#It is just this is a mechs album and i am so used to them ending in world ending tragic fates | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

okdeedee · 1 year

Text

here i am

cassian andor x gn! reader - 6th installment of latch

masterlist

a/n: alright besties here's another chapter. life day celebrations And other things aka gratuitous party ish scene + Angst + the power of friendship. IN WHICH;;;,,,, cassian andor plays the role of mr darcy for a bit. title from stuck in the middle with you by stealer's wheel because,,, clowns to the left of me. jokers to the right. here i am, stuck in the middle with you.

content? warning?: shara bey and kes dameron cameo x. the introduction of another oc who i Love. she's a 6 foot 9 or 2.05m tall devaronian menace. angst. swearing. ramping up that sexual tension but no smut Probably Ever because i just wont. drinking moderately in a social context, no drunkenness or alcoholism. kissing! amorous touches! this was written with almost exclusively rosalía's motomami album playing in the bg so just keep that in mind. jk.

wc: 10.2k HUH

It’s Life Day, and other than essential personnel, the base is off-duty.

Unless, of course, there is a catastrophe, but everyone has decided there won’t be. You all need a break.

You and some of the mech crew are deemed essential personnel, but just in the morning. There are some Y-Wings that need repair before a mission tomorrow.

You’re working on Shara’s ship – she’s become a fun friend to have around. You hold similar opinions on repairs and mods, and she’s interesting to talk to – always complaining about that soldier Kes, who keeps asking her out.

You know she likes him; she just wants to string him on a bit. The thought of it makes you laugh.

Only a few other mechs are scattered around.

One of them is Lakan, a middle-aged Besalisk who was an engineer before he joined the Rebellion. He helped a lot in your first couple months – he’s endlessly patient and deeply affectionate. It’s sort of like having a father again, and he greets you with his crushing four armed hugs every time you see him.

Another is a younger Togruta individual with vivid blue skin called Eyroa – they’re something of a prodigy, and the sort of being that seems to know what you need before you ask for it. They’re often handing you a different sized servodriver or a drill-bit with a shy smile.

The other mech present this morning is Greda, the Devaronian you have become good friends with. She’s ridiculously tall and covered in tattoos. Her skin is a deep green, her hair is blonde and short – you still haven’t worked up the nerve to ask if it’s natural or not – and she is a complete nuisance.

Greda likes to wear earplugs while she’s working; she says she gets her best work done when she isn’t distracted by other people. Your friendship started on your second day of work as a mechanic, when she approached you right as you were going on your lunch break. You weren’t sure who she was because she’d been holed up working on a Hammerhead Corvette so you hadn’t met her yet, but you were quickly very glad to know her.

Not here today are the following:

Your fellow humans: Yemmi, an older man who is a notorious flirt, Manala and Hasset, the twins who never stop talking, and Riekk, the Bith, who plays a beautiful new genre of music through his speaker every workday.

They’re good co-workers. They were welcoming when you arrived, and you’re fond of all of them.

Greda, however, is being a pain today.

She’s always a pest, but since it’s a holiday, she’s decided she’s going to wreak havoc upon your morning instead of actually getting work done, which is a first for her.

She picks strange hills to die on.

Right now, she’s sitting on top of Shara’s Y-Wing, kicking her feet, and ranting about something. You zoned out five minutes ago and now her deep, resonant voice is just a buzz in your ear.

You hold out a wrench to her so you can root through your toolbox with both hands, and she takes it without thinking, not pausing in her speech.

You find what you need, but you leave the wrench in her hand. If she’s not going to work, she can at least be useful as a tool stand.

A few minutes later, she stops talking and looks at the wrench in her hand.

“Did you give me this?”

“Yeah, like five minutes ago.”

“I’ll drop it on you.”

You laugh. “I thought you were anti-violence. That’s why you’re a mechanic.”

She huffs and jumps off the Y-Wing. “You’re not being fun today.”

You grunt as you pull a panel of the engine off. “I’m more fun when I’m not being interrupted during work.”

She raises her hands in surrender. “Apologies, my liege.”

You swat her with a rag you had in your pocket. “Enough from you,” you reprimand.

Greda starts to walk away, whistling some annoying little song.

“I’ll see you at the bonfire tonight, though, right?”

“Yeah! See you then!”

She disappears into the hull of a G-75, then there is blessed silence, because Lakan works without music.

You find yourself thinking about Cassian, wondering what he’s doing with his day off.

He visits you in the hangars often, just to say hi, or to keep you company for a bit. You feel honoured to receive his individual attention. You’re flustered by it, too.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t quite get used to the intensity in his eyes when he’s focussed on you. You find yourself looking at his lips, or the line of his jaw, or the sweeping length of his eyelashes more often than not these days.

Flustered or not, you cherish those visits – like the one several months ago where you talked about Onderon, and you kissed each other’s hands. It still brings heat to your face and a thrill through your body just to think about it.

Or the one last week where Cassian told you about his childhood and his family.

The hardest are the weeks when Cassian can’t visit at all because he’s on a long mission.

He’s one of the best operatives the Rebellion has. He’s ruthless, efficient, and observant. He’s killed people just to be able to get back home.

You know how good he is at this work, but you’re still terrified that each time he visits will be the last.

A dozen times, he’s come back bruised and battered, and you hold him extra-gently and extra-long in your arms.

Once, he was rushed to the med centre for carbon dioxide poisoning. You stayed by his bedside for a full 18 hours.

You love him wholeheartedly. He’s your best friend. You’re not sure what that means in the long run, but for now it means he has to come back alive from all of his missions, so you get more time to figure it out.

And maybe one day, tell him.

Cassian actually has things to do on this day off. Leisurely things.

He and Melshi are going to sit down and have caf and talk, of all things. They’re both off today, and he hasn’t really spoken to Melshi in a couple months because of conflicting schedules, so that will be nice, he thinks.

A year ago, he probably would have baulked at the idea – Melshi is a friend he made out of necessity; a brother-in-arms – not that he doesn’t like him or enjoy spending time with him.

It’s just that they became friends by escaping a slave-labour prison and establishing trust by clinging on a cliffside together for hours, not by discussing their mutual interests.

He used to do it all the time on Ferrix. He’d walk to Brasso’s work just to catch him before he went home, he’d hang out with Bix, deliver something from Maarva to Jezzi, shoot the shit with Xanwan while he was waiting for a transport.

The rebel base on Yavin 4 doesn’t quite have that same homely feeling yet.

Now, he’s warmed again to the idea of talking, visiting people just to see them, thanks to his constant need to see you.

It’s ridiculous how often he finds time to visit the hangar. The first few times, he pretended it was because he had something else to do and he just happened to run into you, but he can’t be bothered to lie anymore.

You always greet him with a smile and touch his arm with your hand, or if he’s coming back after a mission, you’ll hug him.

What you don’t know is that Cassian comes to the hangar most days he’s on base, but he’ll only talk to you if you’re alone.

Often, you’re talking to Shara Bey about her Y-Wing (or about that ground soldier, Kes, that keeps hitting on her), or chatting across the hangar to one of the other mechanics. Sometimes, you just look like you’re concentrating really hard, and he doesn’t want to disturb you.

He gets embarrassed for some reason and walks away with a little ache in his chest.

Cassian is still bewildered by how obviously overjoyed you are to see him every time he visits. He’s not sure what he did to deserve the smiles you send his way – you smile with your whole being. It’s like being a plant in the sun; like he needs it to get through the day.

He’s pretty sure he’s in love with you.

He doesn’t expect to ever tell you, doesn’t entertain thoughts of crossing the physical boundaries the two of you have. He only dreams of you once every month or so, and that’s out of his control.

He’d rather never tell you he loves you that way than chance losing your companionship. If he made you uncomfortable and you drifted apart, he’d be so shattered that he’d probably become more reckless than usual with his work.

If he dies on a mission one of these days, he doesn’t think he’ll regret that decision.

The rebellion always comes first, now.

It’s evening, and Life Day festivities are starting.

Some of the more artistically inclined members of the Rebellion have decorated a sizeable part of the runway outside the temple.

There are random different sizes and kinds of lamps hanging on wires that are precariously strung between generators and trees, scraps of spare fabric (mostly orange, likely from pilots’ jumpsuits), and a massive bonfire being constructed in the centre of the clearing.

There are a few fold-out tables laden with portions of vastly contrasting foods in mismatched containers or piled on mess-hall trays.

For the last couple of weeks, a lot of the rebels who went off-world for missions or recon made pit-stops to pick up different ingredients for cultural delicacies they wanted to make for Life Day.

You smile to see a couple dishes your pilot friends mentioned in passing on the table.

There’s jaunty music playing at an agreeable volume through the runway PA system.

You watch over the next half an hour as more of your comrades fill the space, bringing food or musical instruments, some not in uniform, all relaxed and happy.

The bonfire is lit, during which there’s a song sung by some of the rebels in a language you don’t recognise, but you don’t mind – you feel a part of it regardless.

You’re basking in the joy and freedom of this night until someone practically tackles you from behind and you stumble.

“Hey, babycakes,” Greda says, a little too loud right next to your ear.

You grunt trying to bear her weight. You shove her off, laughing. “Babycakes?”

“Just trying something new,” she says breezily, “you like it?”

You shake your head, but get distracted by watching everyone mingle, unable to keep the smile off your face.

The two of you stand there, soaking it in, until Greda gets fidgety.

She hums that annoying song from this morning and circles you like a loth-wolf, looking around at everything, until she stops and pokes your shoulder over, and over, and over again.

“Greda, what the hell are you doing?”

“Who’s the little grumpy dude watching you from the corner?”

Your head whips around. “Where?”

She points to a dark corner of the runway, right near a path into the forest. You follow her hand and at the end of it is Cassian Andor. He glances away as soon as you clock him.

Shit.

You yank her hand down and give her your fiercest glare.

“Stars and planets, Greda, are you allergic to discretion?”

She grins. “Oh, calm down. Who is it? So tiny and angry.”

You huff. “Everyone’s tiny to you, you’re almost seven feet tall.”

“Still.”

You turn her away from him and watch him over her shoulder. You feel flustered, all of a sudden. “That’s Cassian. He’s – uh – we –”

“So, you’re on a first name basis with the Captain Andor? Interesting.”

You frown, and Greda has a mischievous glint in her eye, and you’re realising this is probably a set up.

“You just implied you didn’t know who he was.”

“That’s on you. Everyone knows who he is. I was just trying to figure out if you knew him.”

You shove her with your hip. “Asshole. Why do you care?”

Greda grabs your hands and swings them between you like you’re dancing.

“Because,” she says in a sing-song voice, “you’re so mysterious, and I can’t tell if you have any friends. I wanted to know if you knew him because he was looking at you like he wanted to take all your clothes off.”

“I have plenty of friends – and I’ve known you for months now, I would have thought you count,” you say, taking control and swinging her arms more violently.

“You didn’t deny that he looked like he wanted to take your clothes off,”

“I wasn’t planning on dignifying that with a response, you perv. And how did you not notice Cassian and I were friends? He visits the hangars like twice a week.”

“I don’t know, I’m busy. I don’t really pay attention to other people,”

You scoff. “Next time you accuse me of being mysterious, get your head out of your narcissistic ass first.”

She makes an exaggerated sad face. “You’re not nearly drunk enough for me to lead this conversation where I want it to go.”

“I’m stone-cold sober, Greda.”

“Exactly.”

Then Lakan and Yemmi join you, so that conversation trails off.

You haven’t had easy, relaxed fun like this in a long time, so despite her threat, when Greda offers you your first drink of the night (with no repayment in order), you take it.

You dance with all of the mech crew in a big, messy circle, copying each other’s moves and tripping over yourselves. Manala and Hasset try to teach you a dance they made up as children, but it’s really quite intricate. The two women can’t stop laughing at you.

Later, when you get a rush of self-confidence, you leave your crew and go chat to Bassa who’s standing by the fire. She’s gruff, as always, and pretends she’s not happy to see you.

You know she is – you can tell by the extra crinkles around her eyes that she’s doing her version of smiling.

She tells you about a couple of her recent missions, and retires pretty early, bemoaning old age.

Greda offers you a second drink maybe an hour later. You accept.

By about 2100, you’re relaxed, just a little bit buzzed, but you still have top-notch fine motor control.

You’re sitting with Greda, cross-legged on the ground. For all her tomfoolery, you trust her.

She just has a cheeky streak half the galaxy wide.

You find yourself thinking that if she were to ask you about Cassian, you might tell her the truth. You’ve never told anyone about him – your friendship, your feelings.

You haven’t had enough to drink for that thought to be the alcohol talking, so you’re pretty sure you actually want to tell her.

At that moment, Cassian walks by. You say “Hey,” too quietly and reprimand yourself internally, but he hears you and turns his head.

“Hey,” he responds, a little more rigidly than usual.

Silence.

You smile awkwardly and look between him and Greda.

“This is Greda. She’s part of mech crew. Greda, Cassian. Cassian, Greda.”

