there are many kinds of bears all of them will mess up your refrigerator
otters can fit under, on, or next to your kayak so what’s the problem
wolves are prehistoric proto-dogs that never left of course they’re huge they are the final evolution that we purposefully chose not to let happen they are almost big enough to ride but you’ll be dead before you or your child can mount one don’t do it
rodents ok
moose and buffalo can both fit two or three of what people think moose and buffalo are. don’t let bullwinkle take your car keys he doesn’t even fit
pigs are proto-boars. that means they are huge once they’re adults but still quite big at adolescents. big enough for wrasslin but I don’t wanna die
Fuck coyotes
foxes vary. some are tiny. cat sized. diminutive. babies but adults.
i warned you about bears, bro. i told you, dawg
platypus are TINY. like, kitten small. A+ smols.
Deer are smaller than you think - stags are larger but not huge, hit em with your car and you’ll dent the deer and write off the car.
Rats are larger than you think. Don’t let that cartoon fool you. if a rat is on your head, you’re gonna look like a RAT IS ON YOUR HEAD. large hat or no.
Pigs are bigger than you expect by quite a bit.
Wild boar WILL KILL YOU.
Hare are not rabbits. They are swol rabbits. think baby kangaroos.
I saw a manta ray once while scuba diving and it was the size of a fucking car.
For @littlestartopaz : Steve
catches Wanda sulking and invites her to Disney Night with Nat and Clint. Wanda teases him, and Vision ends up there
too. Better yet, not MCU so we can also
have her brother. Or just ignore that
part of the MCU.
GOOD.
Also, Quicksilver is alive and healthy after a while in a healing coma,
as speedsters do. I read a wild AU once
where he was shot and died, and the comments were full of complaints about how
it didn’t make sense. I am RIGHT THIS
MOMENT deciding that this fic and this and this and possibly some others with small tweaks exist in the
same universe as this one
(I do not have a timeline to speak of) and also I’m disregarding that same wild AU’s belief that
Clint lives? On a farm? Rather than a shitty apartment building in
NYC and the Tower/Mansion? And that Nat and
Clint are not soulmates on a level that makes romance look downright petty,
kay-thanks-bye. AND also I’m so glad we
all remember how Wanda and Pietro were kids who were pressganged and conned
into service of HYDRA rather than being voluntary recruits.
It wasn’t like Wanda had expected her relationship with Pietro to be all
roses after he came out of his coma, but her worry had also done a spectacular
job of blurring out some of his less desirable qualities as a brother. Like, just for example, his overwhelming, pointless, overprotective bullshit. She muttered a bitter Sokovian curse under
her breath and stripped off her jacket, dropping it on the bed without a care
for the soot that would certainly stain her sheets. The rest of her uniform was given the same
careless treatment, abandoned on the floor as she yanked on a pair of leggings
and a soft shirt two sizes too big.
She wasn’t even sure who she was more frustrated with—Pietro, for
yanking her out of the way of a spider ‘bot that she could have taken care of,
or herself, for losing focus for long enough to let him take the hit for her. Someday, he was going to suddenly realize
that his fragile twin sister had gone and turned into an adult while he was
busy fending off the world. She hoped it
was sooner rather than later, or she might have to beat it into him. Assuming he even lived that long, which was
beginning to look increasingly unlikely.
“Stupid nervous bastard,” she muttered in English, and flopped down on
her bed, flat on her back with her fingers laced over her face. “Martyr.”
“Hazard of the profession,” Steve’s voice said, amused. Wanda turned her head, untangling her fingers
to look toward the door, where Steve was leaning against her doorjamb. He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt,
standard fare for any of them after showering upon returning from a
mission. His hair was a rumpled mess and
he had a nasty purple and blue bruise marbling over one cheek, where Bruce had
diagnosed a cracked zygomatic. In
combination with the blood that had been leaking from a split in his lip,
Natasha had cheerfully commented that he was looking very patriotic indeed.
“Put ice on your face,” she said, frowning at him across the landscape
of her comforter. Steve grinned at her,
and winced, raising the cold pack in his hand back to his cheek.
“Like I said,” Steve said. His voice
was muffled, but his eyes were bright and wild with adrenaline, like blue fire. “We’re all fucking martyrs, or so I’m told. Your brother just wants to keep you safe.”
“Well, I just spent months at
his bedside because he took eight bullets to the chest and severed his spine,”
Wanda said, sitting up sharply. “So he
can get over it.”
A man is driving down the road and breaks down near a monastery. He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, “My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?”
The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound.
The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”
The man is disappointed but thanks them anyway and goes about his merry way.
Some years later, the same man breaks down in front of the same monastery.
The monks accept him, feed him, even fix his car. That night, he hears the same strange noise that he had heard years earlier.
The next morning, he asks what it is, but the monks reply, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”
The man says, “All right, all right. I’m *dying* to know. If the only way I can find out what that sound was is to become a monk, how do I become a monk?”
The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will become a monk.”
The man sets about his task. Forty-five years later, he returns and knocks on the door of the monastery. He says, “I have traveled the earth and have found what you have asked for. There are 145,236,284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth.”
The monks reply, “Congratulations. You are now a monk. We shall now show you the way to the sound.”
The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, “The sound is right behind that door.”
The man reaches for the knob, but the door is locked. He says, “Real funny. May I have the key?”
The monks give him the key, and he opens the door.
Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone.
The man demands the key to the stone door.
The monks give him the key, and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby.
He demands another key from the monks, who provide it.
Behind that door is another door, this one made of sapphire.
So it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald, silver, topaz, and amethyst.
Finally, the monks say, “This is the last key to the last door.”
The man is relieved to no end.
He unlocks the door, turns the knob, and behind that door he is amazed to find the source of that strange sound.
But I can’t tell you what it is because you’re not a monk
the way i learned this, it was always told through spoken word. And you’d do the door thing for ages. AGES. literally just making up any old material. ‘behind the foam door is a door made of spinach’ that kind of shit. Go on until whoever is listening has already begged you to stop and has now gone on to pleading, clutching your shirt on their knees pleading. And when you finally said the last line? People went fucking nuts Like there was a good chance of just getting the teeth knocked out of you after telling that joke.
A friend of mine did that shit for 30 minutes on a camp once. The entire fucking bus just exploded in anger when she finished. It was a fucking massacre.
Dancing under the moon light in a grassy field in Alabama with your S. O., you notice that the lightning bugs that had started out as only a few clusters were now completely surrounding you in a tornado of bugs. After staring at them for a few minutes, you look back at your S. O. They now have a face of a giant bug. What happens?
