1. Breathe in. It’s just a question. You can do this.
“Yeah, I do.”
Perfect. They’re smiling now.
Something small inside of you feels guilty about lying by omission, so you keep going.
Here comes the hard part.
“I do believe in God, it’s just that - I don’t really go to church anymore.”
Their smile dims, just a little.
But why?! They cry out.
You used to go to church every Sunday when you were little! Someone else intercedes.
Your nails are digging into your palm. Breathe in again, just this once.
“I know, but like, I didn’t really feel it after a while? I prefer to pray on my own.”
2. Things you remember from church:
i. The smell of incense that clung to your hair, even hours after mass.
ii. The sunlight, filtering in through the colored glass.
iii. HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN, I CAN’T BELIEVE GOD WOULD LET THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE GO UNPUNISHED, THEY DESERVE TO BURN IN HELL, whispered by a priest to your grandma. Your eyes water and you don’t know why.
iv. You can still recite some of the psalms by heart.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?
v. Your aunt presses a rosary into your palm, one year before you swear to yourself you will never set foot in a church again. You don’t have the heart to tell her that it feels like she’s handing you a chain made of iron and lead and the weight of your guilt.
vi. Confession is always awkward and forced and you feel like your sins should be yours to deal with and yours alone, but they told you without it you’d be dirty and you believed them. You think about this when you kneel down in front of the crucifix. Jesus Christ’s eyes are closed. The small, ugly thing in your stomach is glad He is not looking at you.
3. There are roughly 52 Sundays in a year. You went to church every Sunday since you were a baby until you were 16. That makes it about 800 masses.
You do the math in your head and it doesn’t feel like 800 hours, it feels like eternities of you standing in your best clothes, forced to listen to stories of fire and brimstone and God’s righteous anger against sinners.
Very rarely they talk about how God is also love and forgiveness. Those times, it feels like you walked into another service for a different religion.
4. You realize you’re “different” around the same time they make you realize they’ll never accept you for who you are.
It hurts more than you thought it would.
5. Your faith is a fragile, small, sleeping thing nested in your ribcage.
You poke and prod and worry at it, hoping you’ll get an answer to a question you’re too afraid to ask.
6. Your family loves you and your friends love you but if there’s really a higher being
7. who created the Universe as we know it
8. and loves us all, for we are His children
9. HOW DO YOU KNOW HE HATES ME FOR WHAT I THINK FOR WHO I LOVE FOR WHO I AM
10. God punishes sinners but he also forgives them.
It took you some time to realize there was nothing to forgive, nothing to end up in Hell for, except the usual stuff, ordinary sins like white lies and feeling envious of someone else’s possessions and other human things.
The first time you walk into a church after a while you do it with a weight on your shoulders you need to get rid of.
The pews are empty and the light hits the altar just right.
You breathe in. Close your eyes.
I BELIEVE IN A GOD WHO LOVES ME, you scream in your head, and it’s loud enough to rattle Heaven.
I want to take some time to think about Soulmate AUs in broader social and historical context. (I’m sticking to the ‘first words written on your body’ version of those aus)
Thoughts on Society:
In a soulmate universe there would be distinctly less homophobia because queerness would be both normalized and no one would be able to argue that it isn’t natural. (Not that there wouldn’t be any because people are assholes).
Religion would be structured differently - destiny would be seen as an incontrovertible subject. “Of course you have a destiny and a place in God’s plan, just look at those words on your arm.” What words were written on the arms of Messiahs and prophets?
Scientists attempting to explain it through genetics and physics.
The culture of introductions would be essential. What you say to new people would be built into the culture of what is polite and it would change society by society.
Societies with strict verbal introduction rules that limit the finding of soul mates (because what would disrupt strict social stratification than princes discovering that their soul mate is a maid).
Societies where people craft personalized introductions and use the same line like a personal signature each time they meet someone new.
First day of school or college or a new job being almost all meeting rituals.
Special festivals that are dedicated to meeting new people and talking to them. Pilgrimages for young adults to go town by town to meet as many people as possible.
Pop Culture
Massive online databases full of those first words.
Books dedicated to the first words of famous people.
Analyses of your words (a la astrology: because you have the word ‘time’ in your words it means…)
Matchmakers who promise they’ll find you Your Soulmate!
Imagine the shipping debates around TV shows: “Her words haven’t been revealed yet! So she could be his match!” or “They revealed his words in season 2 so we know his match isn’t Fred!”
Interpersonal:
Imagine the pressure to find your match
People who claim children raised outside of matches are more destructive and less well adjusted and at a disadvantage
“If you have sex outside a Match you will catch chlamydia and you will DIE”
Special marriages for matches.
Support groups for those who find their Matches late in life.
Imagine the family pressure in some families to never meet anyone unapproved by the family. “Your father speaks to everyone first!”
Different marriage systems
Flexible ones where every non-match marriage is considered voidable if a soulmate match is found. Imagine being the person left behind by someone you love and trust because of words on their skin.
Or a system of different marriages where people have different partners for different contexts: This is my household wife June and my Match wife Alice her household husband Larry and we all make it work.
Or systems where you can’t legally marry unless you can both show your words and prove you are a match.
People who lie about it to avoid the social pressure inherent in finding your match. “Of course my husband and I are a match!” Or teens who lie to their parents that someone is their match because their parents disapprove of their new date.
Parents who worry like hell about their kid’s words.
People who fall in love with the “wrong person” because this social system means that there is literally a wrong person. But they truly fall in love. Who try and scratch off their soulmate words from their skin because FUCK destiny, we’re making our own.
Imagine how broken you would feel if you were asexual/aromantic and you didn’t have words.
Imagine having words that you hated. Imagine having words on your skin that were a slur or an insult or a threat and knowing that someday you will meet someone who will say that to you and they are someone you are supposed to love.
It fascinates me because the idea is so much bigger than just meet-cute scenarios and fluff fics. It would change society from the ground up.
