I’m imagining the epilouge but with Neville’s kid instead of Harry’s.
Sensibly Named Child:
Dad, what if the hat puts me in Slytherin?
Neville:
Then it means you really are a Slytherin. Do you have any idea how hard I begged to be a Hufflepuff? How hard I argued with the hat against Gryffindor? And you know what, it turns out the hat was right and I pulled the sword out of the hat and killed the snake. It's a magical hat and you're an eleven year old who thinks Axe works to attract girls. You know nothing, listen to the hat.
One thing I’ve learned: when people end whatever they’re saying with “idk, I’m probably not making any sense,” it usually means they are telling you something very close and personal to them, something that’s such an integral part of their being that they have trouble putting it into words that do it justice.
Observation: I have never broken a bone Hypothesis: I am boneless Data: I appear to have broken at least two bones in my foot slipping on the ice Conclusion: I have at least two bones. Strong evidence suggests the possibility of a third one.
After a lot of consideration over AO3′s rating system, I’ve decided how I’m going to categorize my fics from now on:
G - no dicks. Just none. Well, maybe a small baby with a penis pisses on the person changing that baby’s diaper (oh the family friendly laughs!), but that’s it. We’re the better for it.
T - dicks are alluded to, perhaps even mentioned, especially in respect to angst over teenage masturbation (heavy heavy angst), however, we know no details. In most cases, we don’t want to because it’d be a little creepy.
M - dicks factor heavily, and we know in pretty specific detail how those dicks are being used, and the direct results. But selections from the full spectrum of dick-related details are, tastefully or tauntingly, left out.
E - we know this dick. We know its veins and contours and twitches better than we know the back of our own hands, the smiles on our mothers’ faces, or the smell of our childhood homes.
Challenge to writers: describe your characters (esp female ones) without ever describing their general attractiveness…none of: cute, sexy, beautiful/gorgeous/ugly, appealing, etc. Instead, describe their features, and let the audience/other characters (through their interactions) make their own judgments about those features. Aside from being meatier (show, don’t tell), this may help you avoid stereotyping features as “pretty/ugly”–different people are attracted to different things, so why should your characters be different, right? Explore attractiveness of a wide variety of features, explore attractiveness as an opinion that some characters have and some don’t, explore attractiveness as something that isn’t just a convention everyone agrees on
i just received a text from my best friend that said “so i think i’m gay” out of literally nowhere
so i’m like “dude sweet for real just like suddenly you realized or?”
and she says “well i pretty much just had sex with a girl so”
AND THEN DOESN’T ANSWER ME FOR AN HOUR
HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT AND THEN NOT EXPLAIN IT AT ALL
update: she couldn’t answer me because was still banging the girl
I wish this wasn’t so glaringly fake cause it would be kinda funny if it were real but its not real so its not funny and I’m being redundant for the purpose of conveying shut the fuck up and don’t make up bullshit for notes
i just scrolled back three months into a conversation to prove you wrong lmao bye bitch get off my fucking post
march 15th primary states: florida, illinois, missouri, north carolina, ohio
ohioan 17 year olds: bernie fought for your right to vote in presidential primaries, so make sure you use it!
also people who want to help out but are not old enough, not in a primary state, etc: you can can phonebank for bernie! this is a tried and true method to rock the vote, it worked in chicago and it will work for march 15th states as well! more info here!
Unfortunately the numbers don’t lie, youth voter turn out is down since 2008. Young voters support Bernie Sanders in overwhelming numbers, 86-14 in New Hampshire. That is massive, even better than Obama. Still, we NEED TO VOTE. We NEED to stay ACTIVE and involved! This political revolution is to make OUR country a better place, we need to quit letting 65 year old voters decide the future of our country. PLEASE REGISTER TO VOTE IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE SO ALREADY! BERNIE SANDERS 2016!
I just registered, it took 5 minutes. All you need is a driver’s license or ID. I don’t like politics on my dash, but I’m reblogging this because no matter who you support, you should register to vote, and this post has a link that makes it very easy to get started.
I don’t appreciate these posts that make it out to be like the only barrier to youths voting is laziness and apathy.
1) as far as I know, there are no systems in place to teach kids how to vote. My mom said she went to catholic school where they actually had field trips to go to voting booths and see how it worked. I don’t know anyone my age that has had that.
