Sometimes I like to think of myself as a Reasonable Adult who makes Reasonable Adult Decisions.
And then sometimes Amazon marketing figures out that I’m pretending
Adulting powers activate (I’m a little concerned about the Minions box)
Taste test result: Odinforce is far more fragrant and flavorful, though both are amazingly smooth for oral caffeine delivery systems. This is legitimately tasty coffee. I rarely take my coffee black because of the acidity, but these were surprisingly smooth (which is in line with a darker roast not necessarily meaning stronger coffee).
I wish they sold the whole roasted beans; I’d love to grind these up fresh. (THEY DO.)
Dad likes the more flavorful Odinforce best while I’m more partial to the smoother Death Wish, but I’m very pleased with both.
Overall, I’d marry this coffee, probably.
Update: I think I’ve made a minor logistical error. I think you’re not meant to drink a cup and a half of each in the space of 10 minutes.
friend: im so glad i met you… you’re so fun to talk to! i love talking to you…
me, to myself: no. you fool. its the other way around. i, in fact, am the one who is glad to have met you. i am overjoyed in your presence. do not say that you enjoy talking to me more.
Nothing loves what is dead like the First Order. A world conceived out of passion for the rotting corpse of the Empire and founded by her widowers—necrophiliacs, to a man. It’s a perversity that shows itself in odd ways, flickering through high ceremonies and the songs they sing. A world caught up in self-loathing for its own existence, a New Republican reporter wrote once. Survivor’s guilt given a permanent residence.
The article was widely touted, might have even won the Regaal Prize—Leia vaguely remembers reading about it over her morning caf, and resisting the urge to throw her datapad at the wall. (Instead, she threw the mug of caf, startling Han and making Ben scream. Maker, won’t someone think of the poor ex-Imperials? Leia had snarled, nostrils flaring. They’re so sad they lost their oppressive empire.)
FN-2187 does not remember reading it, mostly because he didn’t. The article was published to a New Republican holochannel, and never made it past the Order’s censors. It was deemed dangerous for public consumption—not for alleging that the First Order considered living a kind of cowardice, but for the suggestion there was anything at all strange about that.
The holonews reporter never saw any of the stormtrooper training facilities. By design—the First Order’s leaders were perverse, not stupid. They knew what story would be written, if he had seen all those warm-blooded bodies under the tyranny of the grave.
It would have been a very different article.
.
Finn remembers the way Slip wanted to die. And Zeroes. And Ace and Ello and Four—they’d discussed it enough, in whispers after lights-out, or during meals, their heads bent together and eyes bright, hard, planning for fire and glory. Though Crisper had always wanted to go in a daring undercover mission, like in the Black Ops propos—and Ohs had liked the idea of hand-to-hand combat with a dangerous rebel, a vibroblade to the gut.
(You just like that because it’d give you a chance to get out a dramatic speech, Ace had laughed, and Ohs had scowled and flicked protein flakes in her hair.)
Even he and Rey had discussed it, over the patchy transmissions sent between D’Qar and Ahch-To. I used to know for sure, she writes. I’d grow old, too old to scavenge, and then I’d starve. Or I’d fall, and break a hip, a leg, a spine, and starve. Or I’d fall ill, and if the poison in my blood didn’t take me, I’d starve.
But I don’t know anymore, she writes.
When he asks Poe how he wants to die, Poe blanches, the humor vanishing from his expression. What? Why would you ask that?
It takes a fumbling, long and terrible explanation, with Finn backtracking desperately and Poe struggling to keep all emotion out of his eyes. What was yours? he asks, after Finn has finished, and they’re sitting in awkward silence. Finn is trying not to notice how white Poe’s knuckles are, where he clutches the mug of caf.
My what?
The death you wanted.
Finn blinks. He lived on the edges of those conversations, FN-2187 with no nickname; no one’s ever—asked him before. He answers without thinking: I didn’t…I didn’t want to die.
.
Death is a flat plain endlessly, a stormtrooper sings, my voice opens and calls you in.
Hail, hail, the line of troopers answers as it marches; death, we come in.
.
Finn spends the entirety of the Resistance funeral sweating cold and shaking, his hands fisted so tightly that his nails leave crescent-marks on his palms. Afterwards, he has to excuse himself to the refresher, and his knees give out under him.
He cries, something hollow and yet heavy in the pit of his stomach. (No one is there to see, so he laughs too, against his fist, wild and terrible, an animal sound.) I guess there’s something the First Order does better, he says bitterly, to no one in particular.
.
When Leia mentions going back to collect the dead, Finn stares at her like she’s suggested he split open his ribcage and hand her his still-beating heart. Are your orders unclear, Lieutenant Finn? she asks, and he quickly schools his face back into blank stillness.
No, General.
Still, he stares throughout, they fold hands over bellies and shut unseeing eyes. (He twitches, whenever this is done, but Leia could not say why.) Even when he helps—he’s not squeamish, not the way Leia used to be around the dead—he stares, as though he can’t follow the sense in what his hands are doing.
The sun is much lower in the lavender sky when Leia comes to stand beside him. He is staring down at the blue-shrouded body frowning, a faint line between his brows.
It’s rare, that we have the chance to do this, Leia says, and Finn blinks at her. Often battlefields are compromised, we can’t…go back. X-wings are built to implode upon impact. Most of the time, our dead are lost to us.
(A field of rubble, where Alderaan hung amid the stars.)
Do you—believe they’re still in there? Finn asks tentatively, glancing down at the shrouded body.
No, they’re dead.
Why, then?
The First Order never retrieved bodies? He shakes his head, and Leia considers this for a moment. What did you do with the armor of dead troopers?
Finn blinks. If it was still in—working condition, their squad got first pick. I had a…a friend’s armguards.