I want to write the one in bold a little bit.
I would love to read in-depth discussion about each of these ideas. Sadly, there’s not much available. What does exist, though, is discussion about fannish tattoos, which are voluntary physical marks of things we value. Transformative Works and Cultures has a couple of interesting articles on this topic by Bethan Jones, which you can read here and here.
Growing up believing that the words have to be spoken out loud, in person, to you, but discovering it was that person you met online that one time.
my favorite college experience is when i had a 7am class and the kid next to me literally poured a monster energy drink into his coffee said “i’m going to die” and drank the whole thing
i knew a guy who brewed his instant coffee with monster instead of water. three cups in two hours. i think he ascended to the astral realm
the survivability of the human race never ceases to amaze me
TABI ANECDOTE
My final year I lived with engineering masters students. One night, I’m finishing up my final paper, I’m juuuust backing up my final copy, and my housemate’s cat knocks a vase over onto my laptop.
Which wouldn’t be a problem except my cable had been chewed on (thanks Kobe), so the wiring was exposed. Circuits short out, I fling myself back to avoid electrocution and by the time we get the situation handled, my laptop AND my external hard drive have been fried by the surge.
I mean, fried. Like, they-are-vaguely-smoking fried.
I start to cry, because there goes fifty percent of my final grade.
Ahmad just goes “it’s okay, we will fix”. I’m like “how the fuck do you propose that?” And he’s like “I have spare laptop.” “THIS IS DUE IN THE AM!”
And he looks me dead in the eye and goes, “I said I will help. Go get the laptop.”
So off I go. By the time I make it downstairs, there’s this chemical /reek/ in the kitchen. I go in and there he is, methodically crushing caffeine pills with the bottom of a glass on a ceramic plate, periodically dusting the powder into a cooking pot. Meanwhile, his coffee pot is chugging away on the counter.
As I watch, he takes the coffee pot, empties it into the cooking pot, lets THAT come to a boil and dumps in some of his Turkish coffee, AND the remaining caffeine pill powder, which by now is starting to look uncomfortably like coke.
He lets that steep, and by now the coffee/burning smell is so strong it’s woken up all six of the other housemates, who have all come downstairs and are vacillating between staring at my laptop and at this concoction with undisguised horror.
He pours this sludge into a mug, stirs in about four /tablespoons/ of sugar and slides it my way.
I figure that I’m probably dead either way regardless, so I suck it back, filtering the grounds through my teeth as I go.
I’ve had three sips when it hits, and I feel my heart trip on a beat. I must have gone white cause he nods, all pleased, and points me at his laptop.
Long story short, I got an week’s extension, didn’t sleep for five days, had a conversation with my BLINDS in SPANISH, and got a B+, with a note that it was an “engaging read and well-written, when intelligible”.
To this day, coffee any stronger than a pale off-beige makes my chest hurt.
I honestly thought he was going to drink the coffee and perform was magic on the laptop but.. nope. even better. Honest to god, I really want to know how that conversation with the blinds went.
Bruh. BRUH.
This is so real. LMFAOOO
I’m concerned for all of you. You at least shortened your life by ten years.
I hate to use a Mad Max reference but WITNESS ME. -chugs monster and takes midterms-
My minor is in Chemistry.
I collect chemistry glassware.
I figured out how to triple-distill and vacuum-extract coffee to raise the caffeine concentration 20-30x.
The first time I sampled a mug of the end product, I didn’t sleep for 2 days and was convinced that I could feel air molecules.
♥ OH MY GOD I LOVED YOUR EXR COMPLEMENTARY POWERS FIC ♥ It was so amazing! I would JUST LOVE to turn it into a little comic, if that's alright with you! You write amazingly, thank you so much for enriching our lives :3 Have a lovely day!
I TAKE IT BACK, I AM LITERALLY DYING RIGHT NOW, EVERYONE IS TOO NICE. Um, absolutely! Fuck yeah, make a comic, tag me in it so I can hyperventilate over how amazing literally everyone is, like…holy shit, friend, buddy, pal, you are amazing.
your exr soul mate au killed me, thank you,, i loved the concept, it was so cool, and unique and ahhhhh!!!!!i love your writing!!!
Holy shit thank you so much? You are the sweetest?
This may be totally unwelcome but if you want to read more of my stuff, I’m on AO3 here (a couple Les Mis fics are in progress) and I have a writing tag on my blog here (stuff is tagged by fandom fic, likeles mis fic or hamilton fic, or you can just scroll, I guess) and I am always open for prompts although it might take me a while to work through them if I get inundated at the same rate as I have today.
Thank you so much for your amazing compliment, I am literally dying right now.
I seriously trust the entire Hamilton cast so much like legit if Lin, Anthony, Oak, and Daveed pulled up in a suspicious white van and told me to get in, you bet your ass I would. I’d climb in that van so fucking fast. Idk where we go or whats happening, I trust these people.
I write. I swear to God. I actually love writing fanfic. BUT, and here’s the catch, I have a ton of trouble coming up with short fic ideas. Short anything ideas, really. The most memorable example is that one time I decided to write how I thought someone being able to see the future would pan out, just a few pages of character study, dicking around with super powers, nothing fancy. Smash cut to a year and a half later, I’m wrapping up my 350 page novel and staring dismally at my 200 additional pages of worldbuilding. And it’s always like that, it gets so out of hand.
SO. My solution to that is this. If you have a craving for a specific pairing that you know I ship, shoot me a prompt and I’ll throw together a short fic for you and post it. I’m trying to unwind after finals, so it’ll be good for me, and you’ll get fic, so it’ll be good for you.
Hit me up.
Since that one Les Mis E x R Superpower AU got a hundred notes last night, I would like to remind everyone that I TAKE PROMPTS ALWAYS. My inbox is open, my free time is excessive, and I am bored, it would be my genuine pleasure to write y'all some fic. There is a (perpetually in progress) master list of ships on my blog.