They’re an animorph, and they’re ready to take off as a firefly in an attempt to infiltrate a new Yeerk facility.
jesus could absolutely, unequivocally beat the shit out of richard dawkins. i’m not saying he would, just that he absolutely could. like, round one knockout, whole fight uploaded to vine, embarrassing. dawkins’ feeble, mortal body crumbling to the mat. he finally saw jesus, but never saw those hands coming. richard dawkins searching for god while he’s in la-la land. no fucking chance for old man honeyjars. down for the count as the entire arena converts to christianity on the spot
So… I have a guilty love of the prohibition era. I’dd never want to LIVE then, but int terms of really interesting social dynamics, fashion, art and narrative possibility, its really, really interesting. During the ‘Would-Bacta-work-as-lube?“ question posed by @poplitealqueen a few months ago, I set about scouring-SCOURING, I TELL YOU- Wookieepedia and all my SW-related material to find out what Bacta actually COST, and how it operated, to answer the question of whether it was economically and practically feasible. And I found out that:
1. It apparently makes ideal lube, as long as you don’t mind the smell of Pineapple.
2. It’s basically ultra-thick saline with suspended nutrients and ACTUAL BACTERIA in it.
(so, these next couple conclusions are made in the face of conflicting canons, but it’s the one that makes the most sense for how shit plays out)
3. Bacta is the GMO reconstruction of Kolto, which is a psuedo-parastic microorganism that may or may not be related to midichlorians that alters it’s DNA to turn into the host’s cells. (IDK it’s science fiction, roll with it) Kolto was the more effective substance, able to treat things like cirrhosis, brain damage, etc,- but was wiped out by a virus during the KOTOR era as part of a plot to get rid of the Jedi.
Good job guys.
So Bacta is the GMO they managed to cobble together afterwards with the remaining info they had, and while it’s pretty miraculous as a traumatic injury treatment, it doesn’t do chronic diseases like Kolto did
4. Bacta is literally grown in cultured vats, much the way insulin is farmed today.
5. While it’s heavily regulated in the TPM era, because it’s MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, it’s still really easy to grow once you get your startup costs out of the way.
6. The expensive part of bacta is the administration devices- bacta doesn’t do well in tubes, so you either need to keep a small live colony (a bacta tank ala ESB), or flash-freeze them in the ultra thick saline, and have a small…bacterial microwave, essentially, to thaw bits of it out for use.
7. During the clone wars, Palpatine subsidized the crap out of the bacta industry so he’d have enough for his army and the worlds loyal to him- post 66, he was a punitive asshole who controlled all “legitimate” (but not necessarily well-run) bacta production, and would just not ship it to worlds he didn’t like.
The point I’m getting at is- The conditions are PERFECT for there to be a massive Bootleg Bacta trade starting in TPM and going all through the empire (and into TFA probably, we’ll see what the timeline looks like once this all shakes out) Just thing- ALL the shenanigans people got up to with bootlegging, but with bacta.
People with illicit ‘stills’ in the basement, people doing insane planetary runs to get it to worlds in need- or pirating Imperial ships for the stuff. Kids going to school with an “ice pack” in their lunch bag, only to give the frozen bacta to their Rebel-sympathizing teacher. Imperial Facilities get raided by Bacta Pirates, not for the shitty imperial strain, but literally to pull the piping and saline tanks out of the walls.
Of course, some people are gonna be unscrupulous and cut corners with their vats, resulting in horrible mutant strains that do god knows what (but that’s another plot bunny). Or Strains of bacta that are more refined and effective, because much of the scientific Community was not friends with Sheevy P, even before the war.
AND CLONES WOULD KICK ASS AT BACTA FARMING- because a LOT of bacta farming happened On Kamino, and hell, it was probably part of chores to tend to the tanks. “Feed the vats so your brothers can live”
The HARD part about starting your own farm is 1. finding/making suitable vats 2. GETTING YOUR HANDS ON A GOOD STRAIN.
Kix becomes an unintentional fucktillionaire distributing the Kamino strain. He wasn’t even charging, people just kept giving him money.
“Uncle Jesse’s Extra-Viscosity Varmint Grease” is the joke name of the best strain. Kix is SO MAD that drunk Jesse named it that but you know? No imp inspection officer has ever wanted to open those barrels.
The things people pretend to be shipping instead of bacta though, which might actually include booze:
"Booze! Twelve million gallons of Zanbar Blue!“ “Oh that stuff is gross. Carry on.”
Also, the REALLY enterprising people who figure out how to start mixing spice in with their bacta- and create a medical revolution in the process. Glitterstim is a bad idea to snort, but the trace amounts in the “Candy Cane” strain heal nerve damage! "Pineapple express” is a strain that essentially acts as a topical PTSD treatment "Beskar Berserker” is a strain that has some pretty awesome painkiller/amphetamine combo, and while it was meant to keep people from coding, it becomes REALLY popular with former ARC troopers.
Hera gets Kanan a strain called “second sight” after he loses his eyes. She did it because it was supposed to be good for treating optic injuries and numbing visual hallucinations… they find out later it’s basically bacta + Midichlorian chow.
Anyway, this was a fun thought, please feel free to play with it if you want and tell me all about it
This is such a cool idea! If anyone decides to run with this, here are some facts about bacteria-growing to consider in case it helps (I’ve worked in a bio lab).
Bacteria can be frozen down at around -70˚C with a bit of glycerol (presumably the “ultra thick” descriptor of the saline). This doesn’t hurt the bacteria and it can be re-grown simply by scraping a bit off the frozen tube and rubbing it on an agar plate. You then pick the colonies that look right on the plate and grow only those ones.
It’s really hard to grow the bacteria you want and only the bacteria you want. The good bacta strains have probably been engineered to have resistances to some cheap and common antibiotics. The plates, ultra thick saline and any growth broth would contain these antibiotics to help limit bad/useless strains.
It’s an ongoing struggle to keep everything reasonably clean and sterile to prevent bad/useless strains from growing. There’s probably space-technology that makes it easy and the illegal stills may or may not have access to them.
Bacteria that interact with human bodies grow best at 37˚C (internal human body temperature) and when they’re shaken. The vats would absolutely be as sealed as possible. They would also have to be purified out of the growth broth and put in the ultra thick saline for use in humans.
Lots of bacteria are kind of smelly when they grow up to large numbers. A well-seasoned lab person can tell if the good kind or bad/useless kinds have grown just by the smell. Pro-tip: some bad/useless kinds smell rank.
OH MY GOD YOU ARE THE BEST
I’m running another EotE game soon and bacta-farming is almost certainly going to come up.
