HARRIET TUBMAN ESCAPED FROM SLAVERY AND THEN WENT BACK TO GET OTHERS. LIKE, I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO HARRIET TUBMAN IS AND THAT SHE DID THAT, BUT I JUST WANT YOU TO TAKE THAT IN FOR A SECOND.
HARRIET TUBMAN WAS HELD CAPTIVE AND BOUND TO UNPAID, BACK-BREAKING LABOR SINCE BIRTH UNDER PENALTY OF TORTURE OR DEATH. SHE MANAGED TO ESCAPE THAT LIFE, AND SHE TURNED THE FUCK AROUND AND WENT THE FUCK BACK TO GET EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS STILL TRAPPED IN IT. AND THEN SHE DID IT AGAIN EIGHTEEN MORE TIMES.
WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS UNSURE WHETHER OR NOT HE WAS PREPARED TO MAKE A STAND AGAINST SLAVERY, HARRIET TUBMAN BASICALLY SAID HE SHOULD STOP BEING SUCH A DIAPER BABY AND THAT GUYS WHO ARE TOO SCARED TO END SLAVERY DON’T DESERVE TO WIN WARS.
NOT ONLY DID SHE SECRET OVER 300 SLAVES TO FREEDOM ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, BUT SHE ACTED AS A SPY FOR THE UNION ARMY DURING THE CIVIL WAR, AND BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD AN ARMED ASSAULT IN THE CIVIL WAR. THAT RAID BROUGHT FREEDOM TO OVER 700 SLAVES IN ONE GO.
SO I JUST WANT YOU TO STEW ON THAT FOR LIKE A MINUTE. ACTING IN THE SHADOWS, SHE WALKED INTO HELL ON EARTH 19 TIMES TO SAVE HER FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS FROM THE TORMENT SHE ENDURED, AND THE SECOND SHE WAS GIVEN EVEN A MODICUM OF POWER, SHE MANAGED TO FREE SEVEN HUNDRED SLAVES IN ONE DAY.
I GUARANTEE, HOWEVER IMPRESSED YOU ALREADY ARE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN, YOU ARE FALLING LIKE AT LEAST 40% SHORT OF HOW IMPRESSED YOU SHOULD BE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN. SHE IS ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES OF BADASSERY IN THE ENTIRETY OF AMERICAN HISTORY.
OKAY LISTEN IN ADDITION TO MAKING BOTH CAPTAIN AMERICA AND MOSES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT LOOK LIKE A PAIR OF GODDAMN UNDERACHIEVERS SHE DID ALL THISWITH CHRONIC PAIN FROM A TRAUMATIC HEAD INJURY.
WHEN SHE WAS FUCKING TWELVE YEARS OLD SHE TRIED TO INTERVENE IN THE BEATING OF ANOTHER SLAVE AND GOT HER HEAD CRACKED OPEN FROM IT. A CHILD. A CHILD BORN INTO SLAVERY. AND SHE WENT UP AGAINST A PISSED OFF WHITE MAN WHO LITERALLY OWNED HER TO TRY AND HELP, LIKE, SHIT, I DON’T WANT TO GO TOE-TO-TOE WITH PISSED OFF WHITE MEN AND I’M WHITE AND IT’S THE 21st CENTURY. SO OKAY THEN HERE’S THIS WOMAN, FIVE FOOT NOTHING, DISABLED, HAD NARCOLEPSY AND HEADACHES AND VISIONS, DECIDED THOSE VISIONS WERE FROM GOD, AND PERSONALLY DELIVERED A THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS FROM ONE OF THE CRUELEST FORMS OF ENSLAVEMENT IN HISTORY. OH, AND AFTER ALL THAT SHE LIVED UNTIL SHE WAS FUCKING NINETY.
