#I am even less comfortable with the idea of releasing it on a random alien planet

[championsandheroes]

Perhaps the cage for that rodent in Mass Effect Andromeda wasn't quite that small, but... still. Too small. Entirely unsuitable for that big chubby monstrosity. And it suffered the same fate as poor Boo II - nothing stimulating whatsoever in their cage. You can travel across galaxies but you can't give a hamster a wheel and something to dig in? Tshh.

Over at Patreon and society6 we also don’t engage in space-dog fights, Shepard. 

#champions and heroes #mass effect #mass effect 2 #mass effect andromeda #commander Shepard #the fish #who are not sleeping #Urz #some hapless krogan #Ryder #and that... yes let's call it a hamster #sure #it is absolutely not a hamster #but we can call it that #I am even less comfortable with the idea of releasing it on a random alien planet #who knows what consequences that could have? #it probably isn't pregnant #but look #it's pretty chunky #it could be #who knows what kind of damange it could do to the echo system? #it clearly eats alarming amounts

[chameleonspell]

some random iriel words i found

[I just found this in my drafts, must have been there a few years, as I don’t remember anything about it. From context, I gather it’s answers I wrote to some sort of horror-themed OC question meme. I used to do a lot of these for character development when I was writing HTDC, but rarely posted them in case I ended up wanting to use the content in the fic. Might as well post it now? I have no idea if anyone else likes reading this stuff, but lmk if you do, I no doubt have a ton more somewhere...]

They have a premonition that something terrible will happen to them. How do they handle the situation?

Iriel would carry on as normal, because he has anxiety, so that's a normal Loredas, tbh. Perhaps some breathing exercises, or carefully modulated Calm spells. If, however, the premonition is specific and prophetic-sounding enough to convince him it results from an external source and not his own brain, then that's a whole different nest of scribs. Because that means that someone is fucking with him, probably a Daedra, and Iriel has well-documented reservations about the trustworthiness of such things. What situation are they REALLY trying to engineer, and why?

Do they have a fear of the unknown and things they can’t explain?

Not nearly as much as some people. Iriel has enough known-fears to contend with that something being unknown gives it rather an advantage, at times. Besides, he's a scholar. Unknown things are inherently interesting, because then you can research them, and test hypotheses! Sometimes to the point of almost contracting vampirism, because you can't resist touching weird-looking corpses.

What is the most disturbing thing they’ve ever seen?

I had to think about this one, because pitching Iriel through Morrowind involved subjecting him to a lot of disturbing things. Sixth House stuff is obviously designed to be body-horror nightmarish, and Ire's particular terror of skeletons meant that ancestral tombs were always going to be a trial. In terms of character turning points, though, I'm gonna say Rotheran was the worst thing he'd ever seen, the most upsetting. Because it wasn't just the slavery, or the sadistic games, or the Daedra worship, or the illusion-magic mind control (though that was all bad enough!). It was the dark things about himself, about his psychology and attitude to other people, that he believed he saw magnified and reflected there, triggering a spiral into self-loathing and despair, and the events of the next several chapters! Which... sounds really depressing, but was ultimately useful, in a gotta-lance-the-poison-filled-abscess-before-you-can-clean-and-heal-it kind of way.

What would they do if they witnessed an alien ship crash landing?

I like how this sort of question highlights the differences of the TES setting. Cosmology, f'rinstance, is rather a different affair. Space travel is occasionally a thing in the lore, but their "space" isn't the same as ours. The appearance of strange crafts from out of the air filled with unidentifiable creatures wouldn't imply "aliens!!!" to someone from Tamriel, but probably something more like: "oh shit what have the Telvanni made NOW?" or "please no more portals spewing horrors from another Daedric realm-o'-the-week, i am so very tired."

If they were a ghost, what methods would they use to haunt someone?

"If". lol. Iriel spends a fair amount of HTDC baaaaasically turning into a ghost, yeah? Insubstantial, invisible, losing all grasp on the material realm. And yet, he utterly fails to use his powers to prank people! Shani and Bodu agree that this is a tragic waste of ghostly powers.

Actually, this is another one where TES sensibilities might differ from ours. In Tamriel, ghosts are a well-documented spiritual phenomenon - the result of a lapse in burial rites, or, in the case of Dunmer, the successful product of them. Haunted houses tend to be places full of actual screaming spectres, rather than strange, poltergeist activity. Floating objects and suchlike would be more readily explained by a mage's mischievous telekinesis than the restless dead.

Anyway, to return to your question, a house haunted by Iriel is largely identical to one in which he is actually living. Either way, you may see little hard evidence of his presence, yet sometimes experience odd, herbal smells; indistinct, yet melancholic apparitions in the corner of your eye, and soft sighs just on the edge of hearing. You may also find your books mysteriously disappearing, and reappearing with the pages tea-stained and dog-eared.

How much would they have to be offered to live in a haunted house for a month?

"Let me get this straight. You're offering me an empty house... yes, fine, there are ghosts, but no real people... an empty house that everyone else is frightened to go near, so I'd have complete peace and quiet-- yes, yes, apart from the ghosts, I mean-- ...and I can do whatever I like there, and... let me be absolutely clear about this... YOU want to pay ME?"

("Hmm? Oh yes, it's been fine. Honestly, the dead are far less trouble than people think, especially the non-embodied kind. Simple wards and charms will do adequately if you want to keep them contained, but really, a little attention is all most of them want. They like it when I sing to them, actually. I did get one dreadful screamer, and had to spend a night traipsing around the cellar, scrabbling in the dirt until I found where the poor thing had been buried, but ever since I got the gravedigger to move him somewhere more comfortable, he's been a total sweetheart. Which is more than you can say for dogs or babies or Bosmer housemates, honestly.")

Could they stay calm lost in the woods all night by themselves?

It's funny... I'm sure Iriel's pa used to take him camping in the woods as a kid, and I'm sure Ire spent the entire time freaking out about weird noises, and generally having an unhappy, stressful time. And yet, upon being released from prison as an adult, he immediately vanished into the woods, and voluntarily spent multiple days and nights alone out there. (Three reasons: fear of civilisation, dissociation and drugs.)

After that, even once the drugs wore off, he'd become accustomed to wild places, and grown to feel safer there than in cities, where the dangers around him were harder to predict and quantify. Iriel is, in some ways, very unimaginative. His mind will create possible scenarios based on his experiences, but it won't invent implausible monsters from nothing, and he finds darkness comforting, rather than a source of horror. The woods at night are a good deal more peaceful and friendly than many other places he's spent time.

#oc memes #question memes

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 117: The Zoo

“Can you blame ‘em?”

Every Western story about a return journey can be compared to The Odyssey if you squint hard enough, and while Steven’s rescue of Greg has already featured poor decisions and a cyclops, The Zoo is our most obvious reference point to a trial of Odysseus: in this case, the Lotus Eaters. 

Does it make sense that such a small population could genetically reproduce this long? Let alone that distinct races would still be a thing in this inevitably incestuous family tree spanning millennia? Does it make sense that everyone here is roughly the same age, with barely any old people or children? Or that they’re speaking English, a language thousands of years younger than the last human abducted for the Zoo before Greg? Of course not, this is a nonsensical system. But if the choice was eleven minutes going over hyper-realistic minutia of how this system works (most likely, these folks are divided into small packs and we’re just seeing one of many groups) versus an interesting fable about free will and the conflict between hedonism and responsibility, I’m good ignoring the massive leaps required for the Zoo to hold logical water.

A thorny ethical question presents itself here: if the Zoomans are eternally happy and safe, to the point where they don’t understand the concept of “hurt,” is it such a bad thing that they lack free will? To us, freedom is such an obviously good thing that its value is taken as a given, but all choice does here is make the Zoomans unhappy for the first time since an incident long ago enough to be the stuff of legend. This is a group of people whose culture predates Ancient Greece and is still going strong, outlasting any human civilization that’s ever existed on Earth by an impossibly huge degree, so what right do we have to think our moral code is superior to theirs?