The concept of humanly toasty vibrating tanks is HILARIOUS tho, becuase we have a cat-dude in the party.
I figure that if SW has whatever magical tech that keeps kamino’s pristine halls pristine despite being occupied bu appx 5 million teenage boys, your average bootlegger can keep a few hot vibrating tanks reasonably clean. Space Windex or whatever.
*slams hands* man im curious. People following me who haven’t read or watched FMA (bless your patient hearts) what’s the most confusing thing about the series you’ve seen me say/reblog/tag?
I’m a huge slut for out-of-context interpretation
Congratulations anon you stumbled upon THE SHOW’S VERY OWN FAVORITE RECURRING JOKE
The little one, Ed, is in fact the Fullmetal Alchemist. There are at least 10+ instances in the show of some secondary characters being like “Hey the Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother are here” *both look to Ed and Al* “Yes I understand why they call him Fullmetal in that large suit of armor also who’s the short kid?”
1. Doctor finds anecdotal evidence that people are passing kidney stones after riding on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World
2. Doctor makes 3-D model of kidney, complete with stones and urine (his own), takes it on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 60 times
3. “The stones passed 63.89 percent of the time while the kidneys were in the back of the car. When they were in the front, the passage rate was only 16.67 percent. That’s based on only 60 rides on a single coaster, and Wartinger guards his excitement in the journal article: ‘Preliminary study findings support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones.’”
4. “Some rides are going to be more advantageous for some patients than other rides. So I wouldn’t say that the only ride that helps you pass stones is Big Thunder Mountain. That’s grossly inaccurate.”
5. “His advice for now: If you know you have a stone that’s smaller than five millimeters, riding a series of roller coasters could help you pass that stone before it gets to an obstructive size and either causes debilitating colic or requires a $10,000 procedure to try and break it up. And even once a stone is broken up using shock waves, tiny fragments and “dust” remain that need to be passed. The coaster could help with that, too.”
SCIENCE: IT WORKS
Update:
“In all, we used 174 kidney stones of varying shapes, sizes and weights to see if each model worked on the same ride and on two other roller coasters,” Wartinger said. “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked. We tried Space Mountain and Aerosmith’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and both failed.”Wartinger went on to explain that these other rides are too fast and too violent with a G-force that pins the stone into the kidney and doesn’t allow it to pass.“The ideal coaster is rough and quick with some twists and turns, but no upside down or inverted movements,” he said.
it really bothers me that so many people on this site treat ableism like it’s black and white.
just now i saw a post where op was like “i’m glad that spinners are popular because it normalizes fidgets and decreases stigma” and someone replied like “no!! it’s absolutely TERRIBLE that neurotypicals are using these fidgets because when they get in trouble they make things harder for mentally ill kids!!” and like you guys do realize that? you’re both right? it isn’t a decisive fact that neurotypicals using fidgets is either good or bad, there are both benefits and consequences that need to be taken into consideration.
a few months ago there was a post going around that was like, *neurotypical voice* why are you bouncing your leg, and somebody reblogged it saying that the post was ableist because autistic kids can get overstimulated by leg bouncing. i go to a school for the mentally disabled, and i’ve been in this exact scenario, my classmate wasn’t able to focus because i was bouncing my leg and although i felt bad i told him that i wouldn’t be able to stop for long because i do it subconsciously due to my adhd. he wasn’t being ableist for asking me to stop, and i wasn’t being ableist for saying i couldn’t, we just both had different needs. in the end, our compromise was that i went to work in the computer lab.
you have to understand that there is always more than one side to issues like these, and that we should be striving for understanding and balance over demonization of one side and blind support of the other. this is especially relevant when people on both sides are mentally ill or disabled, because sometimes symptoms will clash and you just need to deal with it.
researching 17th century piracy tonight. came across this:
One popular pastime amongst pirates was the mock trial. Each man played a part be it jailer, lawyer, judge, juror, or hangman. This sham court arrested, tried, convicted, and “carried out” the sentence to the amusement of all. (x)
how widespread could this have really been? how would it have gotten passed from ship to ship? can you imagine a pirate crew at a tavern, bragging to another pirate crew about how good they are at playing pretend? why was their go-to game “legal system”? were they performing incisive satire? is this some sort of pirates-only inside joke that’s been lost to the ages?
update: the mock-charge in the mock-trial was piracy
they used to pretend to try each other for piracy
as a stress relief
ok but it’s got to have been a lot of fun to be the pirate defense lawyer, for the pirate accused of piracy, to attempt to argue to the pirate judge, in front of a jury of pirate peers, that your client could not possibly be a pirate
!!!
“Look, matey, I know a pirate when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.”
“No no he’s not a pirate, he’s, he’s law abidin’! Remarkable man, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!”
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
ok, but like odysseus’s player was definitely the asshole who fucks up every plot point homer wanted to introduce into the story. agamemnon accidentally orders everybody to go home and the troops are about to set sail? odysseus’s diplomacy modifier says otherwise. some asshole’s trying to provoke mutiny and desertion in the ranks? an intimidate check makes it not a problem. they’re losing battle after battle? stealth check into the enemy camp and straight up sneak attack the sleeping trojan allies to death. achilles is dead and the war is all but lost? FUCK YOU my giant wooden horse and my bluff beg to differ.
when it comes time for odysseus to play his solo campaign, the DM just rubs his hands together ominously and laughs.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: You spot your enemy in battle. What do you do? Paris’ player: I fire an arrow at him, ignoring his armor. *rolls a 6 for accuracy* Homer, the DM: You hit him where he has no armor, but in a non-vital area. Achilles’ player: Damage done? Paris’ player:*rolls a natural 20, gets a 4 point bonus from Rage* Homer, the DM: Lethal. Achilles’ player: Fuck…
Homer, the DM: Alright,
your wife’s suitors are attempting to string your bow. *rolls behind screen a
few times* A few of them fail miserably.
Odysseus’s player:
Alright, let me try. I pick up the bow.
Homer, the DM: The
suitors begin laughing and jeering at you. Give me a strength check.
Odysseus’s player: *rolls
nat 20*
Homer, the DM:
You string the bow. Thunder booms. A cat dies in a nearby house. One of the
suitors busts a nut. Your glamour is starting to wear off.
Odysseus’s player: As
my glamour wears off, I shoot an arrow through all three hoops at the target.
