“Are you normally this pale or do you return to your coffin at sunrise?”
“I can’t figure out who you’re dressed as but you look amazing.”
“I’m taking my little niece/nephew/cousin trick-or-treating.”
“This IS my costume.”
“BOO! Did I scare you?”
“You forgot your broomstick.”
“Ah Halloween! The one time of year I feel normal.”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to bump into you. I can’t see anything through this fog.”
“Do you normally go to haunted houses?”
“The house at the end of the street gives out full size candy bars. Wanna hit them up?”
“Great party, huh?”
“Is that zombie Elvis?”
“I’m a home haunter. It’s what you call people who REALLY do the whole decorate thing for Halloween.”
“Are there any scary movies playing nearby?”
“Dressing up is stupid.”
“Must be hard to kiss with those fake teeth…”
“Your house looks amazing!”
“This is my casual cape. My fancy one is at the cleaners.”
“I was thinking about doing a monster movie marathon, wanna join me?”
“The veil between the living and the dead is thin tonight.”
“I was just going to stay home and hand out candy to the kids.”
“Something lingers in the dark…”
“That werewolf looks a little TOO real.”
“No one went to this creepy old house that stood on the corner at the end of the street. Years ago it burned down, but they say on Halloween it reappears and makes children vanish in the night…”
“He resembles Princess Luthien greatly,” Oropher said and Celeborn stiffened on instinct.
He side-eyed his kinsman, bracing for the impact of whatever came next. Oropher never made idle comments. Oropher epecially never made idle comments to him, not without the direct intention of starting a fight.
Celeborn hoped this wasn’t intended to be a fight. He’d promised Gil-galad, and more importantly, Galadriel, that they wouldn’t so much as bicker tonight. They were supposed to stand next to one another in solidarity and pretend like the High Council of Lindon wasn’t fracturing at the seams and about to fall apart, the direct consequence of Oropher’s words and desires and pride.
But right now, Oropher at least wasn’t speaking of their king- ‘I don’t remember choosing him, do you think you speak for all of us?’- but of the one standing next to him on the ballroom dais. Of perhaps the one person whose name and presence between them was just as, if not more, incendiary than Gil-galad’s. Poor Elrond.
“He does,” Celeborn replied mildly, biting his tongue before he could ask why Oropher was bringing this up now. It wasn’t like he’d never seen the young lord- no longer a boy, not a child by any race’s measure, though it was hard to remember- before. It wasn’t like they all didn’t meet and talk often enough.
“More than either Elwing or Earendil. Or her.”
And, ah. There it was.
“True enough,” Celeborn said, and he wasn’t sure if Oropher wanted him to agree or not, but he wasn’t going to lie.
Elrond took greatly after dear Aunt Luthien. In some lights it was slightly nerve wracking.
Oropher crossed his arms rather than reply immediately, his face closed off. Not stony or hard like at council meetings, but his thoughts and feelings were far away from any observer. He actually looked like the lord they pretended he was, rather than the rogue marchwarden he actually was; regal. When Oropher looked like that he reminded Celeborn of Galathil.
He looked away.
“I think, in the details though, they are more present. His cheeks, for example-“
“And it’s funny,” Oropher said, and he even huffed a very sad laugh, trying and failing to make it sound like he actually was joking. The two of them hadn’t shared a joke since… since.
Celeborn certainly wasn’t laughing. He closed his eyes and swallowed his annoyance at being interrupted. He knew Oropher did it on purpose, perpetually the preteen at his brother’s table delighting in ribald and shock.
And there were his words to consider.
“El-Elwing didn’t really take after Luthien very much.”
She didn’t. She’d taken after the person whose presence hung between Oropher and Celeborn like the unlight of Ungoliant, sucking the air out of the room. Which was a horrible legacy for someone they both loved so much, but grief did strange things to already strained relationships.
“I keep asking myself if there’s something about Earendil I’m forgetting.” Oropher was rambling now, highly uncharacteristic. Celeborn drew in a long breath and re-centered himself in anticipation for wherever this was headed. “Has Galadriel said anything about a resemblance to anyone in her family?”
Celeborn raised an eyebrow, but Oropher wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were locked somewhere past Elrond’s head. Hopefully he hadn’t noticed.
But Oropher acknowledging Galadriel’s family, Earendil’s family willingly?