Leia nods. The principle is the same. It’s easier, when there’s something to hold. Otherwise it’s just absence. Open wounds heal more slowly.
Finn’s expression flickers on ‘heal’, and his mouth shapes the word almost uncomprehendingly, trying to sound out a strange language. (She wonders how they speak about mourning in the First Order—necrophiliacs, she suddenly remembers. Then she wonders if they mourn at all.)
Yes, General, Finn says, finally. I understand.
They stand there together in the gathering violet dusk, as the bodies are carried up from the dust.
You wake up with two small lumps on your back, just around your shoulder blades. Your friend has a similar dilemma, however, theirs are on their forehead, and look like zits. Small horns protrude from theirs, while feathers come from yours.
Within a month, you have large, white, dove wings, while your friend has long, curly horns. Turns out, you’re an angel, they’re a demon, and you’re supposed to fight. But you both’d rather just go see a movie.
she looks like the way summer tastes. but she’s my best friend. she’s just my best friend, and this entire thing is too cheesy.
she’s spitting up into the sink. blood has been in her mouth a lot ever since the teeth starting coming in. “do you think teething is like?” she lisps around a sore tongue “permanent?”
i’m scrubbing at my eyes. i’m allergic to certain animal dander. my body has been going through shock; fever on, fever off. the truth is that human bodies don’t like foreign cells inside of themselves.
“you know,” i say, “i wrote this story once.” the movie ended a while ago but we had to wait until the bathroom was empty. if we’re lucky, people just think we’re cosplaying. we locked the door behind us.
“my mouth hurts,” she says.
“i was like, twelve,” i say. i feel like there are mites, always, everywhere, crawling all over me. the other day a third set of eyes started growing in my hands. i’m not used to it yet and i get a lot of vertigo and 3D glasses per pair are super expensive. “it was bad.”
“i mean,” she pauses. “we look stupid.” for a second, the fire on her starts again, and she swears while she puts it out. i meanwhile send her another “i can be ur angle or yuor devil” meme, leaning against the counter while she again washes her mouth out.
“it was stupid,” i say. “i didn’t even know the word nephilim, like some kind of pleb.”
“get wrecked, twelve-year-old you,” she says.
i’ve learned a lot these past few months, have scoured the bible sixteen times. “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.” Genesis 6:4. Maybe that’s us. Or maybe we’re in the X-Men. If it wasn’t for the creepy voice who told us otherwise, we have no evidence.
i have trouble looking at her sometimes. not because she’s so different now, but because she makes my heart swell up like balloon. like an explosion. like heavenly light.
she makes eye contact with my original set. i feel my hearts start revving. she smiles at me in that way that makes me forget about wings and horns and eternal forces.
“i liked the movie, though,” i blurt.
“ugh!” she rolls her eyes, drying her hands by shaking them off. they again ignite, and she swears again, clapping them out. “it was bad, ray.”
i laugh, we head out. two girls in a jeep with too many layers for the heat. i can’t drive anymore, i’m too distracted by the extra eyes. she does better but has to stop sometimes to put out fires.
she pulls off on the lookout by the watertower to shake a few teeth loose. i stretch and almost fall over, unused to a new body and no balance. my bones are hollowing.
“was that crack your wrist?” she asks.
“yuh,” i say, holding it.
“yuck,” she says, “sounds broken.”
“might be,” i’m biting my tongue, “it’s lit.”
she comes over to examine it. “broken,” she says. she glows in the darkness, but i don’t know if that’s literally her or just how i see her, all alight with life and perfect. she helps me wrap it. we sit on the hood of her car and look out to the forest below us. we sip snapple i stole. i hear my bone heal. we both ignore the noise it makes.
“that guy is kind of a dingus,” i say. i put on a deep voice, “Thou must wage in the eternal war. Put on Earth so that thy may Know; as above and so below.”
“might not be a guy,” she says. “very gender-specific of you, ray.”
“my apologies,” i say to the sky, “that was crass of me. you can be whatever gender you want, giant sky voice. or many genders. or all. whatever works.”
“i’m still like… what the hell does that middle part about knowing mean. like. also. crack open a grammar book for the modern century.”
i “hmm” into my snapple. my running theory is that our time spent as mortals meant we knew what it was exactly we were fighting for. i don’t tell her this because my entire evidence is how i feel about her, is how every day with her made it worth it, how being her best friend was the best experience i ever had. but like. it’s chill.
“it’s a broken capitalist heaven economy,” i say. “war eternal?”
she laughs. i love it when she laughs. “at least you can be sure you’re going to the place that profits off of all of this,” she says. “heaven’s got the big guy.”
i make a note in the back of my throat and face her. “you don’t know that,” i whisper, “we’ve talked about this.”
she laughs in a new way, a sad one, staring out ahead of her. “yeah, you and your bible. ‘angels and demons are the same species but separated geospatially,’ blah blah blah, either one of us could be the damned soul, blah blah blah.”
“hey, i did research,” i say. “and i’m right, a lot of angels are…”
“goatish? have devil horns? light on fire?”
“micheal was like, forty to ninety percent fire.”
“micheal also was like, always an angel. he don’t need to question anything. fire? sure, he good. he was born angel.”
“i don’t know they’re like, born,” i say. i look up at her. “but i’m serious. i got like sixteen eyes and counting -”
“nine, you have nine”
“and like that’s not counting the spiritual aspect of this whole thing since -“
“oh my god, ray,” she says, sighing, “not this whole ‘morally impure’ thing again.”
“i’m just saying,” i don’t like how upset she is, but the more i try to fix it, the worse it is, “i’m not, like, a good person! i’m -” i stop myself two milliseconds before finishing the loaded end of that sentence about her, and how i feel, and the terrible gap before us.
she whips around and looks at me. just really looks, like i’m pinned there by her. for a second, she’s my best friend, not angel or demon, and she’s glaring.