When Rey is ten, another scavenger tries to steal her haul. It isn’t much: a twist of some old engine, a carbonator; but it’s enough to feed her for the rest of the day, maybe the next, and pickings have been slim lately. The clutch of metal bits (barely enough to swell the lining of her bag) represents the first meal she’ll have had in two days (she is so hungry). And this man – this boy, she’ll think when she looks back; he can’t have been more than fifteen – grabs it from her. There’s no civilisation on Jakku, no sense of protect the small and weak – there’s no mercy for a girl alone. And the boy just takes it, snatches it from her grasping hands, holds it aloft, grinning wide and wild and mocking. “Finders keep –” he starts to say, quoting the oldest (and only) law of the desert. The rest of the words snag on his loose teeth and split-open lips: Rey smacks him in the jaw with her staff and every bit of strength she has. He stumbles, makes for the blaster at his side, and she panics: she hits him in the legs to bring him down, hits him in the skull until his hand falls slack and he is very, very still. Rey snatches her haul up and runs and does not look back. (She’ll think of him sprawled in the sand, skull open and red and wet, when she prowls through the frozen forest towards Kylo Ren. She’s older. She knows better. She’ll hesitate. She will not deliver that final blow.)
Jessika Pava snatches a chip from her plate in the canteen. It’s all in good humour; Rey is hanging out with the pilots in one of the rare moments she isn’t training with Luke, enjoying the noise and hubbub – oh there are so many people. It gives her a headache, light and sharp behind her eyes, but it is a good pain, a clean pain; a growing pain. Anyway. Pava snatches the chip – a misguided attempt at flirting, maybe? – and Rey reacts without thinking and stabs her in the back of the hand with a fork. There’s silence for a moment, an aching and desperate silence, and Rey can only hear the roar of blood in her ears. She stares down. Pava’s hand has slackened; the chip is on the table. The tines of the fork haven’t sunk in that far, but there is red pooling on Pava’s skin and Rey feels a great rush of nausea. Her stomach cramps, hard, and she leaps to her feet, gabbling apologies. Pava holds up her hands, says, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it really is,” and Poe scrapes a good chunk of his dinner onto Rey’s plate and says, “We won’t ever let you go hungry,” and it’s all too much: Rey bursts into tears. (No one tries to steal her food again. Later, she leaves a basket full of apples and potatoes on Pava’s bed. It is an apology. It is a very well guided attempt at flirting.)
“What’s wrong with this water?” she gasps, holding her cupped hands out to Luke. “It’s awful!”
Luke bursts out laughing. “It’s full of salt, Rey. You can’t drink it.”
“All that water,” she says, scornful, “and not a drop to drink – are you sure that the Force is benevolent?”
“Hey, when I first saw an ocean I did the exact same thing. Only difference was that Han pretended that that was what water was meant to taste like. Pretended to drink it and then got offended when I didn’t. I didn’t want to seem like the odd one out so I drank a whole mug of it and vomited everywhere – he wasn’t laughing so hard when he was trying to air the smell of vomit out of the Falcon.”
Rey bursts out laughing, wading back towards shore. “Tell me more about him,” she says.
Okay, so we all know that Poe went around the Resistance base telling everyone about the Handsome Stormtrooper that saved his life – but what about BB-8? Imagine BB-8 coming back to base and promptly telling everyone about the good brave human who saved his Poe. This is Finn he is so lovely, he is the best of all humans, look at him, be nice to him – he’s a little bit slow – doesn’t understand droid at all but he’s a quick learner.
And imagine ALL THE DROIDS falling into line, looking after Finn, and Finn is just so nice to them because he remembers what it’s like to be treated like you’re nothing, like you don’t have a personality. And they just adopt him: Finn the best human, they designate him, and R2-D2 – battle-hardened war vet that he is – teaches him binary but teaches him the bastardised sweary binary that all the older droids speak and BB-8 is innocent and oblivious and C3-PO is scandalised because Finn is going round saying things like fuck me this is hot in this little whistle-beep.
And whenever Finn sits down he’s surrounded by happy young droids who absolutely adore him, and he is just so nice and all the droids go out of their way to do things for him.
And yes. Give me sweet lovely Finn with his droid ducklings.
so if BB-8′s “a BB unit”, does that mean there’s a BB-1 through 7?
Does this mean there were scary stories on the flight deck pre- or post-mission with Poe and Black Squadron? Imagine Poe with a light-stick beneath his chin and a glint in his eye, kneeling to speak in a spooky voice to BB-8.