The Zoo is dystopia by way of Dora the Explorer, a perfect prison that has babied its inhabitants for so many lifespans that they can’t even fathom disrupting the system. A friendly voice tells them what actions to take to have fun (Smell the flowers! Go to bed! Swiper, no swiping!) and the Zoomans obey without hesitation; they are essentially to humans what modern dogs are to wolves, a domesticated and perpetually juvenile version of the original model. But they certainly aren’t a different species in that way (dogs diverged from wolves genetically tens of thousands of years ago, rather than a paltry 5,000); we see that the Zoomans are quickly capable of making choice when the idea is planted, but they choose to listen to the little voice. Is it ethical to give them the information to make a more informed choice? My gut says yes, but that’s based on a moral code developed by a society that, like English, is much younger than Zooman society.

The second question that arises from the first is the morality of Pink Diamond’s actions. From a Gem perspective, it’s a no-brainer: free will isn’t a societal good to them, so even if Earth wasn’t destroyed as originally planned when the Zoo was built, bringing people to a paradise whose only cost is freedom is an obvious win. This matters a lot for Blue Diamond, who’s still patronizing in her “saving” of Greg but clearly means well by her own alien metrics of good and bad. And in that way, on first viewing, Pink’s behavior becomes far less ambiguous than “evil alien kidnaps humans.” If she’s anything like Blue, she considered it a favor, and that alone characterizes her more than anything else we know at this point.

In retrospect, the Zoo is more clearly a half-measure taken when Pink was trying and failing to stop the colonization she began. This conflict wasn’t short, and it’s great to see evidence of Pink trying smaller ways to help humans before realizing that more drastic actions were necessary, rather than her just jumping straight to full revolution. The fact that the Zoo is still a thing after her permanent shift to Rose Quartz, however, is one of many indicators of Pink’s childish selfishness. She didn’t release the humans she abducted, just as she didn’t think of how her faked murder might have more violent consequences than a freed Earth. I call the selfishness childish because it comes not from malice, but seemingly not knowing any better. This is the self-centeredness of somebody who’s never had any reason to not be self-centered, which doesn’t absolve the harm she causes, but makes her more interesting than a true monster.

While the Gem perspective is clear, Steven provides an ardent opposition to the concept of paradise without choice. At no point is he tempted by a life free of worries, valuing his ties to an existing life despite its many warts. And while Greg shows a few hints of falling for the Lotus Eater trap in his more relaxed attitude towards captivity, it’s crucial that his support of Steven trumps the comfort of this new reality; an entire episode about Greg measuring an easy life versus his son’s happiness, while in keeping from the weird shitty version of Greg we met in House Guest, would’ve been ruinous to his actual character. He’s still chill, and encourages Steven to chill as well for his own well-being, but never goes further in trying to stay at the Zoo; we even know that he tried to escape before Steven arrived.

While their long-awaited reunion is sweet, my favorite Steven'n’Greg moment is the realization that amethysts will likely arrive in response to pain. Steven’s insistence that Greg hit him comes from both impatience and the knowledge that he can take a punch, but Tom Scharpling perfectly captures how insane this sounds to Greg. Even though he’s physically weaker than his superhumanly powerful son, Greg’s willing to get hurt in his kid’s place. And still, Steven hesitates, because neither of these people wants to hit the other despite the circumstances. Finally, after Steven’s punch sends Greg flying, I appreciate his idea to try punching him again; to me, it’s representative of how much Steven thinks of his dad, because he just assumes this middle aged dude is tough enough to shrug off such a blow.

The two lead Zooman representatives sorta blend together, but I think that’s the point: in a society where conformity is the only option, everyone’s bound to act similarly. They’re both portrayed well enough to avoid boring tropes associated with characters like this (we don’t get airy hippies or droning disciples): Cristina Vee’s Jay-Ten and Lamar Abrams’s Wy-Six are delightfully dopey and just a little bit self-superior when things they find obvious are a mystery to our heroes. Vee doubles as the Little Voice, which is correctly played without a hint of menace, and while Abrams has already proven himself as Buck Dewey, I’m impressed by his ability to play a fully different character just as well (he’s also Garbanzo, who also sounds distinct, but he only says his own name so there’s not much room to measure differences).

While I have no idea whether the pun is intentional, I am all about these people raised beyond the stars being spacier than our more grounded Earthlings. Still, their one-note nature means that my favorite Zooman moments are actually Steven’s reactions to them. His quick decision to escape after being told to do “the bits” bit is low key hilarious, as is his bewilderment at their tiny splashes. These aren’t people that are going to make jokes or clever observations on their own, at least in a way that can match what their terrestrial counterparts can accomplish, but at least I never feel bored with the routine in a way that detracts from the episode.

In contrast to the mundane hedonism of daily life, the Choosening is just the sort of cultish jargon that one might expect from a society like this, and I love the familiarity implied in Greg’s world-weary comment that there’s always a catch with this sort of thing. We have no way of knowing how arbitrary the Choosening is, but considering Greg gets chosen Choosened right after arriving, it certainly seems random. While arranged marriage is obviously a thing on Earth as well, the power dynamics on the Zoo are more akin to forced marriage. But even this is colored by an earthly glimpse at an alien culture, because we don’t have any societies with an all-powerful overclass and a genuinely content and cared-for underclass. Is it really forced marriage if the parties involved are happy about it? Even if this is due to them being happy about everything that happens in this society? Are they really capable of true happiness when they’ve experienced no alternate emotions?

This is where the theme of choice versus happiness comes to a head, and it’s so important that we don’t get a tidy ending where free will is presented as a liberating alternative to a peaceful life of following orders. Choices allow for more meaningful happiness, but can lead to sadness as well; while this might seem obvious, I’m always down for children’s media explaining why negative emotions can be okay sometimes (see: Inside Out) and that a life free of pain isn’t necessarily good. It would be disingenuous for real choice to be presented without backlash to a society without free will, and we don’t even get to see how the situation resolves in the original series.

The amethysts march in to help, and Michaela Dietz wonderfully captures gruff warriors helping with emotional wounds. But we end the episode with the Zoomans in turmoil, abandoned by our heroes without a second thought. Based on how the system works, all it takes to reject the Little Voice is just deciding not to listen, and it hadn’t been done before because the Zoomans wanted to listen; again, it’s a tricky situation, because perhaps they do have free will and have chosen obedience. .

As in the last few episodes, we get a cliffhanger ending, but The Zoo bounces back from Gem Heist by having an actual complete story within the chapter. Steven and Greg make a meaningful impact on the Zoomans, but whether it’s for better or worse is up in the air. Our heroes gain the option to eat lotuses in peace for the rest of their days, but choose freedom instead. And they reinforce their bond by sticking together through it all. Now they just have to escape a space station crawling with Gems and find their missing friends and fly home, and that will be all!

Future Vision!

The Zoomans finally return in Steven Universe Future, where their utopia has been expanded to include the Famethyst and Holly Blue. They may be running the station, but they choose to live the way they always have. They’re also petty as hell, which is an excellent development for their passive society.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

While I appreciate the moral questions prompted by The Zoo, and enjoy the episode itself, it’s not quite something that I’d say I love. There’s nothing I find wrong with it, but it lacks a certain amount of oomph that might make it worthy to stand alongside the likes of Alone at Sea or Maximum Capacity in my rankings; this is a high concept episode that has decent character work, but ratio of focus on concept to character doesn’t align with what I love about Steven Universe.

It’s weird to put it in the same category as Gem Heist, because I like The Zoo a lot more, but this is what I get for not having way too many categories. Enh, I can live with it.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

#the zoo #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[katiekat1321]

The Master and The God (part 9)

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 

A/N: In the Last Chapter... You met with a cosmic entity named Infinity who has asked you to help prevent a Universe changing event that is coming.

You walked up to Loki’s door, still wondering if your choice was right. Was it fair to Loki? Not really, I’m essentially a parasite feeding off his seidr now. But Infinity said this would make things better and I think it’s fair to assume a cosmic entity knows what she is talking about. You thought to yourself, then again, she could have just said that to manipulate me into agreeing. Infinity’s goal is to make sure the universe is safe; she probably would have said anything to get me to agree. Y/n, what have you gotten yourself into?