“that’s not true and you know it,” she says, her voice barely over a whisper, “don’t say that kind of thing about yourself.”
i sigh and pull my hair, dropping her gaze. “i’m sorry,” i say, “i’m just… this whole thing is messed up and, like… i’m not… an angel, i guess.”
“i thought you said that the original angels were all-powerful and scary,” she says, “that purity was a new myth.”
i stare at her. how do i explain to my best friend that i’m taking advantage of her just by being around her; how every time she hugs me i mean more by it, how holding hands with her gives me little shocks that keep me happy.
“you know what?” she says, kicking off the hood, “fuck this, let’s go back to my place and let’s get drunk.”
we do.
late in the night i wake up and she’s not in bed anymore. i’m still drunk and my mouth feels like a trash bin. i blink in the light of her room, grab my toothbrush, put toothpaste on both tongues as an appetizer, just to dispel the taste. stretch the gross chicken-finger nubs of a sore back with six pairs of soon-to-be wings and stumble to her bathroom.
she’s sitting on the floor and her horns are gone. bandages bloodied with green ooze sit around her. black scars hide up in her hairline.
“how’s it going?” she says casually.
i drop everything onto the sink and drop to her side. “oh my god,” i whisper, my hands touching her warm skin, “what happened?”
she looks at me. our faces are so close i have to stop myself from shaking, but the more i look at what she’s done, the worse i feel for her. i push back her matted hair and reach for new gauze to wipe away the blood she missed. her hand loops gently around one of my wrists, not restraining, just comforting.
“it’s okay, ray,” she says softly, “i found a tutorial on the internet. how to cut off goat horns. it didn’t hurt that bad, i promise. like, when we pierced our own cartilage back in middle school hurt a lot worse.”
i stare at her. “you cauterized your own wounds and you expect me to calm down.” i clean up her face frantically. i feel tears, but i’m not sure in which pair of eyes.
“i didn’t say i cauterized anything.”
“it’s clear!” i almost burst into a thousand pieces, holding her round face in my hands, struggling to lower my voice, “it’s clear.”
“i’m okay,” she says, half-smiling, “i’m okay.”
“you should have woken me up,” i say. “what kind of -“
she kisses me and i understand why she’s got the power of fire. if i immolate, i don’t notice. we move from bathroom floor to hallway to bedroom. her hands and my hands and our bodies almost feel human.
when we finally separate, her voice is low. “fuck,” she says, “i wasn’t supposed to do that. you weren’t supposed to know.”
i’m breathless. i can’t form words. “know…?” i manage.
she leans in. kisses me again. “i like you, ray,” she whispers, “i like you a lot, you giant six-winged bug.”
“in a gay way?” i ask.
she laughs. “the gayest.”
“okay,” i say. i’m shaking. “because, like, i like you too. like. in the gay way.” my voice sounds different, high and tense and fluttery. almost too loud, even though we’re both whispering.
“your wings kind of look like chicken fingers,” she says, “or like, really big nipples.”
“you know,” i say, “i think the same thing.” i stare at her. all of my eyes, on her, on this girl, on the girl i can’t have, on the girl i couldn’t have even if we weren’t magical beings from a metaphysical plane, because we’re best friends and that matters more than anything.
i think of us and of our future and of her, surrounded by the pieces of her horns, and of my wings, and of the world. i think of the bad movie we watched and how it was good because she was next to me. i think of the words of the giant sky voice and how we’re supposed to fight in an eternal war and how i do know, how i’ve always known, how love was the only thing that was worth fighting for, how she has always been my angel. how i would tear heaven down in order to have her and that’s how i know: i’m the one who fell long ago.
she deserves heaven and holy and the best things. she deserves more than a twelve-year-old’s silly plotline, more than to be forced into fate, more than to be a drafted soldier. she deserves a better life than this.
look out, god, i think, i’ve got a hell of a bone to pick.
“i love you,” i whisper, “and i have loved you for a long time.”
she kisses me.
in the morning, i’m gone.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH What the fuck AAAAAAH This is glorious!
billionaire could give me %.01 of his wealth and change my life while he is virtually unaffected.
0.01% of $1,000,000,000 is $100,000.
Which, for some people, is as much as they’d make in five years of 60 hour weeks of labor.
And this is one hundredth of one percent of the bare minimum of being a billionaire.
Also, if the billionaire has a decent bank account setup (which, let’s face it, billionaire has), that $100,000 will just come back the next time interest happens. It is a perpetually regenerating $100,000.
With $100,000 I could fix my credit, buy a house in my family’s hometown and a car, drive back there to live, and have a small cushion left over to get me through till I find a local job—which wouldn’t have to be high-paying, mind, since my house would be paid off. If I brought my mom with me, she could afford to quit her three jobs and start collecting on her Social Security. We could live quite well and I might not even have to finish college to get a job with a wage that would pay our bills and expenses. “Life-changing” is no exaggeration.
reasons USA capitalism and especially “trickle down economics” are both bullshit: because they allow situations like this
Obligate note that everyone is hot and I am
having A Rough Time. Especially Romeo
and Rosaline. Damn. Relatedly, I’d die for Rosaline. DAMN.
Lovin’ that character interpretation
and her friendship with Juliet. I
couldn’t give less of a damn about Benvolio/Rosaline, but give me all of
Escalus cutting out his own heart to save Verona and Rosaline hating herself
for not being able to hate him. The
scene of them in the church was some good shit.
This was EXACTLY the overwrought historically
inaccurate Shakespeare nonsense I hoped it would be, frankly. Sweeping beautiful visuals, sudden closeups
for theatrical one-liners, slightly confused plotline timing, and The Drama™. Good stuff.
