#it’s the trust issues it’s the trust issues think empirically Star

[dreamerwriternstargazer]

OHHHH THAT WAS ACTUALLY SO FUN BUT NOW IM HAVING OVERTHINKING BRAIN I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOOOOO

#star speaks #*screams into a pillow* #I FELT COMFORTABLE AND GREAT AND OMG THEY WERE SO GREAT AND LIKE YEAH WE’RE DEFINITELY FRIENDS BUT ALSO SERIOUS STUFF SHOULD I HAVE SHARED #THAT #BUT ALSO IF I FELT COMFORTABLE THEN THAT’S GOOD RIGHT #TRUST MY INSTINCTS RIGHT #BUT WHY THE KNEEJERK REACTION NOW #*screams* #it’s the trust issues it’s the trust issues think empirically Star #it’s the trauma saying no you don’t talk about this stuff #*cries* but what if it’s not

[mock-arts]

part 2/2 of my 2023 cover collection! This one only 75% star wars and 25% sandman. Check out my cover collection tag for big chunks of covers like this, or check out my big bang tag for a bunch of collab'd stuff! idk or do whatever you want!

oh, and happy thanksgiving for my american buds I'm thankful for getting to work with so many cool people

Links and summaries beneath the cut!

2023 cover collection

We'll Meet Again by @littledumplingwrites (art) (with more art by @punkascas)

When Initiate Obi-Wan Kenobi is assigned to AgriCorps, he goes to his Creche Master to ask why he hasn’t been assigned to a Service Corps better suited. As a result he’s sent to MediCorps to become a healer. Cue Obi-Wan becoming Ben Kenobi: a master healer and specialized surgeon who does philanthropic MediCorps work on the Outer Rim. It’s hard work, but good work and he enjoys what he does. But when the Clone Wars start, Ben is called away from his humanitarian work to patch up Clone Troopers and Jedi on the battlefield. And once he’s there, he meets a rising star in the Clone Army: one Captain Cody.

Or, Healer-Surgeon Ben Kenobi was called to the war front. And he wasn't too keen on going. What were the Jedi even thinking when they started a war?

That M*A*S*H Star Wars AU that I just couldn't get out of my head, so I wrote it. (However, you do not have to know or have seen MASH to understand this.)

Healer Ben Kenobi, Reporting for Duty by @littledumplingwrites (art) (with podfic by mengde)

Healer Ben Kenobi finishes his surgical work on one battlefield and finds out he has a new assignment: rendezvous with the 212th and work with the clone healers there. This makes Ben a little nervous, because his new boyfriend Major Cody is a part of the 212th and Ben hasn’t heard from him in weeks.

Can the two of them work through their relationship issues, even as the Separatist Droid Army closes in on their position? Can Cody learn to trust someone who isn’t a brother? And can Ben learn to put his partner’s care above his past hurts?

Can be read as a standalone. Also, you do NOT need to know anything about M.A.S.H. to read or enjoy this story.

Bonds of Beskar by @popjeckdoom (art) (with more art by Aliennotperson)

In a universe where the Mandalorian Empire never fell, but changed, Ad’be’alor Kote Vhett faces threats from all sides. His father, Mand’alor Jango Vhett has been cursed into a Majick sleep, and as Tor Vizsla and his supporters tear the Council of Clans apart, Kote is desperate to wake his father and reunite the Empire. In an effort to save his father, and his people, Kote Vhett offers “anything” to the person who can cure his Father’s curse.

Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi may be the person for the job; only one issue--the Jedi have been in hiding for a thousand years, still hunted by Sith and Mandalorians alike. Can he keep his true identity secret long enough to help the Mand'alor... or will events conspire to reveal him before his mission is complete?

Forever; Without Stagnation by @noir-renard (art)

Din and Luke meet on Tatooine. Din and Luke fall in love. Din and Luke get married—

And then the plot catches up.

The Galaxy needs you, says The Force, and Luke believes it.

Din will understand, Luke thinks. It won’t take that long. What is a few years compared to the vow of 'forever'?

Only Blindly Could I Read You by @lillytalons (art) (with more art by @vanisketches

Rex's goal was to get into the organization, get the information, and take it down. Of course, no one had ever successfully infiltrated this empire, and most people had died attempting it, so it was easier said than done. But, the fact that a government agency had also sent in an agent, their best agent, was either a very good or very bad thing. Rex just happened to recognize them, and for some reason, Ben had decided that working together was the best option. What could go wrong?

It's a Sad Song (But We Sing it Anyway) by @ouzoa11-writes (art) (with more art by @impalafortrenchcoats)

Obi-Wan and Cody Kenobi have raised Luke for years and are at the center of the Rebellion when a new threat looms the horizon in the form of a new weapon. The tides seem to turn in their favor, even as they face new challenges along the way.

Or: Obi-Wan and Cody are soulmates who just want to see everyone survive. Their lives from Luke and Leia's nineteenth birthday to a confrontation with Vader alone.

Standalone though it is part of the "We Raise Our Cups To Them" universe

An Epiphany of Poppies Upon the Battlefield by @questing-wulfstan (art)

April 1940, On a French battlefield, Hob Gadling doubts his will to persevere in being alive for the second time of his existence. He swallows morphine in the hope to soothe his horror-scarified mind, and summons a mirage of the stranger who occupied his thoughts as the patron of his immortality. In a Japanese psychiatric ward, Delirium of the Endless is alerted by Dream's irruption in her realm, who she found missing when she sought his company on her quest for the Prodigal. Disappointment overcomes her as she finds it was but an image of her brother conjured by a mortal, and so it does Hob when her eruption dismisses the vision. Delirium will not resign herself to her exponential loss of brothers however, neither will Hob Gadling withhold his aid from any entity in distress, whether the stranger or his younger sister ; they just might hold the might to liberate Morpheus between their four hands ...

The Other Kingdom by @banhus (art)

In 1916, Roderick Burgess successfully summons Death, and Hob Gadling wakes up in the trenches alongside three dead soldiers.

#dreamling #dinluke #codywan #star wars #obi wan kenobi #commander cody #captain rex #din djarin #the mandalorian #luke skywalker #obirex #rexobi #hob gadling #dream of the endless #delirium of the endless #cover collection #collab

[sgiandubh]

OK, I got it : Telegraph shitshow, anyone?

Oh, what the hell. I had no patience and couldn't picture myself fidgeting in a dull supermarket and ending up by forgetting half of the things on my list.

So, here it is, all of it.

Proof of buying:

Yeah, "between Outlander's seasons nine and 10'. See how accurate the girl who wrote it is? How about a cobbled something to address the real issues at stake, of which there are three (more on this, in my next post)?

LOL? LOL.

Anyway, there goes. Passages in bold are marked by me:

If anyone knows a thing or two about sex scenes, it’s Sam Heughan. Over the past decade, the 43-year-old Scottish star of Outlander, the cult-hit historical drama, has filmed hours of notoriously raunchy footage in his role as Jamie Fraser, the dashing 18th-­century Highland rebel, with his wife, Claire – a time-traveller from the 20th century, played by ­Caitríona Balfe.

Yet two years ago, Heughan, as one of the executive producers (with Balfe), introduced an intimacy co-ordinator to choreograph such scenes, which had been criticised by many as excessively violent.

“The industry’s completely changed since Outlander started,” Heughan says, sitting in a Soho bar on a visit to London from his home outside Glasgow. “Not just our show but also shows like Game of Thrones were very graphic, with no room for the imagination, in a way that’s quite jarring now. As young, keen actors, we were just expected to get naked and go at it. Caitríona and I formed a bond and trusted each other, but there were times when we were pushed too far.” He was especially troubled by a scene involving full-frontal nudity in ­season one, when Jamie was tortured and raped by his rival, Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies). “That really didn’t sit well.”

Everything changed following the MeToo scandal, leading ­Heughan to employ Vanessa Coffey to choreograph the sex scenes. “So now everyone knows what the boundaries are, like in a football or rugby match. It’s been so helpful and freeing, and it was because I didn’t want younger actors to go through what we’d gone through. Now, the scenes are sexually charged, but not gratuitous.”

Despite his heartthrob status, Heughan – who’s 6ft 2in, with the strapping physique his role necess­i­tates – is modest and thoughtful company. He also had Coffey enlisted to co-ordinate his latest pro­ject, Channel 4’s erotic thriller The Couple Next Door, filmed during the short break between Outlander’s seasons nine and 10, in which he plays Danny, a policeman living in a Leeds suburb in an open marriage with Becka (Jessica De Gouw).

“We didn’t want to make a salacious or seedy show about swingers,” Heughan says. “It’s about the psychology behind it – what is it to be in an open relationship where two characters love each other so much that they can invite people into that relationship? I think it’s possibly the greatest form of romance to allow your partner this, if it’s the itch they need to scratch. My character struggles with it.”

The couple’s (initially) strait-laced neighbours are played by Alfred Enoch and Eleanor Tom­linson, who in 2019 finished five seasons as Demelza in Poldark. With Outlander about to start ­filming its final season, she and Heughan compared notes on moving on from a huge, long-running costume drama.

“It’s emotional. For me, the prospect’s hugely bittersweet. It feels like getting out of an institution. Outlander’s like a family, it literally defines who I am.” After all, Heughan has created an empire of Outlander spin-offs, including books, television travelogues and his spirits brand, The Sassenach – named after Jamie’s nickname for the English Claire – not to mention his charity, My Peak Challenge, which has raised nearly £5 million to fund a variety of causes, including ­hunger relief and blood-cancer research. “I’m ready for new challenges, but also nervous about what it’s like in the real world,” he says.

Still, he felt now was the right time to wrap. “Outlander could have finished after the ninth season, but, personally, I felt we hadn’t quite got there. So now we have the problem of pushing the writers to do something that’s hopefully satisfying for the audience, but also exciting.” So Heughan doesn’t yet know how Outlander ends? “No idea, and it’s really tough because Diana [Gabaldon, the author on whose novels the series is based] has written so many books.”

The show has a vast international fanbase; VisitScotland has cited a 67 per cent rise in visits to the show’s locations, such as Culloden and Inverness. “I do feel like I’m an unofficial ambassador for Scotland, and sometimes I don’t think the show is given enough credit for what it’s done for Scottish tourism,” Heughan says. “I think the numbers are even bigger than they say, because reams of Americans are just making their own itineraries. Doune Castle’s numbers are up 800 per cent, it’s been completely renovated as a result.”

The show has also transformed the local film industry. “For 10 years, we’ve been employing ­people at over 200 Scottish locations, we’ve started an intern scheme, we’ve built a studio with five sound stages where there was nothing before. So it’s going to leave a legacy.”

The son of an artist single mother (his father walked out when he was a baby), Heughan spent his early childhood in the Borders, his teens in Edinburgh, before studying at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where his mentor was third-year student James McAvoy.

Having worked in London and Los Angeles, Heughan fell back in love with Scotland when he was cast in Outlander. Initially against independence, filming the first ­season in the run-up to the 2016 ­referendum transformed him into a vocal advocate. “Scottish politics right now is a bit of a mess, which is a shame, but maybe they’ll find a new rallying cry. We’re a great wee country with amazing resources, most of which are controlled by the British. Similar small European countries have great identities.”