You heard one of the guards clear his throat and you realized you had been lost in thought in front Loki’s door for at least a few minutes. You smiled awkwardly and went to knock on the door but heard a something crash into the wall by the door. You jumped back a bit and looked at the guard, expecting him to rush in and see if everything was okay.

He just shrugged and said, “He’s been in a mood since you left. Yelling and breaking things.”

You nodded and knocked on the door. You could hear the soft thud of something being dropped to the floor and a cold “Enter,” from Loki.

Loki saw you peek around the door, a little scared of being hit by a projectile. He took a deep breath before greeting you, “Y/n?”

“I’m back,” you said as you walked in and set your cane down next to what was a dresser when you left, but now all the drawers were missing and broken, and the clothes were everywhere. “What happened in here? It looks like a tornado rip this place apart!”

Loki gave you a once over like he could tell something was different about you already. “It’s fine, just,” Loki paused for a minute. He tried look like he was searching for the right words, but you could feel the lie on the tip of his tongue before he said it, “a little, how do you say it on Midgard? Cabin fever?”

You nodded, that was probably not a lie. It was more of a half-truth. Loki was tired of being under house arrest and stuck in here, but that was not why he destroyed his room. You waved a hand around the room and everything repaired itself. “How about a little prison break then? Maybe a change of location will make continuing our earlier conversation a bit easier?” You offered.

Loki raised an eye brow but agreed nonetheless. He sat down in a chair and gestured for you to sit in the one facing him. You sat down in front of him and immediately allowed your astral form to be released from your physical form. You looked to Loki but knew he couldn’t see you. You put a hand on his cheek and watched him jump slightly in surprise before you moved your hand to his forehead and pushed his astral form out.

“Fancy meeting you here stranger,” you said before waving a hand over his body and floating towards the door and Loki followed. “Where shall we go? And just so you don’t think to try something I put a spell on you. If you leave the palace grounds, you’ll be shocked and forced back into your body. It’s not very comfortable. The Ancient One would use that on us in training.”

“The sun recently set, I know a of a small balcony off Odin’s private library that is great for viewing the night sky,” Loki offered. As soon as you nodded Loki headed off, leading you there. You breezed past countless empty rooms, up a few stairwells, and shelves of books in the library before reaching Odin’s private collection of books. You saw Loki go out the glass doors leading to the balcony, but one section of books caught your eye. You stopped to read the spines of the books and translated the runes. They were about Midgard’s history.

You pulled the first one off the shelf, flipped it open, and saw a picture of Master Agamotto. The caption under it explained that he was a master of magic known as the mystic arts and taught many disciples. It also noted that he was entrusted with the time stone and placed it in the necklace he is often pictured wearing.

You stared at the picture of Master Agamotto and tried to work through that this all meant. Odin had kept Earth’s history of the Mystic Arts existence a secret from the people of Asgard. He himself knew the history and it seemed Frigga did as well but destroyed all other books on the subject. That was some extreme censorship. Is it to make Asgardians feel stronger? You wondered, I want to believe Odin is a good person, was it to protect us from something? But from what?

You were lost in thought, trying to figure out what Odin’s intentions were when you heard Loki right behind you. “Y/n, what are you looking at?”

You slammed the book shut and put it back on the shelf, hoping that didn’t make enough noise to raise suspicion that someone had snuck into the library. Before you could make up a response Loki continued speaking, “It’s not actually a blank book you know. It only appears that way to people less powerful than Odin. Mother once told me only she and Odin could read any of these books.”

“Oh, um,” You weren’t sure how to reply to that, but if you wanted Loki to be truthful to you about everything leading up to the Battle of New York you should be truthful to him too. “They’re supposed to be blank? I was looking at a picture of the Agamotto, the founder of the Masters of the Mystic Arts.”

“You can actually read it?” Loki asked incredulously.

You nodded, worried you had messed up again today and this would only upset him more. His eyes lit up a little as he pulled another thin book off the shelf at random, opened it to page, and held it out to you, “What does this say?”

You leaned in a little closer and translated the first paragraph. “Something about Dark Elves and the Ether returning one day.”

Loki closed the book and looked confused as he read the spine again. “This book is supposed to be about the final battle of Bor and the Dark Elves. We were taught that Bor killed every last one of the Dark Elves and destroyed the Ether on Svartalfheim.”

You took the book from Loki and put it back on the shelf from where he had grabbed it. “It seems that Odin has censored your history and kept the real records hidden away in this private collection.”

“Why?” Loki asked quietly. You knew the question wasn’t directed to you, you expected Loki didn’t realize he even said it out loud. It was more of an internal pondering.

“I think I know why actually, but I need to talk to Frigga more about it before I say anything more.” You replied and turned towards the door to the balcony, “Let’s just go outside and talk. The fresh air will do you good.” Loki agreed without protest and followed you outside.

Loki sat on the stone railing, legs dangling over the edge. You followed suit, sitting with a small gap between the two of you. “I still don’t know where to start.” Loki said softly.

“You can start wherever you want to. I wasn’t here when any of this happened so tell me your side of the story. I’m not sitting here with a negative image of you already.” You told him.

Loki scoffed, “How can you not have a negative image of me? I helped an army of aliens attack your planet in exchange for the promise of being named its king!”

You placed and hand on his. Loki’s eyes widened and he glanced at you in his peripheral. “I am not holding that against you. I never did. I’ve spent all my time at Kamar-Taj studying Asgard. I know your past and I know what Midgardian Norse Mythology says of you. I also know Frigga speaks of you with so much love and that she still has faith that you will do great things. Your mistakes don’t have to define you. I want to help you Loki.”

“Okay, I’ll being where I think everything started to fall apart, the day that Thor was supposed to be crowned king,” Loki said, turning toward you slightly, “I felt that Thor was not suited for the throne. He was too foolhardy and just wanted to fight and win glory. He didn’t really care about the people’s well-being. I didn’t feel it was fair for Odin to dismiss my claims to the throne so blatantly so I allowed a diversion to prevent the coronation from proceeding. I snuck a message out to Jotunheim and told them to send a couple warriors to reclaim the Casket of Ancient Winters. I hated the Jotuns, and I still do, but they were the easiest of Asgard’s enemies to trick. They were desperate and never fully recovered after they were cut off from the rest of the realms so I knew they would be willing to accept an anonyms message offering to help them; I knew they wouldn’t succeed and the Destroyer would kill them. I planned this all as a harmless trick to stop the coronation, to ensure that the date would get pushed back and I would have more time to talk to Odin and convince him Thor wasn’t worthy of the throne. Then Thor decided to go to Jotunheim to fight them. I admit I might have supported the idea, but I didn’t think Thor would be so quick to agree. I told a guard where we were going and to send Father after us after we left so that Thor would be punished and we would end up dead.”

You made a small sound of surprise, but Loki noticed and paused his story. He looked to you and asked what happened. “It’s nothing, you just finally called Odin your father.”

Loki looked away and you were worried he was going to stop talking and close up again but to your surprise he started speaking again, “Anyway, I was touched by one of the Jotuns and turned blue rather than getting frost burn so I knew something was wrong, after Thor was banished I spoke to Odin about it and that’s when he told me that I was not his son, but would have been the crown prince of the creatures I grew up being taught to hate.”

“That would be enough to fuck anyone up,” you commented.

Loki seemed amused by your response, “Your Midgardian simplicity refreshing as always Lady Y/n.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” you questioned.

“Nothing negative, darling,” Loki defended himself, “The brashness of your replies is quite amusing. It’s so unapologetically honest. It’s very different from most people here and rather endearing,” you blushed in response so Loki changed the subject, “anyway after that Odin fell into an Odinsleep and being the only heir left on Asgard, I became the acting King. I wanted to finish the Jotuns off like they should have been hundreds of years ago, but now, looking back on my emotions, I realize that I was also wanting to erase my true past. I wanted to cut any and all ties I could have to them so I formulated a plan to sabotage them and elevate myself to the strong hero status Thor held. For my plan to work I knew I would need to keep Thor away on Midgard so I lied to him, telling him father died and though I was king, he would have to remain banished. Then I went to Laufey, claiming I wanted to betray Asgard, but as you know it was just a ploy to kill him, which was obviously successful,” Loki’s words trailed off.