So, after listening to the Hamilton soundtrack for like the fifteenth time I decided to look up Hamilton’s last words. I’ve never realized how accurate the characterization was until I read, essentially, “He kept talking for hours after getting shot. Nobody knows his exact last words because he wouldn’t stop talking. The man with so much to say refused to go quietly.”
- Star Trek is a huge cinematic franchise. It is huge. It has thousands of fans of all different ages. This is a huge, huge step for diversity in wide spread cinema.
- The writers says Sulu will have a husband and a daughter. Not only will he be happy, he will have a family, he will have a KID. Considering how bleak LGBT representation has been this year alone, having a happy little girl with two Daddys is incredible.
- Science fiction does not tend to be an area where we have LGBT representation.
- Sulu is a main character. He has been an important part of the series and is a major badass.
- John Cho is Korean- American, so not only are we having LGBT representation but POC - LGBT representation!
- Star Trek have announced Sulu’s sexuality before the film is even out. So therefore giving a big fuck you to any homophobes who now won’t go see the film. Zero fucks given.
- And best of all: the original actor who played Sulu came out in 2005 as a gay man - Sulu being gay is paying respect to real life events. How cool is that?
i just realized something: think about padme amidala’s public image. nobody knew she was married. nobody knew who anakin skywalker was at all–he was just some random jedi trainee, and by the time anybody would have started paying attention to him in the public eye, they would have known him as darth vader. to the public, anakin became a faceless villain who always was who he was, no fall from grace needed.
so, padme. i’m sure she had supporters across the republic. i’m sure her time as queen of naboo was EXTREMELY well-documented, and honestly, based on her rotation of outfits, she was probably a full-on celebrity. she was young and brilliant and a passionate defender of her people, and even though the empire seized power in the end, i wouldn’t be surprised if the rebellion decades later directly descended from the ideals of her followers.
but think about the circumstances of her death from the outside. people probably knew she was pregnant by some unknown father, of course, but this is a universe with robot doctors–saying “she died in childbirth” would probably be like saying “she died of the common cold” today. not something that happens, especially for a celebrity politician with unlimited resources. and there must have been a child, but what happened to it? did it die too? as a media narrative, it’s flimsy at best, ESPECIALLY considering the timing of her death.
padme amidala, the woman who ruled a planet at 14 and sat stony-faced while every other senator cheered on palpatine’s rise to power, died under mysterious circumstances just as the government she’d defended crumbled. from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that she was assassinated.
if this was a universe that at all made sense, padme amidala would have been a household name among republic loyalists. her tragically short life, her noble self-sacrifice for the ideals she believed in, would have been LEGENDARY. when the rebellion rose, she would have been the name on everybody’s mind–do it in her honor, people would have said. finish the fight she started.
i know we can’t go back in time and change the original trilogy, but the sequel movies? come on. don’t tell me darth vader is the only looming icon in this franchise.
i’m honestly really emotional about the sulu reveal in star trek because finally, finally, we have a character in a major mainstream film that isn’t a its-so-hard-being-gay-we’re-cheating-on-our-spouses-its-so-scandalous-and-sad oscar-bait drama. finally, hollywood might be recognizing that gay people can exist in universes other than sad, reality-laden ones that end in tragic death. we’ve taken the first step, into sci-fi, and it’s an incredible feeling.
now, all we can do is hope that other major studios take the hint.
1.) one or both of people you see as a “straight couple” could be pan/bi/poly/ace
2.) one or both of them could be trans or non binary
3.) you could be misgendering someone
4.) They could be there to give moral support to a queer friend or family member who didn’t want to go alone.
Number four is important
5. They could be there because they support the cause stop fucking gatekeeping
6. They could be there in memory of a loved one, don’t forget Pride used to be a memorial as well as a celebration. I know a good number of straight people who go to Pride to celebrate the lives of friends and family who have died because they want to remember them as they lived, happy and joyful and surrounded by a community that loved them.
being emotionally abused has made me incredibly defensive towards being told what to do, but at the same time has made it hard for me to do things without someone telling me that it’s ok to do out if fear of doing something wrong and getting in trouble
Hopefully Sulu being gay will mean that Lucasfilms will feel like they have to one up Star Trek and add more gay characters. A chain reaction of making every character LGBT+ just because of rivalry.
During a promotional event in Australia, John Cho confirmed that beloved Star Trek character Hikaru Sulu is gay.
Sulu was originally played by George Takei, who in later life has become a prominent activist for LGBT rights. In a tribute to his ongoing legacy as an icon of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond writer Simon Pegg and director Justin Lin decided make Sulu canonically gay in the upcoming movie.
“I liked [Pegg and Lin’s] approach, which was not to make a big thing out of it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicize one’s personal orientations,” Cho said.
one time in sixth grade i did my math homework and then because i was excited that i had grasped the lesson so well, i did the next day’s homework too
the next day in class i told my teacher, and she looked constipated for a second, and then said dismissively, “well, then you’re not very good at following directions, are you.”
Cause tags are truth. Maaan ,that one time a teacher stole my encyclopedia cause it proved her wrong.
when I was eight and in public school, we could do a report based on any historical character who had a book about them in the school library.
I picked Harriet Tubman because Harriet Tubman, and I wrote about how her master had thrown an anvil at her head, leaving her with a permanent dent in her forehead. I know that the anvil part was definitely in the school library book.
My teacher circled the word “anvil” and took off points.
“I HAVE SPELLED ANVIL CORRECTLY,” I roared in tiny confrontation.
“No,” she said, and it transpired that she didn’t know or care that “anvil” is a word or that “anvils” are a thing.
And so despite my helpful attempts to explain what anvils were, including references to blacksmiths and the Roadrunner, I had points taken off OH MY GOD.
YES, I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THIS TWENTY YEARS LATER. FUCK YOU, LADY. YOU ARE DOUBTLESSLY DEAD BY NOW AND I HOPE YOU KNOW YOUR STUDENTS STILL HATE YOU.
