im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever
scottish trad music genres:
Everyone I Love Is Dead
The English Have Stolen All My Sheep
You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three
The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep
I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]
The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English
One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome
The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep
We have of course the traditional Irish music genres to go with them:
* Everyone I Love Is An Allegorical Representation of Ireland
* The English Stole My Farm And Put Sheep On It
* You Were My Boyfriend But Now You Won’t Even Come To The Window To Look Upon Me And Our Dead Infant Child (In The Rain)
* Whack Fol Too La Roo Umptytiddly Good They’ve Stopped Listening Now Let’s Talk About Revolution
* Something In Irish, I Think It’s About Fairies, Or Maybe A Cow
oooo can I add to this? don’t forget Appalachian folk balladry, the American cousin of Scottish and Irish traditional music and just as uplifting as its Anglo-Saxon highland forbears!!!
genres include:
I Left Everyone I Love Back Home In The Holler To Be With This Guy Who Doesn’t Wear Shoes Or Have Teeth But He Plays A Mean Jug
The English Told Us Not To Move West Yet, We Ignored Them, My Entire Family Was Killed
You Were My Boyfriend But You Tied A Sack Of Rocks To My Petticoats And Threw Me In The Creek (And My Baby Too)
Mama Loves All 14 Of Us A Lot But She’s Weary Of Our Shit And Now She’s Dyin’ (Gather Round)
The McCleans Stole A Firewood Log From Our Pile So We Won’t Rest Until The Last Of Their Male Kin Is Laid In The Cold Ground
We Knew The River Would Rise But We Still Didn’t Fix The Levee
The River Rose, The Levee Broke, Everyone Died, It Was Just As We Reckoned (dulcimer twang-a-lang)
When The Rebels Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Southern Man And I Feed Their Horses My Best, When The Yankees Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Northern Man And I Feed Their Horses What The Rebels Left
The Tennessee Valley Authority Killed All My Sheep Somehow
Don’t forget that old standby “The Mine Collapsed and Everyone Died”!
I think someone needs to put in a word for the English folk tradition though:
I Met a Girl and We Went Hunting (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl and We Caught Some Birds (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl and We Found Her Lost Pet (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl By Staying At Her Parents’ House and She Made My Bed (It Was an Especially Thinly-Veiled Metaphor for Sex)
I Am a Girl and I Regret Engaging In Metaphors for Sex Because Now I’m Pregnant
I Met a Girl and Bribed Her Into Sex But She Stole My Horse and Ran Away With It
I Met a Girl At an Inn and We Had Non-Metaphorical Sex But She Stole My Stuff The Next Morning and Now I Have Syphilis
Your Fiance Died Either at Trafalgar or Waterloo, Let’s Get Married, I’m Glad You Said No Because I’m Really Him In Disguise
Lord Nelson Sure Was Awesome
The Press-Gang Dragged Off All the Important Men in My Life (And Now They Are Dead)
Farm Laborers Are The Salt of the Earth And Are Never Grindingly Poor
Begging Is a Completely Viable Career Option With Flexible Hours and Unlimited Access to Alcohol
i know that people being on their phones has become like a symbol of apathy and uncaring but so many people i know use social media to share love. like yesterday i got to watch a wedding livestreamed to everyone who couldn’t make it. i’ve seen my friend slowly learn how to cope with being a teen mom because of a massive outpouring of “mumblr” support + tips. i’ve seen my friends come out as gay, learn to cook, discover the flaws in their feminism, work for social change, make good life choices, go to amazing places, develop passions, form educated opinions, learn to love themselves. i’ve seen people post the bravest recovery posts and shy political posts and everything in between.
and i don’t honestly care how edgy you think your art is. what you’re telling me when you draw grey people looking at a white screen is that you don’t care what happens to the other people in your life.
but i do. i care about the boy i’m in a long distance relationship with, but i also care about people i’ve never met. i’ve been following some people for three years and genuinely care about their experiences. i’m glad you’re still in touch with the people you love, even if you’re not paying attention directly to me! i get happy when you finally dump him! i’m sad when your cat gets sick! i give a shit.
i don’t think technology is taking empathy away from us. i think it’s changing it.
“Trump just criticized me for preparing for this debate. You know what else I prepared for? Being president.”—Hillary Clinton, an actual adult arguing with a child. (via ashermajestywishes)
Trump has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), if passed by congress. It was first introduced in the House on June 17, 2015 and would effectively legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination across the board, including among employers, businesses, landlords and healthcare providers, as long as they claim to be motivated by a firmly held religious beliefs.
It’s important to vote here, folks. Trump presidency is a massive no.
Please vote hillary I’m begging you
Vote for Hillary. A third-party candidate may be closer to your ideals, but a vote for anyone other than Hillary is a vote closer to Trump winning. The race is CLOSE, if the well-being of others matters AT ALL to you, please vote Hillary Clinton.
If you are LGBTQIA or remotely care about the LGBTQIA community and our wellbeing you NEED TO VOTE FOR HILLARY
Trump is a repulsive evil fucking COCKROACH that despises LGBTQIA people and if this slimy reptillian scumbag got elected one of the first things he’d seek to do would be to make it legal to take jobs AWAY from queer and trans americans
If you are LGBTQIA: THAT MEANS YOU
If you remotely care about ANYONE who is LGBTQIA: THAT MEANS PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT
Vote for Hillary and keep this bigoted and repulsive sack of shit and his hateful agenda of evil OUT of the white house
Once upon a time, I was running a DnD game for some friends. The player characters were checking out reports that a local town had been having trouble with monsters. They’re informed that it was true, a few years ago, but a copper dragon set up a lair in the mountains and chased all the awful creatures out. A dragon slayer showed up shortly thereafter and neither dragon nor slayer were heard from again. Players are disappointed at first, but then quickly perk up when some other plot threads become apparent.