“Hey, BB-8. Why is BB-6 afraid of BB-7?”
An inquisitive whirr.
“’Cause BB-7 ate 9!”
“!!!!” BB-8 rolls back and forth in panic while Poe falls over laughing.
“It’s okay, buddy. I didn’t mean it literally! It’s just a joke!” (A joke??) “Yeah, a joke!” BB-8 gently zaps Poe in retribution and rolls away, the droid-equivalent of a walking off in a huff.
“Ow, hey! Come on, BB-8, it was supposed to be funny!”
BB-8 doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the day, so Poe goes on a mission around base asking any and everyone if they’ve seen any droids, and joins the squadron table at dinner looking exhausted but triumphant. BB-8 is with them.
“Hey, BB-8, look!” He holds up a round, shrieking droid with a grin. “It’s BB-7!”
BB-8 beeps in alarm and hides behind the table leg while Poe gently explains that BB-7 is not really scary at all, see?
BB cautiously rolls out to investigate for itself. Cue gentle droid booping.
They become bosom buddies and roll everywhere together, collect the whole gang and then BB rolls up to Poe pre-flight sometime a week later, like ten minutes before take off. “BB-8, buddy where were you? we gotta go!” “!!” “what is it?” BB-8 is insistent.“!” “You wanna show me something? ok buddy but make it quick, it’s almost time to leave.”
BB-8 whistles and BB-6 rolls over in a panic, whirring. BB-8 whirrs at it and it whirrs back and all three of them turn towards BB-7 rolling determinedly along. BB-6 Ducks behind BB-8 as BB-7 rolls to a stop a few feet before reaching them. A smaller beep draws Poe’s attention to his feet where BB-9 sits, rocking back and forth in contentment.
All three droids beep back the joke in binary.
Poe cries laughing and doesn’t stop until the General herself contacts him on comms to ask what him the hold up is.
Okay but consider: the droids.
The fact that they clearly, CLEARLY rehearsed this little show before showing off to Poe on the tarmac just before the flight
BB-8 is a very strict producer ok
lots of beeeeeeep!!! and whirrrr bleeep!!!s when the others got it wrong
“no it has to be THIS WAY” “this is how Poe told it!” “do it OVER.”
can we take a moment to just think about how incredibly scary magical healing is in-context?
You get your insides ripped open but your friend waves his hands and your flesh just pulls back together, agony and evisceration pulling back to a ‘kinda hurts’ level of pain and you’re physically whole, with the 100% expectation that you’ll get back up and keep fighting whatever it was that struck you down the first time.
You break your arm after falling somewhere and after you’re healed instead of looking for ‘another way around’ everybody just looks at you and goes “okay try again”.
You’ve been fighting for hours, you’re hungry, thirsty, bleeding, crying from exhaustion, and a hand-wave happens and only two of those things go away. you’re still hungry, you’re still weak from thirst, but the handwave means you have ‘no excuse’ to stop.
You act out aggressively maybe punch a wall or gnash your teeth or hit your head on something and it’s hand-waved because it’s ‘such a small injury you probably can’t even feel it anymore’ but the point was that you felt it at all?
Your pain literally means nothing because as long as you’re not bleeding you’re not injured, right? Here drink this potion and who cares about the emotional exhaustion of that butchered village, why are you so reserved in camp don’t you think it’s fun retelling that time you fell through a burning building and with a hand-wave you got back up again and ran out with those two kids and their dog?
Older warriors who get a shiver around magic-users not because of the whole ‘fireball’ thing but the ‘I don’t know what a normal pain tolerance is anymore’ effect of too much healing. Permanent paralysis and loss of sensation in limbs is pretty much a given in the later years of any fighter’s life. Did I have a stroke or did the mage just heal too hard and now this side of my face doesn’t work? No i’m not dead from the dragon’s claws but I can’t even bend my torso anymore because of how the scar tissue grew out of me like a vine.
Magical healing is great and keeps casualties down.
But man.
That stuff is scary.
shit just got creepy
Or maybe magical healing doesn’t leave scars or damage. It is magical, after all.