Cassian acknowledges her with a nod. She grins, nods back.

“What are you drinking?” He asks.

You open your mouth to speak, but Greda interrupts, “Corellian Rum and some kind of soda I nicked. I needed our Wompy to relax a little. You know how it is. It’s been a difficult few months.”

You gape at her incredulously.

“How have I not been relaxed? And more importantly, how do you know about that fucking nickname?”

Cassian smiles, just barely. His dimple is just visible from this angle. Your face gets warmer.

“A little birdie told me.”

You groan. “Bassa?”

“Indeed. A few months ago. I was just keeping it for the right moment.”

You cover your face with your hands.

There’s a pause. You see Cassian’s feet shift through a gap in your fingers, and you hear him sigh.

Your heart sinks just a touch – he’s probably not interested in this conversation, and he’s not super sociable so he won’t sit down and talk to you and Greda.

“Sorry, Cass, you were going somewhere. I interrupted.”

“No, it’s okay – I’m just… I was just leaving.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Ah. Well. Have a good night,” you try.

He nods. “Thank you. You too.”

With that, he walks away.

You sigh out deeply.

Greda starts cackling. “What in the seven hells was that?”

You punch her shoulder. “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” you mumble under her laughter.

“No, really. What just happened? You call him Cass? Cute. But I thought you were friends? That was so awkward. And he just stood there staring at you.”

You tilt your head back and look at the stars, trying to find something to get you out of this.

You find nothing, except your mind’s eye replaying the image of Cassian smiling in the firelight.

“I think he’s the love of my life,” you say before you can think.

Greda stops laughing abruptly.

“Oh, my gods.”

She turns to you and her face is serious. You stare back blankly, “What?”

Greda starts ranting in her mother tongue - by the tone of her voice, you think she’s swearing.

She finishes her tirade in Basic:

“Really? Andor? He’s so cranky and you’re so… likeable.”

Something blooms in your chest at the confirmation that Greda, who likes just about no one, likes you. You smile at the ground.

“Why?”

Your mind floods with a ridiculously detailed montage of interactions with Cassian over the last year and you can’t help the beaming smile that appears on your face.

Greda groans in disgust.

“Shut up. Cassian’s been there for me ever since I joined the Rebellion. He’s… intelligent. He’s very good at what he does. He’s easy to talk to.”

“You sound like you’re recommending him for a job.”

You narrow your eyes at her. “You are not making this easy. I can end this conversation whenever I want.”

She has the decency to look a bit sheepish. “Sorry.”

“We trust each other. He’s got a very gentle heart underneath it all. And… he’s – he’s very-”

“What?”

Your whole body feels warm. “I like his face.”

She snickers. “He is pretty. In sort of a depressed, haunted loth-cat way.”

“I can’t stand you.”

You shove your foot into her shin, but it doesn’t hurt her. All it does is throw you off balance, and you topple backwards and end up flat on the ground.

Her giggling turns into fully fledged booming laughter.

“You are such a child,” you reprimand through your own giggles.

Greda doubles over and slaps your leg repeatedly, laughing so hard she’s silently shaking.

Fucking Devaronians.

Cassian comes to see you in the upper hangar two nights later and thank the stars, you’re alone.

He’s pretty sure you’re working on Shara’s astromech, an R5 unit.

There are droids that do that sort of work so you don’t really have to, but he remembers you saying you were happy to help and you needed the practice, and Shara was happy to lend a her droid to you.

The speaker next to you is playing soft music, and you’re sitting cross legged on the floor in the lamplight.

Cassian can hear you talking the astromech gently through what you’re doing – it’s powered down, so talking to it is completely redundant, but he’s endeared by your kindness.

He doesn’t want to ruin your peace, but he needs to ask you something.

He’s about to greet you when you turn to get something and see him approaching.

You give him a tired smile and his heart races.

“Hey, Cass,” you say. You reach out your hand up him and he instinctively takes it. You give his hand a squeeze and sigh contently.

“Hi,” he says, trying to keep his voice soft.

“What brings you here? It’s so late,”

He takes a fortifying breath and says what he came here to say.

“Would you do me a massive favour?” He asks.

You nod immediately. “Yeah, ‘course.”

“I just – I need a mech, for an operation next week, and they said to pick anyone I wanted, and I want you,” his face flushes, “I mean - I wanted to ask you. I know you don’t like active combat. You’re not gonna be in danger.”

Wariness takes over your face. A mission?

“Tell me more.”

The plan is to land near a city on Numidian Prime. Cassian will go into the city undercover, into one of its many gambling hubs, and try to gamble information from someone who knows someone who’s supposed to know the whereabouts of a Rebel informant who’s recently gone missing.

This informant is vital to the function of the Rebellion, it seems.

The mission is somewhat complicated for Cassian, but your role in it isn’t too stressful. The Rebel Alliance has an old U-Wing model that, with a little paint job, can pass as the sort of vintage ship a rich gambler might own instead of an Alliance ship – the latter of which could cause a lot of problems. The only shortcoming is that because of its age, it can really only survive one trip into hyperspace before repairs have to be made.

Which is where you come in.

As soon as Cassian leaves the ship, you need to get to work on repairing it, replacing any parts necessary (which might require a trip into town yourself) and making sure it’s ready to fly back to Yavin 4.

Despite the importance of the operation, it isn’t particularly intense. No one bats an eye at another souped-up looking ship on a planet filled with smugglers and gamblers in hiding, and Numidian Prime doesn’t have a government or law-enforcement agency that might enforce a parking fine or impoundment – or even check the details of ships that land there.

Cassian looks like he’s worried you’ll say no.

The thought did cross your mind, but you’d much rather be with Cassian on a mission in a non-combat capacity than stay on Yavin 4 and hope he’s alright.

Your only qualm with the whole situation is really his choice of mech.

“Why me?”

That seems to be the last thing he was expecting you to say. “What do you mean?”

You shrug. “Lakan has years more experience than me, Eyroa’s practically psychic when it comes to ship diagnostics. Riekk is much more efficient than the rest of us.”

There Cassian goes again, with his earnest face. He strokes your hand with his thumb.

“Because I trust you.”

You chew on your lip.

“Okay.”

There are a couple meetings over the next three days. You, Greda and Eyroa spend your spare moments detailing the old U-Wing, painting and buffing so it attracts normal, ship-enthusiast attention on Numidian Prime.

It’s interesting being part of mission briefs again, after a year and a bit off. You listen raptly and are incredibly thankful you don’t have to do what Cassian does.

His alias is a man called Dimik Kayo – a man who frequents the casinos of Canto Bight but is looking for more high-stakes and tucked away places to make money. Thus, Numidian Prime.

They gave him some clothes to wear during the mission, and he won’t show you, but he doesn’t seem pleased. You’re sort of morbidly excited to see how bad the outfit is.

The day comes, you get in the U-Wing with as many tools and parts as your mech team can spare and get on your way.

The flight is relatively short, only a day and a half. Cassian spends a fair amount of it sleeping; he’s just off the back of a last-minute mission and hasn’t slept for a couple days. You amuse yourself by watching him or going through the Mechanic’s Manual for the U-Wing.

As expected, the landing on Numidian Prime is easy. You’re a couple kliks out from the main city in a clearing, surrounded by trees. No one comms in and asks for identification – one of the perks of dodgy planets.

Cassian’s getting changed. You wait in the copilot’s seat, your back to him. You’re completely silent - you feel anxious about the mission and just nervous in general.

Then you hear the click of dress shoes walking towards you.

“This is as good as it’s gonna get.”

You turn around, and as soon as you set eyes on Cassian, you’re filled with an all-encompassing want.

You’ve always thought of Cassian as attractive. He’s a beautiful man and a good person, and those big brown eyes of his definitely don’t hurt.

But the difference between this moment and every other time you’ve interacted with Cassian is that - it’s just -

It turns out that Cassian Andor is hot.

He’s tried to comb his hair back, but it’s still pretty messy. His facial hair is grown out at the moment, but he’s just trimmed it, so his cheekbones and jaw look extra sharp.

And the clothes he’s wearing. A muted, dark blue suit jacket with a high rounded collar, with the top two out of six buttons undone. You can see the entirety of his clavicle and some of his chest. The sleeves are tight, and they make him look particularly built.

The same with the legs of his trousers. They’re snug around his thighs, and you have to tear your eyes away. You can hear your pulse in your ears.

‘As good as it’s going to get’ is … very good.

Stars, he’s so hot your tongue feels numb.

He’s talking, but there might as well be static in your ears.

His hands.

There are rings on his fingers.

Half of your mind is taken up by a montage of all the places you want his hands to touch you, the other half sounding the alarm that it is not ideal to desire your best friend carnally, it will lead to a wealth of problems.

He takes a step closer, and you can smell him, the cologne he just put on, and if you weren’t already sitting your knees would give out from under you -

“Are you listening?”

You snap your mouth closed. “Hm?”

“I’ll call you ‘Wompy’ just to annoy you into paying attention.”

You’re sort of thinking he can call you anything he wants when he looks like that, but instead you say, “I’ll kick you in the shins if you do,” uncharacteristically combatively.

He frowns, a little concerned.

You curse internally; you’ve been thrown off your rhythm.

“Sorry,” you wave a hand in the air vaguely, “lost in thought. What were you saying?”

You’re acting weird.

You’re fidgeting in a way Cassian hasn’t seen from you since that first time you spoke in the forest of Yavin 4 after Nar Shaddaa. The last few things you’ve said have gone just a touch past your usual level of banter into defensiveness.

While he was talking through the order of operations, it seemed like you were zoning out.

Cassian’s attaching his comm to his inside jacket pocket, tucking a blaster in his boot, watching you in his peripheral vision. You look deep in thought, one of your legs bouncing up and down.

Nervous?

He turns slightly towards you, debating on whether to talk to you or not.

You glance up like you feel his eyes on you. He watches your eyes scan his body from head to toe, and he feels his face heat up.

He feels ridiculous in this getup, it’s a lot less coverage than he’s accustomed to wearing when he’s working, and it’s like half of his torso is on display.

Cassian was already feeling unsettled, and now you’re acting strange, and he needs to sort this out, otherwise he’ll just be worried about you for the whole mission.

He runs a hand through his hair (freshly gelled, which feels slimy and disgusting) as he makes his way over to you. Then there’s residue on his hand and he can’t wipe it off on his trousers, so he just stares at his hand, standing in front of you.

Force, what is going on today?

“You want a cloth for that?” You ask, cutting through his mile-a-minute thoughts.

He nods. “Please.”

So you stand up to get a cloth without factoring in his proximity to you, and suddenly you are almost chest to chest. You put your arms out in front of you to brace yourself and they land on each side of the deep V of his suit jacket.

He’s warm. You stare at his neck for a second to gather your wits, which doesn’t work very well because his neck is just as nice as his…everything else.

Then you look up, and he’s already gazing intently at your face.

He’s very close. And his eyes are so beautiful.

You have the compulsion to chew on your lip out of pure stress, but what if that’s weird and Cassian notices, so you just purse your lips in to stop yourself from doing anything stupid with them.

Cassian immediately looks at your lips and you feel your entire body go stiff.

He frowns, and the hand that isn’t covered in hair gel comes up and squeezes your upper arm.

“Is everything alright?” He asks softly. You can feel his breath on your face.

You let out the most stupid, timid “yep” of your life and you want the ground below you to cave in.

He searches your face. “Come on. Tell me.”

You let out a sharp sigh. You have no idea how to get out of this.

His hand moves from your shoulder to the side of your neck, and it practically sends sparks through your entire body. “Are you nervous?”

Silence.

Cassian starts to stroke your cheek with his thumb without thinking. He just wants that eopie-in-the-headlights expression on your face to fall away. “This is an easy mission. Plus, I’ll have you in my ear the whole time. You don’t need to be nervous-”

“Maker, Cassian, don’t do that!” You push him away, and that comforting warmth of your hands on his chest disappears.

He’s scrambling, trying to figure out if he overstepped - he doesn’t think he did, he’s touched your face before.

You rub your hands over your face vigorously. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

Something in his chest aches to see you out of sorts like this. You laugh a little bitterly, which confuses him even more. Then you look at him and take a deep breath.

“I am nervous. Not about the mission. It’s fine. I’m sorry I’m being so weird. Don’t worry.”

“What are you nervous about?”

You look flustered, and you indicate to him with a vague wave of your arm.

“Me?”

You cringe. “Yes.”

His mind is racing. “Did I do something wrong?”

You can see Cassian is panicking that he’s made you uncomfortable, and you shouldn’t have said anything, but he needs to know he hasn’t done anything wrong, so you say:

“You -” you gesture uselessly, “you look… You look really good and I’m…just sort of…”

Realisation dawns on Cassian’s face, but he’s still and silent.

You can’t stop yourself now that you’ve started. “Like, stars, Cassian, do you think they made your sleeves tight enough? And those stupid rings? And they really picked the right colour for the suit, didn’t they?”