*rolls nat 20*
Homer, the DM:
The arrow flies through the hoops and skewers the target. The suitors notice
your glamour wear off and are terrified. None of them have ever seen you in
person, though, so none of them recognise you.
jewish men really broke their backs to make their place in the comics industry and make a powerful statement back in the 40´s/50′s and now comic companies use nazi imagery because they think it looks cool. real life nazis are making a comeback and they legit turned heroic symbols into nazi propaganda. marvel and dc really are doing that. wow
What if I titled this paper “Fuck Nick Spencer: Time for Authors to Take Responsibility” and just ended it with a picture of me flipping off my teacher
everyone acts like bucky was the troublemaker in the steve/bucky relationship but steve picked fights with everything that moved and bucky went to a science convention for fun
You know I’m surprised the Galra aren’t terrified of humans like they kidnapped three of them and then four more shot off into space and promptly formed Voltron and killed their emperor in what I assume to be a few months
Like I would just leave earth the fuck alone after that shit
not to mention that the very first one they put in the arena beat their reigning champion
I just heard this woman say “you procrastinate because you are afraid of rejection. It’s a defense mechanism, you are trying to protect yourself without even trying.” and I think I just realized what was wrong with me.
Yep, this is a very, very common reason for procrastinating. It’s also why procrastination, even though it’s often associated with laziness, is a fairly common trait in a lot of people with anxiety and perfectionism issues.
This idea - You’re not lazy, you’re protecting yourself - hit me really hard while reading, of all things, Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which turns out to be as much about how brains work and how relationships work as how orgasms work.
In an early part of the book she talks about Fight/Flight/Freeze responses to threats–the example she uses is being attacked by a lion. You fight, if you think you can defeat the lion; you run away, if you think you can escape the lion; and when you think there’s nothing you can do, when you feel the lion’s jaws closing on your neck, you freeze, because dying will hurt less that way. You just stop and go numb and wait for it to be over, because that is the last way to protect any scrap of yourself.
Later in the book, she talks about the brain process that motivates you to pursue incentives, describing it as a little monitor that gauges your progress toward a goal versus the effort you’re expending. If it feels like too little progress is being made you get frustrated, get angry, and, eventually, you… despair. You stop trying.
You go numb and wait for it to be over, because that’s the only way left to protect yourself.
So it occurred to me that these are basically the same thing–when facing a difficult task, where failure feels like a Threat, you can get frustrated and fight it out–INCREASE DOING THE THING until you get where you’re going. Or you can flee–try to solve the problem some other way than straight on, changing your goal, changing your approach, whatever. Fight or flight.
But both of those only apply when you think the problem is solvable, right? If the problem isn’t solvable, then you freeze. You despair.
And if you’re one of those Smart Kids (Smart Girls, especially) who was praised for being smart so that all tasks in the world came to be divided between Ooh This Is Easy and I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT AND IF I FUCK UP I WILL DIE, then… it’s pretty easy to see how you lose the frustration/anger stage of working toward a goal, because your brain goes straight to freeze/despair every time. Things are easy and routine or they are straight up impossible.
So, you know, any time you manage to pull yourself up and give that lion a smack on the nose, or go stumbling away from it instead of just falling down like a fainting goat as soon as you spot it on the horizon, give yourself a gold star from me. Because this is some deeply wired survival-brain stuff. Even if logically you know that that term paper is not a lion, it really is like that sometimes.
[…] Boyega is fast becoming one of the most recognizable – and bankable – stars working today. As Josh Gad said of Boyega during the panel for The Last Jedi panel at Star Wars Celebration, he’s already a cultural icon thanks to his role in Star Wars. As Boyega continues to gain more and more fame for roles outside of Finn, we could be watching the birth of Hollywood’s next big star, in the vein of leading men such as Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney.
[…] His post-Force Awakens career choices have all been smartly made, balancing sci-fi with realism. In particular, his choice to take the lead in Bigelow’s upcoming film shows a savvy when it comes to choosing roles. Bigelow’s work is consistently in the running for best picture, so needless to say her return to film is already generating Oscar buzz. As the film’s frontman, Boyega will no doubt receive similar buzz, potentially elevating him to a critical darling as well as box office draw. His decision to launch his own production company, Upper Room Productions, also marks another intelligent career move; Upper Room Productions will also be one of the companies producing Pacific Rim Uprising. Not only does this give Boyega more creative control over his own roles but it also gives him a much more versatile skill set, ensuring he’s not relegated solely to work in front fo the camera.
[…] It is that charm that will help him make the leap from character actor to bonafide star. It takes charisma to be a true movie star, and Boyega has that in spades. Videos of him reacting to The Force Awakens‘s trailer have view counts in the millions. His interviews are, if you’ll pardon the fangirl terms, a vortex of charm. Stars such as Smith or Clooney are very charismatic; it’s part of their inherent charm. Boyega has enough charisma even at this early point in his career that he could probably hold his own in a film with them. After all, he managed to more than hold his own next to Ford. Is there anything he can’t do?
Most importantly, Boyega is a breath of fresh air. He is passionate about his art, and it shows in his performances. Gone are the days of simply coasting to stardom on looks and a role in a big budget franchise. Boyega works hard at his craft and yet is effortlessly charming. He deserves stardom, and in fact seems born for it given the graceful way he’s accepted his newfound Star Wars fame. There is no worry about whether or not he’ll burn out after Episode IX concludes. Instead, it’s become a discussion of whether or not he’ll receive his first Oscar nomination by the time he’s thirty.
if you don’t acknowledge that platonic relationships might be the most important ones in somebody’s life, just remember that the trap that vader & palpatine tried to set for luke at cloud city pretty completely relied on that fact and sith lords are officially better at this than you are
do
do you think they somehow figured out that was the only way this was gonna work for them
like i don’t know how you’d even figure out but
do you think palps was just like “aw yeah. gonna corrupt another skywalker. easy-peasy. same as last time. we just gotta wait for him to fall in love and – OH COME ON”
it’s even better because luke is a pretty friendly dude, so presumably palpatine had to go through all the spy reports and figure out who his BFFs were out of basically the entire rebel alliance. his gunner dak? fellow pilot wedge antilles?? who?????
meanwhile vader’s lurking in a corner going “wow my son has so many friends, he must be a great guy. do you… do you think he’d like me?”
