"Don't question my missing sanity"

Just.

*clenches fist*

It’s so lonely at the top.

Cody, who has been one amongst many all his life, never on his own, always surrounded by voices and warmth and brothers, suddenly set apart from all the vode by station and duty, and he cannot lean on them, he cannot, he has to lead and inspire and it would be unfair to place his worries and burdens on the shoulders of someone under his command and expect them to carry them with him.

And Obi-Wan, High General Kenobi, Councillor Kenobi, responsible for so much, and with so little opportunity to spend time among his people as the requirements of the war scatter the Jedi across the galaxy, the companionship of living in an entire temple filled with familiar, comforting, light force signatures replaced with hurried, harried comm calls and meetings in empty rooms filled with cold, blue holo-projections whose presence cannot be felt; his most regular contact his erstwhile padawan, the relationship with whom grows ever more distant and fraught with secrets and lies.

'Mid conversation I ran out of people energy, and I won’t be able to keep speaking constructively. I need to leave now or I will explode' script: “Hey, I’m sorry, but it’s getting late, and I should really be going. It’s been really lovely speaking to you; we have to get together again sometime soon. But I really need to head out. I’ll talk to you later?”

‘Your opinions are bad and you should feel bad about them, but I have some reason to not tell you that. instead i want out as fast as possible from this conversation and/or to reroute it IMMEDIATELY’: “I can see why you’d think that, yeah. I get what you’re saying, but, you know, I don’t really know this topic well enough to talk about it, you know? What about [tangential, barely related thing that is safe to talk about that they also care about]?” Wait a few minutes, nod and mmhmm at some stuff, and then check your phone and go “Oh, no, it’s getting pretty late. I have to run, but I’ll talk to you later, alright?” (This one is very useful when your unfortunately unavoidable but incredibly prejudiced grandparents come around and your parents will be mad if you start screaming arguments with them over the Thanksgiving table, especially if you can reroute them into a topic of conversation that other people care about rather than running away wholesale.)

‘you are so fucking annoying. never speak to me again’ or other variants of ‘fuck off’ that you dont want to just say that way to someone you know because that is fucking mean. basically a friendship breakup script: “Listen, I think you’re a great person, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way because it’s really not personal, but I think you and I are very different people, with very different interests.  That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t think that you would enjoy spending much time with me, and vice versa. I wish you the best, but I’d rather we just stay acquaintances, alright?” (Don’t do this unless you absolutely mean it, but it’s good to know what to say when you mean it.)

Bastard Good: You make the world better for people but in a really obnoxious way so everyone low-key hates you for it

Chaotic Dead: You set yourself on fire at the start of each session

Informed Evil: you're wearing a red cape and cackling so we kind of assume you've probably done some bad things off screen, right?

Lawful Pointless: You follow the rules of chess in every situation you find yourself in.

False Neutral: HAHA FOOLS! I WAS NO DRUID! I WAS A PALADIN ALL ALONG!

Lawful Anxious: You follow very strict laws but you don't know what those laws are or if you're breaking them.

Personal Evil: rather then making things worse for sapient life, you work to make things worse for Steve specifically. Everyone else is fine.

Centrist Neutral: "I don't support The Chained God Tharizdun breaking free and unmaking all reality but if we stop him through force we're just as bad as he is. Did you know there's actually zero difference between good and bad things?"

Sponsored Good: You provide justice, compassion and the great taste of subways sandwiches! Put in the code SMITETHESINNERS when ordering online for 20% off!

Sexy Lawful: You follow very strict rules but in such a way we kind of suspect you're getting off on it.

Chaotic Incidental: You act completely randomly but by sheer chance your actions turn out identical to if you followed very strict rules.

Theoretical Good: You want to do good things to help the world and once you stop binging Netflix you're absolutely going to.

Ugly Neutral: None of the other alignments want to hang out with you so you're neutral by default

Chaotic Meta: You pointedly refuse to follow the rules of the game you're playing.

at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.

i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.

it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things. 

and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.

parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.

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.