Cassian’s got a tiny, incredulous smile on his face as he looks at you. His eyes are bright.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you say in an embarrassingly weak voice.

That smile turns into one of those stupid little smirks he does.

There is a long pause, where you’re just looking at each other.

“You really like this outfit?” He asks.

You groan and cover your face with your hands, muttering a muffled “I hate you.”

Outside, he looks calm enough. Inside, his heart is racing, his body feels too hot, and he thinks he’s going to lose his balance.

You, the most gorgeous, radiant person he has ever seen, are flustered by him in formal wear. You think he’s attractive, so much so that you’re stumbling over your words.

He can’t help but laugh for the pure elation the idea brings him.

You cringe and peek at him through your fingers. “Don’t laugh!”

He schools his face. “I’m not-” You glare at him. “I am, I’m just. I’m not laughing at you.”

You roll your eyes, set your jaw. There is a tiny hint of a smile on your face. “I’m getting you a cloth for your stupid hand.”

He watches you walk away, eyes the lines of your body, the movement of your hips. It’s not the first time he’s done it, not by a long shot.

You return with the cloth and hold it out to him, arm completely outstretched for maximum distance between the two of you.

He takes your hand anyway and pulls you toward him, which makes you gasp. Cassian desperately wishes he didn’t have a mission to do right now.

You shove the rag into the centre of his chest and yank your hand out of his grip.

“Go be good looking somewhere else.”

Cassian feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin.

Neither of you move.

Cassian wipes the gel off his hand and tosses the rag on the floor.

You lean closer in.

Stars above.

He knows physical intimacy. He’s plenty experienced, but his hands are shaking anyway, because it’s you.

Instinctively, Cassian reaches out, wraps an arm around your waist, pulls you against him.

“Cass,” you warn, but you’re sliding your palms up the front of his suit jacket anyway. Cassian shudders and reaches his hand up to the side of your face. You press your cheek against his hand, and the movement exposes the wide expanse of the other side of your neck.

He can’t hold back, not anymore, so he leans in and kisses you in that soft space just above your collarbone, once, before he can even think about it. You gasp softly, and one of your hands moves up to the back of his neck.

He knows this is a good sign, so he kisses you again, a little higher. You make a gentle, breathy sound in the back of your throat that makes his heart trip. Another kiss, lingering, a little higher. You tilt your head further back for ease of access, and his hands squeeze involuntarily on your waist. He feels like it’s his first time kissing someone.

This time, when his lips meet your neck, he sucks on your skin for a second or two.

Your mind is ridiculously hazy, overwhelmed entirely by the situation, but when he sucks on your neck you have a moment of clarity.

The mission.

“Cassian Andor, don’t you dare start something you don’t have the time to finish.”

It comes out much more breathily than you would have planned - in your head you were more authoritative, but his beard feels so lovely against your skin and you can’t quite breathe.

Cassian just shushes you, the bastard, and kisses along your jaw, getting closer to your lips. He pulls away, about to kiss you again, but you grab his chin and make him look you in the eyes.

He looks flushed, his eyelids are half closed, and he’s breathing heavily.

Whatever you were about to say goes into hyperspace and exits your mind. You open and close your mouth a few times, trying to come up with something to say.

There’s a lazy smile on his face, like it’s fun for him to watch you struggle. You grip his chin a little harder and he laughs, breathy and low.

“Cass-”

“I know,” he murmurs, drawing back. He doesn’t move his gaze from your lips, though.

You pull his bottom lip down gently with your thumb. He makes a little pleading sound, which is probably the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard.

You let his lip go. “Kiss me again after the mission, gorgeous.”

His jaw drops and you laugh deliriously in shock at yourself.

“Sorry. It slipped out,” you push him away and he takes a couple of wobbly steps backward.

“Off you go.”

“You can’t just call me that and then tell me to leave,” he appeals.

You’re still laughing. You cover your mouth with your hand. “The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back.”

He stares you down affectionately with those ridiculously intense eyes of his, and it’s hard not to cave in and fall back into his arms.

He shakes his head at you minutely and he’s trying not to smile.

You’re still grappling with the events of the last five minutes, but you’re so elated it’s hard to focus.

“Stop loitering,” you tease.

He scoffs good-naturedly and walks backwards in the direction of the shuttle ramp. His gaze meanders up and down your body, which makes you feel like you’re on fire.

Flirting. That’s new.

“I’ll be talking in your ear for the entire mission. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

He meets your eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure, angel.”

You freeze, bewildered by his chosen term of endearment. Cassian’s rendered you speechless and he knows it, so he grins. A mischievous, joyful smile that makes your knees weak.

He turns and walks down the ramp. Then he’s out of sight.

Angel.

The speaker crackles to life in the cockpit, and it’s just Cassian laughing over the comm. You're somewhat embarrassed, but you feel like you’re about to take flight or something. His laugh.

“And you had the audacity to complain about me calling you gorgeous. What the fuck, Cass.”

He’s still laughing as you pull out your toolboxes.

You both focus entirely on the mission, after that. You're both good at compartmentalising.

Cassian plays the role of a sleazy, womanizing gambler, and you hurriedly repair the ship.

Several hours later, the comm crackles on again.

“Success?” You ask.

“Yeah. Coming back now.”

“Alright. I’m just replacing a floor panel, otherwise, I’m done.’

He makes a satisfied “hm.”

You grumble into the comm as you replace the floor panels of the shuttle, “That was fast on your end, though. You should dress up as a money hungry man-whore more often.”

“Hey,” he reprimands.

“What was this character’s name again?” You ask as you search your toolbox for a wrench.

“Dimik. Kayo.”

“Yikes,” you grunt as you put your bodyweight into tightening a bolt.

“What’s wrong with ‘Dimik’?” Cassian asks.

“Oh, you know…”

It dawns on you while you’re talking with Cassian that this is all brand new. The comfortable, easy friendship you’ve developed has changed irreversibly, regardless of how things go when he gets back to the ship.

You trust Cassian. That’s the easy part.

But romantic relationships are not particularly familiar to you, and you’re in the middle of a war, and the what ifs start piling up. You’re not sure you really want the newness when everything around you is already changing all the time.

Cassian notices you trail off mid-sentence. He figures you need to concentrate fully on your work for a second.

But after a minute or so of silence, he checks in.

“Hey, are you okay?”

A pause.

“I’m gonna ask you something, and you have to answer me honestly,” you start softly.

His heart thuds like a death knell in his chest. You sound solemn.

“I would never lie to you.”

“Are we going to be alright? After…” everything that just happened.

Cassian’s steps almost falter. “We are,” he says.

Do you regret it? Do you want it to be a one-time thing? You said he could kiss you again when he gets back, but was that a joke? Heat of the moment?

He realises that the idea of not getting to kiss or hold you again is a source of stress, which throws him into a panic.

He’s not ready for this. You’re his best friend. Knowing you is easy, and integral to his life. Kissing you was easy – he enjoys it, he’s good at it. And he… likes you.

But those two components together are –

They’re daunting. He’s never wanted to give all of himself to a person before. He never felt he had much to give.

Your voice is timid as you say, “I can’t lose you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You won’t. I - you won’t lose me.”

You hum, deep in thought.

Cassian is still making his way to the shuttle. He waits for you to speak.

“Okay,” you start, voice uneven.

His heart just about melts. “Yeah?”

“I - care about you a lot, okay, and I’m not sure I’m good at relationships. Romance.” You sigh.

He wants to run back to the shuttle and wrap you tightly in his arms, but he thinks if he saw the look in your eyes right now, he wouldn’t know what to do, so he keeps walking at the same pace.

“This was so much more coherent in my head. I just want - I don’t want this to be weird. I don’t - I don’t want anything to change. Between us.”

Cassian tries to stay calm, but his heart is sinking. So you do regret it?

He asks in a very neutral voice, “As in, you don’t want to be more than friends?”

“Shit, no - sorry - stars, I’m doing a terrible job of this,” you mutter, “let me start again.”

Cassian takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

You curse quietly.

“Okay. I love you, Cass. And I want you. Every part of you in any way I can get. But I’m not so familiar with dating or partnership and I really don’t want to fuck it up. Would we just be the same we’ve been but with … new physical aspects? Or is there something else I’ll need to be? I’m bad at flirting, I think I just turn mean. I don’t know how to be…sexy, or attractive, I don’t know. I think I’m scared that that’s what I need to bring to a relationship, and I won’t be able to, and you’ll leave eventually, and I will have lost my best friend. So.”

It’s like he’s floating in antigrav. Or like he’s high off some top-quality spice. “You love me.”

You sigh gently but exasperatedly, “Yes, of course I do. Did you hear everything else I said, though?”

Whoops. “Yes. I-” The shuttle comes into view. Shit. “- I did. I heard you.”

“You don’t have to respond right now. If you need time to think.” You’re making a valiant effort to accommodate him, but your voice is wobbly.

The thing is, at the heart of all his worry, Cassian knows this:

No one’s ever been as kind to him as you. No one’s ever been so considerate. No one’s as steadfast, as non-judgemental. He has never trusted a person like he trusts you.

He knows he doesn’t deserve you. It’s selfish, but that won’t stop him from holding onto you until his dying breath. He decides in that moment that he wants to do whatever it takes to keep you by his side.

He reaches the hangar the ship is docked in.

“I don’t need time to think.”

He hears you take a shallow breath. “Okay.”

You’re waiting for Cassian to speak when you hear footsteps up the ramp. You whirl around, about to grab something from your toolbox as a weapon, when you realise it’s Cassian, which in this very moment is scarier than if it was a random attacker.

You stand stock still. He takes his comm out and puts it in his pocket.

Your pulse is racing, and you can hear your blood in your ears.

The two of you stand there a metre and a bit apart for what feels like a little eternity.

Then Cassian takes a few purposeful steps towards you and takes you in his arms.

He’s so warm, and he smells so good, so you tuck your face into his neck. His hand moves up to cradle the back of your head.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hi,” you say, muffled.

You can’t lose this. The feel of his arms around you, the warmth of his chest against yours.

But you need an answer now, so you whisper, “You said you didn’t need time to think.”

Cassian’s fingers sift through your hair. “I don’t.”

There is a pause.

Then Cassian says gently in your ear;

“You don’t need to be anything you aren’t already. I love you because of who you were when I met you, who you are now. Who you’re always gonna be. Nothing else.”

He loves you. You’d fall to your knees if he wasn’t holding you up. You don’t know what to say, but you can’t leave him hanging.

“Cassian-”

“If it helps, I always thought you were attractive. Sexy.”

You think you might die with his soft, raspy voice in your ear saying that.

“And hey, if the physical stuff takes some time, I don’t mind. I want you, too, but I’m ready when you are. Any way you want me.”

You tilt your head and whisper in his ear, “Andor, I’m gonna do something indecent if you keep talking to me like that.”

He smiles, and you feel it against your cheek. “Like I said. I’m ready when you are.”

He runs a hand through the hair at the nape of your neck, and you release him from your hold to put your hands on either side of his face.

His expression is so soft. You can see the dimple on his left cheek, and his eyes are catching all sorts of light.

This beautiful man.

“You love me?” You ask, trying and failing to hide a smile.

He lets out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, I do,”

You make this funny sound, like halfway between a single laugh and a hiccup, because your body can’t quite process the joy you’re feeling.

Cassian snorts. “What was that?”

You shake your head giddily, grinning. “I don’t know!”

“Stop making weird sounds,” he murmurs. His eyes don’t leave your lips.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you mumble as you close the distance between you.

His lips are ridiculously soft, and they’re moving languidly against yours like you’ve got all the time in the world. His facial hair is a little scratchy, but in a pleasant way that makes your face feel hot.

It goes like this for a minute or so - until his tongue runs across your lips. You gasp, and your hands fall from his face. You sling your arms around his neck while he licks into your mouth, filthy and slow.

You try to give back as good as you get, but stars, this man can kiss.

Suddenly, his lips aren’t on yours anymore, and he’s walking you back into the wall of the ship. You hit the wall with a soft thud and then Cassian starts kissing your neck again.

You feel like a teenager again.

“Cassian,” you manage to choke out.

He grunts in response.

He lingers on one spot on your neck for so long you’re pretty sure there’s going to be a mark, which will be fun to explain when you get back to base.

Cassian’s hands start to roam all over you, and you’re getting a little restless. You pull his face back up to yours and kiss him again as fervently as you can manage.

You’re there for Force knows how long, exploring each other in this new way, until the pace slows and you’re both breathing heavily. You start to pull away, but Cassian bites your bottom lip and tugs on it a little.

You make a soft, surprised sound and he chuckles, low and gentle. You feel another wave of heat rush through your body.

He gives you one more searing kiss, steps back with a smug little smile on his face and starts to get the ship ready for take-off.

You flatten your palms against the wall. Your head falls back in a haze.

You look over at Cassian.

