#so glad there's a sequel coming out i hope they explore their relationship in it too

[spicypussywave]

THE MOVIE WAS SO GOOD. such a feel good funny movie i loved it so much rawr

#binged the actor's films too and they were good! #I MISSED WATCHING MOVIES #this movie had a rush ending? #they got together in the last 3-5 mins literally #but like. the scene so good skdjfdkijfd i loved it #so glad there's a sequel coming out i hope they explore their relationship in it too #unemployed guy w a dysfunctional family x girl who's the exact opposite #it's so goooood #i've rewatched it i will continue rewatching it #ughughugh i wanna be in love now #can i get the guy or the girl please im not picky #premalu #malayalam #desiblr #naomiliveblogs

[goosewriting]

Warmth

summary: now that reader got to look underneath the surface, they discover the not so pretty parts about being an inquisitor

relationship: inq!Cal Kestis x gn!reader

warnings: 18+, semi-graphic violence, mentions of blood, trauma, it gets pretty steamy, but still fade to black, implied sexual encounters, cal being emotionally constipated because what else is new, dom cal, soft cal, dirty talk? sorta?, talking about killing people, reader being a nerd, having a bath together, non-sexual nudity, reader gets choked, a lot is happening ok

word count: 12k … this one got away form me, i–

A/N: tbh when i started this i had no idea where i was going with it; this just took on a life of its own. i guess this one’s a little more grounded than the previous one, as reader and cal explore what it means to be an inquisitor. it’s a bit different to my usual stuff but i hope you like it nonetheless :’D

this can be read on its own, but it's technically a sequel to underneath!

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

— — —

It’s rather calm today, uneventful, as you sit at your office desk doing your work absent-mindedly.

You think back to your first night together with inquisitor Cal Kestis. It’s been some time since then, and you’re glad that there were more nights after that one.

Whatever is going on between you two, you try to be discreet about it. But it didn’t go unnoticed by others how Cal would approach you in the hallways to say hi or have a quick chat to check in on you. At first, you were nervous that it would affect your job in some way, negatively change your relationship with your boss and colleagues (not that you’re too close with them, but you still want to keep it professional and respectful with them). To your surprise though, the others seem to respect you more because of it. Apparently being able to hold your ground against an inquisitor isn't a small feat. ‘Hold your ground’... More like being wrapped around his finger. 

You smile to yourself as you think back to a couple of nights back. Your heart quickens and the tip of your ears burn as you remember the trails of kisses Cal left on your skin, setting your whole body on fire, accompanied by words of praise and adoration, words only for you to hear. 

Shaking your head to rid yourself of the slippery slope that is your current train of thought, you refocus on the screen in front of you and continue clacking away on the keyboard. You haven’t really defined or put a label on what you two have, but you know it’s special, and it is real. And you’re content with that for now. You like the current dynamic, where you have dinner together as often as your jobs will allow it, and you sleep over at his quarters every other day. 

However, lately there’s been a habit of Cal’s that worries you a bit. There’s been several instances now when you wake up in the middle of the night and your hand reaches out to find him, but his side of the bed is empty. Sometimes he’s not in the room at all. Other times you can see him standing at the window with his back towards you; his red hair seems to glow above his dark silhouette contrasting with the dim fiery glow coming from Mustafar, appearing from behind a veil of clouds. You know he knows you’re awake, but you stay still, pretending to be asleep. Whatever is weighing on his mind, whenever he feels ready, he’ll come to you. And you’d wait for as long as he needs.

Still, getting up so often at night starts to take a toll. You notice he’s more irritable, you see the dark bags under his eyes. But when you try to confront him about it, he dismisses it as unimportant, saying he’ll get better sleep that night. But it’s just the same thing over and over again.

One night after dinner, you’re both sitting on his couch, and you finally manage to pry out what has got him unable to sleep: nightmares. You don’t really understand what the problem is; everyone gets nightmares every once in a while. Even if he were to move around a lot, you’d try to calm him down and get him back to sleep.

“Do you know how inquisitors are made?” he asks seemingly out of nowhere while on the nightmare topic.

You take a moment to think about it, and realise that you do, in fact, not. So you shake your head.

“The Empire captures Jedis, to torture and remake them however they see fit”, he explains and stops from a moment to let it sink in.

“Part of them is lost forever,” he continues, his gaze moving to the side, looking at nothing in particular. “The other seems to be trapped, unable to move or escape. Jedis are trained to not give in to hate or anger. For inquisitors, those are the only things keeping them going. Ironically, feeling an enemy’s life force fade away… It makes you feel alive again.” He looks down at his hands. “It lets you feel something again at all: the rage, towards oneself and towards everyone who’s ever wronged you. It’s an addicting feeling, all-consuming. But much too short. So you seek it out again. And the Empire has plenty of enemies they need gone, so you comply.”

He pauses, allowing you to interject if it’s too much, but you remain silent, listening attentively. You’ve never heard this side of him, of how it felt being an inquisitor. 

“In those moments–” he goes on, clenching his hands into fists. “–feeding off of someone's desperation and pain that you can feel through the Force, it also opens a minimal gap for you to feel other things too. Things you thought you had forgotten or want to forget, like regret, fear and doubt. Or things you think you don’t deserve to feel anymore, like warmth. Happiness.” He pauses for a moment. “Love.”

You remain silent for a moment longer in case he wants to add anything else, but it doesn’t look like it. So you ask something instead. 

“And what do you remember in those moments?”

Cal closes his eyes and throws his head back slightly, taking a deep breath.

“The smell of the temple library on Coruscant,” he replies. “The rare sound of the clones laughing in the mess hall. How safe I felt with my master.”

You tilt your head with a slight grimace; it breaks your heart to hear he thinks he can’t have those things anymore because of what he is now. Or rather, what he was made.

“You still deserve all of that, the warmth and feelings of safety,” you say, and reach out to run your fingertips over his cheek, but he turns away.

“You don’t think I’m a monster? Like everyone else does?” he asks with a wry chuckle. “You know what I do. I don’t deserve any of it.”

Or you.

He doesn’t say the words aloud, but they hang heavy in the air between you two. 

“Okay, Kestis,” you say as you stand up, one hand stretched out towards him. “No moping, c’mon.”

He gives you a suspicious look, but accepts your hand nonetheless. You guide him to the washroom and run a bath for him, using one of your nicer bath bombs which you kept for special occasions. 

“Time for some pampering. You deserve it,” you enunciate that last part. “Clothes off.”

He narrows his eyes at you, unsure of what you’re scheming. You can’t help but laugh at the faint blush spreading on his freckled face as you start to strip yourself. 

“Now, don’t get any ideas. No funny business, I mean it. Just a bath,” you say, pointing a finger at him.

“Alright, alright,” he gives in with a low chuckle, and starts unbuttoning his shirt. 

Not long after, you’re both in the tub, with you sitting behind Cal, both enveloped by fragrant bubbles filling the warm water surface. You instruct him to lean back so you can wash his hair. Using your own shampoo instead of the boring, Empire-issue one, you lather up his hair, massaging his scalp, which earns you a grunt or two, and you can’t help a triumphant smile.

“Does it feel good?” you ask, and you get another grunt in response, so it must indeed feel good.

After you’re done with the hair, you tell him to turn around, and you squirt some soap onto a wash cloth. Starting at his neck, you scrub gently in circular motions, making your way down over his shoulder and his arms. Then you repeat the process on the other arm. As you lift it out from the thick layer of bubbles, you notice some reddening on his skin at his bicep. You take a closer look.

“Is that a new scar?” you ask.

“Yeah, don’t know where from though,” he says, and you get the impression that he does, but you don’t ask him about it. 

“Is that so,” you mumble, then lean in to place a soft kiss on it. “There, now it will heal faster.” 

Cal snorts and rolls his eyes, but his gaze remains soft.

“What, you don’t believe me?” you retort in mock offence. Then you start placing kisses on all his scars, the ones on his face, at his jaw and over his nose. The scars on his chest, his shoulders. You end by placing one last kiss on the tip of his nose, and grin up at him, but your face changes into worry when you see his expression. His brows are furrowed, as if in pain, his eyes shut tightly, his shoulders tense.

“Cal, are you okay?” you ask, and his hand comes out of the water to hold your face. You place your hand over his. He blinks a couple of times, and when he fully opens his eyes again, his features relax, and he smiles warmly. But what shocks you the most is that his eyes aren’t their usual yellow; they’re greenish blue. You open your mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. His gaze is not only a different colour, but also as vulnerable and tender as you’ve never seen before in him. 

“You’re too good to me,” he whispers, leaning in to place a single, lingering kiss on your cheek. 

Suddenly, his face contorts in pain again, this time more than before, and his hands shoot up to either side of his head, pressing onto his temples. When he opens his eyes again, they’re back to the yellow you know and love.

“My head is killing me suddenly,” he says through gritted teeth. “Can we wrap it up?” 

“Uh, of course, yeah,” you answer, making quick work of rinsing off both of you and getting some towels. 

Soon you’re both in bed, with your back against his chest, as he holds on to you like his life depends on it. Cal falls asleep first, but it’s rather restless. He keeps twitching and flinching, and with every sudden move, you’re dragged back out of your almost drifting to sleep. When he seems to finally have calmed down, you exhale deeply, eager to follow suit and drift into dreamland as well. Instead, Cal groans loudly, and you lean onto your side to look up over your shoulder. He looks distressed, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

“Cal, are you okay?” you ask, placing your hand on his shoulder to try and wake him, but you retrieve it quickly when his eyes shoot open, wild and angry and disoriented. 

“Prauf!” he screams, grabbing you harshly and rolling over so he’s straddling you, one of his hands fisting the sheets while the other goes to your throat, starting to choke you.

“C-Cal…!” you rasp out, holding onto his wrist to try and get him off of you. “You’re hurting me!”

He puts more weight into his hold, and you start seeing white dots sprinkled in your field of vision.

“It’s me, please,” you gasp, raising your hand to hold his cheek instead, and that seems to work. Slowly, his eyes seem to focus again, and his ragged breathing calms down slightly. When he finally sees you under him and understands what he is doing, he lets go and jumps off of you, off the bed, and slams his back against the opposite wall. You take a gulp of air, falling into a coughing fit. 

“Are you okay?” you croak when you can finally talk again, and you see him holding his head, trembling. 

“I- I’m sorry- This-” he starts, but can’t form a sentence. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he lets his hands fall back down to his sides. “I’m sleeping on the couch.” 

Cal leaves the room before you can protest, and the doors close behind him. Just like that you’re left alone, wondering what in the world just happened. Does it have something to do with his eyes earlier? And what, or who, is Prauf? 

— — —

The next morning, you’re awoken by the alarm clock on his night stand, and it takes you a couple of tries to turn it off. Sitting up on the bed with a yawn, you start remembering what happened the night before, and your hands comes up to your neck, where you can still feel some soreness from being choked like that.

You tiptoe out of the room, but just as you expected, Cal is gone. Taking a quick look at the clock, you yelp as you realise how late it is, and you hurry to the washroom to get ready. 

Once you’re ready to go, you take one last look at yourself in the mirror, and realise that your neck has visible marks, clearly in the shape of a hand. You grimace slightly, propping up the collar of your uniform as high up as it will go, and it covers up most of it. As long as you don’t look up or stretch your neck too much, you should be good. So you leave Cal’s quarters and head to your office. 

The whole day, you’re a bit distracted, hoping that Cal doesn’t feel too bad about what he did. You just want to help; sure, the nightmares are worse than you thought. But you’ll figure it out, together. 

You don’t get to see or hear from Cal the whole day though, or the next, or the one after that. For almost a week, he seems to be avoiding you completely. He doesn’t answer your holocalls or texts. You only catch the occasional glimpse of him leaving a room just when you’re entering. 

Tired of this game of cat and mouse, you decide to go find him. Instead, you end up cornered by the Ninth Sister. You’re slightly scared of her if you’re honest – no, scratch that. You are scared of her; she’s incredibly intimidating, not just by her sheer size and strength, but her presence in general. She always sounds mad, a deep frown etched into her face. So when she suddenly tells you to follow her, you don’t find it in you to refuse. To your surprise, she hunts down Cal as well, and brings you both to an empty hallway.

“Whatever is going on between you two: fix it!” she barks, then turns around with a scoff, muttering something about it being like scolding children. 

You look around, and there’s no one around, so you look up at Cal’s helmet visor, trying to find his eyes under it, but obviously only seeing your own reflection.

“Hey,” you greet him, giving him a smile to signal you’re not mad. “I missed you.”

His shoulders slump slightly, and he looks around as well. Instead of answering, he grabs you by your elbow and guides you some steps down the hallway to a maintenance shaft. He flicks his wrist, and the doors open, he shoves you both inside and closes the doors.

Only now does he take off his helmet, and you can’t suppress a gasp, horrified at the sight. His hair is sticking out everywhere, the bags under his eyes are the darkest you’ve ever seen, and he not only has new scratches on his face, he also a black eye that seems to be a couple of days old. 

“What happened to you?” you ask, and you’re aware that it’s not a great opener, but you’re genuinely worried. Your hands gingerly run over his face as you inspect the damage. Cal shrugs nonchalantly.

“I’ve been distracted lately and it affected my performance,” he says with a wry smile. “So they had to correct my bad behaviour.”

You take a moment to make sure you’re properly understanding what he’s implying. By the look in his eyes, kinda sad and a bit ashamed, it seems you are.

“Do you get corrected often?” you ask carefully.

“Sometimes. When I get greedy,” he answers. You think back to your conversation about being an inquisitor, and remember how he said that he only got a glimpse back into his own heart when he was out there, doing horrible things. Does that mean he was defying orders just to be able ‘to feel something at all’? 

“Do you usually get corrected… after being with me?” you ask this time, almost scared of the answer. 

“It’s not your fault,” he indirectly answers your question, taking your hands in his. “Being with you is just as addicting as being out there. I’m just… weak like that, I guess.”

“Oh, Cal,” you whisper, giving his hands a squeeze. “The warmth you yearn for and that you seek, it may make you feel vulnerable, and you think that makes you weak, but all it does is make you real. You’re real, Cal, and so am I. And I don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t need to be greedy; I’m here, I always will be. You deserve that warmth, and if you’ll have me, I’ll give you all of it.”

His brows rise slightly in surprise, and you realise you basically just professed your love for him. Heat erupts on your face and in your panic, you grab onto his collar and kiss him, hard at first, but then you’re both moving in unison with a rare softness you don’t always get to experience from him. 

Suddenly he pulls back with a pained grunt, and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor. 

“Cal, are you okay? What’s wrong?” You kneel down beside him, and you lift his face to look at him. Once again, you’re met with blue eyes, this time like an ocean about to erupt into stormy waves. He’s close to tears, and he looks so scared, so small, it breaks your heart. If only you knew how to mend the broken pieces of his soul, you’d kiss them all better if you could. 

“I’m sorry I stayed away so long,” he suddenly says, hugging you into his chest. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of hurting you again. What if I don’t snap back in time? What if I do something worse?”

You rack your brains for something reassuring to say, and finally land on something.

“You know, as a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare,” you start, hoping to not only get your point across better with your story, but also getting him out of the rabbit hole he was about to go down. “I kept dreaming that my parents abandoned me. We would all be together somewhere, and I looked away for a moment, but by the time I turned back around, they were gone. And I would feel so alone, and full of dread, I felt like I was going crazy. I’d often wake up screaming and crying.”

You take a moment to gauge his reaction; talking about your pasts has been kind of a taboo topic between you two. He openly said once that he doesn’t want to talk about his past, which you respect, but it also meant he never asked questions about yours. Maybe he’s scared to know more because it would reawaken memories of his own. Maybe he just doesn’t want to pry. Maybe he doesn’t care. Either way, you’re now crossing that invisible line and hope it won’t scare him away completely.