A few sessions later, the place they were staying burned down (their fault), forcing them to check out the more expensive tavern in town. There, they meet Allie Cohol, a half-elf woman with red hair that owned and ran the tavern. She was cheerfully greedy, but still helpful and always ready with a cheesey joke… And after only the third joke, one of the players, Bill, froze and locked eyes with me. “You fucker. She’s the copper dragon,” Bill says.
That reveal was supposed to be a big thing later, so I’m kinda on the spot. Fortunately, another player, Fran, pipes up and says, “nah, that’s stupid. The dragon in the mountain is a red herring. We’re here for the cultists.” The cultists were in the sewer and the PCs were actually working for the cleric Big Bad without them knowing.
“No, listen,” Bill continued. “Red hair. Greedy. Bad jokes… Her name is Allie Cohol.”
Everyone around the table gives him a fairly blank look, but I’m sweating bullets. Threads that I had spun oh so carefully were half a heartbeat away from unraveling. Bill is getting this real wild look in his eyes and pounds a fist against the table. “Allie Cohol. HER NAME IS ALCOHOL.”
Fran then slowly pans over and looks me dead in the eyes. “The deadly joke ability. She’s a goddamn dragon.”
*slides $20 across the ask box* what do Alderaanian wife braids look like?
“You should go see Leia.”
Han blinked, startled by the sudden voice, the sudden farmboy-cum-Jedi standing in the doorway and blocking the light. It was after-hours even for the track, he hadn’t been expecting anyone in the pilot’s lounge.
“Hello to you too, Luke,” he drawled, leaning back in the armchair. “Good to see you, been too long, how’s the search for Jedi shit going? Myself? Well, I’m not too bad, bit of a trouble with my joints—getting older’s a rum business, you know? But I can’t complain; complaining’s the business of them who don’t have enough else to do, as I like to say.”
Luke stared balefully at Han, and Han got the sense he was just restraining himself from rolling his eyes. “You’ve never said that before in your life. And also, you should go see Leia.”
“Kid, I know you’re last of the Jedi or whatever these days, but you gotta work on your small talk.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “You are the most frustrating, stubborn—”
“To be fair, you knew that about me already,”
Han laughed, stumbling to his feet and crossing the lounge to Luke. With a sigh, Luke let himself be enfolded in a hug.
“Han—”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Is she hurt?” Han asked. (He still wasn’t entirely sure how the Force-thing worked, but he knew Luke and Leia kept tabs on each other, even across the galaxy.) A thought struck, and he sucked in a breath. “Kriff, is it—is it Ben? Is Ben okay?”
“Ben is fine. Leia is fine. She’s just…it’s a politics thing.”
Han exhaled, laughing. “Mother of Kwath, kid, you got me terrified over nothing. I am not the politics guy. Leia has politics guys, I am not them. I’ll give her a comm tonight, but I’m—sure she’s got it handled.”
“It’s about you,” Luke said pointedly, and Han felt cold well in the pit of his stomach. “This time, you are the politics thing.”
“Oh,” Han said.
.
.
“It’s idiotic,” Leia dismissed, when he commed. “Even if—someone’s choice of spouse said anything about their character at all, you are a war hero and a general. You led the assault on Endor! And now you’re an entrepreneur—”
“That’s a lot of syllables for someone who travels around the galaxy, betting on themselves in starship races, sweetheart.”
“The essence of politics is describing things in more syllables than they’re worth,” she bit out, and he laughed, outright. Even over the crappy satellite feed, he could see her relax a little at the sound, breathe out.
She looked so small and very far away, her face on the monitor.
“Do you want me there?” he asked. “Because I can be there—Chewie can take the Falcon, and I’m pretty sure farmboy still remembers his way around a ship if he needs a co-pilot. I could use a vacation.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s fine. I’m fine. You have the Outer Rim qualifier in two weeks, and this is just another stupid fight over something that doesn’t matter. A distraction. Once I get this bill approved, they’ll drop it.”
“Yeah, but—”
Before he could finish, there was a loud clattering sound from her end of the connection, and a shout of “Is that dad? Can I talk to dad?” with Threepio’s fainter, “Master Ben, really!” By the time he’d talked (argued) with Ben and talked (argued) with Leia again, the matter was dropped.
Luke looked up when Han entered he cockpit, smiling a little when Han groaned and let himself sag into the pilot’s seat. “So, about the Outer Rim qualifier—”
“Maybe you don’t know this about me,” Luke said, his tone thoughtful. “But I’m a pretty good pilot. I once flew an x-wing with my eyes closed and blew up the Death Star. So I could probably handle going really fast around a track once or twice.“
“I can see why the Empire decided to kill all the Jedi,” Han grumbled.
.
.
Normally, Han would have arrived on Chandrila at some ungodly hour, shucked off his boots at the door, and crawled into bed beside Leia still smelling of the Falcon, too tired to do much more than mumble against her cheek and pass out.