It seems like it’s his personal mission to make you swoon today, because he’s sitting in the pilot’s chair with his headphones on, his hair all messy, still in that suit. His posture is relaxed, his eyes are focussed on the switchboard before him.

You love to see this man in his element.

You stand there leaning against the wall of the ship in a daze while he goes about his work.

He’s about to take off, so he turns to you to tell you to take a seat, but he sees your expression and he stops. There’s a quizzical look on his face.

“What?” He asks.

His shoulders look so broad in that suit.

You have too many thoughts in your head to be able to pick one to say, so you stay silent and just keep following the lines of his body with your eyes.

He fiddles with his hands. He looks embarrassed or even a little shy, which sends a thrill running through you.

“Are you gonna sit down?”

You’ve succeeded in flustering the notoriously stern and unflappable Cassian Andor, and it feels fantastic. You do take a seat, but you don’t stop blatantly watching him. You can’t look away.

He shifts under your gaze, but he manages to take off and get the ship into the atmosphere without any issues.

You let yourself get lost in thought.

It’s been silent for a while, and Cassian is calculating the hyperspace route on a datapad. He’s finally feeling like he has control over the situation when you ask, “Are you planning on keeping the beard? It felt so nice on my neck.”

Cassian drops his stylus, but he manages not to choke on air, so he thinks he handles that pretty well.

He leans down to grab it, but you get there first. You offer him the stylus and your hand lingers on his for a second.

His hand shakes as he types in the coordinates. This is a lot to deal with.

“Uh, maybe? It’s sort of annoying to take care of.”

“Hm.”

Is it warm on the ship? He checks climate control.

Maybe it’s just him. He undoes a button of his jacket and rolls up a sleeve.

He looks over to you while he’s working on his second sleeve and you’re still staring at him, a little dazed. Your eyes meet and you quickly look away.

Cassian feels powerful, that he can make you look like that. He’s also terrified – did he make the wrong choice? Are you better without him?

The screen flashes to notify him that the engines are ready, so he pushes the lever forward and the ship launches into hyperspace.

He watches as the inside of the ship is washed in faint blue from the streaks of light out of the window. Watches the colours playing on your skin.

It occurs to him that the two of you are alone on this ship now for an entire cycle.

A silence stretches out between you, punctuated by accidental eye contact when both of you try to sneak a glance at the other and get caught.

At some point, Cassian stands up, walks over to his pack and grabs his water canteen.

Out of absolutely nowhere, you say very nonchalantly, “I wish there was a shower on this ship.”

Cassian’s mind goes to about fifteen very naked places it’s not supposed to be, and it almost gives him whiplash. “What?”

“Your hair’s all crunchy from the gel. If there was a shower you could wash it off.”

The hair gel isn’t bothering him, so he’s a little confused. “I’ll be able to wash it off tomorrow,”

You nod. “I’ve just always wanted to run my fingers through your hair because it looks so soft, and I figure you’d let me do that now. But the gel is in the way of that right now.”

Suddenly, the hair gel is bothering him. A lot.

“I thought you said you were bad at flirting,” he manages to rasp out.

“You think that’s flirting?”

Cassian thinks he might not survive this flight. “What do you think it is?”

“That’s just my stream of consciousness.”

‘Stream of consciousness.’ Stars help him.

Cassian’s still a little drunk on you saying you love him and feeling your hands and mouth on him, so his self-preservation skills are lacking.

Plus he’s never been one to think much before he acts.

This is what leads him to ask; “What else is in your stream of consciousness?” as he takes a sip from his canteen.

A contemplative hum.

“I was thinking you look hot with your sleeves rolled up.”

He chokes on his water.

You watch him, alarmed, as he coughs up his lungs. It’s embarrassing, but he can’t stop coughing, to the point where you rush over.

“Shit, are you okay?” You reach out to touch him.

Cassian waves your hand away as he tries to get his breath back.

Once he manages to take a few blessedly uneventful breaths, and you take the opportunity to stroke the side of his face. Your eyes are so wide, so concerned. You’re the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

His chest aches. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve you.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

And now you’re apologising. For complimenting him. For calling him hot.

“- Stars, Cass, I thought you were dying for a second there, is there anything I can-”

He rushes you backwards against the wall of the ship again and does his very best to kiss you breathless.

Before he can even think, he’s pushing his knee gently between your legs. You let out a very soft moan.

He can’t stop. He’s kissing every bit of your skin he can find, and your hands are roaming everywhere on his body.

Maybe if he makes you feel good; if he pleases you, keeps you happy that way, you won’t notice how wrong he is for you.

“I love you,” he murmurs as he moves to kiss your lips again, “I love you,” as he pulls away to take a breath, “I love you,” before he bites your earlobe.

You gasp and grip his shoulder.

Something dark and possessive runs through him.

He can’t lose you. He can’t.

But he knows he shouldn’t do this to you, either.

Cassian’s moving with reckless abandon, his lips and teeth and tongue are everywhere he can reach.

The tenderness and joy of the first few kisses you shared are washed away by this intensity, this focus.

And it’s not that you don’t like it, the urgency, but when you catch Cassian’s expression, it’s as stern and intense as he is during a mission.

Something’s wrong.

You brace your hands on his chest. “Cass, are you okay?”

He ignores you and presses his lips to yours.

You try a couple more times with gentle coaxing, to figure out what’s going on with him, but he doesn’t respond, so you grab his face, press his forehead against yours, and say, “Stop, baby.”

His eyes fly open and he wrenches himself away from you without a word.

He paces the length of the ship over and over again, and you watch the furrow in his brow get deeper.

Slowly, you slide down against the hull of the ship and sit on the floor.

You’ve known Cassian long enough to be able to identify some of his habits and patterns of thought. You trust him enough to know he didn’t lie when he said he loved you, but there’s something stopping him from giving himself to you.

He’s the sort of person that will give love, but not accept it back.

He stops and looks at you. “We can’t do this.”

Twenty minutes ago, you would have allowed this, given up and nursed a bruised heart for months.

But this is now, and you’re not letting the man you love forfeit something that could make him happy because he thinks he doesn’t deserve it.

He’s obviously not expecting the calm expression on your face, or how you say, “Sit down.”

He sits immediately, leaning against the other side of the hull.

“I’m gonna say some things, and then I’ll give you time to think, and you can come back and respond, okay?”

Cassian nods, dumbfounded.

“If you don’t want this, you tell me that. Otherwise, don’t make my choices for me. You haven’t tricked me into loving you. I’ve loved you since you walked over to our table in the mess hall, dead on your feet with your grumpy face, looking like you were about to kill someone. There isn’t an expiry date or a condition on that. I’m not going to wake up one day and decide that I don’t love you because of what you’ve done, or who you are. You’re a good person. You deserve to be happy. To be loved. I’ll love you regardless of whether you’ll accept it or not,” you smile a little, “if you look at it that way, you could find that you may as well make the most of it.”

His eyes are shiny - more than normal - and you realise there are tears there, waiting to spill over. You want nothing more than to go over and hold him, but you don’t need physical contact to keep distracting you from conversations that need to be had.

“Make sense?” You ask.

He nods.

“Good. I’ll be here for you. I’ll still be here for you when we land back on Yavin, no matter how long it takes. Just take your time, sweetheart.”

If anyone else called him ‘sweetheart’, Cassian would start a fight, but when you do, you say it like you mean it. Like you think he’s good, or precious.

You put the meaning of the two words in it. ‘Sweet’ and ‘heart’. It would be enough to make him cry on a normal day, let alone this one. He clears his throat to keep himself under control.

After a while, you move to the bench in the middle of the ship and lie down on it. You didn’t get much sleep during the flight here, so Cassian isn’t surprised when your eyes fall shut almost immediately.

So he sits on the floor of the hull in silence, and he thinks.

A few weeks pass and Cassian hasn’t visited you in the hangars once.

You assume he needs space away from you to think. You said you’d give it to him and you are, but you’re not endlessly patient, and doubt is creeping in.

You trust Cassian, you do, but what if he said he loved you because he felt obliged to, or because of the heat of the moment? What if he’s never going to visit you again? What if those kisses were the only ones you were ever going to share with him?

Greda, for once, is being tactical. She seemed to notice something was off, but she hasn’t mentioned it except for asking you how you are once or twice.

You’re entering the lower hangar with a late-night cup of herbal tea when you hear the alarm for an emergency landing going off on the runway.

You and Riekk are on the night shift tonight, which means you do some mech work or personal projects, but mostly you’re on call for any emergencies ship-wise throughout the night.

You run up the stairs to ground level, your tea left on the bottom step.

When you get to the runway, there’s a BTL Y-wing half in flames, haphazardly landed.

Through the smoke, you see two figures making their way out of their seats on the ship.

K-2 and Cassian.

K-2 might be a little banged up, it’s hard to see from here, but Cassian is hunched over, holding his side. His other arm is limp.

You comm the med centre and ask for the medics on call to bring a med-rig.

The med team arrives while you and Riekk are putting out the last of the fire, and Cassian is taken away on the rig before you can see him.

In the adrenaline rush and anxiety, you manage to convince yourself that Cassian won't want you there with him in the med centre. You need to keep giving him space. He's not dying, just injured. You'll only be an annoyance in the med centre anyway.

So after you've gotten a couple of the bigger maintenance droids to tug the Y-wing out of the middle of the runway into the upper hangar, you trudge back downstairs to work on some carbon scoring that's built up on one of the Corvettes.

You pick up the tea you left on the bottom step and take a sip, but it's been steeping too long, so it's bitter and cold.

#cassian andor x reader #cassian andor x gn!reader #cassian andor x gn reader #cassian andor x you

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daily-spg-songs · 5 months

Text

Hello and welcome :)

On this blog, I will post one Steam Powered Giraffe song a day.

I will take requests for specific songs on specific days. Just send an ask or submission with the song you want and the specific day you want it. If you don't have a particular day in mind send the song in and I’ll add it to the queue.

Please note that I will only do songs by Steam Powered Giraffe. Songs featuring them will be included as well as their covers of songs.

You can submit songs from the band's busking days or other events that aren't in an album. Just include the link to the specific video in the ask cause otherwise I might not be able to find the one you want.

Posts will be scheduled for 7 am GMT. However, asks will be responded to at random times because why not.

This blog is run by @nix-does-stuff and my pronouns are they/it. And if you have any interest in The Mechanisms then check out my other song blog @daily-mechs-songs

Tags under cut ⬇

Tags I use:

#spg daily song

⬆ Tag for all the daily songs

#[album name] spg

#[song name] spg

⬆ These tags are so the songs can be found later and so you and i know which songs have been done. Or if the song is a cover instead of the album tag will be replaced with #spg cover.

#vintage!rabbit

⬆ For everything that came out pre mk III

#spg song request

⬆ For answering asks and submissions requesting a song

#not a song

⬆ self-explanatory

#pinned post #not a song

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time-is-restored · 7 months

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hello, mechanisms enjoyer. who is your favourite mechanism. what is your favourite album. what is your favourite song. what is your favourite photo. do you have a favourite live recording/have you been to a live show.

HI FELLOW MECHANISMS ENJOYER :DD

okay so my favourite mechanism is by FAR raphaella, her derth of backstory and absolutely nuts vocal range has utterly bewitched me. im also SO in love with her aesthetic, and any + all portrayals of her wings kick ASS

FAVOURITE SONG IS HARD... rn it is a very close tie between pieces and hellfire -- but atm hellfire wins out! i fucking LOVE the ominous sermon vibes it has; the organ in the beginning? the way the humming progresses into wailing in the harmonies? the fucking TRUMPET in the chorus*???????? the hair-raising whispered poem ABT arthurian legend in the second spoken section? jonny's Deranged Preacher Cackle??????? THE DTTM RECORDING WHERE YOU CAN HEAR THE WHOLE CROWD SCREAM 'BUT YOU'RE A LIAR'????????????? showstopping. breathtaking. absolutely no notes.

anyway if you couldn't tell my favourite album atm is high noon over camelot LMAO. i think the soundscape it creates is like. the most impressive + immersive out of all of mechs recordings -- the way they use the synth throughout is fucking MASTERFUL, and its such a PERFECT way to blend the genres of scifi + western, considering the mechs usual timbre lends itself extremely well to folky and old-fashioned. like, the absolutely BONE chilling reprise of hellfire during the heirophant goes CRAZY hard and ive never seen ANYONE mention it! and the whole album is full of moments like that! like each song transitions perfectly into a background hum for the narration and then back again, and its always so well balanced and !!!!!!!

favourite photo............. god there are some really fucking good ones out there but its Gotta be this raphaella shot:

its just. So fucking ethereal. she <333333333333333

i have regrettably never been to a liveshow </3 i don't actually have a lot of knowledge of all the different recordings - i have a bunch of masterposts saved, but im super slow to work through them.

so i think ive gotta go with death to the mechanisms! while i do sometimes wish it captured the details a little better, its so awesome being able to see the majority of the band during each song :) in paticular, i LOVE getting to see kofi's acting, they're SO fucking expressive and they get so excited in the leadup to both thor and expert testimony and i just :D

thanks so much for the ask! i love talking abt the mechs and am stoked to do so at literally any and all times, LMAOOO

*side note: if you've never done a dedicated listen of hellfire where ur completely focused on the trump part, i am begging you to do so. holy shit. it adds So Much. ivy my BELOVEDDDD

#mechs #asks #other top song contestants i didn't list bc it would go on for pages: riddle of the sphinx + elysian fields + favoured son + hades + loki +#losing track + ragnarok ii + empty trail + the hanged man rusts + once and future king + rose red + cinders song + our boy jack +#frankenstein + dr pilchard + the toy soldiers song + stranger + alice + [is dragged off stage kicking and screaming]#<- very normal about this band

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jonny-b-meowborn · 10 months

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Dude I had a Mechanisms dream again and I'm going quite insane and also I am upset at my body for waking up at a very bad moment for no reason at all much earlier than I'm supposed to get up.

