#virtual star wars run

[gffa]

I just need a hug. A YouTuber I respected, Jessie Gender, tweeted that the Jedi deserved to end (though at least she had the decency to say it shouldn't have been in genocide). Ugh, it's hard to exist in fandom when everyone seems ready to judge the Jedi as cops and not a culture that palpatine eradicated.

Virtual hugs, anon. It's really hard to lose respect for a creator you once admired--and going to check out their tweet, oh, I see we're calling the Buddhist Christians again--and I try to be understanding, not a lot of people really know enough about non-Western dominant religions to realize the often xenophobic/imperialistic undertones to describing Buddhism as such (or my other favorite, calling the Buddhist-inspired religion a "cult"), as if Christianity is the default. At least they acknowledged that what happened was a genocide and didn't say it was their own fault/something they did. But here's my real advice, the only way I've found to make myself feel better after something like this: Go on a Jedi-positive spree. Don't vagueblog, that won't make you feel better in the long run, but address some of the things that frustrate you. Like, I would tweet out a, "Hey, you wanna see a list of all the times the Jedi said really nice things about Anakin?" or "Hey you wanna see a list of all the times the Jedi died to protect someone?" or "Hey you wanna see all the times the Jedi express emotion and said feelings were normal?" or "Hey you remember that time TCW explicitly showed us how the Jedi actually had no real power within the framework of the government? And we can see that they were were only there to better facilitate saving lives, because that's how you effect change on a galactic level, instead of idk charging people money to fly around the galaxy in ships and eat food?" Tweet out a series of George Lucas quotes about how the Jedi were right about stuff or how they were limited in Shitty Choice A or Shitty Choice B. This builds something positive, it makes it more fun to be around you and draw more people to you, and you will feel better. It sucks to lose respect for someone you liked, but just remember. No amount of fan opinions can touch what the movies and TCW and George Lucas' interviews, and ultimately it's still just Star Wars. We cannot live and die by a made up fictional story, I've tried and it sucks so much more than just shrugging my shoulders, saying to myself that someone has Bad Star Wars Takes, and sailing on off. Lots of hugs, anon, and I hope you can find comfort that there are still lots of us having fun over here in our Actually The Jedi Were Pretty Right About Everything corner. ^_~

[goosewriting]

Glad to hear requests are open! I just wanted to say I love your inquis!cal fics :D

I was wondering if you could write something with Cal? Lovesick Inquis!Cal hunting an in-denial-of-feelings-for-him Jedi!reader is always a favorite of mine. Literally just Cal pinning the reader down and insisting how they’d make such a great team if only reader would join him. Just anything really, being at his mercy- ugh.

Feel free to write it or not, I don’t mind, just figured I’d put it out there :)

Loth-cat and Mouse

summary: as reader escapes from an inquisitor, old sparks might reignite despite the danger.

relationship: Inquisitor Cal Kestis x gn!Jedi!reader

warnings: mentions of death and murder 

word count: 3.6k

A/N: top tier request anon, tysm! writing the whole force shenanigans was my favourite part tbh. i’ve been meaning to explore that aspect for so long, battle of the will and all, and i’ll definitely be doing it again! tell me what you think pls c: 

[all masterlists] 🪶 [star wars masterlist] 🪶 [ao3]

(english is not my first language. constructive criticism and grammar corrections are very appreciated!)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Living in hiding when the galaxy thinks you’re dead is easy. It comes with the privilege of being virtually invisible in a galaxy that seeks to oppress and exploit every living soul.

Ever since escaping the Clones turning on the Jedis as a Padawan, and the rise of the Empire, you’ve lived in hiding, as most of the surviving Jedis did. And for a long time, you were successful. That is, until an Inquisitor picked up your scent and started hunting you down.

This went on for two years, and you somehow managed to evade her, always being a step ahead. You only came face to face with the Inquisitor twice: the first time, when you looked the purplish skinned Mirialan in her yellow eyes for the first time, and the second when you knew what you had to do.

Sitting in the dusty booth of a run-down tavern somewhere in the Outer Rim, your shoulders slump forward as you remember how you had felt her life essence vanish through the Force like a cloud of spores disappearing, carried away by the wind. You knew you couldn’t get through with it with your own hands, so you rigged an old warehouse with so many explosives that not even the strongest Jedi Master would be able to escape. Using yourself as bait, standing by the entrance to the building, that was the last time you’d see her. Your plan worked, and the whole thing came down on her. So much so that it almost took you out as well, but you survived despite the injuries. You hope that in the eyes of the Force, you had freed her from her pain. Maybe somewhere deep inside she was thankful.

Or that was what you’d keep telling yourself to be able to sleep at night. 

It’s been a couple of months since then, and you’ve doubled your efforts at staying hidden, as you don’t think you can take another Inquisitor hunt. Not because you can’t win against them. You already did, and that’s the problem. When you first realised an Inquisitor was trailing you, you were afraid. But now, after defeating her, the thought of going out there and turning around the hunter and hunted roles suddenly seems… exhilarating. But that would make you no better than a Sith, would it? Your face contorts in discomfort as you can practically hear your Master’s disappointed voice at what has become of you.

“I thought I taught you better.”

You sigh. Yeah, you did. But you trained me to be a peacekeeper, not an outlaw. It’s a kill or get killed world out here. It probably always has been, but we were shielded from it, had a roof over our heads, clothes to wear and food on our plates. You smile bitterly to yourself, the hood of your cape casting a shadow over your face as you twirl a toothpick between your fingers. Who’d have thought that we had it better during the war than afterwards. 

Your motions come to a sudden halt and you involuntarily snap the thin piece of wood in two as you feel the air in the tavern change, turning impossibly cold. The constant chatter doesn’t stop though, the few customers currently in the tavern continue on unaware of the shift. 

Rising up to your feet quickly but without making a noise, you beeline towards the bar, turning a sharp corner into the kitchen and then towards the back exit you know of. You can hear some modulated voices back in the main room; Purge Troopers. And where there are black armoured troopers… you don’t need to look to know what else is there. 

Once out of view from the main area, you quicken your pace, exiting the place with one goal in mind: getting as far away as possible. With your mind reeling, you skilfully evade every person and droid in your way so as not to make a fuss or cause noise by something falling to the ground. Mentally, you go through every interaction from the last several weeks, trying to find where you did something careless that gave you away. But you’ve been so thorough with your recons, moving every few days, never staying in one place too long. 

How did they find me? 

This question echoes through your mind over and over as you take step after step. The destination of your brisk walk doesn’t really matter, you just need to put as much distance as possible between yourself and whatever hound they’ve sent after you. 

It isn’t until you suddenly feel your burning lungs and aching legs asking for a break that you realise how far you’ve walked, and at what speed. You ran all the way back to your hideout. Agh, stupid! you reprimand yourself, smacking your hand to your forehead. it must have been an automatic response to come to your current “safe spot”, but if they find you here, you wouldn’t be able to come back to retrieve your supplies. In the few days you’ve been here, you’ve collected several machinery parts that you were planning on selling, but that plan just went down the drain. So you pack up whatever you can carry, mentally saying goodbye to not only the place and everything you’re leaving behind, yet again, but also the potential money you could have made which you desperately needed. With a sigh and a mental promise to do better next time, you head out to the port. Not the nearest one, though; the troopers probably have that one surrounded and monitored. You’re going to the one two towns over. It will take a while to get there, but it’s the safer choice. 

The whole way there, you do your mental meditation exercises to keep your Force signature hidden. The familiarity of it also helps you calm down a little and recentre yourself. 

After what felt like half an eternity, you’re finally at the port, and you go to buy a ticket off the planet. You’re relieved that at first glance there don't seem to be any Stormtroopers doing patrols out here. There is a bit of a line at the ticket shop though, so you stay a little further back by some crates and equipment waiting to be loaded into the cargo ships. Hiding out of sight, you wait until you can approach the window directly. 

One by one you watch the people in the queue leave, and when there’s only one person left, you take a quick look around to make sure no Imperial has arrived. The coast is clear, and you take a step in that direction. Except that your boots remain stuck to the ground. All at once, you’re surrounded, no, enveloped in that cold, eerie aura from the tavern earlier, which holds you in place. You take a gulp of air much like a fish out of water, and you try to turn your head around when you hear a modulated chuckle behind you, but you’re frozen in place.

“Going to the port further away even though it cost you more time. Bold choice,” the modulated voice of a man says, and your heart feels like it’s about to leap out of your throat. 

This is it. They found me, you think to yourself, trying your hardest to slip your hand to your belt underneath your robe to reach your weapon, but to no avail.

“Don’t worry. All the troopers are probably still by the tavern searching the whole village,” he says, and you can feel yourself slowly being turned towards him. You were ready to spit in his face and curse him out, but the image before you catches you completely off-guard. While the red visor of his sleek helmet is practically unmistakable regarding his line of work, he threw on some sort of poncho to cover his armour. It’s almost comical, and were it not for the imminent danger you find yourself in, you probably would have laughed a bit.

“Everything has been so boring lately,” he continues, rolling his head back and to the side to make his point. Then, his visor locks onto your face, and he stays silent for a moment. “When I read what you did to the Eleventh Sister, though, I knew I had to come check you out for myself.”

“W-why,” you manage to croak out. His Force grip is starting to get tighter and it's getting harder for you to breathe.

He slightly shrugs, one of his shoulders leaning onto the big supply crate that shields you both from view. “As I said, I was bored. And you get a head start, so…” He pulls the poncho over his head, letting it fall down to the ground unceremoniously. “Entertain me.” 

As he turns on his heels, he finally lets go and you can fill your lungs again. You don't know what just happened, but you’re not about to waste this chance to escape, so you beeline to the ticket shop and buy your way off the planet. Before boarding the ship, you take one last look over your shoulder; the Inquisitor is nowhere to be seen. Or felt. 

From then on, a strange game of Loth-cat and mouse starts. You’d escape, the Inquisitor somehow following your trail, even though you took great care to stay anonymous. Only days after arriving at a new location, you’d find his Purge Troopers looking for you. Every time you thought you might be able to get a break and rest at one place a little longer, the Inquisitor would reach out in the Force, poking at you ever so slightly, just as a reminder that he’s still there. 

You’re exhausted.

People who aren’t Force-sensitive emit a certain aura, while those who are able to tap into and manipulate it, manifest in different ways. Most seem to have an extra set of long, immaterial limbs, able to scan their surroundings. Sometimes it’s like a flowy cape, fluttering around the person with grace; sometimes it’s more like thick and heavy vines, dragging themselves around and scratching everything with their thorns. 

Inquisitors have a very strong and rather aggressive presence in the Force, but you’ve never quite felt a signature as distinctly intense as the one currently hunting you. His whole essence feels like an icy mist, spreading quickly around him and seeping into every corner, looking for his victims. It starts out slow, unnoticeable at first, but by the time you realise what’s surrounding you, it’s too late. Once the victim is found, the mist solidifies into ice, sticking their feet to the ground, rendering them unable to move. The Inquisitor stretches out his arm in their direction, and the mist becomes more dense, constricting their airways, squeezing out every last drop of oxygen agonisingly slowly. 

At some point, his presence starts haunting you at night. In the few hours of restless sleep you allow yourself while on the run, you find him to be there more and more often. Worn down by how long the chase has been going on, your guard starts to fall. Suddenly you don’t dread it anymore, the cold shudders as you walk through a market, and the icy mist following you into your dreams. Not just his Force signature but his whole presence as a whole, it’s so strong, it’s almost intoxicating. The more he keeps finding you, the more you keep catching yourself almost looking for his presence.

Much to your surprise and not delight, you realise his manipulation game is working.