“No matter how much my parents reassured me that they wouldn’t abandon me, it always played out the same,” you continue your story. “One night, I was so scared of having the nightmare again, that I straight up refused to go to sleep. That’s when my mother told me this: sometimes, dreams are just your mind and soul processing something that actually happened. But other times, it’s the mind’s way of trying to find closure for something that hasn’t happened. So even if the dream isn’t nice, you have to wait until the end. Only then will your mind be able to tell you what it needs, even if it’s something you don’t want to hear.”

Wiping the silent tears off of Cal’s cheeks, you give him a comforting smile.

“And I know this doesn’t compare in any way to the nightmares you have,” you say. “But, maybe, you just need to let them play out. What if it’s your subconscious trying to tell you something and you cut it off before it has a chance to? What if… it’s the Force trying to tell you something important?”

This seems to click in some way with Cal, and he takes a moment to think over your words.

“Whatever happens, when you wake up you won’t be alone. I promise”, you assure him.

Cal is about to say something, when his eyes shut closed and he claims his head hurts again. He blinks a couple of times, holding his head, and his eyes switch between greenish blue and yellow. 

“Don’t block it out,” you encourage him, removing his hands from his temples and bringing them to your face instead. “I take back what I said earlier. You can be greedy, but not out there. Be greedy with me. Take everything you want, Cal. As much as you need. It’s all for you.”

He blinks one, two more times, his eyes fully reverted to their usual fiery yellow, and the fear from before is completely gone, now replaced with something sharp and dark.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he says through gritted teeth, his whole body trembling in anticipation or self-control, maybe both.

“But I do,” you reassure him, climbing over his legs so you’re sitting on his lap, and gently press your forehead against his. “That yearning is eating you up from the inside. You’re hurting. It doesn’t have to be like that.”

Cal’s hands wander from your cheeks over your shoulders, down your arms, until they rest on your waist. He looks up at you, still a little unsure, and you roll your hips against his to further encourage him and tell him it’s okay. You both can’t help the low moans that escape your lips.

“It’s okay, Cal,” you whisper, leaning in and stopping just above his lips, where you feel his shaky breath. “Consume me until there’s nothing left.”

That seems to snap him back to his usual, more dominant self that he is in intimate moments like this. Adjusting your position in his lap, he presses your body into his, kissing you passionately. It’s just as intense as your make-out sessions usually are, but there’s something else lingering as well. You can’t quite describe it, but it’s like there’s a newfound meaning behind his actions. As if he is trying to pour his whole being and soul into it in an attempt to reach you. And it does. In fact, he’s using all his senses, Force included, to breathe in all of you, and his presence envelops you like it never has before.

You start undoing both your uniforms, and you pull back for a moment to take a much needed breather. 

“You’re doing great,” you pant, not really thinking about what you’re saying as you try to undo the clasps and buttons as fast as your trembling hands will allow. “Such a good boy for me.”

To say that his whimper takes you by surprise, is an understatement. You stop your movements and pull back a little more to take in the image before you: Cal’s partially exposed chest is rising and sinking rapidly, a violent blush spreading from the tip of his ears all the way down to his sternum. His usual confidence and cockiness seem gone, and biting his bottom lip, hair completely dishevelled, he gives you a flustered look you’ve never seen on him.

“Don’t call me that,” he breathes, trying to pull you closer again so you can’t look at him.

“Call you what, a good boy?” you tease him, and his whole body tenses up under you as he takes a sharp breath. “I think you rather like it, no? Being such a good boy for me. C’mon, keep going.”

He relentlessly attacks your neck just the way he knows you like, biting and licking and nibbling along your pulse. 

“Ah, kriff, these uniforms, I swear–” you curse under your breath into Cal’s temple, trying to rid yourself of your jacket without losing contact with him. You only manage to push it down to your elbows. Cal’s hands slip under your shirt and start wandering up and up. Your whole body feels like it’s on fire, goosebumps erupting on your arms and back as you arch yourself into his hold. Another moan escapes your throat as he bites down hard, immediately licking the darkened spot. You finally manage to shake off your jacket and–

Your comlink beeps and you groan. Cal seems unbothered, as he’s still going, now moving back up to finding your lips, tongue darting out to meet yours. After blindly tapping around to find the device in a pocket of your discarded jacket, you take it out and look at the caller ID. Your blood freezes when you recognise it to be your boss. Right, you’re in a maintenance shaft half naked with the inquisitor when you should be at your office. 

Shoving Cal away begrudgingly, he growls in annoyance, about to flick the still beeping comlink out of your hand.

“Wait, wait, it could be important,” you say through heavy breaths, trying to calm yourself down enough to sound somewhat normal. Cal merely pushes his face into your chest with a defeated sigh. After clearing your throat, you take the call.

“Took you long enough, officer,” your boss says in a clearly annoyed tone that makes you cringe slightly.

“Sorry, Sir, I was, uh, occupied,” you stumble over your words and mentally slap yourself. Cal doesn’t even try to hide his snort at your response. You smack him lightly on the back of his head.

“Whatever you were doing, officer,” the man says in a way that he knows exactly what you were doing and with whom. “Prepare your things and get ready, you’re to leave for an off-planet mission by tonight.”

“Yes, Sir,” you reply, instinctively straightening your back.

“You’re to meet us at the hangar by 1900 hours. And officer,” he adds with a sigh, his voice adopting a strange tone of embarrassment, almost. “If inquisitor Kestis happens to be there, tell him to come as well.”

“Understood, Sir,” Cal replies with no qualms, and you’re petrified. 

After one more sigh and some unintelligible curses, your boss hangs up. 

You blink a couple of times, trying to recover from the shock. Great, now your boss knows for sure what you were up to. 

“We’re not done here,” Cal says, as he places one last kiss on the corner of your mouth and stands up, helping you get on your feet as well. “We’ll pick up where we left off later.”

“At a different location though, I would hope,” you chuckle as you two get ready to leave the little room.

After a quick detour to the nearest washroom, where you both fix your messy hair and uniforms (his smirk as you’re barely able to cover all the hickeys with your propped up collar will be the end of you), and one to your office for you to pick up some supplies, you make your way to the hangar. A group of people is already waiting for you two; two purge troopers, two stormtroopers of your own squad your boss stand next to Cal’s ship, a zeta-class shuttle: black, sleek and menacing. 

After the debrief, you review the data on your holopad. It’s a mission on another planet, and you’re always excited to get one of those, as you don’t get to go out “into the field” often. In this case there’s a possible rebel cell, but their transmissions are set up in a way that decoding them from the Fortress Inquisitorius would take a considerable amount of time, so it’s quicker to get close to the base and physically infiltrate their comms system to get the information you need. Additionally, there’s been a tip about a possible Jedi being hidden within the rebel group, that’s why they’re sending an inquisitor as well. You’re to stay on the ship working on the decryption while they do their thing.

The ship takes off, and once you’re far enough, you make the jump into hyperspace. During the trip, both the purge troopers and Cal sit unnervingly still, probably power napping and saving their energy for the possible fight ahead. Your two troopers are in the cockpit flying the ship and having a chat, so you have a lot of time for yourself. You mainly work on preparing your equipment, revising your software and getting all the tools you’d need ready. It doesn’t take long for you to have everything prepped; the moment you’d enter the planet’s atmosphere, your scans would tell you the rebel’s comm system location within seconds, and once you land, you can head right out to hook up your own tech. There’s still a good portion of waiting after you’re done though, and with the constant hyperspace humming, you find yourself dozing on and off, replaying the earlier conversation you had with Cal in your mind, wondering how to act and what to say once you get back to base. 

After what feels like an eternity, the piloting troopers finally announce you’re here. The drop out of hyperspace shakes you slightly, and as you look out the window, you see your goal: a small planet on the very edge of the Outer Rim; you’ve never been this far away from the Core Worlds, and as you see the vast expanse of pitch black void surrounding it, you notice the lack of starts in the distance, and you almost let yourself be swallowed by the dread that runs a cold shiver down your spine. Shaking your head, you rid yourself of any distracting thoughts and get to work. As expected, your holopad is already beeping, alerting you that it found your target location. You stand up from your seat and approach the cockpit, for which you have to walk past Cal. His helmet visor is aimed at the floor in front of his feet, and he doesn’t look up as you walk by. For all you know, his eyes could be trained on you though; there’s no way to know for sure. 

Standing between the pilot seats, you show one of the troopers the coordinates on your holopad, and he punches them into the console. Holding onto the back of the seat, you stand there as the ship approaches the area you marked, and the landing is swift and almost motionless. So this is what the good ships feel like, you think to yourself. And the troopers seem to be thinking the same, if the slow whistle coming from one of them is anything to go by.

You turn around to go inform the purge troopers you’re here, but Cal is already standing in front of you, blocking your exit from the cockpit. 

“My men and I will look for our target, you two stay here,” he says as he points at the two stormtroopers. Then he gestures towards you with his head. “The officer is in charge while I’m gone, and better be unharmed when I come back, understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” they respond in unison. 

Cal seems to linger on your form for a second longer, then turns on his heels. The cargo door opens and the smell of humid, tropical air reaches your nose. Cal and his troopers take off, and you nod to yourself with an ‘alright’, as you get to work. Connecting a couple of wires here and there, you call one of the troopers to you.

“We need to bring this–” you point at your contraption. “–to the base of this structure.” You show him the red dot on the holomap at the edge of a water body. “That seems to be the backbone of their communication system. There have to be wires that we can hook the machine into.”

“Understood.”

He picks up the machine and starts heading out. You gather a couple more tools, throw them into your bag and sling it over your shoulder. As you approach the cargo door, you turn to the other trooper one last time.

“You stay here and hold down the fort. Keep the usual channels open for us and for C- Inquisitor Kestis.”

“Yes, Sir!” 

And off you go.

After a while, you get to the point at the cliff as indicated by your holomap. Both you and the stormtrooper stand at the ledge, carefully looking down. At the base, a broad river runs along the cliffside. Scanning the rocky walls with your eyes, you find what you’re looking for.

“Jackpot,” you say, pointing at something, and the trooper follows your line of sight. “That’s our transmitter.”

It’s essentially a big metal box built into the side of the cliff, with an antenna on one side and a rather wonky satellite dish on the other, partially hidden under a rocky overhang. You’d have to climb down quite a bit to reach it.

“We didn’t bring any climbing equipment,” the trooper points out. 

“We improvise,” you retort with a shrug.

You take the rope out of your bag and tie one end to a nearby tree that looks sturdy enough, and the other around your legs and waist.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Sir,” the stormtrooper starts. “If anything happens to you, Inquisitor Kestis will–” He’s stopped by the stern look you shoot him. 

“I know how to take care of myself, trooper,” You say firmly. “Now, help me get down there.” 

You plug in one of the thicker wires into your machine, holding the other end between your teeth. The trooper helps you climb down the cliffside step by step, slowly letting you down. Once you reach the desired point by the transmitter, you take the wire out of your mouth.

“Here’s good! Hold it there!” you call. A  grunt is all the response you get. 

You plug in the wire, and your holopad starts beeping, starting to intercept the messages. But they’re not written words, voices or even proper sounds, it just sounds and looks like static. 

“Guess I have to calibrate my receiver,” you think aloud. “Pull me up!”

Climbing back up the way you came, you untie the rope the moment you find your footing again, which left a slight stinging sensation at the back of your legs, and you absent-mindedly rub your bum to alleviate the sensation. You notice the trooper giving you a strange look, and heat spreads on your face.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” you say as you straighten up, looking for an order to give. “Go, uh, go collect the rope.”

“Yes, Sir…” he responds with a snicker.

You roll your eyes, but you’re not really mad at him. That must have just looked really funny. Either way, time to get to work: you kneel down next to your contraption, holding your holopad next to it, adjusting some levels here and pressing buttons there. But no matter how much you try to isolate the signal, it still doesn’t get cleaner or clearer.

The trooper places the neatly tied up rope next to your bag which you left on the ground, then holds up his blaster, undoing the safety. You look up at him in confusion.

“What’s wrong?” 

“I’m not sure…” he answers. “I have a bad feeling about this place. Let’s get what we came for and go back to the ship.”

“Okay…” you stretch out the word, unsure what put him on edge like that. Yes, there’s known aggressive fauna here, but all in all the planet is abandoned, there's no particular danger. Not documented, anyway. You keep looking at the static on your holopad, trying to make sense of it. But the more you see, the less random it seems. That’s when it dawns on you. 

Suddenly, you furiously type away on your pad, trying to translate the encoded message, but it’s just gibberish. You tilt your head in confusion, revising your translation; it should be right. But it isn’t. Why?...

“Oh!” You say after a few more seconds, getting up to your feet so quickly that it almost makes you dizzy. “Oh, this is actually quite brilliant. Ah, these rebels sure are getting crafty. Come here, you’re gonna love this.”

The stormtrooper shoots one last look over his shoulder into the vegetation, then turns to you, still holding tightly onto his blaster.

“You ever heard of Dadita?” you ask, not bothering to hide your excitement.

“No?”

“Of course you haven’t,” you say with a click of your tongue. “It’s an ancient Mandalorian code consisting of short and long bursts of static, where each combination stands for a letter. But these rebels combined it with Mon Calamari blink code, which is the same principles but with light sequences. They used Dadita static, but the sequences actually correspond to the blink code letters. No wonder back at HQ they thought we couldn’t intercept proper comms. It’s made to look like static.”

“Uh-huh,” is all you get out of the trooper, still nervously looking around.

“C’mon, this is cool,” you try, but to no avail. Sighing in defeat, you add, “You know what, nevermind. Let’s just go back.”

At least Cal will show interest in your find. Or so you hope. Speaking of, you wonder how he’s doing. You know you shouldn’t ping him as it could interfere with his mission, but you just hope they made it back safely to the ship by the time you’re there.

“Contact the ship, will you? And tell them we’re going back,” you instruct. The trooper presses some buttons on the console on his wrist.

“Ground team to ship, do you copy?”

The only answer is static.

You look in the direction of the ship as the trooper tries again, and you feel something cold on your nose, then on your cheek. You look up; it’s starting to rain. Great. Your machine shouldn’t have trouble with a little rain, but you still don’t feel great about it. You kinda made it up on the spot, so there are a couple of exposed wires. 

“We need to go get something to cover the receiver. Any answer yet?” you ask, and it’s really starting to come down now. You have to blink several times to get the water out of your eyes.

“No,” he responds, nervously looking around. “I told you, something is wrong.”

“Okay, no need to panic,” to try to calm him down; his demeanour is starting to make you nervous as well. “Let’s just quickly go back; I'm pretty sure I saw a piece of canvas that we can use to–” You sling your bag back onto your shoulders as you speak, but the inertia of the bag makes you lose your balance for a second, and with the ground now turning into mud, your boot loses its grip on the ground, making you slip and your knees give out under you. 

“Officer!” You hear the stormtrooper call as he stretches out his arm in a vain attempt to catch you, but you’re already falling backwards off the cliff. Seemingly in slow motion, the trooper and the treeline disappear from your view, being replaced by a grey, cloudy sky. You close your eyes, feeling the droplets on your face and the air rushing by your ears, and you’re strangely calm. All you can think of is Cal.

Are you okay? I wish we had properly made up before this. 

When your back hits the water of the river at the base of the cliff, your survival instincts are awoken all at once. The current is stronger than what it seemed from up the ledge. You swim with all your might, trying to stay afloat and taking gulps of air whenever you can. it isn't long until your arms are burning from the sudden effort, and you scan your surroundings, desperate to find something to hold onto. The river seems to open up and away from the cliffside. Here, the shores are filled with mangrove-like trees, their roots thick and plenty, some of them stretching out like low-hanging branches over the water surface. You try to hold on to one, but your gloves don't provide much of a grip, so you take them off and ditch them. Nearing the next big branch, you ready yourself and throw your upper body out of the water so that you can hold onto it with both your arms, and it works. Slowly, you inch closer and closer to the tree trunk, until you reach the shore. Letting yourself fall onto the mossy ground, you take some deep breaths trying to calm down your breathing, racing heart and aching limbs.