It was strange to be there in the sunlight, walking up the last of the stairs just as she was emerging from the suite. For a minute, he just watched her—she was on another planet, reading something on her datapad and all her attention focused there; he was still surprised she didn’t bump into walls when she did that.
He’d teased her once that it was the only part of the Force he actually believed in.
Han grabbed her elbow before she could pass him, and she looked up in shock. “You should be careful, Senator,” Han drawled, as she laughed. “I hear there are some real criminal elements in this part of town.”
“Oh, well,” she said, her eyes alight, “they can’t be as shockingly criminal as my husband.”
(Every time she kissed him like this, it was like that first time in the Falcon, his skin aching and hot, more alive than he’d ever been because death and her were staring him down. The kissing wasn’t the reason he left—or the reason he came back—but it was a reason, all the same.)
“Hello, stranger,” she murmured, when they separated.
“Hey,” he said, inhaling the smell of her, whatever product she put in her hair these days—it reminded him of Endor, something sharp and green. “Thought I’d come and apologize for not listening to you in person.”
Her mouth curved. “You never listen to me, I’ve gotten used to it.”
It took about two days for Han to realize it was worse than Luke had let on. He wasn’t sure why everyone suddenly cared about Leia marrying a Corellian bastard of an ex-spice smuggler—the justice who married them had asked if there were any objections five years ago, no one seemed bothered then—but people cared. And he trusted Leia when she said it would stop after the bill, but the bill was being stalled in some committee, and—
“Politics,” Han sighed, when Ben asked why Han was being talked about on the holonews. “It’s all just politics, kid, don’t worry. We’re going to be fine.”
On the third week, when they still weren’t fine, Han put Ben to bed and sat down across from Leia at the dining table. She had datapads spread around her and a pinched look on her face; Han almost balked, but— “Maybe I might be willing to go to some of those parties,” he said. Her gaze snapped up, to him, and he offered a weak smile. “You know, those ones I hate, with the tiny food and the awful people. And maybe I can show your senator friends that…I am that civilized Hero of Endor, and you didn’t screw up, by picking me. You know, if you think that could help.”
“Han—”
“Or, I mean, we could get divorced, but I worked really hard to convince you to marry me in the first place, plus there was a war. I don’t think I’ll get so lucky a second time.”
Leia looked at him for a long, long moment, then exhaled. “Well, we’ll try the first, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always the second option. Maybe you can ask for Threepio in the settlement.”
“Your sense of humor has not improved with time, princess.”
.
.
“You shouldn’t shout you know,” Han said, settling against the doorframe and offering a grin. “My wife wouldn’t be too pleased if she found out I brought a beautiful stranger into our bedroom.”
Leia met his gaze in the mirror and pointedly rolled her eyes. Han stuck out his tongue at her. “I thought you’d be dressed by now,” she said, her mouth twisting. “The party starts in an hour, and—”
“It’ll take me ten minutes to change. I didn’t want to wrinkle anything waiting for you.”
“I’ve seen you preen for forty-five minutes, Solo, don’t lie to me.”
He snorted, watching as she set down her brush and began braiding her hair. He’d always liked her this way, barefoot and unarmored, the most herself she could be. He’d always liked being one of the few allowed to see it.
“Did you need me for some reason? I can change into the suit right now if you think of some interesting ways to put wrinkles in it.”
“Just you hand,” she interrupted, shooting him another look. Her hands were still moving, doing something complicated with the strands she had gathered at the top of her skull. He crossed the room to her side, “Put your index finger…here,” she said, tapping a place where the strands wove together. He pressed his finger in exactly that place, and she wove the hair around it, like a ring. “Take your hand away? And—then thumb in the divot over my ear.”
“Okay,” Han said quietly.
There was something steadying about it, just her soft directions, and him, and their hands. He’d watched her do this before, braid and coil and brush and knot—the traditional art of Alderaan, passed down from mother to daughter. They each had meanings, and Han knew some of them; the circlet interwoven with a lace was her imitation of the crown of Alderaan, and when she wore that high coil of braids, it meant she was grieving.
(What about when you wear it loose like this? he’d asked once, when he was pouring it through his fingers like water. He liked it best down, a veil around her shoulders.
Nothing, she had said. This is just me.)
“I haven’t seen this one before, have I?” he asked when she was finished, touching the soft honeycomb cluster behind her ear, looping to an equally complex knot on the other side. It took him a moment to realize that the twisting coils were the size of his fingers, left over of his hands.
“No, I haven’t—done this one before,” Leia said quietly, smoothing back a flyaway strand with her fingertips.
“I’m surprised,” Han chuckled. “Would have though you had plenty use for braids that say you’re ready to fight.”
“These aren’t braids for fighting,” Leia said. She wasn’t quite meeting Han’s gaze in the mirror, and he thought he saw a blush. “My mother wore these each year on her wedding anniversary. These are—the traditional name is ‘the work of loved hands’ but they’re better known as wife’s knots. They’re one of the few styles that is unique to every wearer, because it requires two sets of hands.”
Han couldn’t think of what to say, if there was anything to say. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t trust himself. He felt like he’d get lost in it too easily, let the whole world and everything in it slip away because she was there, with wife’s knots in her hair.
“I didn’t screw up, picking you,” Leia said, rising to her feet. When she turned, her expression was fierce, stern. She’d ordered men into battle with that expression. “And either way, I did pick you. I’m keeping you, and there’s nothing the New Republic can do about it.
