I just left my husband alone with our two children for sixteen days. I was not worried about anything regarding the house, their food, or their wellbeing. I put all the appointments in the family calendar and my husband checked it and kept them. I literally did not worry about them. I missed them, and I was sad that they missed me, but I didn’t worry about them AT ALL. I need to impress upon you all that I missed their company, but was not worried for their welfare.
I also did no meal prep. I don’t even think I went shopping right before I left.
This is not about apples and oranges. This isn’t even about my husband. This is about the fact that this is apparently WEIRD.
Another mum at my daughter’s school is leaving for ten days. She’s taking her youngest (who is a very small baby) and leaving her husband with their two girls. She has been cooking for days preparing freezer meals. She’s panicking and deputizing her six year old to remind him how to make school lunches. AND I AM APPALLED.
A) He is definitely not helpless. (He’s a doctor or something.) What gendered bullshit. B) THAT LITTLE GIRL IS NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HER AND HER SISTER’S WELLBEING. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. C) Why is she married to this person and creating children with him if he’s this big of an idiot?
While she was laughingly recounting this, the other mums were nodding and smiling sympathetically, like oh yes, I too have my caveman at home!! Such managing required! I was the only one who was like “Dude, he’ll be fine. Literally. He will be fine.” I said it a lot. She was not convinced. She kept bringing up her older daughter. She’ll be like a little mum!
NO.
NO NO NO NO.
NO.
Straight women, don’t do this shit. It’s gross. Don’t infantilize your husbands and then expect your daughters to pick up the slack. So fucking gross. So. So. GROSS.
The fact that so many adults think a six year old girl is more capable of learning and performing basic domestic tasks than a grown-ass man says it all, really.
This stuff is so toxic and awful. I told a car full of women one time that I refused to be in another relationship until I met a man who was capable of making his own doctors’ appointments and washing the dishes. They told me I was going to die alone.
Fuck this shit. Don’t enable men’s incompetence and label it cute.
IT WAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. THIS IS MY FAVORITE STAR TREK MOVIE OF ALL, EVER, EVER, EVER.
THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE THING I DID NOT LOVE TO BITS AND PIECES.
I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS WHOLE MOVIE.
I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I have never been more fine. I am not at all teetering on the edge of an endorphin-drunk, sleep-deprived teary tirade about stars and the universe and humanity and how we’re so tiny and small but we just want to touch every star in the sky and hold hands with every being out there and KNOW what it’s like to fly and see the universe laid out beneath our feet, not ready for the conquering, but just THERE to be seen and reveled in and explored.
Reblog if you ARE a woman in STEM, SUPPORT women in STEM, or ARE STILL BITTER about Rosalind Franklin not getting credit for discovering the structure of DNA and the Nobel prize going to Watson and Crick instead.
okay so in psychology years ago we learnt that it’s common for companies to put women in charge when there’s a predicted downfall so that they could be all ha see women suck at being in charge. and I just find it interesting how the UK is gonna have a female PM right after Brexit so like years from now people are gonna be like “the country saw some of its worst years under a woman” when it was men that fucked it up and then ran
FAM I was at target the other day and saw the DVD for miraculous ladybug and I flipped and bought it cuz I thought it would have all the eps but it only has the first 7 and yeah
That’s so fucking upsetting, and since I am sorry for your disappointment HERE, this the possibly-dubiously-legal website I’ve been watching them on because I don’t have money and I do have wifi. You’ve probably gotten around to finding that, but still. A present. It streams pretty well when you’re not working with shitty college-campus-grade wifi.
One of the greatest things I’ve come to realize today: everyone is a MCR fan, whether intensely or just casually, but we were all waiting silently for this day to come
If anyone ever tries to tell you that sexism isn’t a problem in nerd culture, remind Them that no one batted any eye when Tony Stark became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics in one night but threw a hissy fit when Rey was able to use a Lightsaber without having wielded one before.