“HE IS A TRAITOR ON THE RUN FROM THE EMPIRE, HOW DOES HE EVEN MEET ALL THESE PEOPLE,” shouts palpatine as he scrolls through tagged photo after tagged photo on rebel facebook.
this is the best caption anyone else has added to this post since i made it thank you for your contribution
i used to get self-conscious over the smallest things but friends let me tell you that today i had to smuggle a furious 8ft python onto the bus during the school rush and not a single person noticed. not one. if people don’t care enough to notice a shopping bag writhing and seething with barely-contained reptilian hatred then i promise you that no-one will pay any attention to that blemish you’re fretting about or how you’ve done your hair
Question, why are you bringing a 8 ft python into a public bus? You know that this reptile can kill anyone inside there?
buddy she’s a snake not a flying death tentacle
snakes are not evil killers out for blood, and length doesn’t mean lethality! my biggest guy is 11 ft– if i have him around my neck, both his face and his tail touch the floor– and even his species struggles to take down anything bigger than a small-to-medium dog
the worst damage that my 8fter is capable of is when she decides to do an impression of a blood-pressure cuff and makes my arm go a bit purple, and even that’s just when i humour her dreams of being big and scary and let her squeeze her hardest before i unwind her like a bratty garden hose
as long as you’re not some sort of magical tumblring rat, you’re fine
Okay, I gotta ask…
1. Why was she angry?
2. Where were you taking her on the bus? Is there a leash-free snake park where you live?
I need to know.
1. she’s a cranky ass in general, but her mood was absolutely not improved by eating a bit of a snake hook, getting stuffed in a sack, experiencing an hour of adelaide’s finest public transport, and having a vet jam a tube into her stomach
2. i think all of australia is technically a leash-free snake park tbh
I am so glad there was follow up on this post explaining why the snake was on the bus!!!
I just love the myth of Persephone, i mean the real, original version of it, because it’s not like she got kidnapped, no, this bitch was la-de-da-ing in a meadow and she just happened to find an entrance to the Underworld and she was like “Imma check this out”. And she just wanders into the Underworld and discovers that hey this place ain’t too bad.
Meanwhile Hades is in the background “????? UM??? PRETTY GIRL??? WHY ARE YOU HERE?????? YOU AREN’T DEAD???”
And Persephone (who was originally called Kore just a little fyi) just looked at him and said “I like it here. I’m staying.”
And Hades kinda just went with it, until Demeter started throwing the temper tantrum of the millenium upstairs and Zeus had to intervene because this shit was getting out of hand and its actually his job to be admistrator of justice. Which considering the shit he gets up to is kinda histerical but that’s another story there.
And basically Persephone wasn’t a prisoner or kidnap victim at all she just really loved the Underworld and her (eventual) husband, and the Greeks feared her arguably more than her husband because Hades could be reasoned with but Persephone was the one laying the smack down on sinners, and really, who wouldn’t be at least a little scared of someone who’s name means something along the lines of “the destroyer”
Basically, Persephone is amazing and everbody needs to get on her level
i think the best part of that myth is that Zeus decided to change Kore’s name to Persephone (basically “the one who brings chaos”) only because she wanted to stay in the underworld and SHE WOULDN’T FUCKING LISTEN then Zeus, all-mighty king of the gods, kinda gives up and goes “fine, but you’re going to visit your mom” “also, I changed your name” “get rekt”
Also, if I’m not mistaken, Kore means “little girl” so imagine going from that to “chaos bringer”
I mean, going from little girl to chaos bringer sounds like a p solid deal to me, sign me up.
This may not be the version of the myth that’s commonly known and taught. But is is the original, from before it was altered to scare Greek/Roman girls into submission. Persephone was a badass bitch.
Chug your ale each time Dickens introduces a new character.
Do a shot each time you look over your shoulder during 1984. Two shots if you get up to close the curtains.
Slam a Red Bull every time you turn the page in Wuthering Heights. Just to stay awake, really.
Take a sip of wine for every Biblical sin you’ve committed. Start at Genesis.
Drinking with friends
Take turns trying to recite the infamous 11,282-word sentence from Ulysses in one breath. Whoever stops first has to drink the most.
Smuggle booze into a library. Or go to your bookshelves. Pull out books at random, playing “Never have I ever” with books: “Never have I ever read Throne of Glass,” etc. All who have read the book in question must take a drink.
Take turns reading passages from The Bell Jar aloud. Whoever cries hardest must be cut off from alcohol immediately. This is followed by a group hug and gentle rocking.
Group-read a Shakespeare play and take a shot whenever there’s a joke about venereal disease, gender roles, or sexual relations.
I know most people associate LUSH Cosmetics with white girls and bath bombs but products from this beautiful company have faded my scars and stretch marks, completely gotten rid of my acne, fixed my dry skin problems, thickened my eyelashes, laid my edges, made my hair grow like crazy… I can go on and on. I’ve actually never tried the bath bombs, but their skincare and haircare products work magic.
Fading Scars / Stretch Marks Organic Therapy Massage Bar
Extra Dry Skin King of Skin In-Shower Body Conditioner, Skin Drink Facial Moisturizer, Sultana of Soap Bar, Tender is the Night Massage Bar, Each’s a Peach Massage Bar
Acne Fresh Farmacy Solid Cleanser, Eau Roma Toning Water, Full of Grace Serum Bar
Thickening Lashes Eyes Right Mascara / Lash Milk
Edges R&B Hair Moisturizer (if you put this on your edges before wrapping your hair, they’ll be relaxer-straight when you wake up, lasts about 12 hours), Dirty Styling Cream (cream-based edge control with a matte finish, no more shiny or crunchy edges)
Hair Growth NEW! Shampoo Bar, Retread Hair Conditioner
I was asked to list the rest of the products I currently have in my possession, so here y’all go!
FACE / HAIR STUFF
Magical Moringa Facial Moisturizer Oh my lordy. Let me tell y'all about this stuff. It’s marketed as a moisturizer but I use it as a primer because when you put this on your face, it’s completely matte. Like completely. All day. And it will lock your makeup in place like no other. You can sweat in it, swim in it, whatever. Shit won’t budge. Ever.
Jason & the Argan Oil Shampoo Bar Amazing for volumizing. It made the three bundles in my head look more like five when I used this thing the first time, I kid you not. Also gives your hair a really natural shine. I only use it when I really need a volume boost, otherwise it’s just too much.
No Drought Dry Shampoo If you have a weave, you need this stuff. Period. A lot of times, the natural oils in our scalps (referring to my fellow black women here) are too heavy for Brazilian, Peruvian, etc hair, and so it’s easy for weave to get weighed down between washes. Shake this stuff in your hair, brush it out - bam, flow city.
Honey Trap Lip Balm My favorite lip balm, ever. Really improves the texture of your lips and seals in moisture. However, this is not for fixing chapped lips - use Ultrabalm for that first, and then this to prevent them from chapping again. Also, pro-tip, if you apply it before liquid lipstick, your lipstick won’t crease or dry out all day.