Oropher had always seemed to operate under some purposeful mental dissonance, wherein he forced himself to think of Galadriel as some Telerin princess who had mystically made her way across the sea alone and by sheer force of will. And Earendil? He might as well have been prince to some lost, entirely independent Elven kingdom- not Sindar, not Laiquendi, certainly not Noldor- for how Oropher acted, for the most part.
He’d slipped in an argument about Gil-galad once when he shouted that, ‘Earendil was the only Noldo I would have ever had for my king and he’s gone!’
“She’s never made any special mention of a resemblance,” Celeborn said carefully. He didn’t want to call attention to the… mannerisms picked up from certain half-cousins that Galadriel had noticed. That wasn’t a resemblance, after all. “Why?”
“No particular reason,” he said, though it was becoming clear that there was a very particular reason, “just, many remark that his brother took after Earendil and I never saw it, so I-“
“I always thought Elros more so resembled Dior.”
Oropher’s head snapped over to finally look at him. He nodded, slow and low, not even slightly upset at being interrupted.
“Yes, I thought the same,” he said. “Funny that. Identical twins, but it’s in the- the bearing. Who they take after. Luthien and Dior.”
Celeborn fought off the shudder that threatened the shake him, to make him crack and crumble under the weight of the thing between him and Oropher that would never go away. He actually looked Oropher in the eye, and in that faraway gaze, this time he saw the same weakness.
“How much have you had to drink this evening?” Celeborn asked.
Oropher shrugged casually, with one shoulder, and that was plenty of answer. Surely he couldn’t be as drunk as either the time Celeborn found his and his friends deep into Galathil’s liquor cabinet or the night they drank themselves into a state in Sirion after… after. Still.
“That’s very unbecoming.”
“You see it though, right?” Oropher said, voice still uncharacteristically even, but when they met eyes…
He was such a weepy drunk.
“Elwing and Earendil’s boys, they carry themselves well,” he said, voice bitter as could be. “Beautiful, kind, clever, magnetic, the both of them. Princess Luthien’s wildness is in Elrond, and Dior’s wonder at the world is in Elros. They stand so tall. And, yes, you’re right, Elwing and Earendil are there in the margins, but there’s also- also them. And so much space is taken up, our- Lothig is eaten whole.”
Hearing Nimloth’s childhood nickname come out of Oropher’s mouth was like being stabbed. There was no more air. Just like that, Celeborn was drowning.
“You should be proud,” he hissed back, trying to keep his head above water. “That is a fine legacy to resemble, our princess, our king. We loved them as well. At least, I did.”
Oropher wasn’t listening. He never did.
“Do you think any of these people-“ he swept his arm out to gesture at the entire room, the entirety of Lindon’s court; Noldor, Sindar, Nandor, Men and Dwarves in the margins, and one peredhil. “-care that they killed her?”
“Don’t put that on him,” Celeborn snapped quietly, “he doesn’t owe you grief for someone he never knew-“
“I don’t care what Elrond feels, I can’t even look at him,” Oropher spat out, every word sounding pained, and there was torment in his whisper quiet voice.
That whisper, more than anything, tipped Celeborn off to the fact that this conversation wasn’t just one of their drunken spats about trading blame.
“I would have raised that boy like we raised his mother and your brother raised me,” Oropher said, “but that didn’t happen, and I can’t look at him. He looks like Luthien. His brother looks like Dior. And that’s a wonderful thing for everyone else in this room, isn’t it? That’s hope. The beautiful king taken too soon reborn and the Nightengale who stole her happy ending walking among us, and that’s such a lovely end to this tale for them. But what about for us, Celeborn?”
For Celeborn? Celeborn was shaking with the effort it was taking to keep his breathing even. Galadriel touched the edge of his fea to ask if he was okay. He gently pushed her away.
Oropher was right about one thing, this was about their family; about Doriath and Menegorth and being the last two members of Thingol’s inner court on this shore.
Eru Iluvatar, how did it end up being them? Just a pair of hot-headed youths with the weight an entire dead kingdom on their shoulders.
“Gondolin and Nargothrond are gone too,” he replied, the words dull even to his ears. “Hithlum and Dorthonion, half of Ossiriand, and even Himlad and Thargelion. It’s about building something new for all of us. Hope is not a bad thing.”
“It’s different for us.”
Yes. It was. Because Doriath and Sirion need not have fallen like that, and the monsters who took their homes and their loved ones from them weren’t even defeated. They faded, sad and pathetic and allowed to escape by everyone and everything but their prize, and there was no catharsis in that.