“Too many young girls don’t know how to act when someone’s being inappropriate with them. They giggle or they try to brush it off. Don’t do that. Tell them to go fuck themselves - be a bitch. If someone’s being disrespectful to you, be disrespectful right back. Show them the same amount of respect that they show you.”—Wise words from my mom (via magicrobotgeography)
Honestly the thought alone of one day being able to read a fic about Elizabeth that's written by you is a blessing and will keep my heart warm
Oh my God you’re too nice. Trust me, I too want to read a fic written by me about Elizabeth Swann, but I have no ideas that aren’t five pages of caps-lock-littered weeping about Elizabeth as the Pirate King, who keeps her bargain with the magic of the Dutchman by carrying the earth in a tiny glass vial around her neck, and who goes out and rages over the seas with her ships like a hurricane, and who raises her child on the waves as free and wild as a tern, and who crosses paths with Jack Sparrow and wreaks havoc and kisses him on the cheek and grins wickedly every time, and who catches men close when she kills them, slides a blade into their heart and a letter into their pocket and whispers in their ear “Take this message to my husband, dear sailor.”
I mean…that is what I would have to say. Pretty much incoherent and plotless. It would all be messages in dead-men-as-bottles, children raised to crawl the rigging of ships and charge wildly into trouble, and Elizabeth over it all, Pirate King and old friend of Calypso and wife of the Dutchman’s captain and comrade/sister/rival/unattainable love of Captain Jack Sparrow, she who is beloved of the sea.
If that appeals, hit me up with a prompt and I will deliver.
I have been feeling a desire for a happy Pepper and Tony fic, and if you wrote that, most certainly read and enjoy it. Also, hello! Hope your day had a thing that made you smile really wide :D
Mmmm well I got to get dinner on the dime of my summer program, all the students in it were there and the bill was pushing $400 and I spent the whole time talking with a few people including this dazzlingly gorgeous (although probably straight) girl in the program, so THAT was good, you are so sweet. I’ll admit I’m pretty tired to toss off a ficlet right now (between work and socializing and starting editing on one of my Actual Real Completed Novels, I have exactly zero brain), BUT, I’ll tell you about one fic I kind of want for this pairing.
Okay, so if I wrote this thing I would call it “Twelve” and it would be literally just happy, there would be very little angst, which is…probably why I haven’t gotten around to writing it, let’s call a spade a spade. But it would be all the times the number twelve has appeared in Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and I’m sure I’d come up with more while I wrote the thing, but here are a few that would definitely make the cut (with a total disregard for official timeline).
THE FIRST TIME: Tony has fired…so many personal assistants, okay, and definitely a few quit on grounds of “HE IS IMPOSSIBLE” after finding him asleep half-under a car or after he took apart their coffee machine or something, so Peggy Carter (I’ll fight you for Peggy as Tony’s quirky British aunt) is like “I’m going to handle this, kid,” and gets ahold of the massive list of Stark Industries employees and starts sifting through them for potentials. Once she has her list of possible candidates, she hacks into Tony’s work (actually she has his password because she knows him and he might be a genius but he’s also sentimental) and changes one value in a file he’s about to send out and makes sure it’s going to go to all of her selected candidates and ships it out. The next day a woman in a pair of ruthless heels with a stubborn set to her jaw and orange hair marches into Tony’s office and announces that there’s a mistake in his math–it’s 0.12 off.
ANOTHER TIME: So Pepper’s been considering quitting because her boss is…Tony Stark, and like even once he shapes up that’s got to be stressful, and she’s only been working for him for a few months at this point. So she takes a few minutes to steel herself and goes down to the lab and finds him drinking, which is…normal, honestly, but he’s not doing anything and the bots are all quiet and he’s just sitting there getting drunk and he looks so pathetic that she can’t bring herself to just quit. Pepper sits down next to him on the lab bench and he says hi, very quiet, and she asks what’s wrong, because Pepper’s like that, and he admits quietly that it’s the anniversary of his parents’ death. She should have known this, in retrospect, because the death of Howard Stark was BIG NEWS, but still: kind of slipped her mind. And he just sighs, this deep bone-shaking sigh, and leans to the side until he reaches her shoulder and says even quieter that it’s been twelve years now (he looks maybe twenty-ish in the flashback at the start of Civil War?), and Pepper decides she can put off quitting until tomorrow.
ANOTHER TIME: Pepper turns in her resignation twelve times. She also storms in to snatch the letter out of his hands and chew him out for his latest transgression and snarl “Of course I’m not quitting” when he reaches for the letter twelve times. She stops somewhere around the two year mark.
