Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

slyrider asked: FAM I was at target the other day and saw the DVD for miraculous ladybug and I flipped and bought it cuz I thought it would have all the eps but it only has the first 7 and yeah

That’s so fucking upsetting, and since I am sorry for your disappointment HERE, this the possibly-dubiously-legal website I’ve been watching them on because I don’t have money and I do have wifi.  You’ve probably gotten around to finding that, but still.  A present.  It streams pretty well when you’re not working with shitty college-campus-grade wifi.

girlonstage asked: I have been feeling a desire for a happy Pepper and Tony fic, and if you wrote that, most certainly read and enjoy it. Also, hello! Hope your day had a thing that made you smile really wide :D

Mmmm well I got to get dinner on the dime of my summer program, all the students in it were there and the bill was pushing $400 and I spent the whole time talking with a few people including this dazzlingly gorgeous (although probably straight) girl in the program, so THAT was good, you are so sweet.  I’ll admit I’m pretty tired to toss off a ficlet right now (between work and socializing and starting editing on one of my Actual Real Completed Novels, I have exactly zero brain), BUT, I’ll tell you about one fic I kind of want for this pairing.

Okay, so if I wrote this thing I would call it “Twelve” and it would be literally just happy, there would be very little angst, which is…probably why I haven’t gotten around to writing it, let’s call a spade a spade.  But it would be all the times the number twelve has appeared in Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and I’m sure I’d come up with more while I wrote the thing, but here are a few that would definitely make the cut (with a total disregard for official timeline).

• THE FIRST TIME: Tony has fired…so many personal assistants, okay, and definitely a few quit on grounds of “HE IS IMPOSSIBLE” after finding him asleep half-under a car or after he took apart their coffee machine or something, so Peggy Carter (I’ll fight you for Peggy as Tony’s quirky British aunt) is like “I’m going to handle this, kid,” and gets ahold of the massive list of Stark Industries employees and starts sifting through them for potentials.  Once she has her list of possible candidates, she hacks into Tony’s work (actually she has his password because she knows him and he might be a genius but he’s also sentimental) and changes one value in a file he’s about to send out and makes sure it’s going to go to all of her selected candidates and ships it out.  The next day a woman in a pair of ruthless heels with a stubborn set to her jaw and orange hair marches into Tony’s office and announces that there’s a mistake in his math–it’s 0.12 off.
  
• ANOTHER TIME: So Pepper’s been considering quitting because her boss is…Tony Stark, and like even once he shapes up that’s got to be stressful, and she’s only been working for him for a few months at this point.  So she takes a few minutes to steel herself and goes down to the lab and finds him drinking, which is…normal, honestly, but he’s not doing anything and the bots are all quiet and he’s just sitting there getting drunk and he looks so pathetic that she can’t bring herself to just quit.  Pepper sits down next to him on the lab bench and he says hi, very quiet, and she asks what’s wrong, because Pepper’s like that, and he admits quietly that it’s the anniversary of his parents’ death.  She should have known this, in retrospect, because the death of Howard Stark was BIG NEWS, but still: kind of slipped her mind.  And he just sighs, this deep bone-shaking sigh, and leans to the side until he reaches her shoulder and says even quieter that it’s been twelve years now (he looks maybe twenty-ish in the flashback at the start of Civil War?), and Pepper decides she can put off quitting until tomorrow.
• ANOTHER TIME: Pepper turns in her resignation twelve times.  She also storms in to snatch the letter out of his hands and chew him out for his latest transgression and snarl “Of course I’m not quitting” when he reaches for the letter twelve times.  She stops somewhere around the two year mark.
• ANOTHER TIME: During Iron Man.  Tony’s been missing for twelve days.  Pepper has been handling media relations that whole time–she hasn’t cracked her perfectly smooth professional face once.  She locks herself into her office, orders JARVIS to keep everyone out, and cries for two hours that twelfth day.
• ANOTHER TIME: The twelve percent thing in Avengers?  Yeah, that’s a running joke, what percent of the Tower Pepper’s responsible for, there would be a bit dealing with that.
• ANOTHER TIME: I don’t fucking know, like, how much do you think the Chitauri damage is going to cost to fix?  It’s fairly localized damage, but it’s impressive.  So Tony and Pepper have a chat and they decide to donate twelve million dollars to the reconstruction effort, in addition to other stuff.
• THE LAST TIME: Tony takes Pepper out for dinner and reserves the whole restaurant because he DOES actually learn from his mistakes and Pepper doesn’t love being made a public spectacle, and after the meal when she’s looking down at the dessert menu he sets a black velvet box on the table with a ring in it.  The ring has a central sapphire–as blue as the dress ‘he’ got her for her birthday–surrounded by twelve minuscule diamonds.  She says yes.