“And then Thor returned,” you offered.

This seemed to refocus Loki’s mind, “Yes, Thor returned and stopped me from fully destroying Jotunheim by destroying the Bifrost and I fell from the bridge. Odin could have saved me, but he didn’t, and I fell to my doom.”

You could hear his throat tightening as he neared the end of his sentence so you tried to urge him to continue, “And then what happened?”

“It’s getting rather late isn’t it?” Loki said, ignoring your question entirely, “I think we should turn in for the night and continue this conversation another day.”

You knew what Loki was trying to do, he was trying to get out of continuing this conversation. He only shared what you already knew, but you appreciated the fact that he was willing to open up, even this much. “That’s okay, we can continue tomorrow. Thank you, Loki,” you said and held a hand up to his face, making him disappear and rejoin his physical form back in his room. Before you returned to your body as well you took one last glance at the shelves in Odin’s private library. How much else has he hidden? Everything about the Masters, everything about Hela, and apparently the truth about whatever happened between King Bor and the Dark Elves.

You were torn between confronting Odin directly about all this or just privately sneaking back in at some point and reading through more of the books. There was nothing you could do at the moment anyway so you returned to your body in Loki’s room.

“I’ll be back early tomorrow Loki,” you told him as you stood up, stretched, and cracked your neck. “I know this is difficult for you. It must not be easy to relive whatever happened to you, I can see the pain in your eyes.”

Loki refused to meet your eyes. “What happened to you out there, Lady Y/n?” He asked.

“What do you mean?” You asked in response.

“What did Heimdall summon you for?” Loki clarified. He watched your smile falter and knew he needed to press the topic further, “You’re stronger. I can feel your Seidr burning and the energy in you,” Loki placed a hand over the center of your chest, “I can feel it coursing through your veins.”

“It seems I’ll have some explaining to do tomorrow as well,” you agreed and removed his hand from your chest, but instead of releasing it, you held it for a moment in both of your hands. “But you’re going first.”

Loki’s eyes crinkled into a smile as he agreed. “Goodnight darling,” he said simply and walked away from you towards his bed.

“Goodnight my Prince,” you quipped back as you walked to the door, holding out a hand and your cane soaring into it. You could feel the mirth radiating from Loki at that comment as you left his room and headed to your own.

As you made the short walk back to your room you thought about what your next step should be. I obviously need to hear the rest of Loki’s story first, you thought. Then it’s a toss up between returning to Earth to begin the tasks of making sure these twins are properly enhanced and everything is on the path it should be or stay on Asgard a bit longer before that and figure out why Odin has been lying to his people.

It was moments like this that you wish you had the Eye of Agamotto to see what different futures held. Though even without the ability to see the future you knew fate would pull you down whichever path is more pressing.

You were so distracted by your own thoughts you didn’t even notice Thor until you actually ran into him.

“Lady Y/n?” He said as he steadied you, “What are you doing wandering the castle at this hour?”

“I’ll admit I have no idea what time it is, but I’m sure it isn’t that late Thor,” you said with a kind smile, “sorry, I should have been paying more attention to where I was going.”

“What is on your mind?” Thor asked. He really was like a human, or rather Asgardian, golden retriever; all blonde, friendly, and kind.

“I had an interesting meeting with… a friend of your mothers earlier this evening and I’ve only just finished speaking with your brother. I’ve learned a lot tonight and I’m not sure what to do next honestly. I’m not even sure if I should be telling you this much,” you confessed. Just saying that much to another person was relieving some of the metaphorical pressure you felt on your shoulders.

“I didn’t know mother had a friend visiting her,” Thor replied.

“It was just a quick visit. I’m guessing she was in the area so she thought she’d just pop in,” you lied.

“Well if it’s about Loki then I can talk to him,” Thor offered, “I’m well aware you can handle yourself Lady Y/n, but I’m happy to help you however I can.”

You reached up on your tiptoes to ruffle his hair a bit, “You’re very sweet Thor. But Loki has been nothing but a gentleman to me. Honestly! You must know your brother well enough to recognize that he is not a bad person. Misguided maybe, but not evil.”

Thor flattened his hair and sighed. “I’m not sure what to think of him anymore. He’s changed so much from when we were kids.”

“Well of course, everyone changes as they grow and learn life lessons. I believe one dashing blond god-man recently learned that fighting isn’t always the best answer, especially for a king.”

“You are very wise for a Midgardian,” Thor murmured. You raised an eyebrow at his comment and he quickly realized what he said came out wrong. “I meant that you have the wisdom of someone who has lived hundreds of years, Lady Y/n”

“Of course, you did,” you joked. “Well, I should be getting to bed. Loki still has a lot more to explain tomorrow and I have a feeling I will need a lot of energy to get it all out of him.” You were about to walk away when you thought of something. “Actually, maybe you talking to Loki would help. But not quite yet, he still needs more time. Goodnight Thor”

Thor bid you goodnight as you continued down the hall to your door. As soon as you reached your bed you collapsed onto it, the day’s mental strain finally catching up with you.

**If you would like to be added to the tag list for this fic send me an ask!

Tag List: @missaphrodite23 @sidemenaremylife @casuallyobsessivewitchcraft @alfoos @fiftyshadesofriri @dammitkatt @awkwardnesshabitat @fiery-feyre @serrure-ikol @bone-ankle-tree @shysaladewriter

Part 10 -->

#loki x reader #loki x plus size reader #Loki Laufeyson #loki fanfic #loki odinson #loki imagine #reader insert #loki x you #Loki #avengers imagine

[momo-de-avis]

No one knew about Mariana, because I never talked about it. There was no reason for it, particularly when you spend the majority of your life doing you best to push the subject down. I figured it was easier to pretend she never existed, easier to drift through life knowing the place she left was never filled—as I was a remembrance of that for every day of my life.

That morning, I remembered the baby shoes again. I wished they had never been worn, but they had. Her feet had been inside of it, once: my mother tried them on, to see if they fit. They were too big. She had gotten excited and bought them too early, thought they looked neat on a little girl, but excused herself with logic: it’s for when she starts walking, she told everyone, though she was nearly a year away from that.

She never even got a chance to walk.

I skittered back to bed, the drapes pulled together, blinds shut, as dark as I enjoyed—admittedly, I detested how much I liked the dark, because I could feel a gush of relief under the sunlight. But the darkness was embracing, a silent lover for the solitary losers who drift about in their own space, trying to find reason to exist. To love the darkness is to love someone who hurts you on purpose, knowing it’s bad for you—like eating nothing but junk food, or doing drugs. Though I was guilty of the latter, I suppose embracing the darkness so tenderly was the lesser of two evils, at the end of the day. And I detested that about me, deeply—yet I didn’t know how else to live.

The contradicting thing about it was that I couldn’t care less about what the neighbours saw. I enjoyed the voyeurism of things: I got undressed with my window wide open if necessary, and went about my day with bright lights so everyone could peek inside. But only at night. It was my way of desperately trying to be different from my mother, to release myself from those maternal shackles, because I couldn’t tolerate the idea of me being like her, but forever there remains a common ground. In the end, darkness is soothing, cradling, tender; the lack of light, the freedom that comes with existing in a darkened bedroom, in the blackness of a duvet thrown over our heads, is like flinging ourselves off a building. Brings nothing good, that I know—but I couldn’t stop doing it.

Time passed, almost indistinct, were it not for my phone vibrating on the bedside table—duly ignored. I tried to go back to sleep, and eventually did a couple of times, but was always awaked by my dream of strangely comforting aliens who woke me from my dread with a soft touch and a message of deliverance. As if I was the chosen one, for something. In one of them, I dared to open my eyes, but I couldn’t see their figures—there were no shadows either. All I saw was a pair of gloved hands holding an object I knew well: a pair of baby tennis shoes, worn exactly once, and never again.