MASSAGE BARS
Strawberry Feels Forever Smells like fresh strawberries! Has a much thinner consistency than the other massage bars, so it can be used every day, like a solid lotion.
Soft Coeur Smells like chocolate and honey, and is ridiculously moisturizing. More heavy-duty than the other bars, so I like to only use this one on spots like my knees, heels, and elbows.
From Dusk til Dawn The shape of this one is amazing. It’s shaped like a cone, so it gives a deep massage when you’re using it. Definitely recommend if you have any sort of muscle pain.
SCRUBS
The Rough with the Smooth This stuff smells soooo good. Like cotton candy. I use it before I shave because it really does an amazing job at removing any dead skin and it doesn’t leave a residue, so it won’t clog your razor. However, it’s a sugar scrub, so it melts super quickly.
Ocean Salt This is a heavy-duty scrub. Really amazing if you have dry, flaky skin, and the healing properties of the salt are really great if you have acne. It’ll dry it up and heal it super quick.
Cup o’ Coffee Face & Body Mask I’m on my fourth jar of this already. The coffee beans are ground up just enough to give a deep, yet gentle scrub and the caffeine in the bar really does wake up your skin and make it look brighter. Great for the morning.
Buffy It smells like a vacation, that’s really the only way to describe it. It’s an exfoliant bar and body butter mixed together, so you rub it all over while you’re still in the shower, and then rinse the sand off. After, rub the oils in and pat dry. No need for lotion after because it seals in the moisture from your shower.
SHOWER GELS / JELLIES
Rose Jam Shower Gel Smells like roses and has a really bubbly lather. More cleansing than moisturizing. I like to use it before a more moisturizing soap because it’s great for removing dirt and oil from the skin.
The Olive Branch Shower Gel A long-time favorite of mine. Great for dry skin, as it has a really creamy lather versus a bubbly one. Also, the smell is very calming and lingers for a long time.
Needles & Pines Shower Jelly It’s a solid shower gel (consistency of jello), and it smells like Christmas trees! I like to store it in the fridge and use it when it’s hot outside, super cleansing and refreshing.
SOAPS:
Roses All the Way Personal favorite! Smells like roses & vanilla ice cream. Super moisturizing and so, so creamy. Definitely buy if you suffer from dry skin.
Yog Nog Very moisturizing and the scent lingers for a really long time. Smells like snickerdoodles and eggnog.
Bohemian Not at all creamy, as it’s an exfoliating soap. It’s great to use on dark spots like knees and armpits because the exfoliants soften the skin and the lemon juice evens out your skintone. Smells like lemons.
Karma Another favorite. It has a super thin consistency but is still very moisturizing, so it’s a good shaving soap because it won’t gunk up your razor. Smells like incense and patchouli.
Figs & Leaves Smells like dirt and grass, in a good way. Super cleansing. As in your skin will literally squeak after using it, so I recommend using an in-shower moisturizer like King of Skin after using it.
OTHER:
Atomic Toothy Tabs Solid toothpaste that you crush up in your mouth. It sounds weird but these things are phenomenal. They really leave your teeth squeaky clean, and are the sole reason my teeth are so white - I don’t use any whitening products. This particular kind smells like cloves and cinnamon.
Ultrabalm All Purpose Balm This stuff is amazing. It’s an all-over balm for rough spots. I use it in the winter time on my hands and lips, because they get dry. I also use it year round on my face where I get dry spots, as it doesn’t clog pores.
Silky Underwear Dusting Powder Another holy grail. If you could turn cocoa butter into a powder, this would be it. It’s not drying like baby powder, it’s more silky (it’s also talc-free). I use it between my legs to prevent chafing and under my boobs when it’s hot outside to prevent sweating.
This is actually so helpful because a lot of times I go into lush and I just end up getting pink things and things that smell good because I don’t know what other products are worth purchasing!
TALK TO PEOPLE. okay so I only worked there as a seasonal, but these overly polite, overly talkative salespeople have to do 3 demos an hour! SO if they ask if you want to try something, let them. They know what they’re doing and they will tell you everything you want to know about the product and what it will do for you.
The worst was when I had customers saying that they were just looking because they didnt know a thing about what they were looking at. A lot of the products look identical on the shelves, but they are all specifically tailored for different needs.
Fun facts:
86% of all products are vegan, the rest are vegetarian
everything is ethically sourced, including the charcoal which comes from recycled forest fires
Lush will cut ties with their suppliers if they dont treat their employees nicely enough
Lush saves 10% of their spending budget for emergencies, like when a well broke down in one of their suppliers companies over in Kenya and Lush found out they were lowering women into the well, that money didnt just go to repairing the well, but for getting them a second well as well.
Lush even makes perfume but the scents are about stories instead of smells. There’s a little booklet for each one. My favorites are Dear John (about the owner, Mark, not knowing who his dad was) and Dad’s Lemon Tree (which he made after meeting his dad)
Lush also makes makeup, although they are working on getting more pigments
Lush is 21 years old and in 57 countries!
Charity Pot is a lotion that is low scent as not to mix with your other scents, is a lot of cocoa butter, and 100% goes to grassroots charities, they dont even pay people to make it, that’s how good it is
If you bring in 5 black pots (wash them please, they are dishwasher safe) you can get a free fresh face mask
Lush is the inventor of the bathbomb and most of them have essential oils in them and cocoa butter, so they’re not just fun, but they’re actually really good for your skin
There is a Lush Facebook page but more importantly is that there are local Lush facebooks. You can ask them if something is in stock and they’ll get back to you as quickly as possible (the Alderwood location takes only a few hours)
Anything that looks like a big brick of product is sold by weight. Just ask and they will cut you off a piece to fit your budget
FREE SAMPLES. Feel free to ask. They do NOT want to sell you something that is not right for you
Everything is handmade with commercial kitchen like equipment. This is why things don’t always look the same, because the recipe changes and different people are making it. Leave room for error and basically Guenivere likes adding more pigment than Brendan does but Brendan makes seasonal stuff that’s fantastic. It’s not that it’s gone off or is poorly made. There’s a little sticker that shows you who made it and it also has the expiration date on it
It the ingredient list is both green and black, the green is for natural ingredients and black is for synthetic.
If you go in and they dont have something because it was a seasonal or it’s no longer being made, do not be sad. The same scent may be in another product but more importantly, you can still get it. THE LUSH KITCHEN puts out products that are no longer being made every night at midnight (UK though so time stuff). There’s exclusive merch on there too, including bags and aprons and shirts. Everything goes really really fast though so you have to be ON it.
reblogged to the wrong blog because it took 4 attempts to reblog at all!
this is…nice
My daughter worked at LUSH before college and just seriously…they are an amazing company with highly educated salespeople who want to help you find things that will make you feel, look and smell your best.