Anonymous asked: I wish you would write a fic where you just fuck me up with the life-ruining kind of Anidala, I really just wish that.

Oh but friend, where would we start?

Canon?  BECAUSE CANON IS PRETTY BAD.

But no, we can do better.

The AU where Vader is the one to walk away from Mustafar and he goes to Padme and takes her in his arms and his Darkness and kisses her and says “anything, anything for you, my angel” and she is faced with a choice: use this weapon who’s come to her hand and trying to save the galaxy from him by conquering it, or take her children, soft fragile corruptible things that they are, and run as far as she can, hoping that the galaxy will be able to save itself while she saves them?

The AU where Anakin, small and alone and barely not-a-slave for more than a breath, has a vision on the ship traveling back from Tatooine, and wakes up screaming his throat raw for…something, and Padme comes and tries to take him in her arms and comfort him–a child-queen responding to the fear of a child-Jedi–and he flinches away like she’s lit him on fire?

The AU where they return to Coruscant and Anakin is turned away, and they go to Naboo and Qui-Gon dies and Anakin is turned away, and away, and away, until he’s lost and powerful and scared and angry, and Padme comes and takes his hand and stares at the Jedi and says “he is Naboo and I will buy out his contract and he will be free” and, surrounded by her handmaidens that night, realizes that she’s responsible for training him how to not drown in the Force and how to be kind and how to be gentle and how to be a free person?

The AU where they’re at war with the Separatists and some rageful clone from the 501st abandons his brothers and turns on his General and does what they had all agreed not to do, and goes to the Jedi Council and says “Skywalker has broken the Code,” and Anakin is cast out, disowned by the Jedi, disgraced in the army, distrusted by Obi-Wan, and Padme may be everything, but even Padme is not enough to replace all those people?

The AU where Padme is what breaks Vader in a whole other way, held like a threat over his head, like a promise just before his fingers, like spun crystal ready to be broken between Sidious’ fingers at any moment?

The AU where nothing changes except that Vader, burned and trapped in a torture-suit and broken to the will of his latest Master, feels a burst of power in the Force and he knows that power, he knows that mind, it’s Padme, Padme is alive and she will understand/forgive/hate/save/kill him, because Padme is stronger than he ever could have been, and Vader tears across the galaxy only to find…children, two children, a baby girl with Padme’s dark curls and his angry stare, a baby boy with his sandstorm-dust locks and her sweet smile, and they are his/hers/theirs/no one’s, but where is Padme?

Or.  Well.  There’s always the AU We Do Not Speak Of.  

Surely emotion is not wicked at its core, young Padme says, surely not, and she reaches out, learns to shape the Force with her passions and her loves and her rages and her laughs, and it is warm and rich and wild and vicious and everything she is (and surely this cannot be the Dark Side), and when she stands on the Tatooine sand and meets a boy who shines like a sun, some part of her mind (the part that’s seen people die because their vaunted politicians took too long to see them suffering, the part that’s seen wars start over petty arguments and diplomatic differences, the part that looks around Tatooine and thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power to save them) says yesssss.  And she reaches out and she takes his hand and she stays in touch and she assures him that no, emotion is not wrong, love is not wrong, Attachment is not wrong, he is not wrong, and one day…oh, one day he comes to her, wild-eyed, with the words of another person on his tongue and talk about Sith, and she does her research and she thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power, and…

Well.  Padme only wants to help.  Surely the ends justify the means.  Surely this cannot be Dark, if it’s to save starving children and wounded soldiers and slaves.

And the Empire rises under the command of its Empress and her iron fist, Darth Vader.