It doesn’t take much longer until you finally come face to face with the Inquisitor. You know it’s too late to escape him, and you don’t know if you can hold your own against him in your current state, but you have no choice.

As if the exhaustion wasn’t enough, you’re currently stuck in a tropical forest, and you can feel the dirt and debris after running through the thick vegetation sticking to you, a thin sheen of sweat on your skin. The only sound you hear is your ragged breathing and the sounds of the jungle. You know the Inquisitor is not far behind you, but he’s been moving surprisingly silently given his armour. More than ever, he feels like a predator. 

Arriving at a clearing in the forest, you stop. Deep in your gut you can feel it: it’s time. Whatever happens, only one of you will walk out of here. So, after taking a deep breath and wiping off your face with the back of your sleeve, you turn around. 

All this time, you’ve tried not to imagine what he looked like underneath his helmet, as you knew it would only humanise him and make it harder for you to fight the man. So when you’re met with a face instead of a red visor, you’re surprised. Whatever mental image you might have had of him, you were not expecting him to look as handsome and young as he did. There’s also a strange air of familiarity which you can’t place, but decide to ignore for the time being.

Sizing each other up from either side of the clearing, you merely stand there, looking at each other. He moves his hand and you instinctively reach for your sabre, but he casually adjusts his gloves, weapon stil sheathed.

“You know,” he says with a slight chuckle. “I only ever came after you because I recognised your name. I personally requested to pick up where the Eleventh Sister left off.” 

Your brows furrow at his confession, which feels very much misplaced. He talks like he’s expecting you to be flattered or honoured at his words.

You deny ever having seen him, and he seems a little dejected at that. Kneeling down, he picks a little blue flower from the shrubs, and takes a couple steps in your direction. Offering it to you, he calls you by a nickname that you haven’t heard in what feels like several lifetimes. 

That’s when you suddenly remember: you had met him once, on Coruscant, when Padawans from all over the galaxy would go to the temple and be shown the archives. You were from two different home planets, there was no reason for you to have ever crossed paths, yet fate would have you attending the tour through the archives on the same day. All Padawans got to spend some time together, mainly to train and spar with each other. You can’t really remember anyone else you met that day, and the events are pretty blurry as is, but you do distinctly remember a Padawan with wild copper hair and freckles that looked like the constellations the Jedi taught you about. You and him would steal glances at each other the whole day, until finally he approached you, offering you a little white flower he picked somewhere. Where exactly, you had no idea, given the lack of green spaces on the planet. 

“Cal. Cal Kestis,” you say as his name comes back to you, like it’s always been on the tip of your tongue, dormant. 

“Ah, so you do remember,” he smiles a little at that. You don’t take the flower from his hand though, so he flicks it away without a second thought.

”What did they do to you…” You shake your head in disbelief.

You mentally compare the sweet little boy with fiery hair that you had met that day, and try to superpose that image with the man now standing before you, and it’s just not possible. It’s not the same person any more. His eyes, once the colour of oceans and clear skies, now glow an angry yellow, his gaze piercing right through your soul.

Since coming face to face in the clearing, Cal’s presence in the Force has been as unmovable and strong as ever, so you had no choice but to mentally and emotionally shield yourself, like hiding behind a rock in a snowstorm, trying to avoid the relentless icy wind clawing at your exposed skin. But now that you know who he is, you’re certain there has to be something left, even if very deep within him. So you dig deep in your own heart for that short connection you had felt with him that day on Coruscant, and bring it back to the surface, holding onto it for dear life. You dig out the warmth, the safety, the certainty that those days used to have, using them as a shield to part the cold wind as you take step after step in the metaphorical snow towards Cal. 

Feeling the shift, Cal straightens up.

“What are you doing?” he questions.

You don’t answer immediately, holding his harsh gaze the best you can.

“I’m reaching out to you,” you say after a moment, the light of your Force finally strong enough to allow you to approach him without being knocked back by his icy aura. The dry leaves crunch under your feet as you take a step towards the Inquisitor.

To an outsider, this interaction would have looked like an intense staring contest. But if you allowed your dynamics in the Force to have an impact on the physical world, you two would have flattened the terrain around you both in an instant. 

During this battle of will and determination, which seems to go on forever, you shorten what little distance separates you from Cal. His whole body is tense, trying to keep his wits as you’re blinding him with your light. You wonder if there is a part in him that wants to give in, and that’s exactly what you’re trying to find within him. Stretching out your hand, you carefully cup his face. He flinches slightly in surprise, but doesn’t pull away.

“It’s not too late, Cal,” you say. Your voice is soft, contrasting the intensity in both your gazes. “Please come back.”

Now that you’re so close, you decide to drop the metaphorical shield you were holding up, exposing the warmth and joy from before to him. His icy wind almost knocks you back a couple of steps, but you let it wash over you. You inhale sharply as you let everything he’s throwing at you bounce off; his hate, his  anger, his pain. 

“Stop,” he demands almost breathlessly.

But you bring your other hand to his face too, holding him, as you cling onto the memory of your first meeting with him and try to emanate that light through his own shield wherever you find cracks. And you succeed, feeling how, for a split second, all his walls come crumbling down and all you’re left with is just a boy, scared and alone.

“Stop!” he yells, as his own hand reaches out this time, swatting yours away and harshly grabbing you by the throat. Pushing you back several steps until your back hits a tree, he holds you there, your own hands clawing at his wrists in an attempt to ease the pressure of his grip.

“Stop,” he repeats, much more collected this time. 

“You’re so deep in that dark cave, you forgot there’s an exit at all,” you say. “You don’t have to stay there, you know. Let me help you get back to the light.”

“Why would I want to leave?” He chuckles darkly. “Let me show you the way into the dark instead. There’s more here than you could ever know, so much power to be tapped into that you’re missing.”

He takes a moment to study your face, loosening his grip on you ever so slightly, which allows you to take a gulp of air. 

“Come with me,” he offers. ”You’ve already proven how powerful you are. Imagine how much more we could both accomplish if we joined forces.” 

“Me? Become like you?” You scoff. “I’d rather you kill me now.”

Cal hums, as if considering your suggestion for a moment. But he remains silent, with you still pinned to the tree. He doesn’t let go of you nor does he tighten his grip, leaving the next move to you instead. Your head spins, trying to figure out what to do.

He raises a brow at you, urging you to do or say something. You frown, conflicted.

“All this time I thought you were just playing a twisted game, coming after me until you got bored. And then you’d kill me. Now you’re trying to recruit me?”

“If I wanted you dead, you never would have even seen me coming,” he retorts with a bit of a snarl.  

Then he reaches out for the lightsabre at your belt, and one of your hands protectively grabs onto it before he can. Cal gives you a smug look as that’s exactly what he wanted, and placing his hand over yours, he guides your weapon up, pressing the unignited end into his ribcage. He’s essentially saying, ‘if you don’t want to come with me, you’ll have to kill me right now, right here.’

“Quite the conundrum we find ourselves in, huh,” he says after a moment, giving your hand a squeeze. “What’s stopping you?” 

“…Hope,” you answer rather unconvincingly, cringing at how corny it sounds.

He scoffs and lets go of your hand, which falls to your side still holding onto your weapon.

“Don’t worry, I can fix that.” 

Cal suddenly leans in, placing a lingering kiss on your cheek. 

“I’m looking forward to our next encounter,” he whispers into your ear, and a shudder runs down your spine. 

He lets go suddenly, your legs giving in, and you fall to the ground with a grunt as you take a couple deep breaths now that your airways aren’t constricted anymore.

As he walks away, Cal doesn’t turn back once. He picks up his helmet where he discarded it earlier, putting it on and disappearing amongst the trees.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A/N2: part 2 anyone? 👀 let me know how you’d like the story to unfold!

A/N3: the amount of times i’ve written reader getting choked by inq!cal…….. i think i need to unpack something there

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🐥 taglist: [link to join in my pinned post!] @dybynyght, @galaxtic-writings, @kalea-bane, @soka-writes-things, @padawancat97, @ivelostmyabilitytoeven, @alternatescififandomelover, @riddikulus-obsessions, @optimisticprime3, @starilicious, @lovelyygirl8, @cathyket, @wildefire, @ghostkestis, @reckoning-star

[whitegownsandflowercrowns]

The thing that’s really getting me sad is that hate won.

I know that a vague “hate” is not even Top 20 scariest things about a Trump presidency, but let’s say that we get the best possible outcome and he spends the next four years doing virtually nothing. That’ll be better than what a lot of us are anticipating, but it’ll still get me that at the end of the day, hate won.

That for seventy million Americans, none of it was a dealbreaker. “Grab em by the pussy […] when you’re a star, they let you do it” wasn’t a dealbreaker. Mocking Christine Blasey Ford wasn’t a dealbreaker. “There’s a floating island of garbage…I think it’s called Puerto Rico” Black people supposedly carving watermelons for Halloween, “they’re eating the dogs” none of that was a dealbreaker. Running a campaign based largely on transphobia wasn’t a dealbreaker. Mocking Serge Kovaleski’s disability wasn’t a dealbreaker. Hell, if none of that mattered, then saying that John McCain, who was disabled after experiencing torture as a prisoner of war, wasn’t a war hero should have mattered. But absolutely none of it was enough. I do believe that he could quite literally shoot someone in the middle of a crowded street and not lose a single vote.

It’s that knowledge that at the end of the day, we hate each other. That’s what’s been driving me up the wall. At the end of the day, people will support a vile man for cheaper groceries. At the end of the day, people will either decide that 20-something women are liars or that it doesn’t matter if they’re not.

It’s not like the writing hasn’t been on the wall for a while - the r word making a comeback, increased gender wars on social media, Andrew Tate radicalizing young men, a certain group of Christians getting offended over the Olympic opening ceremony, increased anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiment, increased homophobia and transphobia, but it’s just so disappointing to watch it all come to a head. It’s going to be cool to be cruel - I say that like it hasn’t always been, but it’s just going to keep getting worse.

Again, I know that this is nowhere near the worst possible outcome of a Trump presidency, but that’s what’s been shaking my core about America these past 24 hours. Absolutely none of it was a dealbreaker, the cruelty is the point. If you voted for him and you can’t understand why anyone is mad at you, why they’re saying they can’t be friends with you anymore or want nothing to do with you - read this again.

[animatedjen]

Jedi Survivor Photomode Tips: Portrait Lighting!

There are four lighting features that impact Survivor’s photomode: the environmental light, Cal's lightsaber, the exposure slider, and the three spotlights. Let's use them all 🔆

Environment

The environment/lighting teams at Respawn have designed incredible locations across all these different Star Wars planets. Pay attention to how the already-placed lights impact your portrait: I have a running shortlist of favorite locations that I often go back to when creating a specific look.

Environmental lighting also includes effects like fire particles, weapons, Merrin’s magick, etc. If you get your timing right, these can add extra color and visual interest to your photo.

Lightsaber

Cal’s lightsaber! It’s made of light! While everyone has their own color preferences (ginger saber supremacy) keep your color choice in mind when using the saber as a key light.

Bonus tip: Cal’s saber can also be used to help light NPCs 👀 Photomode allows you to toggle Cal’s visibility on and off, but the ambient glow from the saber will remain. It’s pretty easy to tell when I’m using this trick: just look for a bar-shaped catchlight in the character’s eyes.

Speaking of catchlights - they’re a great way to add life to your portrait. If the environmental light doesn’t hit the character’s eyes, I’ll often use the first spotlight as a key (main) light to try and create that reflection.