At noon, I snapped myself awake, jolting out of bed in a motion of anger, blaming that weird teenage girl for keeping me up when all I wanted was to sleep. I had no idea how she knew about Mariana, or who I am, or even how she found me, but in the age of social media, who knows—maybe my mother had a very active social networking life and she’d been spilling the beans, maybe she was sent there by my anonymous father, maybe she came across me by chance and stalked my co-workers into giving out information. Probably why they had opened the door of my apartment so freely to her—a teenager, of all things.

I stumbled back into the living room, rubbing my eyes, and gazed quickly around. It was enough to stop me in my tracks, dumbfounded as I studied my own private space: it was clean. Incredibly clean. The ash spilled all over the coffee table and the floor the night before had been swept, no paper cups spread, no napkins scattered about, no pills waiting to be sucked between our teeth, no spilled alcohol. And it wasn’t just clean, it was precisely the way I wanted it to be tidied up: the ashtray was resting on the couch’s arm, so I wouldn’t have to lean forward when I smoked, and the remotes were lined up perfectly side-by-side with my cigarettes and my lighter. The plant was pushed a couple of inches away from the TV, enough so it wouldn’t bother my viewing, but not so far it looked displaced, and the blinds were pulled only halfway through, the perfect balance between midday light and my beloved darkness. My shoes were resting at the front door: side-by-side as well, perfectly lined, and all the coasters were stacked on the kitchenette counter. The dishes were done, the glasses in the case, the empty bottles in the trash. It even smelled of gardenias instead of the nasty, suffocating smell of sweat and drugs that makes us wonder if that’s a reminiscence of sex or a terrible house party.

I knew for a fact none of my guests had done it—J was the sort of guy to throw paper wraps on the ground, and M couldn’t be bothered to raise his ass from the couch if I asked him to grab me the remote. In the six years they’d frequented my apartment, not once did they so much as grab a napkin to wipe spilled beer. Even forcing them to take their shoes off—a religious rule in my apartment—was a fight on its own.

Which meant, I figured, the girl had done it.

Of course, my immediate reaction was to make sure nothing had been stolen—why else would she clean my stupid apartment? Yet it didn’t seem to have happened: none of my medicine bottles had disappeared, my stack of saved-up cash remained hidden in a tin can inside my wardrobe, my books were all in place, every gadget I owned still where I left them. Not that I owned anything worth stealing, if not the things well-hidden, but nothing was even remotely out of place. She didn’t just tidy up my things—she did it the way I specifically enjoyed.

I tried not to think about it; instead, I ate, chugged down some cold water and tried to relax. Yet as time passed, there was a strange feeling looming above my had, like static coming from the television, something bringing the hairs on my arm up. Without a proper explanation—mostly to myself—I stood up from the couch and walked to the door to look through the peep-hole.

A part of me could already anticipate it: there she was still, sitting on the stairs, reading her book, feet crossed at the ankles, one of them tapping the iron bars of the handrail. I stood back. Throughout my life, I had witnessed my fair share of bizarre things, yet this surpassed them all—which is something to say, when you work with tourists and museum-goers. It was easier to believe her to be some drug addict runaway trying to get into the first apartment available to snatch some opioids (which were right at her disposal on my bedside table, by all means). It was easier to believe she was some museum-goer who saw me in my place of work and grew strangely and childishly infatuated with me, probably stalked me and got some information out of my idiot co-workers, until she found herself a nice chance to enter my home.

But it was not every day that I was faced with a random teenage girl who showed up at my door claiming to be my dead sister.

This isn’t exactly done in chapters, because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore, but I figured this bit works in, well, exposing the conflict or what the inciting incident here is. Names might change later on, I just pulled these out of my ass, when that didn’t work, I threw initials in there lmao

#my writing #writing #creative writing #fiction #tbh I got no clue where this is going as a conflict Im expecting my Mind (TM) well reveal it to me at some point #have you guys watched Blue Velvet? The David Lynch movie? #you know that opening shot? SHE WORE BLUUUUEEEE VEEELVEEEET LA LA LA #and then the camera shows a perfect white suburban neigbourhood and plunged down into the grass #and the beautiful view of a middle class street transforms itself into maggots in the dirt? #that's my approach on shit like this #not that the view is particularly pleasing in its opening: this bitch is doing drugs and has no idea whats happening around her #its that you get deeper and deeper into the mind and start plucking out the buried shit in there #the maggots you know #and what sparks the fire is an apparent dead person coming back to life 18 years later #(someone WE KNOW is dead like its not a mystery she is dead its just this girl says 'her soul lived on me' or some shit) #if you read toni Morrisson's Beloved you know what I mean #SORRY FOR THE LONG POST

[the-far-bright-center]

eventually, even stars burn out

“Sometimes there are things no one can fix.”

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve become increasingly concerned that my days in the SW fandom (or at least, the tumblr side of it) may be numbered.

I very much hope I’m wrong about this. So, on the slight chance that it might help somehow, I’ll try to explain why I feel this way right now.

As most of you know, I have an extremely fraught and complicated relationship with Disney’s so-called ‘new canon’ material, which all began when TFA left me so heartbroken that I’ve been unable to trust anyone at all with Star Wars ever since. I struggle to believe that the Skywalker saga will ever be treated with the adequate respect and care that it requires, and I fear that new material will only attempt to further erode its original mythic meaning....just so the ‘story’ can be continued on indefinitely. It is therefore difficult if not impossible for me to be excited about ‘new canon’ content, because ever since TFA I view every single piece of SW media released by Disney with (imo warranted) mistrust and skepticism.

After a certain SW animated series ended earlier this year, I had thought I would finally be free from the strain of constantly worrying about ‘new’ content. My blacklists covered most of the major things I didn’t want to see, and tumblr’s filter feature seemed to take care of the rest. It still took some careful navigating not to run into sequels-related crap and other random shit, but it was not impossible. I’d breathed a sigh of relief, and carried on minding my own business, living in my SW happy place where the things that distressed me didn’t exist.

But then some news broke, and suddenly, my hard-won calm was shattered. It felt like someone had kicked the heart right out of me. My carefully constructed safe space felt safe no longer. I’d thought the PT and TCW era would be safe from Disney, at least for a while. But I was wrong. It was like all the faint hope I had left for my ability to withstand the current Disney!SW onslaught fled from me in a single instant, and have been in a state of anxiety, depression, and despair ever since.

I’ve been so scared, because the last time I felt this despondent was after TFA, when I honestly thought I would never feel anything warm and light and beautiful about Star Wars ever again. And it ended up taking me YEARS to move beyond that, and to reclaim my feels and to get into the headspace I needed to be in to truly enjoy it again.

And I just... don’t know if I have that kind of energy anymore. The last three years have taken a huge toll (in RL I mean, not just in fandom). On top of my seemingly never-ending mental health struggles, I’ve had some physical ailments that went un-diagnosed for a long time and for which I’m only just starting to receive treatment. I’m always tired, mentally, physically, and emotionally. All of this makes the prospect of going through that same process all over again seem daunting, if not completely impossible.

Because back then, after TFA, when I felt that I’d ‘lost’ the Original Trilogy, I still had other places to turn. I was able to go back in time, and re-ignite my passion for SW again by re-watching the PT and TCW. But now? will those be taken from me too? have they already? is too late ?

(Have I just been delaying the inevitable, all this time?)

Horrible thoughts like this keep coming into my mind. Despite this, I haven’t given up totally...not yet. I’m still hanging on, or at least ...trying to. But in the midst of all this, I’ve been attempting to figure out what exactly is going on here. Why do these things upset me so badly that it causes me such intense emotional reactions? To the point that I can hardly converse with friends online anymore, without fear what they will say? To the point that I can’t even talk to my (very supportive) husband about Star Wars anymore without freaking out about spoilers?? To the point that I even end up feeling suicidal at times? Why does it feel like my whole world is collapsing?

Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that, when I was growing up, ‘Star Wars’ was always, from as long as I can remember, something that was ‘finished’. Complete. It was over. And its completeness was a source of comfort to me from the start. Here was a story that contained darkness and struggle, but which had an ending. And an uplifting, mythic, and spiritual one, at that.  And even later, when I was a teen and in my early 20s during the release of the Prequels, it was still something that had an end in sight. From the beginning of the PT, we knew that once those three episodes were over, the saga would be complete.