I don’t generally care for versions of Romeo and
Juliet where the love story is played straight (Shakespeare wrote it as a
tongue-in-cheek tragedy, a lot of the narrative makes more sense with that
perspective, and the love-at-first-sight angle is kind of desperately overplayed
and therefore I Do Not Care) but I’m willing to roll with it because I knew
what I was getting into. And like they
do a decent job with it, it’s very tragic, Juliet is good, I like her, Romeo’s
death is nicely done. Kinda annoyed that
Juliet poisons herself rather than stabbing herself because I like the tragedy
of “I will kiss thy lips//Haply some poison yet doth hang on them.”
That being said, I think it was a narratively
good move to add some additional weight to the Montague/Capulet feud. Like, on the one hand, yes, folks are being
murdered in your streets, that is Not Good, but also let’s…have a solid reason
for the Prince to care, seeing as
that’s the whole plot of this show. And
it being Italy in the 16th century, concerns about a power grab by
the winning family are pretty legit. (I’ve
watched a lot of Borgias lately.)
ANTHONY. STEWART.
HEAD. AS LORD CAPULET. Aw man y’all the part of me that really
enjoyed the first two and a half seasons or so of Merlin (another show I have
Opinions on) as a terrible romp through somewhat bastardized Arthuriana is real
excited right now.
Glad to see Paris is a dick. Very pleased.
The all out riotous brawl at the funeral was
honestly the top thing on my wish list for this show and I feel intensely
gratified to have gotten it.
The line “Escalus, Verona is burning” was my fucking shit to be
honest. Like, damn, son, Isabella is
Athena, the clear-eyed goddess of wisdom and war, and I feel like the world
deserves to see her with a sword in her hand.
Here is my #1 Complaint: they seem to have
accidentally switched Benvolio and Mercutio’s personalities. This is not to say that Benvolio is
necessarily the voice of reason in the play (it’s a play of Bad Choices), but
Mercutio is 100% the “I am drunk at 10 AM,” Do It For The Vine friend. I got to the scene where Mercutio dies before
I realized that the other guy wasn’t Mercutio, and I was solely tipped off by
the fact that I knew Mercutio died. I
get it that they clearly wanted some sort of bad boy thing to be happening
here, but I’m so salty about this. Like,
why WOULDN’T you want Benvolio to be loyal and honest and grief-stricken and desperate
to do right by his best friends’ deaths for this thoughtless crusade? Romeo, the hopeless romantic, and Mercutio,
the laughing rogue, both dead from this hopeless feud, and Benvolio, true and dependable
as good steel, the last one left alive, who will see it mended if it kills him
but who can’t quite forget his friends’ voices enough to marry a woman he doesn’t
love. Like, what part of that DOESN’T
sound like good shit.
….I mean…personal headcanon that he’s drowning
himself in alcohol and misery because Mercutio doesn’t love him, and that he
doesn’t care what happens to him afterward because Mercutio is dead. Like, that’s the only way I can reconcile the
dude in the show and the play character.
But whatever that’s just me.
Ultimate conclusion: 10/10 on The Drama™, but it ain’t exactly Sense8 for structure or narrative cohesion. Will I show my Shakespeare nerd parents? Jury’s out. Will I continue watching it? HELL YES.
Karikki was sitting in the ship’s mess when the most recent addition to the crew stumbled into the room and collapsed into a chair with a relieved groan, dropping her head onto the table.
“Rough shift?” ie said, making a sympathetic noise as ie broke off another piece of ir food pack.
Melanie Dupré, recently hired on as a ship’s mechanic and as of one month ago the only human crewmember of the Xanaki Star, mumbled something into the table before lifting her head so that her translator could actually be of use.
“I could swear the ventilation ducts actually hate me personally,” she said. “I’ve been running around all day.” A look of horror crossed her features then, and she groaned again, dragging her hand across her eyes. “And I left my food packs in my room. Goddamn it.”
Karikki churred soothingly. “Don’t worry about it, you can have one of ours,” ie said, getting to ir feet and digging one of the vacuum-sealed silver packs out of the pantry.
Melanie made a noise that Karikki had learned to interpret as grateful and peeled the pack open, looking down at it dubiously. “You’re sure this is okay?”
“We’re nutritionally compatible!” Karikki said. “The captain checked, before we hired you on. Just in case you ran out of your own supplies. It should be fine.”
“Okay. Thanks,” she said, breaking off a square of the compressed nutrition block and popping it into her mouth.
A look crossed her face then that it took Karikki a moment to identify: disgust, ie realized. That was disgust–which was made all the clearer when Melanie gagged and grabbed a napkin, spitting the square out into her hand. “Oh my god,” she said.
Karikki could feel ir antennae fluttering anxiously. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is that a bad texture for humans?”
Melanie wiped her mouth, scrubbing at her tongue with the side of her hand. She shook her head. “No, the texture’s fine, it’s just like one of our protein blocks. It’s the [——], I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but it’s awful! How can you eat that?”
Karikki flicked ir ear. “Sorry, say that again? I think your translator cut out in the middle. It’s the what?”
Cellulite is a female secondary sex characteristic and should be celebrated as a rite of womanhood, not despised or eradicated.
it’s really a secondary sex characteristic?!
It is. It has to do with the way our bodies network fat. Female bodies create sort of a mesh network to support fat (female bodies are MUCH more hardy in times of stress) and it can present as delightfully lumpy. More than 90% of women have visible cellulite, but all women store fat in this manner.
why did no one tell me this?!
You know why :/
Spread this. I only just started to see mine and I started to freak out a bit. More people should/need to know about this
Here’s an illustration of the aforementioned difference in fat storage.
