Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Month
In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…
Someone always says it, whenever it comes up:
“I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!”
Well.
Yes.
It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote
all us women
and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone
ever again.
This vote is legally binding.
Yes, of course, all women know each other,
the way you always suspected.
(Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.)
We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54
and all the others streamed in through the doors
into that endless liminal space,
a chain of humans stretching backward
heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites,
Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child.
We sat around in the couches in the women’s room
(I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches)
and chatted with each other in the secret female language
that you always knew existed.
Somebody set up a Playstation–
the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart
and Cleopatra never learned to lose
and a woman who ruled an empire that fell
when the Sea People came
and left no trace
can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument.
Eventually we took the vote.
You had three defenders:
your grandmother and your first-grade teacher
and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody.
Your mom abstained.
It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks
that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s
since the beginning of recorded time.
And then we went back to playing Mario Kart
and Hoelun took off her bra
and we didn’t think about you again
except that I had to carry this message.
So anyway
good luck with that
it’s just as you always said it was.
Hush now,
no talkinghush.
All right, so, those of you who’ve been around long enough may or may not recall that my practice when I hit a round number of followers is to post some original writing (see: Methods of Inheritance and Sabbatical). And I’m coming up on 400, so I’ll be doing that again! But! I have…a lot of original fiction. A lot of original fiction. So I’m going to offer a list of options, and you lot can tell me which one you’d like to see! To vote, you can reply to this post or reblog it, or send me a message, although I’d prefer the ask box over a private message just because it’ll be easier to collate the answers that way. For the novels, obviously, you’d be getting an excerpt, probably 2-5 pages. Any short stories, though, you’d get all of.
Polaris: the revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel (as yet incomplete). Like. There’s more detail, obviously. But that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with there. There are a bunch of LGBT characters and a few superpowers and a revolution, thus: revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel. Tag is here if you want more detail.
Falls the Shadow: my best beloved novel about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, led by Sam, the Horseman of Death and Antichrist. This one’s complete, but it is H E F T Y at 250K words. I’m editing it down. Tag is here, but no one asks me about it, so there’s not much there. First of a trilogy.
Battalion: the novel where angels happened and fucked everything up, and humans have been fucking them over in response for about 70 years (incomplete). Yep. That’s here, and there is exactly one post.
Stories From the Second War: a triad of short stories technically set in the FtS universe, about Heaven’s war against the Nephilim. Um…they’re dark. The Nephilim are monstrous. But I think they might be some of my favorite writing I’ve done. They are Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant) and To Fight Aloud, Is Very Brave (Uniforms of Snow), both from the perspective of the leader of the Nephilim, and The Stillness in the Air (Between Heaves of Storm), from the perspective of her hunting partner. I’d put all three on here as a set, because I think they work best that way.
Deorum (Of Gods): a short story I wrote for that writing class I hated. Jack, the main character, lives in a city populated partly by mortals and partly by the gods of the world’s pantheons–Idunn owns a coffee shop, Apollo teaches art at an elementary school, Ninkasi runs a bar, and dark things live in the woods. Jack attracts more gods than he’s strictly comfortable with, and they all seem to know him remarkably well…. I don’t know if it’s my best work in terms of quality, but I definitely think it’s up there as the most fun. This is about forty pages, so I’d have to post it piecemeal.
So…yeah. Anyone have a preference?
some of the people on my dash i just assume are their icons bc i’ve never seen their pics so it’s like “oh look gandalf is up late bloggin again"
i met someone today and when i asked him if he was a dog person or a cat person he said he was a fish person. a fish person. he’s not even allergic to dogs or cats, he’s had no traumatizing experiences, he just doesn’t like dogs OR cats. he likes fish. what the fuck. what the actual fuck. who is this aquaman wanna-be hating on dogs AND cats what the fuck. who the fuck hates both of them? what, he’s gonna come home and be greeted by the excited gurgling of a fucking goldfish? that fish don’t love you man. that fish doesn’t even recognize you as a person. you’re just a food dispenser. he’s gonna die someday and that fish won’t mourn him. that fish won’t even know he’s gone. hating on dogs and cats. wehat the fuck. i’m never associating with that boy again. fish person. what the fukc.
i realized i posted this to the wrong blog but i’m still too pissed off to care. fucking fish person.
Bro: You can’t say you’re pan if you’ve only dated cis-boys Jess..
Me: Then you can’t say you’re straight since you’ve never had a girlfriend
Bro: touche…
____________________________________________________________
Bro: so you like girls?
Me: yep
Bro: so youre gonna get a girlfriend?
Me: maybe
Bro: NOW I GOTTA COMPETE AGAINST YOU TOO??
____________________________________________________________
Bro: wanna bet on who kisses a girl first?
Me: sure… $10?
Bro: okay
Me: sweet…cough up the money because i already kissed three
Bro: WHAT?? WHO?? you whore…No but seriously who because we only have like 2 lesbians in our school….