ANOTHER TIME: During Iron Man. Tony’s been missing for twelve days. Pepper has been handling media relations that whole time–she hasn’t cracked her perfectly smooth professional face once. She locks herself into her office, orders JARVIS to keep everyone out, and cries for two hours that twelfth day.
ANOTHER TIME: The twelve percent thing in Avengers? Yeah, that’s a running joke, what percent of the Tower Pepper’s responsible for, there would be a bit dealing with that.
ANOTHER TIME: I don’t fucking know, like, how much do you think the Chitauri damage is going to cost to fix? It’s fairly localized damage, but it’s impressive. So Tony and Pepper have a chat and they decide to donate twelve million dollars to the reconstruction effort, in addition to other stuff.
THE LAST TIME: Tony takes Pepper out for dinner and reserves the whole restaurant because he DOES actually learn from his mistakes and Pepper doesn’t love being made a public spectacle, and after the meal when she’s looking down at the dessert menu he sets a black velvet box on the table with a ring in it. The ring has a central sapphire–as blue as the dress ‘he’ got her for her birthday–surrounded by twelve minuscule diamonds. She says yes.
It takes creativity. It is the act of putting something on paper, that when others see it, a unique picture is drawn in their mind. All guided by the author. I definitely call that an art.
Wait, there are poeple who don’t think writing is a form of art??
The post was practically perfect in every way, and then somebody went and added Julie Andrews, thus shooting it into the realm of utter and absolute perfection.
I wish you would write a fic where you just fuck me up with the life-ruining kind of Anidala, I really just wish that.
Oh but friend, where would we start?
Canon? BECAUSE CANON IS PRETTY BAD.
But no, we can do better.
The AU where Vader is the one to walk away from Mustafar and he goes to Padme and takes her in his arms and his Darkness and kisses her and says “anything, anything for you, my angel” and she is faced with a choice: use this weapon who’s come to her hand and trying to save the galaxy from him by conquering it, or take her children, soft fragile corruptible things that they are, and run as far as she can, hoping that the galaxy will be able to save itself while she saves them?
The AU where Anakin, small and alone and barely not-a-slave for more than a breath, has a vision on the ship traveling back from Tatooine, and wakes up screaming his throat raw for…something, and Padme comes and tries to take him in her arms and comfort him–a child-queen responding to the fear of a child-Jedi–and he flinches away like she’s lit him on fire?
The AU where they return to Coruscant and Anakin is turned away, and they go to Naboo and Qui-Gon dies and Anakin is turned away, and away, and away, until he’s lost and powerful and scared and angry, and Padme comes and takes his hand and stares at the Jedi and says “he is Naboo and I will buy out his contract and he will be free” and, surrounded by her handmaidens that night, realizes that she’s responsible for training him how to not drown in the Force and how to be kind and how to be gentle and how to be a free person?
The AU where they’re at war with the Separatists and some rageful clone from the 501st abandons his brothers and turns on his General and does what they had all agreed not to do, and goes to the Jedi Council and says “Skywalker has broken the Code,” and Anakin is cast out, disowned by the Jedi, disgraced in the army, distrusted by Obi-Wan, and Padme may be everything, but even Padme is not enough to replace all those people?
The AU where Padme is what breaks Vader in a whole other way, held like a threat over his head, like a promise just before his fingers, like spun crystal ready to be broken between Sidious’ fingers at any moment?
The AU where nothing changes except that Vader, burned and trapped in a torture-suit and broken to the will of his latest Master, feels a burst of power in the Force and he knows that power, he knows that mind, it’s Padme, Padme is alive and she will understand/forgive/hate/save/kill him, because Padme is stronger than he ever could have been, and Vader tears across the galaxy only to find…children, two children, a baby girl with Padme’s dark curls and his angry stare, a baby boy with his sandstorm-dust locks and her sweet smile, and they are his/hers/theirs/no one’s, but where is Padme?
Or. Well. There’s always the AU We Do Not Speak Of.