ANVILS ARE A THING.
From “Daring Greatly” by Brene Browne:
“…85 percent of the men and women we interviewed for the shame research could recall a school incident from their childhood that was so shaming, it changed how they thought of themselves as learners.”
I think about this quote a lot when I think of school.
Sometimes you just see a combination of posts that really crystallizes something for you. thank you spcsnaptags for putting these thoughts together this way.
THIS. when i was in first grade i was bored in class a lot. my solution was: finish my work as quickly as possible, then read a book, because teachers said that books were good and i liked to read. except i got in trouble, more than once, for working ahead. because… we were doing it as a class i suppose? but if y’all are gonna take an hour to descirbe how to tell time, why shouldn’t i finish my worksheet? i remember we had these clothespins with our names on them and we had to move them to yellow or red from green if we got into trouble, and because i answered the next three questions ahead (correctly, i might add) i had to move my pin to yellow and miss recess.
and it didn’t stop as i got older. i once had an 8th grade science teacher tell me off for reading in class and said he would throw my library book away, because i had finished my work and the other people in my group, who didn’t want to do their work and were whining to copy off mine, hadn’t finished. because i was expected not to be done until they were, and he refused to believe they wanted to cheat. (of course the solution here was to let them cheat and go back to harry potter, because fuck if i was going to listen to them complain through every single problem they didn’t want to do).
tl;dr: STOP PUNISHING KIDS FOR WANTING TO WORK HARD
in fourth grade we had an end of the trimester pizza party or whatever for the kids that had worked hard enough to read x amount of books. it was like, four books and the only requirement was that it had to be at your reading level or above, so the kids who struggled to read could also get the chance to partake.
well, i had read the third and fourth harry potter books along with some others, and i had one book left. we had to tell our teacher what we were reading so she could keep track. i told her i was reading order of the phoenix and she said no. “you’ve read too many of those.”
YOU REALLY, HONESTLY WANT TO TELL A NINE YEAR OLD THAT WANTS TO READ AN 870 PAGE BOOK TO NOT DO IT?
I said fuck her and read it in two days. she was pissed but she had to count it because i passed the computer test on it so she knew i had actually read it.
don’t tell a kid they can’t read something, for god sakes. don’t punish children for wanting to learn or to do something above the regular level. thats how kids wind up not doing anything.
More recently for myself is when highschool teachers embarrass kids for asking “dumb questions” or asking about things they should “already know.” You’re the teacher???? Teach, maybe????
as someone studying teaching, I can attest that organising a lesson plan tailored to ~20 children, all at different levels of competency, skill, and timing, is ridiculously difficult. but it’s part of the job and you should never EVER punish or embarrass a child for being eager to work and learn.
a story about how to deal with this correctly: when I was in second grade my teacher noticed that I was finishing all my work early and reading to myself while everyone else finished. rather than punishing me, she went home and made me my very own writing book. whenever I finished my work early she would give me a prompt to write about. it kept me occupied with something that I loved, allowed her to help the rest of the class without worrying that I was bored and didn’t make the other kids feel jealous of me finishing early because I want getting ‘free time’.
moral of the story: when students put in extra effort, teachers should too.
My high school English teacher got mad at me for correcting him on how to spell “intelligence” and gave me a D on my next essay. Would you like to know the reasons he said he gave me a D? One word was apparently used wrong. So I looked it up in the dictionary. My entire family (both of my parents are editors and my dad is a writer) told me I had used it correctly. He also marked me down for using the term “hand signals” rather than “sign language.” Um, excuse me, genius, that ape was not fluent in sign language. It knew fucking hand signals.
According to my mother, one teacher nearly drove my eight-year-old self into an actual nervous breakdown, because I dared to correct a spelling error (I don’t even remember what it was - something of the there-their-they’re variety, I think). Even his colleagues said I was right - and apparently the way he treated me was so infamous that my mother had teachers from other schools coming up to her and telling her she needed to move me from his class.
I put up with this shit constantly through my whole time in school (if I had a dollar for every time a teacher told me I wasn’t allowed to talk anymore or failed me on something for correcting them, I would be a rich woman), but I think possibly the most memorable occasion was in high school–ninth grade, okay–when a teacher who hated me docked me an entire letter grade for using a made-up word. The word was obsequious, which is a bit obscure but not fucking made-up. When I brought her a dictionary and the assignment, not only did she refuse to improve my grade, she said that the writing was bad enough to have deserved the grade she gave me, and handed me an example piece to model my further work on.
For reference, this particular assignment was something we had to do weekly.
The example she gave me was my own work, from three weeks prior. She docked me another half a letter grade for pointing to my name on the header of the example.
"Fun fact: cots and blankets were in short supply during the Revolutionary War and standard practice during the winters to avoid frostbite was to share. I feel this is pertinent to your interests given that it's a matter of historical record that Laurens and Hamilton were best friends and consequently the logical partners to share a bed." Yes I did just copy and paste your message from our chat into this. Hamilton/Laurens sharing a bed. Please <3 your Laurens
First
of all, you are clearly not to be trusted with fun historical facts. What would you ever do with the knowledge
that the Marquis de Lafayette once gave John Quincy Adams a pet alligator that
the sixth president insisted on keeping in the White House? Or the fact that America’s treaty with Morocco
is the longest standing, due to the fact that they were the first to
acknowledge us as an independent country?
Anyway. There was technically
already these two idiots sharing a bed last time, but you know what everyone
always needs more of in their life? THE
WINTER AT VALLEY FORGE. Now, there’s
actual Research that happened for this one, so some points. It’s about the end of 1777, meaning John
Laurens has only been with the army a couple months (to be fair Hamilton’s only
been there about six months longer), and what I’m generously calling ‘huts’ are
tiny little buildings that basically only function to cut the windchill down, and they usually housed WAY more than two, but…artistic license? For the sake of nominal consistency, I’m pretending
that this is before Schuylkill, so theoretically it could fit into the same continuum
as your other request.