You pat your uniform and conclude that you lost your bag somewhere along the way, which had your holopad and all your equipment. You sit up and wipe the back of your sleeve over your eyes, but the constant rain keeps hitting your face. You pop open the collar of your uniform and it feels like ridding yourself of a chokehold. The uniforms were never particularly comfortable, being on the stiff side, but drenched like this, it’s much worse.

Looking around, you stand up; you have no idea where you are or where the ship could be. Giving yourself one more pat down, you find your comlink in one of your zipped up pockets, and thank the Maker under your breath. 

“Hello? Does anyone copy?”

You can hear static, so you assume that it is working, but it’s the mic or speaker, or both that are ruined. At least from the ship they should be able to locate you with it. 

A gust of wind makes you shiver slightly; despite it being a rather tropical climate, being completely wet does make you feel the dropping temperatures that will probably await you at night. In fact, it’s starting to get dark. 

They’ll find me. It’s fine. I just have to make sure I’m alive by the time they get here, hah, you tell yourself with a wry chuckle. 

First thing you have to do is seek shelter from the relentless rain. Hugging yourself, you cringe at the sensation of your feet against the wet boots, but you still take step after step into the vegetation, looking for some place to dry off. Completely lost and giving up on the idea of ever getting out of this maze by yourself, the only information you keep in your head is the direction of the river; you'll be needing water after all. For now, you could just drink rain water though, so you venture further and further away into the forest. With the dense branches sporting big, round leaves, they already stop part of the rain, but not enough. Finally, you come across a big tree, the roots lifted into the air so that they form something akin to a cage, and the ground beneath it is dry; that's exactly what you need.

Hurrying through the gaps between the roots, you take off your boots, jacket and trousers, giving everything a good squeeze to wring as much water out as possible. Left in your underwear and a black short sleeve shirt, you wonder what to do next. You’d need food soon. You sigh, leaning back onto the rough surface of the tree.

“This is exactly why I wanted an office job,” you say bitterly. So much for being excited about a mission ‘on the field’. 

For now, you decide to wait out the rain, which could hopefully stop just as suddenly as it started, and you just sit there, holding your comlink in your hands, looking at it intently. 

After a while, the rain finally seems to subside, and while your clothes are nowhere dry, you don’t exactly want to explore a jungle half naked. So you put your trousers back on, which takes a while, as the wet fabric keeps sticking to your legs. After what feels like another workout, you finally zip them up, and put on your equally wet boots. Oh, how you crave a warm shower right now. 

Taking the jacket into your hands, you feel the wet fabric and decide to leave it. Your skin dried much faster, so it was better to be a little cold without a jacket than very cold with a drenched one. Placing your comlink into your pocket, you go foraging for some sort of fruit or berry. After the rain and with no equipment, you doubt you’d be able to start a fire to cook anything, so you have to find something you can eat raw. 

As you’re picking some reddish purple berries from a bush and contemplating if you can eat them, you hear some rustling behind you. Dropping the berries and immediately turning around, you’re met with a human and you notice several things. First of all, they’re holding their side, which is bleeding a lot, their clothes stained in a dark red. Second, you see the lightsabre in their hand, emitting a blueish hue, its electric hum the only sound aside of their ragged breathing. And third, you see the plea in their deep brown eyes, silently asking you for help. Almost in the same moment, you also see their eyes dart down to your uniform and back up to your own, realisation spreading on their face. And you’re conflicted.

You know who’s after them. You know what’s going to happen. So it’s not like you don’t want to help; you can’t. If the circumstances were different, would you help? You realise you don’t want to know the answer to that. Either way, you're unarmed, hungry and shivering, so you can't really put up much of a fight against them either. 

“I'm sorry,” you say instead, and you're not really sure which part you're apologising for. You're about to take a step to the side and gesture them to go past you, but you hear footsteps approaching quickly.

The stranger winces in pain as they try to take another step, but collapse onto the ground, the sabre retracting with a whirr. They look up at you again, this time enraged, a deep frown etched into their face, and you're about to say something, but a modulated voice is quicker.

“Officer, what are you doing here?” It’s the purge trooper.

“I- I fell,” you say sheepishly. He scoffs in disbelief, shaking his head.

“Well, good job stopping our target. It’s a slippery one, this one.”

The trooper picks up the sabre, and turns around the Jedi onto their back with his boot, earning a pained grunt. From behind him emerges Cal out of the vegetation, and you’re horrified at how he looks: helmet gone, hair wild, and face partially covered in blood. If it’s his own or not, you can’t tell. He looks frustrated and beyond angry. You’re about to say something, asking if he’s okay, but the sharp look in his eyes freezes you in your spot. 

“It’s the end of the line now, Jedi,” he spits through gritted teeth, and holds his red lightsabre a little tighter. He shoots you a quick look, then at his trooper, and motions with his head to the side. The man nods and turns to you, grabbing you by your bicep, and starts dragging you away. 

“Wait, wait!” You try to turn back around, but the trooper’s grip keeps facing you forward. When you reach a thick tree, he slams your back into it rather harshly, and tells you to stay there. He doesn’t move from in front of you, holding onto his electrostaff with both hands. It emits an electric crackle of purplish hue, clearly warning you not try anything funny. And to be honest, you don't have the energy right now, so you just rest the back of your head against the bark. You can hear the stranger starting to plead for their life, trying to get under Cal’s skin, saying something about a time before being an inquisitor, but Cal is fresh out of patience, and the Jedi chokes on their words. Their laboured breathing fills this corner of the jungle, and after the sound of a lightsabre swinging and the distinct sizzling of flesh, there is silence.

The purge trooper stretches his neck to see past the tree, then gestures to you with a quick nod.

“Let’s go,” he says, and you comply.

Cal stands in front of the body, partially shielding it from your view, and you walk past him as well, following the trooper. As you three make your way back, you notice there's no trace of the second purge trooper that had left with them.

“The other one's dead,” Cal says before you can even ask, and gets handed the Jedi’s lightsabre, which he clips onto his belt. “Why are you down here? And where's your jacket?” You sigh.

“I fell,” you say, and it still sounds as stupid as it did before. “I slipped, and fell down the cliff. I left my jacket by the river. But before that I did get the receiver hooked up and I know how to decrypt the messages. Do you know if my squad made it back to the ship?”

“Don’t know, our comms don't really seem to work down here.” He suddenly stops and looks around, gesturing to a different direction, and the purge trooper takes off through the bushes. Cal turns back to you, and you shoot him a questioning look. 

“You fell from a cliff? Just what were you doing.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, clearly distressed by your reckless actions. “I pinged you several times, and you didn't answer. I knew it probably was the signal being jammed but… I thought that– What if–”

“Hey, it's okay. I'm okay.” You place your hand on his chest and that's when you notice several gashes on his uniform. “Are you okay, though?”

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, his worry replaced by exasperation.

“You really shouldn't have–”

He stops in the middle of his sentence and takes a quick step back away from you as both your heads turn towards the sound of approaching footsteps. The purge trooper approaches Cal and hands him his helmet. Or what's left of it, anyway. The visor is broken, the part that sits above the jaw seems to have been sliced off entirely, and there are several dents on the other side. Your eyes meet Cal’s again in worry, but he avoids your gaze entirely. 

“Let’s move.”

The trek back to the ship is quick, as per the relentless pace of the two men. There are some obstacles on the way though, where you need a little help. When crossing a river with a particularly strong current, you lose your footing on the rocky riverbed, and find yourself holding onto the next best thing, which happens to be the purge trooper. He lets you hold him as he guides you across to the other side, where he quickly shakes you off. You wonder if he’s really that uncomfortable to be close to you, and you make a mental note not to ask purge troopers for anything in the future, especially if it entailed physical contact of any kind. But what you didn't see were the Force daggers that Cal was stabbing into the back of the poor man’s head.

Not long after the river, you come face to face with an abrupt slope with a flat, rocky surface. It’s almost like a wall, leading to the plateau above. It’s too high to jump and too even to climb, so you wonder how you will get up there. Once again, Cal seems to read your mind, as before you can even ask, you see him essentially levitating up and onto the ledge above. Now that's a handy Force trick. You expect him to throw down a rope or something for you to hold onto, but instead, you're being lifted off the ground by an invisible force, as is the trooper next to you. Once you reach the top, you’re gently placed back on solid ground, while the trooper is let go far earlier, which he is unprepared for, so he falls forward and onto his knees with a grunt. But he gets back up onto his feet without complaints or remarks, simply dusting off his thighs and continuing the way back to the ship. You want to scold Cal a little for being unnecessarily mean, but the harshness still etched into his face, now stained with dry and flaky patches of blood, refrains you from making any comments. 

Finally, you make it back to a place you recognise, where the ship isn’t far away. You run off first, despite your muscles screaming in pain to finally give them some rest. The cargo door is closed, and you bang your hand on it twice.

“Open up!” you order, and the ramp opens with a mechanical hiss, then gets lowered down. You quickly climb up before it even completely reaches the ground.  

“Officer!” both stormtroopers exclaim in unison and in apparent relief when they see you alive and in one piece. One of them runs off to the equipment storage to get a blanket for you, and you gladly accept it. Only now do you realise how cold and stiff your whole body feels. 

“Have you been intercepting the messages?” you ask, grabbing a spare holopad to log into your receiver’s software to start decrypting. 

“Yes, and as you said, it’s a coded transmission made with static bursts” the first trooper explains, the one you had been on the cliff with. “I covered up the receiver with the canvas as you asked, and we’ve been monitoring it this whole time, but we didn’t know how to decrypt it without you…”

“That’s okay, that’s my job after all.” You playfully shove your elbow into his side. “I’m just glad you’re both alive.” You smile genuinely at them, and you wonder if they're smiling back at you from under their helmets as well. The Empire may think that stormtroopers are easily replaceable, but this is your squad. And you intend to take care of them.

You take a step back to take a seat and start decrypting, but your back bumps into something, or rather someone. You turn around just in time to see Cal gesture to the purge trooper, who once again merely gives a short nod, then heads to the cockpit.

“Let’s get out of here,” is the last thing you hear him say before the cockpit and cargo doors close with a hiss, and the engines start.

Cal and you just stand there for a moment, looking at each other. 

“Are you going to say something?,” you go first. “Because if not, I have work to do.”

You sit down and he doesn't stop you, instead taking a seat next to you. You type away on the holopad, letter by letter, and the message starts forming. By typing with both hands you’re quicker, but the blanket keeps slipping down from your shoulders. Cal notices and picks it up, wrapping your form in it properly again, and then leaving his arm around you so it would stay there. You give him a quick ‘thanks’, but don't stop what you're doing. For a moment you wonder if you're giving him the silent treatment, and if so, why, but you really have to get this thing decrypted, so you focus on that for the time being. 

At some point, Cal carefully places his head on your shoulder, and when you don't shoo him away, he properly gets comfortable. By then, you've written a program to automate the decoding. It's a bit crude and not your best, but it works. Now the decrypted message appears much faster, and it seems to be mostly correct, except for the occasional letter here and there. The message is still clear and understandable, though, and you can feel your focus and energy quickly depleting, so you decide it’s good enough for now. You set it up so that the live decryption gets sent back to HQ as your receiver feeds the rebel comms into it.

Setting down your holopad on the seat next to you with a yawn, you gently stroke Cal’s cheek.

“You awake?” you ask softly, and he hums.

“You done?” he asks back, and you hum as well.

Then you sit in silence again. The constant rumbling of the ship, combined with your adrenaline completely gone now, is all inviting you to the sweet embrace of sleep.

“We have to talk when we get back,” is the last thing you manage to mumble before drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

— — —

You wake up to your shoulder being shaken and the repeated call of your name. Your eyes shoot open and you sit up straight, immediately slumping back down with a wince as your whole body aches, both because of the whole river action earlier, and sleeping in such a weird position. 

Standing up with a grunt, you shiver as you look down at yourself: still without a jacket, your boots and trousers are stained with dirt, moss and sand. Your upper half must look even worse. Especially with the marks on your neck and who knows where else, courtesy of the inquisitor himself. So you grab the blanket and wrap it around yourself like a hooded poncho of sorts, hoping to hide most of your face and dirty clothes.

“I called earlier and they're waiting with a stretcher for you at the hangar,” Cal says as you try to hide both your head and legs, but the blanket clearly isn't big enough for that. You turn around with a raised eyebrow. “They're going to wrap you up and take you straight to medbay. So no one will see you.”

“How–”

“I may or may not have said that you might have a slight case of hypothermia.”

“We were on a planet with tropical climate,” you retort.

“I was convincing,” is all he says.

You can't question him further, as you feel the familiar sway of a landing ship. When it hits the ground with a ‘clunk’, everything happens so quickly: the cockpit and cargo doors open, and Cal suddenly picks you up bridal style. He places you onto the promised stretcher which is already waiting at the base of the ramp, and two med troopers quickly wrap you up in an emergency foil blanket. Just like that, you're taken to the medbay. 

After your check-up, they tell you that other than being a little shaken and dehydrated, you're fine. You're free to stay a little longer to rest up, but you can also leave if you feel like it. And just like that, you're alone in the little room. How Cal managed to convince them to give you the private medbay room, you still don't know. But at this point, you should probably be used to it. Inquisitors seem to get almost anything they want here. Albeit at a cost.

The cot is decently comfy, and you consider staying here for a couple more hours to nap and rest up, knowing you won't be interrupted. So you get comfortable with a sigh, and just as you find a good position to sleep in, the doors open. You groan, lifting the blanket over your face. 

“I thought you were asleep,” Cal says as the doors close behind him and he approaches your bed. 

“I was about to be,” you reply with a sigh and fold the blanket back down to sit up properly. You're about to ask him what he wants, when you see that he’s sporting several bandages, one on his jaw, and some on his torso, visible through the white shirt he’s wearing. 

“Are you okay?,” you ask and scoot over on the bed to make what little room you can spare for him to sit. However, he stays where he stands.

“Just a couple of scratches, I’ve had worse,” he replies, but it doesn’t make you feel better. “What about you?”

“Well, it’s not hypothermia,” you joke, in an attempt to ease the strange tension building between the two of you, but he doesn’t react. “I’ve basically been discharged. I was just about to nap, but… what is it?”

He looks at you as if he didn’t know what you mean. But the whole time, he’s been chewing the inside of his cheek. Clearly something is on his mind, and right now you don't have the energy to play the back and forth game.

“You want to tell me something, right? So, tell me.” You want to sound trusting, but it comes out harsher than you meant. He seems slightly taken aback.

“You said earlier you wanted to talk,” he retorts defensively. “And I understand.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitates for a second.

“We don’t need to keep–” He looks for the right word. “–seeing each other.”

You pause for a moment, trying to dig deeper behind his words and try to get the real meaning out, but you're lost and rather shocked by his words.

“What do you mean?” you repeat yourself, alarmed.

He sighs, running his hand through his hair; he's nervous.

“I didn’t want you to see it,” he starts, avoiding looking at you. “It’s a side of me I didn't want you to see.”

“Oh,” you say, and you understand what he's getting at; the whole hunting and killing Jedi business. 

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?” he asks, his eyes finding yours and narrowing them at you. “Isn’t that what you wanted to talk about?”

“I mean, we can talk about it if you want to. I–” You sheepishly fidget with your fingers on your lap. You actually wanted to talk about how he treats his purge troopers, but this is far more important, you realise. “Yeah, let’s talk about that.”

Before he can inquire what you actually meant to talk about, you gesture for him to sit next to you. He still doesn’t move.