Men’s lattice pattern collagen threads holds subcutaneous fat in a way that, when the skin expands because of the fat storage, it expands evenly. Women’s “pockets” expand unevenly when we accumulate fat, creating that orange peel effect. Our storage pattern means we can healthily store more fat than men. Like a woman with 25% body fat is average, a man with 25% body fat is chubby. Because of that, like OP said, women are hardier in times of stress or famine. It’s also one of the reasons why our bodies can survive pregnancy, which is a massive energy demand on our system.
And there’s absolutely NO “treatment” for cellulite that will work. They are all bullshit designed to separate you from your hard-earned cash. It’s a secondary sex characteristic, it’s perfectly normal and it’s not going away no matter what you do. Like I’m very lean myself and I work out 5~6 times a week, and I still have cellulite. Someone giving a woman shit for having cellulite is akin to giving her shit for having skin. It’s just a mixture of misogyny and corporate greed.
Love your lumpy skin, ladies. It means you are a badass surviving machine shaped by millenia of evolution.
u wanna watch a video thats any amount of time??? thats too long, even if the video is like 10 seconds
becoming too aware of how things feel or how u do certain things or just regular bodily functions like breathing or blinking
staying up until 4 AM or later for no reason aside from adhd said so
that sinking feeling when u realized uve spaced out for most of a conversation and u feel too bad abt doing it to ask the person to repeat what they said
overstimulation
meltdowns
when u have the motivation to get shit done, but executive dysfunction is like “lmfao nope”
trying to get certain stuff done and ur managing ok, but u still get distracted on occasion and u scold urself every time u do but u cant stop urself from doing it
the antsy anxiousness that comes with being confined to doing smth for too long
“i hope i remember this” u didnt remember it
outbursts which cause u to snap at ppl and then u feel bad but u couldnt help it
no volume control so ur constantly told to stop yelling but u cant make ur voice quieter
*someone explains instructions and its a rather simple thing* “ok got it” u dont got it
getting irrationally irritated over the smallest shit but u cant help it everything is just So Frustrating
“u know what i think im having a good day” and then mood swing that makes u either Super Sad or Super Mad for no reason
having what ur gonna say right in ur head but somehow u still space out in the middle of talking and forget what u wanted to say
forgetting why u were upset but still feeling upset
the sinking feeling of remembering why u were upset and now ur even more upset
when rsd is being extremely irrational and u know its bullshit but u dont have the energy to fight it so u just sit there in sadness
when rsd makes u self conscious abt stimming in public
having absolutely no time perception at all. what even is time ive never heard of that in my life
needing to get smth done and u manage to focus, but ur focusing on the wrong thing
overanalyzing past stuff thats happened and realizing other shit u couldve said that wouldve helped the situation and damn why didnt u think of that when u were in the situation
look, whatever the han solo series ends up claiming as “backstory”, you and I know that what really happened was that han solo grew up an orphan of the late republic in the slums of corellia.
at some point in his erstwhile adolescence (’erstwhile’ is leia’s word; he remembers a lot more dirt and desperation and starving than ‘erstwhile’ really conveys) he takes stock of his worldly possessions:
a vague, foggy shape in place of his mother, a story she told han (or han told himself, he’s never sure) about a handsome pilot for a father;
four credits;
a perpetually-damp pallet that the Amber Twi’iek’s mistress sometimes rolls out in front of the fire, in exchange for him chasing off the rats in the cellar, running messages, and acting as lookout for troopers;
an itch, in his feet, in his gut, behind his eyes, that demands he get into the sky even if it requires building himself a set of wings out of wax and flimsi, which—well, lends some credence to the pilot story.
(there’s a saying: you can tell a corellian by looking. they’re born with crooked necks, to better stare up at the stars)
by the time he meets lando, he’s been haunting the cantinas around the docks looking for someone willing to take him aboard. they’re all eager—he’s young and strong and naive in certain ways—at least until they see the faint, raised bump in the hollow of his palm.
it’s a galactic crime to take an orphan from their planet of origin without the proper paperwork; it makes him a liability. (part of senator amidala’s anti-sentient trafficking initiative, and if han knew, he’d curse her and all her descendants. yes, even those ones.)
either way—it’s a smoggy night and he’s nineteen, trying to pass himself off as older, which lando finds inexplicably charming (there’s a lot about han’s bravado he finds inexplicably charming, probably because it’s so poorly constructed; probably because it makes lando feel so tender about the whole thing.) you have a ship? he says, and lando likes the way he flushes when lando says yes, leaning in—overeager, artless—and saying, buy me a drink then.
lando is only twenty-five and his ship is a junker, practically a historical artifact, that he won in a hand of sabacc and can just barely fly without a copilot. he buys the stranger drink anyway.
the first time han set foot in the falcon, he came home. lando remembers, because he woke up alone in his bunk the next morning—the attractive stranger from the night before was sitting, shirtless, in lando’s cockpit, touching the controls one by one, like he was turning over something fragile and desperately vital in his hands.
lando had watched, and lando had thought: I wonder if I can make him look at me like that.
(han hadn’t noticed. han had been busy falling headlong, desperately in love, in the way he wouldn’t again, not with anyone)
one night turns into three turns into—well, han crawling between lando’s legs and holding out a vibroblade. Then his hand, palm up. cut it out, he says, and lando looks at him, all that poorly-stitched-together bravado. han is very beautiful when he’s young, it makes him difficult to refuse.
if you want to be a pilot, your hands are your life. can’t risk damaging them, lando says, gently closing han’s outstretched hand into a fist. wait another two years, they’ll remove it—
it’ll be too late, han says, and this is lando’s great fault, he never really learns to predict these flashes of wild selflessness and loyalty, doesn’t know what to do with them. you’ll be gone, you’ll have forgotten me. cut it out.
it’s really difficult to overstate how beautiful han is, at nineteen.
I’ll be careful, lando promises. afterwards, they burn the bloody sheets and the tracker chip along with them. the heap is still smoldering as han watches lando prep for takeoff, and it’s—almost, it’s very close to how he looked at the falcon, that first morning.
