"Don't question my missing sanity"

I love Regency Romance, don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my all-time favourite genres, but I really feel like there are not enough people who appreciate the non-romance shenanigans that the rigid code of politeness in force in Approximate-Regency-Period England allows. Where are the stories about:

1. Someone accidentally wanders into the wrong social group without realizing it, Certain Things are never openly discussed, ergo two discreetly gay dudes have been effectively members of a smuggling operation for like 4 years without anyone noticing the misunderstanding. A Discreet Communication Carried For A Friend is a  Discreet Communication Carried For A Friend, after all. 

2. Elderly matriarch of large and successful family is discovered on her death to be the widow of the wrong Sir Henry, at no point did anyone notice because It’s Rude To Pry, entire family has been slavishly obeying the whims of a completely unrelated stranger for 30 years purely because she turned up and announced that she was Eccentric Uncle Henry’s widow. 

3. Trans dude makes his first foray out in male attire, meets a bunch of Lively Young Gentlemen while out drinking, they’re friends now, his entire made-up-on-the-spot backstory is accepted without question, nobody questions him for the next 50 years because he’s Lord So-and-so’s Dear Chum and therefore is just presumed to have been vetted at some point. Once or twice a Fellow Chum finds out, is mildly shocked, and then Never Speaks Of It Again Because One Does Not. 

4. Being a werewolf is HELL when it takes 2-3 hours to get dressed to socially acceptable standards and all the best parties are on full moon nights so people can see to drive home. 

5. Angry ex shows up to be poisonously sweet at a party, it is Literally Unthinkable to be so rude as to tell them to leave. 

6. All your friends are 100% down to help each other cover up a scandal. So far your friends-group has concealed 1 lesbian affair, 2 het affairs, smuggling, extortion, and 2 murders. 

Because, after everything that happened in the Clone Wars, I feel like it would be entirely in character for Grievous to kill Palpatine thinking he was doing the Separatists a Solid. Meanwhile Dooku is just staring at Palpatine’s body and feeling like he’s going to have a stroke. Because

It’s a well-established trope from the Clone Wars that Grievous periodically Does The Stupidest Thing You Have Ever Witnessed In His Grudge Match Against Obi-Wan and that

Palpatine is captured. He’s sitting in that big fancy room. Handcuffed to a chair. Grievous is prowling around said chair, but he’s insignificant to Palpatine in the long run. Just a blunt instrument. He’s got nothing better to do so he’s internally patting himself on the back for staging yet another successful kidnapping of himself, thinking ahead to enacting the final part of the plan in killing Dooku and bagging Anakin as his new Apprentice. Dooku isn’t there yet, he’s set to rendezvous in about fifteen minutes or so.

Palpatine doesn’t notice Grievous getting progressively angrier as Obi-Wan and Anakin wage a cruiser battle and it appears they are winning. It’s insignificant to him. The only warning he gets is Grievous sending a cam droid into the air and recording, but he assumes it’s a posterity thing.

“You lose, General Kenobi!” Boom, just like that, Grievous runs Palpatine through with one lightsaber and beheads him with two more. Dooku shows up just in time to see the last smoke from the release of dark energy recede from the room. He does the only sensible thing he can to salvage the situation; he promptly leaves the ship and hides out in that little Sith lair on Coruscant having five successive panic attacks while the Republic reels from the loss of the Chancellor.

The thing is, I somehow doubt Dooku knew the full extent of Operation Knightfall. And even if he did, there was a reason Palpatine killed him and wanted Anakin instead. Dooku is a businessman. And he was once a Jedi. On paper, the idea might seem a pretty good one. But he’s falter just before the big moment. Either because he can never seem to deal any true damage to Obi-Wan in memorial of Qui-Gon, or because there actually IS a difference between a Dark Jedi and a Sith in practice.

He settles for killing most of the High Council off instead (again, not being able to kill Obi-Wan). Yoda was his main grievance, anyway.

And initially, the Jedi and the Republic are left reeling. Until they realize that their intelligence leaks have lessened by 75%, and that problems impeding military and relief aid are almost non-existent compared to what they were. Then Ahsoka drags Maul back and he nearly dies laughing when he realizes what happened, and because it’s Kenobi he can’t help but monologue and gloat about Palpatine and his hubris, and that’s how they eventually learn the full scope of the plot in motion against them.

Eventually, they win the war, and for the life of them they can’t figure out where Dooku got off to (he left in a self-imposed exile after he killed the High Council because his work, from his point of view, was done. Like Thanos heading off to his stupid garden planet at the end of Infinity War.

because while everyone moved on, im still here mentally

Dance in the oranges.

Happy pride month ❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Return of the Jedi 🔁

Let’s float and cuddle with mama 💞

Reference under cut