2) there is virtually no support for the actual act of voting (which is separate from the act of registering to vote). In Iowa I heard that Bernie sanders was bussing students to the polls so they could vote—why in the hell is he the only one I’ve heard of doing this? By the way, where the hell do you actually go to vote?
3) there is no support for people who face obstacles to getting an ID. No buses, no nothing. You can’t set an appointment to get an ID (at least here because I’ve tried) and actually getting the ID is more complex than voting.
I am so sick of these posts trying to guilt people into voting and then not offering a single piece of support beyond “here is the link to register that I just googled.”
as a young person of color i especially don’t appreciate the condescension as it’s coming mainly from white people.
Melbourne gave their trees ID numbers and email addresses so residents could report downed branches or other problems. Instead, people starting writing their trees love letters.
Sometimes, the trees even write back:
To: Green Leaf Elm, Tree ID 102216529 May 2015Dear Green Leaf Elm, I hope you like living at St. Mary’s. Most of the time I like it too. I have exams coming up and I should be busy studying. You do not have exams because you are a tree. I don’t think that there is much more to talk about as we don’t have a lot in common, you being a tree and such. But I’m glad we’re in this together. Cheers, F”
29 May 2015 Hello F, I do like living here. I hope you do well in your exams. Research has shown that nature can influence the way people learn in a positive way, so I hope I inspire your learning. Best wishes, Green Leaf Elm, Tree ID 1022165
To: Willow Leaf Peppermint, Tree ID 1357982 29 January 2015 Willow Leaf Peppermint, Tree ID 1357982 Hello Mr Willow Leaf Peppermint, or should I say Mrs Willow Leaf Peppermint? Do trees have genders? I hope you’ve had some nice sun today. Regards, L
30 January 2015 Hello, I am not a Mr or a Mrs, as I have what’s called perfect flowers that include both genders in my flower structure, the term for this is Monoicous. Some trees species have only male or female flowers on individual plants and therefore do have genders, the term for this is Dioecious. Some other trees have male flowers and female flowers on the same tree. It is all very confusing and quite amazing how diverse and complex trees can be. Kind regards, Mr and Mrs Willow Leaf Peppermint (same Tree)
some two girls always screaming “OH MY GOD I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER” in the hallway
stress breakdowns before finals
gum under your desk, even in schools that have never allowed gum
Jeopardy review
the Cupid Shuffle
shitty cafeteria food
FREEZE
EVERYBODY CLAP YOUR HANDS
What is the pacer
The pacer test. Where you sprint back and forth across the gym and whoever lasts the longest without experiencing heart failure or respiratory distress wins.
The pacer test is a multi-stage
aerobic capacity test that progressively gets faster as it continues.
Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster
each time you hear this signal: *r2d2 screams
in hell* A single lap should be
completed each time you hear this sound: *digitalized bicycle bell from a five year old about to run your ass over* The second time you fail to complete a lap
before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word
“start.”
Old People Restaurant Scam. You know the scam. Whine about perfectly good food to get some sort of comp.
In their old age, my parents befriended another older couple who would pull this stunt everywhere they went. After my mother told me a few stories about how their new friends had shown them how to get discounted or free meals, I felt like I was suddenly the responsible adult, concerned about the bad influence these people were on my parents.
While visiting my parents with my girlfriend, this other couple attended dinner with us. As I expected, the food was brought to the table and they immediately began dramatically complaining to one another about the quality/taste/temperature/etc. They were making a scene in order to attract the attention of the waitress. When our waitress returned to ask how we were doing, the miserable old bastard who played the lead role in their act took a deep breathe, struck a dramatic pose (with his hand raised to begin gesticulating for emphasis) and bega–I leaned forward and cut him off before he could finish the first word: “Everything is absolutely fantastic. It’s all great! Thank you very much!” She smiled, and began her obligatory “Great, well if you need any–” when he made a second attempt. “We come here all the time an–”. I didn’t acknowledge that he was speaking at all, repeated that all was just as we ordered and thank her again.
He was stunned and thrown off from his routine by my interruption. During this pause the waitress walked away (It seemed clear that she knew what they were trying to accomplish). He turned bright red. I turned to my girlfriend and, smiling and without lowering my voice, stated how pitiful it is that some people could be dishonest, deceitful and put at risk the livelihood of a cook, server or hostess for a pathetic discount or a free early-bird special. My passive-aggressive reverse-parenting broke my parents of the habit in short time.