____________________________________________________________
Bro: I SWEAR TO GOD IF I HEAR ONE MORE PUN ABOUT YOU AND KITCHENWEAR IM KILLING YOU
____________________________________________________________
Brothers friend: so your sister is pan?
Bro: yeah?
Friend: what’s that?
Bro: basically she’ll date anyone
Friend: think she’ll date me?
Bro: ew no, dude she has standered still..
____________________________________________________________
Bro: so…how was narnia?
____________________________________________________________
Mother: i dont want you going to (insert friend)’s house because you’re pan and they are too
Bro: shes 18 mom AND you had no problem with it before jess was out
Mother: yeah but-
Bro: and they’re both girls so its not like even if something DID happen she wouldn’t get pregnant or anything
Mother: yeah but-
Bro: just let her hang out with the one friend she still has
____________________________________________________________
Bro: *is complaning about something* Thats so ga- OH MY GOD IM SO SORRY IT SLIPPED
____________________________________________________________
Bro: *shows me a picture of a girl* do you think shes hot?
Me: ew no
Bro: I AM TRYING TO GET YOU A GIRLFRIEND STOP BEING PICKY WOMAN WE LIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF NO WHERE THERE ARENT THAT MANY OPTIONS
____________________________________________________________
Me: *is complaining to my brother about this dude on campus* -anyways hes so not my type
Mother: but youre pan and ‘youre attracted to everyone regardless of gender’ so you dont have a type
Bro: thats like saying because i’m straight i like every girl mom…she can be pan and have types you limp lettuce
____________________________________________________________
Bro: do you think grandma will freak out when she finds out you’re queer?
Me: hopefully
Bro: sweet…..can i tell her??
Me: no?
Bro: dammit…
____________________________________________________________
Bro: *is playing COD online in his room* Guys seriously stop saying the F slur
Bro: Seriously i dont care about your kill streak, i will shoot you
Bro: NO SCOPE! I warned you!
____________________________________________________________
Bro: you know what my favorite part of you being pan is?
Me: what?
Bro: you’re no longer grandmas favorite…now i get all the money/food
____________________________________________________________
Bro: aw fuck
Me: what?
Bro: what if you get a girlfriend one day and she breaks your heart? i can’t punch a girl!
Me: no thats okay-
Bro: HOW WILL I DEFEND YOUR HONOR???
This is so sweet actually
I love this
*hides face* Oh my God, it’s been like a MONTH, I am so sorry, but HERE. There is dancing and feelings and kissing and Enjolras actually having a social life because Courfeyrac forces him to. Also, I seem to have a tendency to write ‘getting their shit together’ ficlets so if you want…not that, feel free to ask. And if you want the reverse of this where Grantaire teaches Enjolras to dance, it is here.
Enjolras goes to clubs. It’s not especially common knowledge, because he’s usually too busy, but whenever Courfeyrac feels like it’s necessary, he’ll drag Enjolras out to a nightclub, pour a few shots into him, and turn him loose for a few hours with instructions to not think too much. This time, it’s a group outing, all of Les Amis laughing and tactile with alcohol, hands on arms and cheeks flushed with the triumph of their latest protest.
Joly, giggly with his second rum and coke, is the one to start the dancing, pushing Musichetta and Bousset onto the dance floor ahead of him. The three of them fit together like puzzle pieces, Musichetta’s petite body pressed back against Joly’s chest and Bousset’s broad shoulders behind the pair of them. They’ve clearly done this before, because Bousset and Musichetta know just how to move so that Joly can dance without aggravating his limp. It’s fluid and sensual, Musichetta’s head tipped back on Joly’s shoulder and her smile dazzling up at her boys, and Enjolras feels the brief pause around him, the rest of them caught up in the trio’s giddy joy.
“Aw, they’re cute,” Cosette says, and Éponine smirks, finishes her scotch, and pinches Marius hard in the side. He yelps and flails—not a graceful man at the best of times, and less so with alcohol—but gets the hint, shyly offering his hand to Cosette and letting her tug him onto the floor. Éponine is still snickering when she darts out herself, bouncing and coiling like a ribbon in the dim club lights.
Book 3: The Encounter
AKA “The first named character attempts suicide and suffers the first breakdown regarding humanity”
While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.
When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.
Being published badly is worse than being never published.
It can destroy your career and your dreams.
The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.
But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.
Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks
and the WRITER BEWARE blog
Keep yourself and your work safe.
This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.
Just to let you know, PublishAmerica changed their name to America Star Books.
HEAD’S UP, WRITER TYPES: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PSA!
Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.
Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories. When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research. Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever. Knowing more is never going to hurt.
Omg!!! Thanks for the warning! Writers— reblog!
I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe!
