#comlink.

[nullclass]

Cryptic message. B')

Considerate of you to put Pr’ika’s mind at ease and make him feel less singled out.

[wieldbalance]

“A heart’s a heavy burden.”

meme  //  accepting!  //  @spacepiratemaz 

      Rey’s knees have found the floor, her body desperate for the steadying influence of packed earth under her boots. Some parts of her even long for the more familiar balancing act of trudging through the loose sand on Jakku, where every other step felt like the world falling away beneath her feet. At least that is a challenge she knows how to overcome, but this… This is gravity itself shifting with her every move, and realizing the RULES will always change faster than she can learn them. 

                                            …if she can learn them. 

        Fingers twist into handfuls of cloth to hide the faintest hint of trembling, and Rey’s jaw sets with a twitch beneath her skin. She’s not accustomed to vulnerability. To trusting anyone with the things that could hurt her the harshest. She prefers to keep her doubts inside her head where they belong, so they cannot be spoken back to her, confirmation stinging like sand as it burrows deep inside an uncovered wound. 

       “What if it’s too much?” Rey whispers at last, and there is something rusty about her voice. As if asking anything of anyone requires parts she hasn’t cared for in years. “What if I’m not strong enough for this?”  What if there’s been a mistake, and I truly belong back on Jakku, scrubbing sand out of ship scraps to sell for half a meal, if I’m lucky?  Somehow, it feels both good and agonizing to speak some of her doubts aloud. A blast of cold, clear water to cleanse away the blood and the sand. “How can I be sure—?” 

        She can’t be, and she knows this, so at last her voice refuses to finish. 

[nullclass]

Hey! I’m a huuuge RepCom fan and in the middle of re-reading the books (for the thousandth time), and also not the hugest Kal fan - I’m curious about one of your HC posts where you mention that Ordo becomes estranged from Kal and effectively divorced from Besany, how do you see this happening and why? It’s been haunting me for days!

In reference to this headcanon post. This is a really long one. The short of it is:

Kal, it happens over Kal’s decision to destroy the cure. It estranges all of the Nulls, including ultimately Ordo, because it puts on very clear display just how harmful Kal’s self-centeredness and disregard for the choices of others is. It forces Ordo to take another look at his entire relationship with Kal, and he finds it wanting. He doesn’t come back.

Besany, it’s a long process, one that happens as she and Ordo struggle with the very way they’ve approached the relationship. It gets burdened with misplaced idealism, the idea that the only normal life Ordo will have is connected to this relationship, the controlling environment in which they formed this relationship which has negatively affected an otherwise surprisingly healthy one, and generally various needs to step away from the relationship and be alone for a while. Eventually, after they’ve squared everything with themselves, they do get the opportunity to try again—and they do with success.

Kal is an easier one. I see you’re also not a Kal fan, so I won’t rehash the entire thing about how Kal isn’t as good as he is framed to be. But for any third parties, it is my view that Kal fails as a guardian and, while he is well-meaning, he is controlling, manipulative, disregarding of his children’s needs, and emotionally abusive. I’ve written about it extensively here, but I can stand to do it a little more—anyone wanting to know more, my ask is open.

Though I basically disregard a lot of what Legacy of the Force did with Clan Skirata and dismiss entirely out of hand everything Traviss planned for Imperial Commando 2, I do retain one thing: Kal seeks to destroy the aging cure.

The exact details on his motivations are still a little fuzzy, but I’m certain he does so because he believes it is the best way to protect the family. However, it is a decisions that best serves his interests, not that of anybody else in the family; ultimately, it is a self-serving and self-centered decision. Broadly, there is staunch disagreement on this, most vocally the Nulls. With one exception, Ordo. Though Ordo very much agrees the cure should not be destroyed, he finds himself being asked to choose between Kal and the other Nulls. Despite it all, and despite how far he’s come, Ordo still views losing Kal’s approval as an existential threat. He adopts a neutral stance because he is afraid and he is trying to have it both ways. Among the Nulls, at least, there is understanding for why Ordo is scared to vocally oppose Kal.

To get to the point, despite the overwhelming disagreement, Kal ends up destroying the cure anyway. Or, he thinks he does. Mereel, being clever and having A’den’s support, secretly saved some of it—just in case.