And that’s just the thing. With Disney’s Star Wars, there is no end in sight. It is something that, for all intents and purposes, could be dragged on indefinitely. And that thought is terrifying enough to make me start feeling panicky all over again. Years and years of feeling like this, all the time?? Dear Force, make it stop. D:

It’s becoming clear to me that it’s not just about one particular piece of media that I want to avoid. It’s not just the fact that something so close to my heart has at times been treated disrespectfully or even threatened with annihilation, and that I’ve felt helpless to prevent it. It’s not about my various and sundry issues with Disney’s version of SW. It’s not even that I believe that all of Disney’s SW output is inherently ‘bad’ or bound to be terrible just because it’s under the brand of Disney. I mean, I’ve been willing and able to ignore the aspects of ‘new canon’ that I loathe, and pick and choose from the bits that I do enjoy (which are few and far between, but do, occasionally, still exist). And law of averages would suggest there would have to be some decent or even, gasp, quality content at times (see: Rogue One, for instance).

So what, then, is *really* causing me so much pain and anguish on an almost daily basis? What is making my continued attempts to be part of the ‘fandom’ feel so incredibly futile?? It’s not the additions to canon themselves, but rather the frequency and sheer number of them, along with the fandom reception of these potentially infinite ‘additions’ that are causing me so much turmoil.

In the years since TFA, I’ve attempted to deal with this by viewing Disney’s ‘new canon’ as just another version of an Expanded Universe—in other words, as something optional that is not required in order to understand and appreciate the original, and that only needs to ‘exist’ in my mind and as a part of my headcanon if I wish it to. So, despite how much some of this material hurts me on a personal level, and despite the fact that the sheer amount of it makes it difficult to navigate around, up til now I’ve been able to continue as at least a semi-functional SW fan in its wake.

But lately, I’m beginning to be concerned that this method is not an adequate way of dealing with this. Because, even though *I’m* perfectly capable of ignoring the ‘new canon’ material that I don’t want to see, my need to ignore it makes it almost impossible for me to interact with 99% of the rest of the fandom.

And without interaction, a major component of fandom itself is missing. And it’s that sense of isolation and alienation that is killing me.

While tumblr as a platform has changed the face of online fandom for many (and made it unrecognizable to me in so many ways), I am still very old school in that I believe that the main purpose of fandom is to a) enjoy what we love to the nth degree, b) share what we love with each other, and c) through discussion about our shared fictional passions, create transformative fanworks, such as fanfiction, fan art, edits, fan vids, metas, etc.

This may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but unfortunately for a vast majority on tumblr, “fandom” has become less about the above, and far moreso about keeping up with actors’ and creators’ social media accounts, using fiction as a platform for ‘performative’ social justice in which people show off how ‘woke’ they are, and, worst of all (for me), constantly fixating on announcements, trailers, and news about ‘the next big thing’. It seems like, for many fans, speculation about upcoming releases is more important than enjoying the content that already exists. It’s what they LIVE for. And the minute those new pieces of media appear, everything else that came before is just... forgotten, or cast aside, in favour of it. This leaves me feeling like I’ve been left in the dust. Because, for me, the mere idea of ‘the next big thing’ fills me with nothing but extreme anxiety, depression, panic, as though I have a giant black hole in the pit of of my stomach. I live in utter DREAD of SW news. So my ability to relate to other fans and to interact with them on any meaningful level has greatly diminished due to this factor alone.

In a smaller fandom, where announcements maybe happen once or twice a year at most, I can often weather it. For example, several years ago, I left a fandom for a certain popular tv series, but remained semi-active just for the sake of one particular ship from it that I still loved. I was able to avoid most news and spoilers because it was just one show with one season per year, and that was it. But with SW in its current form, with Disney’s need to pump out new content on what seems like an almost weekly or even daily basis, it’s becoming too much for me to bear.

As I said in a previous post,

 “.....one of my many problems with Disney’s current treatment of Star Wars is that there is such a thing as ‘too much canon’. In the days of the EU, it didn’t matter how much of that was released, because any and all of it could be dismissed at a given time, because it was never official canon. But nowadays, EVERY DAMN THING has a film, book, show, comic series, animated short, video game, etc. about it. And this actually angers and distresses me, because it begins to leave less and less room for headcanons and for fans’ imaginations to run free. When there is SO much ‘official’ canon that it covers all the backstories and little ‘in between moments’, where is the freedom for writing fic and just…imagining things? Star Wars is not Marvel-verse, and should not be treated as such. Not all canon is (or even SHOULD BE) considered  ‘equal’, and this is something that, in pre-Disney times, was understood and respected. The main saga films were canon. That was it. The rest of it fell into various gradations of ‘sub’-canon. And imo, that is how it should, ideally, still be.” 

To have constant ‘additions’ to a canon that is as long-established as Star Wars feels completely disingenuous to me. So each time something new is announced, it feels like a breaking of the fourth wall. A chipping away at my ability to continue *believing* in Star Wars. It feels like someone keeps bursting into a completed story to try to mansplain it to me, saying, ‘ha, just kidding!! it’s been 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, 5 years (etc) that you’ve loved this and believed in this, but ACTUALLY the story is not REALLY over! look over here, we want to make money off you so we’re pretending the story is continuing even though it’s fake and forced!! haha!!!’  

Most of my Star Wars ‘feels’ are predicated upon a very simple premise, and that is the fact that the Skywalker saga (aka the PT and OT), AS IT EXISTS IN ITS ORIGINAL STATE, is the story of Anakin Skywalker, and that it is a complete and coherent myth, and an ultimately uplifting and redemptive tale. Everything I love about Star Wars comes back to Anakin Skywalker, his cosmic role as the Chosen One, and his eventual redemption. The fact that he, through the power of his son’s unconditional love, returns to his True Self, breaks free of his chains and sacrifices himself for his loved one, setting himself and the galaxy free. Everything depends on it, and revolves around it. My love of Anakin and Padme, my love of Obi-Wan and Anakin. My love of Snips and Skyguy, my love of Luke and Vader. My love of the Skywalker family, and their entire PT and OT storyline. And of course, my love of Anakin himself.

And what is more, all of the above is likewise dependent on the fact that the OT generations’ tale is an unequivocally heroic one, and that its heroism is complete and lasting, on both familial and galactic scale. It is not something left unfinished for the subsequent generation(s) to ‘complete’. The original saga as *I* know it does not require the ‘next generation’ in order to make it truly heroic. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the tragedy of the Prequels is completely redeemed by the end of Return of the Jedi. It is NOT carried forward as some kind of ‘curse’ onto the next generation. The Skywalkers are representative of the state of the galaxy, and, through Anakin and Luke’s story in the OT, both they and the galaxy itself are  reconciled and made whole again once and for all. That is the entire point of the Chosen One prophecy, and of the metaphysical, galaxy-freeing role that redemptive love plays in the (original) Skywalker saga. If that seems ‘unrealistic’ to contemporary audiences, well, you know what?? Too freaking bad!! Star Wars is not supposed to be ‘realistic’, it’s supposed to be a MYTH.

Take that away, and there IS no Star Wars for me.

And yet, that is exactly what TFA attempted to do. It attempted destroy this basic long-held truth, and with it my ability to love and feel even anything remotely positive about Star Wars,  its story, and its characters. And so it is understandable, I would hope, that ever since then I would greet new ‘additions’ to the original canon with extreme mistrust, skepticism, and even outright despair.

But despite my (imo) perfectly legitimate and justifiable reasons for feeling this way, I still realize that having such, erm, extreme reactions to even the mere prospect of new or additional content is not ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ fans are happy when they get new ‘canonical’ content right?? Unfortunately, I am not and will likely never be able to be a ‘normal’ fan in this way. When it comes to Star Wars, I will never be able to feel even the remotest bit of excitement for any such new canon content. (Which, in this case, more often than not simply means ‘officially sanctioned by a giant corporation, created under a set of confusing, disjointed, and entirely arbitrary standards, and deemed permissible for you to consume and ‘believe in’ as a real version of characters and events’, but I digress...).

