talking about so there’s no way that’s ending happily.

Basically, you know how Anakin had all those nightmares about Padmé? The ones where she was screaming and dying? Yeah, no, Qui-Gon had them about Tahl, while she was off on a mission on the other side of the galaxy. Naturally, he went after her, caught up with her, expressed his fears and concerns, and her response was to be like ‘you worry so much’ and then they pledged themselves to each other. Like, yo, that’s as close to marriage a Jedi can get without access to a lakeside veranda on a remote island.

So, against his better judgement, he left, because he trusted her and he was like ‘yea she got this she can kick my ass it’ll be fine’. Ding dong he was wrong. The nightmares didn’t stop, they just got different and weirdly specific, so he went after her again only this time!! she was a little more worse for wear. Long story short they were in a medical unit on a ship, him clutching her hand and her like, y’know, slowly dying and stuff, and the thing was, when she was dead, he knew who was responsible.

She’d been on this planet filled with a fucktonne of gang people and shit, so he went back there, and he :) slaughtered :) :) every :) last :)) member :) :) of that :) kriffing :) :) :) space gang :) :) :) I’m talking wholesale darkside massacre. And the only reason he didn’t kill the leader as well was because Tahl’s Force Presence begged him not to. So he walked away. And he moved on. A little darker, and a little more in tune with the Force, but he walked away and moved on.

So, yeah, Qui-Gon can relate to Anakin about Padmé. He can relate to being in love with someone when it’s against the Order. He can relate to keeping a relationship a secret. He can relate to being utterly terrified for the life of the one you love and not being able to tell anyone about it. And above all, he can relate to a grief so overwhelming, so #wrecking, and so utterly raw, that it leads to pure, unadulterated dark side.

tl;dr: Qui-Gon would’ve been the best fucking mentor for Anakin. Fight me.