The Tether

[modaccount]

The Tether App

After the raging success of their previous code push, the creators of The Tether have decided to push their app again, an app intended for helping new arrivals find Tethers.

Unfortunately for those who don't want to participate, the prompt for the application will keep popping up on their screen until they fill out the mandatory fields and post their profile. If you don't want to participate, it might be best to fill in the blanks with prank answers!

Once posted, the app creates a profile that looks like this:

	The Witch
«		»
	Age: ageless Gender: female Interests: three interests About: 30 words or less
	base code by photosynthesis
	Tian
	« ✘ ✔ »

It is a simple swiping type app like many dating apps, swipe left to ignore a profile, swipe right to initiate an instant messenger conversation with the person in question on the app's proprietary chat program, complete with emojis!

NOTE: This meme is game canon.

The Code

<br><center><table style="width:300px;"><tr style="border-bottom:1px dashed #102651;"><td></td> <td style="padding:20px; padding-bottom:0; width:300px; font:38px Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; text-transform:uppercase; color:#102651; text-align:center; letter-spacing:2px; background-color:#ffffff; border-top-right-radius:50px; border-top-left-radius:50px;"><b>***CHARACTER NAME***</b></td> <td></td></tr> <tr><td style="font-size:70px; vertical-align:middle; text-align:right; padding:0; color:#102651;">«</td> <td style="background-color:#ffffff; padding:20px; padding-top:10px; padding-bottom:0; width:308px;"><img src="IMAGE - 300 PX OR LESS" style="border-radius:20px;"><br> </td> <td style="font-size:70px; vertical-align:middle; padding:0; color:#102651;">»</td></tr> <tr><td></td> <td style="background-color:#ffffff; font:12px arial; text-align:left; padding:10px;"><span style="color:#102651;"><b>Age:</b> character age</span> <span style="color:#102651;"><b>Gender:</b> character gender</span> <span style="color:#102651;"><b>Interests:</b> three interests</span> <span style="color:#102651;"><b>About:</b> 30 words or less</span> </td></tr> <tr><td></td> <td style="text-align:right; font-size:10px; background-color:#ffffff;"><font color="#102651">base code by</font> <a href="http://photosynthesis.dreamwidth.org/" style="color:#102651;">photosynthesis</td></tr> <raw-code><tr style="border-bottom:1px dashed #102651;"><td></td> <td style="background-color:#ffffff;font:24px Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; color:#102651; text-align:center;">PLANETARY ALIGNMENT</td> <td><td></tr><tr><td></td> <td style="border-bottom-right-radius:50px; border-bottom-left-radius:50px; background-color:#ffffff; text-align:center;"><table style="width:100%; font:30px Verdana;"><tr><td style="text-align:left;"> <span style="text-decoration:none; color:#102651;">« ✘</span></td> <td style="text-align:right;"><span style="text-decoration:none; color:#102651;">✔ »</span></td></tr> </table></td> <td></td></table></raw-code></center>

NAVIGATION

Comments

[jedied]

You do seem remarkably hard to kill.

Kylo and I weren't even speaking to each other when I tethered with Luke. He's since made his disapproval clear, but was a decision that I made out of practicality. I already knew Luke, and tethering isn't that much different from a Force bond. If it had to be anyone, he was the best option.

Has Kylo told you what happened between the two of them?

link not IC but for OOC reasons

[nouskaiananki]

Very much so.

I didn't believe you did it out of spite.

Some. Luke hasn't lived the event, meaning his side isn't know, and given other influences we know to have been present at the time, it is quite a Roil.

[jedied]

I imagine Kylo is, too, but I'd really rather you both not test it here.

We've sorted it out. He understands my reasons. I don't think he's happy about it, but we've rarely approved of the other's choices in general. I don't imagine that part will ever entirely change.

I can't speak for Luke, but I know he regretted it. I know the one here doesn't want to repeat the same mistake.

[nouskaiananki]

I cannot promise I will not but I will do my best to prevent him from testing it.

It may not. You do not have to understand or agree with someone's choices, no matter how much you care for them. Politics being what they were, Padmé and I would end up on opposing sides at times.

Because Palpatine arranged it but. Details.

Understandable. I would like to know what you know of it, eventually.

[jedied]

I don't want to find out what will happen to Kylo if you die here. You don't know what he was like before.

I don't need us to agree all the time. I just want some measure of peace between those I care for.

I'll tell you what I can, having seen both sides of things. It's an in-person sort of conversation.

[nouskaiananki]

You don't want to know what I will do if he dies here.

I'm working in my apartment. You're welcome to stop-by.

[jedied]

I won't let that happen.

All right. Now is as good a time as any.