And baby boomers talk shit about Millennials being entitled
As a Jimmy Johns employee for three years, the largest demographic that scams us for sandwiches are older than 40.
my fav linguistic trend is how younger ppl use “like” to signify paraphrasing and how older ppl dont get it. i’ll say something along the lines of “he was like, ‘fuck off!’” and any older person in the vicinity will be like “did he really say that??” no i was paraphrasing, hence the use of “like” instead of “said.” try to keep up, sandra
sometimes i think a lot about what would have happened if sirius had actually been exonerated at the end of book 3 and harry had gone to live with him and also snape kept his mouth shut and remus kept his job
in the time between sirius being cleared and the end of the school year, sirius starts an intensive course of physical and mental therapy
sirius picking harry up from king’s cross
i know it’s not canon that sirius was an auror after graduating hogwarts but i really like to think he was
anyway once he passes a psych eval he’s reinstated as an auror
kingsley is his partner; they trained together back in the day
it takes kingsley a while but he gets over “sirius black escaped convict and former death eater” and they grow to have a really strong partnership
the rest of the aurors follow suit
the head of the auror office (is it scrimgeour at this point? probably) forming a task force to find pettigrew
sirius wanting to be assigned to that task force but being denied because it’s such a huge conflict of interest
sirius picking up harry from king’s cross when school gets out
both of them really nervous but smiling really big
sirius got a new flat in london in the same neighborhood as his bachelor pad but this one with enough room for both him and harry (and a room that is ostensibly a guest room but really remus uses it all the time that summer)
(he tries to get sirius to let him help with rent and sirius says no because it’s a guest room, remus, you’re a guest, and guests don’t pay rent)
harry spending a lot of time with remus that summer while sirius works
sirius and remus and harry going to the quidditch world cup
ron staying with them in their tent
they get to the top box and they’re in front of the malfoys and sirius just kind of smirks at lucius
sirius’s heart in his throat when he can’t find harry after they’ve gotten the muggles down
sirius almost physically attacking barty crouch for accusing harry of casting the dark mark in the forest
(sirius almost physically attacking barty crouch a lot, tbqh)
sirius trying to be gruff and cheerful when he drops harry off at king’s cross on september first, and thinking about meeting james on that same train 23 years ago
hugging harry tightly but quickly, and harry gripping the back of sirius’s jacket
sirius worried but knowing that remus will look after harry at school
because of how slowly the wheels of justice move, pettigrew’s trial isn’t held until after harry is back at school
remus is there too because they’re both testifying witnesses
it’s a rough day
sirius wondering for a moment if azkaban is a place he’d wish on anyone, even wormtail
then remembering what it felt like to open the door to the cottage at godric’s hollow and seeing james’s body
there on the floor
remus pulls a block of chocolate out of his pocket and hands it to sirius
and then i honestly think sirius would have found a way to get harry out of the triwizard tournament, even if it meant kidnapping the kid
I carefully avoided the car commercial aesthetics or the army recruitment video aesthetics. I avoided making a movie about an army with ranks. I avoided making any kind of message that says war is good. We have enough firepower in the world. I was very careful how I built the movie.
One of the other things I decided was that I wanted a female lead (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi) who has the equal force as the male leads. She’s not going to be a sex kitten, she’s not going to come out in cutoff shorts and a tank top, and it’s going to be a real earnestly drawn character. One of the decisions we made as we went along in the process of the movie was, let’s not have a love story. Let’s have a story about two people…
I have been offered movies that have huge budgets that have war at its centre and I said, ‘I don’t do that.’ I have two daughters and I wanted to make this movie for kids. It’s my lightest movie and yet it’s one of the most precise, adult exercises in world design I’ve ever made. It has the craft of a 48-year-old (del Toro’s age) and the heart of a 12-year-old.