Initially, Heughan is hesitant to discuss the issue, aware taking either side will provoke a social-media backlash, but then he decides: “Why can’t actors have opi­n­ions? The problem is you have to come down on one side, there is no room for deb­ate. Everything has be­come so aggressive and then social-media algo­rithms mean you only get to see one side of the argument.”

He had his fingers burnt when last month he signed an open letter from Artists for Palestine UK, alongside the likes of Tilda Swinton and Steve Coogan, which accused the Government of “aiding and abetting” Israeli war crimes, but failed to condemn Hamas’s terrorism. The following day, Heughan rescinded, saying he hadn’t “fully understood” what he was signing.

“I was maybe naively calling for peace, which is what we all want, but, unfortunately, that situation is so complex, I can’t understand it all,” he says now. “As an actor, you have a platform, but if you put your thoughts out there, you upset ­people, but you’re also damned if you don’t say anything.”

Heughan’s taking time to navigate a potential post-Outlander career path. “I’m a workaholic, but I have to be discerning. Whatever I do next, I have to feel really passionate about.” Possible plans include directing and exploring a different side to Scotland than misty heather and bagpipes. “I think that underbelly you see in [Ian Rankin’s] Rebus and Irvine Welsh is very interesting, there are still pockets that are very hard and gritty.”

Back in 2005, he auditioned for James Bond in Casino Royale – the role that eventually went to Daniel Craig. Now, there’s a new vacancy. “I’ll throw my hat in the ring,” he says, grinning. “I’d be a brilliant Bond, I’m good at action and I’d bring a lot of ­emotional intelligence.”

There might even be space for a personal life. Heughan’s mystified by “facts” he reads about his private life online. “There’s so much ­nonsense that’s completely false – apparently, I have a daughter. News to me!” he says, flushing. The truth, he says, is that Outlander leaves no time for relationships.

“It’s insane hours and takes over everything. Caitríona’s carved out a beautiful family for herself that she protects very well, but I’ve seen how hard it is for her to do that. I want a cat, but I’m too scared even for that, how would I look after it? One day, maybe,” Heughan says, dreamily.

The Couple Next Door begins on Channel 4 on Monday 27 November at 9pm; stream all episodes from this date

#shitshow

[tobiasdrake]

Are there any redemption arcs/stories that you've found that actually did a good job with the issue?

There have been a few.

The obvious go-to that just about everyone thinks of when they think "good redemption arcs" is, of course, Zuko from Avatar.

As deuteragonist of the series, his patterns of belief and their impact on his behavior are put under a microscope pretty much from the get-go. The story takes tremendous care to examine what he believes, why he believes it, how hard it is to break away from it, and how fulfilling it is to finally let go of the toxic incentives that have guided him.

People have been trying to reinvent Zuko for years with mixed results. Often overlooking that what made Zuko work was that we really truly got to know him as a complex and nuanced human being, inside and out.

I'm also partial to Scarlemagne of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. This character is a lot more despicable than Zuko, but we get to see him broken down psychologically over the course of the third season.

Rather than going straight from villain defeat to redemption, Scarlemagne spends much of the third season in prison having philosophical debates with protagonist Kipo. During this time, not only is he able to express and examine his system of belief, but she gets to express hers - ultimately converting him into a true believer in her own methodology over time.

By the time Scarlemagne officially becomes a protagonist, it's only on the back of watching him develop and change from the confines of his much-deserved prison cell.

For a Star Wars example, since Vader was where I started ranting about redemption today, there's Agent Kallus of Star Wars: Rebels. Kallus starts out as an Imperial officer and recurring villain until a Bottle Episode strands him and a Rebel protagonist, Zeb, into a survival situation together.

The whole episode is spent hashing out Kallus and Zeb's different perspectives. Kallus doesn't come around during these talks; By the end of the episode, they go their separate ways and Kallus returns to the Empire. But having this time to debate belief systems with Zeb plants a seed of doubt in Kallus. He begins questioning fascism in ways he hadn't before, ultimately bearing fruit when he becomes a secret Rebel informant - rightfully assuming that no one would trust his intel if they knew who he was.

Also partial to the entirety of The Good Place and My Name is Earl, both of which are shows centered around questions of morality, personal development, and redemption - and which both examine the topics in great detail, despite being very different tonally.

#avatar the last airbender #zuko #star wars rebels #agent kallus #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #the good place #my name is earl

[justanotherperson1]

Imagine the kids scrambling to handle this mess. Jack handles Prime, Raf goes for Ratchet and Miko deals with Bay. Someone needs to remind the bots that not everyone is against them.

Miko thinks the only way to get Bay's mind out of this unhealthy slump is to remind about the good side. Throughout all his adventures, he had key help from humans who still believed in him despite everything. Bay died to protect Sam who later almost dies bringing the Matrix of Leadership to bring him back.

Cade still repaired the Autobot Leader despite knowing his identity and kept faith in him. It's okay to not fully trust others but he can't group an entire race in the same category when there were humans who helped the Autobots until the end. Plus Cybertronians are in the safe boat. Both species have their good/bad sides.

Raf and Jack remind everyone that if Fowler really wasn't on their side than everyone would already be in hiding already. He may be rough at times but the agent is like Lennox. Still loyal to his companions.

A liaison doing the best he can to keep the peace despite the Autobots absolutely sucking at staying incognito. You want to prepare or be cautious? Okay but don't throw someone whose clearly still has faith and trust into the possible enemy bin.

There's also issues with the Matrix of Leadership. Both Optimus have gone through a personality change and Ratchet doesn't trust the relic one bit. Orion Pax incident already showed what Prime was like before becoming the person he is today.

It will mark any potential threat to Cybertron as a danger despite the circumstances. A onesided piece of scrap metal that cannot be trusted. Everyone has to work together or sink by the inner turmoil than just Decepticons.

I feel like Bay! Optimus would find the most wisdom from Arcee in this moment. Though Miko’s words would be kind, Arcee’s experience would be a inadvertant comfort.

After the reveal of what the humans did to his Ratchet he would retreat to the roof where Arcee would find him.

She wouldn’t scold him or try to lure him back with the others but istead, under the low light of a setting sun, they would sit and look over the world just beyond Cliffjuper’s memoral in a certain solidaridy.

They are the most alike and therefore, Arcee would be the most likley to understand him. Unlike Prime! Optimus who is the ‘figurehead’ and the ‘ideal’, I feel she would be more likley and more willing to hear Bay!. Does that exuse his actions? His brashness? What could Arcee say? She’s been where he was and is still activly trying to tame the rage she sure as the pit feels.

That’s not to say none of the others in the team don’t experience loss, but Arcee and Bay! Prime seem to deal with loss and the feeling of failure the same way.

She wouldn’t try to defend humaninty as a whole, but tell stories of Jack and how he helped her after the death of Cliffjumper, and maybe…. Just maybe, Bay! Would recall the young boy he once knew that the first human he ever talked to. Who was there when few others would stand with him.

But your last line couple of lines raises an iteresting thought.

Bay!’s matrix has been stained long before him and found a kindered spirit in a Crucader become Prime. In the very first movie he said that Cybertron was an Empire, and later we learn that he and other knights like him traveled the stars in a PRISON ship Lockdown later comindeared from him. Do you guys remember what it looked like? What was in it?

“Bone grinders, brain blinders, flesh peelers, chromazonal inverters, catatonic slug, black hole trap doors and, of course, radiation.” - Crosshairs, Age of Extinction.

What the hell is he doing with a ship like that?!

Even then, everything the Bay! Allspark touches turns into a rage-filled, blood thirsty vile creature who’s only initiative is to destroy everything around it. We see this again and again in the years we Optimus is on Earth. The more and more electronics accidently get turned into Cybertronian creatures- so then what rules does the Matrix follow when heralding and protecting such a naturally violent race? What morals would it really have.

What was he doing? Before and after the matrix?

And what was the Matrix truly instilling in him?

Do you think, in Prime! Optimus seeing himself he saw something not like him? a being who was already a conqueror before the fall of their race? Something who, in theory shared his ideas, but in action truly was brutish? A Cybertronian more like Unicron than that of Primus?

Did Bay! Optimus really change after the Matrix?

#transformers #tfp transformers prime #tfp #bayverse optimus #bayverse #crossover #optimus prime #yeah I dont know about this bay guy #the more I think about it #the more sinister he gets #but why does that make him so much more inticing??????? #And interesting????? #I need help

[findmeinasunshower]

𝐵𝑜𝑔𝒶𝓃𝑜 𝒟𝒶𝓌𝓃𝓈: 𝒞𝒶𝓁 𝒦𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓈

word-count: 1.1k

one-shot, fluff

warnings: sleep issues

Sitting in the grass on Bogano, you can’t bring yourself to open your eyes. The shift in the light beyond your eyelids tells you that the sun is rising, but the feeling of delicate blades of grass brushing your arms and the sound of boglings playing in the crisp early morning light is enough stimulation for you at the moment.

You still don’t open your eyes even when the sound of footsteps on the ramp meets your ears. Or when you hear boots walking toward you through the grass, and sense a warm body settle down next to you.

Cal doesn’t speak, but you feel his support even without seeing him. That feeling is what finally makes you open your eyes.

You expect to be met with the harsh light of the newly risen sun in front of you, and are surprised to see that it’s still below the horizon. The sky is painted a deep purple, with streaks of gold indicating the oncoming sun. And the grass dances in the breeze like a swaying sea, with the white stone of the ruins glowing purple in the semi-darkness.

Finally, you look at Cal. He’s staring straight ahead at the incoming dawn, completely relaxed with one arm propped up on his knee. For once, BD-1 isn’t accompanying him on his shoulder.

You open your mouth to greet him, but Cal beats you to it:

“It was always raining on Bracca,” he says. Even though you were expecting it, the sound of his voice jars you slightly. A small smile turns up the corner of his mouth. “I’m still getting used to not being wet all the time. And the sight of a sun. And the feel of wind that doesn’t immediately make me freezing.”

“And boglings playing in the field,” you add playfully.

Cal chuckles and turns his head to look at you. His gaze sobers. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Your eyes drop from his as your smile fades. “No.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well lately at all,” he observes. Your surprise must show on your face because Cal smiles innocently and shrugs. “Jedi, remember?”

You breathe out a cautious laugh. “Yeah.”

“So why do you come out here?”

His question makes you think. If you’re being honest, you’ve never really thought about why you venture out here when you can’t sleep. Maybe it’s a reason you don’t want to think about. But, you trust Cal. More than anyone or anything.

You look back toward the horizon; the sky is magenta now. “I’ve never seen a dawn,” you admit. “My planet was lucky in the Outer Rim. I used to sleep in, not look outside until the sun had risen. But then when the Empire found us, everything changed.

“I’ve only remembered recently that my mother would go out and watch every dawn. Every goddamn one. So even when I come out here and I can’t sleep, I can’t bring myself to watch a dawn. I just close my eyes and I...I feel it, and I just feel...peace, you know?”

A long pause passes between you before Cal responds.

“You know, now that I think about it...I’ve never seen a sunrise either.”

You look at him skeptically. “Really?”