[nouskaiananki]

Just let yourself in.

[jedied]

She shows up a little while later with two travel cups of that weird pumpkin spice caf stuff that she'd noticed Vader took an interest in when he'd joined her before. She'll drink literally anything, so she has no idea if it's actually good by anyone else's standards, but she's incapable of not bringing something consumable. Even to Vader. Especially if she's going to have to get into all this mess.

She takes him at his word and enters with only a moment's hesitation -- mostly because she's still having trouble with the cognitive dissonance of having a chat with Darth kriffing Vader. On purpose. With caf.

Well. At least it's one conversation she'll never have to have again.

"Hello?"

[nouskaiananki]

Vader's apartment doesn't really look like an apartment anymore - every horizontal surface has been covered with a hard surface to make it into a desk or tabletop. And every surface was covered with what a first might look like junk. And some is, in various stages of disassembly and sorting, in piles next to various projects including replacement limbs (and other medical equipment), others being made into tools. The kitchen-type area only has several cardboard cases of medical meal replacement, one opened, the cases stacked on the floor. The only semi-comfortable place to sit was a metal chair wedged into the corner with a couple of oddly shaped cushions perched on it.

Vader meanwhile, was wearing the grey scrubs they'd been rescued in, now stained with oil or grease smears, ink and graphite marks, the occasional tiny burn hole, and more pockets in other material rather expertly sewn on to hold tools. His modified helmet - covering his head from ear to ear and crown to nose to supply the sensory input he needed - was on his head and attached with leather straps. The air had a faint smell of hot metal from a recently used soldering iron.

"Once I secure this, you'll have my attention." He's not ignoring her - but he's not going to risk burning the building down for the sake of civility either.
"

[jedied]

Rey's own apartment isn't much better, though she does keep a few soft spaces to curl up and read at her leisure. Her eyes rake over the assorted parts and projects with a keen sense of what she'd use them for, and what they might've traded for back home. She still has a difficult time not coming back home with every potentially useful scrap she sees.

She puts the coffee down on the nearest available space and tries not to look too eager to know what he's doing. It's a losing battle, but she waits until he doesn't seem like he's likely to set anything on fire before asking.

"What are you working on?"

[nouskaiananki]

To be fair: his childhood bedroom and his Padawan and Knight quarters almost looked mostly like this, although there were more comfortable places to rest or sleep and at least in the Jedi Temple bread and stashes of fruit.

Now he was markedly less concerned with comfort. Almost resents it even.

Still, the smell of the caf is noted, and the politeness is appreciated. He turned towards her and beckoned a metal tumbler up off the floor and flicks his wrist to land it next to what she's brought. Once he walked over to her, he picked it up and slid it inside the tumbler. "A personal shield prototype." He completely expected to have to remake it several times at this stage. "Something small, which can be worn concealed, to be deployed if caught unaware." Taking the idea from Padmé's jewelry, of course.

[jedied]

Rey can't help but be impressed; the technology for personal shields had been lost or guarded such that it never made it to anything useable for her side of the war. Probably not for the First Order, either, else Snoke wouldn't have died the way he had.

"So long as you're not planning on testing it by having people shoot you, I imagine it'll make you even harder to kill."

She says it with more than a bit of humor, since that's how she's decided she's dealing with this entire Vader situation. If she can't be vaguely amused by her circumstances she's going to lie down on the floor and cry about them, and that seems unproductive at best.

[nouskaiananki]

Given he's seen them in action, and gotten to get his hands on Pamdé's ('Tell your Jedi to stop foundling your jewelry' 'Ani is gifted with technology, he won't hurt it' had been uttered in their apartment on Coruscant more than once), he had a fair idea how to make a stable one. But he hadn't tried before.

"I hadn't been." Was he joking? Was he serious? Time would tell. "It isn't for me ultimately, regardless."

At least he responded well to the humor?

[jedied]

"Hmm. Well, I'm sure its recipient will appreciate it."

She's trying very hard not to ask which of his descendants gets the first one, or whether it's meant to stop them killing one another. Instead she sips her own caf and leans against the edge of a table that doesn't look likely to tip over. She's not exactly comfortable here, but at least she's grown used to Vader's presence in the Force such that it no longer makes her uneasy on its own.

"Speaking of which, I said I'd tell you what happened between Luke and Kylo. You said Kylo's spoken of it. How much has he said?"

[nouskaiananki]

"That is the hope."

Among others. He's used to demanding things, getting them, even from the Force. Even here, if not reliably. Vader may be able to make it be reliable.

"He said Luke grew afraid of him, and he awoke one night to find him standing over him with his saber ignited." That he finds that distasteful is somehow clear, despite most of his face being covered.

