the to the point of distraction au is incredible and i have so many thoughts,,, is tatooine working on taking down any of the other hutt systems, and are maybe trying to like, seduce the jedi and the sith back to see who will help their anti-slavery quest??? is kitster like, making fun of anakin in the evenings while they watch their coruscanti day time holos together? is obi-wan gonna be the jealous one this time?
oooohoho good thoughts!! to address in order,
i think any new kingdom of tatooine is going to have to eventually take down the other hutt systems, but also they'll need to strengthen themselves first - which is probably why shmi is entertaining both the jedi and the sith right now for sure. if neither faction feels good to her, she'd be fine going alone, it'd just be quicker to allow one to help her.
kitster and anakin definitely get together at night and kitster drags anakin for filth over all the shit he's said or done with darth solence because it's genuinely hilarious. kitster's never really seen anakin like this with anyone. half the time he's mooning over solence and the other half he's trying to stab him with a knife. kitster was half afraid anakin would stab him with a knife during a banquet where darth solence had, apparently, remembered his mission and was showering kitster-who-is-pretending-to-be-prince-skywalker in attention and flirty asides
which brings me to the last point where honestly i think my understanding of anakin's character in general is that he's jealous. or greedy. or possessive, which is why it shows up in my works so much. i think he's irrationally jealous a lot which then sneaks into his narrative when i write things from his perspective. im sure people are sick and tired of this facet of my anakins, but honestly it's one of the things that, for me, make his character read as a version of anakin skywalker, despite the crazy situations i put him in. sorry!
at the same time i really don't see obi-wan kenobi's character having that same nugget of irrational jealousy or greed or possessiveness that i see anakin skywalker having and that's why a lot of my fics have elements of jealous anakin but not jealous obi-wan - jealous/possessive obi-wan is more au dependent than essential to the character for me
that all being said, for this au i do think obi-wan would be jealous or possessive - after all, he's Fallen! He's dark! he can allow his jealousy to run rampant! now...how many situations crop up where he can really be jealous or possessive? like it's not kitster the manservant that anyone's trying to seduce, it's the prince! obi-wan's kitster isn't in the line of fire, so to speak, so while i'm sure there are moments where obi-wan feels that sweet sweet green-eyed monster, the plotty identity shenanigans really thwart more openly jealous obi-wan here
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What if Wei Ying turned out different? What if he had gone through much worse as a homeless child?
Heaven knows what his life was like before Jiang Fengmian found him, but it surely wasn't friendly. What if that changed him so much? The trauma ingraining itself into his brain that it becomes his main source of survival?
Yiling was a badly managed town, even the children saw that. And among the cultivation sects, none were really keen on investing their time and materials on withered soil, especially the nearest jurisdictions of Qishan Wen and Yunmeng Jiang.
That's why in Yiling, everything tagged crime can be stashed away, hidden into, escaped out of. Sects turn a blind eye to it, hell, even the previous Baron of the land didn't bother reclaiming Yiling because of its high crime rate.
It built itself up by blood money and fear, and with the Burial Mounds so close in vicinity it was much worse.
Anything and everything illegal was practically spoiled culture there.
Especially,
Especially slave traders, especially human trafficking. There was no authority to call upon, no one strong enough of a will to stop it. And so whenever Yiling hears the heart-dropping sound of golden bells chiming, the heavy hooves of a bull that carries with it a large wooden cage. They do nothing.
They can do nothing.
And there goes A-Ying, freshly orphaned, still getting a hang of wandering around the streets he would have to call his new home.
The first time it happened, his face got too close to the torch while he panicked. The large men and their ropes scared him too much and he wanted them to let go let go let go-
They didn't like how he moved around too much and tightened the noose around his neck, A-Ying suddenly couldn't breathe. He felt the bones of his weak throat cave on itself and it hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurt so bad. It made him thrash around the cage widely, using his remaining air to scream so violently that would have guaranteed his broken throat.
In his panic attack he hit his head on the splintered pole used as a torch on the corner of the cage they threw him in.
A-Ying didn't think he had the strength to scream about it, but apparently he did. He realized later that the graining sound against his ears were his blood-curdling cries, and that he couldn't feel the left side of his head.
They never took him, in the end. The slave traders complained loudly that he damaged himself and would be of no value. The large man who tied him up, held him by his hair and threw him out of the cage.
After that it was black.
You'd think that after that experience, Wei Ying would have known how to escape people like these then.
He should have died. He should have died a long time ago. When the slave traders lured him in with promise of a meal, when a drunk man mistook him for someone else and beat him with shattered wine jars, when a cultivator feigned kindness and Wei Ying took his hand--
A-Ying should have died when he was 5 when-
Wei Ying should have died when he was 7 when-
When-
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Someone stop it STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOPITSTOPITSTOPITSTOPITSTOPSTOPSTOP
He can't be blamed! He can't deal with it! The ringing in his head has made itself a home in his head a long time ago and at that point its been a part of his life.
He's half-blind, half-dying, half a body, full of scars.
Wei Ying can't be blamed.
So when a man comes to him, on a cold winter night calling his name-- he can't be blamed.
(That was used on him several times, several ways, at this point the whole world knows his name. Maybe they were never addressing him really? And it's just so his foolish brain responded to every call hoping it was a-niang or baba who came back to get him.--
Hoping. He was hoping. Such a silly thing to do these days.)
The man wore purple robes, was surrounded by many people with purple robes. One of them approached when he didn't respond.