Cal does that adorable little shrug again. “Master Tapal liked to get me up early for training, but we were on a ship. When I looked out a window, it was nothing but black and stars.” He smiles softly and gently bumps you with his shoulder. “How about we watch this one together?”

Despite your heavy heart, you can’t help the bashful smile that spreads across your cheeks. “I’d love that.”

Cal grins and when he looks back ahead, you take a moment to observe him.

You’ve seen this boy angry. You’ve seen him cocky. You’ve seen him lose hope after clawing his way out of whatever pit he’s been dropped in. But you’ve never seen him as content as he is now, lounging next to you in the Bogano mud.

Even facing away from you, you can still see the weight behind his green eyes. Cal’s been through so much, even more than you, and yet most of the time he’s the one reassuring you when things go sideways. Despite everything, after backsliding into hopelessness and hatred, he consistently sticks to his own beliefs. And even when it’s you comforting him, when it seems like the entire galaxy is trying to beat him down, he never truly gives up.

That takes a monumental amount of energy for anyone, let alone a Psychometric Jedi who’s experienced as much trauma as he has.

Your eyes travel down to the long scar across his nose, then to the one lining his jaw. "Hey Cal?”

“Hm?”

You reach out and trace your finger gently across his jawbone. “How did you get this?”

“The scar? A blaster during the Purge.”

You tap your nose gently and point at him. “What about this one?”

Cal laughs. “A rigging job on Bracca. A cable came back and snapped me across the face. Hurt like a mother, but it comes with the territory.”

“Bullshit, ‘It comes with the territory,’” you laugh. “You’re just too reckless for your own damn good.”

Cal smiles smugly and lays back in the grass. “I prefer the word ‘tenacious.’”

You roll your eyes and lay down next to him, propping yourself on your elbow. “Oh, please.” You lean in closer for a better look at his perfect imperfections. “What about this one?” you ask, feathering your fingers below his right ear.”

“Prauf got me with his Blow Burner.”

“Yikes. Is that where the one hidden in your hair came from too?”

Cal laughs. “Oh yeah. I was half-hairless for weeks, it was awful.”

“Yeah, I’m sure none of the ladies wanted you.” You let your hand wander to his neck. “What about—”

You gasp quietly when Cal’s hand reaches up and traps yours against his chest. His eyes are unreadable as he curls his fingers around yours, unintentionally pulling you in closer. “(y/n)...am I misreading this situation?”

You bite your lip thoughtfully and lean in close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off of him. “I don’t think so,” you whisper. “Am I?”

You think you hear him breathe out a “no” before he lifts up and closes the distance between you. He stops for just a moment before brushing his lips against yours hesitantly, and you let out a soft whimper before kissing him back, drawing a nearly inaudible groan out of him. You feel his heart racing beneath your joined hands.

You don’t know how long you stay there, draped across Cal’s chest kissing him unhurriedly, but at some point through the haze of content, Cal pulls away. “(y/n).”

“Hm?”

He smiles against your lips. “The sun has risen.”

#findmeinasunshower #cal kestis x reader #cal kestis imagine #cal kestis x you #cal kestis fanfiction #jedi: fallen order #jedi fallen order #jedi fallen order x reader #jedi fallen order fanfiction #fandom imagine #imagine #x reader #x you #fanfiction

[tarisilmarwen]

Rebels Rewatch: “Out of Darkness”

Hera and Sabine go on their mandatory Season One friendship bonding field-trip, only there’s more teeth and less TIE fighters involved in this one lol.

It’s a feature in a lot of kids cartoons to take two members of the cast, typically two that clash or have friction in some fashion, and put them in A Situation in order to help them appreciate and understand each other more, especially in early seasons when the show is busy establishing the myriad of character dynamics and relationships.

Whether or not this understanding sticks varies.  Fortunately in Rebels’ case Status Quo Is Not God, and Hera and Sabine keep the general understanding they came to in this episode throughout the rest of the show.  (This may in fact be part of the reason Hera advocates so hard for her in “Trials of the Darksaber”.)

The Phantom does not have seat belts, so please enjoy Ezra and Sabine clinging for dear life to the cargo seats.

Sabine rolls her eyes a little bit here when Ezra asks to be taught some of Hera’s “high flying moves”.  She is still not impressed by his attempts to sound cool and suave, even if he’s not directly flirting at her, lol.

Still love Ezra’s cute little nod here when Hera asks if he’s ready.

Oh hey!  Death Star trench run cue!

“You may ask.”  Snrk, SUCH a parent line.

We never got the reason behind why Fulcrum’s intel was becoming ah... poorly researched, and given how belly up the last mission they did on bad intel went (”Rise of the Old Masters”) Sabine’s suspicions actually seem very reasonable.

Her broken trust in the Empire led to her loss/estrangement from her first family so you can understand why she’s trepidacious about trusting some stranger she’s never met with the general safety and well-being of her new family, especially since it seems to be under threat more and more.

Sabine goes to sulk in the background there lol.

The animation is super bouncy and loose this episode, which I kinda dig, shows off a lot of character and emotion.

‘course the trade-off is that some of the early budget constraints of the show become unfortunately noticeable.

Zeb and Ezra trying to sneak off and then visibly deflating when Hera calls them. XD  Like a pair of siblings trying to duck out of chores lol.

Sabine lets some anger come out in her tone here, she’s still very hurt by everything that happened to her at the academy, and we can’t be much more than a year or two out from it.

Major Found Family vibes in how she’s acting like a typical rebellious teenage daughter, even lampshaded by the “Learned from the best.” line.

Beyond this one maintenance hallway we don’t see much of what’s on this floor of the Ghost.  I like to think the refresher is probably on this level.

Ahhhh the early days when Chopper was even more of a deliberate menace to Ezra and Zeb. XD  Makes the eventual bond between him and Ezra and how he becomes one of Ezra’s closest confidences even more heartwarming.

And now somehow the three of them are in the second level main hallway.

Lol Hera doesn’t even question her boys trying to murder Chopper.

So this is a case where both parties are technically in the right--the secrecy surrounding Fulcrum is there to protect Sabine from being forced into confessing what she doesn’t know, and protect the wider Rebellion from discovery, but Hera could also stand to trust Sabine a little more given Sabine’s stated trust issues.

This fandom likes to act like keeping secrets (in a clandestine guerilla war type scenario at that) is the worst possible thing to do to another character though, because this fandom is actually very bad at understanding how war works, despite the title of the franchise.

So yeah, I have seen more than one bad take trying to call Hera out for this episode.

I am begging y’all to stop coddling characters’ traumas, just because Sabine has Backstory Problems with being asked to not question superiors and having secrets kept from her does not mean she’s entitled to Hera’s need-to-know information about the wider Rebellion network.

Alright, rant over, let’s get back to the episode.

Fort Anaxes here was originally an asset planned to be used in TWC (and it did eventually see the light of day in the revived Season Seven).  But er... there was kind of a planet attached to this base, and definitely no fragmented asteroid belt.

Does make you wonder what exactly, ah... happened to said location.

I mean besides the obvious “everyone got ate by the nasties”.

(Something to be said for the usage of almost apocalyptic imagery this show has sometimes, familiar locations we know from before are now in ruins, blown up, shattered apart, people living in the rubble.  Layers of untold history, hints at background conflict, artifacts of disaster unsaid but looming present.)

See me being impressed with the camera movement once again, with this sly pan down to the fuel leaking from the shuttle.

I don’t really have anything to say about this conversation, it’s just great.  Just two characters who both have good points trying to understand each other.

Sabine being blunt in how she’s feeling but also holding back so much from the audience, though Hera clearly knows.  Given “Trials of the Darksaber” it’s probably safe to say that Hera’s the only one who actually knows any details about Sabine’s disaster at the academy, which means Sabine has already shown a lot of trust in Hera before and is partly wanting a little reciprocation... which of course Hera can’t give her because it could compromise the Rebellion’s mission.  And Hera probably wishes she could assuage Sabine’s fears more but Hera has always been the one most battle-minded and clinically practical about what they do.  She’s a Rebel leader, she has to manage her assets, make the hard calls.  So she does hint that there IS a larger goal and picture but there’s not much else she can actually do to ease Sabine’s mind here.

There’s no real resolution to the dilemma either, the episode ends without Sabine being brought into the loop, like what might happen on other shows.  It’s a realistic touch, leaves us with a bit of mystery to chew on.

The pain and hurt in Sabine’s voice here is also nicely acted.

Huh, well, turns out I did have something to say about the conversation. XD

Oh, ALSO.  Hera’s little verbal deflection/misdirection when she says, “We--Kanan... he knows what he’s doing.”  Very sneaky.  Part of their whole cover is pretending that Kanan is the one in charge, that he’s the leader, even though it’s clearly Hera.  An extra layer of security to deflect Imperial attention off Hera, make them think she’s just the pilot.

And if you guessed that parts of fandom also took a bad faith interpretation of this ding ding ding you are today’s winner, once again y’all have got to learn how war works.

This music cue here seems to be tied to the fyrnocks, it makes another notable appearance in “Gathering Forces” when we return here.

Literally all they are missing for this to be a full horror movie are some decaying clone corpses.  Or at least empty armor.

There’s a hissing sound effect and very faint smoke that comes off the fyrnock’s feet here, if you’re sharp-eyed.

The asteroids drifting in front of the sun are a very nice environmental danger aspect.  Lends tension, gives a ticking clock.

Zeb listening to his funky space poprock. :)

Please do not think about how Ezra is so tiny and light that Zeb can pick him up one-handed.

Lol a very stern pointed finger from Zeb here all, “STAY.”

Seriously, how is this maintenance hallway accessed?  They were down in the galley.  Animators, I need the blueprints here.

Ezra so eager to believe Kanan is being a super cool amazing Jedi but no, y’all boys just loud ha ha.

Love how Sabine puts hands on her knees like the barrel full of explosives is just a cute puppy she’s aww-ing at.

Aside from one glaring shot that is repeated (once you see it you cannot unsee), this sequence is pretty nicely edited.  But then I think most of the action sequences in this show are well-edited.

Once again, Luke’s Theme used as a hero theme for the Ghost. :)

C’mon tell me that isn’t a badass shot.

I do have a certain fond affection for Ezra’s slingshot, as useless as it is against Stormtroopers and Inquisitors.  It’s exactly the kind of improvised weapon a bratty street kid would have.  And Ezra actually looks really cool here jumping down to protect Sabine and cover her and Hera’s escape.

He is pulling that thing aaaaaaaall the way back, look at him.  No quick stun shots on these draws, he wants to put those fyrnocks in the freaking ground.

I mean can you blame him though?  This boy has a hero complex and a guilt complex, he’s probably been mentally kicking himself for his role in getting Hera and Sabine stuck like this since he found out.

Ezra proceeds to ruin his genuinely awesome and heroic, “I got your back!” moment by getting a bit cocky and trying to show off.  Because he’s fourteen and Sabine makes him a dumbass.