[jedied]

It's none of her business, but there's a fleeting pang of something like envy that she barely takes heed of. Her own parents had left her with nothing at all in the way of protection, and they never would -- never mind that she'd insist herself beyond needing it from anyone else.

At his recounting, she nods soberly. There's nothing untrue about it, and there's no way to deny the effect that it had had on both men. But she still feels as though further context is warranted.

"He said it was a vision. He saw a future that Ben -- Kylo -- would cause, and in a moment of fear he thought to avert it. I don't believe he would've harmed him. He told me he regretted it instantly, but Kylo lashed out, destroying Luke's Jedi school and killing the other students."

She doesn't know that that last part isn't actually the clear truth of the matter, though she's always gotten the sense that it was an instinctual reaction gone wrong rather than the massacre it seemed. She can't believe Kylo had any intentional cruelty in him toward the students who had been his friends -- not back then, anyway. Not before he'd been with Snoke for long enough to shape his darkness into a weapon.

[nouskaiananki]

Vader's need to protect his family had caused the downfall of the Jedi it was worth remembering. He took it to obsessive, freighting levels. This was at least mostly benign.

Vader listened, taking the words into account. Which words were chosen instead of others. "Force visions can be manipulated, but he may not have been taught that." A lesson Vader himself had come to learn and appreciate far too late. "Was that one action? Or?"

[jedied]

"I don't know; you'd have to ask Kylo. Neither of them wanted to get too deeply into the recollection of it."

Understandably so, but it meant she didn't have a full picture, even having heard both sides and believing the truth to be somewhere in the middle.

"My instinct tells me that Kylo believed he was acting in self-defense, and also that Luke never would have harmed him. Each of them believed the truth of things as they told it."

Luke had hidden the whole of the truth from her at first, but his shame had felt true enough when he revealed the rest. And he'd come back in the end to try to set things right.

[nouskaiananki]

"And without Luke's memories to examine we can't know the fuller truth." And without Palpatine to cross-examine or the site to examine that made it more difficult.

Although yes they would believe it would be self defense. Vader sighed and picked up his cup to fidget with it.

He needed to stab things.

[jedied]

Rey would also like to take out her feelings on the matter on something inanimate and unbreakable, since it put her in the uncomfortable position of sympathizing with both and yet being angry at both at the same time. She'd been angrier with Luke before she met the one here, and she still felt that a Jedi Master ought to have had more control over his fear than to consider attacking his nephew in his sleep. But she hadn't been there, and she couldn't say she'd never reacted badly to Kylo being Kylo.

"If you ask Kylo about that night he'll tell you the truth of things as he experienced them. I haven't known him to lie. When I asked him before it wasn't exactly as a friend."

She'd wanted the truth, and what she learned had been enough to sway her to his side at first. But she hadn't been in a position to really sit down and listen to all of it.

[nouskaiananki]

Vader was well aware of how Jedi Masters responded to fear. And given Luke...well. Well between being faced with a second Vader or nipping the threat in the bud - he knew which one the High Council would have voted for.

Seems the Jedi had infected his son more than he knew.

"No I don't believe he'd lie to me."

[jedied]

Rey chews the inside of her lip and toys with her cup, feeling all kinds of conflicted about having said as much as she had, though none of it was untrue.

"You won't take it out on the Luke who's here, will you? He doesn't want to become that person, and it's not really fair to him to judge him for things he hasn't done yet."

She doesn't want to have just signed Luke up for conflict with his father beyond what they've already dealt with back home. If there's a chance for the entire family to mend things between them, she'd like to see it happen.

[nouskaiananki]

Vader considered his words. What he's vowed to his grandson - a vow he intended to keep - and what information he had. "I told Kylo I will not allow Luke to grow into that person. Some of that does mean confronting the misguided teachings of the Jedi regarding fear. But I would not punish him for something he hasn't done, no." He wouldn't allow his child to become a coward to struck out in the dark on a sleeping child.

How that was different than what he had done, well. It simply was.

[jedied]

"Do you think it's possible to change what's already happened, then? For this Luke to do things differently?

She's not sure, herself, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. If things here can't change anything at all back home, then she's set herself up to break her own heart by allowing herself to care for Kylo as much as she already does. Not to mention befriending and tethering to a man who was dead back home, who hadn't been the teacher she'd asked for, and who she's not sure ever forgave her for being what she was. Going home with all of her memories intact would almost be crueler than losing them again if nothing at all could change.

"I put myself in between them, and I don't regret it, but I don't want my actions to contribute to hurting either of them. I don't even know how much I should have told you, but it seemed important that you know."