(lando is very beautiful too, it should be said. but he will be his most beautiful at thirty-one, heartbroken and standing among the clouds of bespin—it hasn’t happened yet, how beautiful he is. han will never be more beautiful than he is now, the first time he clutches at the co-pilot seat so tightly his hand starts bleeding again and his eyes fill with the stars.)
what next? han breathes, as lando puts the ship on autopilot. he’s staring at the blue whirl of hyperspace like nothing has ever been so beautiful.
(lando is staring at him, ditto.)
anything you want, lando says, and han just—just laughs.
legolas & gimli!!! bc i saw you mention them in your faramir & eowyn answer and got v excited but then you didn't get TOO sidetracked lmao
1. I love the dynamic, of like, light-hearted kinda scatterbrained eccentric and slightly goofy elf ranger who verbally shitposts and sounds like a loon whenever he opens his mouth but occasionally says deep and genuine things too, plus the super-serious well-spoken soulful proud dwarf lord who also talks weird but in like, the opposite way, with these heartfelt open feelings couched in kind of solemnity and manners, but more and more frequently over the book babbles and says spontaneous stuff, and how they fit together so well in a dynamic that is really un-cliched on the personal level – this weird melding of senses of humor and viewpoints on the other characters and events around them, which are pretty different but don’t oppose one another as much as overlap and join together to create a single bigger, even more fun outside viewpoint, they’re such a good pseudo greek chorus-y thing
2. I think this pairing is the main reason I kinda like the LACE ‘elves have no desire to have sex with anyone unless they fall in love and sex equals getting married for them’ thing tbh. I love the symmetry with the ‘dwarves only ever fall in love once and never marry otherwise but nothing is said about extramarital sex for them’ thing, Meaning it’s like, some weird special experience on both sides but in different ways. I usually don’t care for this trope in most shippy fic, but I like it in interspecies and I really like it for them.
3. Aaggghhhh the getting-together process! Most of all, I think about the fact that by all accounts, and as implied by certain lines in Fellowship, the dwarves of Erebor don’t really get elves and the elves of Mirkwood don’t really get dwarves, and there’s probably a lot of just, natural assumptions that are totally wrong and which they never thought to examine. It could even be that the fire-forged-ness of their bond might actually interfere with some of this understanding of each other, if they moved into this state of complete attachment and acceptance of each other while in this upside-down fugue state of pre-apocalypse where they didn’t really have…that much time to talk, after their period of downtime in Lothlorien where I assume the first stage of their friendship was formed. Like, when they emerge from emergency-mode after the destruction of the Ring, they’ve already plummeted straight into “oh I know he’s a weird alien and I love him, oh no wait it’s that kind of love, okay lol this definitely won’t work welp I’m screwed I guess???” without considering that no maybe he’s not that much of an alien, and yes you can fuck him without it being a disaster.
4. OBVIOUSLY the whole immortal/mortal thing, especially highlighted since they live in pretty close contact and temporally in parallel with Aragorn and Arwen, whose mortal/immortal problem is totally different. Also the sea-longing! How, and when, was it decided that Legolas would stay in ME that long, or that he would take Gimli with him to Valinor? So many opportunities! In some ways, their time in ME after the war is a grace period, a finite stage of overlap, a kind of once-in-an-age, improbable, forgotten, enchanted sort of time, where the dwarves are building for the future but the elves are just pretty much just lingering and housekeeping for the humans on their way out, and it would feel like there is a sort of pressure to make something of this time, both their own separate lives and whatever their relationship is like.
5. lmao I think the main reason I imagined Legolas as blond was either because Thranduil had golden hair in the Hobbit book or because something something weird associations with personality types something (because I had no idea about any of the movie castings at the time I read the books). BUT ALSO: “I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet
over you gold shall have no dominion” :)
6. I am TRASH. I will read SO MUCH SILLINESS with them. But here are just three HQ recs:
Anyway here is an itemised list of the reasons why I’m loving Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries so much:
Miss Fisher is obviously a badass but also she’s not young! She’s Of A Certain Age and she still lands the absolute hottest dudes. The hottest dudes. The hottest dudes
It’s the Carousing Good Guy trope but a lady!
Her lady-loving doctor friend Mac wears the most wonderful suits and she is amazing and I want to kiss her
What kind of a name is Phrynie. It’s absurd
Super old-school anti-procedural. Like Jonathan Creek but without all the British cringiness. Like Star Trek but instead of space stuff it’s murders and instead of space it’s set in Australia.
I didn’t even know Australia had a ‘20s until I watched this show. Upon closer study, it seems plausible
Miss Fisher is absolutely ruthless, clever, dangerous, insightful, and willing to go to any length to solve her case - including playing any number of fanciful parts, scaling large buildings, getting herself nearly poisoned to death, and otherwise putting herself in physical and emotional danger - and she does all this without having to sacrifice her love of pretty things. She scales those buildings in beautiful hand-tooled Italian heels. She is always impeccably, gorgeously dressed, and doesn’t ever change that about herself, even when she starts being taken more seriously by the police force or when she is doing serious detective work like interviewing wicked murderers or hunting for the man who killed her sister. Miss Fisher is only ever entirely herself.
She adopts strays like no one’s business.
There’s something very appealing about the story of a woman who has seen terrible, gruesome things, decided afterwards to dedicate her life entirely to pleasure, and then (almost despite herself) ended up becoming a philanthropist and a den mother and a doer-of-good. I have seen this story many many many (many, many) times from a male perspective, but not so often from a female viewpoint, and Miss Fisher does it without ever begrudging what she’s become. She’s infinitely more graceful than every other good-guy-against-his-better-judgment story I’ve watched or read.
oppressors paint famous radicals as soft pacifists because they know quiet rebellion (read: quiet acceptance of the system) won’t get us anywhere. if you manage to convince someone that their hero was peaceful and kind even in the face of oppression, you manage to squash rebellion before it can rise up.