What I wanted was for kids to see a movie where they don’t need to aspire to be in an army to aspire for an adventure. And I used very deliberate language that is a reference to westerns. I don’t have captains, majors, generals. I have a marshal, rangers…it has the language of an adventure movie. I want kids to come out of the movie and say, I want to be a Jaeger pilot! I really think that would be my dream come true.
tumblr friendships are hard to maintain like im sorry i know i havent talked to you in 5 months but you’re still super rad and i still consider us friends im just dumb
how come there isnt a single college professor out there that realizes the address bar on chrome doubles as a google search. every time i see a professor open chrome and then type in google.com i lose 2 days off my life span
this post is making college professors mad every time i get a notification on this post and its a professor upset that theyve been Called Out i just gain back 2 days of my lifespan so keep it up, i might eventually regain all the days i lost watching yall try to figure out how to use The Internet
I’ve looked at synesthesia a few times in the past in psychology classes and just for personal research and I’ve never thought I had it but I had never heard of lexical-gustatory (words/sounds having a taste) until today’s episode and like…that’s something I’ve always experienced. Like I always just assumed that I had a really weird and intense sense of imagery or something.
But the word “good” tastes like a cold, sweet, flowery, juicy pear; “San Diego” tastes like waffles; the voice of the pastor of the church I went to grade school at tasted like tomato sauce (I would get so hungry during chapel services that my stomach would start rumbling); “cherry” tastes cold and sharp and syrupy sweet, like a slushy; the voice of a girl that went to my church when I was little tasted like biting into a crisp, cold Granny Smith apple when she said certain words; I made a post awhile ago (I’ll try to link to it later when I’m not on mobile) about how RandL’s voices together taste like eating fries with a milkshake.
And it’s all a subconscious thing. Like it’s just always been the natural, automatic response to hearing/seeing certain words/voices. But how do I know if it’s something I have or if I’m just like…trying too hard? Like I don’t want to be one of those people who are like, “oh look at how special/different/unique I am I have this thing that you’ve never heard of,” because people pretending they’re a certain way for attention is one of the most irritating things in the world to me, but like I really feel like this could be a legitimate thing…? But I don’t want to be one of those people if it’s not…?
Okay, sweetie, I feel for you. I have synesthesia in a couple forms (I see words spin in my mind’s eye when I listen to someone talk, and voices or music have colors that look like those sound wave things, sometimes numbers or numerical patterns have musical notes, and people have colors–it’s weird but like my mother is dark green and my dad is dark blue and my roommate is bright green and my friend is dark orange, and the colors seem…pretty much baseless although I’ve never liked bright pink or bright orange people much) and I had EXACTLY THAT FREAK OUT. Like, when I’m on the spot I have trouble putting it into words, so I kind of went “right, I’m fooling myself into thinking I’m unique, bad Moran, no biscuit.” But…like…once you start paying attention to it, it’s hard to ignore. So finally I went to my psych teacher and described it and she was like “you have synesthesia” and I blinked at her and went “but it’s not strong enough to be synesthesia” and she gave me what I think is still some of the best advice I’ve ever heard on the subject.
It’s your brain. You’ve always had it. If one sense hooks into another sense in any way, it’s going to feel normal to you, and it might be totally unremarkable to you because you’ve always been this way. You feel me? It’s the same as when my therapist was like “Novel thought, possibly part of the reason exams and busy work are hard for you is because you’re ADHD” and my response was (I kid you not) “Everyone has trouble sitting still for more than ten minutes.” Until someone brought it up with me, I thought it was perfectly normal that I can’t sit still for more than ten minutes or concentrate on a single thing for more than ten minutes, because it just…never occurred to me.
Fortunately, synesthesia is 100% subjective and based on your own experiences, so here’s the only question you need to answer to put your concerns to bed (not permanently, these concerns will be back, but less often maybe). Do you recall this phenomenon of words–>tastes happening before you found the phrase ‘lexical-gustatory synesthesia?’ If so, then it’s not your brain manifesting things to make you feel ‘special,’ no matter how much you worry about such a thing. Please collect your party hat and club jacket on the table to your left.
If you wish to take part in any fandom, you need to accept and respect these three laws.
If you aren’t able to do that, then you need to realise that your actions are making fandom unsafe for creators. That you are stifling creativity.
Like vaccination, fandom only works if everyone respects these rules. Creators need to be free to make their fanart, fanfics and all other content without fear of being harassed or concern-trolled for their creative choices, no matter whether you happen to like that content or not.