It isn’t enough, however, to save the family. Mereel, disgusted, is immediately estranged from Kal, and the others drift off as well. Ordo, ends up being the last of the six to remain. Seeing the others feel pushed away from Kal wears his own relationship to Kal down. Blame @tapcaftogo​ especially for this last part, but Mereel apparently dies. Though it isn’t entirely accurate, Ordo jumps to the conclusion: “If Kal hadn’t driven him out, Mereel would still be alive.”

(Just to throw it in here to reassure you, he’s not actually dead. He’s just believed dead.)

Sure, inaccurate, but it’s the start of a very long journey down realizing that Kal has hurt them all immensely anyway. Coupled with Ordo’s own guilt that he let fear of losing Kal’s approval over supporting the five siblings he loves more than anything else in the galaxy, it fractures whatever is left of Ordo’s relationship with Kal.

Unable to cope with the immense amount of stress, he suffers a debilitating nervous breakdown, gets pulled out of Kyrimorut by Besany, and doesn’t look back. The subsequent process of dealing with grief, recovering from his breakdown, gaining the distance to finally grasp the true nature of his relationship with Kal, working through it all solidifies the estrangement.

Ordo is forced to face the extreme end of how Kal’s disregard for their decisions and how his self-centeredness hurts them and, coupled with the physical and emotional distance his nervous breakdown demands, he is given the chance to look back at it all and see it for what it is.

Besany is a harder one to explain, but it’s very much based on headcanon. I’ve written two posts on it: some rough sketching, on motivations for why it developed. Specifically, Ordo and Besany are still married, they never formally divorce, but they are separated and are open to seeing other people. Though it wasn’t exactly as intended at the time, what ends up happening is that Ordo and Besany go on (a very long) break—they separate, but ultimately they get back together eight or nine years later.

Ordo is so very young. He doesn’t have any life experience nor does he have a completely settled sense of identity. The way Kal raised him to think of romantic relationships isn’t completely healthy either: to have a normal life, Ordo must have a marriage. Besany as a spouse becomes an integral, inseparable part of Ordo having a normal life. It’s a framework that is susceptible to pedestals and possessiveness and stifling idealism. 

And I think that’s what happens. The relationship gets stifling—because they get trapped in pitfalls that they didn’t adequately work out in the early stages. As they change, they get anxious about what the other thinks of them and both start focusing on what they believe the other expects from a good spouse. They start turning inward, into themselves, into their own anxieties—as is their tendency to do as intensely self-reliant persons—instead of turning outward toward each other. They project, they assume, they disconnect. As they both change, the disconnect grows greater until it starts to fester into resentment.

To add onto it, much of their early relationship is informed by the fact that they are both very lonely people who are desperate for the validation and emotional support offered by each other. They love each other, deeply and sincerely, but there is a potential for a lingering shadow on their relationship that this was something built because they had no other choice.

I basically conceive of it as Ordo coming back to this relationship once he has a firmer sense of self, stronger ability to navigate a close relationship, and a more developed understanding of his own personal needs and of how to tend to someone else’s needs. Besany, for her own part, doesn’t have the same identity and boundary issues to work out—but her life has had a series of major upheavals, and she’s been swept into this family and her choices limited to what this single family, what Kal specifically, has wanted to do and wanted her to do. She needs the ability to step out of this circle just to know that she can. This was a family structure that, when Kal was in it, was immensely controlling and was almost violently reluctant to allow people to leave it. Even though Ordo would never retaliate against her should she decide to leave him, she needs that peace of mind to know that she can safely leave him. And feeding into that, Ordo needs to be alone. He needs to know that her leaving him isn’t the end of the world. He needs to learn that he can and is able to stand on his own—despite his fears about being left, despite all he’s been told about how his life cannot be normal without her.

After everything about the situation they were in has done to them and how it has negatively influenced a relationship between them that has so much good to offer, they both need the certainty that being alone can offer them. They both step away from the relationship to give each other and themselves the breathing room to figure things out.

It’s like… weirdly complicated in my head, and I don’t think I’m explaining it right, but that’s how it is. They need breathing room, especially Ordo. They need time to come to terms with the new contexts of their lives and figure themselves out alone—so that they don’t tie everything into this relationship and ask of this relationship the impossible.