So after years of fighting, your skin is still perfect. Unmarred. In fact, you’re actually in better shape than regular people who don’t get magical healing when they fall out of trees or walk into doors or cut themselves while cooking dinner. You’re in such good shape that it’s unnatural.
And the really good healing magic takes away more than just the obvious injuries. You first start noticing it after about ten years when you go home and haha, you look the same age as your younger sibling, that’s funny.
Not so funny ten years later when they look older. Or forty years later, when you bury them still looking like you did at twenty. When do you retire from this gig anyway? How much damage is too much damage?
How many times do you glimpse the afterlife, or worse, how many times don’t you? What do you live through, get used to, show no outward sign of except a perfectly healthy body, too perfect for any person living a real life.
How many times are you sitting in a tavern with your friends and you hear the whispers, because the people around you know. How can they not know? Your weapons shine with enchantments and your armour is better than the best money can buy and there is not a damn scar on you. You hardly seem human to them.
How long before you hardly seem human to yourself?
And you find yourself struggling to remember the places where the scars should have been, phantom pains that wake you screaming, touching all the old injuries and finding nothing there. It’s all in your head. Was it ever anywhere else?
How long before you’re fighting a lich or a vampire or some other undead monster and you wonder…
…what makes me so different?
Here we go someone who GETS IT.
Not gonna lie, this is my number one consideration when I’m constructing magical universes. If magic can heal, what effect does it have? Do you retain some of the damage? Can it only heal to a point? Does it heal EVERYTHING, right down to the aging of your cells? Does it force your body through the usual healing process, just really really fast, and leave behind knotted scars and damaged bone? Does someone else have to take on the damage so that a soldier can keep fighting (and what does that do to the soldier, when a mage walks out onto the battlefield and dies of blood loss without a blade laid on them)? Does magic stop working at ‘death’ or can you raise someone whose heart is stopped? Does magic take time to heal–if someone is bleeding out from a slit throat, could they die during the healing? What price does the healer pay for the healing? Are they weary, are they injured, are they sick? What price does the healed pay for the healing? What kind of trauma does that leave?
It’s kind of tricky when you’re a over-thinker and you are aware of it. At this point I’m so unsure about the conclusions I come up with. I mean, is it true? Or did I make it up because I have been overthinking too much? Am I right or has my overthinking fooled me?
isn’t it amazing!! six continents, seven billion people on the planet, and a whole lifetime of choices and outcomes and in this particular string of decisions, in this point in time, out of everyone i get to meet, i got lucky enough to know you
I like this one because it’s suppose to be mushy and cute but with a certain tone of voice I could very easily turn this entire sentence into a passive aggressive fuck off
Be a little weirder, be a little more you. Wear yr hair that one way nobody else likes. Shave – or skip it – if it makes you feel free. Tell the joke when it strikes you, sing with your headphones on the train, compliment a stranger – the way you’d want to be complimented if someone found they were suddenly in love with you.
The most purple thing we can do is to be wholly ourselves, even if doing that thing is a little scarier or a little harder.
Okay so you mentioned kind of missing Tolkien and I've been on a bit of a Tolkien kick lately ('lately' she says as she scuttles deeper into the horde of Tolkien marginalia beginning to resemble a small mountain) and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on dwarves. I know the Men of Gondor are more your thing, but I was struck by sudden curiosity.
I LOVE DWARVES
look, the beauty of Tolkien is that, as far as I know, he is the only creator who firmly maintained, all his life, that filling in the blanks of the world he had generated was actually an act mirroring divine creation. (He called this “subcreation”—as human beings, we are made in the image of the divine creator, and therefore, we are driven to replicate creation on a minor scale. Tolkien wholeheartedly loved fanfiction, in a way I’ve never seen in any subsequent content-creator.)
but
I love dwarves!!!!