“Now,” she said, “get changed. The party starts in an hour.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Han said quietly, and followed her out.
it will never cease to delight me that in the trilogy, gimli is shown to be charming, with all the polish and grace of a trained diplomat—he trades wits with elrond and speaks so graciously to galadriel that she gives him a gift denied feanor; his extemporaneous description of the glittering caves is what convinces legolas to travel there with him after the war, he sings the song of durin so well that sam begs to learn it.
whereas legolas is this big cheerful lug of a hunter-tracker, incidentally a prince, only unwittingly beautiful and graceful—his speech is decidedly stiff and formal, even when he’s trying to be gentle, but then turns around and starts singing without realizing he’s forgotten half the song. He has strange moments of seriousness, when the ancientness of him shines through, but then—
I do wonder what their first conversations were, gimli dignified but a little chilly; legolas stiff even as he attempted humor, but a way forward nonetheless.
The Bullet, an ensemble member with nothing to separate her from the rest but a poof of curls at the top of her head, morphs not only into a Greek Chorus member, but into a signal of death approaching until she eventually (historical spoiler alert:) approaches Hamilton at the end of the show as an embodiment of the shot that killed him.
At the start, the Bullet is indistinguishable from her fellow ensemble members. Most of the ensemble steps into the spotlight a couple times, though, as everything from named historical figures like Samuel Seabury and James Reynolds to small speaking roles, and the Bullet is no different. After “You’ll Be Back,” she steps forward for the first time as a spy receiving a letter, only to have her neck snapped by a redcoat and become the first death of the revolution. However, unlike the rest of the ensemble, who return to the anonymous chorus until their next role, the Bullet never seems to leave that first moment behind. Her next appearance as a singular character is in “Stay Alive,” when she becomes the actual Bullet for the first time as she passes Hamilton by at the sound of the gunshot at the top of the song, and from that moment on, every second she is allowed the audience’s full or even partial attention, she becomes a harbinger of death.
Though her connection to death is most apparent in Act II, she is absolutely present and aware of his role as the Bullet from the beginning. When asked about playing the Bullet in an interview with “The Great Discontent,” Ariana DeBose, the original Bullet, said, “I always know I’m aiming for him—even if the rest of the ensemble members don’t. So even if I’m just a lady in a ball gown at a party, there’s still a part of my character that knows that that moment is going to come.” Even when the spotlight is not on her, every moment the Bullet is onstage has significance. Whether it’s in “My Shot,” when the ensemble unfreezes one by one as Hamilton moves toward them during his first recitation of the “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory” monologue and the Bullet is the last one to move, her hand still outstretched toward Hamilton as he steps in front of her, or it’s in “Ten Duel Commandments,” when the ensemble lines up between Hamilton and Burr, singing, “Pick a place to die where it’s high and dry,” and the Bullet places herself directly at Hamilton’s side, the connection between them is already being formed. Knowing that the Bullet is fully aware of the final meeting she and Hamilton are hurtling toward makes the short moment in “Ten Duel Commandments” when Hamilton looks at her lining up beside him, the only time he ever seems to truly see her before his final moments, and the pair stand side by side for numbers six and seven of the Commandments, moving through the choreography in sync, feel hugely significant in a way it never would otherwise.
Several songs later, during “Yorktown,” she kills a redcoat with Laurens in South Carolina. They celebrate for a brief moment before she returns to the ensemble, and the show moves on. It until three songs later that the audience and Hamilton learn that Laurens was shot and killed in South Carolina not long after the fighting ended. It is a short and easily dismissed interaction, but this is the first moment that her actions are entwined in someone’s death. This quick look the Bullet and Laurens share in “Yorktown” begins to feel like Laurens sealing his fate with a handshake in retrospect.
This quick tie the Bullet forms with a person as they are about to die becomes extremely important in the second act, when she really steps into her role as the Bullet. Her spoken lines, though few, are particularly significant, as every one of them eventually leads to someone getting shot – namely, Philip and Hamilton. In “Blow Us All Away,” she tells Philip exactly where to find George Eaker, the man who will kill him, singing, “I saw him just up Broadway, couple of blocks. He was going to see a play.” Philip follows her directions and challenges him to the duel that will kill him. Her only other spoken line is as one of Burr’s supporters in “The Election of 1800,” when she says, “I can’t believe we’re here with him” and flashes Burr a large, hopeful smile. Burr leaves the exchange with a fist pump, believing he has the election in the bag, only to have that hope ripped away when Hamilton’s support of Jefferson leads to him losing the presidency and challenging Hamilton to the duel the whole show has been foreshadowing. At the start of “Your Obedient Servant,” when Burr actually challenges Hamilton, the Bullet actually pulls Burr’s desk onto the stage and hands him his quill so that he can begin his fateful letters, edging his toward the battlefield. Every action she takes ensures that Hamilton meets her one last time.
Once she has successfully gotten the pair to pull their guns on each other’s, she appears for a final time as the actual bullet, slowly approaching Hamilton throughout the entirety of his final monologue and coming dangerously close to him as he moves, scatter-brained, across the stage. Halfway through, he steps right in her path, turns back and stumbles out of the way, and as he frantically repeats, “Rise up, rise up, rise up,” she lunges for him, only to be pulled back by another ensemble member as Eliza steps in her path. Once Hamilton has been shot, she joins the ensemble once again, satisfied that the path she’s been on since the beginning has come to an end.