And in this kingdom they spoke Sindarin, but they took a Noldorin king who ruled through Noldorin traditions- with a few of Cirdan’s lessons thrown in there- in a city built by Noldorin hands. After his death, Thingol had lost his war of cultural influence. Badly.
“No one here remembers her but us, Celeborn,” Oropher urged. “They remember our heroes and our most tantalizing tragedies, but they don’t remember her. They don’t see her. She’s just one more dead wife and mother, if they get that far, but not a cousin, a niece-“
“Enough, Oropher.”
“-an astrologist, a troublemaker, a queen, a girl who was so scared of being outshined-“
“Oropher!” Celeborn snapped, more harshly than he meant to. It made Oropher stop long enough that he could put a hand on his shoulder, though.
“Oropher, you’re weeping.”
He blinked harshly, then brought up a hand to wipe at his cheek. When he pulled away, Celeborn could see how wet the palm was. Oropher glared at the remnant of his tears like they’d personally offended him.
He muttered, half to himself, “Surely you can’t keep living like this. Ignoring what was done to us because it’s awkward and inconvenient for the new age they’re building.”
Could he? Celeborn didn’t know. He was trying. Galadriel was trying; she had as many wounds as him she was trying to swallow for the sake of something new and bright. But it was hard. Lindon made Celeborn feel old, somehow. But with Oropher he was always just a boy again, strutting around Menegroth, trying to make his place, being too loud and too proud and too sure of himself.
Perhaps that was part of why they couldn’t stop fighting. Always just boys when together. And those boys, they had a few things in common.
Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were in Oropher. And when Oropher looked at him, those same things were in Celeborn. There was no place for those things in this new world.
Because Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were forever gone on this shore. Oropher needed to realize that. Not matter how much it fucking hurt.
“Go to bed, Oropher,” Celeborn told him softly. “You’re drunk and emotional. You’ll embarrass your son. He’s one of those young people looking for something new. Something hopeful.”
And when they looked back towards Gil-galad’s dais and the youths surrounding him, there was Thranduil, charming smile on his face, making Elrond toss his head back and laugh. If anyone took after Nimloth, it was him; her mother and Oropher’s had been identical twins.
Celeborn’s hand was suddenly colder and hanging in the air. He turned back to the kid who showed up one day and took so much of his older brother’s attention and who he’d never forgiven for that small slight. Oropher was composed and looking like Galathil once more.
“I hate that you’re right,” he whispered. “And he probably needs me to be better than this. But I can’t be better here.”
And he left.
The next week, Oropher would formally announce his intention to travel east and settle there, alongside anyone who would join him. Celeborn, to the surprise of every other council member but Galadriel, raised no objection. Very briefly, the thought crossed his mind to join Oropher.
But that desire faded quickly. The envy didn’t, though, not for many, many years.
Not until the day he planted a little silver tree in Lothlorien.
“He resembles Princess Luthien greatly,” Oropher said and Celeborn stiffened on instinct.
He side-eyed his kinsman, bracing for the impact of whatever came next. Oropher never made idle comments. Oropher epecially never made idle comments to him, not without the direct intention of starting a fight.
Celeborn hoped this wasn’t intended to be a fight. He’d promised Gil-galad, and more importantly, Galadriel, that they wouldn’t so much as bicker tonight. They were supposed to stand next to one another in solidarity and pretend like the High Council of Lindon wasn’t fracturing at the seams and about to fall apart, the direct consequence of Oropher’s words and desires and pride.
But right now, Oropher at least wasn’t speaking of their king- ‘I don’t remember choosing him, do you think you speak for all of us?’- but of the one standing next to him on the ballroom dais. Of perhaps the one person whose name and presence between them was just as, if not more, incendiary than Gil-galad’s. Poor Elrond.
“He does,” Celeborn replied mildly, biting his tongue before he could ask why Oropher was bringing this up now. It wasn’t like he’d never seen the young lord- no longer a boy, not a child by any race’s measure, though it was hard to remember- before. It wasn’t like they all didn’t meet and talk often enough.
“More than either Elwing or Earendil. Or her.”
And, ah. There it was.
“True enough,” Celeborn said, and he wasn’t sure if Oropher wanted him to agree or not, but he wasn’t going to lie.
Elrond took greatly after dear Aunt Luthien. In some lights it was slightly nerve wracking.