Everything I love and understand about Star Wars existed before Disney ‘did’ anything to it, and everything that I still value about Star Wars to this day is likewise not dependent on whatever Disney might try do to it in the present or future. But even though I know this on an intellectual level, whenever there is new content coming out, it nonetheless still feels like a mortal threat, looming on the horizon. It feels like it’s going to try to take away everything I love all over again. And I fall into despair because I honestly lack the strength to fight it.

(Or at least, I lack the strength to fight it alone.)

And so unfortunately, from my perspective (even though I know that of course people don’t intend it to come across this way), when other fans get so excited about the new stuff, and when it seems like they so readily just accept it without question, it ends up leaving me feeling as though I’ve been left behind. As though what *I* love is, in their eyes, not enough. That somehow, the original Skywalker saga is not enough. That loving Lucas-era canon, but not Disney’s, is just me limiting myself or ‘missing out’ somehow. Whereas, from my perspective, the original material IS ‘enough’. It feels complete. It IS complete. Believing it’s not complete seems to me to be exactly what Disney wants people to think, so they can justify all of their never-ending additions, re-writes, retcons, and continuations.

And thus every time Disney churns out more content, and I see people around me acting like this content is not just a fun (and entirely optional) addition, but is rather something essential that all fans ‘deserve’ and need (despite having been perfectly fine without it for years, if not decades), just makes me feel even more alienated than I already do. Again, it’s not merely the existence of the constant stream of ‘new’ content that is killing me, but rather the fact that this content is greeted with elation by what seems to be the majority of fans these days. Yeah I know this makes me sound like I’m just resentful and bitter that other people are happy. Please know I don’t begrudge others’ happiness. Rather, I’m just struggling with the fact that while others are excited, I cannot be, thus leading me to feel isolated and left out.

But since the last thing I want is to rain on anyone’s parade, I try to be sensitive to this. Other than my various early anti-TFA rants (which I got out of my system years ago), for the most part (with the occasional exception), I’ve been keeping mum on these matters. But more often than not, in order not to be a source of negativity to others, I just end up hiding away, not talking to anyone, retreating further and further within myself  to the point that I wonder what I’m even doing here anymore.

The level of pain and anxiety and stress that all of this—from the constant stream of new content, to fans’ reception of it, to my own desperate attempts to avoid and ignore it—causes me cannot be adequately summed up in just a few words. I struggle to convey how I feel to most people because I honestly don’t know how to explain it. I feel ridiculous for even writing it down. It sounds so silly when I type it out, even though in my heart and mind, this is a very real and debilitating issue. Every time something new is announced, I become sick to my stomach, I can’t eat or sleep, I have intrusive, racing thoughts, and I feel that I have to hide out for days, weeks, or even months. I have to limit who I can talk to, and WHAT subjects I can talk to them about. And each time, it begins to feel more and more futile to even bother trying to avoid everything. Like trying to swim upstream, or to remain upright in a tidal wave. It is a constant onslaught, and I’m not sure how much longer I can weather it.

(Yes, there are some underlying mental health issues going on here that no doubt contribute to things on some level. However, it’s a complicated situation, because for many years I have been turning to fandom as a sort of therapy for myself. My most beloved fictional universes, characters, relationships, and stories are a safe-space for me, a refuge I can retreat into when my existence becomes unbearable. A coping mechanism. I don’t use that term lightly either... some days, it literally keeps me alive. And so when that coping mechanism feels like it’s being ripped away, my downward spiral into the abyss is terrifyingly swift indeed. But this is an extremely personal matter, which I won’t go into any further here, because I don’t want to diminish the topic at hand, which is a legitimate and very real struggle of mine, and is something that affects me regardless of the state of my mental health at a given time.)

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to worry anyone. I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet, and hopefully not for a while. This blog is too important to me. The people I’ve met here are too important to me. Star Wars, such as it exists in my heart, is too important to me. Despite the fact that I’m struggling emotionally, and despite the fact that it’s increasingly difficult for me to find content for this blog, I have been determined not to abandon it, and have made sure that I have a queue ready for the days when I don’t feel up to posting.

That being said, I do feel the need to be honest here about just how much of a struggle it has been to hold on, and just how alienated I have felt from so much of what is considered the normal fandom experience. And to express my anguish and despair over the fact that I can never, ever be innocently excited about new content being released in this Disney era. Doesn’t matter what it is, or who makes it. Ever since TFA, I am simply unable to ever feel happy that it even exists in same world that I inhabit. And this makes me fear for my longevity in a fandom that seems to thrive on the very thing that I abhor most and that fills me with constant dread.

While I’m uncertain these days as to whether ‘happiness’ is even possible for me in this physical existence, I do feel that my fandom experience ought to be, at the very least, a source of comfort. But as more and more of my SW safe-spaces are eroded, as more and more words must be blacklisted, as more and more tags become ‘off limits’ to me, I have fewer and fewer corners of this fandom to which I can turn.

I wish things were not like this. I wish *I* were not like this. It would be so much easier if I could just be happy like everyone else. But sadly, it seems that when it comes to being able to participate in and enjoy SW fandom in its current form, something in me is fundamentally, irreparably, broken.

What I hope to accomplish by writing and posting this, I’m not entirely sure. Obviously, I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for enjoying what they enjoy. Nor am I even seeking ‘validation’ on this matter. Because, while there are no doubt others out there who feel similarly (and *big hugs* to them if they do), I am not actually looking for commiseration or to ‘wallow’ in misery at this time. For some reason that just makes things a hundred times worse. Because...I’m still trying to hold out hope that even someone as damaged as myself can nonetheless continue to love Star Wars and even be part of an active online community.

So for now, I just needed to get this off my chest in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, by doing so, I can find a way back from this.  

#personal #very personal #extremely personal #long post #read at your own risk #not putting this in any tags #please be gentle #i am fragile right now #tw mental health #tw suicidal thoughts #just... depressing shit in general #but also attempt to alleviate some of my pain #to try to find that flicker of hope in there #somewhere #even dead stars can still have heartbeats after all #i guess should tag this as #anti-TFA #anti-Disney #anti-sequels #and #sw negativity #just in case

[francisrosenfeld]

Of Feelings - excerpt

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"Get away, you pest! Oh, just wait until I get my hands on you, you little ingrate!" Sarah screamed at the dragon who stared at her innocently with two of its heads as it continued munching on aloe vera with the other three. Half of the leaves on the gardenia shrubs were consumed to the bare branches and Solomon had found refuge all the way up one of the pear trees, hissing like a tea kettle with all its fur standing on end.

"Don't you talk like that to my dragon! Come here, sweetie, did she hurt you?" sister Joseph came quickly to the lizard's defense.

"You were concerned what it was going to eat? It eats everything in sight, it's an unstoppable garden wrecking machine, and it's not picky either! Check out the hot pepper patch, your beast has no taste buds! I replanted the aloe vera five times already!" Sarah protested, really flustered and trying to look menacing to the lizard. The dragon watched her innocently, attempted a gurgle and blinked its eyes in series. "I swear if you weren't so cute!" Sarah thought. "Sister Joseph finally lost it! She wouldn't dream of letting the goats have free reign of the vegetable patch but she has no problem allowing mini-Godzilla here to run havoc through the land!"

"It's not like I can't hear you! You stay away from my dragon, it's infinitely more interesting than any one of you!" sister Joseph picked up the lizard who blinked at Sarah and then half-closed its yellow eyes feeling protected and content in its owner's arms; the redhead could swear she saw one of the muzzles sketch a little smirk like a reptilian Cheshire cat.  

"You may swindle sister Joseph who gave into her weakness, but you don't fool me with that innocent stare, you evildoer! Stay away from my plants and leave Solomon alone!" Sarah frowned furiously at the dragon.

"Screech!" the dragon uttered cheerfully.

"You tell me if she bothers you and I'll give her a piece of my mind! And I won't be shy about it either!" Joseph coddled the creature as the rest of the sisters collectively burst in Homeric, albeit inner laughter.