He doesn’t seem to feel at all emasculated by Sabine jumping back down into the fray to shoot the fyrnock off him, though.  Tries to use it a flirting opportunity in fact.  Interesting to note this is the one time Sabine genuinely sounds irritated with him and the strongest she shuts him down.  Though frankly I think it’s mostly that she’s annoyed she had to pull his ass out of trouble after he was party responsible for her and Hera being in danger in the first place.

Anyway, enjoy these next few caps for no particular reason. :)

“There’s a LOT you don’t know about my ship.”  Aaaaaaand the censors were asleep for that line.

C’mon.

There’s a guilty kind of hesitance in Ezra’s body posture here, before he masks it and hides behind his attempt at a playful tease.

Right, he is absolutely feeling super guilty about putting her in danger and does not know how to approach her about it to apologize.

As I said, the resolution to Hera and Sabine’s conflict this episode is really more of an accepted stalemate.  All Hera divulges is that, yes, we do have a plan, we do have allies out there, and Sabine is like, “Okay I guess that will have to suffice.”

Sidenote: Sabine looks really pretty in this episode, I dunno if it’s something about the lighting or what.

Another episode that sometimes gets the unfair moniker of “filler”.  I mean even if it was that wouldn’t be a bad thing because sometimes you need to just let your characters have a break from the main plot to interact and grow and pick up allies and bounce off each other.

But also!  We’re back here literally two episodes from now in probably one of my favorite scenes this season.  I just love when plot elements come back. :)

#star wars #star wars rebels #rebels rewatch #liveblog #ezra bridger #sabezra

[isagrimorie]

I need more interviews with Dave Filoni and the cast of Star Wars Ahsoka! I need it!

“She had a very particular idea of him, the Jedi order, and who she was in all of that for a very long time until that image was shattered,” Dawson says. “The point we graduate to here is, yeah, he did some terrible things, and he also did some really great things. And it’s always up to you how you choose the direction. She can look back at her own life. She’s gone through some hardships that could have been the moment that turned her dark. She didn’t go there. So I think she’s starting to trust herself.” The series continues an arc from the animated Rebels series, set at the beginning of the galactic uprising, when Vader was at full power as an Imperial enforcer and Ahsoka came face-to-mask with her former mentor. “While I had introduced in Rebels the idea that she came to understand that Anakin had become Darth Vader, I never really dealt with the fallout from that,” Filoni says. “How does that affect somebody when a person that they really admire and looked up to turned out not to be the person they thought they were? Are we all just capable of a fall from grace? And what is forgiveness? What shape does that look like? Did I take the good parts of this person with me as well as the bad, or am I just the good? I thought there were a lot of interesting challenges for her.” -- Dave Filoni on Vanity Fair

---

Sabine has no blood relationship with Anakin, but she has a certain recklessness in common with him that makes her mentor Ahsoka more than uneasy. “Part of the reason Ahsoka originally had issues trusting Sabine was because I reminded her so much of her master in some ways, in terms of the internal struggle I was going through,” she says. -- Natasha Liu Bordizzo

---

Filoni felt he had to expand the Star Wars universe in order to justify their absence and add an extra-large obstacle to their eventual recovery. “If they were in the Star Wars galaxy—the old Star Wars galaxy that we know—I think somebody would’ve found them,” Filoni says. “There’s too many starships, there’s too many people traveling. You get a signal out, and I think you could have found them if they wanted to be found. I had to really throw them far afield.” Lucas himself laid the foundation for this solution, which Filoni found tucked away in one of the prequel films. “I think it’s in Attack of the Clones,” he says. “If you look, there’s an image of the galaxy, and then there are actually these smaller galaxies near it. So I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’”

I really, really love that we open up the Star Wars universe more, and opening up in a different galaxy!

Expect this broader universe to be a factor in any future season of Ahsoka or that feature film he is developing. “I’m setting up what seems to be a larger conflict with the Imperial remnant,” Filoni says. “That conflict can’t just mirror what we’ve seen before. It has to take on a different shape. It can’t just be the Empire versus what looks like the Rebellion, or even the Republic. It has to be visually different.

#star wars #star wars ahsoka #dave filoni #natasha liu bordizzo #sabine wren #ahsoka tano #anakin skywalker

[ospreyeamon]

on the prevalence of bounty hunters in the gffa

I’m not sure George Lucas intended bounty hunters to become as prominent as they are in the Star Wars universe. It might just be a consequence of Boba Fett Armour Rad ✨, like the invention of the Mandalorians. However, thinking about  the Galactic Republic, it does make sense that there would be a lot of bounty hunters running around fulfilling a particular societal need.

The Galactic Republic’s structure is difficult to pin down because it doesn’t have a clear real world parallel. While it’s usually the United Nations or USA that are brought up, I suggest that its closest structural equivalent is the European Union; single currency, open boarders, high degree of internal autonomy while members are still meant to be bound by the laws and rulings of the higher courts and legislature, multitude of languages and cultures, states have the right cede unilaterally without requiring permission from the central authority. There are still differences though, and the one relevant to this discussion is that we aren’t shown a Republic equivalent of Europol, or the better-known Interpol. During the prequels era there are the Republic Judicial Forces and Jedi Order, but both these organisations provide specialist and crisis assistance rather than dealing with the day-to-day dealings of local planetary and system law enforcement systems. Nobody is calling the Jedi because someone skipped off-planet rather than front-up to court after crashing their speeder through a sixth-story window. Even if local law enforcement were inclined to do such a thing it wouldn’t be permissible, because the number of Jedi and Judicials is tiny compared to the overall population of the Republic.

I think the Republic logically should have an equivalent of Interpol, which I call the Intersector Security Bureau so it can keep its acronym when it is transformed into the Imperial Security Bureau. Given how easy it appears for anybody who owns a private starship to planet-hop undetected, facilitating information exchange must be hugely important. Still, the fact that so far as I can recall the ISB is never mentioned before the Republic becomes the Empire suggests that its reach is limited before Palpatine starts beefing it up. The Jedi do a lot of investigating but mostly rely on their own resources or liaise with the local planetary authorities.

There are a few reasons why an early ISB space!Interpol equivalent might have less prominence and reach than RL!Interpol. One is that it is affected by the same resources sap as the Judicial Forces; losing work to the Jedi Order and funding to local planetary or sector law enforcement. Another is that the Republic’s diverse array of species and cultures creates a complicated environment for hashing out the cultural consensus necessary for the level of understanding and trust required for agreeing to carry out other agencies’ arrest warrants. For example, the Republic’s de facto age of majority – the minimum age at which a person can hold Republic public office, like a become a Senator – is sixteen. This is not an age of majority that member systems of the Republic are required to adhere to in any way; having species with wildly different lifespans and lifecycles like wookiees, trandoshans, and ruurians makes trying to enforce a single age of majority a terrible idea. But that means that you have a planet like Naboo, where Padme Amidala can be employed in the political office of Princess of Theed when she is nine, under the same government as Alderaan, where the heir to the throne doesn’t step up into their full public role until they come of age at sixteen. Other points of difference – attitudes to gambling, recreational drug usage, corporal punishment, reasonable person tests, etc. – create a plethora of friction points between legal jurisdictions.

Then there’s the issue that many of the planets in the Republic aren’t going to trust the governments of every other planet in the Republic. RL!Interpol is facing controversy regarding the accusation that some countries like China have been submitting warrants for arrest on people who are actually political dissidents. In the Republic that translates to, for example, corporate-controlled planets putting out warrants on whistle-blowers calling out the companies’ fraud, environmental regulation violations, debt slavery, etc.

So, if you can’t rely on intersector law enforcement cooperation to retrieve your dangerous driver before any more speeders become wedged through the windows of high-rise apartments, what do you do? You put a bounty on them.

This implies that mainstream socially respectable bounty hunting is quite different from the “I can bring you in hot or I can bring you in cold” business the Mandalorians engage in. Reputable law enforcement agencies will only want their bounties hot and minimally injured; the idea is to get criminals back so they can be tried and punished in accordance with your law. And what if a bounty hunter screws up the bounty you posted and grabs the wrong person? If they’re alive you can stick them on a shuttle back to the planet they were kidnapped from, but if they’re dead that’s a PR nightmare and now you need to chase after that bounty hunter to charge them for murder.

Looking back a couple of millennia from the Post-Ruusan Republic to the Old Republic, many of these forces are still in play. One example of a deficit in law enforcement cooperation that I found particularly memorable was Miel Muwn of the Sullustan Constable Brigade from the Smuggler class story, who personally travelled to Coruscant in pursuit of the stolen Murustavan Ruby where he deputised two Very Upstanding Lawful Citizens to aid him rather than collaborate with the Coruscanti authorities.

Additionally, the division of the galaxy between the Republic and the Sith Empire creates another reason for those governments to work through bounty hunters. Because the Republic and the Empire are either in a state of hot or cold war, they obviously aren’t cooperating on issues like intergalactic crime. If either power wants to arrest someone who has fled into the other’s territories, the most legal least likely to spark violent conflict option available to them is to hire a third party (it’s still not very legal or unlikely to end in violence). Hence, bounty hunters everywhere.

…there are so many ways that this dysfunctional excuse for a system would produce bad outcomes.

#Meanwhile in a Galaxy Far Far Away #star wars meta #swtor meta #bounty hunters #the Galactic Republic #star wars prequels #star wars the old republic

[as8bakwthesage]

Y’all wanna know something really interesting?

When I started writing the original version of “The Crow’s Calling” I was massively inspired by Lily and Mikaila Orchard’s “The Sith Resurgence” because I liked the ideas it was putting down. At first I thought Aliana was a compelling character and her philosophy about the Force and the Sith was interesting. So I wanted to do something similar but with the prequels.

However, after examining “The Sith Resurgence” and seeing how many issues there are with the characters and the writing and the main character always having to be right, I realised that this story isn’t all that good. Ignoring the stuff about Aliana being a coloniser, her mother being a slave trader (which Rey should have been able to be mad about, not just for angst but for the sake of character development), it’s just not very well executed.

So after I started to severely dislike Lily Orchard and realise how much she sucks as a person, I wanted to do something different with “The Crow’s Calling”. The premises are the same, ie. a Sith who is on the run meets a canon cast of characters and falls in love with one of them while also challenging the characters’ worldviews about the darkside and the Sith themselves.

However, unlike Aliana, Savi is not always correct. Savi is a character who learns. Savi had no faith in democracy at first because the Republic had failed them and their family, they disliked Jedi regardless of who they were, and they were committed to being alone and away from anyone, at first content to let the Republic fall to war. But over the course of the story, Savi learns that there are those in the Republic who want to fight for others, they learn that there is value in trusting others again, and they rock the boat by just being a sibling-like figure to Anakin.

What Savi wants is to just collect their family’s holocrons and then fuck off. But what they need is to be a boat rocker, they need to step outside of their comfort zone and allow themselves to love again while coping with grief.

Aliana on the other hand... she wants the Sith to be recognised and she eventually wants to establish a new Sith Empire. She wants to get into Rey’s pants. But what does she actually need? It’s implied that she too needs to open up and allow herself to meet others within the narrative but then the narrative itself shoots that down. Leia and Luke within TSR are treated poorly and mischaracterised, Aliana is never allowed to be wrong. She Force lightnings an old woman because the old woman made a snippy comment.