Anonymous asked: honestly i'm not sure to hate you or love you (love, it's love) because that cliffhanger is so coMPELLING!

I love you too, babe, but I’m also feeding on your distress, so take it as you will.  I’m glad you liked the thing, cliffhanger notwithstanding!

Anonymous asked: Cliffhangers are literally the worst??? I mean??? Why? Why would you do this????

Okay, there’s the ‘I’m a dick’ answer which is “I like to make people (especially my roommate) suffer.”  And there’s the ‘I’m a writer’ answer, which is “The next good break point was going to be like five pages down the line and this chapter was already longer than my average goal for this story.”  And then there’s the ‘life is time-consuming’ answer, which is “I wanted to get the chapter out before I was a billion.”

I mean, take your pick, they’re all perfectly true.

@littlestartopaz​ asked for the answers to F, W, X, and Y from this post, sooo here we go.

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it. 

Answered here.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?

As I believe we’ve established, my writing operates on a very strict rule: the less specific a prompt is, the faster it gets out of hand.  Do I like general prompts like “Hamilton Star Wars AU” that I can write about at length?  Absolutely.  But I also really don’t have time to do a lot of them, so perforce I’m going to say ‘specific’.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer.

…all of them.  Ever.  Specifically?  Um…nah, I’m going to stand by that.  The more I like a character, the more I want to see them cry over the bodies of everyone they’ve ever loved.  One of my most beloved original characters actually has that exact experience in the canon plot of her novel, and everyone I killed for it were characters I adore.  No one is safe.

Y: A character you want to protect.

I’m going to assume that it’s perfectly feasible to both like making a character suffer and want to protect them, so…yeah.  Wanda Maximoff is the first one to come to mind, also Kurt Wagner, Jean Grey, and Warren Worthington III, John Laurens (I can include historical characters, I do what I want), Grantaire, Enjolras, Cosette, Eponine, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff…Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls…the Animorphs if anyone gets THAT reference…Aerin Dragon-Killer, which is even MORE obscure…Rogue, Gambit, Kitty Pryde, Colossus…this list could go on.

ghostdog401 asked: F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This conversation, from this untitled Sam/Steve/Bucky friendship ficlet.

“It’s Captain America, Barnes,” Clint said, a laugh hidden beneath the deadpan.  “He doesn’t need taking care of.”

Bucky stopped and gave the plane at large a pitying sort of look. “You poor sonsabitches, you fell for it. You fell for the spiel.  Let me tell you somethin’, when I say I left for five minutes, I mean five goddamn minutes.  I turn my back on this little shit, last time I’m gonna see him before I go off and get my ass shot at by a bunch of dickless Nazis, and he runs off and signs up to be a guinea pig for Stark.  I wasn’t even out of the city, I was a hundred yards away.”

“So compared to that, this seems like a much better plan, don’t you think?” Steve asked, grinning. 

BECAUSE I FELT LIKE BUCKY NEEDED TO GET THAT OFF HIS CHEST, AND I AM PROUD TO HAVE BEEN A PART OF IT.  

I’m also very proud of literally all the dialogue in this untitled Rogue/Remy ficlet, but I couldn’t pick a favorite bit.

Anonymous asked: for the fanfic ask game, how about H, R, and S?

Woo, people are doing the thing!  From this post.

H: How would you describe your style?

Too many fucking commas.  

Seriously, though, I’m not sure how I’d describe my style, since I tend to vary it depending on how I want the story to feel.  Something like things we lost in the fire, my Les Mis Avatar AU, is supposed to feel very different from, like, this, my First Order Rey AU.  I guess my style is very character-driven–I perceive my characters (and other people’s characters, in fic) as very real people, so I try to model the feeling of the story after the way the POV character thinks.  Which is how I end up with things like the Hamilton Star Wars AU, which has A LOT of commas and run-on sentences because…Alexander Hamilton.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) who you consider an influence?