Sister Joseph named the beast Josephine despite the fact they haven't figured out yet if dragons had genders (if someone were able to ascertain that fact it would have been the sister herself). Joseph didn't take this detail into consideration when she decided the dragon would be a 'she' and allowed 'her' to share her name. Nobody could argue with the sister about the behavior of her beloved pet, Josephine could do no wrong in her eyes and showed such devotion to her master that it was allowed to follow her everywhere with the exception of the Prayer Hall and that only because the sisters decided the line needed to be drawn somewhere.

A second mat was placed on the other side of the Prayer Hall door and Josephine lay there munching on veggie snacks for the duration of the service, eyeing Solomon with a couple of its heads and making the cat bristle its fur and push its ears back.

Josephine was loud, especially when discontented, and the sisters learned it was less unpleasant to accommodate her whims than to put up with the horrid noise, but otherwise she proved to be an adorable creature who gleamed through the Institute hallways in intense cobalt blue looking like she had just come down from the Gates of Ishtar.

The original idea was to keep her in one of the desert greenhouse environments but Josephine didn't take well to being confined and screeched their ears off until they let her out to the absolute delight of the children, visitors and science delegations and the chagrin of Sarah for whom protecting the crops became a full time occupation.

She remembered her daydream about petting a peacefully resting dragon who was supposed to lie cooing at her feet but nobody other than sister Joseph ever managed to touch the scratchy lizard. It turned out that dragons were really fast runners when they didn't fly and were not shy to use their five sets of teeth if annoyed. Josephine had the activity level and temper tantrums of a toddler and after putting up with the biting, clawing and deafening screeches Sarah resigned herself to admire the creature from a distance and breathed a little sigh of relief when it was quiet.

***

"Are you letting the dragon roam free? Aren't you worried it's going to attack the children?" doctor O'Shaughnessy asked, concerned. He had brought his own toddler to Terra Two and the sight of the seemingly vicious lizard ran shivers down his spine. The little boy on the other hand was absolutely enthralled with the alien creature and didn't seem to question the fact that it had five heads.

"Not at all! Josephine is the sweetest thing and completely harmless!" Sarah said with a level of conviction that seemed a little suspect. "I can't believe I have to defend the wretch after she practically destroyed my garden! What am I saying, we don't even know it's a 'she', there's a good side project for sister Joseph! She's the animal specialist, she should be able to figure that out!" her mind rummaged quietly.

Josephine stared at them turning one of its heads sideways like a chicken to get a better view. It gurgled, took a few steps forward and pecked at whatever was left of the cauliflower patch. Sarah uttered a sigh and resolved to put an invisible fence around the vegetable garden before the lizard finished it off.

"Josephine is part of the family," sister Joseph intervened, concerned that the little boy might rough handle her beloved pet, as if anything on two legs could outrun the blue lightning, especially at his age!

"Come here, sweetheart!" the sister enticed Josephine and the latter batted its wings leisurely to jump on her shoulder. "Say 'hi' to the nice people!" Joseph encouraged and Josephine uttered a random sequence of little screeches from a few of her heads.

"Who's a good dragon?" the sister asked.

"Screech-screech!" Josephine replied, fluffing the frills around her heads.

"Shiver me timbers! Now the only things she's missing are an eye patch and a peg leg!" Sarah thought.

"I'm not missing them at all," sister Joseph frowned at the latter, to the confusion of the visitor who wasn't wearing an interlink bracelet. "Would you care for a tour of the Institute, doctor?" she graciously asked the guest, then left with Josephine, the doctor and his son. The lizard's tail swayed gently in the breeze while a dozen of her eyes looked back reproachfully at Sarah. Sarah got annoyed that the dragon stole her thunder and was now conducting the tours but slightly relieved that she got an hour to herself to tinker with recipes in the apothecary.

No such luck, though, because when she arrived at the shop she found Gemma running a large experiment that required virtually all the glassware and equipment. The teenager smiled apologetically when she saw Sarah come in.

"I'm making something for Jimmy and Jenna, they must miss home!" she said.

"And home surely misses them," Sarah thought, taking a moment to remember that Jimmy and Jenna were not children anymore. "What are you making?" she asked curiously.

"A globe shaped terrarium with miniature Terra Two plants," she said. "It's completely self-sufficient, it should be able to keep itself in balance indefinitely."

"Oh, I see you even included Purple, they'll be pleased to send a delegation!" Sarah smiled. In the middle of the Lilliputian landscape a minute graft of the bean plant flourished, half green, half purple, just like the original. "What's with all the dirty glassware?" she asked, puzzled.

"Soil, air and water testing, the chemical balance has to be perfect," Gemma said, and that's when Sarah noticed that the miniature planet had rivulets and lakes and tides in its oceans, and up in its atmosphere fluffy clouds gathered, releasing sudden showers over the toy sized rain forest.

"What, no cats?" the redhead joked. "You know, there are a lot of visiting horticulturists in the Institute right now, maybe it would be a good idea to show them a presentation of your project before you send it to Soléa, I don't think anybody ever made something like this before."

***

With all the back and forth between Terra Two and Soléa the solenoid attained the well worn look of an old favorite sweater that gets softer and more comfortable after many washes.

Restless parents found every reason imaginable to slide through time back and forth with warm clothing, fresh baked pies or favorite and woefully unavailable fruit.

Lily and her exploration team were past the eye-roll age, even though not by much, and  wore down the device just as much from the other end, coming back often to Terra Two to grab the music they forgot to pack, their sculpting tools, their scuba gear.

Because the dragons were quite friendly, though not trustful enough for contact, some of Sarah's kids made regular trips home to bring them delightful succulent treats from their planet, so different from the dragons' scraggly diet and so flavorful in comparison. Despite Lily's impossible to enforce ban on bringing alien food to upset their regular fare, Jimmy snuck back to Terra Two on a regular basis to bring fresh vegetables he pretended to eat himself, so many that he had to print a couple of extra refrigerators to store the kale and lettuce the blue lizards liked so much.

Their accommodations were modest to say the least because it was decided Soléa's environment was too pristine to be developed and it was to be disturbed as little as possible. The children had never seen a wilderness like this, born as they were in a world made by hand, a place designed from the bare ground and filled with plants and animals brought from Earth. Soléa was rugged and cold like the top of the mountains, worn by winds and overwhelmed by the vastness of its deep blue sky.

Its vegetation was low and cast almost no shadows on the archaic rock formations and its topography looked frozen in time shortly after the ground hardened, harsh like it had just emerged from the bowels of its molten core and showing strangely little wear for a planet haunted by the winds. Everything had a blue hue on Soléa, mostly because of the refraction in its thick atmosphere, but not entirely so. There was blue and azure in the rocks themselves from the aluminum salt deposits, and the peculiar prismatic structure of the dragons' skins only let out the color of the sky.

Here and there in long dried river beds the water had carved and polished the soluble rocks into giant sculptural masterpieces, round, hollow and twisted like frozen waves, with stunningly beautiful grain hugging their curves. Far in the distance tall limestone needles glowed violet against the horizon like a stone forest.

The scarce vegetation rarely covered the ground and their team carved no paths through the bristle, they just walked around it following the tracks of the dragons to the best watering holes, the thickest clumps of Oma trees or the soft sandy shores of the mirror lakes where the blue residents of the planet built their nests undisturbed.

Flocks of dragons flew majestically overhead watching the newcomers with tolerant dignity almost as if they wanted to guide them on their way and show them their beautiful world. Everything seemed quieter in the blue land, everything but the calls of the dragons and the song of the wind.

The children of Terra Two unconsciously softened their unrestrained vigor and assumed the reverence one finds in the depths of a cathedral as the blinding radiance of the sun descended upon them through the thick sky and wrapped their shoulders in light like in a blanket.

The unrelenting brightness of the solitary sun didn't feel that unusual to the sisters, who had grown up on Earth, but it felt very intimidating to the tanned and care free children of the tropical forest born to warmth and rain and they missed the rosy chocolate skies and the gentle gems of their two suns like one misses the roof over their head when one has to sleep under the open sky.

Soléa's sky made them restless and overwhelmed them with its vastness like an unknown depth of a sea and sometimes when they were almost asleep they were jolted awake by the feeling of falling in it.

#Sci-Fi & Fantasy #adventure #fiction #utopia