Spotlights

I’m often using spotlights in two ways, either intensifying the environmental light or pushing the image with stylized lighting. The first creates more interaction between the character and their surroundings, while the second adds drama and visual interest. My favorite portraits are often a mix of both.

Here’s a breakdown from a recent photo: the unlit photo (1), a yellow spotlight as a key (2), a red rim light that connects to the neon sign in the background (3), a green rim light for stylization and repeating color (4), and the final image (5)

Other spotlight tips: play with moving them closer/further away from your subject, along with the intensity of the light itself. Some colors (white, yellow) are more powerful than others (red, blue). If I can’t get the color I want from one light, I’ll place two in the same location and drop the intensity to blend them - blue and green make turquoise!

If you want to be a nerd like me (though I'm in this industry so it's kind of my job) study lighting that’s used in real life portraiture and cinematography. Techniques like short lighting, three point lighting, butterfly lighting, etc.

Exposure Slider

The exposure slider in photomode is a helpful option when the entire scene is darker/brighter than you’d like. It’s also a good way to isolate your subject from the background: drop the exposure down, then use spotlights to add light back to your subject. Note that the spotlight brightness is impacted by the exposure as well, so you’ll need to crank the spotlights up to compensate.

Photo editing

Survivor’s visuals have a beautiful dynamic range and photomode does a great job protecting its highlights and shadows, though that often means less contrast. So if it’s a favorite portrait, I’ll add some contrast back in and often push complementary color into the shadows (yay color theory!)

--

So I've been slowly writing notes for a full-fledged video tutorial and wanted to try a thread-style post in the meantime. Lighting is such an important part of photography, both IRL and virtual, but it's not the easiest tool to use. This is more theory than a practical how-to, but hopefully some of it is helpful?

If you made it all the way down here, you get... a turbo dog or something. Two turbo dogs! 🌭

[scuderiasundays]

a promise is a promise

summary: sliding into a stranger's dm's, nostalgia for your first date, and a promise sealed with a kiss + a little insta au at the end 💙

words: 1,071

a/n: my first time writing for mr. leclerc! thank you for the req, @headinthecloudssblog 🫶🏼 tagging @vamossainz55, @sainzcaleruega, @monzabee, @formulaforza, @thatsdemko, and @diorleclerc because i trust you all deeply. feedback is much appreciated as always. hugs and kisses!

Charles loved Adele and he sure wasn't shy about it. While the other racing drivers were hyping themselves up with rock, EDM, or rap, the Monegasque’s AirPods (which he often lost) were blaring “Someone Like You.” You, yourself, wondered how the powerful yet melancholy ballad could put him in the right headspace to drive at breathtaking speeds of up to 362 km/h. 

You were nothing short of euphoric when it was announced that she would be extending her exclusive residency in Las Vegas. It would be a dream come true if you could see her live during the weekend of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. However, a bitter reality crept in when you discovered the final show was scheduled for November 4, a mere two weeks before the two of you would arrive stateside. Charles would be racing at Interlagos, while you would be stuck at a clinical genetics conference in St Andrews.

“I was going to get us tickets to thank you for your service in the Great War!” You huffed as you watched Charles tie the laces of his Puma running shoes, visibly let down by the news. All of your friends thought the racing driver had used his F1 connections to get you those coveted floor seats, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. Your boyfriend had spent 18 hours in a virtual queue on one of his few days off, using multiple of his sim racing monitors to secure tickets to the Eras Tour. Arthur had mocked his older brother about how “whipped” he was, joking that he was relieved someone else’s screen time was as horrific as his own.

With a light kiss on your neck, Charles wrapped his arms around you from behind, his voice filled with affection. "It’s like this, ma chérie. I'm going for a run with Andrea," he whispered. As he headed towards the door, his shoulders slumped and his AirPods in, it became clear today's run would be more of a recovery run, a moment for him to recharge physically but more so emotionally.

Determined to bring Charles closer to his idol, you swiftly grabbed your phone from the kitchen island and opened Adele's Instagram profile. Sliding into someone's DMs had never been your style, let alone that of a Grammy-winning artist, but you figured there was nothing to lose.

"Hi, this is Y/N. I know it's unlikely that you'll ever see this, but I'm taking a leap of faith for my boyfriend Charles, who is undoubtedly your biggest fan. Our first date perfectly encapsulates his essence," you began typing, a wave of nostalgia washing over you. "He took me on the most gorgeous twilight yacht ride, accompanied by a meticulously curated playlist of his favorite songs. Upbeat songs like 'A Sky Full of Stars,' 'Pepas,' and 'Feel So Close' filled the air. But then, out of nowhere, a hauntingly beautiful piano melody began to play."

Pausing for a moment, a reminiscent smile graced your face as the memory came roaring back to life. "'Is this Adele?'" you had asked, a glass of rosé in your hand. Charles looked so at peace compared to the tense expression he sometimes wore during race weekends. He had offered you his blue Ferrari sweatshirt to ward off the evening chill and confirmed that it was indeed Adele. Charles shared that he, unlike most, found comfort in what he deemed “depressive music.”

Since that fateful evening, the British songstress' music had become an integral part of your relationship. It served as the soundtrack to your road trips, where you took turns belting ‘Rolling in the Deep.’ It sparked heated debates about whether Adele’s ‘Daydreamer’ or Sade’s ‘By Your Side’ should be your first dance song. It even led to late nights, downing espresso shots just so you could listen to her latest album the second it dropped.

You reached for your phone once again. "That night ended with Charles’ hand resting on my thigh as he drove me home to 'Make You Feel My Love.’ Your music has been the soundtrack to so many of our most intimate moments, and it would mean the world if you could find some time to perform for him," you typed, pouring your heart into the message. You added, "I know this is a long shot, but I..." before eagerly hitting the "Send" button. With a growing sense of accomplishment, you decided to run to the grocery store to pick up some fresh salmon for dinner.

Unable to keep a secret to save your life, you shared what you’d been up to with Charles. "You DM'd the queen? Je t'aime, ma belle, but I highly doubt she'll reply," he playfully teased, rolling his eyes as he wiped the dish you had just handed him.

"What if she does?" you retorted, a hint of hope in your voice. "You know how I treasure you so much I don’t even trust myself to take you on a hot lap? We’ll do it in Las Vegas if and only if Adele responds." His devilish Leclerc wink accompanied the mischievous remark, leaving you to wonder how this crazy turn of events would unfold.

Weeks passed, and with each passing day, the likelihood of a reply dwindled. Charles was away in Qatar when the doorbell unexpectedly rang. A courier stood before you, holding a grand bouquet of white roses along with a message card. Assuming it was from him, your hands trembled as you read the sign-off on the ivory white card. There it was, unmistakably etched in the most elegant script. Five letters. Adele.

You snatched the card eagerly and read it over countless times, overcome with disbelief. It turned out that Adele's devoted fan base had made her very much aware of Charles' fanboying. She expressed her delight and confirmed that she would be more than happy to sing a few songs for you over dinner so long as she could score some “cool mom points” and bring her son Angelo to the race.

Your hands trembled with sheer excitement as you shared the spectacular news with Charles. He blamed his nonexistent allergies as tears welled up in his eyes, but you saw right through his lies.

"So, you'll be taking me on that hot lap, Leclerc?" you grinned, blissed out seeing him so happy. "Bah oui, une promesse est une promesse," he replied, sealing his vow with a well-earned kiss.

﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

liked by charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc, and 61,616 others

yourusername: weekends with adele (and charles) 🎰🍸❤️

fan1: “it’s true that, after a bad day, if you listen to that, you cry. you don’t feel any better. but i like it. i like the mood of depressive music.” - chuck leclerc

charles_leclerc: i have the best girlfriend in the world! tu est simplement la meilleure ❤️

adele: she’s one of a kind! thank you for letting me bear witness to your love x

yourusername: you, sir, are the love of my life. thanks for tolerating my impulsivity!

fan2: i need a charles and adele collab and i need it NOW 😤

joris_trouche: he’ll never shut up about this

charles_leclerc: prepare to be sick of me! wait, you and @andferrari007 already are 🫣

scuderiaferrari: c² music challenge but adele songs only?

carlossainz55: why play when i don’t even stand a chance 🤨

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[rainofaugustsith]

These lines right here sum up why I feel FFXIV has much more superior, nuanced writing than the Star Wars franchise.

Star Wars has you believe that one side is right regardless of what they do, and the other side is so evil, rotten to the core in every way that their entire people, planets. culture, language, religion - everything - should be permanently erased if they can't be converted to an entirely different culture, language, and creed (And don't get me started on how they conveniently made the Sith alphabet - again considered terrabad - virtually identical to the Hebrew alphabet). It's a very black and white, dogmatic view that IMHO hearkens back to the evangelical belief that only one point of view gets to go to heaven, and if you don't believe that, resist converting and want to hang onto your identity, you're going to hell. And you're certainly going to hell if you point out anything questionable the other side has done.

What you discover in FFXIV is nuance.

Every single job can be used for good; every single job can be used for evil. The heroes of one story are the villains of another. Every heroic gesture comes with a very real price. Nobody is beyond reproach, and that includes the player character. Actions one person takes for the greater good can lead to devastating damage for others.

The "get back to nature" white mages rule a city-state where xenophobia rules the day and the elementals run a reign of terror. White magic executed without proper training can be fatal.

The black mages who congregate in a hall for the gods of the dead have an alliance among the marginalized tribes that spans all three city-states and saves Eorzea from calamity. Black magic executed without proper training can be fatal.

The Dark Knights dedicate themselves to protecting those who need their help, and teach that one's dark side isn't something to vanquish, but something to hear, acknowledge and make peace with.

The Dragoon story shows that one's archenemy can become one's ally - or consume them.

The fearsome reapers who treat with the dead are actually helping the downtrodden.

The community working hard to keep the peace and move forward in a productive way are ex-pirates.

And so on. Nobody is expected to forgive those who have wronged them. Atonement is seen as something that involves work on the part of the perpetrator, not the participation of the survivors. But atonement is there and in several cases characters do better.

Any thoughts that any group in Eorzea needs to be eliminated are eventually dispelled completely. Marginalization of various groups is something that eventually does need to be answered for, and is presented as a problem, not a necessity. When Eorzea finally marches on their nemesis, the Garlean Empire, it is on an aid mission, not conquest. There are no attempts to convert. Just to help.

Both Garlemald in Endwalker and Ziost in SWTOR deal with the issue of murderous possessed people. In SWTOR, the Republic - remember, our "good guys" - response with Saresh is to send an invading army to increase the hurt. In FFXIV, the Alliance's response is to send an army to help, with Scions striking out into the snow and into the smoldering ruins to rescue anyone they can.

If you asked me if I would live anywhere in a Star Wars universe, it would be an emphatic HELL NO. But FFXIV? I feel like they are at least striving for better, with common ground and peaceful co-existence, and everything is nuanced.

[vasquez-rocks]

in the spirit of "o'brien doesn't actually suffer the most, it's just that all his suffering takes place in special Suffering Episodes": a complete ranking of ds9 characters by how much they suffer

(including recurring guest stars but not villains. i don't care how much gul dukat suffers. he could get hit by a fucking bus for all i care!!) 1. kira nerys. undefeated galactic suffering champion. literally goes back in time to find out if her mom died in a concentration camp when she was a small child like she thought and somehow the answer she gets is, to her, EVEN WORSE THAN THAT. o'brien could never.

2. odo. lab experiment childhood, spends 5 seasons pining tragically for the station’s most eligible terrorist, seeks his family only to find out they're genocidal maniacs, every small innocent being he tries to parent either dies or runs away, he has to return to said family to end a war! odo suffers so much actually??