Basically I was at my cousin's, she lives in a very big city. It's summer, so there's a lot of festivals and shows and all that, both huge expensive ones and small in random locations. There was some sort of small unknown artist festival in some theatre or pub or whatever that was going to last a few days. Unfortunately I couldn't afford it even though it was fairly cheap, but they had an artist I wanted to check out on the first day. So since I couldn't buy a ticket, I decided to sit by the building where it took place and listen through the walls and windows, and in the end I had a pretty good time.

The next day, I'm thinking if I wanna do the same thing even though I didn't know any of the other artists, when it turned out that the Mechanisms are gonna play there, a decision made last minute because of some planning issue, there was an empty slot between other bands or something? But in that dream it wasn't the actual pirates, but it wasn't just straight up their actors either, something kind of in-between, they weren't their fictional characters but they weren't exactly real people, I'm not sure what was the deal with that. Like, it wasn't the real man Jonny Sims, it was still Jonny D'Ville, but if Jonny D'Ville was just a regular guy. Either way, the mechanisms died a few years ago and this wasn't supposed to be a huge reunion, more like old friends playing a couple of their songs together. So of course I wanted to go see them, but I still had no money, so I decided to do the same trick as before and sat near the door to the venue a little while before they were supposed to begin. In the end I managed to somehow sneak in unnoticed, and the place was pretty empty, no one really cared for this festival. So of course, since there weren't that many people and no one noticed that I entered without a ticket, I sat in the first row. Eventually the mechs entered the stage, which was just a designated area of the floor in the main room on the same level as the audience. Not every mech was there, there was a bunch of people I didn't know at all, because not every original band member was able to come. They didn't have their costumes either, instead wore casual daily clothes. It seemed like the decision to play there was really last minute. There was Jonny, Brian, Tim, and I think Marius. I was, obviously, extremely excited to see them, even if the whole band couldn't be there. They weren't going to play a whole album, just a couple random songs from across their discography. I remember that when they started playing due to some dream bullshit my sister was suddenly in the audience with me? They started with Old King Cole, and it was great. I don't remember the next song, but it was one of the ttbt ones.

And then, almost everyone left the stage except for one person I didn't know that was supposed to play a few very rare unreleased mech songs, and in the meantime the rest of the band just hung out in the venue. So because it was a dream and some dreams are pretty much just fanfics that your brain unconsciously writes, Tim and Brain sat next to us. And like I said, they all were something weirdly between the immortal space pirate character and the real person. Like, they were all still fictional characters, but they weren't these specific characters? Kind of like if they were actually immortal guys with silly names and their silly personalities, but the space pirate part was made up. Anyway, these two sat next to us, and I tried extremely hard not to fangirl all over the place. We all were watching the short solo performance, and at some point my chair turned into like an office chair on wheels or something, idk dream logic. Gunpowder Tim was sitting slightly behind me, and I wanted to casually roll back to kinda have him in my field of vision while he's there, for fangirl reasons. But I accidentally rolled my chair across his foot and I panicked, I just hurt the guy I was a fan of, he's surely gonna leave because of that and he'll hate me. I started apologizing, but he was just like, chill literally nothing happened my toes arent made of glass it's not a big deal. I still felt horrible though so I kept saying I'm sorry and if there's anything I can do as an apology. My sister was just kinda laughing at me for embarrassing myself, Brian didn't have any big reactions, he was more focused on the performance. Tim eventually laughed that as an official apology I could write a letter to his character. He said that half jokingly but I got excited at the opportunity to, as I put it then, write a lil bit of fan fiction on request of the og creator, so I agreed. He was like, cool, then write it right now. It kinda seemed like he wanted to like, embarrass me further but not in a mean way, more in a playful friendly way. So I produced a piece of paper and a pen out of nowhere and started writing something with the paper on my lap, hurrying before the main performance resumes and they all go back on the stage. While I was working on that Tim moved his chair closer and I shit you not he leaned his head on my shoulder and watched my writing. I was, of course, internally screaming and exploding. Like he was fully leaning on me while I was writing a silly letter to the character he played. It felt like he was very aware of how much I was fangirling in my mind and making me flustered amused him.

Aaaand that's when I woke up. I have no idea why, it was 5:40 in the morning, I'm supposed to get up in like two hours, there wasn't any noise that woke me up or anything, but in the last couple days I've been waking up weird early. Just sucks that it happened while I was having a very silly nice dream lmao

#when i woke up it wasnt very sudden and the dream was still lingering #like come on the guy ever was leaning on my shoulder during his show why did my brain wake me up #and i don't think i have to tell you how insane that felt #his hair was nice #love having dreams where the people im a fan of just decide to spend time with me its the best shit #fuckinnnnng sold to one direction but if nothing made real world sense hhsbsbdbbxjxjdxj #k im gonna try to go back to sleep now #the mechanisms #bee buzz

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nyastyaraspurrtina · 17 days

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Question for youuuuu

Hi! I have never actually listened to the mechanisms, but I’m a big tma fan and really like the very slight aus where it’s like the mechanisms were the archivists college band things, so I’ve read a lot of fanfic that basically references them with not a lot of context yk?

Also. Because I have watched some rusty quill stream vods on YouTube, I’m now getting like 9 second mechanisms clips recommended to me.

And. Last little thing. I am a big alt folk person, and last night I remembered this band I love that I basically totally forgot about and hadn’t been listening to for a bit, and went and just shuffled their songs and it was great. (Robert hallow and the holy men! If you were curious)

But. I was like scrolling through the similar artists, and the mechanisms showed up again.

So now partly because I just keep seeing them come up and partly because of curiosity. I’m tempted to actually check them out.

But I’m really bad with new music, just kind of in general I like my comfortable and familiar songs. And I know really nothing about them besides like. Some of their names and the whole like immortal space pirate thing. But like musically? I have like no info.

So basically uh.

What should I expect? What like. Kind of music would I be getting into? Is it worth it?

I’m asking mostly because I’m looking for someone to be enthusiastic so I have a reason to push my hesitancy against new things aside btw.

Sorry this is so long lmao, and thank you :)

OH MY GOD????? IM FUCKING HONORED THANK YOU

Okay so to start out with, they have 4 main albums. Once Upon A Time In Space, The Bifrost Incident, High Noon Over Camelot, and Ulysses Dies At Dawn. They tend to vary in terms of what their music sounds like, but they always have the same instruments, more or less. (Glockenspiel, flute, drums, sometimes Jonny on the harmonica, bass, guitar that I honestly cannot tell if it's electric or acoustic, viola, violin, Jessica Law's amazing vocals, and I think that's it but I'm probably forgetting something else). High Noon Over Camelot has a lot of Western influence, and is very folk-leaning-country, is the best way I can describe it?

You said you listen to TMA, so here's a couple people to know - Frank Voss and Jessica Law. Frank Voss plays Ashes O'Reilly, an arsonist who burned down their home planet and joined up with the Mechs. Here's the song with their backstory. It's very much like jazz, I think. In TMA, Frank Voss plays Basira Hussain. Jessica Law plays the Toy Soldier, a sentient wooden man (or, according to a tweet she made, a metal man that just looks wooden?) It essentially pretends to be alive, and will obey any order given to it. It pretended to be a rich lady's husband for a while, and then fell in love with an Angel - when it wasn't reciprocated, it ripped out the Angel's voice box. Not sure if it uses it as its own voice box, I forgot. No backstory song for TS sadly :(((. In TMA, Jessica Law plays Nikola Orsinov! And then there's Jonny Dville, first mate, killed his dad for money, killed the guy who paid him to kill his dad, burnt down the guy's casino, and joined up with the Mechs. Here's the song with his backstory. Not quite sure what genre that song falls under, sorry! Jonny D'ville is played by Jonny Sims, who is Jonathan Sims. Don't worry, it's really easy to remember /j.

Anyways, I'm gonna assume you're not very familiar with their whole shtick from what you said - basically, each of their albums tells a story, except for Tales To Be Told Vol 1 and 2. In those, all of the individual songs tell individual stories. There is Death To The Mechanisms, but I'd listen to that last. You can listen to the other albums in any order, though! There are some songs that are entirely narration, no singing. If that's not your thing, TheVoidSings on YouTube, who is an absolute SAINT, has a playlist of all the tracks that do NOT have that narration.

Now, the music type. WARNING FOR GUNSHOT NOISES IN ALMOST ALL THE ALBUMS. Not sure if that bothers you, but they do often have gunshot sound effects. If you like, I can compile a list of songs that have the gunshot effect so you can avoid it, if it would make it a no go for you. High Noon Over Camelot - Western. Heavy folk & country. Once Upon A Time In Space....not sure what to class it as. It's a mixture of things. It can be very loud and fast-paced, but sometimes slow? There's some songs that are like a waltz. Some are very fast and loud. The Bifrost Incident - the best thing I can class it as is "train". Very loud, fast-paced, but melodic in a way. Ulysses Dies At Dawn is heavy blues influence, kinda jazz? idk I don't really listen to jazz sorry :(. And while I am biased, it is ABSOLUTELY worth getting into. Like I said, if a whole album at once seems too intimidating, Tales To Be Told vols 1 and 2 have individual songs that each tell a story. Their music as a whole is always pretty loud and fast paced, so don't go into it expecting waltz, classical, slow and soft stuff.

I'm sorry this took me so long to answer 😭😭😭 I hope this is OK please let me know if you have any more questions!!!!!!

#mechsposting #long post

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duckduckngoose · 7 months

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all the Mechs posts got me curious, but just listening to them aint doin it... am i doing it wrong? is there some videos one should start with to get more lore immersed?

Unfortunately, there aren't any official videos stating all the lore. However, there are lore summaries/guides on how to get started made by fans. Maybe one of those could help you? I’d personally recommend checking out @/Luckysevens blog, especially their post ‘so, you’ve heard about the mechanisms, but have no idea what they are or how to get into them?’ . Or their updated version of that post: 'mechanisms basics & lore'.

The fandom wiki also has some good information on the lore, especially regarding the albums.

I also once answered a question about ‘recommended listening order’, which doesn’t really go into lore, but could be useful if you're lost on where to start/go next.

I hope this can help you out a bit, however if you still have questions, feel free to send another ask!

#the duck quacks #asks #i hope this helps!#also make sure you dont shuffle the albums themselves #their songs and narration are meant to be listened to in order #also if any other fans have advice/reccomendations feel free to add on to this post

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radiosandrecordings · 4 years

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So, hot take, but I 100% believe that, by the end of TMA, the world will have been returned to close to normal. The world overall will have a happy ending. This does not mean the show won’t be tragic. It will be tragic, there is no way of denying that, but ‘tragedy’ doesn’t equate to ‘grimdark everything is ruined forever’.

And the reason I think this is Melanie King. Not because she’ll do anything in particular to save it. She might do. She might not. I have the feeling that Georgie at least will play a big part in saving the world, but their future actions within the show don’t actually matter here. What matters is what has happened before. Which is that Melanie King has experienced her character arc. She was introduced to the story, she suffered, and she escaped. She, through her own hard work, earned her happy ending. She sacrificed her sight to free herself of the Beholding, and she got to move on and have the rest of her life with her girlfriend.

Having the world stay in a state of constant terror would destroy everything Melanie worked for. It would just be entirely unsatisfying. Her entire arc was about recovery, about not letting her anger get the better of her, and how she went to therapy and got help and built a support system in Georgie. And what would a world of terror being her ending say to that? That that is worth nothing?That pursuit of recovery is futile in the face of all the fear in the world?

That’s just a horrible message to put in your story, and one I can guarantee Jonny would never give us.

Linking from there, my second point is something the man himself said. In a twitch stream of Bloodborne, he at one stage said that he was going to skip a side quest because it was too sad. As far as I remember (The VOD is no longer available to check), his words were something along the lines of ‘It’s not a good tragedy story because there is no catharsis at the end’, and that the story was just sad and dark for the sake of it. That majorly helped to solidify my opinions of TMA and how it’s metaplot will go. There needs to be something at the end to have made the journey worth it. It will be tragic, because TMA is a tragedy, and it will be horrifying, because TMA is a horror, but it will also have that catharsis.