Oropher crossed his arms rather than reply immediately, his face closed off. Not stony or hard like at council meetings, but his thoughts and feelings were far away from any observer. He actually looked like the lord they pretended he was, rather than the rogue marchwarden he actually was; regal. When Oropher looked like that he reminded Celeborn of Galathil.
He looked away.
“I think, in the details though, they are more present. His cheeks, for example-“
“And it’s funny,” Oropher said, and he even huffed a very sad laugh, trying and failing to make it sound like he actually was joking. The two of them hadn’t shared a joke since… since.
Celeborn certainly wasn’t laughing. He closed his eyes and swallowed his annoyance at being interrupted. He knew Oropher did it on purpose, perpetually the preteen at his brother’s table delighting in ribald and shock.
And there were his words to consider.
“El-Elwing didn’t really take after Luthien very much.”
She didn’t. She’d taken after the person whose presence hung between Oropher and Celeborn like the unlight of Ungoliant, sucking the air out of the room. Which was a horrible legacy for someone they both loved so much, but grief did strange things to already strained relationships.
“I keep asking myself if there’s something about Earendil I’m forgetting.” Oropher was rambling now, highly uncharacteristic. Celeborn drew in a long breath and re-centered himself in anticipation for wherever this was headed. “Has Galadriel said anything about a resemblance to anyone in her family?”
Celeborn raised an eyebrow, but Oropher wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were locked somewhere past Elrond’s head. Hopefully he hadn’t noticed.
But Oropher acknowledging Galadriel’s family, Earendil’s family willingly?
Oropher had always seemed to operate under some purposeful mental dissonance, wherein he forced himself to think of Galadriel as some Telerin princess who had mystically made her way across the sea alone and by sheer force of will. And Earendil? He might as well have been prince to some lost, entirely independent Elven kingdom- not Sindar, not Laiquendi, certainly not Noldor- for how Oropher acted, for the most part.
He’d slipped in an argument about Gil-galad once when he shouted that, ‘Earendil was the only Noldo I would have ever had for my king and he’s gone!’
“She’s never made any special mention of a resemblance,” Celeborn said carefully. He didn’t want to call attention to the… mannerisms picked up from certain half-cousins that Galadriel had noticed. That wasn’t a resemblance, after all. “Why?”
“No particular reason,” he said, though it was becoming clear that there was a very particular reason, “just, many remark that his brother took after Earendil and I never saw it, so I-“
“I always thought Elros more so resembled Dior.”
Oropher’s head snapped over to finally look at him. He nodded, slow and low, not even slightly upset at being interrupted.
“Yes, I thought the same,” he said. “Funny that. Identical twins, but it’s in the- the bearing. Who they take after. Luthien and Dior.”
Celeborn fought off the shudder that threatened the shake him, to make him crack and crumble under the weight of the thing between him and Oropher that would never go away. He actually looked Oropher in the eye, and in that faraway gaze, this time he saw the same weakness.
“How much have you had to drink this evening?” Celeborn asked.
Oropher shrugged casually, with one shoulder, and that was plenty of answer. Surely he couldn’t be as drunk as either the time Celeborn found his and his friends deep into Galathil’s liquor cabinet or the night they drank themselves into a state in Sirion after… after. Still.
“That’s very unbecoming.”
“You see it though, right?” Oropher said, voice still uncharacteristically even, but when they met eyes…
He was such a weepy drunk.
“Elwing and Earendil’s boys, they carry themselves well,” he said, voice bitter as could be. “Beautiful, kind, clever, magnetic, the both of them. Princess Luthien’s wildness is in Elrond, and Dior’s wonder at the world is in Elros. They stand so tall. And, yes, you’re right, Elwing and Earendil are there in the margins, but there’s also- also them. And so much space is taken up, our- Lothig is eaten whole.”
Hearing Nimloth’s childhood nickname come out of Oropher’s mouth was like being stabbed. There was no more air. Just like that, Celeborn was drowning.
“You should be proud,” he hissed back, trying to keep his head above water. “That is a fine legacy to resemble, our princess, our king. We loved them as well. At least, I did.”
Oropher wasn’t listening. He never did.
“Do you think any of these people-“ he swept his arm out to gesture at the entire room, the entirety of Lindon’s court; Noldor, Sindar, Nandor, Men and Dwarves in the margins, and one peredhil. “-care that they killed her?”