Always, ALWAYS check Writer Beware. Let me also recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog about contracts and contract scams for authors in her section Business Musings.
okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ’90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives— for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
So, on the subject of ‘things i finished a while back and needed to post,’ this is Part Two of this thing. It’s basically shippy nonsense and discussion of how Sarah Williams is a weird motherfucker.
“So who’s Sarah?” Jonathan asked after they’d eaten dinner—just takeout, because they were both feeling particularly lazy. He was toying with the folded bit of notebook paper with Sarah’s number on it, curious, and Nancy smiled as she dropped the last few dishes they’d used into the drying rack. She padded over, barefoot with her hair loose around her shoulders, and settled herself in his lap without so much as an ‘as you please’. He wrapped his arms around her snugly and tucked her back against his chest, his chin hooked over her shoulder like a little boy.
“Sarah,” Nancy said, reaching out to play with the paper herself, “is the girl who recited Der Erlkonig in its original German. She’s a freshman and she’s…odd.”
Honestly if the fellowship had cellphones the #1 change would be Aragorn constantly complaining on the phone with arwen in the two towers like “they’re flirting again. Yes again. Literally I don’t even want to tell u what I walked in on yesterday but it involved gimli cleaning his axe in an inappropriate manner. And the worst bit is they still pretend like they hate each other my god. I’m gonna lose it I swear” while arwen is like “mhmm that’s nice dear”
Oh my God YES. They…they basically don’t win for six books, and I had never seen that kind of track record in any books, let alone kids’ books. I mean, they get Ax out before the Yeerks can get to him, but even that…the only reason they survive that encounter is because the whales come and save them from being eaten by Visser Three, it is A VERY CLOSE CALL is my point here. And like, that’s upsetting, sure, yeah, very upsetting, the fate of the world is at stake and these THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLDS keep losing fights, but just…someone who was prepared to admit, straight-up, in a kids’ book that sometimes you lose and that’s just how it is? I was fucking blown away.
I am an adult, I cannot be flailing in a public ice cream store about these books, I have work to do.
That being said, NEVER HESITATE TO TALK TO ME ABOUT ANIMORPHS.
So turns out we’re doing a post for every single book. Literally why am I like this. Posts will be going here, feel free to block the tag. Spoilers, yadda, yadda.
Book 2: The Visitor
AKA “We get some seriously grim insight on voluntary Controllers, the first bug morph, and probably the reason I hate shrews”
So I started this the HOUR I got out of X-Men Apocalypse and then I got busy and it sat mostly-finished in my documents for like a month and a half and then I finished it and now it’s sat COMPLETELY finished in my documents for about two and a half weeks. But I finally got around to posting it. Warnings for…standard X-Men-level violence, body horror, social prejudice, and general jackassery, and also for rampant abuse of parentheticals. Crossposted to AO3 here.
So this is how it starts.
He comes around and the first thing he realizes is that his head is clear, really clear, for the first time in…a while. Might be days. Might be weeks. Good fucking job, he tells himself while he’s still working up the courage to move. Stranger danger, dumbass. Especially when the strangers in question are blue and pop out of mysterious purple bubbles, apparently. To give himself due credit, he’s pretty sure he tried to leave the blue stranger in the dust—the guy’s name is elusive, something ancient, something translated roughly as ‘Apocalypse,’ and isn’t that just menacing as hell.
ME. Everything is under a cut because I’m trying not to inflict too much mulling-over-of-plot on y’all. But I need to hash some details out re: Polaris and Tumblr is now my wall at which to throw things.
…………………reblog this and say something nice about the person u reblogged it from because there’s too much hate on my dashboard right now and its making me upset so lets start a chain of love
Listen to me, kiddies. I read these books for the first time when I was SEVEN. (Well, it took me about three years to collect most of them and get to the end, so I read the first half of the series about twelve times by the time I was ten or eleven.) And let me tell you a thing: if you have passed these books up because of the ridiculous covers or because they’re ‘kids’ books’ you need to reevaluate your life. Immediately.
ANYWAY, I found them all for free on the internet (GET THEM HERE) and I’m rereading them/reading them out loud to Adler, because we are actually DISGUSTINGLY domestic. And I was originally planning to comment on them like five at a time, because otherwise I’d have way too many posts, but I wrote like a solid page of things down about the first book alone, so….yeah. I guess books-per-post will be flexible based on how much I say about the book in question. Here be spoilers, obviously. If you don’t want to hear about it, please feel free to block my Animorphs tag, I won’t be offended.
Book 1: The Invasion
AKA “The first named character is murdered, a main character is trapped as a bird, and five kids sign up for a lifetime of PTSD”
Today, we’re going to talk about the time Paul’s desire for superior firepower turned into a mini arms race that ended with me setting Eric on fire with a homemade flamethrower.
No, Matt Boomer, you sexy motherfucker, I am not kidding you. Let’s begin with some details.
So when I was at the University of Iowa, several people, including myself, bought Nerf guns for impromptu battles in the hallways when we had free time. Mostly this was all good, clean fun, except for two of the guys down the hall, my roommate, and I.