“Please sit,” you insist, and finally, he does. With the extra weigh dipping the mattress, you kind of lean into his side. You keep talking, both of you looking ahead. “Everything I said earlier, it still stands, you know.”

He doesn’t respond, so you continue.

“About the… warmth. And you being you and still deserving it.” You gingerly place your hand over his, and he momentarily flinches, but doesn’t pull away. “I’m not stupid, Cal. I know what you do. I’ve been aware of it from the start. And I simply don’t care. It’s not like my job is any better. My work also has… certain consequences, for others. And I’ve made peace with it.”

Finally you dare look up at him, his gaze still cast down. You can feel him trembling slightly though.

“You may be an inquisitor to others, but to me you're just Cal.” You squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. “Cal who makes pancakes with me. Cal who calls in a stretcher for me so I can save myself the embarrassment of my boss seeing me being a dirty, flustered mess. Cal who would stab someone else for looking at me the wrong way.”

He chuckles lightly at that. You reach out to cup his face, and make him look at you.

“But also the Cal who has nightmares. Cal who is sometimes scared out of his mind. Cal who asks me to stay the night because he doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. I want all of them.” You pause for a second, but you’re too tired to fight the question that’s been pestering your mind for ages now. “And all those versions of Cal… they give me warmth too. Right?”

His shoulders slump slightly with a sharp exhale.

“They do,” he finally answers in a voice so small you almost miss it. 

“Glad we could clear that up then,” you say just as softly, and close the gap to place a kiss to his lips, and he reciprocates so tenderly, holding your face like it could crumble any moment and disappear through his fingers. 

You want to pull back from the kiss, but his lips follow yours, capturing them once again. Cal climbs on top of you, pushing you back down onto the mattress.

“Don’t you want to get back to–” you try offering to move to a better location, but your words are interrupted by the squeal you let out as he pinches your side. 

“We have to make up for lost time,” he states, getting back to attacking you with kisses, each one more and more ferocious.

You hear the distinct hiss of the doors opening, but Cal is quick to close them again with a quick flick of his wrist. From the other side, you can hear the nurse complaining. 

“The officer is busy,” Cal calls over his shoulder, looking down at you the way a predator looks at its prey. “Come back later.” 

— — —

Later that night, after a shower and slipping into your comfiest PJs, you’re both in his bed. Cal lies on his back and you have your head on his chest, drawing random figures onto his shirt. 

“Are you sure about this?” Cal asks for the hundredth time. 

“Yes,” you reassure him, propping yourself up on your elbow so you can place a kiss on his nose. “I’ll talk you through it. Just, try to stay in the dream. It will all work out, I promise.” 

“Right,” he sighs, closing his eyes, and takes a deep breath. 

You get back to cuddling into his side, and the even drumming of his heartbeat does quick work of lulling you to sleep.

It doesn’t take long, however, and you wake up to Cal twitching again. His brows are furrowed, his hands holding onto the bedsheet for dear life, and you sit up next to him, caressing his hair and holding his hand, whispering words of encouragement.

Cal is back on Bracca, collecting scraps from the same ships that he used to call home back when he was a Padawan. That seems so long ago now. Lifetimes ago. And maybe it is. 

What would his younger self think of what he is now? 

Cal stands at the edge of the partially stripped apart engine, impossibly small against the size of the machinery. A voice calls out to him, and he turns around. The world around him spins, turning into a blinding white, and he shields his eyes from the sudden change with his hands. 

“Why are you here?” a trembling voice asks.

Cal looks up, meeting his own eyes, still a greenish blue, of his 13-year-old self. Disappointment and horror etched into his little face.

“What have you done?” another voice spits condescendingly.

Cal whips around, now looking at his master, Jaro Tapal, looking at him in disgust. 

“Cal!” 

He turns around again, starting to get dizzy, and his body freezes up, he can’t breathe. He’s standing at the edge of a scrapper platform now, surrounded by other people he used to know, but all their faces are blurred or scratched out. However, he can clearly see Prauf, his good friend Prauf, confronting the Second Sister. She holds her sabre at his throat, the blade sizzling in the rain. The red hue reflects in Prauf’s eyes.

Cal instinctively reaches out to his belt, expecting to find his own lightsabre, but it’s not there. He looks down at himself, and sees that he’s donning full inquisitor armour. 

“Kill him,” the Second Sister orders.

Finally, Cal seems to be able to move and breathe again, and he takes a huge gulp of air. 

“I said, kill him,” she repeats.

“No,” Cal says, and she slowly turns around to him. 

“No?”, she chuckles, but the venom spills out of her voice like an overflowing glass of spotchka. It burns. 

Suddenly, Cal is shoved in her direction against his will, and his inquisitor lightsabre appears in his hand. His arm is lifted into the air by an invisible force, about to swing down on top of Prauf’s head. 

“Do it!” she yells, and Cal screams as well, trying with all his might to hold back his arm. 

He hates this, he wants out. It hurts too much. The force trying to push down his arm and the sad look in his friend’s eyes tear into his heart like iron claws, shredding everything in its way.

Cal can hear the Second Sister’s voice yelling, urging him to get it done, but he hears something else too: it’s you. Your voice cuts through the cacophony of the scrapping grounds, pushing away all sounds of machinery, drills, saws, the rain itself and the inquisitor’s voice. Shoving it all aside, there’s just you.

“It’s okay, Cal,” you say, and the oppressing force on his arm is lifted with every word of yours. “I’m here, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not alone.”

Finally, the force is gone entirely, and he screams in both pain and relief. Cal lets go of his weapon, which retracts mid-air with a whirr, and it falls to the ground. 

The world around him freezes, and everyone disappears. He’s back in the blinding white room, now  in his old scrapper outfit.

“Cal,” Prauf’s voice comes from behind him, and the redhead whips around. 

“My friend,” Prauf says warmly, as he always did, and stretches out his arms. A silent invitation. 

Cal hesitates only for a second, then gives in. Taking the few steps that separate the two, he lets himself be embraced by the Abednedo. Unable to hold back, he cries into his friend’s chest. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasps between sobs. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” the older man comforts him, lightly patting Cal’s back. “It’s not your fault.”

After a few more moments, when Cal’s cries subside, he pulls back to look up at Prauf.

“Why am I here?” he asks.

Prauf smiles down at him.

“I just wanted to let you know: it’s not your fault,” he says, placing his hands on the younger man’s shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “And to say thank you, for being my friend. I hope you found your way off Bracca and can have a peaceful life. You’ve been through so much, kid.”

Cal feels another wave of tears prickling behind his eyes.

“You never really belonged on Bracca, but I’m glad I met you,” Prauf says, his voice trailing off, as if swept off by the wind, as his image also starts disappearing from in front of Cal. “I hope you found your place.”

“No, wait!” he calls, trying to hold on to him, but his hands phase through the shadow of the figure still left.

Suddenly, Cal sits up on the bed with a scream, which takes you by surprise and you flinch backwards, falling onto your hands on the bed. 

He holds his shirt over his heart so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and with a broken sob, he lets himself fall back onto the bed. You hurry to scoot closer.

“You were right,” Cal says between sobs. “The Force was trying to get a message to me.”

That night, you hold him as he cries, this time not out of fear, but because he can finally allow himself to grief the loss of a friend from a long time ago.

I found my place, Prauf, Cal thinks, about to drift off to sleep after the exhaustion of crying takes over. He looks at you lying on his chest one last time, a soft smile spreading on his lips.