Surely emotion is not wicked at its core, young Padme says, surely not, and she reaches out, learns to shape the Force with her passions and her loves and her rages and her laughs, and it is warm and rich and wild and vicious and everything she is (and surely this cannot be the Dark Side), and when she stands on the Tatooine sand and meets a boy who shines like a sun, some part of her mind (the part that’s seen people die because their vaunted politicians took too long to see them suffering, the part that’s seen wars start over petty arguments and diplomatic differences, the part that looks around Tatooine and thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power to save them) says yesssss. And she reaches out and she takes his hand and she stays in touch and she assures him that no, emotion is not wrong, love is not wrong, Attachment is not wrong, he is not wrong, and one day…oh, one day he comes to her, wild-eyed, with the words of another person on his tongue and talk about Sith, and she does her research and she thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power, and…
Well. Padme only wants to help. Surely the ends justify the means. Surely this cannot be Dark, if it’s to save starving children and wounded soldiers and slaves.
And the Empire rises under the command of its Empress and her iron fist, Darth Vader.
“why aren’t u talking abt this one Problematic thing involving that actor/show u like??”
listen. i am tired. im putting down my pitchfork. i’ll acknowledge that thing was bad if it was but im tired of vilifying ppl for their mistakes just bc they’re famous. i want to enjoy things. i want Peace
narcissa malfoy was probably the most powerful occlumens in hogwarts history and nobody knew
she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased
voldemort had actual doubts about snape
narcissa swans on by without a whisper, without a second glance
narcissa malfoy understood from a young age that she was meant to do only a few things: look pretty, say nothing, and marry well.
narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them.
look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy.
say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things.
marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight.
masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement.
narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.
Sirius didn’t know that the Dursleys were abusive.
At the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, he automatically assumes that Harry would rather live with them than with him. In the Goblet of Fire, Harry writes to him about Dudley’s video games and diet habits but never explicitly mentions anything about being abused. Even when he gets to Grimmauld Place in the Order of the Phoenix, he expresses his anger at not receiving information and though we know that he was also emotionally exhausted from spending another summer at an abusive household, he never discloses it. In fact, seeing as how he protected Dudley, Sirius could just as well be under the impression that the two were very close.
And I hate this so much because Sirius Orion Black grew up in an abusive household and if he had known for a single second that his godson was facing the same thing that he had faced, he would have really blown up a street in an attempt to get to Privet Drive and rescue Harry.
And it also breaks my heart because you know that Harry knew this which meant that he was more worried about his godfather’s safety and freedom than he was his own health.
Who hurt you and why did you feel the need to hurt us?
concept: a retelling of hamlet with the frame story that it’s a tabletop rpg being played by a bunch of overzealous college kids and an increasingly frazzled dm trying to keep them all from rushing headlong into situations and dying immediately. horatio is the dm’s vaguely self-insert npc character. thanks
“AND THEN HE GETS KIDNAPPED BY PIRATES”
“um…dude…you can’t just–”
“PIRATES”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by the same player, who keeps forgetting that he’s running two separate characters.
“The ghost awaits a response”
“Horatio, you went to college, you talk to it.”
—–
“You find the skull of the old court jester.”
“I’m going to talk to it until someone stops me.”
“Horatio, you went to college, you stop him.”
—–
“I stab the curtain!”
“Polonius, roll for fortitude.”
——
“I search for a nunnery in the moat”
*sigh* “Seaweed wraps around your leg. Roll for dexterity escape”
—–
“We all drink to Hamlet’s victory.”
“Everyone roll for fortitude.”
*groans amid the sound of rolling dice*
—–
“Sorry I’m late, everyone. Can my Prince of Finland character just show up?”
random observations from re-watching the first AOS Star Trek film:
people always characterize Kirk & McCoy’s dynamic as pure ‘IM GONNA DO THE THING, BONES” vs “DAMNIT JIM DONT DO THE THING”
but it’s incredibly significant to me, that it’s Bones who makes the decision to smuggle him onto the Enterprise.
Jim finds out that he’s under academic suspension, and can’t go with the rest of the fleet, and he doesn’t argue.
He stands there, looking a little bit lost, sure.
But he tells Bones to go without him, lies to Bones’ face and says that he’s fine, he’s ‘good’, even though it’s absolutely killing to say that.
Except he knows Bones’ needs that lie, that reassurance, because Bones is the one who is scared, not him, and if it’s the last thing they say to each other, Bones needs to know that Kirk will be okay.