3. benjamin sisko. loses his wife, becomes an unwilling messiah, forced to leave his family (the most important thing), etc.

4. miles o'brien. ok fine sure he does suffer a lot. not like kira does tho!!

5. garak. most of his suffering is pre-show but that suffering is BAROQUE. and then daddy never tells him he loves him and he indirectly causes his mother’s death

6. nog. after 6 seasons of minimal suffering, our baby boy suffers a LOT

7. jake sisko. not counting "the visitor" (it was a different timeline!). if the show put Jake through any additional suffering, i would wail and cry. His primary sufferings are pre-show (mom's death) and end-of-show (dad is gone and can't say when he'll return), but they are significant. at least he has, and loves, a wonderful stepmom!

8. kassidy yates. SPEAKING OF. her primary suffering is going to jail for the standard federation prison sentence (6 months, which is also what garak got for attempted genocide!!!!!), but then also losing her beloved husband to the celestial temple like almost immediately after, which is kind of a lot

9. keiko o'brien. a lot of miles’ suffering is hers also, and also she gets possessed by a demon after spending the first few seasons trying to find a new fulfilling job despite her husband moving her, a botanist, to a barren space station on which all life withers

10. jadzia dax. happy-go-lucky sex worm who has never experienced a "problem" until gul dukat throws a death basketball at her at age 35, so idk it evens out

11. julian bashir. gets kidnapped a lot and has a backstory so angsty that it's hard to tell whether he's even technically the same person he once was. HOWEVER, he's a goofy lil sexual harasser which makes it very easy to overlook his suffering!

12. worf. virtually all of his suffering is his own fault and he universally responds to it by creating more suffering for his own perverse ends. however, he does get disgraced from his people (his fault), lose his wife (not his fault but also why was she the only person left on the station when she literally FLIES THE SHIP most of the time??), and refuses to ever have fun (his fault)

13. leeta. perky and happy. in a great marriage. loves her stepson! unionized her workplace! however she is not at the bottom of this list because she is (a) a child of the occupation and (b) has to put up with fuckin quark

14. ezri dax. contrary to her frequently expressed beliefs, many things are easy for ezri

15. quark. when he suffers it's hijinks

16. rom. rom's character development is entirely positive. he goes from being the put upon idiot brother to the self-actualized leader of his people who has a son who loves him and a beautiful wife. the worst thing that happens to him specifically is probably when he masturbates so hard he almost dies and even then the result is he becomes a hero to labor in both his world and ours. things go ludicrously well for him at every turn. he is the winner of ds9

[boinkingbattlemechs]

Highlander

The Highlander is one of the most well-known Star League Defense Force assault 'Mechs, serving with distinction for almost two centuries since first entering service in 2592. Initially designed as a dedicated city and installation defender, the original model featured a variety of weaponry along with fifteen and a half tons of ferro-fibrous armor, but perhaps its most useful asset were the three HildCo jump jets giving it a jumping range of 90 meters. Among the heaviest 'Mech designs to feature jump jets at the time, their original task was to allow the Highlander the ability to jump over inconvenient obstacles such as buildings and outpace other 'Mechs with a faster ground speed, but because of this increased mobility and its versatile weaponry the Highlander proved to be a capable fighter on any battlefield and within decades nearly every BattleMech regiment of the Regular and Royal Armies featured them. However it was during the design's initial trial runs that pilots began using these 'Mechs in what would infamously become known as the "Highlander Burial". Leaping into the air and landing directly on their enemy, a Highlander could literally drive a light 'Mech into the ground. So successful was this maneuver that the design team reengineered the legs to withstand repeated death-from-above attacks and turned what had been a desperation move into an art form, giving Highlander pilots an additional psychological edge.

(the above excellent video by @a-rebellious-waffle)

As with other Star League era designs the Highlander would suffer the loss of technology brought about by the Succession Wars, and when StarCorps' factory on Son Hoa was devastated towards the end of the Second Succession War the original HGN-732 became virtually extinct. An agreement between StarCorps and Hollis Incorporated to rebuild destroyed chassis from scratch using readily-available technology kept the line going until the mid-3030s when limited production was restarted by StarCorps on Son Hoa and Corey, producing barely a dozen new 'Mechs per year. These HGN-733 Highlanders were used in small numbers by the Capellan Confederation and Lyran Commonwealth, commonly as part of lances containing Exterminators, Victors, Grasshoppers and Catapults.

Unbeknownst to many, ComStar also maintained a large stock of Highlanders left over from the Star League, some of which they gifted to the Draconis Combine during the War of 3039. The appearance of so many seemingly rare 733s, along with a few 732s whose advanced technology managed to slip through ComStar screening, had a large impact on Lyran morale during that conflict. ComStar would also use the design in their own military forces, the Com Guards, and even during the Clan Invasion a few original 732s would take to the field as part of the Clans' fighting forces. The Northwind Highlanders especially favored this namesake BattleMech. In fact, during the Succession Wars, they were the only Inner Sphere army to keep a large number of them operational, along with ComStar. The Highlanders are especially skilled in delivering the famed Highlander Burial maneuver. By 3057 StarCorps' Son Hoa line was at full production, producing brand-new original-spec Highlanders for Lyran units of the Federated Commonwealth, just in time to take part in the FedCom Civil War. Highlanders would continue to be produced all the way through to the Jihad, where advanced variants fought both for and against the Word of Blake.

The Highlander carries a weapons mix that is more at home when fighting a ranged battle, but when the ranges close the Highlander has the right equipment for the job. The primary weapon is an M-7 Gauss rifle that is capable of stripping armor off of an enemy a ton at a time. The Gauss is backed up at long ranges by a Holly-20 LRM-20 launcher. For close range work, it carries two Harmon Starclass medium lasers and a Holly-6 SRM-6 launcher. Two tons of ammo for the gauss rifle, LRM and SRM launchers each provide good endurance while the use of CASE grants added protection. Low heat buildup from the weapons allows for a nearly continuous barrage without taxing the twelve heat sinks, though pilots must still exhibit caution.

[girlactionfigure]

The Heroic Nanny: Erzsebet Fajo

She saved the entire family

Erzsebet Fajo was a brave young babysitter who saved the lives of her employers – a family of four – during the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944.

Erzsebet Fajo was a Slovakian girl from a poor family who emigrated to Hungary by herself at age 13 to work as a nanny. She found employment with the Abonyis, a Jewish family in the small town of Bekescsaba. Parents Laszlo and Margit treasured Erzsebet as a member of the family, and she became like a big sister to their two children, Zsuzsanna and Ivan.

In 1941, the family moved to Budapest because of anti-Jewish persecution in Bekescsaba, and of course Erzsebet went with them. Despite the violent turmoil engulfing Europe, life in Hungary was relatively normal for the Abonyi family. Hungarian President Miklos Horthy had an alliance with Hitler’s Germany, but was reluctant to enforce Nazi decrees against the Jews. That reluctance, plus Horthy’s secret attempts to strike a deal with the Allies, led Germany to invade Hungary in March 1944.

The country was now run by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross party and the situation for Hungary’s Jews got very bad very quickly. All Jews from the moment of birth were required to wear a yellow star prominently displayed on their clothing. Erzsebet, who felt like a member of the Abonyi family, wanted to wear a star too even though she wasn’t Jewish. Instead, they sadly told her she’d have to leave their employment to save her own life – non-Jews weren’t allowed to work for Jews. The Abonyis knew their days were numbered. Ten year old Zsuzsanna tried to convince her parents to commit suicide rather than be separated and murdered. Of course they refused to consider such a drastic act and tried everything to get out of Hungary but they were trapped.

At that point, young Erzsebet stepped up to become the family’s savior. Zsuzsanna remembered, “How (could) she save (us)? She didn’t have any money. She didn’t have an independent life… It (was) very sweet, but it (had) no validity. But I was wrong to think that. When the siege of Budapest started (and) virtually every home was ruined and bombed down, she was in the streets trying to get false papers.”

Erzsebet visited the Abonyis every day, bringing them food as well as medicine and other essential goods. She took all their valuables and brought them to an aunt so they wouldn’t be plundered by the Nazis.

On October 15, 1944 Laszlo Abonyi was arrested at his home and taken to a deportation center, where he awaited transport to a brutal Nazi slave labor camp.

Determined to save him, Erzsebet boldly approached the Red Cross and somehow obtained a letter of protection that she used to get Laszlo released. She knew the Abonyis were not safe in their home, and not sure what to do she pleaded with a local priest for assistance and advice. He helped her get letters from the Vatican which made the family eligible to take shelter in a building in Budapest owned by the Apostolic Nuncio. The Abonyis sheltered there for a few weeks, until the facility was attacked by the Arrow Cross. Storm troopers forced all the Jews outside and prepared to shoot them on the banks of the Danube river. Somehow, in the chaos, Erzsebet helped all four Abonyis escape.

For the next two months, Erzsebet found hiding places for the Abonyis and obtained forged papers for them. She continued visiting each member of the family every day, even though they were all in different parts of Budapest. Finally Erzsebet found safe shelter for the family in a “White Cross Hospital” – an apartment building packed with bunk beds where families targeted by the Nazis were hiding out.

Hungary was liberated by the Soviet Union in January 1945 and the Abonyis were able to return to their apartment. After the war they legally adopted Erzsebet, making it official that she was a member of the Abonyi family. They sent her to school so she could get a good education, and left her a third of their estate. Zsuzsanna and her husband left Hungary following the failed revolution of 1956 and moved to the United States, where Zsuzsanna became a respected writer, professor and founder of the Holocaust Studies Program at the University of Texas. She maintained a close correspondence with her adopted sister until Erzsebet’s death in 1995.

Erzsebet Fajo was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in 1986. In her testimony, Zsuzsanna said, “Driven by the desire to save us, Erzsi defied the Germans. She saved us from death, saved my brother and me from becoming orphans and my parents from the worst anguish that can befall people – the loss of their children. It was her strength and heroism that gave us life, allowed us to grow up and eventually have children of our own.”

For her astonishing bravery in saving the life of an entire family, we honor Erzsebet Fajo as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[cantsayidont]

May (?) 1992. Few fictional universes (even Tolkien's) can rival the depth of lore found in the tabletop wargame BATTLETECH and its RPG spinoff MECHWARRIOR, which encompasses over a thousand years of absurdly detailed future history, and the rise, fall, and disintegration of an interstellar Star League into an array of warring feudal states. Until recently, a central feature of that universe was ComStar, the former Star League communications ministry, which reinvented itself as a quasi-religious mystic order, jealously guarding its virtual monopoly on the faster-than-light communications vital to interstellar trade and diplomacy. ComStar was headquartered on Earth, which it controlled as a Vatican-like independent micro-state. Ostensibly a neutral party that could be called upon to arbitrate disputes (as well as issuing the only universally accepted currency), they were secretly engaged in all manner of nefarious scheming schemery for about 200 years before falling into civil war.