What are Aliana’s flaws? Besides surface level stuff, I don’t see her changing much in her story. She gets a girlfriend but her disdain for the Republic and the Jedi hasn’t changed. She doesn’t get challenged at all as a character. And that feels boring to me.

TL;DR: I think I am writing a better Star Wars fanfic than my former idol.

#fuck lily orchard #the sith resurgence #the sith resurgence critical

[glouchyouchy]

Just a quick post laying out a few pointers ( since I unexpectedly received a handful of queries about my fanfic ( The Mandalorian and the Jedi... thank you for your interest BTW :) )) that basically boil down to these four :

1) A Look Back. - 1 in the latest chapter ( which I labelled as III.2 but is also chapter 8 numerically ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/51672316/chapters/132792904 ) ) directly PRECEDES A Look Back. - 2 in II.2 ( chapter 3, numerically ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/51672316/chapters/130814095 )). It gets confusing, I know ( sorry >_< ), but the idea behind the anachronistic telling of the story is so 'scenes' which have similar themes or which tie in together ( cause / effect ) are grouped together to achieve some point that I want to come across. :)

2) Doesn't Bo-Katan acting basically like Ursa's AMIGA / Sabine's aunt mean you're making her REALLY OLD by the time of the Mandalorian? ( I think this is a Bo-Din shipper's concern :)) ) = Don't worry, I'm a Bo-Din shipper as well! Also, I think the age consistency issue with her has already been pointed out ( Bo was shown to be active and very much already in her physical prime ( and already old enough to be leading people ) in the Clone Wars era ( see the Satine / Obi-Wan arc ), which means she's possibly in her late 40s, maybe even in her 50s or 60s by the time of the Mando-verse ). My personal head-canon is simple : Mandalorians ( or those who I assume are actual native / genetic Mandalorians like Bo-Katan, Ursa, and Sabine ) are basically Star Wars SAIYANS ( yes, from Dragon Ball! ). While they have roughly the same lifespan as humans, they retain their physical primes / youth until the day they die ( I haven't had any cause yet to assume that they have longer life-spans that regular humans like Luke, Leia, as well as Han and Lando ( truth be told they actually look TOO OLD in the sequel trilogy ( over a decade too old, IMO, because those movies supposedly occur JUST 35, 40 years AFTER the original trilogy ( I could be wrong though ( don't trust me on this, I'm no expert :)) )); if they do eventually end up being shown in canon to actually have longer lifespans than regular humans, though... that would make them Star Wars NUMENOREANS / Dunedain ( like Aragorn ), I guess ).

3) When does the attempted attack by the Empire on the Lothal sector occur? ( The one where Hera was in danger of being defeated ( the battle over Garel ) until Sabine comes to the rescue with a sizable contingent of Lothalite defence force fighters ) = This is II.3, Five Years Later. - 1 ( numerically in chapter 4 ). Just before the battle of Endor, but a good while after Hoth :) I'd say it happens just days before the events shown in The Return of the Jedi :)

4) When does II.1 The Lonesome Tower. occur? = ( this is in in chapter 2, numerically ) Just before Peridea. - 4.2 in the latest chapter, III.2 ( numerically chapter 8 )! :)

Hopefully these will help :) Thank you again for reading! See you soon!

#the mandalorian and the jedi fanfic #sabine x ezra #ezra x sabine #ezrabine #sabezra #sabine wren #ezra bridger #star wars rebels #star wars ahsoka

[nimata-beroya]

Hi dearies!

This is my piece for Day 5 of @tbb-appreciation-week. I'm really excited to share this fic that it's part of The Warrior & the Ice Vulture series! Besides the day's prompts "Whump" and "Hiding face on neck", I also threw in this “I don't need you to help me, I can handle things myself.” as an early prompt from Whumptober 2023, and "I will only slow you down" from my @badthingshappenbingo.

Yeah, a lot will happen on this thing 😆

Chapters: 1/2

Fandom: Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon), Star Wars - All Media Types

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: CT-9904 | Crosshair/Original Character(s), CT-9904 | Crosshair/Katkris Pex, CT-9904 | Crosshair/Original Mandalorian Character(s)

Characters: Crosshair (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Katkris Pex (Original Mandalorian Character), Original Imperial Characters (Star Wars), Hunter (Star Wars: The Bad Batch)

Additional Tags: tbbaw 2023, The Bad Batch Appreciation Week 2023, TBB Appreciation Week 2023, Day 5, Whump, hiding face in neck, Whumptober 2023, (Posted Early), Day 15, “I don't need you to help me I can handle things myself.”, flirty banter, Crosshair Has Issues, So Has Katkris, Crosshair Needs a Hug (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Katkris Needs a Hug, Mentioned Tech (Star Wars: The Bad Batch)/Phee Genoa, Bad Things Happen Bingo, I Will Only Slow You Down

Series: Part 2 of The Warrior & the Ice Vulture, Part 1 of Whumptober 2023

Summary: The last thing Crosshair thinks when he takes the bounty to kill an Imperial captain is that Katkris will be involved in it too. And it's just his luck, because when the Mandalorian bounty hunter is around, chaos always follow.

DARK ANGEL WITH A SHOTGUN

CHAPTER 1

Through the rangefinder of his rifle, Crosshair spies the stronghold that the Empire seized from locals and established its headquarters on this backwater planet. He adjusts the vision to thermal to see how many Stormtroopers are inside the structure. Crosshair expects his target to make it easy for him to eliminate him by coming out of the building at some point. He needs a plan B, however, for the eventuality that the Imperial remains stubbornly inside. As he suspected, the security in the complex is heavy, with numerous groups of troopers patrolling the hallways and gates. It isn't going to be easy to infiltrate, but not impossible if Crosshair times his movements correctly. The idea is to maintain his incursion a secret as long as he can, while eliminating hostiles as he goes. That'll make his exit much easier once he takes the target out.

Bounties on Imperials don't come often, much less with such a high reward. It makes him wonder what dirty business this Imperial is involved in, that even his higher-ups have turned a blind eye to the great bounty and haven't made it go away. Whatever the reason, Crosshair has every intention of collecting this one nevertheless.

It could've been an easier job if he had a team to work with, like the Bad Batch. But after all that has happened in the last several years, that isn't his life anymore. He touches down on Pabu on occasion between hunts when he needs a place to lie low, but the relationship with his siblings has never returned to what it used to be. It isn't as bad as it is when they’ve been on opposite sides, but there's too much hurt and guilt coming from all sides to pretend as if nothing has happened. And he doesn't have many other people he can trust; he can count them on one hand.

Crosshair shakes himself out of those thoughts and refocuses on the task at hand. He can do this on his own.

A cluster of heat signatures on the East end of the building catches his eyes. At first, he thinks it's his target in the company of four Stormtroopers guarding him, but as he watches, Crosshair realizes that he's mistaken. The smallest person in the room falls to the ground as one of the four bigger figures manhandles them. Without wasting time, the other three guards gang up with the first and start beating the person on the ground. Crosshair assumes it's someone who has committed a petty crime against the Imperial in charge, and this is their punishment for it. He knows more than anyone else that, sometimes, even something as simple as existing is enough a crime for the Empire. It's a lesson that he learned the hard way.

Telling himself that whatever is happening there isn't of his concern, he redirects his rifle in the opposite direction. He has a job to do, and it doesn't include rescuing a random person.

Crosshair spends the next hour or so studying the comes and goes of Stormtroopers around the building and finding out where his target is actually located. Despite the considerable numbers of Stormtroopers guarding the stronghold, he detects a pathetic high number of vulnerabilities in their patrol patterns. Hardly a surprise; Imperial conscripted soldiers will never achieve the efficiency of the clone army. Crosshair intends on using each one of those vulnerabilities to his advantage. However, there is something that, regardless of his initial dismissal, keeps bothering him. His attention has returned repeatedly to the East end of the building. It isn't relevant to his mission, and yet, he can't stop wondering who the poor bastard in that room is. No doubt, it's somebody having a very bad day.

The beating stopped a while ago, and the person has barely moved since then. They're lying on the floor in the same spot that the guards left them. If it weren't because their heat signature is as strong as it was in the beginning, Crosshair would think they're dead. Unconscious maybe, but something is telling him that it's not the case. And what happens in the next couple of minutes confirms his suspicion. A trooper returns to the room and kneels next to the person. The thought of that, being a rookie move on their part, crosses his mind at the same time that the “unconscious” person springs to life.

Keep reading on Ao3

#tbbaw2023 #archive reblog #crosshair #day 5 #fic #whump #hiding face in neck #oc: katkris pex #canon typical violence #injuries #blood #bad things happen bingo #whumptober 2023 #the warrior and the ice vulture

[squirrelno2]

Assuming that you play Swtor... Who are your main 8 Ocs and what's your favorite class/romance?

muahahaha so you have in fact met at least one of them via my sideblog, @relevant-url-incoming, because you asked about Kit there, but I always welcome the chance to ramble/infodump/annoy the shit out of people who are following me for not-even-star-wars-adjacent things SO:

(disclaimer: this may get spoilery. it's all very out of context spoilers, but if anyone reading this cares about swtor spoilers. be warned.)

Ven is a name some people following me here will remember, specifically as a four year old Nautolan who adopts Dogma, the clone. She also, in the grand scheme of my silly little swtor nonsense, is a time traveller who grows up to fuck shit up in the distant past. As one does. She's my trooper and my Alliance Commander and my precious baby girl mary sue beloved. She's also committed a few war crimes in her youth but what is a war crime to the star wars galaxy anyway? nobody knows. it's fine.

Nalyan is her brother, newly introduced in the same fic series i allude to above, and my smuggler. He is... grumpy. and an asshole. and also overall much more likely to save an enemy than most of my ocs, but that always surprises people due to the grumpiness. I ship him very hard with Corso and Risha who I do not ship with each other, which makes for a delightful dynamic in my head. sometimes besties just have sex with the same man it's whatever.

Kitiver is my Jedi Knight whose anxiety made him fall big-time, and he is full of self-loathing and self-doubt. He's overall kind of neutral in how the game sets up morality but when I write him it's the inwardly directed anger and the way that splashes out onto others that keeps him dark, even though all he wants is to be a good person. He doesn't really believe he's capable of that, anymore. oops.

Kaojacol is my Consular who went from a kind of coldhearted closed off person to the biggest softie who just wants to be a good friend and wife and mom. She's... a good friend? to be fair to her the wife and mom thing kind of got out of control with the whole zakuul thing. Sorry Felix and also the kid I made up for them.

Exchei is my Sith Inquisitor and she's so nice, for someone who'll shock you with Force lightning if you piss her off. Her backstory is always kind of fresh in her mind, and she really really wants to reform the Empire and stop slavery. also if you give her something nice and expensive and don't betray her she'll love you forever, which is how Andronikos sold her on the whole romance thing when she still wasn't sure if she could trust him.

Ri'gastio is a fucking asshole and also my bounty hunter. He's just. He's the guy who does every mean thing and kills everyone he can kill and makes everyone pay for everything he does for them because he figures if the world screwed him over there's no point in him being nice. He might as well do the same. I want to smack him so badly.