We all thought, rightfully so, that factory built Nerf guns are bullshit. They’re weak, darts are too fucking light, the barrels cause too much friction, which makes them inaccurate and slow, and you have to re-cock them after each shot. That’s some fucking bullshit right there. So we fixed it.
We bought new, higher tensile springs. We bought PVC pipe and lubricant. We put BBs in the tips of our darts, and my roommate and even put in a second spring to automatically cock the gun, essentially turning them from bolt action pieces of shit into semi-automatic friendship-ruiners.
So when I moved back to Chicago, and into the apartment, I obviously brought my Nerf guns (my roommate gave me his when we moved out), and I obviously attacked my roommates the first opportunity I had. OBVIOUSLY this led to everyone buying Nerf guns and modifying the shit out of them.
However, some of us were terrible shots, so certain measures had to be taken to make it possible for them to keep up. Brad practiced in his room every day, Josh built an extended clip for his gun, and Kyle bought the fucking Vulcan and built a 600 dart belt for it because he decided aiming is for people who can’t fire 6 darts a second (he modded it for doubled firing speed using a small car battery and replaced mechanics).
Paul was fucking terrible. Like almost so bad it couldn’t be for real. He once tried to ambush me coming around a corner from 2 feet away and missed by a good 6-7 inches. He literally could have slapped me and he missed. Whatever moving on.
So Paul decides to solve his aim problems in the most Paul way possible: online shopping. He bought 500 foam pellets for a marshmallow gun, two dozen foam discs, and a motherfucking t-shirt cannon.
You see, Paul, much like Kyle, decided aiming was for lames. So he would pour foam pellets into the cannon until it was half full, slip in a disc to keep them from falling out, then shotgun people in the face. I was his first victim and boy let me tell you that shit is terrifying.
So Paul became the big dog in the house during Nerf battles, and the rest of us found ourselves unable to compete. So we all escalated in our own insane ways. Eric and I, the former champions, modified our guns to fire faster, Brad added an extended magazine to his gun, Kyle built a harness so that he could shoot his fucking stupid fucking bullet-storm piece of shit while moving. Josh booby-trapped various parts of our apartment. Suddenly, we were all better than Paul again, so he decided to step his game up.
He started making paper cartridges that would explode open once fired. Suddenly, he could actually fire multiple times a minute, which meant once again, he was at the top. It didn’t help that our reluctance to shoot back out of fear of getting shot was allowing him to take his time, therefore drastically improving his aim.
So we stepped up again. I smooth out the cocking mechanism on my guns, improving my firing speed even faster. Eric adds more weight to his darts, making them heavier and faster and much more painful. Kyle buys a bigger battery, newer parts, and he perfects his belts, which increases his firing speed to 12 darts a second.
So Paul steps up to take advantage of his improved aim and buys something called a Pucker Chucker which basically is a t-shirt cannon except it shoots foam pucks. This means we can’t just shoot at him from the other side of the apartment anymore, so we all step up again. I modify the rail on top to make aiming easier, Eric modifies his grip to make it more comfortable, Kyle and brad modify their barrels to make them more accurate, and Josh jumps on board the crazy train and builds a goddamn under barrel cherry bomb launcher.
And this is where shit starts to spiral out of control.
Brad starts making smoke grenades, Kyle solves his weakness against close quarters combat by using his battery to create a cattle prod to keep people back. Eric breaks the head off an old golf club to use the shaft as a weapon, I put pins in the tips of all of my darts, and Paul realizes that the Pucker Chucker can also shoot real hockey pucks after he steals my bucket of pucks from my room.
So it escalated a couple more steps but I’m going to leave them out partially out of a desire to keep moving forward and partially out of shame anywhoozle when we pull out our final contraptions and modifications that day we shifted from light-hearted fun that was a bit too far to literally combat. Josh had a sword. I don’t know where he got it from.
That battle was terrifying. Our normal fights were like an hour, two hours tops, then we would clean up, get together in the living room with some beers, and laugh about what happened. Honestly we should have known this was going to happen because when we did this after our previous fight, the laughter was less “haha remember when I shot Josh in the butthole? Classic.” and more “haha remember when I missed your face with that puck? Next time I won’t miss.”
So we somehow get into a battle again and this time things go south quickly which is bound to happen when you have a dude in a speedo swinging a sword around while rolling fireworks down the hall. It was literally chaos. There were fireworks and homemade smoke grenades and Kyle made the electrical current in his cattle prod too strong and it was too close to the muzzle of his Vulcan so every few seconds you would just see a flaming dart wiz past and I built a fucking flamethrower and I don’t know what the fuck is going on so I’m just firing it in the general direction of Josh to keep him the fuck away. At some point Brad barricades himself in his room, and so we all run back to our rooms and hide.