The religious overtones of ComStar were never entirely convincing, being closely tied to the original idea that much of the advanced technology essential to the premise — faster-than-light travel, fusion power, and robotic "BattleMechs" armed with energy weapons — was no longer really understood, with surviving examples kept running over the centuries through jury-rigging and rote habit. The intent was to lend a medieval chivalric vibe to the game's mecha combat scenarios, which might have worked in books (BATTLETECH spawned dozens of prose novels and short stories), but wasn't really compatible with the conceits or commercial needs of the game, since new weapons, 'Mechs, and rules were what sold supplement books. So, the "LosTech" concept faded out fairly quickly (although BATTLETECH remains unusual in its preoccupation with technological infrastructure — not many sci-fi settings have detailed lists of which factories make a given type of fusion engine!), leaving ComStar's religious trappings feeling a bit out of place, as if your cellphone company started trying to describe your monthly charges as a tithe. (On second thought, let's not give them any ideas …)

[archonsoflove]

Ships included in order of appearance:

Tartaglia / Zhongli

Cyno / Tighnari

Alhaitham / Kaveh

Il Dottore / Pantalone

Zhongli / Reader

Tartaglia / Reader

This is a long one! I'll be updating it regularly as I read more that I enjoy ~

exodus 20:3: you shall have no other gods before me (Explicit)

Childe finds out that the alcohol in Liyue is a force to be reckoned with. It leads to much more than just a hangover.

ajax's adventures with Dog-Lizard (Fluff)

That’s got to be the weirdest looking dog Ajax has ever seen in his life.

after hours (Explicit)

A man is approaching him with a bundle of hardware, straps, and coiled ropes in his arms. He’s wearing a tailored suit — definitely expensive — but missing a tie, and his shirt is unbuttoned far enough for Zhongli to see a nasty set of scars that run across his chest.

He’s very attractive, a little intimidating, and not at all what he’d imagine an accountant would look like-

law and order (Explicit, ft. Neuvilette)

This can’t be the accountant, can it?

There seems to be more than meets the eye when it comes to the Chief Justice and the God of Contracts. A simple trip to Fontaine with Ajax for a vacation turns into something more than they both anticipated.

ceci n’est pas la perfection (Explicit)

After Zhongli asks Childe to marry him, Childe panics and runs away to Fontaine to sort out his feelings. Rejected and confused, Zhongli chases after him to try to understand why.

contractual obligation (Explicit, ft. Lumine)

“You drew up a contract for what?” Lumine stares at her lunchtime companions, jaw working, no further words coming out. When she’d received an invitation to lunch from Zhongli, she hadn’t expected much.

fishbowl:heaven (Suggestive, Angst)

Childe, a world-class professional runner, is reeling from a diagnosis with a terminal heart condition. Stuck in bed with a failing heart, he can’t run, travel, or do anything that gave him purpose before. His career and life appear to be over.

To help him adjust, the doctors prescribe Childe virtual reality therapy. He doesn’t expect much to come of it until he meets a mysterious fellow patient, Zhongli.

etched in stone (Explicit, Fluff, Slice of Life)

I Lie Awake In The Night Just To See Another Dawn (Explicit)

A trip through the ages as Zhongli and Childe learn what it means to love each other.

Childe has returned to Snezhnaya, Liyue has moved on from Osial's reawakening. But war on the borders lying between Fontaine and the land of ice looms ominously on the horizon. While war seems inevitable, and politics begin to shift, Zhongli knows he will follow Childe to the ends of the earth, even if it costs him the highest price.

old instincts die hard (Fluff, Hurt/Comfort)

Is the life of one mortal worth the death of a God?

After spending the greater part of his life all too used to the threat of a blade being drawn against him, Childe has learned not to trust a hand raised toward him, lest it seek to strike while his defenses are lowered. But now in a fresh relationship with Zhongli, he finds his old instincts standing in the way of enjoying something more with the man he's come to adore.

Childe's guide on what to do when your lover turns into a pint-sized dragon overnight (Fluff, Humour)

red thread (Explicit)

When Childe and Zhongli first began their relationship, Childe thought he was prepared for whatever Zhongli might throw at him. Draconic heats, Adepti courtship rituals, scales - he was ready for anything. However, waking up next to a tiny, chubby dragon was not something he thought he’d have to consider.

Childe's face burns. “Zhongli,” he hisses. “This is the theatrical performance you wanted me to attend?”

red heart, orange sun (Explicit, ABO dynamics)

wait, is this play about us? (Explicit)

Four occasions that make Childe’s heart race, for a variety of reasons.

dragonheart (Fluff, Implied MPreg)

Zhenyu's next best-selling light novel has finally arrived in Inazuma! Childe definitely was not expecting to star as the main protagonist when he picked up the new collection, though...

a wasp in every fig (Explicit)

A tsmok of the north meets a dragon of the east.

venus caelestis (Explicit, NSFW Art)

Zhongli tries something different, and Childe is a very, very good boy.

the heart beats in its cage (Explicit, Angst)

childe hasn't spoken to zhongli in 3 weeks, but through the misfortune of becoming afflicted by an aphrodisiac, he finds himself at zhongli's door in search of help

an age of gods and monsters (Mature)

“So, pretend I’m her. Just for the night, one night, you can have her back.” Childe curled his fingers into the front of Zhongli’s shirt. He hoped he sounded self-assured, not desperate.

my all (Explicit, Angst)

When Liyue faces an inevitable catastrophe, Childe finds himself back in the past to retrieve the Gnosis that Zhongli has lost. Perhaps if he returns to the present with it, both Liyue and its Archon can be saved.

tame the thunderclouds (Explicit)

Childe asks Zhongli for one last dinner before leaving Liyue. Zhongli accepts.

more espresso, less depresso (Fluff)

it is a privileged sight for zhongli, to bind the eleventh harbinger and force him to his knees.

set in stone (Explicit)

There's a quaint little coffee shop that catches Childe's eye as soon as soon as he arrives into town. The man that works inside is more exhilarating than any drink Childe has ever tasted.

promises and proposals (Explicit)

What do you do when you write about a certain six thousand year old consultant so much in your letters that it somehow convinces your entire family you're not only dating each other, but that you're also engaged?

lithic oath (Explicit, ABO dynamics)

Childe and Zhongli have been happily dating for nearly a year, and they’re just as in love as ever. Zhongli is perfectly satisfied with the state of their relationship, but an unexpected development between two of his closest friends spurs him to consider his future plans with Childe. And just maybe he’ll need to pick out a ring one of these days.

as the sun gazes upon the moon (Explicit)

Liyue Harbor is the last place on Teyvat that Ajax wanted to see a second time, but the Tsaritsa's orders are absolute.

Childe is lost to the abyss for a week.

calm my head (Explicit)

hook, line, and sinker (Explicit)

Zhongli wants to try something new, and Childe would simply agree to anything when he's caught between his thighs.

off the record (Explicit)

Childe once saw a glimpse of his nerdy Uni roommate Zhongli, and it was over for him. Cue the pining, the moping, the fucking around to forget the sight of those rock-hard abs hidden underneath those sweater vests. Just one problem: Zhongli thinks exactly the same.

stone endures, and the tide will always return (Explicit)

An important meeting is coming up. A last minute change radically alters Zhongli's plans.

the fox of feiyun slope (Explicit)

The cobblestones of Liyue Harbor have been replaced by asphalt, the buildings by sleek skyscrapers and storefronts. Rex Lapis is a figure in the history books, nothing more, and the Harbinger Tartaglia is barely more than a footnote in his long and storied legacy. No one believes in the old Archons anymore.

night time; tea leaves; good company (Explicit)

A certain fondness for a client was good; it made the job easier and the quality of the work more genuine. Zhongli had never once gotten attached. He didn’t expect this boy to be the first.

frame the wallflower (explicit)

Lonely nights are best spent over pots of tea in good company. In terms of tea, Zhongli already knows what he likes. In terms of company - he makes a discovery.

Childe, a young CEO of the multi-billion dollar company “Fatui”, is dealing with more inappropriate gestures and remarks in regards to him being single than he cares for. Zhongli, a consultant of the Wangsheng Funeral Home, is going through a financial crisis, with every possible liability hitting him at once.

wrapped up in pure gold (Fluff)

When ranting to each other over drinks one night, they come to the most absurd solution to both of their problems: pose Zhongli as Childe’s boyfriend and sugar baby, just until everything settles, of course. Childe has more than enough money to spare, Zhongli doesn’t mind helping a friend in need, and their arrangement is flawless. At least, it appears to be that way.

nodus tollens (Explicit)

Childe accidentally proposes to Zhongli. Zhongli accepts.

one of us dies tomorrow (Explicit, Angst)

In all his years in the Fatui, Childe has never had problems following through with his archon’s orders. That is, until The Tsaritsa sends him his final mission--to leave Snezhnaya and marry the Geo Archon, Rex Lapis.

swore to stone and spoken (Explicit, ABO dynamics)

Tomorrow, Tartaglia will take Rex Lapis's gnosis or die trying. Today, Childe gets a final chance to tell Zhongli how he feels. No misunderstandings, no betrayal, and no doubts.

erosion (Mature)

It's been some time since the whole "nearly destroying Liyue" thing. Zhongli has decided he wants their pair-bond to be mutual and asks Childe to mark him. Childe has an existential crisis.

slow embers (Fluff)

There are two things that make Childe who he is--one is his Archon, with her icy fingers and arctic voice and eyes that see into every part of him. The other, as it turns out, is Zhongli.

why does my baba call my teacher baobei? (Explicit, Fluff)

Childe returns. He and Zhongli go on a food tour.

“Guili… over here!” a gentle velvety voice rings through the huddle of parents greeting their children.

man i love fishing (Explicit, Comedy)

Guili perks up at the sound, screaming “dada” and drags Childe towards the most ethereal man he’s ever laid his eyes on.

before it winds down into memories (Explicit, Angst)

Childe’s disastrously down-bad for the MILF next door.

pick me up, take me home (Fluff, Angst)

Childe has his doubts, but Zhongli reminds him that he’s loved.

ganymede (Explicit, Comedy)

Zhongli and Childe finally reunite, but Zhongli didn't expect his beloved to arrive bearing injuries instead of a long-awaited embrace.

“Can we get a room with two beds for the night?” Zhongli asked.

phantom lines (Explicit, Fluff)

She looked through her book of reservations before furrowing her brow. “I’m sorry, gentleman, but the only room I have left is our Honeymoon Suite.”

some kind of resurrection (Explicit, Comedy)

In which Childe has insomnia, vandalizes public property and runs into a mysterious funeral consultant on his first night in Liyue.

between the raging tides (Explicit, Hurt/Comfort)

After overhearing a fascinating story about an obscure temple tucked into some corner of Liyue Harbor, Childe had only meant to have a little fun at Zhongli's expense; he'd earned at least that much after the Osial Incident. Unfortunately for Childe, his track record at outmaneuvering Zhongli isn't exactly stellar.

i wake with your memory over me (Explicit, Reincarnation)

“Isn’t this backwards, Morax?” There’s a mocking edge to Childe’s tone. “Since when do gods get on their knees?”

the white cicada society (Explicit)

Zhongli has lived, died, and remade himself eight times when he sees him again.

The murders aren’t limited to the one Bank. They’ve been trailing down the Liyue border, getting closer and closer to the city. The Tsaritsa has a new mission for him: to figure out who, or what is targeting Fatui forces.

divine intervention (Explicit)

Against his best wishes, Childe is forced to see Zhongli again at the morgue. It becomes clear that he’s going to need a guide, and Childe resolves to quash his pride, and their differences to request his help to navigate Liyue and solve the case.

jade without blemish (Explicit, Mutual Pining)

“The only thing that can counter the mark of an Abyss Lector is the essence of an archon,” Zhongli explains, not meeting Childe’s eyes.

a kiss to show my sincerity (Mature, Fluff)

The Emperor and Empress of Liyue were known throughout Teyvat as a loving and powerful couple. But behind closed doors, it was all an act. Needless to say, a certain Snezhnayan diplomat's trip to Liyue did not go as planned.

“Childe?” Zhongli walks over. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he croaks, pretending he didn’t think that Zhongli looked outrageously pretty in his clothes.

“Your face is red. Have you fallen ill?”

introspection (Fluff)

“No, no, no. I’m fine. I’m peachy. ” He says, like a liar.