WE CAN ALL AGREE ON LANCE AND KEITH also have you seen the galra!keith theories yet
GLAD TO HEAR IT.
And yes I have, and on the one hand I’m not sure if I think the people making the show have that level of forethought going on here (look, I am very skeptical of TV producers, I just am), but on the other I would be ALL THE FUCK OVER THAT. Like. It would combine all my favorite tropes, especially if Kieth doesn’t know he’s Galra at the time of the first season. Weird messed up identity issues! ‘He’s our friend but he’s the enemy’ issues! ‘Oh wow what if I start to turn purple’ issues!
I am Here For It, is the point here. And if that happens I expect some Pain. It would be glorious.
O K A Y. Only took me like nine days to get a new computer, so here we go, posting of this story will now resume its daily schedule. This is Part IV, Parts I,II, and III are also available. This scene takes place the day after the previous one–Jack is no longer dying of a divine-level hangover, is the point. Also, please feel free to correct my German, I do not dich the language.
“Hey, Jackie,” Idunn said, already
sliding forward a travel cup with an elegant cursive J on the side. Her handwriting would have made calligraphers
weep with envy, although her print letters were angular and sharp-edged as
blades. “How are you feeling?”
“Eh,” he said with a shrug and an
expressive hand motion. “Ich bin gut, aber erschoft.” Jack’s eyes widened at the sound of his own
words and one hand flicked up to touch his lips, a betrayed look crossing his
face.
“Didn’t know you spoke German,
Jack,” Idunn said in a strange voice—careful and calm, as if bracing herself or
someone else against an oncoming onslaught.
“Wen haben Sie erfahren?”
“I…didn’t?” he said through his
fingers, and felt almost shaky with relief when the words spilled out in
familiar English. “What the fuck?”
Concept: Some jackass shows Bucky how to make a blog and it becomes really popular. Not because it’s the blog of James Buchanan Barnes, American Legend, War Hero, Infamous Assassin, Alleged Terrorist. Nobody even knows it’s his blog. It gets really popular because people think it’s a really great shitpost generator or something. Because Bucky is just a Weird Fucking Person and everything he posts on his fucking personal blog comes off as somewhere between dril and Jaden Smith and people are like “this is some quality garbage right here” and thus Accidental Memelord Bucky is born.
Bucky posts things like
“What is wrong with bananas. I ate a banana today and it was Wrong. America why”
“Every time I put on my eye makeup it gets bigger. My whole face is eyeliner now.”
“Why does friendship feel so much like punching”
“When I wake up in the middle of the night I am either thinking ‘who am I? does my life have meaning?’ or “did I already eat all of the plums?’”
“Why are you so grumpy” they ask me. they do not realize this is just my Face.”
“I know i said i would give my left arm for a cup of coffee but i am more awake now and i would like my arm back please”
“I guess I must have done something horrible in a past life. I mean. I definitely did something horrible in this life, so. “
OMG I LOVEEEE
YEEESSSSSSS!
“Guy in front of me won’t move his car seat up. I think that might still be upset about all those times I tried to kill him.”
“Got lectured by a guy who had been complaining about how things were Back In The Day. I don’t understand why he got upset. I too lived through the Great Depression and was drafted for the War.”
“The economy in this century sucks. Who exactly though another Stock Market crash was a good idea?”
“Apparently, it was Rude™ of me to pitch in my two cents on a conversation I happened to overhear, despite agreeing with them. On an unrelated note, I am no longer allowed in the ceiling vents.”
“‘If you don’t behave we’ll send (mutual) after you.’ Jokes on them. I’m the one who trained to be an assassin in the first place.”
“Tried to buy a Chicken Dinner candy bar at the supermarket today. Turns out they were discontinued 54 years ago. Super bummed.”
“Wait. People were on the moon?! We got into space? There is a way off of this rock?! Why am I only just hearing about this?!”
“'Have you been living under a rock the past 50 years?’ No I was cryogenically frozen for 70. I don’t appreciate your tone young man.”
“My friend likes convincing people that I’m the Reckless one in our friendship. As if he won’t find an alley behind a bar to pick a fight in if I take my eyes off him for two seconds.”
was reading through your book 4 reread, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Taxxons and Hork Bajir. Especially the 'Taxxons used to be ocean aliens and now they live on land kinda thing'
YEAHLET’S
DO THAT. Okay, so, I ended up just doing the Taxxons
rather than the Hork-Bajir because…um…this got long, to the shock of everyone, I’m sure. I might do the Hork-Bajir later. But yeah.
Okay. I wrote this during Anatomy
class over a couple days and then typed it up, so.
ALL RIGHT.
So, let’s start with a quick little recap I
like to call Everything We Know About Taxxons.
And I don’t mean like attractive cute, I mean like baby otter cute. What if the stumble upon us and go “ohhhhh my god!!! Oh my god!!!! I’m dying this is- look at it! Look at them!!! Oh my god!!!”
We usually imagine having to come up with some Devils trade or unholy arrangement to get tech and trade with aliens, but the instant they see us the aliens immediately set out into conservation efforts. They’re like “their habitat is becoming harsh and unlivable for them! We have to save them!” And everyone just puts a picture of us next to this information and they all agree “Look at them! We have to save them!!” We become like the panda mascots of intergalactic conservation efforts.
Simultaneously, our main export is just streams, videos, holograms, and photos of us. Aliens lose their composure completely over videos of us sneezing or yawning or eating pop tarts or playing video games or taking care of our kids.