We do this for three days. THREE DAYS. I missed classes. We all had junk food in our rooms, and private bathrooms, so that’s what we sustained ourselves on for three fucking days. I, however, try to eat healthy, so I ran out of food almost immediately. After not eating for a day and a half, with food literally less than 50 feet from where I was hiding, I decided that I was willing to risk a trip to the kitchen.
So here’s something important about our apartment: I was the only one who knew how to cook. I had tried to teach the others, but all that had accomplished was several kitchen fires. This meant when Eric also ran out of food, he knew the only way to get a meal was to make peace with me. So he had snuck down the hall to my door, intent on asking me for help.
I did not know he was there.
So when I opened the door and saw a crouching figure in the shadows nearby, I assumed, I think justifiably, that it was the guy who had been swinging a sword at all of us the last time I saw him. So I pulled the trigger on my homemade flamethrower, only to see Eric’s horrified face illuminated by the flames for a split second before they hit his torso.
Luckily, I was using a scavenged fuel source (computer screen cleaner), so the flames were weak, but still fire is fire and fire fucking hurts. So Eric is rolling on the floor with first degree burns on his stomach and chest, and I’m freaking out because Eric is my friend and I just set him on fire, so there is now a lot of screaming coming from the hall.
Now, to lighten the mood slightly, here’s a personality test. You hear the sounds of fire, followed shortly by screaming coming from the hall outside your room. What do you do?
Do you assume the crazy sword guy has finally snapped and is going to kill you all, so you climb out the window onto the fire escape? Congratulations, you’re Brad.
Do you hear the cries of pain and grab a first aid kit before sprinting into the hall to help? Hey! You’re Kyle!
Do you hear the flames so you sprint into the kitchen to grab the fire extinguisher? You are Paul.
Do you come out into the hall to see what’s going on but also bring your sword just in case you have to stab someone? You are Josh and also mentally unstable please put your sword away.
So Kyle comes out and he and I start administering first aid and luckily through a combination of the weakness of my fuel source, how quickly I stopped the flames, and the quickness of our treatments, Eric only gets some first degree burns on his torso. Paul puts out the last of the flames, Josh decides he doesn’t want to stab anyone today, and Brad decides that the lack of screaming is a good thing and he comes inside. I spend the next hour apologizing profusely while cooking everyone dinner, and we decide that hey we should probably have some rules for our Nerf fights to prevent this from ever happening again.
So we all eat, we establish rules about modifications and ammunition, and at the end of it all, we grab some beers, head into the living room, and tell Josh he needs to get rid of the sword seriously dude where did you get that from?
He doesn’t cut the string between them. That’s the cruelest part, Leia thinks—that she can still feel that cord of golden light tied around the struts of her ribs, knotted somewhere in her cardiac muscle, tying her to him. He plucks at it sometimes, and she can feel the vibrations in her throat, her back teeth. (That’s how her brother loves her, bile choking her and a blinding agony, like her heart is trying to squeeze itself through her ribs. I miss you, he whispers through the Force, through her dreams, a lover’s voice. We are all we have, Leia, why won’t you see that?)
It’s cruel, it’s cruel, she doesn’t want to feel the black mold and ice spreading out from his hands, calcifying and creeping closer, ever closer, to her. He should have cut it. He should have finished it, this, them.
But then, Leia hasn’t cut it either. She’s not sure what her reason is.
.
The hardest part is the walk.
She can choke down the greasy slop that they serve at various dodgy cantinas throughout the galaxy. She can sleep on the itchy pallet on the narrow bunk in the Falcon. She can wrinkle her nose at Han cleaning his teeth and trying to talk at the same time—both too early in the morning when she really needs the refresher—and go without a hot sanisteam for weeks. She can lie and haggle and handle a blaster, speak Huttese like an Outer Rim rube or Basic with a thick Corellian drawl that never fails to make Han laugh.
And she can do it all while quietly slipping transmissions for the Rebellion into the right hands, praying that there is someone to read them on the other end. (It’s gone quiet in the wake of Endor, even though the Emperor had mysteriously retreated and all but handed them the victory. Leia doesn’t know what to make of that)
But when she’s not thinking about it, she reverts to the princess, the general—she’s always been someone who commands attention, and it’s written in the way she holds herself, the way she walks. It’s a dead giveaway, Han sighs, exchanging a look with Chewbacca. They’ve been watching her walk up and down the hold for what feels like most of the day, and nothing seems to be working.
We could shoot her in the foot, Chewie grumbles. Or you in the mouth, it’d have the same effect.
There isn’t truly ‘night’ when you spend most of your time in hyperspace, flitting from planet to planet, each with their own orbital period. Once, Leia had been able to shut her eyes and simply know what hour it was in Aldera, night or day, wherever in the galaxy she was. Even after Alderaan was destroyed, she had been able to breathe deeply and know, absolutely know, just before dawn, the oldawu blooms will be opening, or, third night watch, the streets quiet.