IF YOU NEED TO CALL 911 BUT ARE SCARED TO BECAUSE OF SOMEONE IN THE ROOM, dial and ask for a pepperoni pizza. They will ask if you know you’re calling 911. Say yes, and continue pretending you’re making an order. They’ll ask if there’s someone in the room.
You can ask how long it will take for the pizza to get to you, and they will tell you how far away a dispatcher is.
This is okay advice but not 100% accurate. Pepperoni pizza is not exactly a secret “code” among law enforcement.
We have gotten calls like these using other topics as a disguise. Do what you can safely to express to the dispatcher you need help. They cannot just hang up on you unless the issue has been cleared. If you absolutely cannot talk or are too scared, call and put the phone down or in your pocket so the dispatcher can hear. If possible try to at least say your location because they don’t always get correct information about your address when your call populates.
Dispatchers are trained to pick up on unusual situations and to go with them to get you help.
A’IGHT PARTNER OF A 911 DISPATCHER HERE: Pizza isn’t some secret code, but dispatchers are trained to pick up if someone is having to lie on the phone about who they’re calling. The most important thing is to give them an address. They can send cops to an address, and yes, ordering pizza is a good way to get away with giving your address away on the phone.
Important information to note: locating where you are isn’t like Hollywood portrays it. Dispatchers/police can’t just pinpoint your location within seconds. It’s a long process that isn’t always allowed (they literally have to go through your cell phone carrier company and sometimes the carrier says “no you can’t pinpoint this person”).
most dispatch centers in the US, including the one i work at (boulder, colorado), have text-to-911 service these days. so even better than calling, just send a text to 911 (!!! IMPORTANT !!! include the address/location of where you are IN THE FIRST TEXT YOU SEND so that if you become unable to use your phone after that first text, we at least know where to send help). if the dispatch center in your area doesn’t have a text service, you will receive an automated text back saying something along the lines of “The 911 answering point in your area does not support text-to-911. Please call 911 instead.”
in that scenario, where you end up needing to call but still can’t make it known that you’re calling 911, there are plenty of things you can do to communicate that you need help depending on the exact circumstances.
if there is a person with you who is threatening to harm or kill you, and your call to 911 would only make things worse, try to call as discreetly as possible. with smartphones these days, you don’t even have to unlock your phone to call 911. simply get your phone to the unlock screen where you would enter your passcode and there should be a button at the bottom of your screen (sometimes at the top) that says “Emergency Call.” just hit that button and you’re good to go. also keep in mind that you can do this from phones that haven’t even been activated yet (just be aware however, that if you’re calling from a deactivated phone, and the call gets disconnected somehow, the dispatcher will NOT be able to call you back like we can with activated phones because there is no phone number attached to a deactivated phone).
from there, after you’ve pressed the emergency call button, if the person threatening you is yelling at you, simply keep an open line. your phone’s microphone is more powerful than you think, and can easily pick up someone in the same room yelling at you. if you’re able to do so without dramatically escalating the situation, yell back at them, and try to throw in some details about where you are. also try to throw in details of whether or not there are any weapons present (guns, knives, baseball bats, golf clubs, whatever).
the biggest thing we care about when taking a 911 call is the address/location. if you’re not in a building, give an intersection. if you don’t know the roads you’re on/near, give a landmark. a big building. a strangely colored building. a specific grouping of buildings together. we’re trained to be extremely familiar with the landmarks in our jurisdiction, and usually those landmarks will be in our computer system as well.
also, just be aware that if you call 911 with an open line and we don’t hear anything, we will hang up and call you back immediately, so make sure to answer the next call you get. this can actually help you out because it can be an excuse to step out of the room to take a phone call. if you can’t step out of the room to answer when we call you back, try to at least answer the call and give us something.
now, if you’re calling 911 in a situation where you can call us just fine but can’t talk because someone might hear you, try whispering. if you can’t even whisper, press a button on your phone. if we hear even something that tells us there’s a person on the other end, we will make every attempt to ask if that person can hear us before we hang up and attempt a callback. a common method of communicating with someone who can’t talk is to have the caller tap on the back of their phone, or press a number on the keypad. if this is the method of communication the dispatcher is using with you, they’ll usually use a “tap once for yes, twice for no” method. pressing buttons on your phone’s keypad makes an audible beep sound to the person on the other end, i.e. the dispatcher. once a “tap once for yes, twice for no” dialogue has been established, the dispatcher will ask you yes or no questions. just try to answer them to the best of your ability. again, the most important thing is an address/location. also, if it’s at all possible, call from a landline, not your cell phone. thought landlines were useless? think again. landlines are required to register to an address, so if there’s a landline available, use it, don’t use your cell phone. that way, if you can’t tell us where you are, it’s fine because we’ll already have an address.
i feel like i should make some kind of a master post about this stuff in the future.
I hate you so much. As per our conversation, you absolute heathen: Borgias Star Wars AU Cesare as Leia Lucrezia as Luke Micheletto as Han Fucking go. I hate you so much.
This is the first of two Star Wars AUs, this one is mostly because I profoundly wanted an AU where Cesare was literally a prince of an entire planet and also I wanted Lucrezia to have a lightsaber. I am currently working on another one for @wildehacked in which everyone is in the much more obvious position of being Sith.
Cesare doesn’t expect a rescue, as he sits in
his cell, back to the wall and one leg stretched out in front of him with the
other bent close to his body. The
ceremonial robes of Alderaan are heavy, uncomfortable at the best of times and
these…these are not the best of times.
Deep red cloth rubs against his skin, raw and tender from a few rounds
with a torture droid, and he ignores it.
He told them nothing—he has no profound alliance to the Rebellion, but
the image of the great and terrible Darth Sixtus wading through the endless
dunes of Dantooine had amused him, and after their young general turned their
weapon on Alderaan…
Well.
Cesare is (was) hardly beloved of his people, raised by the stern and
austere Viceroy of Alderaan, della Rovere, but that was his planet, and after
it was gone, he denied the Empire information out of sheer spite. It had been worth it, to see the towering
dark figure of Sixtus storm out of the room in a rage.
Still, though. His planet is gone, and they didn’t love
their distant prince, and the Rebellion trusts him only on the weight of his
adopted guardian, who was well known in the right circles for his totally
ruthless devotion to the cause. Cesare
sent away the information he had been told to care for with the droid, a PA-L0
unit more willful than was good for it.