There are lines of aliens who would LOVE to have a human in their home or on their ship. It’s a little condescending (we’re not sure if we’re guests or well treated exotic pets) but still a good opportunity, and any human who wants can go to space at any time basically for free or even for profit, and the aliens will go out of their way to give you anything you ask for.
There are obvious downsides. We struggle to be taken seriously. While it’s usually shut down pretty quickly, every once in a while some alien group sees the demand for us and tries to start an illegal trade. But at the same time, it’s neat that somewhere out there is an alien (or usually a LOT of aliens) that would love you unconditionally, find every flaw and idiosyncrasy endearing, be worried about you and do anything they could to make you safe and happy. They work hard to make our planet and our personal lives better and don’t ask for anything in return. They just do it because they decided we are important and worth saving just for existing. It’s an odd relationship, and we’re not always sure what to make of it, but honestly it goes a lot better than we worried alien contact would.
humans getting a reputation amongst the galaxy for doing totally absurd and reckless things, like making absolutely ridiculous flight paths through asteroid belts, or hitting warp speed for a five mile trip, or devoting 90% of the power of a ship’s onboard computer to their personal laptop so they can torrent abba’s discography, or mixing rocket fuel with mentos to see what happens
and at first other species are like….. okay we’d better not have humans on the crew if they’re this dangerous….. but then when they notice the humans are actually getting a lot more done and advancing super fast because they take such absurd risks “just to see if it works” it becomes commonplace to have a group of at least four humans on every ship in the fleet
no other species previously had a word in their language that equated to “fuck it” but within a century “fuck it” is regarded as an immensely wise proverb
Scenario One
“Now we must be careful as there is still the question of how territorial the wildlife in this area is-“ The jalaxian fleet commander says, standing in front of their crew, ready to lead a slow and calculated expedition through an unexplored forest on an uncharted world.
“SPACE PUPPIES!” The human medic exclaims, barging past, picking up a small tentacled beast. It appears to be friendly, welcoming the contact.
“… Well, I suppose that answers that.”
Scenario Two
Zampushian: “Captain! The space pirates are hot on our tail and with their firepower we could never hope to outrun them! I can send a beacon to the fleet-”
Human: “Nah. It’s cool. Just put all the power to the shields.”
Zampushian: “But Captain-”
Human: “Trust me, dude!”
[The Zampushian transfers all available power to the shield modules. The ship, unable to move now, slows to a halt. The space pirate ship barrels forwards and crashes into the ship, exploding on impact, with no damage to the fleet ship.]
Human: “See? Everything’s chill. Do we have any chips left?”
Scenario Three
An Ungrampish crew member working aboard a multi-species fleet ship goes into the ship’s cargo bay to move some equipment. Tye (that’s the pronoun they use on Ungramp) is greeted by the sight of a human eating an entire Ungrampish chilli pepper, the hottest in the known universe, just to see what happens.
leonardo da vinci was a year younger than christopher columbus.
stalin, freud, Ttto, trotsky and hitler walk into a bar……no really, it’s possible since they all lived in vienna in 1913.
aristotle tutored alexander the great.
abraham lincoln was twelve when napoleon bonaparte died.
an unusually well-traveled person in 5th century BC could have conceivably met confucius, lao tze, the buddha and socrates over the course of a seventy year life.
pharaohs and mammoths existed at the same time.
pocahontas and william shakespeare died, in the same country, less than a year apart from each other.
The doctor I went to last week was looking over my history and he said “Endometriosis?” and I said yes. And he said “Is that just your speculation or have you actually been diagnosed?” and I was like “I have been cut open three times for it so I hope it isn’t just speculation.” and he just looked at me and said “Females tend to diagnose themselves” and without missing a beat I said “Well I hope you do your job so I don’t have to.”
All right kiddies, this is an announcement that my fucking hard drive crashed yesterday and my computer is officially KIA. The rest of Deorum will be posted when I have a new computer, which could take like two weeks, so…yep. Also I am very annoyed, I’m probably going to crawl out of my skin without my writing to work on.
Sometimes it blows my mind that there are people that don’t wear glasses/contacts. Like they can literally see with no aid. Like they wake up and just be out here seeing. What a wild concept.
And people say stuff like ‘lol don’t you hate it when you look up in the middle of the night and see a spider on your ceiling’ like bitch (!!) i could have Nicholas II last czar of Russia hangin from my ceiling fan and i would be none the wiser
Okay, first of all: ASKDSFHIGH THANK YOU for writing me fic! I absolutely LOVED it (as another hopeless person who loves Eliot and has an inclination to whump him in fics). But just, everything was amazing? I really liked how you portrayed Eliot's analytical thought processes with parentheses. And other little things too: Hardison tracing his hand over Eliot's at the end, Eliot fooling the bad guys on the coms, Parker in general, EVERY LAST BIT of dialogue, I can't even. Thank you again!! <3
I’m so glad you liked it, oh my god! It was a blast to write, I live for Eliot being protective. I’m really pleased that you think the analyses in his thoughts came out well, I’ve never tried that before and it was kind of a fun experiment. Thank you so much!
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.
To make it extra tragic - in the EU it mentions that the coroner used some kind of hologram technology to make it look like she was still pregnant at the time of her death, to protect the twins from the emperor and Anakin by telling everyone that the children had never been born. Padme Amidala’s death would have been the tragedy of the century, the face of the lost democracy.