“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.“
That Gal Gadot has never ‘supported the Palestinian genocide’.
Does not have a rifle with the notch marks of all those she’s killed.
And has stated outright that she believes in coexistence.
She worked as a fitness instructor, never seeing combat during her mandatory stint in the Israeli army (IDF), and the only thing she said was that she wished luck to her former colleagues in the army (you know, the equivalent of ‘Support Our Troops’) and specifically wished them luck against (and condemned) Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Her tags then went on to note #stopterror and #coexistance.
You don’t have to like her, or Wonder Woman, or DC, but if you could keep the antisemitism out of it, that’d be great.
draw women in post-apocalyptic world settings with armpit hair, leg hair, bushy brows and pubic hair ya cowards,, draw brown women/women with dark thick hair with arm hair and happy trails and sideburns and mustaches i’m sick of seeing silky smooth soapy clean make up wearing post apocalyptic dolled up women next to stinky sweaty crusty men with dirty nails and sweaty clothes and sweaty greasy hair and 3m long ugly beards
or, if you must depict women maintaining that shit, at least be interesting about it. I can actually buy someone shaving/putting on makeup if that’s their way of coping, something they do to tether themselves to the past or an ellusive feeling of normalcy. So show me the EFFORT put in, yeah? Show that woman risking a zombie horde because she spotted a fucking tube of scarlet lipstick and christ she hasn’t seen that color in five years but it’s what she wore on her first date with her now-dead husband. Show me the girl who is quietly starting to fucking lose it but covers it up with fanatical commitment to her appearance because if she gets these eyebrows right, maybe no one will notice how she stares at things that aren’t there.
I find it completely plausible that some women would go to incredible lengths to maintaining their appearance, because they’ve been socialized all their lives to caring about it, because it’s a part of their identity. So show me how that part gets negotiated with once the world has gone to hell.
Catch me in your local bunker doing a smoky eye with the ashes of my former life.
One of the visual images that still sticks with me is from the 2000 TV show Prairie Quest, when modern people simulated homesteading in the 1870s. They all got kind of bushy and hairy as they dealt with an extremely limited supply of clean, warm water or good soap. One of the women hated the feeling of hairy legs while she slept, so as an act of love and care, her husband had her prop her legs up on the kitchen table while he carefully shaved her legs with a hunting knife.
… that is honestly fucking adorable and kind of hot and I am totally stealing it for a post-apocalyptic setting.
You start a game of DnD with a blank character sheet. Your DM has them all. You only discover stats and things as they become relevant.
Like, “I rolled 7 on my constitution check” “You get a +2 bonus so that’s a 9.” *Hurriedly marking it down*
Or
“I would like to ask the innkeeper if there is anything weird going on in the area” “Dragonborn are rare in these parts, so she is suspicious at your approach.” “Wait I’m a DRAGONBORN?!?”
It would be absolute chaos but for a one-shot I feel it would be fun. Maybe all the characters have amnesia and they have to figure out what they can do from scratch.
not to get mad nerdy but I just discovered tabletopaudio.com and I’m fuckin losing it
this person (people?) goes about making 10 minute long loopable ambient noise tracks for every imaginable setting (docks, taverns, forests, airships, spaceships, office buildings, sewers, EVERYTHING) and has over a hundred tracks to offer, and on top of that if none of them suit you there’s a huge feature called soundpad where you can mix and match from their set of hundreds of individual sound effects and music clips to make your own ambient background track
holy shit dudes
I did a little further reading on his about and the guy running this is just a dad with two kids who like playing tabletops with him and he had the composition and musical training to start making soundtracks for his games then decided to spread that to the world for absolutely free, he even welcomes you to use his tracks in your works (podcasts, videos etc) and is open to being hired for custom tracks
I love the Han Solo comparisons that everyone made for Cassian during promo for Rogue One and then it totally bait and switched that Jyn was actually the vest-wearing, mercenary asshole who reluctantly joined a noble cause and got a crush on a rebel with pretty brown eyes and a stick up their ass.
Honestly, I think the whole “don’t pay the writers” thing boils down to the notion that everybody thinks they can write. It’s the old saw about the novelist at a cocktail party having to hear someone say, for the millionth time, “I’d love to write a book someday.”
Someone–Stephen King? Pretty sure I saw this in a Stephen King foreword–once said they’d like to say to a brain surgeon, “Boy, I’d love to do brain surgery someday.”
We treat “the ability to put words into a sentence” like it’s just the same as “the ability to form a coherent narrative that engenders a variety of emotions within the reader and puts them in a scene and shows them what they didn’t see before”.
And that’s like me drawing a stick figure and saying I’m an artist.
Writers are constantly devalued because everyone thinks they have a book in them and don’t realize the level of skill and commitment it takes to finish even a short story, much less a whole book.
This goes well beyond fandom, but man, I would’ve hoped fandom would know better.