And then Bones is the one who decides to say “screw regulations, screw the entire academic board of Starfleet and the Medical Code, I’m going to misappropriate medical supplies & inject you with them, to falsify a medical dispensation that will get you on board once I bullshit my way past security. Risking, if we get caught, at a minimum some form of academic penalty, and possibly the loss of my license. But I’m not doing this without my friend by my side.”
It’s then you remember that Kirk isn’t the only last-minute sign-up that day in Iowa.
Bones wasn’t at the bar with the rest of the cadets, or he would have probably met Kirk there, instead, & checked him over for a concussion, at the very least.
He was the only one other than Jim to show up for the shuttle without a uniform, which all of the rest of them had, at a minimum, the night before.
Which means, given what we heard, Bones’ divorce proceedings finally went through, and the next day he woke up, started drinking, and thought to himself. ‘you know, I just got divorced, I’m flat broke, but hey, let’s sign up for STAR FLEET. Because it’s a new start! I’m definitely not signing up for an organization that operates almost exclusively in space, when I’m afraid of flying. that would be a terrible life choice, who would do that? Right. It’s settled, then. I’m gonna do that.”
tl:dr Bones isn’t impulsive as often as Kirk, but when he is:
A. it’s a doozy
B. it probably winds up saving the entire galaxy, somewhere along the way
With a screenplay by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Terry Pratchett, we’re finally going to see an adaptation of The Wee Free Men.
The Wee Free Men introduced Tiffany Aching, the young witch who starred in several of Pratchett’s last Discworld books. It also features a group of Discworld characters who seem absolutely perfect for a Jim Henson movie: the Nac Mac Feegle, a community of foul-mouthed and gleefully violent gnomes.
My boyfriend told me over text that he didn't know the Minotaur story
Boyfriend:
I... I don't even know the story that well babe, I can't even say xD
Me:
Okay so
Me:
Poseidon gives a bull to King Minos, the best and shiniest bull you ever saw, and he's like "You can have this, but only if you promise to sacrifice it to me later" and Minos is like "Sure yeah okay man whatever" so Poseidon sends this bestest bull ever galloping up out of the salty sea spray, and everyone standing around is like "Hot fuck look at that bull" And Minos agrees, and he likes the bull SO much he decides to just quietly sort of...keep it. And he does kill a bull for Poseidon but it's one of his own, lame normal bulls, and Poseidon's no pushover so of course he notices.
Me:
Poseidon is also notoriously easily angered, and he's royal pissed about this, so he comes up with one of the most devious punishments ever, and he infects Minos' wife Pasiphae with a desperate, DESPERATE thirst for the bull. Like she can think of nothing but getting some of that hot Bull D.
Boyfriend:
..........Thefuck.
Me:
But it's hard to convince a bull, especially a divinely spawned bull, to fuck you if you are in fact not a cow but a human queen, so she comes up with a plan
Boyfriend:
I thought some god comes down in bull form and fucks her??
Me:
Ohh, no no no, that's the much much more tame story of Europa, who has sex with Zeus in bull form. This is different
Me:
She goes to the best inventor she knows, Daedalus, and she's like "I need this bull to fuck me I NEED IT" and Daedalus is like "That's really weird maybe you should talk to someone" and she's like "I am talking to you and I am your queen so you better fucking make this happen for me I am going to peel my own skin off if I don't get some bull dick ASAP. But he doesn't want me because I am not fat, four-legged, and mooing."
Boyfriend:
Oh..... oh no.
Me:
So Daedalus shrugs, probably shudders a little, and builds the prettiest, most fuckable wooden cow a bull over saw, but he makes it hollow, presumably with some openings in some awkward places.
Boyfriend:
OH GOD. NO.
Me:
So Pasiphae puts this monstrosity in the field with the bull, climbs in it, and waits. And Daedalus really is a skilled inventor, and he apparently knows what a bull likes, because Pasiphae finally gets the hot bull loving she's been dreaming of
Boyfriend:
I........ I need an aspirin. That is disgusting.
Me:
Only she apparently hasn't been tracking her cycles, because she gets pregnant, and births the minotaur and King Minos is like "What the fuck?" and Pasiphae is like "Honey I need to tell you something"
Cliffhangers are literally the worst??? I mean??? Why? Why would you do this????