These days, she can barely track her own internal chrono. They stumble from morning to midnight to afternoon to dawn and then back, into the timeless suspension of hyperspace. It’s disorienting. She think it’s making her sick.
Still, sometimes, Leia lays beside Han in the artificial dim of the cabin, and she is grateful. She is grateful. It’s easy to pretend in the no-time and nowhereness that they are just two unimportant humans, a man and a woman, hurtling silently through space as humans do. That they have not lost anyone or anything, they are not running. They are not waiting. They are not bleeding out internally, and they are not afraid.
They are just where they are supposed to be.
.
a dream: there is a boy with sand in his mouth, his lips stitched shut by cruel hands. he is heavy, he is so heavy, all the desert in his lungs and belly, burned sere and dry as bones in the sun.
there is another boy, and he is water. he is the flood. he lifts his hand and tears open the boy with sand in his mouth-lungs-belly—washes him away. it is a kind of terrible mercy to drown, the boy thinks.
right then, he is not sure which boy he is.
in this dream, there is a girl who watches them, and screams thunder when the flood runs red.
.
in another world, the boy is still a flood, but he says drink instead of drown. but that is another world. it has no bearing on this one. it’s probably best if you don’t think of it any more.
.
Is he okay? Han asks her once. Leia is sitting in the empty co-pilot seat, her feet tucked under her. She’s fidgeting with her hair—she’d cut it short, terribly short, after some smuggler in a cantina recognized her braids as Alderaanian and nearly blasted her through. (The bounty on her specifies ‘alive’, not ‘well’.) Her head feels impossibly light now, bare and hollowed-out and full of loss.
It’s a kind of vicious equivalence to it, she thinks. Everything about her is full of loss.
I mean—Han starts, but she cuts him off.
I know who you mean.
(If she began spooling that golden thread around her fingers and followed it, to where her brother stands waiting for her in the dark, she knows Han would follow. He would. And he would love the thing she became, however terrible, just as he would love whatever monstrous remnant of Luke they found. She’s not sure he’d even see the ice and black mold growing in the cracks of the people he once knew—she and Luke could blind him with a sharp needle and kiss him after, pet his hair, and Han would be secretly glad, grateful to be wanted, to be allowed.
Sometimes, Leia cannot breathe with how much faith Han has in her, in them. She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve it.)
Well? Han asks. His voice is soft. Is he okay?
I don’t know how to answer that, Leia says.
.
There was talk of a rescue, in the wake of Endor—Lando and Han in particular, still tired-eyed from the battle but upright, warming their hands over the ewoks’ fire. They talked about storming the Emperor’s star destroyer like it was Jabba’s palace, like Luke was trapped in carbonite somewhere and all they had to do was—
Leia had bitten her tongue until it bled. She was in too much pain, her connection to Luke howling, the whole Force digging its claws into her skin, her skull, that the blood in her mouth offered some relief.
At least it was real. She was still real, here, human, and not dissolved into light.
Leia! Han said, when she spat onto the grass. (She had still felt it, the red staining her lips, the corners of her mouth. Every atom in her body was screaming for Luke, her heart pulled against her ribcage like the string might snap if he went any further—)
We can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved, she’d said, and that was the end of it.
.
another dream:
why? the girl who is a storm asks the flood. tell me why and maybe then I will understand, maybe I will come.
I am so tired, the flood says. aren’t you tired?
they are standing in a charnel-house. she is not the reason for all the bones that lie here, but more of them are at her feet than his. (‘skywalker’ is scored into all of them with an uneven hand.)
that’s not a reason, the storm says. that’s an excuse.
.
They’re in some nameless place that serves nameless food, smoke-filled and seedy, when the grav-ball match cuts out. There’s a collective groan from the assembled criminals and riffraff when the Imperial sigil fills the viewscreen—Han’s good at finding planets, places, where there’s no love lost for the Empire. Leia shoots him an amused look; he shrugs, grinning.
Her humor vanishes when a soft-spoken voice says, My name is Luke Skywalker.
The viewscreen is old and grainy, marred by a spiderweb crack at one corner, but Leia can still see that his eyes are bloodshot, orange-red and unsettling. They seem to find her in the crowd, piercing her through and pinning her to the grimy wall. The nameless food roils in her stomach.
His smile is the same, she thinks. A crooked, farmboy smile, undimmed; almost a smirk but meaning-well.
He smiles as he recites the death toll from some ‘uprising’ the Empire ‘cleansed’. Leia barely makes it to the refresher before she’s sick over her boots.
.
can you come back? the storm who is also a girl asks. if there’s a chance, any chance—
you cannot stopper a flood, the boy says, and turns away.
.
Han finds her in the refresher, sobbing, blood in her ears, her nose. I’m sorry, she chokes out. She gets blood on his cheek but she can’t seem to stop pulling him closer and then struggling away, clawing at his shirt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. I’m sorry.