“Don’t put that on him,” Celeborn snapped quietly, “he doesn’t owe you grief for someone he never knew-“
“I don’t care what Elrond feels, I can’t even look at him,” Oropher spat out, every word sounding pained, and there was torment in his whisper quiet voice.
That whisper, more than anything, tipped Celeborn off to the fact that this conversation wasn’t just one of their drunken spats about trading blame.
“I would have raised that boy like we raised his mother and your brother raised me,” Oropher said, “but that didn’t happen, and I can’t look at him. He looks like Luthien. His brother looks like Dior. And that’s a wonderful thing for everyone else in this room, isn’t it? That’s hope. The beautiful king taken too soon reborn and the Nightengale who stole her happy ending walking among us, and that’s such a lovely end to this tale for them. But what about for us, Celeborn?”
For Celeborn? Celeborn was shaking with the effort it was taking to keep his breathing even. Galadriel touched the edge of his fea to ask if he was okay. He gently pushed her away.
Oropher was right about one thing, this was about their family; about Doriath and Menegorth and being the last two members of Thingol’s inner court on this shore.
Eru Iluvatar, how did it end up being them? Just a pair of hot-headed youths with the weight an entire dead kingdom on their shoulders.
“Gondolin and Nargothrond are gone too,” he replied, the words dull even to his ears. “Hithlum and Dorthonion, half of Ossiriand, and even Himlad and Thargelion. It’s about building something new for all of us. Hope is not a bad thing.”
“It’s different for us.”
Yes. It was. Because Doriath and Sirion need not have fallen like that, and the monsters who took their homes and their loved ones from them weren’t even defeated. They faded, sad and pathetic and allowed to escape by everyone and everything but their prize, and there was no catharsis in that.
And in this kingdom they spoke Sindarin, but they took a Noldorin king who ruled through Noldorin traditions- with a few of Cirdan’s lessons thrown in there- in a city built by Noldorin hands. After his death, Thingol had lost his war of cultural influence. Badly.
“No one here remembers her but us, Celeborn,” Oropher urged. “They remember our heroes and our most tantalizing tragedies, but they don’t remember her. They don’t see her. She’s just one more dead wife and mother, if they get that far, but not a cousin, a niece-“
“Enough, Oropher.”
“-an astrologist, a troublemaker, a queen, a girl who was so scared of being outshined-“
“Oropher!” Celeborn snapped, more harshly than he meant to. It made Oropher stop long enough that he could put a hand on his shoulder, though.
“Oropher, you’re weeping.”
He blinked harshly, then brought up a hand to wipe at his cheek. When he pulled away, Celeborn could see how wet the palm was. Oropher glared at the remnant of his tears like they’d personally offended him.
He muttered, half to himself, “Surely you can’t keep living like this. Ignoring what was done to us because it’s awkward and inconvenient for the new age they’re building.”
Could he? Celeborn didn’t know. He was trying. Galadriel was trying; she had as many wounds as him she was trying to swallow for the sake of something new and bright. But it was hard. Lindon made Celeborn feel old, somehow. But with Oropher he was always just a boy again, strutting around Menegroth, trying to make his place, being too loud and too proud and too sure of himself.
Perhaps that was part of why they couldn’t stop fighting. Always just boys when together. And those boys, they had a few things in common.
Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were in Oropher. And when Oropher looked at him, those same things were in Celeborn. There was no place for those things in this new world.
Because Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were forever gone on this shore. Oropher needed to realize that. Not matter how much it fucking hurt.
“Go to bed, Oropher,” Celeborn told him softly. “You’re drunk and emotional. You’ll embarrass your son. He’s one of those young people looking for something new. Something hopeful.”
And when they looked back towards Gil-galad’s dais and the youths surrounding him, there was Thranduil, charming smile on his face, making Elrond toss his head back and laugh. If anyone took after Nimloth, it was him; her mother and Oropher’s had been identical twins.
Celeborn’s hand was suddenly colder and hanging in the air. He turned back to the kid who showed up one day and took so much of his older brother’s attention and who he’d never forgiven for that small slight. Oropher was composed and looking like Galathil once more.
“I hate that you’re right,” he whispered. “And he probably needs me to be better than this. But I can’t be better here.”
And he left.
The next week, Oropher would formally announce his intention to travel east and settle there, alongside anyone who would join him. Celeborn, to the surprise of every other council member but Galadriel, raised no objection. Very briefly, the thought crossed his mind to join Oropher.