Wei Ying was 11 by now, 12 almost, he couldn't be blamed.
The robes were different-- a dark royal hue, but it was the same color of the- the same- and the man was approaching him too quickly he-
A child was never supposed to go through this pain. Wei Ying wouldn't know this, but he couldn't be blamed. A small tooth-dagger was plunged into the cultivator's abdomen and the man shrieked--- he couldn't be blamed.
He ran and ran and ran, the man who called his name ran after. His feet didn't acquaint well with the cold solid ground, it burned his skin ironically, but he ran with only fear to power him.
The man grabbed him by the shoulder and said his name again-- Wei Ying couldn't hear anything amongst the rapid beating of his own heart. Couldn't see quite clearly, couldn't think quite straight, he feared.
Wei Ying couldn't have been blamed. When carriage wheels screeched to a halt but it was too late-- and the man in purple had to let go of him one way or another.
He didn't stay too long to see what happened to him. He just ran and ran and ran.
Until there was no ground to run on. Until Yiling was no longer seen. Until he felt the last of his breath stolen from him.
Wei Ying falls falls fall-
His eyes close on their own, they can't be blamed.
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Yes yes yes!!!! Even in the movies, the whole “at least he’s not on fire!” “What’s left of him isn’t on fire!” scene to me felt very much like a friendly/familial bickering, they weren’t being rude or mean to each other, they were both a little shocked at the state of everything and that’s how they communicate
They!!Are!!Friends!!And!!Love!!Each!!Other!!
Yes, exactly! Even when they're bickering, they're both very visibly enjoying themselves. Poe's barely restraining the urge to smile, you can see it in his eyes, and Rey doesn't even try to stop herself from smiling when she whips out the "you're difficult". Poe's also smiling when he approaches her, even as he starts being sarcastic??? Like...they like each other, they just bicker as a love language?
Like these are not the expressions of two people who hate each other. They're exasperated by each other right now, sure, but the banter is so familiar for them by this point that they're also enjoying it underneath the frustration.
It also irks me (but just goes to show how frankly astoundingly little the fandom actually pays attention to these characters/can't read them) because we know what Poe and Rey look like when they're interacting with characters they hate/cannot stand...and that energy is not here?
by contrast, think of poe's expression uh. any time he's dealing with the first order, or his anger with holdo when he believes she's just leading them to their deaths. think of rey's absolute fury at teedo or legitimately any interaction with ren (barring the five minutes she gave him the benefit of the doubt and he instead chose to be the one true dick) - Rey does not minimize her anger or frustration with people. She sure as hell doesn't smile smugly at people she hates and can't stand, she's a feral little sand gremlin and if she doesn't like you, you're gonna fucking know it.
And altho their banter/bickering match does deteriorate into a genuine argument, let's see what else happens here shall we? Poe puts his two cents in ("you're the best fighter we have, we need you. out there, not here") and walks away before it can get any worse, allowing them to cool off. And Rey is visibly okay with this, she doesn't look worried when Poe walks off, instead she just has that "fuck my friend rightfully called me out on my shit that I don't want to unpack yet" look. Like, Rey is the queen of abandonment issues - after knowing Finn for a day, him leaving in tfa was enough to hurtle her into a traumatic flashback turned Force vision; and there's no doubt the throne room made that worse.
And look, I'm also the queen of abandonment issues, it's one reason why I relate so heavily to Rey. Which is why Rey's lack of a reaction to Poe walking away strikes me so profoundly: because Rey isn't afraid he won't come back. It takes a seriously deep level of friendship to achieve that. I experience that with my qpps 99% of the time, and that other 1% is when my anxiety is really awful but even underneath that I know they won't leave me. Rey seems as confident in Poe not leaving her as a friend, as I am my committed platonic life partners. Let that sink in for a minute.
which is just another point for me for my qpp jedistormpilot hc tyvm
What happens after that, is that when Rey decides to leave to find the wayfinder, she isn't surprised when Poe shows up to (as far as she knows, tho we know he and finn were planning on going) say goodbye, and immediately makes sure they're on good terms before she leaves, just in case.
Poe also checks in on her before they leave because he notices she's acting strangely/drinking in the scenery like she won't see it again, and promptly spends...a lot of the movie worrying about her?
He grounds her several times in the novelization(s).......but is also one of the reasons Rey snaps in the desert with Ren and the transport. In the junior novelization (iirc), she thinks about all the horrible things Ren has done to her and her friends, and one of the things she thinks before she loses control is how he tortured Poe. And then (I can't remember in which novelization) it's Poe's voice who snaps her out of her shell-shocked daze following the transport blowing up. In the regular one, he also gently tells her in the ship to go take a minute and he'll take care of the flying so she can just....have a breather and process what happened and doesn't hold what happened against her in the least (which we also see in the movie).
And BONUS points he trusts her instinctively aboard the Steadfast when she gets a Force feeling (I think the line in the novel is something like "when she got that look, a fellow knew he ought just to follow"? Or it may have been another scene I can't remember). Like.....they're friends. I don't know how much more explicit the movie could have made it, unless folks wanted them sharing a secret handshake or wanted them to briefly pause the movie to add a powerpoint presentation text above their heads going "they're friends". They bicker and they argue and they get exasperated with each other, especially over their similarities (because Rey is a lot like Poe), but they genuinely love and care for one another, and to be quite honest saying otherwise is a huge fucking disservice to how much Daisy and Oscar put into crafting their dynamic.
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