Oh buddy.  Oh buddy buckle up.  First and biggest nod goes to Robin McKinley (GO READ HER STUFF IMMEDIATELY), who I aspire to be when I grow up.  Robin McKinley taught a very scared and very lonely kid who had just been told that she was too old for playing pretend that there was still magic in the world, and I’m always going to owe a massive debt to her for that.  If this was a ‘pick one’ sort of question, it would be her.  JK Rowling, obligatory honorable mention, Lions for the Cup.  PC Hodgell, who is better at sweeping world-building and not-cliche battles between Good and Evil than anyone I can think of off the top of my head (see my rant about her tragically unknown series here).  Neil Gaiman, who balances the creepy with the daily with the mystical in a way I desperately envy.  The innumerable mediocre authors I trucked through in my school libraries, who taught me what NOT to do, which is just as important as what to do.  For fic authors… @notbecauseofvictories, because her Tumblr fics showed me that it was okay to be messy and wild and just…happy about what I was writing at a time where I kind of needed it.  @determamfidd because Sansukh was, like, fucking life-changing, buddy, I am living a post-Sansukh life right now.  The author of the first fic I ever read (no idea who it was, but it was a Buffy fic with a rewrite of Season 3, and I was PRETTY CONCUSSED at the time, so the fact that I even remember the plot should earn me brownie points, it was a great fic and I should find it again).  Um…I can think of maybe twenty more people, published and otherwise, off the top of my head, but I think this massive block of text is long enough, yes?

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Um…many.  I’m a sucker for soulmate AU’s, I really am.  I am also pathetically weak for mutual pining, particularly the whole “X person will never love me back and it’s okay I’ll just sit here and quietly pine away because I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY” thing.  It’s probably a good part of the reason I like Enjolras/Grantaire so much, the Enjolras/Grantaire tag on AO3 is here for you and all your pining needs.  Those are probably the two biggest ones, although I’m also weak for size difference because I’m FIVE GODDAMN FEET TALL and everyone I could hypothetically date is a fucking giant.

Anonymous asked: So, about this Hamilton Star Wars AU: I have noticed an unacceptable lack of Hamilton/Laurens headcanons and feelings and urge you to inflict these on us at your earliest convenience.

Oh, sorry, friend, it looks like you’ve got a typo, I think you meant hey, Moran, inflict your thoughts on Space Monmouth on us, seeing as Laurens almost died there. 

• Washington, by this point, has been SOUNDLY outed as a Bad Code-Breaking Jedi (with a wife, the Council would like to reiterate).  So the Congress governing the Continental systems decided that they needed to save face a little and made Washington promote Master Lee to the rank of Major General, because his record as a Jedi is impeccable.
  