John hadn’t slept
heavily since coming to Valley Forge—the ill ease of a Southern boy exposed to
the bitter nip of a Pennsylvania winter for the first time—but he was getting
better at it. The tiny hut was better
than the tent, and their status as aides de camp of the general himself meant
that they were only two to a hut. It
meant there was barely space to walk between the slapdash cots and the writing
desk they shared and the two chairs.
Alexander—who had insisted on the familiar address within scant days of
meeting John, all sharp-edged smile and warm dark eyes—had a slightly easier
time of it, as he wasn’t forced to stand with his head bowed whenever he drew
too near a wall, but not much. The hut
was small and damp and dark, and there were moments when John felt as if taking
too deep a breath would crack the logs around them.
The thud of
Alexander’s forearm colliding with the desk as he dozed off was loud and sharp
in the small space, and John jolted awake at the sound.
“My apologies, John,”
Alexander said, muffling a yawn with one hand.
He reached out and steadied his tallow candle, dabbing at a smear of ink
on the page.
“They are unnecessary,”
John said, frowning. “What time is it?”
“Very late, or
perhaps very early,” Alexander said with a shrug, brushing an escaping coil of
hair out of his face and squinting down at the page. “I suppose the answer depends on whether you
would prefer to judge by the past evening or the upcoming dawn. That is, of course, assuming you were able to
tell which is which in this abysmal weather.”
- they both have THE SAME FCKIN PRONOUNS SO I CONSTANTLY HAVE TO NAME BOTH CHARACTERS BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL WHO’S DOING WHAT OR WHO’S SPEAKING WHO WILL SAVE ME FROM THIS HELL
I CAN’T BELIEVE THERE’S A POST ABOUT THIS. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL.
You know something we don’t get taught often? Why bodies with uteri often have a slight pouche. You wanna know why? Because the uterus leans against the outside wall of the abdominal cavity. The uterus is literally making that little pouche, the belly that we call fat all the fucking time, and that’s why it’s so fucking hard to get a absolutely flat belly! And thank fuck for having a female anatomy professor who is old enough and feminist enough to not give a damn and cheerfully tell us all the details that a male professor might have thought unimportant. Cause fuck this society that ignores organs in order to fat-shame us.
If a guy ever spreads a rumor that he slept with you, don’t deny it. One, because there will always be people who think it’s true, and two, because that dumbass boy just handed you the power to say anything you want about what he’s like in bed, and people will believe it. Say he bleats like a sheep when he orgasms. Say he put on pearl earrings and asked you to call him Daisy. Say he couldn’t get it up until he watched an old Billy Mays infomercial. The power is yours.
there’s all these aus about vader finding luke and smuggling him away to the empire in a clever moment of mental clarity, but please consider this crack au: after being faced with slavery, his mother’s death, tusken raiders, sand, obi-wan kenobi, seeing the larses, and tatooine in general, vader lays eyes on toddler luke skywalker - his son, which meant palpatine lied, holy fuck i’m a father, oh god padme i’m so sorry - and flips.
this is the straw that breaks the semi-rational sith lord’s back. in true anakin skywalker fashion, vader panics, scoops his son into his arms, charges into mos espa and turns it upside down, steals a shuttle from his own fleet, slams random hyperspace coordinates, and is thrown into space with no real idea where he’s going or when he’s going to get there. with a toddler.
to make things more interesting, obi-wan snuck aboard the ship, but dropped his lightsaber in the ruckus of sneaking into imperial ranks. and poor, poor firmus piett, a lowly officer who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, runs smack into him.
and they’re all stuck on a ship, indefinitely. with a toddler.
sweet baby jesus i love this idea
just vader, picking up toddler luke under his arm like a football, and RUNNING LIKE FUCKING HELL
If Snow White literally had “lips red as a rose, hair black as ebony, and skin white as snow,” she’d look like a walking nightmare.
honestly this sounds like the description of a vampire. Which would also explain how she convinced seven dwarves to let her stay with them. How she could control some animals to do her bidding. How she could sleep for a long time without aging. Why the hunter betrayed the queen for her, and why the queen wanted her heart, so she could be sure she was killed properly.
the first baby is born in may, and dies in his sleep. the second does not make it to term. the third lives for a year before an unknown illness claims him. the queen pricks her finger on a needle: old magic. blood on snow on an ebony windowsill. the wind carries the the contract, and the woods accept.
blood now must be repaid with blood later, but the fourth baby is a girl, and she lives.
*
she grows slowly, and out of order. first her hands, long and bony; then her arms, thin, hollow-looking. she never looks quite like a child: no chubby cheeks, no skinned knees, no missing teeth. her hair is thick and so black it sometimes seems viscous. her skin is so thin you should be able to see the blood running through it.
they name her snow white, for the fairness of her skin. so fair that she cries when left in the light too long.
*
the queen dies when snow white is four, still small, and beloved. she is not beautiful, her mouth too painfully red, her eyes too liquid dark, her teeth too pointedly sharp. but only those who do not live in the castle think this. to know the child is to love her. to know the child is to want to please her. to know the child is to know that she is precious.
that she must be protected. that she must be obeyed.
“it is not your fault,” the king whispers to the child on his lip, petting her head. “she was not strong enough. i will make sure you never go hungry.”
the child presses her tiny hand against his cheek. “i know you will,” snow white says.
*
peasants begin to go missing. young boys are snatched from the fields. women are summoned to the castle and never seen again.
“gifts,” her father calls them. “eat. you are too thin.”
the girls are always silent, and the boys always scream. snow white hates it. she wishes they would stop, but she is hungry. she is so hungry. and doesn’t she have the right to survive? isn’t she a child, too?
but her mother’s blood is the only food that ever made her feel full. now she can eat and eat and eat and never feel like she has taken a single bite.
she grows thin. the sun becomes too strong for her to go outside.