It’s okay, Han says, gathering her up, holding her close. After a minute of struggling, she goes still, like a bird with a snapped neck. (He wishes he had a different metaphor.) Hey, hey, talk to me, Han breathes, stroking her shoulder with his thumb. Tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help. I can help.
I cut it, Leia whispers. I cut the string out. I didn’t have a reason, I just had an excuse, so I cut it out of me. I think I’m bleeding, Han. I don’t think I’ll stop bleeding.
Han exhales. Okay, let me get the medkit, it’s just—
I’m so tired, Leia says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She’s clinging to him weakly, and there’s blood in hair. I’m so tired.
It was a huge disappointment as a child to fall in love with the stars and then find out how much math it requires to get anywhere near them.
Shoutout to everyone that had a dream career or ideal life but were roadblocked by math.
(originally posted here)
Dear (circle one) Ax Marco Tobias Cassie:
I know that you are trying to be extra brave today because (circle all that apply)
A) You fucked up the last mission
B) You are attempting to live up to Andalite cultural standards of masculinity
C) You are attempting to live up to Human cultural standards of masculinity
D) You are trying to (circle one) revenge/save/impress ______
E) You have a personal vendetta against _____
I would just like you to know that (circle all that apply)
A) You’re right, you did fuck up pretty badly in a way that I never could have anticipated
B) You actually saved all of our butts even if you don’t realize it (see back of page explanation)
C) No matter how hard you try, you will never be as good as you think your brother was
D) You are too close to this
E) You are still very special to me
Because of that, in regards to the special mission you have asked to be a part of in order to redeem yourself, I would like to (circle one)
A) Give you my blessing
B) Ask you not to get yourself killed
C) Ask you not to get all of us killed
D) Politely ask you not to go, which we both know you will probably disregard
E) Tell you no way in hell, if you go I will personally rip you a new asshole
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
(circle one) Jake Prince Jake
Dear Rachel:
I would just like to take the time to tell you (circle all that apply):
A) Gold star for being brave for everyone else’s benefit today when you were actually scared
B) Thanks for saving my butt
C) Thanks for saving the butt of (circle all that apply) Tobias Ax Cassie Marco
D) I have a special mission/some dirty work for you (see back of page)
E) You are out of control and you scare the pee out of me sometimes
Thank you.
Love,
Cousin Jake
*finger guns* Hey, my shadowy sweetie, I’ve been called worse things in my life.
are you the person that kills the spider, makes someone else kill the spider, or catches and releases the spider outside
i’m the person other people make kill the spider
when channing tatum was 16 he dated a guy and he’s spoken about it in great length and referred to himself as not-straight so stop calling him part of straight culture lmao
CHANNING TATUM LOVES MEN and works really hard to remind everyone of that all the time and somehow it keeps getting rewritten and forgotten because queer erasure is WILD, support Channing Tatum, man, he’s the genuinely kind inoffensive white normy looking guy we all dream of existing but think can’t be real, Channing unicorn Tatum
I honestly did not know this and I’m so glad I do now!
@boromir-queries-seanI learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
?????
There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:
“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”
THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU
anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice
There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.
Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.
Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.
No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.”
A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.
Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.
I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?
grantaire-put-that-bottle-down:
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!
No no no! Jewish LGBTQ kinderlach! Go to Keshet!
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
so ok about ghostbusters i really feel like holtzmann was the realest part of the movie to me? like a lot of straight people might watch the movie and go ‘holtzmann was so over the top, too much, unrealistic, cartoonish’ but:
i’ve known women like that (and fallen in love with them) and done my best to be a woman like that (and got my heart broken a lot) and you can watch holtzmann aggressively flirt with erin until the moment erin loses her shit over kevin and then you see holtzmann just kind of grin bitterly and stop. entirely stop. erin is insufficiently bi. erin wasn’t politely turning down holtzmann’s overtures, she was totally oblivious of them. erin prefers hotdogs to hamburgers. and holtzmann respects that completely even while her face is like aw, fuck. and i just nodded to myself. like yeah, yep, me too, same, yup.
jillian’s actress is gay. jillian’s actress knows this situation, has lived this situation, grew up in this situation, she knows: most of the women you like will like men, and that sucks, but it’s no one’s fault, you can’t get mad. suck it up; laugh it off. you’re surrounded by brilliant, beautiful women all your life and you flirt and you dance and you preen and you have fun, but you have your honor, too, you also know what it’s like to be hit on by that creep at your job, to dodge innuendo and unwanted touches from that ‘friend’ who’s too friendly. you’re better than the men who get bitter about it. us weird girls, us girls who like girls and are girls, we all know.
i didn’t really expect to see something that real in ghostbusters, but damn. damn. it felt good. it felt like representation. it felt like a pat on the back i’ve never gotten. we know you. you’re here too.