Do you ever just sometimes marvel at the fact that the aesthete culture of the likes of Oscar Wilde has found new life in Millennials? Like there is an established subculture of the “deeply shallow” (to quote @dionysae ) who find real meaning in the look, feel, and texture of our worlds. We have this amazing talent for finding uniform beauty in different vibes and we have no shame in organizing our lives around that vibe pursuing the feelings and values said vibe stirs up in us. Like the “live and die for the aesthetic” meme is funny by it’s not a lie; we are the inheritors of a great tradition of building personalities and commentaries out of sublime, carefully cultivated Looks. Art for art’s sake is back in a Big way folks.
u wanted prompts: steve takes it upon himself to stand outside planned parenthood clinics and fight people who attack and harass pp
Listen, I see and observe your ‘Steve’ up
there, but I raise you Forty Percent of the Marvel Universe because I am bitter
about the current direction of the whole comics thing at the moment. *Max Rockatansky voice* I guarantee you, a
hundred and sixty days out, there’s nothing but salt. Anyway, if you’ve read my Claire Temple AO3
fic that may or may not get more stuff added to it when I feel inspired, this
is technically that universe, but prior knowledge IS NOT REQUIRED, okay good
let’s do it. Also I believe that movie
canon only applies to me when I feel like it so everyone is in New York and the
Avengers live in the Tower, no one is dead and everything is F I N E. I dunno, this is only like the first half of
a much longer thing that covers this whole day and, if I had my way, would be a
full-blown elaborate media fic with tweets and Trish’s show and
everything. But here, it’s real long, so
I left it alone. It’s on AO3.
Steve got the call pre-dawn, just as he was leaving the Tower for his
run.
“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY said politely from the ceiling, “you are
receiving a call from an unknown number with a New York City area code.”
“If it’s a reporter, let it ring out,” Steve said, knotting his running
shoes.
“Reporters do not have your personal cell number, Captain,” FRIDAY said,
and there was a trace of genteel condescension in the artificial voice this
time that made Steve grin down at the floor.
“Where in the City?”
“Hell’s Kitchen.”
Steve frowned, straightening up.
“That might be Daredevil in trouble.
You better put it through to my phone.
Thanks, FRIDAY.”
“Of course, Captain,” FRIDAY said.
Steve’s top-of-the-line, not-on-the-open-market-yet, Jesus-Cap-does-your-shit-phone-even-text-here-let-me-replace-it
StarkPhone rang, a jaunty tune that sounded distinctly like the National
Anthem, and even more distinctly like the foreboding of Bucky getting his ass
kicked.
“Steve Rogers,” Steve answered, hitting the green button and raising the
phone to his ear.
“Um…hi, Captain Rogers,” the voice on the other end said
hesitantly. “This is Claire Temple, I
don’t know if you remember me, but–”
“Of course I remember you, Miss Temple,” Steve said, grinning. “You pulled a piece of rebar out of my chest,
hard to forget a first meeting like that.”
She laughed, the same slightly worn chuckle he remembered from her. “And it’s just Steve, please, ma’am. I think once you’ve been up close and
personal with someone’s lung tissue you can probably skip the ‘Captain.’”
If this gets 50 notes I’ll tell you guys how I ran an underground sex ed class and helped put a pedophile in jail during second grade
Okay, so my mom has always been super open about health stuff and when I was just starting elementary school she got me a bunch of those American Girl books about your body and your feelings and they were really informative and truthful and I really liked them. One day I was talking to a friend about one of them and we started reading it and she was asking a ton if questions and seemed really excited and interested by it and I answered questions and explained stuff. We talked about the books during recess and eventually more girls joined in until we were a group of about 10-15 seven year-olds talking about puberty and sex and a lot of things that most adults don’t The thing about those books is that they look really innocent with cute drawings and there are chapters about brushing your teeth and stuff; but what most people don’t expect is that there’s a lot of health stuff about puberty and mental illness and drugs and a lot of really important stuff that everyone should know. The teachers didn’t care because the books looked super innocent and they thought were talking about proper brushing habits or something. We’d go sit down and read a chapter and I’d add some other stuff that my mom had told me and then we’d just talk and ask questions. It was kind of like group therapy but with sex ed. This was all okay until one of the boys saw a page with a ton of boobs on it (the page was demonstrating a breast exam) and he told the teacher. So they found and I got suspended and I wasn’t allowed to bring any more of those books into school.
Closer to the end of the year, one of the second grade teachers was revealed to be a pedophile when one of his students said that he tried to touch her inappropriately and then three other girls came forward with the same story. After he was arrested, the girl told me that she said what he did because we had talked about what to do in that exact situation. Because of our group she knew that she probably wasn’t the only one and she knew that it was wrong for him to do that and that she wouldn’t get in trouble if she told someone and that she probably wouldn’t have said anything if she hadn’t read those books.
I started doing it again the next year. No one stopped me.
Why do people show dungeon masters as wizards in art and stuff? They’re clearly bards. Chaotic evil bards, often.
you think a bard can figure out the 3.5 grapple rules
A bard knows when to bend the rules of their chosen medium in service to the story. No satisfying narrative has ever resulted from trying to follow the 3.5 grapple rules.
Chapters: 1/? Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Captain America - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Rogers & Justice Characters: Steve Rogers Additional Tags: Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, One Shot Collection, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, aggressively progressive Steve Rogers, other tags will to be added as pertinent, Bananas, RIP Steve’s Publicists TBH Summary:
Steve Rogers wakes up in the 21st century and there are some very specific expectations for how this relic will respond. Steve never did do well with being told how to live his life.
Is there literally any canonical evidence for Jake being a history buff, or is that just a headcanon that bb!me got really committed to?
Like, I am fine with either one and I will not be moved on this matter, Jake is a history buff, but seriously, which one is it.
He never explicitly mentions liking/studying History, but he can name half a dozen battles (several of which I, a decade older, don’t remember) off the top of his head in book 17, and knows the specifications of an aircraft carrier aT LENGTH, SERIOUSLY SO MUCH LENGTH on that one Ax book.
I’d say well-supported fanon.
*fist bump* Thank you my friend, you’re a champ.
Also in #33 he goes off on a rambling monologue that suggests he knows military history and has deliberately been studying famous leaders.
I know there are other examples. At one point he talks about how General Sherman revolutionized warfare, I think. (#31 or 47? IDK.)
I’d say Jake deliberately studying military history out of necessity (not passion) is cannon.
All right, awesome, I knew this couldn’t be something I’d made up wholecloth.