He hopes that some day, he’ll be able to find warmth just with you, not needing to resort to other methods ever again. And maybe then, finally, he can offer you all the warmth back that he forgot he held.

~~~~~

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

#goose feathers #cal kestis x reader #star wars cal x reader #jedi fallen order x reader #jedi survivor x reader #inquisitor cal x reader #inquisitor cal kestis x reader #inq!cal kestis x reader

[skaikruswan]

That meowpheus fic was amazing. Could you do one where he's sulking and everyone in the dreaming is trying to figure out why. Turns out that reader has gone on an excursion to map out fiddlers green. So once returned morpheus(or meowpheus your choice) is suddenly very clingy and wants so much PDA. Thanks love, keep up the great stories!

One should never ignore a cat or an Endless, or both  

WC: 1,6 k Ao3

Relationship: Morpheus x reader

Notes: sulking Morpheus, fluff, PDA

Thanks, this was a great prompt! Dear readers, while you can read this as stand-alone, it is more of a soft sequel to this Meowpheus prompt. Enjoy! If you liked this, check out my other stories.

I chose this gif because that's how I imagine Dream to look like while sulking.

You’re standing inside Fiddler’s green, breathing in the crisp air, and can’t help but jump in excitement. This place is a marvel. You’ve always loved nature, but as life has it, you don’t always find the time to walk through forests, climb on mountains, or swim through the sea. 

Fortunately for you, Fiddler’s green is the answer to all your dreams. The endless green glades and lush forests are practically begging you to explore them. 

You’re ready, your backpack filled with everything you need. You know that you could dream yourself right into the heart of this wondrous place, find the best sites in the blink of an eye, but where would be the fun in that? 

You’re going to map out this place, old-school. If one dream is not enough, you’ll simply continue in the next. Nothing and nobody is going to stop you. 

Setting one foot in front of the other, you begin your adventure. The birdsong sounds like the finest music to you, and as you wander through into a beautiful meadow, you let out a squeal. You are living the dream. 

Lord Morpheus controls the Dreaming, but what cannot be forgotten is that it is also a part of him. Lucienne remembers how the proud palace grew to become a desolate ruin, reflecting the damage their Lord’s absence had caused. 

The library is brimming with life, and each tome and volume makes her heart soar. As its librarian, she feels a deep calm and serenity settle within her. 

Even now as the palace shines anew and dreams and nightmares populate the realm again, Lucienne will always remember the horrible period during which she was the only who, despite being lonely and concerned, kept faith with their Lord. She will never take his presence for granted again. Even if his mood leaves to be desired. 

The sky above them, usually a lovely blue, is now a myriad of grey shades, the color of an oncoming storm. But as she watches Lord Morpheus rebuke a nightmare for leaving their designated place, his expression thunderous, Lucienne wonders if the storm might be already here. 

Lucienne hopes that you will return swiftly.

_______________________________

Matthew is circling above the throne room, looking for a comfortable spot to land. He is definitely getting the hang of this raven-thing. What else can you do when you wake up with feathers and claws, and tasked to help and watch over the world’s moodiest immortal? 

Matthew would rather glue his beak shut than tell him that in person. The boss has a lot of responsibilities and duties, so he can have a cranky moment or two. Now that the boss has reclaimed his power and things have settled down, Matthew actually enjoys his job; then again, anything beats going to literal hell. 

Besides, the boss is not so bad. He tries to listen, to take other people into consideration. Meeting you has helped, and right now he and every soul – real or dreamy – wishes for your return. Matthew is glad that he can just take a break and fly into the waking world to escape the gloom that follows the King of dreams. More like king of sulking.

Just in that moment, the boss looks up, and his dark glare is enough to send Matthew soaring towards the sky. It’s settled: Matthew won’t come back until you have returned. 

                     _________________________________

The roaring of water is getting is getting louder, and you can’t wait. You’ve been following this small stream for what feels to be ages, and you feel it in your bones that it will pay off. The water is so refreshingly cool, it is a pleasure to drink, but you want to finally swim in it. 

Your effort and perseverance are rewarded as the forest thins out, with only a few trees framing the wonderful waterfall and azure lake. The view is breathtaking, with birds flying over the thundering masses of water. 

“This is the best!” you scream as you race towards the azure water, and for a moment you hear an old man’s chuckle inside your mind. As you come closer, you think you see a blur of black and gold at the edge of your vision. 

“I am so happy that I got to do this alone.” Was that mean? Maybe just a little. Will you regret this? Hopefully not. But you had told Morpheus that you wanted, no, that you needed this to be a solo adventure. 

You feel your clothes turn into a swimsuit as you run towards the lake, giggling all the way. 

                        ______________________________

Merv knows the palace in and out. As a janitor, he could walk through this place blindly, which is why it doesn’t bother him that the light seems to dim inside the palace. 

What worries him is how dutiful dreams and nightmares he has known for ages suddenly start to quiver like mortal children. 

The boss has returned, pacing around in front of his throne like a caged tiger, and boy, he looks like a nightmare himself, all dark and broody. 

Merv hopes that your trip will be over soon. 

                             ___________________________

“I am back,” you call out, more softly than you initially wanted to. You still feel a little bad for dismissing Morpheus like that, especially since your trip was longer than anticipated. 

“Hello?” The throne room is eerily quiet, and you scurry past some dreams. One of them almost looks like they wanted to give you a hug, but then opted for a bow. Odd. 

It took some time, but you’ve become better at controlling yourself inside the Dreaming. Right now, you feel just the right mix between spent and serene, right when you stand on top of a mountain after a long hike. 

You walk towards your room, not even bothering to close the door, and drop down on your bed. You’re going to stay here or a while. This bed is your favorite place right now. 

“My love.” Despite your exhaustion, you roll around in your bed to see Morpheus leaning against the door frame. He’s giving you one of his precious, soft smiles, and you feel your heart flutter. 

“I have missed you,” you admit quietly and watch as he advances towards your bed, the mattress dipping as he’s lying down next to you. 

“I have missed you too.” He gently cards his hand through your hair, and you close your eyes, savoring the heavenly moment. This here feels like a dream within a dream, and you hope he continues forever. Way too soon he stops, and you look at him with an expectant pout. 

“Your turn.” You start moving your fingers through his silky hair in return, a proud grin on your face as he starts to hum. Carefully, your movements become slower until they stop. 

“We are not finished.” He turns his back to you, rolling his shoulders once, and you roll your eyes dramatically at him in fond chagrin. You glide your fingers down the shell of his ears, before applying the right amount of pressure to massage his neck. Your hands roam over his shoulders, idly drawing patterns. You press one quick kiss at the top of his spine, signaling him that you’ve finished. 

Apparently, you’re not done, because Morpheus captures your hands with his, his eyes half-lidded as he blinks at you. A heartbeat later, a black cat with golden eyes has taken his place, rubbing its head against your palm. 

“Well, you’re awfully needy today, Lord Meowpheus,” you tease, only for him to playfully nibble at your fingers. You giggle as you sit up, waiting for Morpheus to find a comfortable position on your lap. As you let your fingers glide through his soft fur, you listen to his low purr while telling him about all the be wonders you have seen on your journey. A flower crown is still adorning your head, a souvenir from an extraordinary adventure. 

“I would like to accompany you on your next journey, if I may,” Morpheus asks, his voice deep and comforting like dark chocolate, and you scratch his favorite spot underneath his chin. 

“Hmm, let me think about it.” You try to keep your face impassive, one hand holding your chin in thought. A minute passes as you hum contemplatively, then another. You feel sharp claws pinch your thighs, neither painful nor drawing blood, but enough to let you know about the cat’s displeasure. You let out a soft scoff and lean down to press a kiss between his ears, and Morpheus starts purring again.

“I would love it.” Now that you’ve explored Fiddler’s green, you can’t wait to experience it with Morpheus by your side. 

“I am looking forward to it.” Morpheus moves, exposing his belly, and you continue your ministration in comfortable silence.

“Of course, you would have to keep up. I am a good, fast wanderer.” You can’t help but tease him again, feeling your lips quirk into a smirk. Meowpheus stands up suddenly, arching his back, an in a blink of an eye, Morpheus is lying next to you, rolled to one side, his head propped on his hand. 

“I shall hurry then. If necessary, I will chase you.” His voice is deliciously low, and you see a flash of hunger in his fathomless eyes. You bite your lip, feeling a flush of heat at the memory of Meowpheus chasing mouse-you. That certainly had been an experience, to say the least. 

“Challenge accepted.” What mouse can claim that she tamed a cat? As Morpheus leans down to press his lips and his body against yours, making every inch of you tingle with molten satisfaction, you realize that you might want to revise that statement. 

#the sandman #morpheus x reader #dream of the endless #dream x reader #sandman x reader #my writing #my sandman fics #lord meowpheus

[afrenchwriter]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @andromeda4004, thank you dear 🥰 Always an interesting game to play, share, and reflect!

How many works do you have on ao3?

17

What's your total ao3 word count?

313,513

What fandoms do you write for?

I launched my AO3 account with a Red Dead Redemption fanfic, and then I discovered Good Omens, and then... well, you know how it goes with this fandom ❤️ That being said, I also had fun exploring the seas during the golden age of piracy (Our Flag Means Death) and the lands of a Norse God (Loki).

Top five fics by kudos:

For His Eyes Only (GO - James Bond AU, M rated, 69K)

Getting Closer (GO - fluffy post-S1 fic, G rated, 3K)

To the End of the Ocean (OFMD - post-S1 fic, M rated, 71K)

Whatever Comes After (RDR - canon divergence AU, M rated, 84K)

Ties & Other Obsessions (Loki - 5+1 fic, T rated, 4K)

Do you respond to comments?

Always! I treasure each and every one of them ❤️ But I have to confess that these past few months have been a bit hard (not much energy, unfortunately), and I'm still trying to catch up on all the lovely comments I've received.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Mmh, good question... I'm afraid I don't know how to do that 🙃 Even the last fic I wrote for the GO historical minisode event (Shadow & Light) was supposed to end on an angsty note, and at the last minute, I decided to add a happy epilogue! But if we're talking bittersweet ending, then it would be Sharp Endings & New Beginnings, a post-S2 Loki fic... If you've seen the show, then you know 🌳

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hard to say, considering my previous answer 😇 but all the long fics listed above have a very happy ending!

Do you get hate on fics?

I did, once, on my OFMD fic... It was a shock, but also an interesting experience: it pushed me to question my narrative choices (and, in the end, confirm them).

Do you write smut?

I do... And I have a second AO3 account dedicated to it 😎 (I wonder how many people will reach this part of the tag game and find this out, eheh)

Craziest crossover:

None for now... (For His Eyes Only cannot be considered a crossover since Crowley is basically James Bond 😎).

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! @pavel-pedro has started to translate To the End of the Ocean in Russian... and whether it will be one day finished or not (I know how time-consuming such a work can be!), I'll forever be grateful for the gesture ❤️

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I'm currently co-writing a fic, actually, with my lovely friend @sabotage-on-mercury: a GO/Fleabag AU! We're taking our time for all sorts of reasons, but we want to make sure we deliver quality content, considering the source materials!

All time favorite ship?

The Ineffable Partners, of course. How can you beat a relationship between two beings who have known each other for millennia and have gone through all sorts of ups and downs, down here and out there?

Or, as Neil would say: why? Love ❤️

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

*insert awkward look monkey puppet meme* I don't know, man... I have too many WIPs piling up lately, and not enough energy to work seriously on any of them... I do hope I'll finish all of my GO WIPs someday. But the one WIP I doubt I'll ever come back to (although it makes me sad because the outline I have for this story is WILD) is the sequel of my long RDR fic, called What We Owe to Each Other.

What are your writing strengths?

I've been told several times that I'm good at capturing a character's voice, and that makes me really happy. I'm a huge cinephile and good dialogues, "natural" dialogues, are so important - I'm glad to be able to consider this as one of my strengths! I would like to say developing a plot, too - I love writing long fics and exploring characters' arcs - but I think I'm still too close to the source material for now to consider it a real strength... Room to grow!

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm a slow writer; I need to develop my ability to use imagery and metaphors; and I need better organization when it comes to writing drafts and editing the whole thing!

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Well... I'm French and I write my stories in English + I work as a translator, so... Yes to dialogues in other languages, always (then translated, of course)!

First fandom you wrote in?

I'm not exactly sure, but it must have been between those three: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Artemis Fowl (ah, teenage years!).

Favorite fic you've written?

That's a hard one... Whatever Comes After will forever have a special place in my heart since it's the fic that 1/ brought me back to writing 2/ helped me prove to myself that I was able to complete a long story. Senses & Sensitivity was my first fic for the GO fandom, and 1/ it made me feel confident to write more for the Ineffable Partners 2/ I made some great connections thanks to it (hello @hasturswig! ❤️). I don't think I've ever had more fun than when I was writing For His Eyes Only (and the enthusiastic comments along the way really helped! ❤️). But, to finish, I'd like to mention When All Is Said and Done, a GO fanfic in the South Downs that just poured out of me after the S2 finale... It really made me experience the magic of writing again.

If you've reached the end, thank you for reading! Feel free to ask me anything... And to consider yourself tagged if you want to play this game, too! ❤️

#tag game

[not-rude-ginger]

hi! thank you so much for writing For What, For All But Myself. it’s such a richly built world with so many of my favorite Jiang Cheng tropes + really well-crafted plotlines! I really really enjoyed reading it so much; I didn’t want it to end! I found myself really curious about some of the asides you put in about JC perceiving LXC as laughing at him with JGY (+ as well as having sold his parents’ bed to the Lans during famine, although this is probably a separate thing) and how this is just his interpretation of events. How is LXC (and maybe Gusu Lan at large) experiencing these events/what is actually happening on his end?

I'm hoping to explore some of this in the sequels but the gist of LXC's perception was that he thought JGY and JC were close enough to tease each other after working together to raise Jin Ling, and he was happy they were so harmonious - it was one less stressful relationship he might need to navigate in his own job. So when he laughed he was laughing with them, not at JC, glad some of his peers weren't insufferable and exhausting.

As for the bed, I don't think I said specifically who JC sold it to - it wasn't to the Lan at least. My assumption is he sold it to a merchant who was coming up after the war because he got in on an economy that was very important post war, a bit like how Wu Zetian's dad became very wealthy through timber after a conflict. LXC wouldn't know anything about that because JC would not have wanted it known.

LXC would have known the famine was happening, but a) Gusu would also have been dealing with food shortages and b) he would have assumed that the Jin were helping the Jiang because of their connections, especially once JGY was in charge because JGY was interested in helping people.

Since I've written the fic I'm less certain what JGY was actually doing V what was actually possible. Famines can be extremely complex things - there may not have been much food to share with the Jiang and JGY may have chosen caution and fed subjects over political bonds. I haven't thought about it much in ages so I'm not sure what was happening more broadly, but LXC was assuming JC had help, even if the Lan were not providing it.

Also, LXC wasn't that interested in JC at the time, he had his own stuff to deal with and kinda just assumed JC would tell him if he needed help. I don't think there was any particular intercession from an external person to make them disconnected, I think they were both just focused on their own priorities. If it weren't for LXC's misunderstanding of JC and JGY's relationship, if he hadn't laughed along with JGY thinking JC was also in on the joke, I'm not sure it would have stood out as much to JC. He doesn't hold any similar issue with NMJ, even though I don't think NMJ was much more helpful to him. NMJ just didn't seem to laugh at him and sometimes played board games with him.

#jiang cheng #lan xichen #for what for all but myself #my writing #asked and answered

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

hi hi!! i’m very sorry if any of these are repeats alr on your list, my old rickety ass phone didn’t want to load the doc 😭 i wanted to recommend (& have epubs for all, lmk if you need em!):

- the burning kingdoms trilogy by tasha suri (last book comes out this nov). two women protagonists who are both Kind Of Fucked Up and neither makes great choices most of the time, both driven by revenge. another woman who also is Kind Of Fucked Up also plays a major recurring role and has her own PoV chapters throughout. it’s not on the level of the traitor baru in terms of writing style, mostly just in themes, but if you liked that i think you’ll enjoy these books!

- she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan: SOOOO good, gave me brainworms. it’s sold as “mulan meets song of achilles” but that’s extremely broad and doesn’t get to the true heart of it, which is an exploration of gender and fighting to be recognized as more than/better than “just a girl/woman”. (unfortunately the sequel to this kind of sucks imo!) the first is much more focused on the women/lesbians with a side of tortured self-hating gay men as the parallel antagonists, and it can stand alone pretty well despite it being a duology.

i hope you’re enjoying your journey so far in focusing on women-centric media!! some friends and i have been doing the same for the past few years altho more specifically focused on books with lesbian characters or relationships, and we’ve def read a few clunkers LOL but it’s been fun overall :^)

thank you for the recs!!! ill stick these on the list. i appreciate having more books on my list because that's one area im really trying to flesh out here. im glad you and your friend have been on the yuri warrior grind too feel free to pop back in if you find more good stuff

#ask

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

My morality cries that I shouldn't like this, but my heart is screaming like, "STFU, I lOVE THIS."

I, I don't know how to express my feelings right now. But I can tell you that I cannot sleep tonight. How can I calm this overwhelming heart?

I already knew that I love how you describe Daemon Targaryen, but even THIS version... GOD I helplessly enamored your writing skills, creative plot, the ability to identify characters. It's my personal opinion, but I think the daemon in this story is similar to Book! daemon. Although it's a little darker and scarier.

And, I've always been secretly wondering if Targaryen's incest doesn't apply to parent-child relationships. Although I ended up thinking that this would be too much for them, too. So when you said the pairing of this story is father and daughter I found myself surprised and looking forward to it at the same time. And I was very satisfied.