I still can’t believe that fanfiction is free
I sometimes have to pay for water, but with a phone and some wifi, I get to read whole novels about my favorite characters for exactly zero additional dollars
How goddamn rad is that
Thank you fic writers,The unsung heroes.
Thanks to all fanfiction writers out there
Patron saint of laying in bed till noon on your day off.
Ya'all
I am a 27 year old full grown ass adult.
My partner and I are reading Animorphs together (my first time he has had them since they came out)
We just finished 30 (it’s a Marco book- the reunion)
I can’t …
1. HOW ARE THESE BOOKS MENT FOR 7-12 YEAR OLDS?
2. I just ugly cried for the last half of the book, while reading outloud, nbd.
3. I have told my partner that I will no longer read Marco books… I have entirely too many mommy feels.
4. I am ruined ya’ll, I just can’t.
5. Animorphs fandom, someone comfort me? I have 27 books left to make it through and my poor feels are all going to break and make a mess all over arnt they?
well if you start from a place of
then you generally end up with a cool dude imho
Animorphs is the story of five ordinary teenagers who discover that aliens invading their planet. They meet an alien from a race that opposes the invaders who gives them the ability to shapeshift into animals to fight the invaders and protect their planet. Cue wacky hijinks and cool animal shapeshifting and awesome space adventures!
Except not. Animorphs takes the whole ‘teen superheroes get up, go to school, save the world’ trope and deconstructs it HARD. The kids aren’t even close to equipped to deal with this war; the enemy is huge, powerful, and ruthless. Super-healing comes as a happy side effect of their shapeshifting, which is a good thing because they get into physical combat a LOT and are constantly being disembowelled and having limbs ripped off and soforth. Also, the invaders are body-snatchers, who climb into the heads of their victims and control them utterly, being privy to their every thought and memory, meaning that all the ‘enemies’ whose throats the kids rip out in battle are in fact innocent slaves. One of the kids finds out almost immediately that his older brother, who he loves and respects, is a helpless slave of the enemy, living a nightmare in his own head — and who would kill his little brother without hesitation if he ever found out who he was. The bad guys use the kids’ high school and the local boy-scout-esque community group as tools of manipulation and recruitment, meaning that the kids are surrounded constantly not only by enemies but by innocents being led straight to the enemy and they can’t do a damn thing but watch it happen. A main character tries to commit suicide in book 3 and I think the PTSD nightmares start about book 5. The kids can’t tell their parents why they wake up screaming, of course, any more than they can hug them and tell them they love them right before going into a deadly battle — their parents might be under the control of the enemy, and could kill them at any moment.
As the series goes on, the war gets more complicated. The violent, knife-covered alien footsoldiers the kids are constantly fighting in battle aren’t so violent. The bad guys aren’t so bad. The good guys aren’t so good. And these kids, who are thirteen when this all starts, have to figure that out, because there’s nobody else to do it. Is it okay to use biochemical warfare against the enemy? Is it okay to keep fighting and kill innocents in defense of other innocence? Is it alright to use drugs against the enemy, even if the side effects have negative consequences for their slaves? The Big Bad has a habit of decapitating henchmen who fail, and the Animorphs sometimes need to work against their leader’s enslaved brother… what if the Big Bad kills him? Can they back off, sell out part of the human race just to protect a human they happen to know and love? Eventually, a resistance movement develops among the body snatchers and some of them refuse to take unwilling hosts and will only inhabit volunteers — but where’s the line between free consent and coercion when you’re trapped between opposing forces in a war, when your family is in danger?
Despite having six main characters (they pick up an alien to join them shortly into the story), the protagonists are as well developed as the grey areas they fight in. The character development is amazing as you watch the war break them all in different ways. The charismatic kid who is nominated leader mostly because he has no glaring flaws prohibiting him from the job has no choice but to take it seriously, and can’t show weakness or fear, so he lets nobody help him as he slowly breaks inside and starts treating people like pawns. The clear-sighted realist and head strategist who deals with tragedy with humour, using jokes and sarcasm to hold the team together and give them roles to hold onto, who gets better and better at planning until he realises that the plans and outcomes are all that matters to him even if they involve the death of people he loves… and thinks of this as a good thing. The brash bombshell with more courage than anyone, who shields her friends with her strength and her body and leaving nobody to shield her, who deals with her fear by doing her job until the anger and rage and violence is all that’s left. The philosophising environmentalist, who entered the war as a force of nature nominated to save her planet and has to compromise on line after line until she doesn’t even know how to protect her friends any more. The neglected orphan with no connection to any human being, who finds friends in the fight and fights for them, not humanity… knowing that when it’s over, he’ll have nothing. The alien cadet who just wants to go home and somehow ended up with the honour of his famous brother and the fate of a planet on his shoulders, who tried to operate under his own people’s laws and moral code in a completely different world.
It’s really good, basically. And it’s been released online for free here: http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/
i can’t believe it’s 2016 and there still hasn’t been an animated adaptation of animorphs