Okay, there’s the ‘I’m a dick’ answer which is “I like to make people (especially my roommate) suffer.” And there’s the ‘I’m a writer’ answer, which is “The next good break point was going to be like five pages down the line and this chapter was already longer than my average goal for this story.” And then there’s the ‘life is time-consuming’ answer, which is “I wanted to get the chapter out before I was a billion.”
I mean, take your pick, they’re all perfectly true.
You are not screaming into the void in vain. The void is just practicing active listening and wants you to let it all out without feeling like it is judging or trying to speak over you
“In a healthy relationship, your partner hears you out if you’re upset, and their goal is to avoid upsetting you in the future, not to debate whether you should have been upset in the first place.”
there’s all these aus about vader finding luke and smuggling him away to the empire in a clever moment of mental clarity, but please consider this crack au: after being faced with slavery, his mother’s death, tusken raiders, sand, obi-wan kenobi, seeing the larses, and tatooine in general, vader lays eyes on toddler luke skywalker - his son, which meant palpatine lied, holy fuck i’m a father, oh god padme i’m so sorry - and flips.
this is the straw that breaks the semi-rational sith lord’s back. in true anakin skywalker fashion, vader panics, scoops his son into his arms, charges into mos espa and turns it upside down, steals a shuttle from his own fleet, slams random hyperspace coordinates, and is thrown into space with no real idea where he’s going or when he’s going to get there. with a toddler.
to make things more interesting, obi-wan snuck aboard the ship, but dropped his lightsaber in the ruckus of sneaking into imperial ranks. and poor, poor firmus piett, a lowly officer who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, runs smack into him.
and they’re all stuck on a ship, indefinitely. with a toddler.
sweet baby jesus i love this idea
just vader, picking up toddler luke under his arm like a football, and RUNNING LIKE FUCKING HELL
[darth vader voice] I HAVE YOU NOW
*toddler Luke SCREAMING the whole time*
obiwan just having a nervous breakdown “what what why are you doing this you’re evil but but what what is this someone shut that child up”
i love that people are contributing this is AMAZING
vader hefts the child into his arms - YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM - and literally turns away from everyone else like a kid with a new mcdonald’s toy. you can’t have him, YOU CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT HIM. luke quiets down because he’s up so high and he can see EVERYTHING and it’s fascinating. luke’s an easily impressed kid, after all. (and there are vents up here that he can nearly reach to crawl through!)
obi-wan: you can’t take luke from me, darth. vader, probably: LIKE YOU TOOK MY LIMBS???? HUH OBI-WAN????? HUH?????
What if at one point Obi-wan and Vader get all huffy and refuse to speak to each other and Piett has to act as the go between.
vader: tell that washed up old man that i know exactly what i’m doing
piett: …
piett: yes, lord vader
piett: excuse me, master jedi, but lord vader has everything under control
obi-wan: [huffs] That walking disaster hasn’t had anything under control since he was nine, and you can tell him i said that. In fact, i insist
piett: [looks into the camera like on the office]
oh god i have to write this now. you’ve convinced me, I AM SOLD. THERE IS ALMOST NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS IMAGE.
imagine it gets to the point where vader and obi-wan are screaming at each other with piett stuck in the middle, and luke, his attention torn away from the pretty lights on vader’s chest, clambers up and pats vader right over the respirator. “stop,” luke, a 2 year old, orders, patting sith lord darth vader gently on the face. “is mean,” announces luke.
vader re-settles luke in his arms. “say sowwy,” luke demands. vader, reluctantly, apologizes. he’s not taken with this child at all, obviously he’s just trying to earn luke’s respect, clearly. duh.
luke clambers off vader and toddles to piett to give him the biggest hug. “i sowwy,” says luke, solemnly. piett is about to faint. first lord vader, now the lordling? this is Too Much. vader’s probably giving piett the most terrifying death glare from behind his mask.
with the blessing of the Great and Powerful Luke Skywalker, piett can DEMAND THESE TWO STOP BEING CHILDREN but quietly, with a lot of respect.
obi-wan, meanwhile: i need a drink. i need a whole liquor bottle
I'd love to hear any outsider POV about Empress Amidala verse, people looking at Amidala/Vader shenanigans with great fear and confusion (or maybe they're not confused at all hahaha XD)
No one says “Darth Amidala”, but so many people think “Darth Amidala”. Constantly. All the time. They do their good Force DAMNEDEST to never think it in front of Vader, but even if he picked the thought out of their heads he would just be like “well yes, of course, obviously”.