I love dwarves particularly, because tolkien dismisses them in the context of a numnber of stereotypes, and actually this opens the door for the way fandom has taken then and run with what if dwarves are super jewish. maybe that’s because I follow @goodshipophelia and @swanjolras and @silentstep but the reclamation of very jewish dwarves is beautiful
(thorin harp-player as david springs to mind)
and honeslty to this day, my favorite idea about dwarves is @silentstep’s conception that “mountain” refers not just to the idea of a physical mountain, but everything that lives inside it, all the songs and stories and philosophies, that “mountain” is shorthand for community the way “Judah” or “people of the tribe” does in more modern Judaism
it leads to so much articulation and fictionalization of Judaism and I love that, everyone one should have a fictional articulation of their religion, it allows for so much more freedom than would otherwise be.
Also, I love the idea of thorin fictionally composing the lord of the rings alternative to song-of-songs, so. that’s something, right???
What she means:
Bernie Sanders lost hardcore in the New York primary, costing him a generous lead in the election and a chance of changing the face of the White House. Hillary's win was called far too early as over 50% of New York precincts hadn't even finished counting their votes yet. Over 150,000 voters in Brooklyn, alone, were not able to pledge votes because of voter fraud, and some polling locations opened two hours late and were turning people away even then. The affidavits were not counted or even remotely taken into account, and just like Arizona, Hillary swept the vote with numbers not even remotely congruent with Gallup polls and voter surveys. And since she's the establishment, zero scrutinizing will take place, voter fraud will continuously dominate this election, and the lemmings that vote for her will inevitably buy into the establishment time and time again.
Sometimes you need to remind yourself that you were the one who carried you through the heartache. You are the one who sits with the cold body on the shower floor, and picks it up. You are the one who feeds it, who clothes it, who tucks it into bed, and you should be proud of that. Having the strength to take care of yourself when everyone around you is trying to bleed you dry, that is the strongest thing in the universe.
You don’t have to be grateful that it isn’t worse.
read that.
read it again, and again, and again.
somebody, somewhere, always has it worse than you. there is one person on this planet that has it the worst of all, and that person is NOT the only person allowed to be unhappy with their lot.
if things are bad for you, they are bad for you. period.
As a public service to anyone offended by the Harriet Tubman $20 bills, I am willing to accept your unwanted $20 bills, and I will ensure that they are properly disposed of. This offer is open indefinitely, and any amount of $20 bills will be accepted. Thank you.
I’m taking that creative writing class and I just. Okay. Guys. Explain me a thing. WHY have I read two stories in this past semester about rape? I mean, I guess the one was more about abuse followed by murder (see my rant here), but still, Christ. Honestly I’m going to meet with the teacher about the most recent one, which I’m supposed to critique for Thursday, and just be like, “I fucking cannot do this. I am not objective enough to say shit about this girl’s writing. This is pages upon pages of a girl who witnessed the rape of someone she considered a friend and did nothing, and I have spent way too much time on the wrong side of that equation to be objective here.“ I just. Do not understand why rape is the thing. Like, guys, it’s not like it’s edgy and cool, okay, I promise, people have been hideous to each other since fucking Ur was nothing but a twinkle in the eye of some random ape. They’re not treating it as a very deep trauma and dealing with the fallout and handling it with as much care and compassion as possible, it’s not even fucking productive, it’s just annoying, Christ, fucking STOP.
Also, I honestly don’t care if it makes me a cultural heathen, I don’t like weird abstract writing that’s intended to ‘push the boundaries of what we think of as prose.’ Like, no. It’s not a failing on my part if I want to read fantasy novels with, oh, I don’t know, plot and characters and literally anything other than obsessive navel gazing. The next time I have to read the literary equivalent of that very famous piece of modern art that’s literally just a piece of plywood painted uniformly blue, I am going to scream.
FUCKING UPDATE.
So I got out of responding to the rape story, but I still had to go to class so that I could respond to the OTHER story we read (see above re: fucking abstractist writing that I still hardcore do not like). And I was like “All right, I can live with this, I got my iPod, I got my Fall Out Boy, I got my writing, I can do this.” But I forgot that the classroom is really small and my seat is very close to the teacher, so I couldn’t, like, crank my music to the point where I couldn’t hear anyone talking and so I ended up listening to the talking. And fuck me I’m angry.