“a mother’s blood,” the king muses, and sends his advisors out to find snow white a new one.
*
the kingdom has six queens in six years, but no more peasants go missing. it must be something in the castle, they say. some mold. some terrible illness. something that lingers, and kills you slowly.
but snow white grows healthy regardless. she can be seen, sometimes, on the parapets: in the early years she wears a heavy cloak but as she grows it gets thinner, and then disappears entirely.
she is small, and delicate. her laughter, floating down into the village, is silver and gold and painted in eighth notes. it is said that if you look into her eyes you can see your deepest desire. it is said that she will give it to you. it is said that every time a queen dies it breaks snow white’s gentle heart. she shrinks. she hides away indoors. she becomes frail and cannot leave her bed.
so many queens in so many years. eventually, somebody will notice.
eventually, somebody does.
*
“mirror, mirror, on the wall: who’s the fairest of them all?”
you, my queen.
“there are no others?”
there is one other. but she is young. she was made by the forrest. she doesn’t know what she is.
“another? after all this time? where?”
the kingdom of six queens.
“how strong is her heart?”
she is too young to know for certain. but she when she is hungry, she has always been fed.
*
snow’s new mother arrives on horseback. her lips are red as blood, her hair as black as ebony, her skin as fair as–snow’s.
she marries the king and they spend the night in his chamber. this has never happened before. snow white does not understand. she is hungry. she always gets fed, the very first night. she always gets blood on her gown.
but her father stays in his chamber and does not come out. in the morning, his eyes are hazy and he does nothing but smile. her new mother’s teeth are red.
snow white waits. she isn’t starving yet. surely her father will snap out of it and feed her.
*
“today?” snow white asks, and her father pats her head.
“i will find you a peasant boy,” he says. “a strong one. your favorite kind.”
“that is not my favorite,” snow white tells him. she frowns. he has never told her no before. he, and everyone else, has always done exactly what she wanted. “father, i am hungry. you promised i would never be hungry again.”
she begins to cry, and the hazy look leaves him. he falls to his knees, her face between his hands. “of course,” he murmurs, “of course, tonight, i’ll send her. i don’t know why i didn’t before. i don’t know what i was thinking. tonight.”
snow white kisses his cheek. her red lips leave a print.
*
her new mother does not come. in the morning, her father’s eyes are hazy once again.
*
“father,” snow white begs.
“i promise,” he answers, but he is weak, every night he gives in to weakness because her new mother does not come. snow white is hungry. snow white grows thin. snow white cannot go out into the sun.
*
at last, her new mother comes. she has a plate of food: vegetables, fruit, and a slab of meat.
“eat,” her new mother murmurs. she perches on the edge of the bed.
snow white shuffles away from the sunlight coming through the window. “i’m not hungry,” she says.
“but you must be hungry,” her mother says, smiling. she reaches out to chase the edge of snow’s jaw. “you haven’t eaten in weeks. not even a peasant boy.”
snow white looks up, startled. “they aren’t filling,” snow white says.
“no,” agrees her new mother. “i agree. i prefer kings, when i can get them.”
“i prefer mothers.”
“i am not your mother.”
“then what are you?”
her smile is slow and bitter red. “my mother made the woods a promise, and the promise was me. she did not know that promises must be paid in blood, and sustained in blood, and that the blood was also me. she got what she wanted, and i ate until i was as full as a human could make me.”
“are there others? like you? …. like me?”
“there were,” the queen says. “once, there were many of us, and all of us were starving.”
snow white does not yet understand. “then what happened? where did they go? how did you survive?”
the queen runs a finger along the fabric of snow white’s blanket. her nail rips a line through the thread. “humans are weak, snow white. a thousand of them would not be enough to fill us up. but we are strong. our hearts can sustain a body for a hundred lifetimes.”
her teeth grow long. “i have been hungry for such a long time,” she says.
snow white understands.
she runs.
*
it hurts: her skin is so hot it is nearly on fire. her feet blister as she runs. she has never been outside of the castle grounds, but the woods are dark and shaded. the shade is like jumping into a pool of water. the red bleeds from her skin, leaving her fair and white once more.
she hides inside the hollow of a tree (the woods created her and the woods will keep her safe until her mother’s debt is paid). she sleeps while the hunting parties pass her by, all but one. he is a huntsman. he knows the woods. he knows the woods have favorites, and protect them; but the woods are old and can be tricked.
he waits.
when she emerges, it is dark. her skin is so white he almost wants to drink it. she is small, her hair so black he thinks she has woven the night sky into it. as he notches his bow he thinks it seems a shame to kill something so beautiful, something so beloved by the woods. the huntsman is loved by the woods, too. he knows how its favorites suffer.
she turns to look at him. when their eyes meet he sees his deepest desires. her eyes promise to give it to him. we are the chosen, her eyes promise, as she approaches and he does not shoot. cannot shoot. cannot look away.
“i am so hungry,” she whispers, reaching out to touch his face. “my father hasn’t fed me.”
“she wants your heart,” the huntsman confesses.
snow white knows that already. snow white is beginning to understand the bargain that her mother made.
“she cannot have it,” snow white says, and her teeth get long, and she eats.
*
“mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
I like to think that Hermione wasn’t the only one to figure out that Prof. Lupin was a werewolf. I mean, even if Snape assigned that essay to just their class, I can’t really believe that nobody else put the clues together.
Specifically, I like to think that there was some upper year who figured it out because they paid really close attention in class. Like, not just “I have OWLs this year and I need to get good grades” close attention, but “Prof. Lupin is so nice and so funny and he has such a nice smile, and wow, I am really gay” close attention.
Let’s all be real, here, Remus Lupin probably holds the all-time Hogwarts record for “Most embarrassing adolescent daydreams and adolescent sexual/romantic awakenings caused”. There was a lot of math being done about age differences by students, but to no avail, because Remus was entirely oblivious to everything, because they’re all children.