"Ah... a lizard."

As far as stupid things that Childe has said through his life, this easily contended for the top position on the list.

between dreams and nightmares (Angst, Mutual Pining)

A dragon. This was a dragon. Which is arguably also a lizard.

What I Cannot Put into Words, I Offer You in the Weight of Gold (Angst, Pining, Fluff)

When the Abyss clings onto a person, it follows—and in this case, it follows Childe to his station in Liyue, leaving three of his companions with a puzzling missing person’s case and, for Zhongli, unresolved feelings that weigh on his old soul, alongside a series of strange dreams.

meteor shower (Explicit)

Childe processes just how different Rex Lapis, God of Contracts, and Zhongli, Wangsheng Funeral Consultant, really are. They coincide at the worst of times, and it does some truly awful things to his heart.

How would it feel to fall in love again? To be held, live in the present, and enjoy a mortal life?

Care to Learn More About Wangsheng Funeral Services? (Explicit, Comedy)

If only a God could ever experience such pleasures and luxuries. They are short-lived and not worth it. At least that's what Zhongli had thought until he truly tried it. But the past will always come back to hunt the God. Happiness truly is a luxury.

the autumn winds are sighing (Angst, SickFic, Fluff)

“Zhongli…” Childe whispered as quietly as he could, which wasn’t hard due to the shock of the situation. It figured that between getting married to an Archon, becoming immortal, and having to deal with three other Archons circling around their business that it would be Zhongli’s fully mortal employer that would really pull the rug out from underneath his feet. “Did you agree to let Hu Tao give a commercial for the funeral parlor at our wedding?”

It’s been two months since the storm, and Childe hasn’t seen Zhongli not even once, not since that fateful meeting with the Signora where the truth is finally unveiled.

the world is water (Explicit)

And what a fun little kick to the gut that is, the realization that not only had he been played by all sides, but he's also being tossed aside like trash now that his use had run its course.

Childe doesn't visit Zhongli until it's almost too late.

andante, andante (Fluff)

a cheating man's bouquet (Explicit)

higher education, falling in love, and genius invokation tcg. not necessarily in that order.

you're exactly what i need (Explicit)

a married man flirts with tighnari at the flower shop so cyno decides to put the man in his place the next day.

verdant304 (Explicit)

after sparring with Alhaitham, Tighnari tends to Cyno's bruises

After being pushed into a corner, Tighnari takes unsolicited advice from his university project partner Alhaitham and tries to sell lewd pictures of himself on the internet. That was the idea anyway, in practice he can't take a good picture to save his life.

a cure for denial (Explicit, ABO dynamics)

Luckily, his estranged roommate Cyno has a knack for taking really good pictures...

scientific curiosity (Explicit)

Tighnari asked for help dealing with his heat after being on suppressants for ten years. Cyno was more than willing to assist.

Led by the prospect of an exciting botanical discovery, Tighnari heads into the Avidya Forest and invites Cyno along. Little do they know just what kind of discoveries await them there.

i'll show you every version of yourself tonight (Explicit)

“When we have sex, you like to call me things,” Kaveh continues, trailing off into a whisper.

Alhaitham props his cheek on a hand, looking only slightly amused with where this is going. “What things?”

dancing in the refrigerator light at 2am (Explicit, Hurt/Comfort)

“Like… like, pretty– and such.” Kaveh’s pout deepens into a frown. “Do you mean it?”

tracing other people's poetry (Explicit)

The people of Sumeru are granted dreams, and Kaveh is given nightmares. Now, Alhaitham does whatever he can to help quiet down Kaveh's mind in any way he can.

Three or Four (Or Possibly Five) Easy Steps to Living Harmoniously With Your Roommate (Fluff, Comedy)

Alhaitham has yet to identify this feeling that resides in his chest, this heavy and all-consuming, unpredictable feeling, whenever Kaveh is involved. He wants to open himself up and crack his ribs into tiny chucks, to remove them from their places and peer inside his heart so that he may finally learn what lives here.

in a language he understands (Fluff, Angst)

Kaveh devises a plan to get Alhaitham to smile by being aggressively nice to the man (and also maybe if he makes Alhaitham happy, he can score a discount on his rent or something). Alhaitham thinks Kaveh ate some mind-altering mushrooms and is, understandably, confused and mildly afraid.

Kaveh used to think that Alhaitham had mastered the art of ignoring him. The man would remain unflappable as he continued to read his worn copy of The Origins of Enkanomiyan Language, even when Kaveh was a hair’s breadth away from shattering the windows of their house with his severity of pitch.

No amount of screaming, threats to throw things, or violently waving in front of him could get Alhaitham to pause in his thirst for knowledge. As it turns out, Alhaitham literally just turns his hearing aids off so he doesn’t have to listen to Kaveh.

Romantistique (Explicit, Fluff, Angst)

It’s for this exact reason that Kaveh has decided to learn Sumerian Sign Language.

ships in the night (Explicit)

As it turns out, the journey to falling in love is a long one.

between you and me, the universe slips by (Explicit)

Kaveh is tasked with securing the funding for Kshahrewar from the Acting Grand Sage. Things get complicated.

mortise & tenon (Explicit)

A month ago, Kaveh appeared, disrupting Alhaitham’s quiet life and became his roommate. In less than a week, Kaveh left the house in anger. When he returned, it was the night of Alhaitham’s birthday. A year later, Alhaitham will celebrate his birthday again. This is a story that takes place within the span of a year and a few months. A story where Kaveh finds a grandmother’s unfinished wish, completes it for her grandson, and finds love again.

forbidden fruits of knowledge (Explicit)

Beautiful, he wants to say, the word saccharine on the tip of his tongue. His initial assumptions are false—no marble pillar can shiver as beautifully as this miracle of flesh and muscles and tendons, wonderfully reactive. Kaveh wants to take him apart, unravel the threads of his relentless rationality until nothing remains of him but this humanity, all this softness that does not quite fit right with the rest of him.

Kaveh bites the inside of his cheek, his head full of images of all the possible positions a man can lie with another. It’s unsettling how vividly he can recall the pleasure of something he’s never done.

he talks the talk alright (Explicit)

He really should have known better than to use a suspicious knowledge capsule. Much less one called The Arts of Men: Advanced Techniques Vol. 1. What was he thinking?

Alhaitham tinkers with a pair of Akasha terminals. While Kaveh is away in the desert for a project, they use the devices to indulge a little.

discordant intervals (Mature)

the art of drowning (Explicit)

Dottore sulks during a celebratory banquet. In his enduring generosity, Pantalone offers him something to complain about—the threat of a good time.

After a gruesome mission, Dottore knows just what Pantalone needs. It goes without saying that relaxing is hardly the right word to describe the events that transpire.

exuvia (Explicit)

i am all your sweetest tunes (explicit)

His heat did not come around often and both of you took the opportunity to indulge in this fleeting time for as long as you could.

as gold as the ginko trees (Explicit, Plot Heavy)

Zhongli has been with many partners throughout the long years of his existence, humans and adepti and archons of all genders and backgrounds. But you...you’re unlike any he’s ever laid eyes on. He can’t get enough of the taste of your skin, or the way you blossom under his touch. It’s intoxicating.

Life at the monastery has been nothing but peaceful, in no small part due to the protective seal that keeps the village safe. When the shrine holding said seal is destroyed, panic sets in as the village is now in danger of any Archon war aftermath.

The people are desperate for protection, and when Morax makes an appearance in your tiny village, the people are ready to make a deal no matter the cost.

tricks of the trade (Explicit)

tastes like heaven (Explicit)

When an operation goes tits up and you have to flee, you find a handsome young man to help with your get away. When you discover the fact that this handsome young man is not only an enemy agent, but a Fatui Harbinger you find yourself in more danger than you ever could have expected.

Childe is the accomplished one, between the two of you. He’s the one with twenty-three restaurants spread out across Teyvat, sixteen Michelin stars to his name, and a reputation of being Masterchef Teyvat’s toughest judge, despite being the youngest.

All this, and it’s your warmth he’s lapping at like he’s never tasted anything like it.

[svt-sunnie]

✩°｡⋆ SUNNIE ; All Song Credits

taglist : @seolboba @allthings-fandoms @miyx-amour

SEVENTEEN

MANSAE *✍️ + prod (2015)

When I Grow Up * ✍️ (2015)

Pretty U * ✍️ (2016)

Say Yes * ✍️ (2016)

Love Letter * ✍️ + prod (2016)

Don’t listen in secret * ✍️ (2016)

Smile Flower * ✍️ (2016)

MY I * ✍️ (2017)

Hug * ✍️ + prod (2019)

247 * ✍️ (2019)

HOME;RUN * ✍️ + prod (2020)

Do Re Mi * ✍️ (2020)

Heaven’s Cloud * ✍️ + prod (2021)

Shadow * ✍️ (2022)

_WORLD * ✍️ + prod (2022)

F*ck My Life * ✍️ (2023)

Dust * ✍️ (2023)

Headliner * ✍️ (2023)

Cheers to youth * ✍️ (2024)

SOLO SONGS

sugarcoat * ✍️ + prod (2022)

love & war ft. BE’O * ✍️ + prod (2022)

siren * ✍️ + prod (2022)

2:16 am * ✍️ + prod (2022)

fantasies * ✍️ + prod (2022)

perfect 10 * ✍️ + prod (2022)

DIZZY * ✍️ (2024)

Find Myself * ✍️ (2024)

My Love * ✍️ + prod (2024)

LATE NIGHT * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Good, Bad, Ugly * ✍️ (2024)

Star (Chinese Ver) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Our Street * ✍️ + prod (2024)

In My Dreams * ✍️ (2024)

Welcome (To My World) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

HYPNOTIZED * ✍️ (2024)

VIRTUAL ANGEL * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Balloon (IN LOVE) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

SUNNIE * ✍️ + prod (2024)

TIPSY * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Our Island (Two Hearts) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Summer Romance * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Melody (Chinese Ver.) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

Beauty (Of It All) * ✍️ + prod (2024)

OTHER ARTISTS

plot twist - tws * ✍️ + prod (2024)

BFF - tws * ✍️ + prod (2024)

[itsclydebitches]

As usual I'm not saying anything new, but a comment @lazodiac left on another post of mine about Ruby's memorial helped me realize why I find that image frustrating. Putting aside everything in Volume 7 and 8, those debates about how RWBY is defining heroism and whether Ruby has lived up to those standards, even if I agreed with her every choice 100% I'd still have trouble swallowing that characterization.

Because of Ozpin.

I've talked a lot about how giving him the godly quest and personal motivations (curse + formerly married to Salem + dead kids + Maiden origins) severely undermines Ruby's position as the protagonist, but a side consequence of this is that every victory Ruby secures begs the question, "Why hasn't this happened before?" We're supposed to believe that a teenager almost no one knows said, "Please come together" after dropping the scariest shit imaginable—information that has canonically, consistently left characters broken with pessimism—and people just did that. The ships arrived, Vacuo is letting the refuges stay, people are mostly getting along despite Winter claiming otherwise, etc. It's already hard to swallow, but given that RWBY is fundamentally a show about that hope and shonen-esque inspiration, I could kinda buy it... If it weren't for the fact that Ruby apparently succeeded in thirty seconds where Ozpin failed over thousands of years.