How exactly it happens, there isn’t a specific incident really for it. It’s just a slow degrading over time, them growing distant from each other, at times skating so close to resentment. It’s just ongoing strain in their relationship and their inability to accommodate the kind of person their beloved is becoming strains them more. They do both still love each other, it’s just that they’ve begun to struggle to manage the lingering issues that have plagued them and they’ve ignored since the beginning. Ordo, especially, grows afraid of being resented. In an effort to save themselves, to save each other, they decide to cut each other loose before they both get dragged into the undertow and drown.

I don’t really have an inciting incident right now for why they chose to part ways, but it was a long-time coming.

It’s the best decision for them both. They survive. They grow. They settle into themselves. They never get divorced because they don’t want to formally admit they gave up and failed. They both still hold a flame, though it’s one they both feel silly acknowledging directly to even themselves. They, ultimately, get the chance to try again—and since they’ve worked out a lot of issues with themselves and their worldviews, it’s a more successful relationship this time.

[nullclass]

What does Mirja grow up to be?

I’m not actually too sure. I do know she doesn’t go into the business of bounty hunting and mercenary work. Both of her parents worked hard to prevent her from ever soldiering and to ensure she had broader options than that.

At the moment, after the Civil War, her parents both end up holding administrative positions. Besany is again in the Treasury office for the Republic. Ordo, at the moment, works acquisitions at a cultural institution, later spends his time trying to establish a museum and works as director for that. Perhaps their work trying to keep the Republic accountable in service of the people will have an affect on her decision.

Part of my uncertainty is that Mirja is nineteen when the Civil War finally ends. Her life up to that point is spent being tangentially related to anti-Imperial activity on the supply side of things and, later in her late teens, providing support from the base—all things her parents work very hard to keep her out of as long as they can.

As I thought about it for a few days, while trying to answer this ask, at this moment, I like to think someone documenting the shrinking wildlife of particular systems and hoping to contribute to their preservation. A conservationist? I don’t know what the word is exactly. But right now, that’s what I think.

[nullclass]

Tell us about odros first boyfriend?

“One of the communications officers stationed at headquarters, Ciryl Vai. A sweet-faced Mirialan with a soothing drawl tailored for the comms. The kind of voice one wanted to fall asleep too, and I did many times. He often joked he was meant to be a broadcast jockey. Insisted he would’ve made in a different era, even been a star. I indulged him. Said he was right. Said he could still make it once we settled the galaxy to rights. We were at war. What else was I supposed to say? You find the good things where you can, and you make them if you have to.

“He kissed me in an empty backroom at headquarters because there’s nothing more romantic than dusty crates and stolen inventory. It all happened quickly after that— or, it felt quick next to how slow things with Besany went. But it was fast, and it was brief.

“Often, I hesitate to say he was my boyfriend. Looking back, it was almost more several weeks of a fling than a proper commitment. We almost did. We started looking at the long-term. He was transferring to a unit in the field who needed help setting up a clandestine communications broadcast in the Mid Rim. My team and I were going on longer and longer jaunts away from home base. We didn’t know how, if at all, we were going to navigate this.

“We never faced that question head on.

“He was born and raised on Mirial. Unhappy with the deeply stratified social classes there, built on the bones of its most treasured and honored traditions, he left home and never thought once of going back. He abandoned it all, the culture, the traditions. I couldn’t— I still don’t understand how he could manage it. Just as well: he couldn’t understand how much the Mandalorian traditions meant to me or why I navigated everything I understood about myself by my people’s customs. He couldn’t understand why I chose to “trap” myself in them.

“We argued about all that instead. Not a shouting match, no. Just a long conversation refused to end, rankled in each of us, and then grew more frustrating each time one of us revived it again.

“I left base with my team the next morning, and I thought about it on the jump through hyperspace. I couldn’t give an indeterminate length of my life to a man who didn’t understand why I could not do as he does and reshape my identity independent of the traditions I hold dear. I wrote him a message, and I told him I couldn’t commit to him. I thought it wiser to end things there. I didn’t hear back.