I, personally, believe Jon and Martin won’t survive the series. It’s almost certain Jon will die, and while I’m less sure of Martin (Mostly because he already had an arc about suicidal self-sacrifice), Helen’s comment about Martin not wanting to go through her tunnels without Jon and the general nature of the characters leads me to believe that one would not want to live without the other at this point.

It would also be remiss not to mention the Mechanisms, because while I am incredibly in the ‘It’s not just Jonny’s band, please pay attention to the other people’ camp, he did write a large amount of it and I feel like the pattern there will probably influence TMA. Mechs endings are all bittersweet, but they do also end with the main couple (or trio) getting to be together, and the goal being accomplished. Loki and Sigyn literally get the line ‘At least they can die together’ as they sacrifice themselves to keep New Midguard safe (Not that that lasts forever, but honestly, it’s an hour long concept album, not a 200 episode podcast, the standards aren’t exactly 1:1). There again is that catharsis to them, OUATIS ends the war, UDAD Ulysses gets to die undisturbed by the Acheron, and in HNOC the world is too corrupt to continue so Mordred burns it. In TMA the world isn’t that corrupt though. It’s been shown time and time again that empathy and love and care for each other exists in the world and it’s the antidote to all the fear. Countless people, including Martin, are saved from the Lonely by love. Jon saved Daisy from the Buried because he wouldn’t let someone suffer like that. Even Agnes, someone raised from birth to be a messiah of the Desolation, doubted. She saw the good in humanity and she died because of it, because she’d been allowed to see the good side of living. It’s something worth not destroying, even when her most basic reason for existing was to destroy anything anyone else held dear.

And to top it all off, even without the type of story TMA is, or may be, not matter what character arcs are happening, no matter what the author has previously been involved in the writing of, from a story structure perspective, having the world stay dead would just… Be bad? Narratively? The three act structure of storytelling has, obviously, three acts. ‘Set up’, ‘Confrontation’ and ‘Resolution’. TMA, being something so incredibly long, doesn’t exactly conform to this, but it can be used loosely as a base. I would call S1 set up, S2-4 confrontation, with the season 4 finale as the obvious climax, and S5 the resolution. The world has gone to literal hell already, the stakes can’t be raised from here, so the threat level, which has been steadily rising and peaked in 160, can only go down from here. We need the resolution. All of season 5, imo, would feel like a waste if they got to the end and just. Jon died and the world continued to be hell done the end go home that’s the resolution to a five year story. That’s like if season 4 ended with Martin saying ‘I should stay in the Lonely’ and Jon going ‘Okay sure’ and leaving him there. We’d been building up to Martin rejecting the Lonely and him and Jon Seeing each other all season! What a failure of a story that would seem to just leave us there! And I feel like S5 ending with everything awful would undermine the entire story so far. TMA to me is a story about the effort it takes to be a good person despite situations you might have been put in, and an ending like that would fly in the face of all the themes we’ve seen so far.

So overall, I think a term I like for the ending is bittersweet. It will be tragic and it will have hope in it. People will die, and people will live, and life will go on where it can. TMA has never shied away from the real world implications behind it’s story, season 5’s statements especially. It is aware of the story it’s telling and it’s going to be one that, I hope at least, will not leave listeners with a bad taste in their mouth, but instead tears in their eyes and the knowledge that the story of terror was worth something in the end.

#My Post #'This one will be shorter!' I say. 1100 words later....#The Magnus Archives

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lucky-sevens · 3 years

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dr. carmilla timeline

-rocket girl

-homesick

-alive, i cried

-pin cushion

-dr. carmilla and the mechanisms

-eleven

-lullaby

-exhumed

-dr. carmilla and the void quartet

explanation of the placements, inclusions and omissions, and further analysis of what that means, as well as a timeline of the events rather than the songs, underneath the cut! as always, we are continually discovering new canon, and all theories are tentative, so take this all with a grain of salt! (cws are a brief discussion of suicidal ideation & mention of abuse.)

we know the order of the albums matters. maki has confirmed this on her server. knowing this, i went to analyze the album exhumed & {un}plugged from this lens. we have confirmation from maki exhumed takes place after carmilla leaves the mechanisms and that rocket girl is the first song chronologically in the carmilla timeline. from this, i went from lullaby being a clear circle around back from exhumed, and started considering the theory exhumed and {un}plugged is in chronological order starting from rocket girl. this theory places this in the same order as above the cut. from here, i moved to further analyzing each song and cross-referencing to make sure this worked.

homesick takes place after rocket girl. loreli is mentioned here (’dear lover’), though an interesting analysis to take would be that it’s not loreli. we know carmilla and loreli knew each other from a young-ish age (canon we have is ‘under 30′ and mentions of something happening to terra while carmilla was at college.) the interesting thing is ‘for my crimes, i’ll watch the galaxy burn’. this could be a reference to terra’s destruction, which we know carmilla was not entirely responsible for but has been stated to majorly change the planet. while tv tropes is not necessarily something that can be cited as a reliable source, it notes two lost songs (’i am the antidote’ and ‘city of the dead’) about carmilla taking part in terra’s destruction. (x). however, moving off this train of analysis, there’s no evidence that’s what it’s a reference to.

alive, i cried takes place after homesick. at first, i thought this song was ambiguous in its meaning, but looking at it now, what makes most sense is that it’s about carmilla’s vampirization. look at lines like ‘and all the tears had dried; i grew cold, but still alive.‘ taking those lines literally, it’s very easy to say that a vampire would naturally feel corpse-like. as well, ‘so many times i thought i’d die’; if we take carmilla as regenerating like the mechanisms, she could die and come back. this means, looking through the lens of a chronological exhumed & {un}plugged, that she wasn’t a vampire during homesick. i’d tentatively place welcome to medi bay co here as well, with my own pet theory that there was some involvement with carmilla’s vampirization there, but i’m not nearly confident in that to add it to the timeline and go into further analysis. using this song as a timestamp for carmilla’s vampirization can add some new context to the preceding and next songs.

pincushion takes place after alive, i cried. this further supports the theory i pose above; it very much feels like they’re both vampires here.

eleven takes place after pincushion. unlike above, i have a lot to say about this, as it opens up a gateway for further analysis and partially confirms my theories. first off, we have confirmation that eleven was carmilla chasing after the mechanisms after being airlocked- see this tweet, as well as the line in death to the mechanisms where jonny says king cole’s war happened just after the mechanisms split off; lining up with the out-of-universe timeline. we have confirmation from maki it was king cole’s war. this handily places all of the dr carmilla and the mechanisms canon where they were together in between pincushion and eleven. more on this in my analysis below.

lullaby takes place after eleven. this corresponds with my own theory i don’t believe i’ve posted lengthy meta on, but i believe is pretty certain canon. lullaby is carmilla going back in time to kill loreli. as i’ve said before (though i think it may have only been on discord servers and the like), lullaby feels like a retrospective on loreli as a vampire, but given that it could be read that loreli dies here, and the line ‘no longer a slave to the lust i gave you’ implies she is no longer a vampire here. another theory is that carmilla found some sort of way to reverse her vampirization, but the question then is why didn’t she do that for herself? due to lines like the changed one in her cover of the city, ‘you know i’d choose death if i weren’t permanent’, it’s hard to believe she wouldn’t. we know there’s plenty of time travel in the mechs canon, making this plausible. in addition, it circles back around to exhumed, which we know is after carmilla leaves the mechs.

exhumed is last, and carmilla forms the void quartet afterwards. we have confirmation exhumed is last. from there, we know clone!maki, who theoretically was created in exhumed, knows the new band. maki yamazaki occasionally talks about mechs lore in-character as clone!maki, and actually got into her feelings towards them at one point, saying ‘we’re friends, i think?’ this places it afterwards.

i haven’t tacked ageha (prototype edition) at all here, mostly because it’s a far harder thing to analyze. thick as thieves (loreli pt III) does directly get in the way of this analysis, however, with carmilla falling into ash at the end of it as well. i don’t have a counter to it, besides the doylist explanation of lullaby being a rework somehow. given that i’m writing this meta very late at night, i’ll leave it to others to add on with theories.

in conclusion, analyzing exhumed and {un}plugged from the angle of the songs being mostly chronological provided some further insights! here’s a timeline of events, which is far more theoretical than the one posted above the cut and should not be taken as gospel.

-terra is abandoned, apart from carmilla and a few others, who are left there. the events of rocket girl happen, with her being believed dead.

-carmilla, likely with loreli, finds her family in various states of disarray and kills her father.

-they both become vampires.

-carmilla and loreli’s relationship is (semi-)explicitly stated to be an abusive one; it’s unconfirmed if this is a new development caused by either of their vampirizations.

-carmilla splits off from loreli and starts the mechanisms.

-she mechanizes, in order, jonny, nastya (finding aurora again in this time as well), ivy, ashes, and drumbot brian.

-she is airlocked, for the last time.

-the toy soldier joins. carmilla meets the mechanisms at several of their shows (see lashings and this blog post)

-carmilla travels back in time and buries herself and loreli alive, killing loreli and leaving herself alive.

-100 years later, she is dug out. she decides to clone herself and begins traveling through the weird on the silvana.

-she starts a new band called the void quartet. from there, the events of the trilogy that is currently a work in progress ensue, including further insight into rocket girl, the alchemist, and ageha, and the characters of the void quartet.

#dr carmilla #the mechanisms #the mechs #my posts #meta

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vikingqueer · 3 years

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music recommendations because i have some thoughts™

i don't wanna be that person who's like "my music taste is so weird lol" but i find that very often most of my friends don't really care for the music i like so i thought i'd just make a long ass post about it on tumblr instead. Fair warning, I'm very passionate about MIKA and The Mechanisms and so this very quickly got VERY long because it is part of my ongoing campaign to convince people to listen to mika and the mechs.

1) MIKA in general, but especially My Name Is Michael Holbrook (2019) and No Place In Heaven (2015) (especially the Deluxe version!!)

MIKA is a kind of British singer (half Lebanese, grew up in France blabla), and you probably know him for Grace Kelly and Relax, Take It Easy from his first album Life In Cartoon Motion from 2007. He writes a lot of FUN music, interspersed with the occasional slightly sadder song, especially when looking at an album like No Place In Heaven, which contains a lot of songs with gay themes, resulting in some songs that are just a little bit ouch. He's originally classically trained and has a frankly RIDICULOUS range and idk he just writes very good pop music. Also I have so much respect for that time he talked about how a lot of pop is very fake, with like expensive cars and stilettos and mini skirts in the snow and said "Because I walk down the street, and I don't see any of that. I see fat women and gay men. I don't know... That's real". He's written 5 albums; My Name Is Michael Holbrook (2019), No Place In Heaven (2015), The Origin Of Love (2012), The Boy Who Knew Too Much (2009), and Life In Cartoon Motion (2007).

For starters, I recommend listening to Last Party, Origin Of Love, Grace Kelly, Blame It On The Girls, Blue, Happy Ending, Pick Up Off The Floor, Last Party, Underwater, Tomorrow and Tiny Love (yes this is a long list but i REALLY love MIKA). If you want a slightly broader palette that's not just my favourites, I recommend the Mika starter pack on spotify.

2) The Mechanisms. I warn you. I am making this a thing. I have been obsessed with the mechs since last march.

Boy, where to start? The Mechanisms were a British 9 member space pirate story-telling cabaret that "died" in January 2020. They rewrite songs to fit retellings of various stories. I don't even know what genre I'd describe them as, but probably folk but steam-punk?? Their 4 "main" albums are concept albums, and I honestly just recommend listening to the from beginning to end in chronological order. A good way to get into the mechs is also to listen to UDAD and then watching the live show on youtube or alternately try giving Death To The Mechanisms a listen, to get good quality live show audio of TBI and various other stuff. Also, it was streamed on YouTube and someone combined the footage with the album audio and it rocks. Really, I think the mechs' best selling points are honestly just their concept albums:

Once Upon a Time (In Space) Their first album from 2012. I'd say this is the most "easily digestible" for the general public, since it's a retelling of various fairytales. So, what if Old King Cole was in fact not merry, but rather a cold-blooded dictator, intent on colonising as much of the galaxy as possible. What if Snow White was a general, looking to avenge what King Cole did to her sister, Rose. What if Cinderella was to be wedded to Rose the day that King Cole attacked in order to kidnap Rose? But y'know, In Space and also like every other mechs album it's a beautiful tragedy. Fave songs are Old King Cole, Pump Shanty, and No Happy Ending.