Pro tip: as a teacher at a college that specializes in taking people out of like sophomore year of high school (I dropped out and started college at 16), it is your goddamn job to express clear ethical and legal boundaries. Admitting that rape is wrong is awesome, but it is ALSO WRONG to abandon a rape victim when you have every opportunity to help them. You should not ever be talking about how well a student puts the reader into the mind of a witness and makes their decision to not help understandable.
Also, there was a lot of talking about “Well, I feel like there was some confusion about consent between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.” Let’s be clear here, folks, if I wave a knife at you and you say “Oh no, don’t stab me,” and then I stab you thirty-five times in the chest, the cops are not going to be like “Well, I feel like there was some confusion between the stabber and the stabee.” That’s not how it works. If the girlfriend says no, pushes the boyfriend away physically, and reaches out to a bystander for help, that is not ‘confusion,’ that is pretty fucking clearly not consent. Like, you know what, if you’re going to make me fucking sit through this story, you’d better at least have the stones to admit that your student turned in a story about rape and you forced the rest of the class to read it.
I’ve reached this point of universally being furious with everyone in my writing class. Even the people I like. Literally just existing in the class is enough to make me angry with you, by, like, transitive properties of loathing. And my teacher can fuck the entire way off and not make snide remarks about my writing anymore just because I don’t fucking turn in weird abstract rape stories.
FUCKING EDIT: Did I forget to mention that it’s actually literally illegal to do nothing to aid the victim of a rape? LOOK AT THIS. You can be charged as an accessory to literally whatever the perpetrator is charged with.
They started
off simple: calling her a simple-minded fool. Leia Organa was a silly
little princess throwing a tantrum over her planet being punished for
its treachery. Pretty but petty, and ever so vain, Leia Organa was just a
spoiled little twit spitting rage for not being given the power she
wanted and having a fit over being caught at a crime.
Those stories didn’t work very well.
The repeated success of such a tiny and ragtag group of rebels proved
that there were clever and cunning folk behind the Rebellion. For a
silly twit, Leia Organa slipped out of too many traps, stole too much
information and too many supplies, shot down too many Imperial forces,
and succeeded in her command again and again.
It didn’t
reflect well against the Empire that a spoiled princess kept foiling
them over and over again, even if sometimes by the thinnest of hairs.
And
everyone who’d ever met Leia Organa could never believe them, and Leia
Organa had met many people as she negotiated and coerced more and more
allies for the Rebellion, and many people before when she pretended to
exist under the Empire’s rule. I met Leia Organa once, traders and governors and senators many others across the galaxy would say, and she’s nothing like they say she is.
Leia
Organa is pretty and a princess, but her eyes are sharp and her words
are sharper still, and she is made of kindness and cleverness and grief
and rage. She has little patience for anyone who believes the Empire’s
stories about her. Anyone who can look into her eyes and think her
shallow must be blind to miss the death and hopes and dreams of an
entire planet; there is nothing simple about any of the last children of
Alderaan and everyone knows it - as deep down as the scream that echoed
through the galaxy.
The Empire switches tactics - took them
long enough - and calls the simple-minded fool and silly little princess
a masterful illusion. She’s a lie, they say, and a liar. Leia
Organa is a beautiful temptress, a demoness feeding on the chaos of
war, a front for the Rebel cause, hungry for power and revenge and the deaths of all she can lure to
her weak, pointless, useless cause. This princess who should have died
is only a campaign strategy hiding under a pretty woman’s face.
Some
stories say that Leia Organa is dead. She died with Alderaan; her silly
support of the rebels killed her. What exists now is a sick, twisted
figurehead invention of the Rebellion to gain support - a lying lie. A ghost, a demon, an undead enchantress and seductress who weaves pretty and terrible falsehoods and deceptions.
Leia
Organa hears these rumors and instead of scoffing like she did at those
that proclaimed her a brainless twit, she laughs. Then she scoffs. And
then she goes back to work. The Empire can say what it wants, that won’t
make it true that the Rebellion isn’t gaining ground. (It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be.)