Vader is so obviously Amidala’s. Like, as loyal and terrifying he was as the Emperor’s fucking CYBORG TANK RUN ON NIGHTMARE FUEL, he is worse for Amidala. Amidala he is HAPPY to serve, and Amidala he did not have to shut down his emotional reactions to survive. Also, like, he’s not missing all his limbs, on a respirator, or in CONSTANT FUCKING PAIN. Like–that helps, definitely. Not being in constant fucking pain pretty much ALWAYS helps.
Also-also, he does not give two fucks what anyone not Amidala or the twins thinks of him, and so follows all his random impulses and does all sorts of looks-weird-to-people-not-in-his-head shit. W-why is Lord Vader petting the velvet curtains in this king’s office? Why is Lord Vader rubbing the back of his soup spoon against his neck at this very important dinner party? Why is Lord Vader climbing the outside of the Senate building?
As far as Vader is concerned being Dark means he can do anything he wants, pretty much. He doesn’t need to put on a show of being dignified or do anything to demonstrate that he’s scary or dangerous; he just DOES things and that’s it. People who do not want to be under Imperial rule and people who try to subvert Empress Amidala’s orders RAPIDLY learn how terrifying it is to one moment be dealing with a man who’s playing with a pretty little compact mirror he got from who knows where to a man in fucking MURDER MODE because you said something that could be interpreted as less than entirely worshipful of his Empress.
And as terrifying as he is, he still spends literally all his time on Coruscant trotting after Amidala like a fucking puppy trying to get scritches. He has literally DIVERTED TROOPS’ MOVEMENTS in the interest of getting five minutes of direct attention from Amidala before going back to decimate the surviving dissidents.
So yes, the outsider POV of their relationship is FASCINATING. And kind of traumatized, sometimes. Frequent times. MANY times. Oh Force, Lord Vader, please don’t kill us, WE’RE VERY SORRY WHAT WOULD THE EMPRESS LIKE IS THERE SOMETHING WE CAN DO FOR HER.
I just read through your Empress Amidala tag. I love it. I love Padme's trauma. But. I want to know. Are there ever any times when Padme. forgets? To be horrified? Like, something will happen - some horrible thing, and she can just *fix* it. And every now and then it's soooo eaasy. Instead of bickering senators immorally arguing politics, she can just order the starving citizens fed. Or on a personal level (Vader is still Anakin, she still loves Anakin, qed she loves Vader) Then she remembers.
That sounds like the kind of thing that Padmé is going to occasionally have a problem with, yes. Like, yes, sometimes Vader shows up all happy and sweet and kisses her face and plays with the twins and is entirely useless at helping her get her paperwork done and is just so content and KIND, and sometimes there’s a natural disaster or a pirate attack or problems with the Hutts and she can just send aid or drop the FUCKING hammer and it’s DONE and sometimes some senator or another is being fucking selfish and hateful and greedy and she can just LOOK at them and they will backpedal for their FUCKING LIVES and it’s–it’s–
Fuck, it’s TERRIBLE, actually, it’s the worst thing Padmé’s ever done IN the Senate, short of accidentally playing right into Palpatine’s hands and getting him elected. But what else is she going to do, exactly?
Imagine Palpatine giving Anakin a clone of Padme. On the surface Palpatine claims he is rewarding Vader for exemplary service, but really he's rubbing Vader's face in it over Padme's death.
Holy shit, that clone better be the goddamn FASTEST TALKER in the galaxy, man, because I cannot imagine her surviving five minutes alone with Vader otherwise, “reward” from Palpatine or NOT. Unless, like, sheer spite spared her, maybe, maybe just sheer spite. Of course she is not a reward, of COURSE not, Vader KNOWS she’s not, he–he–
Force, she looks just LIKE her. She doesn’t have the memories, obviously, but the Force signature and the lilt of her accent and the particular tilt to her head and the spark in the back of her eyes are all so, so similar, so very nearly PERFECT, so very nearly … so very nearly …