I have a question, but at the end it was revealed that the reader was pregnant, so what is the future of her? She is a part of the royal family and unmarried, but carrying a bastard. And others might be don't know, but only Rhaenyra can suspect that the baby is Daemon's child. What is Rhaenyra's decision in this situation? Will she ever find out what truly happened with Daemon and Reader? And if Reader's grandparents, sisters, and stepbrothers find out that Daemon has been raping Reader, how will they react and do what?

*I wouldn't be surprised if Laena came back from death and drown Daemon in the deep sea for what he did to their daughter.

Thank you again for writing an amazing story. I'm always enjoying your work :)

Please understand if my grammar and spelling are wrong. English is not my first language.

Aaaaah, I'm so glad you liked! I'm so sorry lol, it's fucking awful. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I promise this has no basis in any real life trauma I've experienced, I'm just screwy in the head and morbidly curious about telling stories I have no personal stake in. All I can hope is it did its job of being mind-fucky and gut-churning and didn't come across as too trite.

I've noticed that a lot of my non-series Daemons are really fucked up, haha. I invest most of my time in gross nasty basically-a-predator soft!Daemon because there's a grit to the softness that works for me, but I like playing in the world where Uncle-Daddy Dae-Dae luvs his babeydoll. But I also really love getting little opportunities to explore his absolutely deplorable side, and I like to think I was able to do that here. He's awful here, but what I found interesting as the 'character' took over was that a lot of that awfulness is so ambiguous; we learn that Daemon's done all this stuff in the past to groom her into the perfect object of abuse, but we don't know exactly what that is, so we're free to imagine how awful he might actually have been. Or wonder if she's so far up in her head that she's been doing the mental manipulation for him, in a way.

I think Targs don't generally do the parent/child thing because marriage is a thing in Valyrian custom, and it'd probably be more common for the parent to still be married to the other parent when the child was at 'breeding age'. I assume they prize exclusivity to marriage in that, though. Thus, their incest options are sibling, cousin or parent's sibling, essentially. Then, over time, the whole 'woof parent/child is BAD' thing would have been the more pressing reason. This is all speculation, though, I assume GRRM has some heinous manifesto as to why only some incest is okay, lolz.

As for the future of Daughter!Reader, I actually have a vague outline of what would likely happen in that future, if you want. I don't think I'll ever write a sequel, because I do just really like the whole ambiguity of where it's left. As for what they'll do when they discover she's being raped - well, I feel like Reader's so confused and fucked-up mentally that she'll never want to call it rape, because that would be disrespecting her father and she's a good girl, so good always that she's let him do it over and over again. And if she doesn't admit to it, what can they do? They'd all be a little too scared to ask, and so the full truth of it will ultimately die out. Grim, unsatisfying, but I kinda like the idea of crafting the message that justice isn't always meted out to those who deserve it.

Thank you so much for reading this absolutely awful fic! I'm thrilled you enjoyed! And your English is WONDERFUL!

#fanfiction comments #fanfiction asks

[vesperewrites]

Someone recommended Meliora to you and I want to join the club! This story is really good. Give a chance when you have some free time!

also want to say that I love your story - Sovereign Deadly Perfect -

{Your prose is wonderfully lucid, full of brilliant details and make me downright homesick for the scenes between Lucemond that don't even exist in the show. The characterization of Aemond and Lucerys is breathtaking, I love how you balance Aemond's morality with his darkness. It's one of the few stories I've read where I feel true canon Aemond. —the emotional core!—

Thank you for writing a beautiful and deeply satisfying fic, but it was also a sensitive and honest exploration of their dynamics. You did a such a wonderful job capturing everything that makes me love these characters. }

I don't usually ask authors about this, but are you planning a sequel in the future?

Oh, I can't wait! The J*cegan pairing have me in a chokehold at the moment. But I resume my reads and I'll add it the list :]

And ahhh thank you so much 🥺❤️ that means a lot to me. I set out to write SDP with a canonical component (both book and show) and because I wanted to develop the relationship between the two into an exploration of obsession, hate, and the insidious nature of longing. When I ventured into canon-divergent territory, I was slightly worried on how the characterization would turn out. It was an experimental fic with no intention of moving past the first chapter, as it was my first dip into L*CMD. I'm happy I finished it and I'm very glad it had an impact.

Here is a sneak preview into the sequel.

It's a bit rough, but I have many scenes written out for it. The toughest challenge for me will be to balance Aemond's and Lucerys's characterization in a way that is authentic to me, while also illustrating the logical conclusion of their character arcs. We left off in SDP with Luke, captured and determined. Aemond has awakened his thirst, so how will this play out in part 2?

Part 2 will be very action-based compared to SDP's slow build. It features a few OCs (that we have already met), but the heavy focus will be on Aemond/Luke interactions. Will obsession consume? Will restraint die?

The sequel will come out probably after I finish my L*cmd gothic AU and my stalking AU (unreleased). :] I'm also working on my other fandom too, so it may take some time, but I do want to fully write it for weekly release. So realistically, around March 2024 is an estimate.

I hope you look forward to it!

#author asks #fic: Sovereign Deadly Perfect

[mishwanders]

Ok devils teeth finally read it. I fucking loved it. Admittedly I am a little glad 31 didn’t just up and kill bestie becca and Jill and I guess it’s also cool Barry survived if he has too *sigh*. But I loved the rage they went through when they saw dead Wesker cause honestly same. I’d do the exact same thing. Like I would come for Chris’ ass. And not even in the horny way which is unusual for me. And then Wesker with powers and them being able to let loose properly and it was perfect all of it was perfect down to the last minute detail. I loved it. You’re amazing, your talent is enviable, the story just is wow, can’t wait for what’s next in store and I’ll be lurking all your other fics as I always do

- the fingers one

AAAHHHHH THANK YOU AND I'M SO HAPPY YOU LIKED THE ENDING!

I was curious how people were going to take that whole scene with finding his body and the rage that took over. Like, even though we all know Chris didn't exactly cause it all, I knew they would be look for anything and anyone to blame it on - and he was the last one in the room with Wesker and immediately became their target after that. Exploring their relationship in the sequel is gonna be interesting, especially now that Claire is going to be involved? OH THE TENSION!

I have some other's planned out, like the fic for Jill and one for Heisenberg, that I'm hoping to get out soon, but stuff is still working in my head for plot things and what not rn. If anyone one has any song recs for Jill or Heisenberg, please let me know because I'm always looking for vibes to add to my playlists lol.

#mish rambles #the devils teeth

[navegandoaciegas]

I love my baby to death

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader 

Warnings: fluff, friends to lovers, tiniest bit of angst but really tiny I promise, 3.5k words, set after Endgame

Summary:  “Say, hypothetically, there’s a 100 year old fossil who’s a bit confused most of the time but he’s got the spirit, right?, and he’s outside with a packed duffle bag, what would you do?”

You were supposed to enjoy a solo roadtrip after years of Avenging, but Bucky invites himself along and you can’t say no to his happy face.

A/N: I haven’t slept in a week because of nightmares and I just needed something to cheer me up, I guess. Reader took Steve’s side in CA:CW and spent two years with him as a nomad. You can choose to see her and Natasha as a platonic relationship or a romantic one, it’s up to you.

masterlist

Read the sequel to this here

“They’re just so fuckin’ gross I don’t understand how you can eat them.”

Bucky sends you his best death glare as he continues digging in his soggy cardboard In-N-Out fries.

“We could have literally stopped by Arby’s three miles west of here” you continue, “they have the best fries. We’re missing out, clearly.” you deadpan eyeing his food skeptically. 

“The curly ones? God no, they’re so spicy. I don’t know why you like your food to hurt but I don’t.”

“Okay, first of all they’re not spicy at all, I don’t know where you got that from. And second, they have a taste at least, unlike these.” You reiterate your point by swinging one the fries in his face. Bucky just grabs your hand and bites the fry, almost biting your fingers off too.

“Yeah, like that god-awful spicy chicken you forced on me the other day? No thank you, ma’am, I’ll stand by my own food choices.” 

You snort. “Not my fault your post-Depression ass can’t handle anything other than salt and black pepper. But sure, go ‘head and enjoy your sorry excuse of a meal, Buck.”

“People from your generation sure love complaining, huh? Back in my days you ate what your mama made you and never bitched about it, or else you went to bed hungry.” 

God, he’s such a grampa. You make a show of rolling your eyes and huffing in annoyance. He likes his senior citizen card a bit too much. He tries to stifle a laugh when he sees the look on your face and just shakes his head at you. 

California (and Bucky Barnes) has stolen your heart and you’ve loved this road trip so much you often wonder why it took you being snapped and facing the end of the world twice to retire from the avenging business. 

Fresno is interesting, to say the least. 

He wanted to stop by, saying something about wanting to see “an old pal from the war” ’s hometown for himself, and you’ve been dreaming about exploring Yosemite for as long as you can remember.

-

Online pictures of Yosemite National Park were stunning but the real thing is just breathtaking. 

You never thought camping would become your thing and you never imagined you’d enjoy stargazing so much. In five months you’ve discovered how big of a nerd Bucky really is and he’s been trying to teach you the names of all the stars and constellations. 

He sees Big Dipper, Orion, Ursa Major and Minor; you see pretty twinkling lights and the occasional shooting star. Nevertheless you sit through hours and hours of explanations, because when he speaks of the things he’s passionate about, Bucky is the most beautiful thing in the world.

“You know, the stars are one of the things I missed the most.” he says softy, furrowing his brows as he does when he remembers something from the past. “Stevie and I used to do that as kids sometimes. We’d sneak out of our houses and go on the roof of this abandoned building to watch the stars. Now there’s so much goddamn light everywhere, you can’t even see them anymore.”

Sometimes when you stop and think about it, really think, you can’t imagine how hard it must have been for them, having everything, even the night sky taken away from them. 

“Steve never told me.” 

“He probably missed the stars too.”

You eye him looking for clues on how he might feel, but you only see a sad smile on his face. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“Every damn day.” his voice cracks and you hold him closer.

“I know Buck, I miss him too. I miss him so much that sometimes I feel like my life has no direction without my Captain.” You’re barely holding back your own tears at this point, “But we’ve got Sam if we need orders, yes?” but you still try to make him smile. You’re always going to try for him.

Your attempt works and he snorts. Always bring Sam up to cheer Bucky.

“I hope he was happy, you know.” he says, “I hope he made the right choice and never regretted a thing. I hope that now he looks back and thinks he wouldn’t have had it any other way. His happiness is all I could ever ask for.”

You cling to each other that night and cry until the early morning. It feels good to let it all out, to let Steve go and look at the future. You’ve lost too much but tonight you only have hope.

-----

New York

Five months before

“Words on the street is you’re retiring your crusty old ass from the field.” 

Sam is leaning on the door of your hotel room with his arms folded and a pleased look on his face.

“Rumors travel fast in this post-apocalyptic word, I see.” you say as you continue stuffing a duffle bag with all the clothes you have left.

“How are you?” Sam asks, with his newly found Captain voice. You wonder if it’s something in that damn shield that gives them that stern commanding tone.

“Tryina analize me, Sammy? I’m not one of your guys at the VA.”

It’s not like you’re pissed at Sam, you love him with all your heart, you’re just angry at the world and Sam’s the one standing in your way right now.

You hear him sigh, “I know what you’re feeling right now, I understand why you would think that-” “Don’t” you interrupt him, “Don’t give me that speech, Fury did that for you already. I’m not running away from my problems.”

“I’m not saying that-” you really don’t want him to talk today, so you stop him again “No but you’re thinking it.”

“I know what it’s like.” he says raising his voice “To lose who you care the most in the world. We all lost someone important but you lost Natasha and I know, trust me I know what you feel right now, because it’s what I felt when I lost Riley.” 

You stop and swallow the tight lump in your throat.

Your eyes well up with tears as you turn to look at him. You’ve been so blinded by your own pain and anger you didn’t stop for a moment to think about others. “I’m sorry Sam, I shouldn’t have treated you like that.” you say sobbing.

Why did she have to leave you?

Stupid, stupid Natasha. Why did she have to sacrifice herself for the world?

Why her?

He hugs you tight and rocks you back and forth. “I understand why you’re leaving and I’m not here to stop you, I promise. Just keep in touch, yes? Text me everyday so I’m not tempted to track you down and fly wherever you are to see if you’re good.”

You smile for the first time in a long time.

“Don’t worry Sam, you’ll get tired of all the selfies I’ll send you, eventually.” 

“You know I’ll never get tired of this pretty face.” he says raising his eyebrows suggestively, making you laugh. “Good, that’s my girl. I missed this laugh so much.”

You stay in his arms a while longer until it’s time for you to leave.

“This is not the only reason I’m here.” he says and clears his throat, “Say, hypothetically, there’s a 100 year old fossil who’s a bit confused most of the time but he’s got the spirit, right?, and he’s outside with a packed duffle bag, what would you do?”

“What?” you manage to stammer out. “Bucky just... wants to...tag along?” 

You are now as confused as Bucky is most of the time.

Sam shrugs. “I guess? You know he’s weird like that.”

What he really means is he’s just like you, lost and confused and in desperate need to live a little, but he doesn’t say it out loud. There’s no need to.

“So, would you mind if he came too?”

You see Bucky standing outside, leaning on your SUV. He’s cut his hair short and he looks hotter than you would like to. He turns around and waves at you with a big smile on his face. Like Sam often says, you too like his energy.

“No, I wouldn’t mind at all.”

----

Denver, Colorado

It’s a long way from New York to Colorado and if you’re honest, you’ve loved every minute of it and you’re glad Bucky came along with you. He’s witty, laid back, snarky, smart and overall a fun guy for someone who was a prisoner to nazis for 70 years.

“Look all I’m saying is I think Edward is a fuckin’ creep. Would you like it if someone stood in your room and looked at you while you sleep?”

“But is that someone a hot vampire, Bucky?”

“It literally doesn’t even matter.”

“Stop saying literally Buck, you’re a 100 year old man, not a valley girl.”

-

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Lemme check a map.”

“Bucky it’s on the screen there, Google says we have 20 minutes left.”

“But can we trust this Google guy?”

-

“All I’m saying is if you made and enjoyed congealed salads you probably don’t deserve your right to vote for the future of this country.”

“I mean...fair enough?”

-

“Do we count blipped years or not?”

“At this point it, it barely makes a difference in my case, doll.”

“Honestly you’ve got a point, old man.”

-

“How are you so calm right now?”

“My standards are so low it’s practically impossible to piss me off.”

“But you aren’t even a little bothered?”

“Chill, it’s just a flat tire, it’s gonna take 10 minutes to fix.”

“Buck we talked about the things that are unacceptable. ‘Chill’ coming out of your mouth is one of those.”

It’s your second week in Denver already, and you’re having the time of your life. 

Bucky is spooning you like he usually does. You think back to the first time you’ve shared a bed and you almost giggle at the memory. 

“Uh, Buck?”

“Yes?”

“We might have a problem.”

He enters the room after you and his eyes widen when he sees it.

There’s a bed in the room.

A single bed.

You weren’t expecting much from this place that gives you ‘Bates Motel’ vibes, but you thought you’d have two beds, or at least a couch.

“I’ll just sleep on the floor, don’t worry about it.”

“What?” you shriek “Absolutely not, I’m not letting you suffer all night. We’re going to share.”

“But I-”

“No buts, you know how many times I slept with Steve? I’m used to you supersoldier men by now, I’m no longer affected by your kicks.”

He stays silent. “You and Steve used to…?”

Only then you realize you could have phrased it better.

“God no, I meant just, ya know, share bed.”

He smiles and nods. Why does he look relieved?

Now he clings to you every night, and most times he’s the little spoon because he likes to be held. You used to hate sleeping tangled with someone else until you woke up on top of Bucky, his hands caressing your back, and he told you he had the best night of sleep he’s had in decades.

There’s a lot of things you do just because they make him happy, actually.

But how could you not?

There’s no point in denying your feelings.

----

Salt Lake City, Utah

God, you love Utah.

You drive through immense stretches of red desert whilst Bucky blasts Nicki Minaj like his life depends on it; that’s how it always ends up when he rides shotgun.

He insisted on visiting Monument Valley despite it being out of your way, but you can never find it in yourself to refuse him anything, so you drove 9 hours straight from Denver to the southern border of Utah just so he could see a place that looks a lot like the ones in those Western cowboy movies from the 50s and 60s he loves so much.

“Yasha would have hated it here so much.” you say as you pull over the Airbnb you’ve rented for a couple of days in Salt Lake City.

He snorts, “Yeah, I bet she would have.”

You thought time would heal all wounds and that someday you might stop feeling the void in your life when you think of her, but now you know you’ll never stop hurting. She was such a big part of your life for so long that your heart will never stop aching for her. 

Sometimes you think how she never got to see you again after you were snapped. 

You wonder if she ever stopped missing you.

You know you’ll never not miss her.

-

You’ve driven for more than humanly possible in two days, but he’s a supersoldier and you’re really stubborn, and now you can’t wait to sleep in a nice bed for the first time in a long while. Usually you just make do with motels, but tonight you wanted to treat yourselves.

You enter the place and notice immediately the two queen size beds. 

You should be relieved, and if it was 4 months ago when you first shared a bed you would probably be, but now you’re so used to his warm body next to yours, his flesh arm over you and his face resting in the crook of your neck that you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to fall asleep without him.

“I’ll go shower first if you don’t mind.” you say as you mentally berate yourself for your thoughts. 

Your goal to not fall in love with Bucky Barnes flew out the window somewhere in the green fields of Western Iowa, but at this point you’re just treading a dangerous path and you know you’re going to get hurt.

There’s no way Bucky feels the same about you, right?

You get out the shower, put on a t-shirt you’ve stolen from Steve ages ago and get out of the bathroom, only to stop when you see Bucky on the bed you claimed as yours.

“Sorry, I hope you don’t mind but I feel better when I sleep with you.”

Maybe he does.

----

Nevada

Technically it takes roughly 43 hours to get from New York to Sacramento by car. It took you almost five months.

You’ve been covering Interstate 80, stopping and visiting towns, cities and parks along the way as you pleased, sleeping in seedy motels, your SUV or that fancy ass tent Bucky bought somewhere in Ohio. You’ve begged Bucky to drive from Salt Lake City straight to Sacramento, stopping only when it’s absolutely necessary; you’ll be visiting Nevada after California anyways, so for now you’re just enjoying the scenic drive, with the windows rolled down and the air messing up your hair.