The First Law of Fandom
Don’t Like; Don’t Read (DL;DR)
It is up to you what you see online. It is not anyone else’s place to tell you what you should or should not consume in terms of content; it is not up to anyone else to police the internet so that you do not see things you do not like. At the same time, it is not up to YOU to police fandom to protect yourself or anyone else, real or hypothetical.
There are tools out there to help protect you if you have triggers or squicks. Learn to use them, and to take care of your own mental health. If you are consuming fan-made content and you find that you are disliking it - STOP.
The Second Law of Fandom
Your Kink Is Not My Kink (YKINMK)
Simply put, this means that everyone likes different things. It’s not up to you to determine what creators are allowed to create. It’s not up to you to police fandom.
If you don’t like something, you can post meta about it or create contrarian content yourself, seek to convert other fans to your way of thinking.
But you have no right to say to any creator “I do not like this, therefore you should not create it. Nobody should like this. It should not exist.”
It’s not up to you to decide what other people are allowed to like or not like, to create or not to create. That’s censorship. Don’t do it.
The Third Law of Fandom
Ship And Let Ship (SALS)
Much (though not all) fandom is about shipping. There are as many possible ships as there are fans, maybe more. You may have an OTP (One True Pairing), you may have a NOTP, that pairing that makes you want to barf at the very thought of its existence.
It’s not up to you to police ships or to determine what other people are allowed to ship. Just because you find that one particular ship problematic or disgusting, does not mean that other people are not allowed to explore its possibilities in their fanworks.
You are free to create contrarian content, to write meta about why a particular ship is repulsive, to discuss it endlessly on your private blog with like-minded persons.
It is not appropriate to harass creators about their ships, it is not appropriate to demand they do not create any more fanworks about those ships, or that they create fanwork only in a manner that you deem appropriate.
These three laws add up to the following:
You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.
Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.
People keep saying, “what if men did what you did to ghostbusters but the other way around!!!!!” but 1) You can’t. There isn’t one major blockbuster from the past 30 years with enough girls to do that with, and 2) Don’t assume that I wouldn’t completely support an all male cheetah girls reboot
don’t you just love when you’re writing and you get like five paragraphs into a part of the text and realize that you’ve switched tense for no reason? so you have to go back and change every individual verb? does that even happen to other people?
Frogs fall out of my mouth when I talk. Toads, too.
It used to be a problem.
There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.
So I got frogs. It happens.
“You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”
I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.
Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.
Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.
I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening. I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.
Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.
Toads are masters of it.
I learned one day that the amphibians are going extinct all over the world, that some of them are vanishing. You go to ponds that should be full of frogs and find them silent. There are a hundred things responsible—fungus and pesticides and acid rain.
When I heard this, I cried “What!?” so loudly that an adult African bullfrog fell from my lips and I had to catch it. It weighed as much as a small cat. I took it to the pet store and spun them a lie in writing about my cousin going off to college and leaving the frog behind.
I brooded about frogs for weeks after that, and then eventually, I decided to do something about it.
I cannot fix the things that kill them. It would take an army of fairy godmothers, and mine retired long ago. Now she goes on long cruises and spreads her wings out across the deck chairs.
But I can make more.
I had to get a field guide at first. It was a long process. Say a word and catch it, check the field marks. Most words turn to bronze frogs if I am not paying attention.
Poison arrow frogs make my lips go numb. I can only do a few of those a day. I go through a lot of chapstick.
It is a holding action I am fighting, nothing more. I go to vernal pools and whisper sonnets that turn into wood frogs. I say the words squeak and squill and spring peepers skitter away into the trees. They begin singing almost the moment they emerge.
I read long legal documents to a growing audience of Fowler’s toads, who blink their goggling eyes up at me. (I wish I could do salamanders. I would read Clive Barker novels aloud and seed the streams with efts and hellbenders. I would fly to Mexico and read love poems in another language to restore the axolotl. Alas, it’s frogs and toads and nothing more. We make do.)
The woods behind my house are full of singing. The neighbors either learn to love it or move away.
My sister—the one who speaks gold and diamonds—funds my travels. She speaks less than I do, but for me and my amphibian friends, she will vomit rubies and sapphires. I am grateful.
I am practicing reading modernist revolutionary poetry aloud. My accent is atrocious. Still, a day will come when the Panamanian golden frog will tumble from my lips, and I will catch it and hold it, and whatever word I spoke, I’ll say again and again, until I stand at the center of a sea of yellow skins, and make from my curse at last a cloth of gold.
Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…
if there is one piece of relationship advice i could give to straight women, it’s this:
you’re not his mother. you don’t have to take his tantrums and walk him through basic shit. i know women are taught that they have to be nurturing and all that but it’s absolutely not your responsibility to “teach him to be a better person”.
like the stress, the pressure and everything ya know. everyone keeps saying like ‘school makes me cry’ and stuff but has it really made you cry bc i cried a lot of times tbh
This loosely translates as “there is no fundamental problem with this and I have no issue with the people who enjoy it but it makes me personally deeply uncomfortable”
They’re not going to rat you out. They’re going to adjust your anesthesia dosage so you don’t WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF SURGERY.
Some anesthesiologists will refuse to put you under if you’ve smoked cannabis within the past 24 hours – and let’s be clear, this is NOT because they’re morally against it – it’s because THC and anesthetic react in unpredictable ways and waking up in the middle of surgery is slightly less of a concern than SLIPPING INTO A COMA OR DYING.
So there’s that.
Yes, this too. Should have included this. It just wasn’t on my mind when I made the original post because my mind was full of NOPE NOPE NOPE after, you guessed it, one of my patients woke up in the middle of her surgery because she didn’t tell her anesthesia team she used marijuana.
(unfollowed for reylo, which is triggering to me as an abuse survivor)
I…did not intend to reblog anything as Reylo as I firmly do not ship it myself, partly because it is dubious with some heavy abuse overtones (not my jam) and partly because there’s like a 90% chance they’re first degree relatives (REALLY not my jam). My interest in the two of them is more because he seems determined to batter himself to pieces on Rey, which is a dynamic I recognize as being very unhealthy and also find very interesting as a writer. I am sincerely sorry that you found it upsetting (fairly sure I know the post you mean), but not that I find the dynamic interesting.
I am glad you are taking care of yourself, though, and hope that your recovery is going well. You probably won’t see this, but in the event that you do, I want you to know that I am proud of you for surviving and withstanding. I know how hard it can be, some days, to hear the whispers of those who hurt you in the voices of those who haven’t, or see their shadows cast over the things and people you love. You have survived and that makes you strong even on the days when you don’t believe it.
every time i reread ootp i reach a new level of hatred for umbridge like i always think i’ve reached my maximum hatred for her but then i flip the page and its like NOPE THE LEVELS ARE FUCKING RISING AGAIN
So how do you think Rey accepting Kylo's offer to teach her would go down? It seems less like she would accept immediately and more like she would slowly, year by year, conflict by conflict, edge a little closer to saying yes. Well, provided the thought festered in her mind enough.
I could teach you the ways of the Force—
i. The fifth time, he is on his hands and knees in the mud of Daluuj, rain sluicing over the both of them, turning her into a shaking, drowned thing, hair plastered to the fine line of her skull. He can only imagine what he looks like—panting like a winded bantha and gritting his teeth around the pain, down on his belly in the filth.
There are two lightsabers in her hand (both of them his, one by blood, the other the work of his hands.) He hopes, with a bright bitterness, the cracked crystal chooses that moment to fly apart, and swallow her in light.
It does not. Instead, she steps forward, rests a hand on the wet tangle of his hair, very gently, like he is a wild animal to be quieted. (He wants to twist, bite out the soft skin of her wrist, bury his teeth in the tangled thread of veins and nerves and pull, tear. He wants to eat her whole.)
She says, stop asking me that.
ii. He is always asking from his knees, flat to the earth, down on the ground in the mud and snow and grass (once, still spitting out pond scum, green at the corners of his mouth.) She stands above him ever, a tower, a pillar, a thing unmoved. He could batter himself to death against her, and the rain would wash away the blood and she wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t care.
He thinks about tearing down those ramparts, finding the fear he knew still lingered in her, curled up like a sleeping animal. (It was all he had recognized in her mind; everything else was so bright.)
He never tries to coax her out, to persuade her to open the gates and allow him inside. He’s only ever been the tower, or the lightning that fell on it; anything else would be futility. No one welcomes the lightning in because it spoke a few honeyed words.