Tavansa is my Sith Warrior, she is my pathetic wet cat lesbian who just wants Vette to love her in spite of her many murderous tendencies and the fact that she's kind of unbearable to be around. A real attack dog kind of person, if an attack dog was also always calculating how people might perceive her behaviour so she can make sure the people (Vette) she cares about see her in the best light possible.

Sarrant is my Agent and he's... very hard to explain honestly? Like he starts out super loyal and that gets burned to hell and back, and he falls for fucking Kaliyo of all people even though he likes to let people live and help them out and generally enjoys being nice, and he also will just cut a bitch for looking at him wrong - man has issues. He's made lighter choices than his sister Tavansa but he is equally fucked.

As for my favourite class and romance uhhhh... story-wise it probably is Jedi Knight because that shit is juicy, though i think in terms of juiciness Agent is also up there. But if we're talking straight-up soft spots I really like the trooper storyline. I like that I got to force Ven to solve the trolley problem like twenty times. That was great. She names her kid after Jaxo, that's how bad that hurt her.

I also really like romancing Jorgan, possibly also because of Ven, but especially for Timothy Omundson's little voice crack when you reunite with him. Like damn. how can i resist that. I haven't romanced Elara in-game yet but the version of her that lives in my head and is married to Ven and Jorgan is great. kind of terrified to find out if the actual romance lives up to that but I adore her so if it doesn't I shall simply rewrite it.

#I refuse to put this under a cut you shall all see my infodump and SUFFER #but yeah this and more is all on that sideblog I think except maybe my favourites #but thank youuuuuu i cannot express the giddiness i feel upon recieving such questions. my little fucked up children #anyway sideblogs are fun it's like i accidentally have two identities. or five really. shh #swtor #Ven (oc) #Nalyan (oc) #not gonna tag all of them because they live elsewhere but i do have ven and nalyan stuff on this blog so. tag! #still don't have an ask tag

[junebugwriter]

Thoughts on Ahsoka

*Spoilers for the whole show*

The Ahsoka series is all about legacy. My hot take is that it is a second try at making a coherent sequel, grappling with the previous series of Clone Wars and Rebels, and putting it in the post-OT timeline. It has the benefit of being a narrative told from a more singular vision (Dave Filoni's) but is also unburdened by the expectation of being as massive a hit as the numbered films.  

First, let's talk about legacy. Star Wars is often derided because of its Chosen One narrative revolving around the Skywalker family, and how people shoulder or buckle under the expectation of doing Great Things. I think Ahsoka, in the tradition of Rebels, is trying to tell an auxiliary story about the world of science fantasy that Star Wars inhabits. Lucas has gone on record in saying that he was heavily influenced by old Flash Gordon serials, the Campbellian monomyth, Japanese samurai films, and WWII aerial dogfighting footage. These are strands in the DNA of Star Wars, and each series can lean into the various identities at the heart of this milieu. Star Wars can tell many kinds of stories; it’s big enough to encompass many visions, but always needs to remember the roots of which the stories spring from. 

Ahsoka, both the show and the character, is the bearer of a complex legacy. Show-wise, it exists as a continuation of the narrative threads of the Clone Wars and Rebels, orbiting around massive blockbuster films. In the story, Ahsoka is the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker, the would-be chosen one who turned and became the perhaps greatest villain of 20th century film, Darth Vader. In the narrative, Ahsoka is burdened by an impossible expectation. Her master is well-known throughout the galaxy as one of the most powerful Jedi in the order, despite not being considered a Jedi Master. In Rebels, it is shown she lost track of Anakin after their falling out. She assumed he had died in the purge of the Jedi Order. She is then proven wrong when she figures out that her mentor was now the right hand of the emperor.  

So, she is burdened by the mixed legacy of a heroic mentor turned terrifying force of evil. She carves her own path, a ronin samurai of a now-forgotten order of mystic knights. It is implied that, after the end of the events of Rebels, she took on an apprentice of her own in Sabine Wren. This, naturally, had a troubled ending. Sabine Wren is a Mandalorian, and that culture is one with an antagonistic relationship to the ways of the Jedi Order. Both Ahsoka and Sabine are hard-headed, stubborn, and have deep-seated trust issues. Each character comes by it honestly, but that makes for a difficult Master/Student relationship. 

That, of course, is mostly prologue. In the events of Ahsoka the show, their dynamic is the central relationship in focus. Sabine is driven by a desire to restore her lost family in finding Ezra, and Ahsoka is driven by a fear of a return of the Empire, the evil from her past she had thought she had grown beyond after the death of her former master. People have called the acting, especially in the first few episodes, wooden and stilted, but knowing the background of these characters and their parallel traumas, it makes sense. It makes sense for Ahsoka to default to being a loner, a ronin. Sabine regresses to her more teenaged rebellious nature, despite being in her late twenties/early thirties. She’s lost both her biological parents and her found family. She’s had to survive on her own, and feels abandoned by Ahsoka. So, when they reconnect, there is tension. Both have a lot riding on their minds, the legacies of their backgrounds overburdening them to the breaking point.  

Midway through the series is a crisis point, and the heroic pair fail. This is expected. Huyang told them to stay together, but they rebelled, went their own way. Ahsoka fell in battle, nearly dying. Sabine was overcome by the desire to see her old friend Ezra, and succumbed to the temptations of the fallen Jedi Baylan Skoll. The duo is scattered; master has failed apprentice, and apprentice has failed mentor.  

Episode 5, the best episode in the series, is an episode-long negotiation of this failure. Ahsoka wrestles with the spirit of her former master, in both metaphysical ways as well as a very real way overcoming her physical trauma. Anakin gives her a final, parting lesson: Fight, or die. Binary. Stark. Real stakes. Searching her history brings to the fore the trauma of being a child soldier, feeling abandoned by the institution that raised her, and grappling with the all-too-human failure of her master. She feared that she too would fall to the temptation of the dark side. She feared that getting close to Sabine would expose her vulnerability, which would leave her open to the darkness. But she instead navigates these very real fears, and chooses to see beyond fighting (the thing her master trained to do) and dying (the fear she grapples with in the absence of fighting). Instead, she breaks the binary, and chooses a secret third option: she chooses to live.  

What this means in practice is a change in demeanor. She was cold, closed off, and in her fear, she was unable to meet Sabine where she desperately needed to be met. “Ahsoka the white,” in direct reference to Gandalf of the Lord of the Rings, is a much more empathetic, trusting, and vulnerable person. She’s still recognizably Ahsoka, but her fears are less stark after facing death and failure. She has learned that failure need not equate death. Rather, that life is filled with failure. How one picks oneself up after that failure is the difference between falling to darkness and embracing light.  

As the series ends, when she is reunited with her apprentice Sabine, there is tension. Sabine knows she failed. But Ahsoka does not hold it against her. Ahsoka is instead understanding, empathetic. They grapple with the realities of the situation, and know that the stakes are high. It is no surprise then that, at the end, the climax is one of mixed success and failure, because that is life. Life is not just one thing. Ahsoka is not just one thing, not just one person. She is many things, because every person encapsulates multitudes, just like her master. She need not be afraid of failure, if there is some measure of success mixed in. Sure, they failed to stop the return of the most dangerous strategist in galactic history... but they also rescued their friend. They may be stranded in a strange land... but now they have another chance to figure out their relationship as master and apprentice. They have a chance at a new life. They did not die. They may have failed, but they still live. Because they live, they have a chance to change their circumstances before the end. 

Legacy weighs on all of us heavily. Life offers us no shortage of burdens. But we need not live in constant conflict, constant fear. We can choose the third option: we can choose to live. Forge a new path, our own path, one that’s honest. One that’s frail, to be sure. But one that is better when shared with a friend. Ahsoka is about legacy in the face of mythic times, but ultimately comes down to interpersonal relationships and healing.  

In the context of Star Wars, Ahsoka is about second chances. The sequel trilogy was a mixed bag at best. The TV shows have shown that you can explore this universe in more nuanced ways than a blockbuster film can afford. Ahsoka proves, then, that you can get a second chance at second chances.  

#star wars #ahsoka #analysis

[stardusthuntress]

EnigmaTech - Ch. 2

My Tech lives AU! This one is based on the idea that the Bad Batch just needs someone with a clear head to follow his trail and appreciate the man for what he is truly capable of! I’m not a many-chapter-fic writer, but this one I felt like it could be divided into 3-4, maybe 5 (yes, it's getting longer, I know) solid chapters that focus on retrieving the beloved brainiac, his bubbly little sister, and their angsty brother. Consider it a mini-series! 

Chapter 2 - One Step at a Time 

Tech x female!reader (EVENTUALLY; but he still hasn't met her yet, this is the buildup to that part, they will meet soon, I promise! just use of pronouns in this part, not anatomy)

(Part 1) (Part 3)

Word Count: ~3.7K

Chapter Summary: Now that they know Tech survived, that means they now have a list of people they care about that they need to rescue. By asking the question 'what did the Empire want with each one', will that help them figure out where each one is?

TW: I state that Tech is hurt, but I don't specify any details! No gore here! Just some notes that he might end up in the same boat Echo was once in. She/her pronouns used, but no mention of female anatomy or anything like that in this one.

A/N: Alrighty, this part feels like it's almost there but not quite, but I needed to just get it out so I can focus on the next part, or I will NEVER finish this story! Enjoy!

Tech dividers by @/djarrex

Translations: haran = hell (Mando'a) dank ferrik = the Star Wars equivalent of "oh fuck" or "damn it"

He’s alive! But dank ferrik, that looks like it hurt like haran [hell]! 

He’d managed to soften his fall a bit, and get out of the way of the railcar, but it was still a long way to fall, and he’d only been able to slow his speed enough to survive it, but not enough to prevent injury on impact. 

“Wait,” Wrecker has questions, “I don’t get it… if Tech is still wearing his goggles, under his helmet there, how can they be the thing that’s recording this?” 

“Good catch Wrecker,” Echo smirks, proud of his brother. 

“Tech had a spare pair of goggles.” Hunter adds. “They must have been in the pack he was wearing when he fell. I used to use whether they were in that pack or this pack,” he gestures with the backup pack he’s still holding, and proceeds to check for the spare pair in it as he continues, “as an indicator of whether or not Tech thought the mission was more dangerous than he was letting on…and they’re not in here. That IS his spare pair… *sigh* I guess you’re right, there were little things he would do to protect us from the full truth.” 

“Don’t feel bad about it Hunter. It means he loves you very much. I just…” she takes a deep breath, “… I’ve found he’s a lot like me, we have a lot of the same habits and ways of doing things. So it’s a little easier for me to put myself in his shoes, so to speak.”  

“So I’ve noticed.” Hunter comments, “It’s sorta comforting, really. You’re just like him… I just wish he had been able to meet you a long time ago. To know that there were others like him, that he was not alone. When we were cadets he often told me that his mind was both his gift and his curse, because it made him unique but being unique meant he was the only one like that. I don’t know if he knew the Kaminoans made him that way because of the effectiveness of people like you.” 

“I know the feeling, and I appreciate the complement.” 

“I’m glad you’re the one Rex sent to help us get them all back. I’m glad he will get a chance to meet you,” Hunter comments. 

