✩ MONTHLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩
The fics I’ve read and enjoyed for the month of May. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.
Fandoms included this month:
DC (Batman)
The Goblin Emperor
Star Wars Prequels/ Clone Wars
Conclave (2024)
Stranger Things
DC
beep beep!! by CreamofTomatoSoup
There’s not really a point in owning a car, especially with the cost of insurance. With the threat of student debt looming overhead like a cloud, Bernard can’t afford to buy a car without help, and there’s no way he’ll ever ask Tim. So Bernard doesn’t really drive. He’s happy to let his weirdly specific driving skills get swept under the rug, because the thing he has with Tim still feels delicate and new, and he doesn’t want to ruin it by bringing up that his uncle was in a gang and hey, he just happened to teach Bernard how to drive. Bernard wants to avoid any kind of conversation around crime in Gotham, actually. Especially after what happened in high school. It’s not like he’s ever going to need to drive a getaway car, anyway. As far as Bernard is concerned, it’ll never come up.
Bernard learned to drive from his henchman uncle. The last place he expects to use this skill is at a dinner with his boyfriend's family.
The Goblin Emperor
moderation by astardanced
“Aha!” Csethiro sat up, displacing him somewhat abruptly. “Thou dost admit it, then!” “Admit what?” said Maia bewilderedly, trying to sit up— “That ‘tis my job to hate people on thy behalf,” said Csethiro magnificently, with a rather intense look in her eye that Maia did not entirely trust, even if he did rather like it. “I did not… quite say that…” “Let me deal with Mer Abrevar, husband,” said Csethiro— in a tone she obviously thought was measured, because she looked proud of herself. It was not measured. It was immense.
The 'starsabovethemarshes' Incident by peredain
The following is as close to the full story as I can recover of the Tumblr blog starsabovethemarshes, or, as most people will know it, "that one time someone on Tumblr tried to impersonate Edrehasivar VII".
There isn't much information about the blog still available on the internet, but by compiling screenshots, doing some of my own internet sleuthing, and reaching out to people who were following the blog when it was active, I've been able to construct a general story of what went down.
The Architects by jouissant
In the twentieth year of Edrehasivar VII’s reign, Lord Berenar announced his retirement as Lord Chancellor, and Maia Drazhar fell into a private crisis.
Clone Wars
Ties That Bind by Imagined
Commander Cody cleared his throat subtly. “Erm, may I ask, sir… how old is he?” “I’m nine,” Anakin said. “But really, I promise I won’t be in the way while you fight, Master Obi-Wan. Maybe I can help in a starfighter!” “Sir,” Commander Cody said. He sounded strangled.
Or: The Clone Wars start a week after Qui-Gon dies and Anakin becomes Obi-Wan's Padawan. Burdened with doubts, new responsibilities, and a former slave child to take care of, a twenty-year-old Obi-Wan finds himself adopted by an army of clones. The clones take care of their own, after all—but then again, so does Obi-Wan.
The war is over (we are beginning) by K_R_Closson
The Jedi have been slaughtered, Anakin has turned dark side, and Obi-Wan is being hunted by his former apprentice. When Yoda tells him he needs to fake his death, Obi-Wan agrees. It isn't as though this is new to him. Obi-Wan, Cody, and Rex are put into a deep Force sleep, and Yoda promises to wake them when the galaxy needs them again.
But it isn't Yoda who wakes them. It's a small voice, calling out to a Jedi for help. Obi-Wan wakes up to a quiet head, both Yoda and Anakin are dead. And then he learns thirty years have passed while he's been asleep. With the Jedi Order gone, with Mandalore glassed, with a Empire that has risen and fallen, Obi-Wan, Cody, and Rex must decide what their place is in this new galaxy.
But first, there is a child who needs help. The only clue Obi-Wan has is a Mandalorian in shiny beskar'gam. If they can find one, they can find the other.
Hands Off by Icannotthinkofapenname
Anakin was really enjoying his first few months at the temple. It was safe and peaceful, and all the jedi he'd met were really nice!
And then Quinlan Vos slapped his master's ass.
Iviin’hiibi te Tuur by whitchry9
Part 3 of Iviin’hiibi te Tuur
Obi Wan has never resented the seizures he's experienced, not exactly, but he wasn't particularly fond of them either.
(And then they save the galaxy.)
squeeze it apart, that’s fine by Anonymous
Ventress was right when she said that General Kenobi would never assume Cody’s position beneath her malevolent hands, but her reasoning had been wrong. Cody would never give the General the opportunity to take his place. One of the few comforts that he had allowed himself - the true vow he had permitted himself to make - was that he would never outlive his Jedi.
He’d endure a thousand tortures and a thousand deaths before he subjected himself to a galaxy without General Kenobi in it.
“You’re going to hurt him, Commander Cody,” Ventress whispered, and Cody startled at the sound of his name on her tongue. He did not realise that she even knew it. “I want to pity you. Martyring yourself for a Jedi who wouldn’t take your place. For a Jedi who, once you are done with him, will wish for nothing more than your death.”
Or: Obi-Wan and the 212th are held hostage by Ventress, who contrives of a unique way to torment the Jedi General by pitting his own biology against him. Locked in a cell with his alpha Commander, Obi-Wan Kenobi has to find an escape before his heat takes control.
Do You Want To Meet All My Monsters? by c_m_li (+ podfic)
Part 1 of Dark Star
Obi-Wan Kenobi has been hiding his species all his life. When he is forced to disclose that he isn't even Near-Human, he doesn't get the reaction from the Clone Troopers that he was expecting.
violence in reconstruction by Serie11
“Do you know what I think?” Cody asks, and doesn’t wait for Obi-Wan to reply. “I think that you haven’t slept in forty hours. I think you’ve been using too many stims, even though Bones tries to limit your access to them. I think that you’re currently drunk. I think,” he says, louder, over the top of Obi-Wan’s sound of protest. “That you’re self aware enough to be thinking about the darkness in the Force, and that you’re scared of going too far into it, because you’re good at waging war. You’re very good at it, and you hate that about yourself.”
Obi-Wan makes a small, broken noise, and Cody closes his eyes as if that will stop him from hearing it.
Conclave
life on earth could be heaven by ShowMeAHero
Pope Innocent XIV and Cardinal Thomas Lawrence share a unique relationship.
Vincent and Thomas share something even greater.
or: vincent and thomas fall in love, find their way, and are witnessed by the world in doing so.
this is hungry work by ShowMeAHero
“I know this is difficult. I know you do not like this. But you are starving yourself, Thomas, and God would not see you starved. I would not see you starved.”
Thomas wonders what it says about him that one of those means more than the other— and what it means that this does not bother him as it should, this blasphemous thought, this sacrilegious reprioritization.
“I do not wish to argue with you, my dear Vincent,” Thomas says, voice quiet. “Your concern is kind, but— I am afraid this is only how I am.”
Vincent squeezes his hands.
“You are not your punishments,” Vincent tells him, firm, warm, insistent. “You are not your denial. You are not your sacrifice, Thomas, nor your hunger. You are not your starvation.” His hands shake Thomas’s, a rattle to keep his attention. “You are Thomas. You are human, and you are starving, and you should not be.”
Stranger Things
True Colors by brightloveee
Eddie expects Steve Harrington, who he’s started hooking up with on the down-low, to be a douchey, spoiled jerk. So he pre-empts him. Only, Steve isn’t a jerk. But guess who is.
OR 5 Times Eddie is a Shitty Boyfriend and 5 Times He Gets Better