Also, it never occurs to him to try.
iii. The twelfth time, it’s Glottal and he is on his back, thinking that he should not have worn his cloak—the humidity is thick enough to choke on, and this fight was particularly vicious. She had wanted to end it quickly, and he had not wanted to let her. He tastes salt and blood, when he licks at his lips.
She crouches down beside him, cocks her head. what would you teach me? she asks.
It’s the first time he’s ever seen her eyes without the refracted red and blue of their lightsabers to fill them. They are dark, which he had not expected. The ways of the Force.
She glances down at his body, which struggles under the great invisible weight that will not let him rise, nor reach for his lightsaber. I already know the ways of the Force. What else?
He bares his teeth. Is this how you used to bargain for scraps on Jakku, scavenger?
Yes. What else?
The lightsaber forms. The ancient ones, developed by Jedi and Sith, not some half-trained moisture farmer.
Again, she glances away, this time at his abandoned lightsaber. I think I can manage. What else?
I’ll give you the coordinates for the Stormtrooper training and conditioning facilities, he says after a moment, because he remembers the way she wept over FN-2187 on Starkiller. The Resistance would never pass up a chance to save innocent children from the clutches of the First Order, he knows. He has to believe—
She is perfectly still, resting on her haunches, studying him with those dark eyes. Two locations now, she says finally, as proof of good faith. Next time we can discuss terms. I was a good scavenger, she says, and there’s something almost like a smile, tugging at the corner of her mouth. I was never swindled or cheated, and I don’t intend to start with you.
You never answered my question, you know, she says as they ready themselves to return to their separate ships, carefully standing two lightsabers’ lengths apart. What could I learn from you, Kylo Ren?
The back of his throat is thick with blood and bile, and he has no answer.
iv. Two major Stormtrooper training and conditioning centers burn. The next time they meet, she is a tower, a pillar—but tired-eyed too, and he imagines he can still smell the acrid smoke in her hair, see the bruises from where a hundred small hands reached up to hers, begging sanctuary, sanctuary.
you need a teacher, he says. The hilt of his lightsaber remains in his hand, unignited.
what for? she laughs hollowly. (She does not even reach for hers.)
For a long moment, they stare at one another, and there is only rushing wind. Finally, he says, you do not have to be this.
(he means: tired and bruised, he means, a tower, he means, a thing unmoved, standing over him always. he means: he does not know what he means. he has never tried to articulate it before, not-having-to-be.)
She recoils as though he has struck her—but he has struck her before, and this is worse, the way her eyes open into wounds he did not mean to inflict. And I suppose you are the one to teach me that lesson? she asks, her voice cold as the Outer Rim. Tell me, Ben—did you have to be this?.
(He eventually gives her coordinates for the other three conditioning facilities, the heat from her lightsaber pushing at the softness of his throat. She generously breaks his nose with her boot, before going.)
v. The twenty-third time, he is lying on the floor of Snoke’s chamber, and most of the blood is not his. (Snoke had bled and bled and bled, and he had kept hacking, screaming through mouthfuls of foul ichor, pushing all his pain and fury and didihavetobethisdidyouhavetomakemethis into every blow, even when Snoke’s lightsaber buried itself in his belly, when the Force reached into him and snapped and crushed, and kept breaking—)
hey, he says, though it comes out slurred, half-choking. He can’t seem to draw breath. scavenger, hey. scavenger—I know what I can teach you now.
He is dimly aware of her hands, thin pressure on his skin as though to hold in blood no longer there. Somewhere above him, Leia Organa is screaming for a medic, and he feels a dull pang of regret for that, if nothing else. (something of the boy who once was, cannot bear to see mother cry.) The rest is right though, is fitting (he is always on his knees, on his back, down in the filth and looking up at the ramparts) and
scavenger, he says. She is looking down at him with wide, dark eyes. There is blood on her cheek; he imagines it is his. scavenger, I can teach you this—I can show you how to die. watch carefully, I’ll only demonstrate it once.
don’t—she says in an uncertain voice.
no, you need a teacher, I’ve been saying so since the beginning. watch. watch. are you watching? say ‘yes m—’
In Captain America: Civil War I don’t want Bucky to be some lost little puppy. I want him to be all, “May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.” I want him kicking ass and taking no prisoners. When Bucky has figured himself out, everyone who ever wronged him or Steve better watch their backs because there is going to be a motherfucking reckoning.