“Thank you, Hunter. That means a lot to me, especially coming from you. I know you are having a hard time trusting me, and I understand why. I’ve had trust issues too, they are very hard to work past. Thank you for letting me work beside you guys. It’s nice to have an understanding team that doesn’t hate me for infodumping all the time.”

“I don’t think I realized how comforting it was when Tech did that until he wasn’t there anymore to do it all the time,” Wrecker added. 

“Then let’s get him back, big guy,” she pats his arm. 

Wrecker smiles and nods. 

Echo chimes in, cool headed and taking inventory like the ARC he is “Okay, so… that recording doesn’t add much. It’s only a few minutes between impact and when that trooper steps on the spare goggles and the recording stops, and it’s mostly pointed at the trees and the wreckage of the railcar during that time. But what DO we have to work with now?” 

“What about the things the TK troopers were talking about. Any names ring a bell?” She asks. 

Hunter starts the list for the group “they mentioned the name Hemlock, that’s the man who brought us Tech’s goggles and took Omega.” 

“Hemlock’s facility is the same one Crosshair was wired to” Echo adds. “That’s why we were trying to track his shuttle from Eriadu.”

“The name does appear in Tech’s notes a few times. Mostly about Crosshair and where he may have been taken, but he doesn’t seem to get very far before the railcar incident.” 

“There are so many unanswered questions though,” Hunter interjects, concerned-big-brother (read: concerned-Dad) mode kicking in. “Why did they want Omega? They’re clearly not interested in more clone troopers, so her status as a near-perfect copy of Django is not it.” 

“She knows a lot about cloning. She grew up in close contact with Nala Se, as an assistant of sorts,” Echo shrugs. 

“Tech told me once that the Empire destroyed Kamino so that they could control cloning. That was shortly after the encounter with the Zillo Beast, the one after the war.” Hunter recalls, doing his best to add as much info as he can, as per her request. 

“That’s not much to go on,” Echo sighs. 

“On the contrary, there’s a lot there to unpack.” She starts counting as she adds each one to a list on her data pad, “one: Omega's knowledge, two: her bond with Nala Se, and three: how there are far more cloning projects going on. And, four: looking at Tech’s notes on the Zillo Beast, they utilized Kaminoan technology, and yet there were no indications of any Kaminoans ever having been present in the lab. All the technology was the human-sized versions they developed ‘for interactions with the clones of Django’ as Tech puts it. And here, a fifth one! Records he decrypted when searching for Crosshair indicate that Nala Se is also alive and was transferred into custody of an unlisted scientist. A scientist? Interesting. She’s listed as a prisoner, but she’s not being held by a prison guard. Either way, it seems that Tech, Nala Se, and Crosshair are likely under Hemlock’s ‘supervision’, or rather control, within the Advanced Science Division. Considering Omega’s ties to all the aforementioned individuals, and that it was Hemlock who took her away, it is likely that she is at the same facility.” Feeling elated by the progress they’re making with everyone contributing, she keeps on rolling. “Speaking of, Tech’s notes on the reason the bounty hunters were after Omega and why the stopped hunting her are very vague, suggesting that info was well hidden. Echo, have you and Rex been able to dig up anything more on that?”

“No, Weirdly, there’s absolutely no record of bounty hunters going after Omega in any Imperial logs we’ve found so far. Which suggests it was not the Imperials that put a bounty on her. Let me crossrefference the times at which the Bounty Hunters stopped showing up with the times that things began to move off of Kamino and see if we can find any correlations there.” 

The room is quiet while Echo scomps into the computer. The screen nearest him lights up and Hunter and Wrecker provide additional eyes as he scrolls through the data, pointing out important pieces as they see them. 

“Here!” Echo’s voice is triumphant. “Tarkin issued orders to put the Kaminoan Prime Minister under surveillance and then he was transferred off world! That’s all not long after we rescued Omega from the two bounty hunters and not long before Admiral Rampart destroyed Kamino. Looks like that does correlate with the time we noticed the bounty hunters seemed to have stopped searching for Omega.” 

“So, its likely that it was the Kaminoans that put a target on her.” She reasons, “But why? What secrets do her genetics carry? What value does she have to Nala Se? Most of the evidence we’ve listed so far has to do with cloning, so it would seem that Hemlock’s work is some type of cloning project, but why is he using existing clones as test subjects? What is he cloning that requires test subjects, or are there other medical projects under Hemlock’s control?” Her train of thought seems doomed to derail just like the railcar. 

“If you’re looking for answers, we definitely have less of those than you do” Wrecker laughs. 

“There are clues everywhere.” She uses a finger to emphasize her point, but the glazed look in her eyes tell them her mind is still diving throught the data, “You just need to know where to look and how to read them.” Wrecker found himself exchanging glances with the other two. 

“Okay, let’s backup. We know Omega, Crosshair, Nala Se, and now Tech are all in the custody of this Dr. Hemlock fellow, and all are central figures in his latest cloning project, which seems to utilise Kaminoan tech (if the Zillo Beast incident is anything to go on, that is, though that is a bit of a leap) and requires test subjects, a LOT of test subjects according to the transferred records Echo and Tech recovered. This would imply that all are likely to be found at the headquarters of the Advanced Science Division, and that there are too many things getting shipped into these new facilities for it to stay off the radar for very long. Track enough of them, and they will all trace back to this secret base, like rashnold on a kylak.” 

“But, what does Hemlock want with Tech?” Like the rest of them, Wrecker’s mind is swirling with unanswered questions. 

“It’s not clear,” Hunter answers, “all we know is that he was injured, in a lot of pain and barely conscious, and they have all the facilities to patch him back up there.” 

“I think there’s more to it,” she cringes “but you’re not gonna like it.” She looks with a pointed pain at Echo out of the corner of her eye. 

Echo turns even more pale, picking up on what she’s implying. “No. No, they better not have.” 

Hunter starts to pick up on it too, he leans forwards in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.” 

“Me either.” She almost whispers it, “But based on the fact that Hemlock needed Omega and Nala Se and test subjects, there’s something they weren’t able to get from the Kaminoan cloning equipment and whatever else they stole from Kamino before destroying it. Likely their records of how to actually do the cloning. Which would mean that they need a mind or two with lots of experience with Kaminoans and their cloning facilities, especially one that’s really good at untangling details and solving complex problems. Based on the fact that Crosshair sent you boys a Plan 88 message, warning that someone is in pursuit, it is likely that Hemlock knows how loyal your team in particular is. That would further suggest that Hemlock knows he’s not going to get anything useful from Tech while Tech is consciously aware of what he is doing. We also know from the Techno Union’s experiments on Echo that it is possible to use an unconscious mind as a strategic processing system. I’d wager that’s exactly what Hemlock plans to do with Tech to extract whatever in haran [hell] he’s missing.” her eyes gloss over as her mind races “kark, it would even be easy to hide him, since his name is ‘Tech’, and how Hemlock is clearly aware that clones are considered property. It’s just a box of equipment and ‘tech’ ready for installation or inspection at his facility, even Tarkin could miss a box with a generic label like that. I shudder to think…” her thought trails off as they all sit in an uncomfortable silence. 

Each of them wore expressions of disgust as they stared into the distance, minds racing. 

“Wait!” Wrecker seems to have caught something “Hemlock caught up with us pretty fast after Eriadu. We’d barely had time to get patched up and Omega got lucky that she woke up before he got there. I remember seeing a Light Cruiser or a Venator or something that looked like one above Ord Mantell! That ship had to come from somewhere and go somewhere, right? That’s a big ship to just disappear off the records all of a sudden! Do you think they already had Tech onboard?” 

“Good point Wreck! You’re right it is!” She adds Wrecker’s input to her growing list on her datapad. 

Echo’s excitement at having a lead they can act on is almost palpable. “We need shipping and transfer records from anything leaving Eriadu immediately after the explosion, specifically anything that went though Ord Mantel on it’s way to it’s destination. If we crossreference that with the destinations of shipments leaving Kamino shortly before Rampart destroyed it, we might be onto something!” 

Hunter seems less worried now that they have something they can do, “Okay, so, step one: find an Imperial communications network we can discreetly tap into and extract shipping records from Kamino and Eriadu without arousing suspicion. Do we all agree with that?” 

“Affirmative, Sergeant!” She and Echo, echo. 

Wrecker cheers. “We’re coming Tech, just hold out a little longer.” 

“...and… Omega and Crosshair” Hunter’s eyebrows raise in concern. 

“Yeah, but Tech is the one in need of a nice medic,” Wrecker points out. 

“We don’t know what state Crosshair is in, but given that he tried to warn us about Hemlock, it seems unlikely that Hemlock is treating him well. He may also be in need of a ‘nice medic’ Wrecker.” Echo points out. 

Wrecker looks around the Marauder, looking at the bandages around Hunter’s waist, while somewhat restrained by his own medical collar. “Seems like we all need that right now,” he mutters. 

“Hey big guy, AZI and I can handle you 3, I just hope we’re included in that ‘nice medic’ count of yours.” She gently nudges his shoulder, “Let’s get you lot on the mend fast so we can break into that Imperial data facility and get the stolen 3 back soon too. Yeah?” 

“Yeah” agrees Wrecker, “thanks little lady, I don’t know what we would have done without you. Echo was right, we did need an outside voice for this mission.” He claps Echo on the shoulder. Even with the medical collar on, Wrecker’s energy seems to be at his usual fervor, as Echo gives him an annoyed look and rubs his own shoulder gently. 

Hunter let’s out a huff and shakes his head. Looking back at the woman he adds in “Wrecker’s right, I don’t think we would have gotten this far without you. Thank you.” He turns to the room at large “Alright. Let’s pick an imperial data relay facility and work out a plan to get the shipping logs for Eriadu and Ord Mantel.” 

Later, during Hunter’s watch, while the others are asleep, she sneaks into the cockpit. 

“Hunter, can I talk to you?” 

He turns in his seat to face her as she sits in the copilot’s seat “Sure. What’s up?” He’s clearly aware of the fact that she just snuck in to talk to him alone while the others were asleep, and is grateful she came to him as the squad leader with her concerns, but trying not to let that get to him just yet. 

“There’s something weird here about all this. Techs actions at the railcar… something doesn’t sit right about it. I’m not sure what exactly though. But I have this weird, nagging feeling that it might have to do with what he found out about Crosshair defecting.” 

Hunter seems glad that she came to him with her concerns “I’m glad you’re telling me this, but I’m not sure I’m going to be much help figuring it out. That’s normally Tech’s job.” 

“So, when Tech couldn’t figure something out, how would you support him?” 

“Usually? I’d force him to get some sleep.” Hunter sighs, “something tells me using my Sergeant status and ordering you to sleep isn’t gonna work here.”

She smiles, “na, not likely. I can’t turn off my mind enough to sleep right now. And I’m not very tired.” 

They sit in silence for a few more minutes before he suggests she just say what she’s thinking out loud. 

“Okay. I might be totally wrong on this though, but I’m not sure how else to interpret this, but it’s more of a feeling than anything supported by evidence this time.” 

“You’ve been pretty spot on so far. I bet you’re not as far off as you think. Tech often says the same thing, and he’s usually got a better handle on it than he thinks he does,” Hunter kinda likes the way she asked what he did to help Tech when he was stuck, this felt exactly the same to him. 