Okay but what if that celebrity factor got used? By, like, everybody.
To the Naboo people, she’s their beloved Queen. To much of the galaxy, she’s a loved and admired public figure and stateswoman. To the Republic loyalists, she’s their martyred supporter, the vanquished—murdered, they think—face of Democracy. To the Empire, she’s a useful idol, the Emperor’s colleague, murdered, they say, by Separatist forces or by Jedi, tragically dead and conveniently silent, beautiful and glamorous and perfect for starting a cult of personality on her behalf.
And here and there, among the various cultures, there are religious concepts like sainthood, ancestor worship, legends of dead protectors coming to life again to fight when they’re needed. And conspiracy theories, and wishful thinking turned speculation, and the Star Wars equivalent of tabloid newspapers.
The result? Padmé is the most popular and famous woman in the galaxy, a combination of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Che Guevara, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, Arthur Pendragon, Chuck Norris, and the Virgin Mary.
One of the most important Imperial holidays is Amidala Day, devoted to celebrating service to the Empire, the official story of the Empire’s birth, the Emperor’s home world, and the heroic Queen and Senator whom Palpatine claims as his staunch supporter. People paint their faces and make elaborate hairstyles or headdresses and put on their fanciest clothes; there are plays, and parties, and traditional Naboo dances and foods.
Vader hates it. This is about 60% of why the Emperor has made such a production of it.
Among Republic loyalists, a different story is told: a Queen Amidala who loved peace and democracy, who opposed war and worked tirelessly for ceasefires and peace treaties, who stood silently or wept as all around her cheered the newborn Empire; a Queen Amidala who was murdered by the Empire so he could create the fiction of her support.
Vader hates this too. It feels uncomfortably true, and threatens to undermine his resolve that she would have been at his side had she lived.
Rebels paint images of her on their fighters, hang holos of her on their walls, wear icons of her as good-luck talismans. There are exhortations, penned semi-anonymously by people who knew her, that she would have wanted people to join and support the Rebellion. The minimalist image of eyes, cheek dots, and paint-split lips are graffiti’d onto public monuments accompanied by words from her speeches. “Amidala Needs You” is a common phrase on Rebel recruitment posters.
Vader hates this most of all.
Statues and icons of her are made in a hundred different artistic styles and adorn the altars of a thousand worlds’ faiths. Mythologies are written about her: she stopped a Separatist advance with words once, appeared in a dream to a slave telling her where her transmitter was hidden, shot five destroyer droids with pinpoint accuracy before they got their shields up, stormed her own palace to take it back from the Trade Federation, cheated death at the hands of the Empire’s assassin, escaped with the help of the last of the Jedi, is still out there somewhere, mourning for the Republic on some uninhabited planet somewhere, training in secret lost Jedi arts to kill the Emperor, working as a Rebel agent or a disguised vigilante.
Vader dislikes this. But he also seeks them out and reads them, when he’s in a certain mood.
The tabloids regularly claim that she’s been seen working as a roast-traladon restaurant in some backwater suburb of Corellia, or navigating a spice freighter to and from Kessel, or singing at a nightclub on Nar Shadda.
Vader dislikes this too. He has to talk himself out of keeping an agent or three just to visit the places in question and make sure.
He isn’t often in a position to see teenage girls with Padmé’s face emblazoned across their tunics, or walls with familiar face paint next to “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause” printed next to it. When he hunts down Rebels with her image on a chain around their necks for luck, he can tear them apart with the Force: a quick death, which is, ironically, the luckiest outcome available to them. Tabloids and legends can be read and dismissed, and he’s never had the opportunity to happen upon the fanfiction.
But when the Emperor commands, Vader stands at his side through parades and parties and celebratory addresses to the Senate, with Padme’s image on banners and holos, with Padmé’s image on stage saying words Padmé never said, with all the women and half the men wearing Naboo royal face paint, and accepts the pain of memory almost like a form of self-harm.
And when the newly-elected Junior Senator from Alderaan with a quiet grace that reminds him of her and a fire in her eyes that reminds him of himself asks him, at some interminable party, if he knew what she was like, he troubles himself to answer honestly.
From this ancient prompt list, because I am the worst and it took me forever to get around to this. I just want everyone to be proud of me because I almost
went somewhere REALLY terrible with this prompt. Because the last episode of Leverage fucked
me all the way up and I remain vengeful about that. That near miss will be obvious.
The con had unraveled at light speed. Things had gone south almost as quickly as the
time Leverage Incorporated had stolen the maquettes
of the David, leaving Parker scrambling to adapt their plan and salvage as much
as possible. They’d managed to get the
files that would prove their target responsible a fistful of deaths revolving
around tainted eggs, but now Eliot’s earbud was fried.
Well.
He thought it was fried—admittedly he hadn’t devoted a lot of time to
checking in more detail. Between the
black eye swelling on his face (bone undamaged, bruising unlikely to occlude
vision), the blood seeping into his jeans from a nasty knife cut to his thigh
(missed the artery, unlikely to prove lethal, would inhibit full range of
motion) and the four cracked-hopefully-not-broken ribs impeding his breathing
(another hit would shatter them along the fissures) and, naturally, the fact
that he was tied to a chair (efficiently, they had practice), the earbud had
taken low priority. If it was fried, he
was going to murder Hardison with his bare hands, assuming he got out of this
with both hands intact.