Ulysses Dies at Dawn You guessed it, it's a story about Odysseus, or Ulysses because I guess Ulysses is easier to rhyme or fit in the meter or something, idk. Ulysses is a war hero of unknown gender who is said to keep something that could take down the corrupt Olympians, meanest families in the City, in a vault to which only they know the passcode. Oedipus, Heracles, Orpheus, and Ariadne have been hired by Hades, who happens to be The Mechs' quartermaster Ashes O'Reilly, to get into Ulysses' vault. I didn't care much for udad at first, but honestly it's got some real bangers and the story is really good. UDAD weirdly stands out as the only of the concept albums to not feature any gay relationships, per se. Fave songs are Riddle of the Sphinx, Favoured Son, and Underworld Blues.

High Noon over Camelot This is my favourite mehcs album. So basically, this is Arthurian legend, but it's a space western and Jonny D'Ville does a bad southern accent. This is the story of the cowboy lovers Arther, Lancelot, and Guinevere searching for the Galfridian Restricted Acces Interface Login, or GRAIL, in order to stop their world from falling into the sun. Meanwhile, Mordred and Gawaine are ruling Camelot, and Mordred has convinced Gawaine to try to establish peace with the Saxons by whom Mordred was raised, but Gawaine hates viciously. If you love getting your heart broken and songs by a fucking off the rails batshit preacher I HIGHLY recommend hnoc. Fave songs are Gunfight at the Dolorous Guard, Blood and Whiskey, and Once and Future King. Honorary mention for Hellfire because it awakens something animalistic in me.

The Bifrost Incident TBI is the frankly only good adaptation of norse mythology I've ever known of, and I say that as Dane who was literally forced to learn things about norse mythology in school because it's my heritage or whatever. I've been listening to TBI a lot lately because it's VERY good. It's definitely the most refined of the mechs' albums (because it's the newest) but also I just love a little bit of cosmic horror. 80 years ago, Odin, the All-Mother, ruler of Asgaard, launched a train through the wormhole Bifrost that would reduce the travel between Asgaard and Midgaard from 3 months to 3 days, but things didn't go quite as planned. Lyfrassir Edda of the New Midgaard Transport Police is trying to solve the case of why suddenly the train has arrived 80 years late; to figure out whether it was accident or maybe it was sabotaged by Loki, who was allegedly sentence to death her murder of Baldur, by the Midgaardian resistance led by Loki's wife Sigyn, or maybe by Thor, who was to take over after Odin, and who holds quite the grudge because he used to be a friend of Loki's. You might've heard the song Thor from this album, it's apparently quite popular. Fave songs are Loki, Ragnarok III: Strange Meeting, and Ragnarok V: End of The Line. Yet again an honorary mention: Red Signal because while Lovecraft was a bitch, his invocations are fucking RAW.

Basically, the Mechanisms do all of their performances in character as captain first mate Jonny D'Ville, quartermaster Ashes O'Reilly, pilot DrumBot Brian, master-at-arms Gunpowder Tim, science officer Raphaella la Cognizi, doctor Baron Marius Von Raum (neither a baron, nor a doctor), archivist Ivy Alexandria, engineer Nastya Rasputina, and The Toy Soldier, who is, as usual, present. You can find very obscure lore about the crew of the Aurora here, tidbits on Tales To Be Told and TTBT Vol. 2, such as One Eyed Jacks, The Ignominious Demise of Dr. Pilchard, Gunpowder Tim vs. The Moon Kaiser, Lucky Sevens, and Lost in the Cosmos.

If you feel like listening to a full 40-50 minute album to find out if you like a band is a bit much, I recommend listening to one of the mini stories Alice, Swan Song, or Frankenstein, which are about 12, 5 and 9:30 minutes respectively.

3) The Amazing Devil You know that guy who played Jaskier in the Witcher? I got into The Amazing Devil from spotify recommending them because I listened to the mechs, and apparently Joey Batey from The Amazing Devil is the same Joey Batey who was in the Witcher. Both him and Madeleine Hyland are VERY talented singers and songwriters and their second album The Horror and the Wild makes me go out into the forest and SCREAM. I listened to it on repeat for like a month straight. I guess they'd also be considered folk, but like. New Folk. Also yes, this is another British artist, I don't know why I'm like this. I've never really gotten that into their first album, Love Run, but King slaps. As I understand there's this whole lore about the Blue Furious Boy and Scarlet Scarlet, Joey and Madeleine respectively, but unlike the Mechanisms it's actually possible to find out things about the actual real people and harder to find the obscure lore? I'm open for people to please help me. Fave songs are The Horror and the Wild, Farewell Wanderlust, and That Unwanted Animal, which is literally a third of their second album, but again. I haven't really listened to Love Run that much, and I just LOVE the harmonies on THATW. (also im gay and dramatic leave me alone)

4) dodie I have so much love for this woman. Like many others, I first knew dodie as doddleoddle on youtube. I think I first stumbled across her in probably 2015, because I distinctly already knew her before she released her first EP Sick of Losing Soulmates in 2016. I think I watched probably every video she's ever made in the span of a few weeks. I just loved her quiet sound and was absolutely HOOKED. Also she's actually the reason I got into MIKA originally, so thanks for that. Dodie just realeased her first album Build A Problem (in addition to her three EP's; the one mentioned above, You, and Human) and it slaps. Yes dodie is also British Fave songs are probably Monster, Rainbow, and In The Middle.

5) Cladia Boleyn Unfortunately, Claudia Boleyn only has three singles and that's it. She's been making content on youtube for quite a while, and that's how I first discovered her. I don't know what genre her music is, but I like it. The songs are Celesta, George, and Mother Maiden Crone, of which the latter is my favourite. I'm not saying Claudia Boleyn invented women in 2017 when she released Mother Maiden Crone, but she did. Also you guessed it, Claudia Boleyn is British.

6) Hozier I'm not about to tell you about Hozier. You know who he is. Listen to Nina Cried Power, Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene, and Shrike. Also Hozier isn't stricly British in that he is definitely from A British Isle, but Ireland is not part of the UK. Give me a break.

7) Oh Land Oh Land IS DANISH. I like her early music best, because I'm not that into the electronic sound. I guess Oh Land is just you regular old pop, but with the occasional weird vibe? Oddly enough, I like her first album Fauna best. Unfortunately I haven't really listened to her newest album Family Tree much, but it seems good? Fave songs are Frostbite, Love You Better and Family Tree. I cried on the bus, first time I listened to the Danish version of Love You Better, Elsker Dig Mer because my mother tongue always just hits harder. Also Frostbite is Oh Land doing a duet with herself which is pretty cool.

8) Oysterband This is a live recommendation. I mean they're a decent folk band and all, but they're a fucking experience live. If you like folk and you ever get the opportunity to see Oysterband live, do it. Unfortunately, yes. They are British. Either way, they are incredible on a scene and I think they deserve a mention for that.

9) Ben Platt Honestly don't know much about this guy, but he's not British and he was in Dear Evan Hansen. He released an album in 2019, Sing To Me Instead, and I just think it's a good album, there isn't really not much more to it. Fave songs are Grow As We Go, Bad Habit, and In Case You Don't Live Forever.

and thats all for now. this has been a ramble. shout out to you if you actually read all of this, especially the mechs part.

#music stuff #amalie.txt #music recommendations #mika #the mechanisms #the amazing devil #dodie #claudia boleyn #hozier #oh land #oysterband #ben platt

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herding-octokittens · 4 years

Text

Finally found the time to go watch the Death to the Mechanisms livestream (and then go listen to the songs that got cut out on Bandcamp), and I HAVE MANY TEARS THOUGHTS! (This is somewhat chronological, but only barely, and way longer than I intended)

The entire band just keeps pulling out more instruments! Marius switches from his violin to whatever that is in Thor and I had to do like a quadruple take. I’m pretty sure I counted like 17 guitars on stage at one time. Ivy has a trumpet. When did that happen? I don’t know, I’m just rolling with it. The Toy Soldier breaks out the tambourine. Cool! Guess that’s happening now!

Oh my gosh, Ashes and Tim singing together as Loki and Sigyn? I love them so much! Their voices are amazing!

Poor Lyf having to deal with Ivy, Raphaella, and Marius for sixty years... How many violins has he summoned? Where do they go? Does Lyf ever take them away and now they just have an evidence room entirely devoted to Marius’s violins? I can totally see all three of them just randomly pulling instruments out of nowhere. Ivy has a never ending supply of recorders and flutes and then one day Lyf stops by and she has a full on trumpet and he just walks away to try and quit right then and there. Raphaella has a grand piano once.

That laugh in Red Signal? When Lyf has finished the Yog-Sothoth chant and Jonny just starts his maniacal laughter?? That right there. That’s what I’m here for.

Squamous. Squamous the second. Squamous3. All the squamous.

Raphaella’s new wings! Shiny and pretty and bright! I am very gay!

I legit didn’t notice when the Toy Soldier got on stage, I just heard it harmonizing in Lost in the Cosmos and was like “That’s new...”

“That was fucking depressing.” You want some livelier music? Yeah? Great! Here’s this upbeat jazzy blues song about the crime boss god of the dead and everyone losing everything they ever had in horrible, heart-wrenching ways!

Just because your prophecies are true doesn’t mean they’re useful, Brian. See: every Greco-Roman myth ever. Those oracles were really bad at making sure people actually understood tf was going on. Also, I really love Brian’s voice and I’m sad he doesn’t sing in more songs.

I mean, it is totally humanly possible to sing and play the drums and the guitar and the banjo and the accordion at the same time. Totally.

Jonny really goes for it as Galahad, and I give him all my respect. Fuck yeah! Top ten religious zealots of all time! Like the mice in a hat!

“No bearing on the validity of his baptisms.” Did you get baptized by him? Jonny?? Did you??? I need answers!!!

“Speaking of motherfuckers,” When were we talking about motherfuckers? I mean, I’m not complaining, Riddle of the Sphinx is a really fun song, but when? Where? Context? ...Nope? Cool.

“You’re projecting.” “Again.” “I really don’t think I am.” “Again.” No, you are definitely projecting, Jonny.

Moons in love? Gravity? Death of millions of people? End of entire civilizations? Lesbians? I don’t see a difference...

When Tim, Raphaella, Brian, and the Toy Soldier are doing the round at the beginning of Rose Red? All the feels!!! It’s one of my favorite Mechs songs ever because my summer camp sings it (albeit, different verses), and so having a full round going brought me back to good times! Y’know, back when people could gather in groups of more than three and sing together about depressing lacks of weddings. Good times!

And then the Toy Soldier starts singing again in Rose Red and now my heart is pumping and I’m about ready to straight up leave college and go on a madwoman rampage across the universe committing war crimes and having an over dramatic tragic wlw love story!

“But that’s not the death you came to see.” Nope! Not ready! You’ve already killed every single character in all of your albums, and then sung all the other death songs in this one single concert. I do not need this!

Jonny mentioned Nastya and I just had to pause and stop for a minute or twenty.

The music keeps shifting when they’re all dying!!! Raphaella’s harmonizing as she dives through a black hole, Blood and Whiskey playing behind Marius as he’s eaten alive, Lost in the Cosmos on the violin was when the dam of tears really broke, and then when Jonny calls them all the Toy Soldier’s friends???? NO! TOO MUCH!!

Gunpowder Tim died because of a fucking seatbelt... I don’t know how to deal... Such a mood...

Jonny watched Marius die. Jonny watched and timed and he was definitely waiting for Marius to come back to life so he could mock him, and then he didn’t and now I’m crying even harder.

And then Laid in Blood??? The book is closed so I’m going to go binge read fanfiction and pretend that didn’t happen.

“Sing along if you still know the words.” I, in fact, do not still know the words. I am a blubbering mess trying to stifle my everything because my roommate is currently asleep.

“It’s been ten years!” “Erm, ten millenium...” What even is time?

“The Toy Soldier as Jessica Law!” That doesn’t seem right, but I don’t know enough to say otherwise.

“Your humble first mate.” “First ma-” “Wait what?” “I know what I said!” It happened! He said it! He is the First Mate!

So that happened. I am crying a lot. If anyone wants to talk about literally anything Mechs related, please hit me up! Otherwise, I am probably going to be randomly spamming the tag this weekend...