It might make it to the Sforza woman della Rovere had intended it for,
or it might not—either way, it is out of his hands. The Rebellion won’t expend the manpower to
send a rescue mission, and the Empire has a new planet-killer to play with. He’s confident he won’t live long enough to
find out whether PA-L0 made it or not.
It’s something of a surprise, then, when
alarms go off and his cell door opens to admit the shortest Stormtrooper he’s
ever seen.
Cesare silently arches an eyebrow. Princes grow up in the public eye, especially
on bustling Core worlds like Alderaan, and Cesare prides himself on the ability
to show no response to any disaster.
He’d had to cultivate it, after the second time he was caught with
someone who, perhaps, should have been off-limits.
“Are you lost?” he asks dryly, and the
Stormtrooper reaches up to wrestle off their helmet, and Cesare’s mouth snaps
shut in surprise.
It’s not the hard-faced man he expected. Instead it’s a woman, a girl, really, with a
youthful face and hair like sunlight pinned up in a knot, and she smiles at
him, perfect tiny teeth a string of matched pearls behind her pink lips. She looks about his own age, maybe
younger. There’s a sharp tug, like a
cord anchored somewhere in Cesare’s spine is pulling him toward her, and he has
the sudden inexplicable urge to brush her hair back, the wayward coils of spun
gold escaping around her face.
“I’m Lucrezia Borgia,” she says, dimpling at
him, and he tries to assemble words to reply.
“I found your Paolo unit. I’m
here to rescue you.”
Cesare has made worse snap decisions in his
life than take a rescue wearing the face of an angel, he concludes in under a
second. They run.
They find another false Stormtrooper, and
this one is far more like what Cesare expected, a man with eyes like stone and
a dispassionate expression under the smudged blood on his cheek. Lucrezia calls him Micheletto, and Cesare
snatches a blaster off a dead Stormtrooper to toss at him.
“My lord,” Micheletto says with a slight
incline of his head.
“This is Cesare della Rovere,” Lucrezia says,
as if Micheletto doesn’t know who he is.
“He gives your orders now. Take
us back to the Condottiere, and we’ll
find Caterina on the way.”
They do find Caterina. Just in time to watch Sixtus cut her
down.
“I knew her brother,” Lucrezia says coolly as
they crowd into the cockpit of Micheletto’s ship, the Condottiere. It’s a bit of a
wreck, but he pilots it like a master, as skillfully as he had cut down any
Stormtrooper in their path. “He was an
unpleasant man, to say the least.” She
fingers the silver hilt at her hip—a lightsaber, she tells Cesare quietly, apparently
once the possession of her father. “You’ll
forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over her corpse.”
“Of course,” Cesare says, and she smiles at
him, and he takes it like a blaster bolt to the heart.
Some other highlights…
Lucrezia brings down the Death Star, her eyes
closed and her X-Wing guided by something at the center of her chest, something
cold and bright as a Tatooine moon. When
she lands, laughing and giddy with triumph, Cesare snatches her up around the
waist and spins her around, and he smiles at her, and she thinks idly about
kissing it off his lips. Micheletto
smiles his faint smile and kisses her cheek like she’s a lady of status. Lucrezia gets an award. Micheletto, a killer and a criminal and a
bloody hand for hire, insists that he should not, and Cesare does not argue
with him.
Cesare finds the leader of the Rebellion, an
ex-Senator named Machiavelli, very much to his liking. It is common knowledge that Machiavelli has
something of an affection for the ex-Prince of Alderaan (it’s something Cesare
asks himself often—is he still a prince at all, if he has no planet?), and
Cesare is not above leveraging this to his purposes.
Lucrezia kisses Cesare on Hoth, after she
almost dies in the cold, her skin still flushed from the incredibly hot shower
she just took, and he clutches her to him like she’s as ethereal as
sunlight. Her golden hair hangs around
them like a curtain, in her quarters, and the red lines her nails trace over his
shoulders and chest sting bright and clean, and Cesare thinks that he has never
loved someone like he loves this woman.
Cesare kisses Micheletto in an asteroid
field, during an argument, and again on Cloud City, where an old acquaintance
turns them over to Sixtus, and it’s harsh and bloodied and hungry. They fuck in dark corners, still half-dressed
and breathless, and Micheletto swears allegiance like he’s praying to a god,
like Cesare is a force of nature, like Cesare is the Force. Cesare leaves bruises shaped like
finger-lengths and the curve of his lips, and they’re still there when
Micheletto is frozen in carbonite by Darth Sixtus.
Lucrezia spends all of thirty seconds
training with a withered old Jedi named Orsini before she rushes away again,
not even pausing at his warnings as she takes flight for Cloud City. When she arrives, there are terrible
revelations about her family—Darth Sixtus, once Rodrigo Borgia, a power-hungry
general from the Clone Wars. On the Condottiere, she cries into Cesare’s
shoulder, her severed hand aching, and he kisses her tears away, her sunlight curls spilling over them
both.
Cesare saves Micheletto. He does not care to be asked why he takes
such a risk for a man he professes to be a simple instrument.
Lucrezia, with a new silver hand like a piece of art, discovers that there is another
Borgia—there was a third, an elder brother gone missing as a small child,
before the Death Star was destroyed, but the young general died with his weapon
and now there is only one. Her twin
brother, Cesare Borgia, Prince of ex-Alderaan.
“But I will say the most drunk I’ve ever been was when I had moonshine, and it wasn’t the first time I’d ever had it, but I’d never had a lot of it ‘cause my step-dad was like ‘here’s a pinch of moonshine’ and I was like ‘I don’t like this’.
But I drank a bunch with my neighbor and then we ate, it was peach moonshine and they had a peach soaking in it, and we ate the peach. And what I remember from that night is literally not a damn thing. But I woke up the next morning, there was dirt in my bed and I had stolen a hymnal from a nearby church.
So the lesson here, kids, is please drink responsibly. Don’t break and enter into the house of the Lord.”—Molly (@ofgeography) on responsible drinking, from the most recent episode of Wait Wait What’s Icing? @waitwaitwhatsicing (via thatwasfunwhileitlasted)
I saw a post that was like “mutuals =/= friends” like whoa okay I always thought of mutuals as low key friends but that’s fine let’s make people more insecure of their relationships than they already are
Bruhs, if we are mutuals you are 100% at least low-key level friend to me.
I follow you = acquaintance
Mutuals = low-key friends
I’ve replied to your posts at least twice = high key friends
I actually use the message system to talk to you = I really really like you and probably talk about you to people irl all the time