That student just wanted to ask some questions about the latest assignment, is obviously genuinely interested in the subject matter, and all that lashes-fluttering was them probably just having something in their eye. He asked and they said so. (And then they promptly turned bright red and screamed pure embarrassment into a couch cushion later when their friend asked how it went. “HE THOUGHT I HAD SOMETHING IN MY EYE, SAM.”)
The result of this student figuring out Prof. Lupin was a werewolf did not result in a panic about their teacher being a werewolf, though. At least, not the sort of panic that Snape might have expected.
“I read that the transformation is really painful, that’s so awful,” says Oliver Beamish, doodling hearts on his Defense essay again. “Do you think he’s okay? He always looks so sick. I mean, he’s so handsome, but he looks ill. I want to smother him and feed him soup, is that weird?”
“Yes, Beamish, that’s really quite queer,” Linda Peakes says, even though she knows that he isn’t actually listening. Replying makes her feel better, though, for having to sit through this and having Oliver Lupin written over every bit of spare parchment that comes into proximity of her friend.
“Is he eating alright? I read that werewolves should eat more before a full moon to help with how exhausting the transformation is - and there was something about filling the bloody and animalistic hunger, but that sounded like bullshit. Do you think he’s getting enough sleep? He should get more sleep; if full moons are really so awful, he definitely needs it. I don’t know if I could take that, though, since he already looks so handsome with rings under his eyes. I want him happy, but I’m not sure I could cope.”
“I already can’t cope; you’ve become a lunatic,” says Linda, weighing the benefits between having a competent Defense teacher and having to listen to Beamish wonder about how to care for his imaginary werewolf boyfriend.
Lunatic, indeed.
She is a master of humor.
Sadly, she has plans for her school path and career track, so the competent teacher side wins. Also, Hufflepuff House took a poll and he’s been rated the nicest and most well-liked teacher after Sprout and Flitwick; she’s pretty sure most of their house would cry if he left, and a heartbroken Beamish might be worse than a mooning one.She’s not willing to risk it.
Heh, mooning. She’ll have to remember that one too.
(She begins plotting the death of Severus Snape when Remus Lupin is fired. She has plans, damn it. Also, so many puns ruined.)
So I lent my friend my mainland Chinese copy of Good Omens, and she’s been commenting on various stuff in the book to me as she read along. One day she messaged, “Crowley’s so cute, chasing after the hedgehogs like that.”
And I said, “……………..what?????!?”
So she told me where in the book it was, and it was the part after Cr&Az realized that Warlock isn’t the kid, talked to the nun, and got out of the hospital. It did say that Crowley was “trying to hit a hedgehog and missing”, but I soon realized that the “second line” she told me that’s about the hedgehog is, “The angel stared out at the rushing hedgerows.” Apparently the Chinese translator read “hedgerows” and thought it was “hedgehogs” again. Obviously it didn’t make a huge change to the plot line, but basically, in the Chinese version of Good Omens, Crowley chased a hedgehog while convincing Aziraphale, “drove in silence for a while”, and then chatted with Aziraphale some more. Meanwhile Aziraphale saw everything but decided to let Crowley do his thing.
So…yeah.
You know, between life and what’s happening in politics and work and too much travel and missing my baby son (he and Amanda are at a conference in Canada and I am hiding to try and make a deadline) it’s been a rotten week.
This, for the record, suddenly made everything really good. It may be my favourite ever Tumblr post.
Okay, so with this new Vision 'verse, how does Padme fit in later? Is Shmi all about this girl and when they first meet weirdly attached to this baby senator? Is Obi-Wan also weirdly attached, or is he conflicted because this woman caused his padawan to form Attachments? And lastly, we have Anakin. Fully-remembering-bad-timeline Anakin. How does he act around her, knowing that in another timeline he killed her and she had his children?
Shmi is definitely all about her and definitely weirdly attached. Obi-Wan is … weirdly CONCERNED, more than anything else, but also attached because yeah, it’s not Padmé’s fault Anakin went Dark Side, Sidious would’ve just found some other way to get into his head. She didn’t handle everything perfectly, but neither did HE, so it’s not like he’s got a damn leg to stand on.
Anakin, now. Anakin is gonna be the concerning thing. Because I know you all think this is gonna be awkward hilarity but honestly? Honestly? LOOK, WE’VE COME THIS FAR WITHOUT ANGST, GUYS, AND GODDAMN IF I’M GONNA LET DOWN THE SIDE AND MAKE A FLUFF-ONLY AU WHEN I’VE GOT THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO RUIN LITERALLY EVERYONE’S LIVES.
“Are you alright?” Padmé asks softly, ducking under the table just enough to clearly see the little boy hiding underneath it. Rabé and Captain Panaka and the others are in the throne room with the Jedi, still, but when she saw the unfamiliar boy peering in from the doorway and then fleeing in alarm the moment he was noticed, she couldn’t just leave him alone. “You’re not from the palace. Are you lost?”
The boy lets out another cracked little sob, and huddles back against the wall.
Luke and Leia have exactly zero percent fear response to sensing the Dark Side. This will definitely never backfire on anyone ever.
The handmaidens regularly take turns going on missions with Vader. Usually there’s two of them; there’s almost always at least one. Padmé slightly hates herself for sending them, but has no intention of stopping sending them. She hates herself a lot more for a lot of other things she’s still doing. The handmaidens don’t answer to Vader and Vader doesn’t answer to the handmaidens, but they DO occasionally remind him what Padmé said in the briefing.
Padmé has nightmares every time that Vader is too far away to sense her having nightmares. She has no idea if this is because that’s when she has the room to or if it’s just because he’s out of her reach, and she doesn’t want to know either way.
I may have mentioned this before but OH MAN, does Vader feel SO CONTENT in the Dark. Like, it is warm and soft and cozy as FUCK to him. He loves it. It’s GREAT. Which, well, he’s probably accessing it through mostly positive emotions, barring some murder-rages and the like, so that should probably make sense, buuuut that also means he’s fueled more than a few horrible slaughters on the power of love, lol. Not even in the VENGEFUL AND PROTECTIVE sense, either, just literally the soft happy feeling of Padmé’s lips pressing to the corner of his mouth or the twin’s little hands in his.