A similar
reaction goes through most of the Rebellion, those who don’t scoff with
disgust burst into laughter and laugh until they cry. Oh yeah, Red Squadron agrees, wiping actual tears off their cheeks, that’s
the princess, alright, seducing men left and right. Yep, there she is
now, standing on a box and yelling like a howleroo in General Solo’s
face again as he yells back. Hair frizzy from working all night and
wearing Skywalker’s ugly yellow jacket again, that’s the true picture of
temptation and enchantment.
Luke laughs so hard that he
falls to the floor and can’t get up for fifteen minutes. (Anyone who so
must as suggests it might be true in front of him quickly learns the true meaning of fear, but
otherwise) Luke nearly dies because he keeping cracking up and almost
hits his head on stuff, and Wedge has had to repeatedly drag him off to
Medical to check if there’s something wrong with him.
(The tests keep coming up negative but Wedge doesn’t understand how anyone can find their own
intragalatic Imperial reputation as a dangerous religious lunatic
absolutely hilarious. There’s something in the sand on Tatooine, you
mark Wedge’s words.)
Han Solo can’t believe what he’s hearing
when he hears the rumors, and doesn’t even laugh. He teases Princess
Leia about it, of course, but everybody quickly learns not to joke about
it in his presence because suddenly the smuggler’s all you wanna repeat that, buddy? And nobody wants to have their arms torn off by a Wookie.
The Empire can tell all the stories it wants, it still loses in the end.
About
twenty years later, the First Order tells stories about Leia Organa,
and it’s the same old story all over again. (A son of Skywalker has fallen, the Jedi have fallen with stragglers scattered across the stars, someone building another giant super-weapon, and the Organas are fighting back against an Empire.) Demonize and dehumanize.
The
only difference is that they acknowledge the existence of the Force
again, saying she uses it to twist minds and hearts and souls, and they
don’t call her beautiful anymore.
Leia Organa pretends to be a
kindly old woman, but she’s really a cunning old crone. She’s a bitter
old hag who can’t let go of rebellion, who wants to tear the galaxy
apart because she wants everything but her wrinkled hands can’t handle
it all. A small and sickly, but deadly and devious and dangerous and
ugly witch.
And that’s not even getting started on what they say about Luke
Leia Organa just laughs, then scoffs.
(There’s a pain in her chest, but it’s not important.) And then she gets
back to work. She remembers when she used to be beautiful, you know.
(“Used to be,” Han says with loyal disdain, then insists, “Still.”)
These little men can talk all they want to prove what big
boys they are, but she’s gone from a pretty-petty princess to a villainous temptress and fabrication to an old and terrible witch, and she’s still kicking.
Those stories didn’t work very well.
(At least, she thinks they didn’t. She hopes so. It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be. Oh, to think that she could find them both, in the dark and distant places they’ve gone to, and bring them home.)
my boyfriend said he was gonna email me this ~fantasy~ about us, so i’m expecting a dirty email and he just sent it and it starts off with five paragraphs of worldbuilding
A seriously ill student has begged for help stem cell donor in the next two months after being told she will die if no match is found.
Final-year Cardiff University medical student Vithiya Alphons , from London, said she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia after falling ill during a lecture.
Doctors have warned her she is facing a race against time to find a donor - something made more complicated by her Sri Lanka heritage.
Ms Alphons said: “I knew it was going to be difficult because there aren’t many people from South Asian backgrounds who are signed up as donors.
@muttonrolls i think you have a bunch of sri lankan followers (?) if you don’t mind sharing
Yeah I’ve actually posted about this!!! Thank you though I’ll reblog this so more people can see it :-)
if there was a way to make your blog have a smell, so that everyone visiting your blog automatically smelled it, what would you make your blog smell like?
This is actually really interesting to see people reply to, it tells you something about everyone and I love it
A new pack of mtg
Some sort of fresh fruit.
Smell: Roasting red meat, well oiled steel and gasoline.
Marshmellows over the hot coals of a fire.
Musty, but the good kind of musty. Like an old library or an abandoned cabin in the woods.