“What’s that song called?” Bucky asks and raises the radio’s volume.

“That’s Dani California by Red Hot Chili Peppers.” you answer absentmindedly, distracted by the seemingly endless stretch of black asphalt and yellowish nothingness around it.

She’s lover, baby and a fighter

Shoulda seen it coming when I got a little brighter

Bucky sings along and smiles glancing your way.

“I like this.” he exclaims when the song ends “Can we listen to it again, please?”

You smile softly and play it again. If there’s one thing Bucky is capable of is listening to the same song on repeat multiple times until you’re so sick of it you don’t ever want to hear it again.

 Who knew the other side of you

Who knew what others died to prove

You never thought Bucky would be like this, or that you’d be privileged enought to see this side of him.

There’s a big smile on his face and the orange hues of the sky reflect in his clear eyes. He’s got one hand on the steering wheel and the vibranium one resting on the car’s door and he looks so different from the man haunted by his past and loneliness you met in Budapest all those years ago. He looks so carefree and relaxed now, so happy. 

You are proud of him.

California rest in peace

Simultaneous release

California show your teeth

She’s my priestess and I’m your priest

I love my baby to death

------

San Diego, California 

You’ve hiked the hills of southern Cali and gone parapending in Torrey Pines. You landed on a breathtaking beach with beautiful dark sand and soon found out, much to Bucky’s dismay and utter disgust, that it was a nudist beach.

He grumbled something about ‘hygiene’ and ‘decor’ and you just laughed at his flustered state.

“First time seeing a naked woman, old man?” you asked in between fits of laughter.

You didn’t notice the sea lion swimming next to you in La Jolla and not even Thanos’ creepy gang could have scared you as much when you turned around and looked him dead in the eyes. Bucky got his revenge filming you as you shot out the ocean with a shrill, covered in algae and terrified. 

You are loving the San Diego area so far. Minus the sea lions.

“Hey I- uh- do you mind if I take the car? I wanted to go do some shopping.” Bucky tells you.

He’s really embarrassed for some reason.

You shrug and mumble a ‘sure’ before going back to basking in the sun by the pool of the hotel you’re staying at.

“Okay, I-I guess I’ll g-go then, I’ll come pick you up at 5.30 for dinner.” he stutters out.

Weird, you think, but you don’t give it too much thought. Bucky is like that.

-

Dinner time rolls around and as promised Bucky comes pick you up on time.

You’re wearing a short green dress with white daisies printed on it and a pair of strappy white sandals. You look good and you know it; Bucky knows it too, judging from the glances he tries to sneak your way.

“So, uhm-” he clears his voice, “I know it’s going to sound weird but I promise it’s not. Can I- Can I blindfold you?”

Can he...what? You could split me in half and I’d be glad about it, you’d like to say.

“Kinky. You could at least buy me differ first, tho.” you settle for something safer instead.

He blushes three shades darker than his usual color and you take the black scarf he’s handing you, barely concealing a teasing smile.

He drives around for a while. When you get to your destination the first thing you hear is the waves beating on the shore and the smell of the ocean. He helps you get out and guides you somewhere.

“Wait here.” 

You hear him park the car in reverse, open the trunk and fiddle with something. He comes up behind you and removes the blindfold. You feel his hot breath on your neck and it sends tingles down your spine straight to your pu- “You can look now.”

When you open your eyes you are stunned for a moment. You turn around with a big smile that turns even bigger when you notice the blankets and the little picnic he’s assembled in the trunk.

“Buck, this is- I can’t believe you remembered.”

Somewhere in Colorado you mentioned how romantic you thought Sunset Cliffs were, and how much you wished you could do something like this. It was a fleeting moment, a thought uttered out loud absentmindedly over a couple of drinks in some bar. You were tipsy and you were running your mouth about all the things you’d want in a partner to some random girl who became your best friends for the night.

You realize you’re tearing up when his fingers grace your cheeks.

It feels nice to be cared about so much. It’s been too long since someone took such good care of you.

“I thought I’d do something special for you.” he says with an adorable blush.

“Thank you Bucky, I love this.” you hug him tightly and bury your face in his chest, inhaling his scent.

“Anything for my girl.”

“When did I become your girl, huh?” you ask teasingly.

“Probably when I invited myself on this trip.”

You both laugh at that.

You swallow hard when you see the look on his face. God, how did you miss the signs? You were always a better sniper than a spy, Yasha always told you.

Your heart is beating out of your chest in anticipation as he leans down slowly and your lips brush lightly. His hands are on your waist and yours on his broad shoulders. He kisses you timidly at first, and more passionately as he gains confidence. 

“I wanted to do this since Bucharest.” he confesses after your lips part.

“Took you long enough, Sarge.”

But it was worth the wait.

-

Tonight’s sunset will be burned in the back of your mind permanently. 

You kiss and laugh some more, and feed eachother seedless grapes because they’re the only ones you eat. He’s brought strawberries, white wine because you don’t drink red, hummus and pita and an assortment of cheese and crackers.

You kiss and talk, cuddle, laugh and kiss some more all night.

You’ve accepted long ago that you’ll never fill the gaping hole in your lives, but that night when you make love to eachother the void in your hearts that Steve and Natasha left behind doesn’t seem as encompassing as it usually is.

---

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please reblog and comment, feedback is always appreciated 🥺🤲 might fuck around and write Bucky’s POV too.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x you #bucky imagine #bucky fanfic #marvel fanfiction #sebastian stan x reader #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes #james barnes x reader #james barnes x you #james barnes x y/n

[ordinaryschmuck]

My Stories Ranked from Worst to Best (According to you guys).

Oh my gosh, it's been a whole year since I have been writing The Owl House fan fiction! ... Oh my gosh, it's been a whole year since I've been writing The Owl House fan fiction...what I am I doing with my life. But regardless, it still has been a year. And within that time, I wrote ten different stories, each with its own varying degrees of success. So today, in celebration(?), I have ordered all that I have written from worst to best. Or, more accurately, you guys have ranked them. Because this list is based on the amount of kudos each story got, and take a shot at why some might be more popular than others. I'll also leave links to each one so you can form your own opinion. With that out of the way, here's the list:

10th place-The Nurse House (181 kudos): This is a story based off of someone else's AU where instead of Luz being a human trapped in the Boiling Isles, she's a witch trapped in the human world. And, instead of Eda being Luz's caretaker, it's Camila. I haven't continued this story since August. And because of that, it hasn't gotten as much attention recently. I do have plans to continue The Nurse House. But it's gonna have to wait until I finish my other projects. As for why it's not doing so good, it's probably either my writing ability or the fact that this fandom rejects anything that doesn't have Lumity in it (which is dumb, I know). Whatever it is, I'll find out when I eventually do work on this story again.

9th place-Baby Talk (187 kudos): This is my most recent story and is also the first one where I had others beta read it. I wanted the conclusion between Luz and Amity about having a kid to feel genuine. And how while neither is in the wrong, they're both not in the right either. But, I guess I didn't do as good of a job as I had hoped.

8th place-The Truth Comes Out (190 kudos): This story might have a similar problem with The Nurse House. It's a story about Luz coming out to her mom, and as far as I can tell, there's not much that's wrong with it. Again, maybe because there's no Lumity, or it's because of my writing ability. I don't know, and I doubt I ever will.

7th place-Same Day, Different Perspectives (230 kudos): With how popular It All Started with a Jacket was doing, I felt weird that I gave no proper introduction to these versions of Luz and Amity. So that's what I did, and, yeah, reading back, it does seem like there's a pacing issue. Still, it has parts of what I assume people like about It All Started with a Jacket, so maybe it's not too bad to check out, right? Right?

6th place-Cupid's Army (339 kudos): I won't lie. This entire story is being written just for the sake of me writing some dumb joke I have planned in the epilogue. And it might not be as worth it as I thought it was. Still, I tried my hardest to write a solid story with a few jokes and interactions between characters that haven't interacted much within canon. So while that ending joke may not be worth it, this story might be.

5th place-Get This Right (Baby) (339 kudos): This story is about Luz proposing to Amity. It has a few cute moments of domestic fluff, some jokes, and the usual jitters one has when popping a question so big. But, rereading it, there is a pacing issue as I jump through different dates almost at random, and it might be a story better off if I split it into separate chapters instead of writing it all at once.

4th place-Help from the Helpless (468 kudos): This is actually the story I'm most proud of. I wrote it for Luz Appreciation Week, and I really wanted to dive into what makes Luz such an incredible character. By exploring her seven most crucial relationships, I wanted to prove that Luz is the light of everyone's life while also giving a perspective into why acts so nice to begin with. It may not be perfect, but while it takes fourth place for everyone else, it's always going to be number one in my heart.

3rd place-Texts to Home (751 kudos): Here it is. The very first story I wrote for this fandom. Even before tons of people joined and continuously obsessed over Lumity, I felt weird that there weren't many stories focusing on Luz and her mother, which is a shame. Because to me, their relationship is really interesting. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and dived deep into Luz and Camila's bond as mother and daughter by having Luz talk about her day at "summer camp." It's the easiest thing in the world for me to write, not because I'm basically recapping episodes, but because Luz and Camila's relationship is a lot like me and my mom's. So writing their interactions is simple as thinking about how my mom and I would talk in these specific situations. I'm proud of how it turned out, and here's hoping season two will allow me the chance to continue this story in the future...whenever the hell that will be.

2nd place-Holy Matrimony (958 kudos): For a time, this was my top-rated story. It's Luz and Amity's wedding, and it is most likely everything that comes to mind when you think of it. And trust me when I say that my ego increased by tenfold after all the sweet and wonderful comments I got from this one. It did so well that I thought that I might as well add more to this story...unfortunately, I Star Wars'd it by writing an unsuccessful prequel and somehow an even worse sequel. But, hey, at least the original is still fluffy and fun!

1st place-It All Started with a Jacket (1730 kudos): Let's be real: You all knew that this was going to be number one. It is my most successful story yet, and you've all made it pretty clear why. It has chemistry between beta Luz and Amity, it's quick and easy to read, and the snark is some of my best snark yet. And the crazy thing is, I initially didn't want to make more of it. It was meant to be a one-shot as a gift for @drabbles-of-writing, but because people asked for more, I just went, "Eh, why not." And holy s**t did I not see the popularity coming! I have no idea how I still keep you all interested enough to read more, but no matter what, I'm glad that you all take the time to read each chapter. Here's hoping I don't do anything to screw it up in the future.

And that's my list. Would you rank things a little differently? Well, give them each a read (if you want) to see for yourself how you rank them. Thank you all so much for reading and loving my work, and I'll see you next time for whatever I write next.

#the owl house #luz noceda #camila noceda #amity blight #beta luz #beta amity #lumity #beta lumity

[aethel]

MDZS/Untamed fic recs

Since I’m in danger of wandering off to another fandom, here are some recs I’ve collected so far:

Wangxian

Strange Darling, fic by etymologyplayground. Explores what Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen mean to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

Habits of Defiance by Feynite. It's a WIP, but I think stands on its own. Explores Alpha/Alpha attraction in an A/B/O world.

all the modern AUs by detectorist, including and there was only one tent

Let's Play Pretend and Live Our Lives by Tassos. Modern AU where Wei Wuxian forgot to tell everyone he was adopting a child and tries to bluff his way through it; Lan Wangji ups the stakes. Pretend husbands, very ridiculous :)

Nothing But Trouble by brooklinegirl. Modern AU with fake dating. Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian with side Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing. On your rich breathing by Petra. Psychic wolves AU. Lan Wangji bonds with Wei Wuxian's wolf after he dies. of all the hands by typefortydeductions. Canon divergent AU with arranged marriage for diplomacy reasons. Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian. tell me your whole life by phnelt. Cyberpunk noir AU. Android Wei Wuxian/hacker Lan Wangji.

i’ll be your girl by plonk. Modern AU, miscommunication, cross-dressing, happy ending. The "extras" companion piece is also very cute.

baby let's take the long way home by plonk. Modern academic AU. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are academic archnemeses until Wei Wuxian gets pregnant and Lan Wangji drives him 6 hours to get an abortion. They fall in love! My favorite line is from Wei Wuxian, during sex with Lan Wangji, saying "I'm so fucking glad I got an abortion." I hope that you will come and meet me by feyburner. Post-Untamed-canon, Wei Wuxian returns to Cloud Recesses. Bed sharing and other delightfulness! I've been listening to the podfic by exmanhater to fall asleep. Other sleep aids in the Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian bed sharing podfic genre: hunters seeking solid ground, and You, Asleep and Dreaming.

this river runs to you by sundiscus. Modern fantasy AU with cultivators. Wei Wuxian is on probation, Lan Wangji is secretly a dragon, nobody dies, much pining and angst. So good! So far there are two podfics, one by argentumlupine and one by Rhea314.

In Case You Should Ever Ask by phnelt, plus sequel from Lan Wangji's POV. Modern AU in which Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are still cultivators (a secret identity). They go undercover at a fetish party for cultivation purposes, but not really. Mianmian, Nie Huaisang, and Wen Qing as Wei Wuxian's kinkster friends who are concerned about him was possibly my favorite part of the fic, followed by Lan Wangji discovering a creative way of satisfying Wei Wuxian's kink. wear me out by plonk. Not!fic modern AU where Wei Wuxian is a soccer player and Lan Wangji is a former child actor/fashion something intern. Very cute! when I look over my shoulder by cafecliche. Modern AU fusion with some horror film I haven't seen? Lan Wangji is an exorcist, and Wei Wuxian is a medium. Wei Wuxian overexerts himself, so Lan Wangji takes him home. A most excellent and creepy use of Mo Xuanyu!

happy not knowing by plonk. Lan Xichen is aggressively clueless about the nature of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's relationship.

live from new york by varnes. Everyone is a writer on SNL. So good! So fun!

a ghost is just a memory you haven't met yet by ThirtySixSaveFiles. Modern AU with super creepy haunted library :) All Caught Up by brooklinegirl. Post-canon Untamed verse where inexplicably Lan Zhan hasn’t noticed that his feelings for Wei Wuxian are not platonic, but the fake betrothal plot clues him in. to dwell inside a body by typefortydeductions. Modern AU series, BDSM, genderfluid Wei Ying.

Like You Mean It by CoatWrites. WangXian, Modern AU, asexual!Wei Ying. Love Is More Than Telling Me You Want It by phnelt. omega!Wei Wuxian/alpha!Lan Wangji. They have sex in the first chapter, but it takes 100K words to communicate their feelings! A most-people-live AU, with unjust gendered A/B/O dynamic social expectations to boot.

Clear Through the Long Night by mistresscurvy. Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji. Pining while sleeping together.

Always Knew You Were Magical by jeyhawk. Modern cultivators AU, with bed sharing.

flourish, full-flowered by lazulisong. Novel-canon, but with A/B/O.

The Last Three Feet, podfic by knight_tracer, fic by etymologyplayground. bunnies, Lan juniors, and lunch.

The Simplest Way Forward by harriet_vane. Modern AU, we-have-to-get-married-for-citizenship, kidfic.

i don't wanna lose you (hope it never ends) by annemari, podficced by exmanhater. The Untamed, Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, sickfic, 2 hours

Resolutions series by incendir. Various POVs, Wei Wuxian’s obliviousness is trauma-related, angst, happy endings, attempted sexual assault in one of the later stories.

Rule 63 Wangxian femslash

if your body's into me by plonk. Modern cultivator AU Gimme shelter by 74243. Modern A/B/O AU.

a history of the body, by northofallmusic, podfic by Thimblerig. Modern AU where Wei Ying has hip problems from an old injury and Lan Zhan pines. Then they use Lan Zhan's sex toys. say all that you're feeling by phnelt. Modern urban lesbian community AU.

wake up all in tangles by la_dissonance. A Rule 63 remix of varnes' live from New York, the SNL AU, except Lan Wangji says I love you before Wei Wuxian ruins it so Wei Wuxian freaks out about the I love you instead.

hush now by astronicht. Always-a-girl modern academic AU. Wangxian.

And they were roommates... by harriet_vane. Modern always-a-girl AU. I read this before I started watching the show (I started watching the show because I read this).

Non-Wangxian

a compromising position by verity. Lan Jingyi/Jiang Cheng (!!). Hilarious Lan Jingyi POV. 

A Civil Combpaign by Ariaste. post-canon Jin Rulan/Lan Sizhui, with combs.

Misdirection by feenwitch. Some kind of fantasy spy agency AU. Lan Jingyi/Lan Sizhui/Ouyang Zizhen/Jin Ling

throughline by lunatea. Modern setting, everyone is detectives or forensics experts. Wen Ning/Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian. 

Revealing That You Can't Forget Me by phnelt. Nie Huaisang is at loose ends without revenge to plan, so he takes up a hobby writing porn.  

Marry for Love by tuesday. Jiang Yanli/Nie Huaisang. Time travel fixit.

the final cut by Wildehack (tyleet). Mò Xuányǔ/Niè Huáisāng. For when you want to be emotionally devastated past bedtime and cry yourself to sleep.

the height of summer by la_dissonance. Post-canon Wen Ning/Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, very sweet. Wen Ning has a secret admirer.

anyway, here's wuji by kakikaeru. Post-Untamed canon Lan Jingyi POV, featuring Lan Jingyi/Lan Sizhui. Sequel is ok, jiujiu: Jin Ling POV, Jin Ling/Ouyang Zizhen.

Four Days in Lanling by halotolerant. Jiang Cheng/Nie Huaisang.

Untamed RPF

bring your secrets to me and I'll drink them all down by ThirtySixSaveFiles. Untamed RPF magic AU. Features a creepy magic house and otherworldly problem solver Wang Yibo/human Xiao Zhan.

you can take my heart (and hold it together) by ThirtySixSaveFiles. Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan. Wang Yibo is a robot/spaceship AI. A little bit Ancillary Justice-y

Sexting Chicken: It's More Likely Than You'd Think by la_dissonance. Untamed RPF. Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan

you're the reason that i just can't concentrate by gdgdbaby. Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan

#recs #mdzs recs #untamed recs #mdzs #podfic recs

[that-wildwolf]

I was tagged by @crescentbunny and I'm not tagging anyone in particular because I never really have a good grip on who's already done a tag game and who hasn't...

Anyway! Here goes :)

How many works do you have on AO3?

I write lots of one-shots, so this should be around thirty... Yep, twenty-seven.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Where do you check that? You can check that???

*spends approximately 10 minutes going through AO3 settings they didn't know existed*

Cool! A lot of features I didn't know about. Anyway, um. Yes. My total word count is, for the moment, 471,674 words.

Wow. I. Um. Almost 500K words. But—and this is extremely important—I feel like this graph contains some vital information:

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Wow. Okay. I'll do this in chronological order because I never really counted.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Inheritance, Assassin's Creed, The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Attack on Titan, Fallout, Sarah Jane Adventures, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Steven Universe. I don't think I missed anything...?

That adds up to 13.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Of course I do! I thrive on feedback! Not implying that my entire self-esteem hinges on the approval of strangers on the internet, but comments are the best fucking thing ever! Instant serotonin for a whole day! Of course I'll reply! I love getting into little conversations with my readers, too!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Wow. I'm usually more of a happy ending kind of person, but A New Quest (which I wrote at the super proud age of 11) did end with half of the main characters dead and a memorial service for them as the last scene, so... You know. If you consider that angsty, then sure.

Fun fact: Crossing A Line was actually originally supposed to end with Shepard dying! The last chapter (which to me still feels a bit out of place) was rewritten completely. I'm glad I changed it, though. I'm having a lot of fun with the sequel!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

A month ago I'd have said Waiting Between Worlds without second thoughts—does it count as a happy ending when the whole fic is just a happy ending?—but it's just been going downhill the last three or four chapters. Pretty much every one of my one-shots in the When I Need You series. Also, Crossing A Line, I guess, now that it has a happy ending.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I... really don't. I'm wildly ace, all my sex knowledge comes from smut and porn and I'm pretty sure that if I were to actually write the adult stuff, I'd either go way overboard and make it too obscene to read or end up with something completely dry and clinical and unreadable too.

When there's sex scenes in my fic, I usually leave them implied. I say the characters had sex, but I never explicitly write the actual sex. I don't think I'd be good at it. (Actually, I've tried plenty of times and I know I'm not. It's the dirtiest, kinkiest filth you'd ever see and I'd really recommend against reading it.)

I do like writing the pre-chorus to sex, as it were, though. The sensual foreplay to the sexual foreplay. The soft or heated moments leading up to the act. I've even gotten comments about my lime being "extremely hot despite not being smut" and I'm more than happy with that description.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the strangest one you’ve written?

I used to write crossovers. Now I only sometimes write AUs based on a different fandom, like a Shakarian Kimi no Na wa!AU.

The strangest crossover I've ever written? Don't know if any of them were strange. I had The Wolf Among Us/The Walking Dead crossovers and Doctor Who/Sarah Jane Adventures crossovers, but both of those pretty much exist in the same universe already, so... No. No weird crossovers.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

God, I hope not. At least none that I know of.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes. Plenty. A lot. I'd wager around 4 out of 5 comments on my Shepard Twins fanfic are negative. I haven't updated the fic in a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not writing anymore. I have around 50K words' worth of WIP of it. So no, the hate comments don't bother me. (A lie: they bother me a lot. They even make me cry, sometimes. But they're not gonna be the reason I stop writing a story I enjoy.)

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

My very first fanfiction writing experience, actually. In retrospect, I think that worked out great, because that kind of cooperation made it easier to carry the whole thing through, get it to the end, and was a very positive experience - which is probably why I've continued to write fanfic.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Ahhh. Royai or Shakarian? Royai or Shakarian? Stupid, since they're almost the same relationship dynamic, but they're both amazingly written. I'm edging a bit more towards Shakarian, because interspecies stuff is always a bonus. Still, it's a close competition.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I wish! I've translated other people's fics, but I've yet to have someone do that for me.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I plan to hope to finish all my WIPs.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. This is going to come off as boastful, but I think I'm pretty good at replicating individual characters' speech patterns.

What are your writing weaknesses?

According to my beta, I use elispses too liberally. According to me, I have trouble with transition scenes. I never write in order, so I always end up with disconnected scenes I need to join into a chapter. And the join parts don't even come easy to me.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Not a fan. (When I write fanfics in Polish, I sometimes use English, but that's not the same because everyone in Poland knows English anyway.) If it's a made-up language in the fandom, I like to include some words every now and then in dialogue - especially when it doesn't translate exactly. I love spotlighting cultural differences. I actually learned a load of Jel words for my Murkmire fanfics.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Good times. Damn, that was a long time ago. *suddenly gets the overwhelming realization that they've been writing fanfic for the bigger part of their life* ...Wow.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Big Spoon/Little Spoon, a short Shakarian one-shot exploring the psychology of the Spacer background a bit. I also used lighting in a really cool way in this one! I'm really proud of it. Even when I call it "the Spooning As A Metaphor For Nationality Issues fanfic", I mean it in an affectionate way.

As far as non-one-shots go, I'm going with Crossing A Line. It's got it all: Enemies to Lovers, language barrier, interspecies awkwardness... Plus, writing from Garrus's POV is always a treat. I get to refer to humans as "aliens". What more could you want?

#tag game #writing #fanfic #fanfic writing #meet the blogger #aka #wild rambles #thanks for tagging me in this bunny it was a lot of fun! #my life #long post

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Personal Thoughts on Pacific Rim: The Black (2021)

I watched season 1 of Pacific Rim: The Black, which released to Netflix on March 4! I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much, after disappointments with the movie sequel. But the Pacific Rim franchise means a lot to me, so I wanted to give it a try. I’m very pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this new show and connected with it in various ways. And given how wild my own life has been lately, it was really nice to get lost in something that validated the importance of different kinds of connections, and to not close down when the going gets tough or hard to explain.

PRTB is a pretty emotional, angsty story, and it’s not afraid to explore that over the full 7 episodes. The stakes are high, involving the loss of friends and family. So the characters have a real investment in what they’re doing and why they’re fighting.

The grittier tone of the show is a deviation from the movies, which maybe some people would like or dislike more. I think the seriousness helps to balance out having (yet again) inexperienced teenage protagonists. But the show does still get some fun scenes and quips in, and our main jaeger has a snarky AI who provides both humor and critical thinking checks for our protagonists, which is nice.

I liked the 2013 movie because it showed all of humanity coming together to fight a common enemy. Here, there’s enemies and allies on both sides of the Kaiju war, and even some who are in-between. This is a stronger nod to reality while decreasing the fun fantasy violence of the 2013 film. I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing for this series to do, because a series has a lot more space/time to fill than a movie, and even the 2013 film showed that there were significant cracks in the so-called “unity” that the Pacific Rim universe outwardly celebrated. In the midst of the 2013 movie’s talk about countries setting aside old rivalries, we still had politicians who didn’t care, criminals capitalizing off pseudoscience and unsanctioned nuclear weapons deals, religious sectors rising up to worship the title enemy, people being forced into dangerous jobs to keep from starving to death, the rich and powerful experiencing minimal lifestyle impact vs. poor people being abandoned to die or surviving through precarious means, and even toxic hero worship and intriguingly, the glorification of violence for entertainment and toy sales. So in this new show, we’re really seeing the movie’s cracks expanded and focused on. It’s even more front and center, given that the rest of humanity sees Australia as a lost battlefront and has deemed so many left behind as worth less than the effort it’d take to rescue them. So maybe a part of me misses the cool concept of human unity from the first movie, but even that movie was trying to tell people that unity is an illusion. Here, it’s just so front and center that it can’t be ignored in favor of robot fights, and I actually liked that immediate boldness.

(review continued under the cut)

Some of the details feel AU or divergent from what I remember of the movies, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing to me, so long as the show itself can be internally consistent. Transformers franchise spent forever trying to created an aligned continuity to no avail, so it’s not a detraction for me if Pacific Rim franchise wants to just flail in its own playground too.

The animation style grew on me as time passed, as it worked well for animating jaegers and Kaiju even if humans seem a bit stilted. It better captured a sense of scale compared to the sequel film, and the jaegers felt actually integrated in the animated physical space (something I really struggled with in Uprising). The sense of scale is not as good as the 2013 film. But then this show has a significantly lower budget and is a very different medium, so it was easy enough for me to accept it for what it is and to be glad that we got anything halfway decent, really.

The pacing could have been better across the different points of conflict, but honestly if no adult questioned or tried to undercut a couple of teenagers piloting the last active jaeger on an entire continent, that would have felt even more jarring and unbelievable to me.

I think Pacific Rim as a franchise has never been about reinventing the wheel when it comes to characters. But I was definitely interested in the topical similarities between the movie’s Mako Mori and the show’s Hayley Travis. They both do things in want to help/prove themselves, which results in an incredible backlash that they have to emotionally work through and overcome. In comparison, Raleigh Becket and Taylor Travis are both fairly static supporters, but when their hope drops out, it’s Mako and Hayley who kick in with other options, more energy. If we get a season 2, I’d be curious to see how the show further differentiates and humanizes these new characters. 

The 2013 movie had main characters who were very significantly traumatized. So having protagonists in the show who are very significantly traumatized as well didn’t feel like a distraction to me but instead just a nod to the franchise and how it’s closely tied with struggles to obtain mental health and connection. I’d be more worried if the teenage protagonists were people who consistently don’t think of consequences or who don’t take an apocalypse or immense power from a jaeger seriously...

PRTB definitely earned its TV-14 rating. It can be gritty and dark at times, but coming out of several TV-MA shows, the way it’s visibly handled on the human side is a nice break and sometimes even more emotionally effective than if extremely gory scenes were shown. I’m a little hesitant to get too emotionally attached to any character for future seasons, though, given this rating.

Some scenes were more personally engaging to me than others, but I’ve watched several shows lately where I couldn’t stand to actually finish them or was checking to see how much more time was left. With PRTB, I kept wanting to see what happened next, and time really flew by with some episodes.

The Kaiju shown are incredibly diverse, with some really cool designs. There’s something in here I’ve been wanting to write a fic about/daydreaming about since 2013 and this show actually does the thing in its own way, so I was personally excited about that.

If this show gets a season 2, I’d love to see our protagonists meeting up with more people from all walks of life and exploring various ways people have survived and maintained or redefined a culture in this post-apocalyptic world.

There’s an element of “connective regret” in this show that really personally spoke to me, given that I’ve lost a lot of people in real life suddenly. Like, you assume people will always be there until suddenly they aren’t, and that fact of life can really destabilize a family or found family. This show doesn’t shy away from trying to validate that stress, or from validating how important healthy connections still are in the face of loss or decoupling from other toxic relationships.

Mental health relapses, trust issues, and survivor’s guilt are also a thing in this show, which I found really interesting, and that was something we really only had time to see in small measure in the 2013 film.

I still have some worldbuilding questions, but honestly I clicked on this show hoping for a good time to lose myself in—and I feel like I received that in this season. So I ended the show feeling like, actually excited to talk about it with other people.

There’s plot twists and characters I want to flail about so bad, but that would involve dropping very significant spoilers here, so maybe I better hold off for now. 

But yeah, if anyone else watches this show, please feel free to reach out and flail with me about it!

#Pacific Rim #Pacific Rim: The Black #PRTB #Lightning rambles #I ended up watching the season twice in one day lol #No regrets #whoever said this show feels like Mad Max meets Godzilla #it does feel that way sometimes LOL

[randombtsprincessa]

2021 Tumblr Year End Review!

RULES: post the top 5 works you're most proud of that you released this year (not necessarily your most popular), your top 4 current WIPs that you're excited to release in the new year, your top 3 biggest improvements in your writing over the past year, your top 2 resolutions (ways you wish to improve your writing/blog) for the new year, and your number 1 favorite line you've written this year!

Tagged by the amazing @ressjeon​ ilybb

5 works I'm most proud of:

Bewitched Fools - To parallel this with AaaPT, I think Namjoon best fits the Darcy type look if given the proper perception. I’m no Austen by a long shot, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head that how awesome it would be if we explored Darcy and Lizzie when they couldn’t escape each other and were already bound to each other. I’m proud of the characters and am excited for the story.

Bed Bereft Epilogue - I am proud of this work mostly because it is my first exploration of a Polyamorous relationship. When I wrote the original Bed Bereft, I was worried if I showed the relationship between OG relationship (Tae and Jin) properly. I wanted to show them really established before I broached it with MC. The amount of love it got told me I was successful but I couldn’t just leave them with sex and let it be. So this sequel was in the works. And there were some time differences before I finalized it during the middle of TaeJin’s bday. And here it is!

Angel Atop A Prickly Tree - Another fic based on Pride and Prejudice but this time a Hallmark movie. Tbvvh, I wasn’t very much taken by the Lizzie of the movie and felt she could’ve had more substance to her. The Darcy however, came through a bit soft yes, but I could work with that. I ADORE this Hoseok, mainly because the image we have of J-Hope is so different than what I pictured for the Jung Hoseok I wanted. However, in the end when I read the finished project, well, it turned out a much better mingle than I had originally thought possible.

Burn With You - Namjoon again. I am proud of this one for a lot of reasons. It’s another one of attempts at telling something like a fairytale but with adult annotations yk. And BY GOD am I in love with this Namjoon. I had plans to make him darker but sadly, it didn’t happen and I am glad for it. For one, a darker Namjoon would take away from the Princess and no way in hell am I making her less for anything. Shiva the Tiger came to me in a dream and all in all, I am pretty feeling awesome about the end result.

Belladonna - I am proud of this one because it is an attempt that I had been suggested by a therapist ages ago but could only bring myself to comply now. The fic narrates a difficult time for me and I write it only when I am in the mindset to deal or cope with that arena of my life. However, the fic does contain more positive and wish fulfilment than real life and somehow I am not bitter about that. I guess that signifies growth?

4 current WIP’s I'm excited to release: (I am not spoiling a thing)

Built for Sin - Coming this Valentine’s ;)

Booted & Suited - Maybe JK’s bday!

Non Omnis Moriar - I want to finish Tom’s story a bit faster so I can plan a sequel welp!

Better Luck Next Time - For Taehyung and by god this one is giving me chills to think of.

3 biggest improvements

For one I’d say I am not as scared of original fiction than I was before. I submitted new pieces and it all started through fanfics, I am so proud and glad I found this community.

Secondly, I think I find it easier to explore and delve into aspects of my life by dipping my toes in it through writing.

Thirdly, It’s slow but many of my writing has become healing. I mean, it’s perceptible enough to be commented on so!

2 resolutions

To increase my speed

To do writing exercises more because dear god, Writer’s Block is a B word.

1 favourite line

“I haven’t believed in miracles since my father died. But I believe in you, I believe we met in that restaurant through a miscommunication so we’d know that we’re more than we appear. If you can believe that, if you can believe in me again then…that’d be my own personal miracle.”

- Hoseok, Angel atop a Prickly Tree.

Tagging: @yoonia​ @knjsnoona​ @chelsea-chee​ @avveh​ @floralseokjin​ @joyfulhopelox​ @lavienjin​ @kookdiaries​ @pjmsdior​ @vyduan​ @sugasbabiie​ @jimilter​ @eatjeanjin​ @tayegi​ @taegularities​ @kithtaehyung​ @yeoldontknow​ and anyone else who wants to do this!

#tulip tagged games #2021 tumblr review

[juneviews]

I am so sorry that a stupid anon (who honestly, if they felt they were right, should've not been anon) sent you that ask. I agree with you that the cheating storyline was lazy writing and also just confirms that they both don't think gay relationships will last and that they are low-key biphobic I feel. There were so many directions they could've gone and also they could've explored Teh having feelings for other people without actually cheating AND the whole concept of change without making him so emotionally gross about it (like "calling out" Oh in front of his own friends???? wtf was that). As always, communication would've solved it. Also maybe Teh realizing that he has to confront his feelings for once, since that same kind of inability to face things head-on caused him to play with that girl's feelings in S1. I thought he learned his lesson but whatever.

Side note: anyone who condones cheating is like ?? Why? Would they feel the same way if it was a straight couple? Or if it was cheating with a woman? As a gay person, the whole "gay couples can do no wrong", in the perspective of cheating being accepted, is just very confusing for me. I guess we shall never know what would've happened.

Anyways, I hope you are having a wonderful day and keep up posting your amazing content. I will fight all those evil anons for you.

I feel like the thing that the writers seem to be lacking in this sequel, which is SO opposite to the first season which did it wonderfully, is that yes you can write flawed characters, but they have to have some development too. if this sequel stood on its own & it was about a couple pulling apart from each other, I would honestly like it more (though teh would still look like an asshole.) but this sequel comes as the continuation of season one which was full of angst & it seems crazy to me that the writers didn't realize we wanted to see teh & oh-aew grow TOGETHER, not apart since the freaking first episode. we literally didn't get any rest from the angst, and jumped right back into it. especially since the sequel being set elsewhere & with new characters is already unsettling enough, so making us feel like we're losing the characters & the relationship we love is simply not the move. at the end of the day, even if I would've still hated it, I would've entirely preferred they break up than to see my favorite character be so cruel as to cheat on his partner out of boredom. and yeah, cheating is... unfortunately a part of life, but I don't think it needs to be accepted as normal behavior in a relationship, especially in a fictional lgbtq+ one since it's only been a decade that we've been getting a sliver of good representation. thank you very much for that, I'm glad you enjoy my blog & that is very cute haha :)

xxx

#answers #i promised you the moon