But that desire faded quickly. The envy didn’t, though, not for many, many years.
Not until the day he planted a little silver tree in Lothlorien.
Thranduil, after somewhat successfully parenting Legolas, who is being A Little Shit: You're enjoying this WAY too much for somebody who cannot claim to have had a significant role in raising me as an excuse.
Celeborn: Oropher asked me to enjoy moments like these on his behalf, should the worst ever happen.
Thranduil: *Narrows eyes*
Celeborn:
Thranduil:
Celeborn:
Thranduil: Shut up, no he didn't.
Celeborn: Perhaps not, let's board a boat to the Undying Land and ask him, shall we?
He doesn’t like to remember the ice. The freezing claustrophobia, the cold that sank deep into his bones until it felt it would never leave him. It had already frozen his brother’s heart. He would talk, he would scream, but it never mattered because Fingon might be crying but only truly expressed nothing but absolute apathy.
They starved there, in the dark and the cold. Food became a matter of life and death, and suddenly any reservations had to be cast aside as seals and polar bears were suddenly large warm food sources, no matter what part you got.
They couldn’t bury the dead on the Helcaraxe. Nothing went to waste.
The eternal darkness was perhaps the worst of it though. Shadows danced around them and even when they set up camp they howled and cackled as they tapped on their tents.
His wife was known for her caution, and his daughter for her light footing. They did not fall. His wife was one of the most competent swimmers of the eldar, she did not drown.
He carried his daughter for most of the journey. Her feet were lost, but not to frostbite, and he couldn’t leave her behind.
And still Fingon tried to hide his apathy behind false expressions.
He gathers his own support. Glorfindel, who lost most fingers on his left hand to a blizzard, Ecthelion, who sung fish out of the water so they could be eaten raw, and others who, like him, just want to knock Feanor’s teeth out.
When they reach Beleriand, it’s like a fog had lifted from their minds. It’s too late to fix anything though. Fingon ran after their dammed cousin like he always had and doesn’t talk to them with anything other than clipped sentences. Curufin crafts his daughter feet of mithril as reparations, and others slowly adapt to their new life.
There is no section of Gondolin’s library regarding the Helcaraxe. If they act like it never happened, then maybe nothing they did was real anyway.
“Are you normally this pale or do you return to your coffin at sunrise?”
“I can’t figure out who you’re dressed as but you look amazing.”
“I’m taking my little niece/nephew/cousin trick-or-treating.”
“This IS my costume.”
“BOO! Did I scare you?”
“You forgot your broomstick.”
“Ah Halloween! The one time of year I feel normal.”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to bump into you. I can’t see anything through this fog.”
“Do you normally go to haunted houses?”
“The house at the end of the street gives out full size candy bars. Wanna hit them up?”
“Great party, huh?”
“Is that zombie Elvis?”
“I’m a home haunter. It’s what you call people who REALLY do the whole decorate thing for Halloween.”
“Are there any scary movies playing nearby?”
“Dressing up is stupid.”
“Must be hard to kiss with those fake teeth…”
“Your house looks amazing!”
“This is my casual cape. My fancy one is at the cleaners.”
“I was thinking about doing a monster movie marathon, wanna join me?”
“The veil between the living and the dead is thin tonight.”
“I was just going to stay home and hand out candy to the kids.”
“Something lingers in the dark…”
“That werewolf looks a little TOO real.”
“No one went to this creepy old house that stood on the corner at the end of the street. Years ago it burned down, but they say on Halloween it reappears and makes children vanish in the night…”
Dracon beams create sario rips every time you fire them directly at each other? How often has this happened in battles in the past? Does everybody just know that this is a thing that happens?
Like I’m picturing the yeerks having this attitude of “yep, dracon beams are way superior to shredders, except for that thing where if you fire them at each other everybody involved DISAPPEARS INTO THE VOID. Shame, that. Oh well.”
Maybe like twice a year someone in the yeerk pool will be like, “So where’s Zog 019? Haven’t heard from him in a while.”
And then someone else will say, “Well, he and Eerrsa 4198-prime fired their dracon beams at the wrong time, and fucking sario rips, man. You know how it is.” And then there’s a moment of silence before they all go back to their hosts.
Is this the kind of crap that goes down in the Yeerk Empire on a regular basis?