Dear 15
When the car breaks down (again), you will reach deep into your pockets and offer up all of your measly life’s savings to fix it. Your mother will shake her head and you will not understand it. There is a lot you don’t understand, yet. And sometimes love comes in the shape of a “no” you are not equipped to accept. But 15 isn’t nearly so grown up at you think it is and the future is toddering toward you on shaky legs and it’s okay to be afraid of it. You don’t know who you are right now, but here are a couple hints: red meat makes your stomach hurt, pink is not the enemy, and girls are really, really pretty. And it’s okay if you want to kiss them.
Dear 13
Get a good look at this one—you’re going to remember him. The cherub face, the voice that rings louder than the one in your own throat; he is the worst thing that ever happened to you. But it will take four more years of being crushed into the margins of your own story to realize that. Right now, right now, he comes dressed as the answer to all of your prayers: looks like God right when you were starting to wonder if there was one. But, darling, if I could go back and keep you away from him, I wouldn’t. He is the atom bomb to your Nevada body and he mushroom-clouds everything that you think you know about yourself.
But he is also one of the only reasons you make it, at all. Broken things always grow back stronger, and now he’s a rumor of a boy with no home that wants him, and you are still standing. And you are stronger.
Dear 11
This is dangerous loving. You are too small, too soft. They are going to make mincemeat of you.
Dear 17
You took it too far—turned lonely into solitary confinement and apathy into a pissing contest. But the betrayals don’t hurt anymore so, hey, you did it. You let the ones who hurt you go. You let everything go. Your body is a steel wall, ninety degrees of unbending Empty. Your first kiss is a boy you hate; you are done leaving voicemails for a boy who might be dead, tomorrow; they are not the same boy, but they might as well be. You will snowball all this Nothing into an avalanche.
Dear 19
Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop. You can’t set fire to the hurting.
Now
11 wants to know what you did with your hair. 15 misses Dad and 19 doesn’t. None of us even recognize you and we can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad one but 13 is in love and 19 is kicking the shit out of her. And 15 is in love and 19 is setting her hair on fire and 17 says she doesn’t know what love means. 11 cried her eyes out yesterday and 17 didn’t do anything. How did you grow up on the backs of so many broken things? How strong can a bed of eggshells be? 15 is starving for affection—can’t remember the last time she was touched. 13 still has nightmares about the boy on the bus and the grin on his face and his hand down the front of her jeans and the way her heart felt like a chicken-wire fence caught in a hurricane. 13 didn’t get out of bed today. 17 sees the boy and hugs him instead of hitting him and feels sick for weeks but 19 is a survivor and she tells the rest of us to get the fuck over it.
What we mean is… are you happy? Because 19 made homes out of beds that she didn’t belong in and we just want 21 to make it.
Are you making it?
what i love about both remus and lily is that they both seem to do this thing where it’s like “oh you’re an asshole? then you may right now immediately go fuck yourself” like when snape called lily a mudblood she was instantly like “ok you deserve whatever you get also your underpants are gross #evansout” and then when remus finds out that peter is alive he’s instantly just down to calmly fucking murder him “shall we kill him together?” like dad please
Remus and Lily will stick by you through hell and high water, even if they know you’re in the wrong and kick themselves for enabling you. But if you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don’t deserve it and you never did, then you are well and truly invited to a game of Hide and Go Fuck Yourself.
hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!
hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.
If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too!
Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!
Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!
–BB
MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.
REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS
i think we all have that one piece of media we like that’s basically “i love this thing, but i dont think everyone should watch this thing and would not categorically recommend it to other people i know, this thing has a lot of problems and i am the first person you should ask if you want to know a long list of criticisms, but i REALLY ENJOY THIS THING” its like holding up a can of trash to everyone else and saying “you are a reasonable person and you would not enjoy touching this garbage and i value that about you” and then pouring it out on the ground and rolling around in it yourself
one of my Favorite Things is when you have a line in a song that’s obviously a metaphor but when you put it in the right fandom context it’s actually completely literal
If a little girl says that she thinks boys are gross, the correct response isn’t “you’ll like boys when you’re older, honey,” it’s “you don’t have to like boys if you don’t want to.”
i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls
Never don’t reblog this. There are so many people who have such bad anxiety about phone calls. This can save so many lives