Eventually, Padmé is accidentally going to genuinely injure Vader in bed. It is not going to go well. The WAY in which it is not going to go well remains up for debate.
WHENEVER YOU SEE THIS POST ON YOUR DASH, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WRITE ONE SENTENCE FOR YOUR CURRENT PROJECT.
Just one sentence. Stop blogging for one minute and write a single sentence. It could be dialogue, it could be a nice description of scenery, it could be a metaphor, I don’t care. The point is, do it. Then, when you finish, you can get back to blogging.
If this gets viral, you might just have your novel finished by next Tuesday.
Goddamn it, it’s back.
If it stays back, I might manage to finish a third story this year. Jesus.
I swear, this is now my only writing motivation.
BACK AGAIN??? Sigh.
Okay, sorry if anyone gets sick of this, but it’s the best way for me to get myself to write.
I just realized……Hydra knew super-soldiers could survive despite being cryogenically frozen, because they did it to the Winter Soldier.
So they knew for certain that Captain America was alive after he crashed the plane in the Arctic.
I find the timing of Cap’s find very suspicious.
I personally believe Obadiah Stane was somewhat affiliated with Hydra (and had them send the Winter Soldier to have Howard killed). And he could easily influence where Howard searched for Steve and the plane.
I believe that Obadiah misdirected Howard intentionally whenever it looled like he was close, bc Hydra didn’t want Captain America back.
It was only when Obadiah died that SHIELD found Cap.
“Are you really going to vote for Clinton just because she isn’t Trump?”
Yes? I would literally elect Chef Boyardee because he isn’t Trump.
Why you should Vote for Hillary if you are a Bernie supporter
College costs:
Bernie: Free. Hillary: Significantly cheaper than currently, free for those who need it. Trump: Defrauded poor and working class people for 10s of thousands of dollars of tuition.
Minimum wage:
Bernie: 15 Hillary: 12-15 Trump: Imported undocumented workers and underpaid them to work on his projects. Currently makes his clothing line in China for tiny wages.
Immigration: Hillary and Bernie: Path to citizenship. Trump: THROW THEM OUT! BUILD A WALL!
Taxes: Bernie: Deep tax increases on the wealthy (and middle class). Hillary: Some tax increases on the wealthy. Trump: Cut’em. Cut’em all!
Racism: Bernie: Solving income inequality will solve racism. Hillary: we need a good plan to increase opportunities to minorities beyond solving income inequality. Trump: Yeah, dun care.
Sexism: Bernie: Solving income inequality will solve sexism. Hillary: Full support of all equal rights issues. Trump: Ladies, all your vag are belong to me (no fatties).
Gun control: Bernie: Mayyyyyybbbie, if you convince me hard enough. Hillary: Yep. Trump: Shoot’em if you gott’em.
Please do not listen to 25 years of GOP propaganda. Hillary has worked on progressive causes for 40 years.
She was the 11th most liberal senator while in the Senate.
Due to Republican hatred, she is the most investigated person in the country and nothing has ever come of it. She is not a criminal, she could not be a criminal, they would have found something they could have trumped up charges on in 25 years of endless, ongoing investigations. She’s been abused by the GOP and burned by the press over and over and is still pursuing her goal. She is smart and ambitious and experienced and tenacious and knowledgeable and practical and none of those are bad things for a President. Jill Stein may be a nice woman, but she has no governmental experience and practically no platform. Gary Johnson is a Republican who cares less about social issues. Hillary and Bernie have more politically in common than any other candidates. Please, if you care about the issues that Bernie cares about, think about voting Hillary.
I’m a Bernie supporter but its a cold day in hell I’ll let Trump win the presidency
To add, Clinton and Sanders voted the same 93% of the time they were in the senate together.
Darling, dear, love. Hamilton/Laurens Literally anything during the revolutionary era Perhaps even just how they got together. /Please/, for me? <3
Anything for you, Laurens.
Soooo…I know you wanted fluff…we’re not doing that. I don’t actually know if Laurens was in
Washington’s camp for this, but we’re going to assume history is flexible
because extensive googling did not produce an actual date or shit for this
battle (besides ‘between September 1777 and June 1778’), which was hardly a
battle at all. Also technically Lee sent
a letter but whatever, we’re doing Some Shit with history anyway, might as well
go hard.
to see our glory
The
message from Lee was greeted by a long beat of silence.
“My
sympathies, Your Excellency,” Lee said, doing a poor job of imitating poise as
his shirtsleeves dripped steadily on the ground. The word simper
drifted through John’s mind at the sound of Lee’s voice.
“Yes,”
General Washington said flatly, both hands braced on the table that had been
serving duty as a tactical map minutes before.
John couldn’t bring himself to look away from where the general’s little
finger had pushed aside the marker of a British fort, one that he and Alexander
had been bickering over not a day past.
“Thank you for informing me, Major General. You are dismissed.”
Lee
left, and the tent was deathly silent, the general still standing over the
table with his head down, John still fixed in place where he stood near the far
corner of the table, the handful of other men in the tent stony.
“Gentlemen,”
General Washington said, his voice perfectly controlled. “Please send for the Marquis, he will want to
know. If my aides would stay, it would
be appreciated. The rest of you are
dismissed.”
concept: a TV show with a dark, tragic, fucked-up beginning that steadily gets happier and lighter and more hopeful as the seasons go on, the narrative arc premised on healing and growth instead of a “gritty” downspiral, the challenges faced in each season finale leaving the characters in a progressively better place. nobody queer dies, and the worst things we ever see after season 1 all happen in flashbacks to events preceding the now.
I would love to see this.
Leverage, my darlings. You’re talking about Leverage.