• Um, naturally, way back when they first meet, Lee takes one look at Washington’s padawan and launches into a truly epic lecture about the dangers and crimes of attachment.  Laurens poker-faces through the whole thing and Hamilton instantly and deeply loathes Lee, because Laurens starts to retreat again.  It’s taken him months to coax Laurens into kissing him, into letting him slip into his bunk and nestle into him sleepily.  Laurens has even started being the one to initiate, tugging Hamilton down by the hand and wrapping long arms around him, pressing skin to skin.  That changes with Lee standing around, looking judgemental.
• That’s okay, though, because Laurens deeply and sincerely loathes Lee for the dispassionate report that Hamilton died at Schuylkill.  Everyone hates Lee, basically.
• Lee actually turns down the command at first because he’s offended at how small it is, never mind that the Continental army is desperately strapped for men and fighters alike.  Washington has the best deadpan in the business, which is the only reason that Lee doesn’t know how relieved he is to hand the command over to Lafayette.
• Of course, then Lee comes back and says he’s going to take command after all, and attack the Empire troops as they leave the desert moon Monmouth, where they spent their own winter.  Washington still holds up that deadpan, because the only other option is to rest his head on the table and swear like a smuggler.
• So they go to battle, Laurens and Hamilton among the fighters Lee leads down into the atmosphere.  The heat from low-atmo combat is so awful a few ships–Continental and Imperial alike–malfunction on the spot and go down in flaming wreckage, all hands dead.
• Here’s the thing.  There’s a trend across Laurens and Hamilton’s experience in battle.  
• At Brandywine, Laurens almost died, after taking a blaster shot to the shoulder.
• Schuylkill was Schuylkill.
• On the Island, Hamilton broke onto an Imperial ship and stole twenty-one out of twenty-four top-of-the-line fighters, while ignoring heavy strafing fire from a battlecruiser.  Hercules, who was there, swears up and down that it gave him grey hair.
• Innumerable other skirmishes have proved that, given the opening, they’re more likely to risk their necks than preserve them.
• They should be used to it, is the thing.  And Laurens might be, if he does say so himself, because Hamilton can find a near-lethal fight with any civilian on the street.  Hamilton, on the other hand, is not, and when Laurens is shot out of the sky, he doesn’t even try to find the other man’s Force signature before he panics.
• Lee is a coward at heart.  He’s not prepared to face the brutal heat, nor the desperation of the Imperial troops, nor the explosion of a Force-hurricane at the combat line.  He runs, and when he runs, the ragged Continental line shatters.
• And then the General’s personal fighter, the Vernon, comes screaming in from the edge of the atmosphere with Lafayette’s Marquis on his wing and the hurricane of Hamilton’s power still roaring so that even the soldiers with less Force-sense than a potato can feel it, and the Continentalists rally with a vengeance.  It’s not a win, but they’ve proved they can hold their line.
• Laurens is pulled out of his wreckage, almost completely uninjured and drenched in Hamilton’s Force signature.  Laurens doesn’t know what happened, and Hamilton isn’t talking.  
• Lee starts talking shit, because Lee is terrible.
• Washington takes a minute, thinks about it, and immediately issues an order that Hamilton have nothing to do with Lee, because Hamilton is on the warpath about Laurens’ latest brush with death.
• Unfortunately, he fails to get ahead of Laurens himself, who is finally reaching his breaking point.  And who would probably jump off a space deck without a suit if Hamilton wanted him to.
• LIGHTSABER DUELS.  HAMILTON DOES NOT LIKE THEM.
• No, seriously, Jedi, Hamilton wants to know why you don’t use blasters like sane people.  He really does.  Using blasters and the Force together is both convenient and fun.  And ranged.  Get on his level.  
• Hamilton almost has a heart attack when he hears someone scream on the dueling ground, and the organ only resumes normal function when Laurens flicks off his lightsaber and lets Lee drop to the ground, a long cauterized wound to the ex-general’s ribs still smoking.
• Laurens is in trouble (Washington would like to be on record that he’s been encouraging attachment, not rampant violence, and he’s very disappointed), but Hamilton…oh, Hamilton is really in trouble.  Because Laurens can call it acting impulsively and ‘a learning experience,’ but Hamilton disobeyed a direct order.
• Washington doesn’t say “I’d send you home but this ship is the only one you have,” but it’s a near thing, and Hamilton looks crushed nonetheless.  It’s a bad day for everyone.
• Instead of being sent ‘home,’ Hamilton is sent away from the front lines (away from John, a greedy part of his mind mutters, and holocalls are so interceptible, they won’t even be able to see each other, letters only), to serve as a liaison and bodyguard for their best supply ship.
• The Revelation picks up its new passenger on its next pass.  At least he’s old friends with the sisters, Hamilton thinks glumly as he lets Eliza crush him in a hug and ruffles his hand through Peggy’s hair to make her squawk in offence and call for Angelica.
• Still.
• The girls aren’t Laurens.

Anonymous asked: I can't help but feel that we are falling inline with themes played in V for Vendetta. Your thoughts? World events seem too coincidental, but there is no such thing as coincidence.

twistedangelsays:

words-writ-in-starlight:

This is…a weirdly heavy question to just….get in Ye Olde Inbox, but okay, sure, we can talk V for Vendetta, I ain’t got shit to do.

Okay, to appreciate that I’m not just being a bitch here, you need to know that I’m not being funny when I call myself a cynic.  I’m pretty serious about that, I consistently expect people to act selfishly and be generally unhelpful until/unless I know them pretty fucking well.  @twistedangelsays (yoooo babe, back me up here) can confirm that my usual response to being told to depend on someone for help is to blink blankly and ask “but what would be in it for them to help me with this.”  (Her usual response is “they’re your teacher, they’re literally getting paid for this,” but I’d like to kindly remind her that teachers at colleges get paid regardless.)  The way I’ve described it several times in my tags is that I’m in love with humanity, and they don’t love me back, so I have a very peculiar view that’s half “God let’s just talk about the Voyager probe and random acts of kindness and the fact that we domesticated our primary predator” and half “I am genuinely not even surprised when people suck, and haven’t been in…forever, maybe.”  It’s a very capital-R Romantic viewpoint, think Grantaire from Les Mis, I am Grantaire and Grantaire is me.