Living asteroids attacked an Andalite Dome Ship and ate the fighters. Random aliens can show up in construction yards and give you unfathomable power, but damn you to a life of suffering in the process. The Helmacrons are a thing.
Of COURSE this is the kind of crap that happens in the Yeerk Empire on a regular basis!
I keep wanting to make a hub blog for all my muses. Not a multi-muse, I’m not organized for that. But just something to like... help people know what characters I write. Or I could just make a page on this blog for people to figure out what’s up.
-You told me you had five children. How many are there in this whole extended family?
-Thirty-one, at last count.
-You must miss them. You’ve been away for over two years.
“Past Tense, Part I” and “Past Tense, Part II” aired on January 2 and January 9, 1995. They’re part of a long line of Star Trek time travel episodes, but only a few of those time travel episodes visit an Earth that is in the characters’ distant past but the audience’s near future. As such, they are among just a handful of Star Trek stories that take place during the part of the Star Trek mythos where humanity had to overcome its differences to get to the utopia awaiting us in the 2300s.
[…]
Since he wrote that episode of Star Trek, “the militarization of police has gotten even more advanced. They have even more weaponry and seemingly more willingness to use it,” Wolfe told me. “As the SWAT team was coming in [to the Sanctuary District during the riots], they were somewhat careful at least. Today, we probably wouldn’t portray that the same way.”
Yet even if “Past Tense” didn’t predict the future with 100 percent accuracy (which, again, shouldn’t have been its goal to begin with), it remains a chilling look at our present by a TV show looking out its own window in the past and seeing the problems we’re still dealing with today. In many cases, those problems have even gotten much, much worse.
“As a writer, all you can do is be a voice in the wilderness, sometimes. You can yell, ‘Fire!’ but you can’t put it out,” Wolfe says. “It’s disappointing that we’re still grappling with this problem. I certainly would have hoped it would be better by now, and people would be like, ‘Ha! Remember that Deep Space Nine episode that said homelessness would still be a problem in the 2020s? They were so gloomy!’ But one of the themes of the show is that paradise doesn’t come for free. Even if it does get handed to you, you have to continually work to protect it and renew it and advance it.” Emily VanDerWerff
‘ NOT ON MY WATCH. ’
‘ you thought it was over? … ha. ’
‘ pepsi bottle? coca cola glass? i don’t give a damn. ’
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‘ so you just gon’ bring me a birthday gift on my birthday to my birthday party on my birthday with a birthday gift? ’
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‘ god first. skating second. hit me up on christian mingle. ’
‘ welcome back to me screaming … AAAAAAAAAAA- ’
‘ oh my gosh, is that corbin bleu from jump in? ’
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‘ okay guys … i’m about to say a curse word, you ready? … shut up! ’
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‘ i thought you were bae! … turns out you’re just fam… ’
‘ i mean … you’re so tall, you must have a problem. ’
‘ i sneezed, oh, i’m not allowed to sneeze? ’
‘ sorry i’m on the toilet, hope the ice cream don’t melt! ’
‘ oh my fuckin’ god, she fuckin’ dead. ’
‘ I’M A BAD BITCH YOU CAN’T KILL ME! ’
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‘ MY DICK FELL OFF! ’
‘ THIS IS WHY MOM DOESN’T FUCKING LOVE YOU. ’
‘ so no head? ’
‘ yogurt is just fruit sperm! and i’m not gay. ’
‘ hi, welcome to chili’s. ’
‘ that’s what good pussy sounds like. ’
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‘ bitch! why you mad? ‘cause my pussy pops severely, and yours don’t?! ’
‘ merry crisis. ’
‘ i love you bitch. i ain’t gonna ever stop loving you …. bitch. ’
‘ what up? i’m ____, i’m nineteen, and i never fuckin’ learned how to read. ’
‘ this bitch empty! YEET! ’
‘ and they were roommates ! ’
‘ is that a weed?! i’m calling the police! ’
‘ today my brother pushed me so i am starting a kickstarter to put him down. the benefits of killing him would be: i would get pushed way less. ’
‘ it is wednesday my dudes …. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- ’
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‘ welcome to bible study, we’re all children of JESUS! ’
‘ i spilled lipstick in your valentino bag. ’
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‘ yes, she is a bitch. b i c t … h. ’
‘ ohhh shit, what is that? who you fightin’? ’
‘ don’t fuck with me! i have the power of god and anime on my side! ’