The problem with Ozpin as a character is that he not only has the quest that should have gone to our protagonist, but he's had a staggeringly long time to make headway on it. We know thanks to WoR and Jinn that he was out there creating the Maidens, defending villages, waged a war, rejected being King, founded the huntsmen schools, created a secret group dedicated to fighting this war... and he was still met with unimaginable setbacks. People refuse to trust one another, his allies betray him, and Salem continually inches towards victory. That right there is a damn compelling setup. After so long and so much effort, how in the world will they finally make a difference by the end of the series? Is it simply a matter of minuscule progress over many more generations, or—as we expect from the show named RWBY—does Ruby Rose hold the key that will make all the difference?

But she doesn't! Ruby is in no way unique, except for in the ways that the story has come to ignore. It would make sense if Salem was introduced as an evolved grimm, or irrevocably grimm-esque due to her fall into the pool, and the world rallies behind Ruby because of her super duper rare silver eyes (best to get rid of the other characters who have them). They never had a weapon against Salem before, but now they do! Huzzah! All praise the chosen warrior who will deliver us from this evil! But obviously that didn't happen. There's no reason for the people to believe in her, especially when we compare Ruby's efforts to Ozpin's. Does the world know who she is? No, she's a virtual stranger. Do they know Ozpin? Yes, he's a renowned huntsmen and headmaster. Does Ruby tell people to trust each other in a way that's inspiring and reassuring? No, she leads with information that, again, consistently makes people give up for a long stretch of time and turn on one another. Does Ozpin? Yes, as a teacher he's specifically working to instill this message in each new generation of huntsmen. Is Ruby an inspiring martyr? Sort of, but she died falling off a magical bridge while everyone was too busy running for their lives to pay attention. Was Ozpin? Yes, he died in a crucial battle that the whole world learns about and responds to in a variety of different ways.

There's simply no persuasive reasoning here. Ruby inspires the world because she "has" to as the protagonist, not because that's in any way consistent with canon. This isn't a case of, "Oh, RWDE is upset that a woman is the hero." No, I'm upset that Ruby was cheated. She's supposed to be the star of the show! Give the girl a story that makes a lick of sense and allows the audience to feel like she's earned this moment of messiah-like devotion please. Ruby as a character deserves better than to make all those mistakes and then come out the other side successful only because her writers are retconning things like crazy behind the scene.

"Remember her message" is absurd when Ozpin has been preaching that exact message for multiple lifetimes. It's literally his goal and his primary motivation, something he's been working at for so long that you've GOT to do more to explain how Ruby managed to succeed in a matter of days.

Like, on a funnier note can you image wtf could be going through his head right now? "Oh, so I spend centuries doing everything within my power to bring humanity together, shouldering the backlash as people realize the secrets I keep, and then this kid keeps the exact same secret, looses two Relics, destroys an entire Kingdom that I helped BUILD... and the people start listening when she says to trust one another? Okay. Sure. I'm COMPLETELY cool about this. Hey, Oscar? How do you feel about screaming at the top of our lungs for the next three hours straight?"

[freesia-writes]

Chapter 33: Contentment

During the Clone Wars, the Bad Batch is tasked with a variety of missions across the galaxy. An unexpected addition to their team throws a wrench in the mix, particularly for Tech, who finds a particular connection with this disillusioned Padawan-turned-mechanic named Vel throughout the events in this action-adventure romance. COVER ART BY @zaana!!

Master List of Chapters

A gentle breeze ruffled the waves of Vel's hair across her face, blurring her vision of what lay before her. She knew there were plenty of planets that she'd never heard of, but how a place like this had remained off the radar, she didn't know. Bendego was relatively small, with geography that ranged from snowy peaks to verdant valleys covered with a plethora of flora and fauna of every possible shape, size, and color. There were rivers everywhere, running down from the mountains through lush forests and grassy plains, all the way to the sea where it joined the sparkling blue waves and disappeared into the horizon.

It had been an agricultural farming community for generations, made up of a variety of sentient species that were mostly human or humanoid in nature. They held a deep respect for their planet and lived in vibrant harmony with it, cultivating it and caring for it to the best of their abilities and appreciating the beauty and sustenance it produced. Technology was minimal, yet the towns scattered across its surface worked in diligent cooperation and always had precisely what they needed to enjoy a simple, fruitful life. There was a prevailing spirit of contentment and curiosity, propelled by the bountiful resources that seemed to evolve and change regularly.

Tech had not only thoroughly researched all of the options but had somehow communicated with local leaders to secure a variety of potential careers and regions on the planet that would be attractive for each member of his family. They'd arrived to a warm welcome and had spent a number of days exploring the entire planet, visiting towns and villages with different needs, environments, and structures. As Tech had predicted, there was a fitting place for everyone, and since the world was so much smaller than most they'd been to, it was a short flight even between villages on opposite sides of the planet. With the war coming to a sudden end and the complete uproar in the Core Worlds, there was plenty of military equipment that no one was paying attention to, so the cargo ship and handful of LA-ATs that came to Bendego with the clones weren't missed.

"What do you think?" Tech asked, coming to stand beside her, following her gaze. They were standing on a grassy knoll at the edge of a village, watching the sun dip below the mountains. It was an older star than the ones that illuminated many of the other planets they'd been on, resulting in a larger, more reddish glow when it kissed the horizon each day. The atmosphere here was also a little thicker, and clouds of virtually every color were always dappled across the sky, impossibly large and fluffy. Grassy hills rolled away from them in gentle curves until they reached the forest that nestled along the base of the mountains. A large river wove its way through it all, continuing past the village until it disappeared out of sight.

"This entire planet is incredibly beautiful," Vel breathed, tears springing to her eyes unbidden. From Corellia to Coruscant, she'd spent most of her time on industrial, urban, gray planets, yet her heart had always yearned for nature. She'd held it in her heart from childhood, soaking it up whenever she could, and now, on a world where there was nothing but vibrant life in all directions, she felt as though her chest were about to burst.

"It appears to have an emotional effect?" Tech observed, ending with a question in his tone to invite her to share. She brushed the backs of her hands across her eyes quickly, turning to him with a closed-mouth smile.

"Overwhelming joy," she identified. "Disbelief. Awe. Excitement. Contentment. A nagging, foreboding sense that this cannot possibly be real... And yet undeniable evidence all around me that yes, it actually is real."

"That is an impressive variety of feelings to experience simultaneously," he responded, stepping closer as some of his "research", namely an archaic romance novel, popped into his mind. He gently turned her back to face the view, snuggling his torso against her back and wrapping his arms around her waist. His armor was safely tucked away on the ship, and he'd even relinquished his lifelong hold on the black base layers in favor of a simple, cream-colored henley shirt and dark brown pants. The utility belt was a permanent fixture, however, containing a variety of pouches and a holster for his blaster. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and Vel relaxed her head against his cheek, heart thrilling as she caressed his forearms and relished his snug embrace.

"You are amazing," she murmured, feeling his chest swell a tiny bit at the praise. "I can't believe you found a place so perfect for everyone." She drifted off, considering all of the areas they had visited. They had talked about building a life together, but it had seemed hypothetical and distant. Now, the potential was staring them in the face, but neither had made any deliberate invitations or comments about it.

"I have something to show you," Tech said quietly, pressing a kiss to her hair as he pulled away, holding out his hand for her to take. They began a leisurely walk through the meadow, following a small path that looked as though it had been worn by the deer-like creatures that frequented the area. There was barely enough room for them to walk side by side without the soft grasses brushing their calves, but when the river came into view, it widened as it followed the curves of the bank. Passing into the trees now, the fading light was beginning to make it difficult to see.

The rushing water provided a soothing background hum to the sounds of the birds coming out for the night and the wind rustling through the tall trees. The ground was soft underfoot, and Vel's senses were delighted with the cool evening air, the scent of wood and earth, and the lushness of the forest all around. The warmth of Tech's hand around hers made it all that much better, and she gave his hand a squeeze of appreciation as they continued. He seemed to know where he was going, and this time she didn't question it, having been so enthralled with his stargazing surprise.

After another minute, a faint glow appeared, and Vel furrowed her brow, squinting a little in the dim light to better see what it was. Old habits stirred up a sense of fear in her, but as she took a deep breath and Tech cast a quick glance at her, she realized there was no need for that here. The dense trees opened up into a small clearing, where a quaint cottage came into view, warm light pouring from its windows and casting a golden glow all around. Lazy wisps of smoke drifted up from the stacked-stone chimney, dancing in the dusk until disappearing into the tree canopy.

Tech stopped at the foot of the stone stairs that led up to a small wooden porch wrapping around the front and side of the cottage. He turned to face Vel, taking both her hands in his, and met her gaze with a soulful expression in his amber eyes.

"I... apologize... if I have overstepped," he began, and her mind was racing as quickly as her heart was pounding. "But I took a calculated risk based on all the data I could consider." He swallowed, looking down and brushing his thumbs across her knuckles before continuing. "The villagers here are working to create a central ecological database. They have been compiling their information by hand. They expressed great interest when I suggested some methods to streamline the process and organize the material more efficiently."

Vel's eyes were wide, fixed on his with eager hope. It took all her patience to avoid blurting out questions that she knew he would soon get to. But she felt as though her entire life were about to fall into place. Finally.

"I immediately thought of your delight on Kashyyyk, and the way the geological cache and arboreal variety seemed to captivate you so... It brought you to life in a way that I have not yet seen anything else even come close to. I thought you might find great joy and lasting fulfillment in such an endeavor, and the comfort and location of this dwelling only solidified my inclination."

"Tech. What are you saying?" she asked, shaking inside as she smiled broadly at him.

"This is your home, if you wish to accept," he said finally, a softness in his eyes. "I believe you will be... happy... and that is my utmost priority."

"But..." Vel hesitated, considering a significant piece of missing information that brought her down from her euphoria for a moment. "Just... my home?" She shifted on her feet, tilting her head at him with the further questions remaining unspoken. A tiny smile danced at the corners of Tech's lips, and he heaved a great sigh.

"It would appear that this is the only living structure currently available in this area," he said slowly, slight twitches betraying his effort to keep a straight face.

"Tech..." she prodded, squeezing his hands and pulling him closer, arms now resting straight to where their hands met below their waists. "You're toying with me."

"I would never," he said flatly, biting his lip and dropping his eyes to the side. He seemed to be mulling something over. He took another deep breath and lifted his head back to hers, resolute now as he gazed into her eyes. Vel had been about to tease, but the intensity of his face stole the words from her mouth. His chin dropped a bit as he cast a glance to her lips, tilting his head slightly and leaning in to share an unfathomably tender kiss. He lingered for a moment before pulling away with a satisfied hum.

"Vel... While I have suspected it for quite some time, it is impossible to quantify and therefore entirely subjective in measure... It is also not at all within any realm of the purposes for which I was created and engineered, and yet it appears to be a human experience of which I am capable... Not only capable, but... assuredly entrenched. We are all starting over, in a way – crafting our lives from the basest elements. And while there are many factors that are both necessary and desirable, there is only one upon which I wish to build."

He gently dropped her hands from his own, moving instead to settle one on her hip and to affectionately caress the side of her face with the other. She closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds, leaning into his touch and committing his words to memory. It was as though she could hear what was coming, and she wanted to soak up every single moment of it.

"I love you," said Tech, voice suddenly quavering a tiny bit. "I am in love with you. I love almost everything about you."

Vel laughed, happy tears crowding her eyelashes again. "Almost? That's fair..." She felt her heart swell in her chest, completely enamored with his eternal factuality.

"Inaccuracy is not permissible simply for the sake of emotional effect," Tech murmured, bringing his forehead an inch lower, his nose nearly touching hers. "Therefore, considering the magnitude of both my commitment and connection to you, I would be most honored if you would allow me to make your provision, your safety, your fulfillment, and your happiness my utmost priority."