Also assuming that the others got out of this
to be murdered, of course, which was
never a certainty when someone had the forethought to take their hitter out of
the equation. Eliot almost would have
been reassured if the target’s hired muscle (most of them half-decent, with a
small command structure of better trained mercs) was busy torturing him,
because if they were occupied with him, the others would have time to get
out. Instead, they had managed to knock
him out with a hard blow to the head (mild concussion, vertigo manageable for
motion) and left him here alone, tied up and out of play. But he was trying not to think about that,
because if he thought too hard about the kind of disaster that could befall
Hardison and Parker when he wasn’t there to take the hit for them, he got a
little lightheaded (possibly the concussion, more probably a mild anxiety
response). So the dead earbud had to
take a back burner to getting the fuck out of here and finding the other
sixty-seven percent of Leverage International.
My TI-83 Plus calculator is almost 15 years old and works just as well as it did on the first day. Its outlasted every other piece of technology I’ve ever purchased for a similar price or greater.
also, i want to apologize to people whose messages were ever ignored by me or took me ages to reply to. i have no excuses, i’m just shit at communicating and a lot of time get stuck in my own head, postpone replying and then either forget about it or think that it is too late to reply. i’m sorry if i’ve ever made someone feel bad bc of this - honestly, it’s never personal, it’s just me and my inner problems. i will try harder to work on it. thank you for ever initiating conversations with me
When you say I hate men, it reminds me of a line from Men in Black: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. A man is not judgmental, oppressive, sexist, homophobic or misogynistic. Men are. You do not hate an individual, random man for the sake of hating them, unless of course that man turns out to be a dickhead. You hate MEN as a social group. Because let's face it, the MEN social group are a bunch of assholes. And just to shut people up, I am a man.
You know, it’s funny - I used to just support Hillary by merit of “Not Donald Trump” (or, honestly, “Not a Republican”). I was feeling the Bern pretty hard during the primary elections, and I just was really concerned that she wasn’t liberal enough, wasn’t honest enough, was offput by the Debbie Wasserman Schultz stuff, etc., etc.
So then I started rethinking things. And around this time, I got a call, actually, from my local Democratic party organizing group - not strictly “for Hillary” so much as generally trying to organize the disparate Democratic groups in the area, which is something I’d wanted for a while. So obviously, I went in, and at first we met once alongside some others from my family, but it became quickly apparent that he was really, really interested in meeting later to discuss social media strategies. Like, that was clearly the biggest thing he was interested in. Simultaneously, it became apparent that he’d organized for Hillary in the primaries. I agreed to meet for a coffee later to discuss strategies, but at the meeting, I went ahead and made it pretty clear up front that I’d been a Bernie supporter but I thought unity was important, etc., etc. And he was just…
I guess I’d sort of expected to have to fight for things a little bit? That I’d have to be holding my ground, that he’d be sort of smug or whatever, but it wasn’t like that at all. He was just immediately welcoming, talking about how glad he was to have me aboard, how important he thought it was to address Bernie supporter’s concerns, how much great work Bernie had done and how eager they were to integrate it into the campaign. But the moment that really stuck with me was when he made a casual reference to abortion rights as “women’s rights” and I stopped him and went “That’s trans exclusionary, I don’t like to call them that.” (Grade A Tumblr discourse, right?) And he didn’t get defensive or anything, just immediately went “Oh, I’m sorry, what should I be calling them?” I was a little taken aback and immediately checked back into the conversation, explaining that “reproductive rights” was more inclusive, etc.
He immediately thanked me and explained that this was why he was so excited to have me and people like me in the campaign, to make sure everyone was included.
I left the conversation feeling a lot more optimistic about this whole thing, feeling like maybe I wasn’t just chipping in to stave off a worst case scenario and was actually fighting fo a cause that was actively including me.
But the real tipping point was… embarrassingly recent, if I’m honest, and came about through a Spotify ad of all things. You may have heard it a zillion times - “millions of jobs”, yada yada yada, but with the stinger at the end that you should go onto her site and read The Plan. “You know, maybe I should actually read that whole ‘Plan’ thing,” I said, and did.
And uh, guys. Do you… has anyone else actually read this? I won’t say I agree on every single point, but there is so much that I’m actually really excited about??
I knew that Hillary was opposed to voter ID laws and probably vaguely supported early voting, but did you also know that she plans to do automatic voter registration at the age of 18 like we’ve wanted to happen for ages? I knew that Hillary had talked about “mending trust between the police and Black communities”, but did you know that her platform explicitly includes body cameras? Did you know that it specifically calls out the school to prison pipeline and her plan to end it? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending private prisons? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending violence against trans women of color with a crosslink to her LGBT rights platform? Did you know that it talks about defending Puerto Rican rights, something even a lot of the mainstream Tumblr SJ discourse tends to overlook?
And I’m still barely touching on all of this, Jesus Christ - we could be here all day discussing all the policies I looked at and went “Oh, wow, that’s actually pretty in line with why I liked Bernie.”
So yeah, okay. You win this round, Hillary. I wanted Bernie to be our candidate, but you know what? Maybe sometimes, primaries are just choosing between two candidates who are actually both pretty great. And maybe you’ve proved that you’re actually willing to listen. And all it took to win me over was, uh, me actually reading your campaign page.
But hey, better late than never, right? It was a slow path to get here, but a worthwhile one, and dammit, at least now I can say without reservation that #imwithher