That being said, here are my current thoughts on the V for Vendetta thing.

1. V for Vendetta, or any other dystopian story on the lines of 1984 or Brave New World, presumes a level of competence on the collective scale that I just haven’t seen in the American government (I’m American, we currently have Clinton and a racist Cheeto duking it out for president, I’m usually better about being aware of the wider world but I am Very Concerned about the election, so the only thing that I really took note of was Brexit, I’m sorry, this is gonna be pretty US-centric.)  Individually, I’m confident that many–um, some of our politicians and administrators are perfectly functional human beings with a high degree of competency, but I have yet to see that brought to the table in any sort of concerted effort.  I remember a lot of government criticism way back when the Occupy movement was a thing revolving around “Well, they don’t have a goal” and that’s valid, I made that remark myself, but also…like, fucking hark who’s talking, Washington DC, what have you done with your life lately.  So that’s the main thing, is that our government flat-out isn’t cohesive enough to execute a functional dystopia, we’re too much of a chaotic mess.
   
2. That being said, I don’t know how much that’s a positive thing.  I mean, the lack of a genuine totalitarian regime (and conversations about whether or not America trends toward dystopianism can please delayed to a later date) is obviously a good thing, but the entropic decline toward chaos we’re witnessing in the clash between the rising generation of (largely) liberal mindset and the people in power, who are by and large interested in maintaining the status quo…that’s going to be REAL messy when it starts to break down.  I mean, shit, it’s already breaking down, look around, read the news, and then maybe drink, ‘cause shit’s depressing.  Who needs totalitarianism when you have what-the-fuck-ever this is.
3. This is more general, but I’m of the opinion that people are neither fundamentally good nor bad, but rather fundamentally people (that’s a bastardized Good Omens quote, it makes some EXTREMELY good philosophical points between the demonic/angelic antics and Four Bikers of the Apocalypse).  As mentioned above, this means I assume a level of selfish behavior, particularly from those already in a position of power–power and wealth beget nothing so much as the desire to maintain one’s power and wealth.  In addition, that translates to a fairly telescopic view on the world, in which one’s immediate loved ones (possibly including self) generally take absolute precedence over the abstracted ‘they.’  Soooo that translates into “the human capacity for precipitating disaster is boundless,” in Moran-speak.

Anyway.  TL;DR: I don’t think much of people’s inherent capacity to be functional enough to run a V for Vendetta style dystopian system (this is also where a lot of conspiracy theories break down for me), but hey.  I’m sure they’ll impress me with their skill at fucking everything up anyway.  Let me take this opportunity to remind my American followers to vote against Trump, I don’t give a damn what you think of Clinton.

And if a revolution starts, I can shoot a gun and have medical qualifications in addition to a good tactical brain, fucking point me at the recruitment office.

I hereby confirm that @words-writ-in-starlight is my darling cynical wife. That’s why we make such a good pair: every idealist needs a cynic to bring them down to earth.

Also, unsurprisingly, I concur. I would not call America totalitarian or dystopian, though there are definitely aspects of those fictional societies reflected in our own (And it would get a lot more totalitarian if Donald Trump got his way and was elected).

I think the key is that it doesn’t have to be be full on dystopian to be oppressive and terrifying. There is corruption, there is discrimination. America is doing abysmally on issues in almost every area of policy. Problems abound. Change needs to happen, whether it happens systematically with politicians moving in the right direction (unlikely) or whether the people rise and force the issue (and my inner Enjolras is displayed for the world to see).

“Do you hear the people sing?” And all that jazz. So there you go: cynical nature of my dear wife confirmed and a slight tangent with an idealist’s spin no one asked for. You satisfied, Hamilton?