#finally found the time to listen and so here I am #the mechanisms #the mechs #death to the mechanisms #dttm #death to the mechanisms livestream #jonny d'ville #gunpowder tim #marius von raum #drumbot brian #ashes o’reilly #the toy soldier #raphaella la cognizi #ivy alexandria #nastya rasputina #the aurora

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yotd2009 · 3 years

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i am curious, as someone who’s only exposure to arthurania was reading jane yolen’s young merlin as a child, would you mind saying why hnoc is a bad adaptation? i’m super curious but no worries if not <3

this has been sitting in my inbox for months bc i kept telling myself i needed to write a full essay with proof from medieval lit to make myself feel smarter. however, since i’ve recently lost all credibility bc i can’t articulate points to save my life, and since i’ve realized that i could answer this in a just a couple paragraphs, now seems like the right time to answer this ask. sorry for the wait.

under a cut bc length

also warnings for mentions of racism bc this is hnoc we're talking abt and sexual assault bc this is med lit we're also talking abt

the basic problems are pendragon polycule itself, the story beats of the album, the fridging and lack of characterization of morgan le fay, the clear influence of pop culture arthuriana, and whatever the fuck happened with gawain/e.

pendragon polycule is... just not a good take. there’s a bit in the lancelot-grail abt arthur viewing lancelot like a son (and lancelot not giving a shit abt him). also arthur knew his parents for years before lancelot was even born. plus lancelot just Doesn’t care abt him and i can’t stress this part enough. arthur repeatedly tries to have guinnevere killed, mostly in the lancelot-grail, and guinn didn’t really have any say in marrying him bc she was a teenager. lancelot and guinnevere is a lot better but that’s not saying much. guinn doesn’t exactly treat lancelot too well... like at all, BUT it’s not intrinsic to their relationship and is completely caused by medieval misogyny and i’m all in favor of modern retellings saying fuck that. but also lancelot has multiple pseudo-canon boyfriends (this is med lit after all), and one pseudo-canon husband so like... there were better options. (also lancelot’s husband is basically in a lavender marriage with guinnevere’s maybe girlfriend who most authors just eventually forget abt as the story progresses).

this next one is a problem with a lot of modern arthurian works bc the inclusion of elayne of astolat is too much to ask apparently. the grail quest isn’t tied to the fall of camelot, it just happens to be one of the last grand adventures the knights of the round table have. the event that traditionally sets off the fall is the death of the maiden of astolat/the lady of shalott/elayne of escolat/she has a lot of names, her story has a few variations but usually she either is cursed to stay in a tower and weave and only be able to see the outside world through a mirror positioned across from her window, until lancelot rides by and she rushes to see him out of the actual window and her mirror shatters, setting off her death, or she lives with her father and brothers and takes care of lancelot bc he was injured for a time and she gets to go on adventures to find him and she’s friends with gawaine and she dies bc lancelot rejects her and this version’s a lot more fun but also more happens which makes it harder to explain. the way her story ends however, is that she dies after she makes arrangements for a glorious boat to drift from astolat to camelot carrying nothing but her dead body and a letter explaining that she died of love for lancelot du lac and the court mourns the death of such a beautiful and young maiden (her age varies a lot but i’ve always read her as a young teenager at most). but the important thing is, camelot is doomed from the moment she washes up on its shore bc she’s an omen of the end and has symbolic meaning and all that, the maiden of astolat washes up on camelot’s shores, the court mourns the loss of a maiden in her prime and she marks the end of camelot’s prime as well, morgan le fay reappears after being presumed dead and warns arthur of guinnevere and lancelot’s affair, aggravaine and modred conspire to bring lancelot and guinnevere’s affair to light, they succeed but lancelot escapes, guinnevere is to be burnt at the stake and lancelot rescues her, killing aggravaine, gaheris and gareth (gawaine’s brothers) in the process, gawaine drags his uncle and camelot to war bc he was driven mad due to the loss of his brothers, lancelot accidentally kills gawaine, his best friend and maybe boyfriend (i have RECEIPTS), and gawaine forgives him on his detahbed while lancelot and guinn rejoin arthur, meanwhile modred, who practically had the throne handed to him, usurps and invites the saxons in, camlann happens, and camelot is destroyed. no where in there is the grail quest.

morgan le fay is honestly the most questionable part of the album bc there’s not a single text where she dies. like.... at least with eurydice in udad she died in the original... there’s no basis for morgan dying. also she is NOT modred’s mother and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, she interacts with him once in the vulgate bc she had three of her nephews over and that’s IT. it’s a horrible take which originated in the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley who is an honest to god monster for reasons i don’t want to trigger tag this post for. also she’s one of the most dynamic and thought-out characters in the entire canon and they just made her a watered down morgause (modred’s actual mother, morgan’s sister, canonical milf)... there was no reason for it to be her apart from the fact that she’s more well known......

pop culture arthuriana is,,, one of my least favorite things. no, morgan wasn’t modred’s mother, no, morgause wasn’t abusive but her husband sure was implied to be, no, aggravaine didn’t kill his mother, that was gaheris, he loved his mother, you’re only saying that bc he has a reputation as the “evil” orkney, no, the once and future king is not a good descriptor for arthur, stop making me read it, no, morgause wasn’t the one to initiate the thing with arthur resulting in modred, no, lancelot and arthur weren’t friends, no, tristan wasn’t a self-centered asshole, tennyson is a fucking liar, no, galahad didn’t have sex or want to, he’s one of the first ever explicitly asexual characters out there, no, galahad’s conception was NOT consensual, lancelot was tricked, and no, elayne of astolat wasn’t galahad’s mother, she’s implied to be younger than him. those are just the big glaring ones, but i swear it’s bc of arthuriana’s reputation as a mythology and the connotations belonging to that word (no one true canon (which is true but there are still things that just AREN’T canon, not completely written down, passed by oral tradition) that causes ppl to see mediocre modern texts and go “oh. well this is abt as close to the original as i’m going to get” and don’t bother to look into so much as malory (who i only name bc he’s one of the most well known medieval authors with the most commonly used storylines, don’t read malory kids, he’s a mediocre-at-best writer even by medieval standards). the big perpetrators of modern arthurian tropes are the books the once and future king by th wh*te, who is a shitty person and lets it bleed into his writing (which isn’t like... nice to read or anything, seriously why do ppl love this book so much it doesn’t have redeeming qualities), and the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley (it’s poorly written, the story is a mess, and mzb is honestly a monster and one google search will tell you that), and unfortunately the writings of tennyson, which are mostly good but he clearly didn’t read the povest (a later text that’s also my favorite, known for significantly improving ppl’s opinions on tristan, isolde and co.) before deciding he hated both tristan and isolde and he has HORRIBLE takes on them. high noon over camelot is SEEPED in pop culture arthuriana and i think it would have been so much better if the band had read so much as a SUMMARY of the events of le morte. it’s evident in the song “the once and future king” bc it’s,,,, literally named after one of the worst books in existence. it’s shown in the morgan le fay thing, and it’s shown in the pendragon polycule thing. and hell, i think you can even explain away the lack of elayne of astolat with pop culture arthuriana, bc ppl have had bad takes on her ever since th wh*te combined her character with that of ela*ne of corbenic, and the band probably went “huh, let’s write lancelot’s abuser out of this” and they would’ve been right to do so if that’s who elayne of astolat was.

the final big issue is gawaine, the closest thing the genre has to a protagonist, he’s pretty much canon bi and, in some texts, arospec, he’s a dashing knight of great reknown and he derails every romance to steal hearts, commit murder, and make out with every knight and lady mentioned. and in hnoc he’s... racist. that’s it. it’s,,, almost completely unfounded by the arthurian canon and shows a major misunderstanding of his motivations (like i said earlier, he wants to avenge his brothers bc there’s a reoccuring motif of how much the orkneys value family). i say almost bc in one text it’s his motivations for killing palomydes but i’ve never heard it mentioned by name bc that’s just what it’s known for. most arthuriana fans just look away from it except when critiquing hnoc but that one text is an outlier, shouldn’t be counted, and i highly doubt the mechs made hnoc gawain how he is bc they found this text. it’s just a bad text.

hnoc has,,, quite a few more minor issues, such as villainized ladies of the lake (their ONLY crimes were sealing away merlin bc he tried to assault teenage nimue/ninniane (proto-nimue/vivianne from the vulgate), and that one time vivviane/ninniane kidnapped adopted baby lancelot), assigning brain to merlin (y’know,,, the predator who helped arrange the [redacted] of arthur’s mother and tried to assault a teenager,,,) although merlin is portrayed in a positive light throughout modern arthuriana so i don’t think they knew, giving a song to pellinore, who my perception of has been forever altered bc i was introduced to him through malory and the explanation of torre’s conception, which you can just look up “sir torre arthurian” to find out abt if you can’t just Guess, if they wanted a song abt the questing beast palomydes was Right There AND has been associated with the questing beast for longer, but once again i don’t think they knew.

also namedropping a bunch of knights in the fiction is... it Suggests a bigger world full of all these other stories but they just don’t work bc the world of hnoc wasn’t designed in a way where the appearance of half these characters would make sense. like,, tristan is referenced as dying in the grail quest in the same sentence as bedevere (one of the characters who is known for almost always surviving), but tristan Isn’t one of the knights who dies on the grail quest, his possible deaths (ignoring the potentially happy ending of the povest for a second) are either being murdered by his uncle, king mark (bc mark married tristan’s gf to try and get tristan killed and also to spite him), bc he was driven into a fury bc of tristan and isolde’s affair, or he’s injured and only isolde (the best healer in the world) can save him so he sends for her and if the ship he sent for her is supposed to fly white sails if she’s there, or black sails if she’s not, and the ship flies white sails but his wife (also named isolde) says it’s black sails (the why depends but usually comes down to jealousy), and so he gives up bc he thinks all hope is lost and usually succumbs to his injuries, either way isolde dies of a broken heart over his body. there’s no way for the tristan and isolde story to play out like it’s supposed to in the world of hnoc, just as there’s no way for any story with gawaine (and Oh Boy are there a lot of stories with gawaine) or pretty much anyone else, without severely altering the canon.

of course, there are still parts of hnoc i like a lot, most of the music i adore and i just like the idea of space cowboys and the secret good hnoc that lives in my head. and it has one of my favorite characterizations of galahad, even though galahad hnoc is nothing like galahad arthuriana. it’s not GOOD but i like it and it’s fun to turn my brain off too, and i’ll always value it as my introduction to arthuriana.

also there are modern arthurian tropes i do like such as characters being genre-savvy/knowing they’re fictional/knowing they’ve done this before (which hnoc does wonderfully!) and bedevere-as-the-storyteller (everyone say thank you lord tennyson).

WOW that was longer than expected, i feel very passionately abt this, when i was planning to write a fully sourced essay i meant to include a bit at the bottom with recommendations to get into better arthuriana and i think i’ll keep that in this post.

if you like hnoc for the arthurian music i’d like to suggest heather dale’s arthurian music to you, she does occasionally fall into the trap of modern arthuriana (some parts of lancelot and arthur being close, morgan as modred’s mother), sometimes she’s just wrong (galahad at lancelot’s trial, a lot of tristan and isolde), and her stuff is kinda straightwashed sometimes (sir gawain and the green knight, for example) but i’d be lying if it wasn’t catchy, and it’s not quite as bad as hnoc adaptation-wise. culwch and olwen is pretty accurate (albeit abridged bc culwch and olwen has SO many tangents), as is lily maid (it’s abt elayne of astolat!).

if you liked hnoc for king arthur... in space! then may i recommend to you my own fanfic? it's not posted yet but the second i finish writing the first chapter i'm going to make a Big Deal out of it that'll be impossible to miss!

if you want to learn abt arthuriana through tumblr-osmosis like i did at first, i’d like to recommend the love of my life @acegalahads, first and foremost (it’s me on a sideblog i’m just obsessed with myself), and i can’t recommend my arthuriana mutuals over there, @/gringolet, @/merlinenthusiast, @/jcbookworm, @/elayneofshalott, and @/elaineofascolat (the elayne urls have been popular recently), also i know for a fact that my mutual-in-law, @/itonje makes great arthuriana posts that i look forwards to whenever i open the tag.

here are a few good reference posts, a quick guide to the characters, a guide to characters of color, and a much more comprehensive intro to arthuriana post with even more texts linked to it.

if you want to ease into med lit, i’d like to introduce you to pre-raphaelite poetry, alfred lord tennyson and william morris are my favorites, although tennyson can’t be trusted with tristan and isolde. the poem the lady of shalott is basically a rite of passage for arthuriana fans, although when it comes to tennyson’s writings abt elayne of astolat, i prefer lancelot and elaine, which is part of his much larger story, idylls of the king. for morris, don’t trust what he says abt aggravaine killing his mother, but my favorites of his are sir galahad, a christmas mystery, which sounds like a shitty disney sequel, and palomyde’s quest, which i blame for my love of palomydes (that and the one bit of the povest where he asks tristan to be his greatest enemy and that he wants nothing more, gay ppl,,,,).

if you want to read abt lancelot and his husband, there’s the lancelot-grail cycle, which i believe was taken off of archive dot org and i think i found it on @/tobeisexhausting’s blog but don’t quote me on that.

the povest, which was a religious experience for me and i can’t reccomend enough if you want to like tristan and isolde, is here, i don’t know who scanned it but i think i found it on @/lanzelet’s blog

the dutch texts are just good in general, here’s a link to their section of a(n unfinished) site for hosting various texts by my former mutual @/reynier (who’s no longer on tumblr). i’d like to recommend lancelot and the white hart specifically bc it’s mainly just just gawaine being gay for lancelot.

if you want older works, here’s my scan of the history of the kings of britain, and here’s culwch and olwen and pa gur.

oh wow this is even longer than i thought it would be so i’m going to wrap this up by saying that i always love to talk abt arthuriana more than anything if you have any questions or just are curious!

#med lit on main #asks #hnoc #the mechs #romeo.txt

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