“Tech had a long way to fall, which means he had time to do something. Like more time than it would take to simply get out of the way of that railcar… so why is it that that is all he did? What if there was more to it?” 

“Are you implying that Tech might have intended to get caught and didn’t intend to prevent his own injury?” Hunter asks, worry etching his features. 

“Sorta,” Her expression tells him that she doesn’t like the idea either, “he seems to have reasoned that the only way to get to Crosshair was to get caught, and then just happened to literally fall into the right solution to get to him. He likely knew that if any of you simply surrendered, you wouldn’t be taken to the same place as Crosshair, too risky for the Empire to put a completely healthy and independently creative or ‘deviant’ clone in a situation where one or more of their own was at risk. You lads fight your way out of situations like that all the time…

Tech may have also gotten the inkling that they wanted Omega back too, we established that he knew she was important to something the Kaminoans were doing. The question is what? What did he know that he didn’t write down?...” Her thoughts drift off. 

Hunter just watches, knowing she will continue, theres too many thoughts swirling in her eyes, they need to be let out. 

“But maybe that part doesn’t matter yet. Going back to getting to Crosshair and Omega though… if Tech arrived there healthy his presence would put Omega at risk. They know he’s attached to her and probably wouldn’t hesitate to use her against him. And they wanted more compliant test subjects. The most compliant are always the wounded because they can prolong their vulnerability and exploit it as a weakness. Gruesome and morally twisted, but that seems like the Imperial thing to do given the way the chips fell…” 

“And it’s exactly the sort of thing Tech would just do and then tell us later that he ‘thought it was obvious’” Hunter spoke though his hands, which covered his mouth. His brow knitted in concern. 

The doors opened and Echo entered quietly and sat down. The cockpit doors closed behind him. 

She smiled, “old habits die hard, huh Echo?” 

Hunter raised a brow, but otherwise didn’t move. 

Echo rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Yeah. Something like that.” 

Hunter gave him a look. He wasn’t about to let it go with just that. 

Embarrassed, Echo began explaining “I, uhhh, when I was with the 501st, my bestfriend, Fives, was really good at getting into things that he shouldn’t. But he couldn’t smooth talk his way out of anything. He thought he could tho,” Echo laughed, eyes distant and filled with memory, “it was fun, and it didn’t seem fair to let him pay the price when I would follow him right into trouble, knowing that’s where he was leading us. So I got really good at getting us out of it… I…erh… may or may not have heard most of that conversation. I scomped into the system from the computers back there,” he gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, “and let the surveillance feed play in my uhhh,” he pointed at the device on his head, and looked pleadingly at Hunter, hoping he wouldn’t have to put a name to it. Echo hated how much machinery he required just to live a normal life anymore. 

Hunter just laughed. “Rex warned me about your mischievous side when we took you in. I was wondering how long you were gonna try to keep it to yourself. Though you seemed content to just let it out when you thought I wasn’t gonna mention anything, I think it even encouraged the trickster in Omega a few times.” 

“Ha! Sorry.” Echo pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was afraid of that.” 

“Such a brotherly thing to do, encourage his little sister to be a little troublemaker.” She was smiling at them from her chair. 

Both the men laughed quietly and returned the grin. 

“I’m glad you heard that though, Echo, but I’m not sure we should tell Wrecker. I would hate to make him more worried about Tech. It was so sweet of him to worry about the medical care Tech is recieving. I know medical things bother Wrecker the most. I get the feeling he’d be really upset if he figured out that Tech might have let himself get hurt, intentionally. Wrecker’s got such a big heart.” 

“Then let’s focus on the mission objectives,” Echo chimed in. “I’ve been thinking about whether we should team up with Rex for the intel part of the mission. I have a feeling he wouldn’t want to miss a chance to gather some intel on the Imperials while we have the chance.” 

Hunter’s eyes focused on the floor lost in intense thought, the light of the console and the stillness and determination in his expression only highlighting the tattoo covering half his face. 

After a few moments, he looks back up at Echo and nods. “Contact him. We will see what he says in the morning. Until then, you two need rest, this was supposed to be my watch after all,” he smirks, bidding them goodnight as Echo scomps into the comm system, and she exits the cockpit, yawning and ready for a good rest so they can develop a plan in the morning.

(Part 3)

Please don’t steal my work! I pour my heart into these so if you like it please reblog to share instead of reposting it!

taglist: @bambambunny (FIRST time I've ever tagged anyone interested in my fics!!! YAY!!! And congrats to Johann for being the first one on the taglist!!!) (if I forgot to tag anyone, please message me! I don't have a full taglist yet, this is just whoever specifically asked to be tagged for this fic for now!)

#zenith writes #tbb tech #tech lives au #tech tbb #more infodumping sorry #i couldn't help it your honor #felt like Tech would want that so I just let it flow #tbb tech x reader #tech tbb x reader #tech lives #EnigmaTech

[sullustangin]

Fluffy February Day 12: Discipline

Fandom: SWTOR

Time: sometime around 40 BTC

Note: all the characters here are OCs. In sum, the Grand Admiral thing ran away from me.

Word count: ~1200

~~

It took a lot of discipline to keep his true feelings in check on a number of issues.  However, there had to be some give and take.  Principles held, others permitted to fall away. 

To make a new government, a new order, a new solution to the problem of corruption, there had to be some compromise. 

Flying took discipline and focus, a skill to be honed and yet still never fully trusted.  It was something to always be practiced and perfected, never let to rest for too long. 

Thus, it was a disciplined choice to choose to defect to the newborn Empire, leaving behind the dysfunctional Republic. 

Discipline meant shelving selfish desires and focusing on the end goal, no matter the personal cost.  Discipline and duty went hand in hand, often, for him.  He was systematic.  He was fair.  He was consistent.  That’s all his men needed for him to marked “exceptional.”

That disquieted him, even as he rose through the ranks.

Existing in the new Sith Empire meant understanding that everything was potential collateral: the more one had, the more one could lose.  It was like playing planetary poker, in the sense one knew what one had but then had to figure out what everyone else and the dealer had…and what they were willing to lose or discard to get what they wanted.

So once the pilot made it to the upper ranks, he jettisoned his personal life.  He had the discipline to tamp down what he’d wanted, as a younger, less wise man.  Those dreams were casualties of a revolution. 

Wants were dismissed.  Needs were addressed as they arose. 

There was one failing in his discipline.  Or maybe it was the safety valve, the sane and safe way to release pressure with no consequences.

It started …not right after he surrendered domesticity and true love.  Years after that point. 

…it started at a dive bar on one of the moons of Hutta.  He didn’t think it was Nar Shaddaa, because Nar Shaddaa then wasn’t as it is now. 

It meant nothing.

Then they kept finding each other.

It wasn’t love.

Discipline was knowing there would be no happily ever after and never making promises… not even in moments of euphoria or utter peace in each other’s company.

It helped a lot that she was of poor birth, with a last name she’d chosen herself, in a ship she’d earned herself.

(Who, by the great Holy Star, would name their child "Dyominia" voluntarily?)

…he’d earned his ship too, though the name was a hand-me-down.  The Sith Empire liked keeping clutter, such as names, objects, titles, bloodlines.  He conformed.

Smugglers did not live long, so he shrugged it off when she stopped appearing in the same old places for months at a time.  A year.  He had the discipline to keep his temporary grief to himself.  Just as no one knew of her existence, nobody knew of her loss.

Until she wasn’t lost.

She deliberately tried to break through a sector under his supervision.  She always did know how to get his attention.  He knew the name of her ship, and he told an underling to try his hand at handling it.  “Non-citizens have limited rights in Imperial space.  That said, smugglers – and their cargo – can be of use.  Investigate.  Interrogate without the conveniences of a cell.”

“You’ll observe?”

“Yes.”

Discipline was hearing her voice and not breaking the stoic façade as he listened to round after round of questioning.  She had changed.  Aged, in a way.  She kept casting nervous backward glances, as if listening and waiting for something…

Something…

Something finally pierced the air.

A cry.

Discipline was only letting the surprise, not the rage, the jealousy, then the calculations of time march through his head show on his face.

The underling lost his cool, entirely.  “Is that a baby?” he asked in astonishment.

“Well, it’s not my pet parrot,” she replied, annoyed that the questioning had gone on as long as it did. 

(She didn’t have a pet parrot, did she?  He didn’t know.  It never was supposed to matter...)

He went right back to business. “Is it yours, or is it merchandise?”

A parade of emotions went right across her face as she heard his voice – the one she’d been looking for.  The surprise, the relief, then the fear –

Why was she afraid now?  She never had been, even as his rank and power grew and she remained as she was.

The answer came, in his head, from the rules of planetary poker: people do foolish things when they have something to lose. 

“Yes,” she answered, honestly.  “She’s mine.”

A beat.

The underling looked in askance at him.  “I don’t know what –”

“Show me the child.  Then we’ll consider letting you go on your way.”

Discipline was waiting for her to come back, uncaringly, looking over a duty report while the smuggler disappeared into the back of her ship.

Discipline was not immediately looking up when he heard her re-enter the cockpit.

Discipline was not reacting to seeing his own red hair on another person for the first time in many, many years.

And how that small person squalled and fought at her mother, as resenting being put on show for some strange audience. 

(He felt the same way, at every parade, at every training exercise he was told to lead, at every medal ceremony.)

Discipline was realizing she would be better off free with her mother than becoming his collateral – something so precious to lose in the Empire’s clawing and squabbling to the top.

Discipline was peering with feigned disinterest.  “Does it have a name?”

Her brave mother replied, “Athene.  Not like her mother.”

A goddess of wisdom and virginity – no, nothing like her mother at all.

(He always appreciated how very self-aware she was – she knew her role in the galaxy and in their liaison.  Until now.  Now she was as caught as off-guard as he was now, but she could not hide it: no discipline in her.)

He turned to his underling.  “Take the ship into the tractor beam.  We will take it in tow to the other end of the sector to ensure she leaves Imperial space without further delay.”

Discipline was surviving to the end of his shift and making it to his quarters before he had a meltdown of an entire emotional spectrum. 

Discipline was waiting another few months before he dared show himself at the same old places to find her.  He found her right away.

She had changed.  Her body had changed.  The child was cared for and far from here, she reassured him.

…Discipline was knowing it was the last time. Discipline was handing over all the clutter the Sith Empire had kept around.  For her. 

Discipline was waiting to laugh in his quarters at the very idea of “House Corolastor,” should she grow into his choices for his life – not her mother’s. (The red hair would go a long way in substantiating any claim. So would the coffer and the maps.)

The Grand Admiral died at the Second Battle of the Seswenna Sector with Athene Corolastor on his mind, never more than a baby in safe hands that were not his, though he supposed she was now 12 years old.

Discipline meant shelving selfish desires and focusing on the end goal (freedom for her), no matter the personal cost.

~~

@fluffyfebruary

@vexa-legacy, @storyknitter, @serenofroses, @magicallulu7 -- Grand Admiral won.

#swtor #swtor ocs #smuggler oc #imperial admiral oc #fluffy february