"I don't even know what you're asking, but that sounds fantastic," Vel giggled, her voice a broken whisper as a single tear escaped down her cheek, brushed away gently by his thumb. She looked up at him, enamored by the complete fullness of his presence. He was both intentional and vulnerable, leading and inviting.

"I am asking you to build a life with me, together in this home, upon the foundation of a mutual love we share for one another. That is, if it is something you hold–" Now it was her turn to kiss him, slipping her arms around his waist and pulling him against her as much as she could. She pressed a smiling kiss to his mouth, breathing heavily through her nose from the absolute thrill that was cascading over her.

"You have my whole heart, Tech," she said against his lips, her voice pitchy and breathless with emotion. She felt him smile against her as well, and his arms wrapped around her shoulders firmly, turning his head to the side to hold her close in a warm embrace. She could feel his heartbeat through his shirt, pressed against her own, and she cupped the back of his neck, caressing it with eager fingers. When they separated, cheeks flushed and eyes brimming with emotion, he gave her a small nod, taking her hand and leading her up the steps to the cottage. He touched the doorknob and paused, looking back to her.

"You didn't exactly say–"

"I love you!" she exclaimed, being unable to do anything else but laugh. She was in complete bliss, and the way his face reacted to her proclamation was yet another image she wanted to treasure forever. It was a mixture of relief and gratitude, affection and excitement, and finally settled into a simple, peaceful smile.

"Excellent. I believe you will enjoy what awaits us inside."

"I believe I will." 

reblog artwork by @vimse!

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[thevibraniumveterans]

STAR WARS — The Acolyte

EP 6 — Teach / Corrupt

MAIN THOUGHTS:

The Stranger has been no less mysterious than he was before, only raising more questions on Osha’s end than can be answered by the man himself. He doesn’t seem to be outright threatening her, so why does Osha make the decisions she make?

Sol still has a story he’s still not telling, and something tells me he might do that next episode, but we’ll see.

Spoilers in my thoughts below.

- Osha wakes, the camera following her body as she sits up. She is in a strange room with rock walls and a pool of water in the middle of it all. She lifts a corner of her shirt, to find her wound dressed and wrapped. There is even food by the pool, still warm and inviting. She takes a swig from the first bottle she picks up, after discerning that it is safe to ingest. She hears a faint chittering sound, and finds a very small animal on the ground. It runs away before she even gets to take a closer look at it.

- Osha rummages a bag of clothes — how it got there and who those clothes belong to is a mystery for now, perhaps it may have been here sister Mae’s, but we’re not certain — and puts those on before venturing outside. She is cautious; she does not know this place nor why she is here; she has a dagger for her safety. The camera pans out to reveal the waters around the island she’s on.

- TITLE CARD!!

- The planet, much less the island, she is on is unknown. How did she end up so far away from where she last fell?

- The camera focuses on a small family on tiny creatures, two parents and an offspring. Osha walks toward the waves in the background.

- Off in the near distance, several meters away from her, she watches the Stranger walk away. Osha’s face falls, resigned.

- On Khofar. A Jedi ship leaves, with Sol in the pilot’s seat. We know from last episode, Mae had taken Osha’s place and followed Sol on board. Funny how Sol is not aware of the switcheroo yet.

- Mae walks into the cockpit, and draws her dagger. Sol, still a bit in shock at recent events, tells Mae (he refers to “Osha”) to “take the wheel”. Somewhere else on the ship, Sol turns off the computer, slams his fist on the desk just once, collects his emotions, and turns the computer back on. He walks off.

- Back on the island, the Stranger goes about his day. Osha trails behind, perhaps out of curiosity. She tightly holds onto her weapon and approaches the Stranger, who has disrobed and taken a dip in the water. Perhaps Osha assumes that without his weapons, he might be vulnerable, but that seems like too juvenile an assumption to have of the person who killed her adopted family in one fell swoop.

- Osha notices that the Stranger had not come unprepared; his lightsaber rests nearby. Osha cautiously picks up the saber, when suddenly the Stranger speaks. Startled, Osha assumes a defensive pose, but does not switch on the saber. He compliments on her saber stance and comments on the fact that Osha likely did not keep a saber with her when she left the Order years ago. This feels like some backhanded comment that Osha does not care for, because this might be a way for the Stranger to get into her mind, something Yord had warned her of last episode. Nevertheless Osha tells the Stranger to not move.

- He does not listen; why would he? He gets out of the water, only wanting to put his clothes back on after his dip in the water. He asks Osha, who still points the saber away from her, whether “it’s honorable to kill” him when he is virtually weaponless. He is trying to get her to think about whether violence is justified during battle but premeditated attacks after the fact would make sense. Osha is silent, but does not change her stance. She backs away, saber out; the Stranger approaches.

- Osha wonders why he has brought her to this island, and asks, “Why not kill me?” It’s a valid question, he’s killed her friends without a second thought, so if she was among them, why did he make the decision to spare her life? He doesn’t reply to that question. Osha then asks whether he killed Sol or Mae, and the Stranger denies killing them. This is true. The Stranger curiously notes that she “ask about [Sol] first”. He notes without malice that Sol was Osha’s teacher; this is also true. The Stranger makes no move to reclaim his weapon, which is still pointed towards him. Now dressed, he just picks up his bag, and starts walking off, without a care in the world.

- In space, planetside. Mae is in the pilot’s seat, and the ship docks at its port. Sol walks into the pilot’s bay. Sol, still unaware that the person in front of him is not Osha, gives Mae a hug. This is awkward. Mae does not give away that she is not Osha, and a transmission comes through, only to fizzle out. The ship’s power switches off.

- In the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Vern speaks, then acknowledges Mog, another Jedi who has just walked in. He comes with news of Sol’s SOS message. Master Vern instructs to prepare a team to go to Khofar, Sol’s last known location.

- Back on the island. As they walk, Osha is still wary of the Stranger. She thinks he used to be a Jedi, a statement he does not dispute. Osha believes Sol will come to rescue her, but the Stranger highly doubts that. He dismissively tells her that she could either swim to the ship or wait until low-tide, then, seeing Osha without a choice either way, asks if she’s hungry. The Stranger is a disarming person, making statements that do not seem false. It is clear Osha has many questions, but the Stranger is no closer to giving her answers.

- Back on the Jedi ship, Mae looks around. After a while, she finds Pip, and resets him.

- On the island. Another closeup of the trio of small creatures. Do they represent an idea, a concept? Or are they just there as scenery? The Stranger returns to his abode, the same room Osha woke up in. She asks him about a comment he made earlier, “What did you mean my strength in the Force?” He makes an observation while stirring his food: “The Jedi teach there’s only one way to access the Force and if you don’t do it their way, it fades.” It’s like he’s just parroting her words, at this point. So it’s not so much an observation of his but a statement Osha has made on her own. He says, “But there is another way.” And continues, “Below the surface of consciousness are powerful emotions.” It’s just so off-putting to Osha that her kidnapper is just squatting in the middle of his room making food, and telling her there’s another way to approach the religion she was essentially brought up in. He goes on: “Anger. Fear. Loss. Desire.” Osha knows and states, that “That’s the path to the dark side.” Or so that was what she was taught. To the Stranger, it’s just a matter of “semantics.” He shrugs, it’s nothing to him. It’s just emotions a person has, and he accepts these emotions. The underlying question seems to be, like he asked Sol last episode, has Osha accepted that these emotions are also a part of her being too?

- She accuses the Stranger of killing her friends, listing Sol, Yord, and then Jecki; the Stranger does not dispute this, but asks her, “Why do you love people who can only go so far? Who can’t go as deep as you can?” He offers her food. She ignores this. She says she’s not Mae, which is true. This has been established early on. She states, “I’m not that easily corrupted.” And walks out.

- She walks out of the room to look across the waves. It is revealed that on her way out, she had grabbed the saber. The Stranger invites Osha to exact her revenge and kill him; after all, she is the one with the weapon, not him. He goes so far as to literally stand so that the hilt from which the blade would protrude is pointed right at his stomach. He dares Osha to turn the weapon on, knowing full well she won’t do it. She states that the Jedi don’t attack unarmed people. His rebuke? “Why do you still think of yourself as a Jedi?” It’s another valid question; she did leave the Order years ago, does that make her no longer a Jedi, and so, render her no longer bound to their rules? The tension rises, and Osha starts internally panicking. She maintains that she left the Order of her own volition, but the Stranger argues that the Jedi did not want her and so, “threw [her] away”. Osha vehemently denies this, but the Stranger circles back to the big question: “Then why aren’t you a Jedi?” Pained, she realizes, “Because I failed!” She ignites the saber, and puts it to the Stranger’s throat, and pushes him backward toward the wall. She pins him there, and stares at her hands, the same hands that ignited the red saber in anger, in pain. He says that his freedom was at the cost of losing everything. Osha backs away, and switches off the saber. She is confused.

- At the Temple, Mog notifies Vern that they are ready to depart. Elsewhere, in space, planetside, in the Jedi’s ship, Sol asks for Osha, and Mae responds, saying that she ran the diagnostics. He does not look at her, instead wondering, in his guilt, why he did not know of the “villain’s true intentions when [they] first met him on Olega?” Mae is cryptic, telling Sol in as few words as possible that his worldview is “clouded” through rose-tinted glasses - what we in this world call confirmation bias. “You see what you wanna see,” she says. Mae is out of sorts; she has to keep pretending to be her sister, to Sol. She states, “I had to lose a lot of myself in order to become a Jedi, even if I didn’t know it at the time.” This statement is in line with what the Stranger had told Osha earlier. She tells Sol that he can tell her what happened on Brendok, but at that moment, the ship powers up. She heads to the pilot’s bay, only to be stunned from behind. Turns out Sol knew it was Mae the whole time, and was just playing the part. He jumps to hyperspace mere seconds before Vern’s ship arrives. Nevertheless, she touches down on Khofar.

- Back on the island. The Stranger repairs his helmet. Osha sits on the other side of the room, bowl in hand. She wonders if he had treated Mae the same he is treating her now, but he admits to erring in his initial decisions. He says, “I thought she wanted more than just revenge. I thought she wanted what I want.” Osha wonders what that could be; the Stranger tells her, “The power of two.” She sees a scar on his back, and asks where he got it from. He tells her someone who “threw [him] away.” Osha realizes this was his Master, when the Stranger does not respond. Instead, he changes the subject and tells her about his helmet, compares it to the training helmet that all Jedi younglings use. He tells her to try it on, but Osha does not trust him in the slightest. The Stranger agrees, but notes that she should trust herself instead. Seeing no other option and nothing else to do, left to her own devices, she stares at the helmet.

- On Khofar. Hard cut to the crime scene from last episode, Jecki’s lifeless body lies in the dirt. Seems like Yord’s body also lies nearby. Master Vern and her entourage has arrived, and they through the scene, deeper into the woods. She can feel the carnage that had happened. And so can Mog, who describes the scene in few but accurate words. She states that the Jedi were all killed by a lightsaber (true, except for Yord). Mog thinks that “a powerful Jedi has fallen.” He’s way closer to the truth than he realizes.

- Back on Sol’s Jedi ship, Mae wakes up, only to realize she’s shackled to the bench she woke up on. She turns her head, only to see Sol. She wants to leave, and Sol says he would let her go, and find her sister, but only after they talk. He tells her he’s had 16 years to think of what he would say to her, so it looks like Mae has no choice but to listen.

- Back on the island, the helmet sits invitingly on the pedestal. Osha approaches it, and gingerly touches it. There is nobody else in the room with her. It’s just her, and the helmet. She runs her finger along a scar on the helmet, then picks it up, and puts it on. She breathes deeply, willing her breath to even out.