“By the time I returned to headquarters, he already left for the Mid Rim. I knew where he was, who he was with, but I never tried to contact him. It didn’t really matter to me anymore. I’d already moved on, cold as that sounds.

“We were at war. What else was I supposed to do? You protect yourself from the unnecessary wounds, especially the emotional, never let yourself get bogged down, and you keep going straight through. You make yourself cold and distant if you have to.”

[nullclass]

8,9,13?

;muse development questions

8. how many friends does your character have?9. how many friends does your character want?

Ordo is a man of few friends and likes it that way. Given that his family is big, he doesn’t often feel the need to seek very many friends beyond them—at first, anyway. And, well, for a significant portion of his life, he was isolated from others by Kal and prevented from forming close relationships outside this family circle. It takes a long time after he breaks from Kal’s influence that he begins to understand the importance of close non-familial relationships and feels comfortable actively seeking them. He just isn’t used to reaching out to others outside his family, especially Kal. Even given this, however, he’s a natural introvert, and he’s satisfied with having a small but close circle of friends around him.

Etain is one of Ordo’s closest friends. I’d consider Maze to be one of his oldest friends, even if their relationship is a strained one much of the time. I typically describe their relationship as “friends who wouldn’t go out for a drink after work but will call each other out on their shit because they expected better from the other and actually want the other to do better—vitriolic best friends”. He has a confidante and friend in his rebel cell, whom I’ve yet to name, but they’ve known and worked with each other for almost twenty years by the end of the Civil War. Although Ordo is guarded around her, I want to say Shara Bey (@lieutenantbae) is a friend.

He doesn’t have very many, and he’s content with that.

13. what does your character pretend or try to care about?

Your feelings. I’d joke “the Republic” but Ordo makes absolutely no effort to pretend or try to care about it. Even though he does his job in service to it, he openly doesn’t give a damn.

The mercenary, bounty on your head, always looking over your shoulder, friends like these lifestyle commonly expected of and lived by many Mandalorians? In the novels, Ordo is discontent upon realizing this is the kind of life he’s potentially saddled with for the rest of his life but resolves to force himself to be happy with it:

[Kal said,] “I know things are a mess at the moment, but it’s going to work out. I promise.”

It was a lie, because Ordo knew they’d probably spend the rest of their lives on the run with bounties on their heads, never able to drop their guard. Kal’buir had lost count of the number of death warrants out on him. Now they all had one. But a lot of Mandalorians—and others—lived their lives that way, and seemed happy enough. Ordo decided he would be happy with it, too.

On that note, Kal’s intensely specific vision for what Ordo’s life is going to be like? Kal’s exacting specifications for what kind of personality Ordo should have and how he should be? Well, he does initially care about these things, but he very quickly begins to not care.

[wieldbalance]

gina fuck off

THANKS MOM.

let 2017 die

[nullclass]

❝ There’s something you’re not telling me. ❞

;silence of the lambs

“There’s always something I’m not telling you.” He glanced at her over his shoulder—physically looked, as being out of armor necessitated. “I would’ve thought you’d have figured that by now.”

He hopped over a fallen trunk taking its time to decompose and threaded his way through the trees. Decade and a half, more, since he was here. Grayer now. Visibly older, much like the forest, though neither of them changed as much as expected.

He still recognized the trees, the rocky outcrops, the fog. The fearful and awed in him said the fog recognized him too.

“I didn’t tell you I fought in the Clone Wars. And when I did, finally, I didn’t tell you the Clone Wars are named after me. I didn’t tell you I married, then I left out the part that I’m arguably divorced—and even then, I still left out that my technically-ex-wife is my unit co-commander.”

The forest was thinning. They weren’t far now.

“If there isn’t an operational need to tell you, I don’t. It’s how I do things.”

The timberline broke, and the trees bowed to a basin. Over the years, the copious rainstorms this planet saw collected in the basin until together they formed a ghostly reservoir. At this distance, through the fog, the spires rising from the waters looked like rock towers. He knew the towers weren’t rock at all. It was all sharp metal, twisted into vengeful knives as the city collapsed under its own weight, weight which created the basin to begin with.

“Welcome, Shara Bey,” he spread his arms wide, gesturing to his handiwork, “to the ruins of N’dian.”