Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Month
no offense but I suck at responding to most messages so please don’t think it’s you. It’s def me.
when the fanfiction you’re reading is so overwhelmingly good that you just have to switch tabs for a moment to collect yourself
Sometimes you need to remind yourself that you were the one who carried you through the heartache. You are the one who sits with the cold body on the shower floor, and picks it up. You are the one who feeds it, who clothes it, who tucks it into bed, and you should be proud of that. Having the strength to take care of yourself when everyone around you is trying to bleed you dry, that is the strongest thing in the universe.
I absolutely needed to read that.
Never not going to reblog this
omg there’s a dog in my yard this is the best day ever
hello fuzzy baby friendNOT A DOG
NOT A DOG
BEAR
ABORT ABORT ABORT
You don’t have to be grateful that it isn’t worse.
read that.
read it again, and again, and again.
somebody, somewhere, always has it worse than you. there is one person on this planet that has it the worst of all, and that person is NOT the only person allowed to be unhappy with their lot.
if things are bad for you, they are bad for you. period.
As a public service to anyone offended by the Harriet Tubman $20 bills, I am willing to accept your unwanted $20 bills, and I will ensure that they are properly disposed of. This offer is open indefinitely, and any amount of $20 bills will be accepted. Thank you.
I’m taking that creative writing class and I just. Okay. Guys. Explain me a thing. WHY have I read two stories in this past semester about rape? I mean, I guess the one was more about abuse followed by murder (see my rant here), but still, Christ. Honestly I’m going to meet with the teacher about the most recent one, which I’m supposed to critique for Thursday, and just be like, “I fucking cannot do this. I am not objective enough to say shit about this girl’s writing. This is pages upon pages of a girl who witnessed the rape of someone she considered a friend and did nothing, and I have spent way too much time on the wrong side of that equation to be objective here.“ I just. Do not understand why rape is the thing. Like, guys, it’s not like it’s edgy and cool, okay, I promise, people have been hideous to each other since fucking Ur was nothing but a twinkle in the eye of some random ape. They’re not treating it as a very deep trauma and dealing with the fallout and handling it with as much care and compassion as possible, it’s not even fucking productive, it’s just annoying, Christ, fucking STOP.
Also, I honestly don’t care if it makes me a cultural heathen, I don’t like weird abstract writing that’s intended to ‘push the boundaries of what we think of as prose.’ Like, no. It’s not a failing on my part if I want to read fantasy novels with, oh, I don’t know, plot and characters and literally anything other than obsessive navel gazing. The next time I have to read the literary equivalent of that very famous piece of modern art that’s literally just a piece of plywood painted uniformly blue, I am going to scream.
FUCKING UPDATE.
So I got out of responding to the rape story, but I still had to go to class so that I could respond to the OTHER story we read (see above re: fucking abstractist writing that I still hardcore do not like). And I was like “All right, I can live with this, I got my iPod, I got my Fall Out Boy, I got my writing, I can do this.” But I forgot that the classroom is really small and my seat is very close to the teacher, so I couldn’t, like, crank my music to the point where I couldn’t hear anyone talking and so I ended up listening to the talking. And fuck me I’m angry.
Pro tip: as a teacher at a college that specializes in taking people out of like sophomore year of high school (I dropped out and started college at 16), it is your goddamn job to express clear ethical and legal boundaries. Admitting that rape is wrong is awesome, but it is ALSO WRONG to abandon a rape victim when you have every opportunity to help them. You should not ever be talking about how well a student puts the reader into the mind of a witness and makes their decision to not help understandable.
Also, there was a lot of talking about “Well, I feel like there was some confusion about consent between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.” Let’s be clear here, folks, if I wave a knife at you and you say “Oh no, don’t stab me,” and then I stab you thirty-five times in the chest, the cops are not going to be like “Well, I feel like there was some confusion between the stabber and the stabee.” That’s not how it works. If the girlfriend says no, pushes the boyfriend away physically, and reaches out to a bystander for help, that is not ‘confusion,’ that is pretty fucking clearly not consent. Like, you know what, if you’re going to make me fucking sit through this story, you’d better at least have the stones to admit that your student turned in a story about rape and you forced the rest of the class to read it.
I’ve reached this point of universally being furious with everyone in my writing class. Even the people I like. Literally just existing in the class is enough to make me angry with you, by, like, transitive properties of loathing. And my teacher can fuck the entire way off and not make snide remarks about my writing anymore just because I don’t fucking turn in weird abstract rape stories.
FUCKING EDIT: Did I forget to mention that it’s actually literally illegal to do nothing to aid the victim of a rape? LOOK AT THIS. You can be charged as an accessory to literally whatever the perpetrator is charged with.
The Empire told stories about Leia Organa.
They started off simple: calling her a simple-minded fool. Leia Organa was a silly little princess throwing a tantrum over her planet being punished for its treachery. Pretty but petty, and ever so vain, Leia Organa was just a spoiled little twit spitting rage for not being given the power she wanted and having a fit over being caught at a crime.
Those stories didn’t work very well.
The repeated success of such a tiny and ragtag group of rebels proved that there were clever and cunning folk behind the Rebellion. For a silly twit, Leia Organa slipped out of too many traps, stole too much information and too many supplies, shot down too many Imperial forces, and succeeded in her command again and again.
It didn’t reflect well against the Empire that a spoiled princess kept foiling them over and over again, even if sometimes by the thinnest of hairs.
And everyone who’d ever met Leia Organa could never believe them, and Leia Organa had met many people as she negotiated and coerced more and more allies for the Rebellion, and many people before when she pretended to exist under the Empire’s rule. I met Leia Organa once, traders and governors and senators many others across the galaxy would say, and she’s nothing like they say she is.
Leia Organa is pretty and a princess, but her eyes are sharp and her words are sharper still, and she is made of kindness and cleverness and grief and rage. She has little patience for anyone who believes the Empire’s stories about her. Anyone who can look into her eyes and think her shallow must be blind to miss the death and hopes and dreams of an entire planet; there is nothing simple about any of the last children of Alderaan and everyone knows it - as deep down as the scream that echoed through the galaxy.
The Empire switches tactics - took them long enough - and calls the simple-minded fool and silly little princess a masterful illusion. She’s a lie, they say, and a liar. Leia Organa is a beautiful temptress, a demoness feeding on the chaos of war, a front for the Rebel cause, hungry for power and revenge and the deaths of all she can lure to her weak, pointless, useless cause. This princess who should have died is only a campaign strategy hiding under a pretty woman’s face.
Some stories say that Leia Organa is dead. She died with Alderaan; her silly support of the rebels killed her. What exists now is a sick, twisted figurehead invention of the Rebellion to gain support - a lying lie. A ghost, a demon, an undead enchantress and seductress who weaves pretty and terrible falsehoods and deceptions.
Leia Organa hears these rumors and instead of scoffing like she did at those that proclaimed her a brainless twit, she laughs. Then she scoffs. And then she goes back to work. The Empire can say what it wants, that won’t make it true that the Rebellion isn’t gaining ground. (It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be.)
A similar reaction goes through most of the Rebellion, those who don’t scoff with disgust burst into laughter and laugh until they cry. Oh yeah, Red Squadron agrees, wiping actual tears off their cheeks, that’s the princess, alright, seducing men left and right. Yep, there she is now, standing on a box and yelling like a howleroo in General Solo’s face again as he yells back. Hair frizzy from working all night and wearing Skywalker’s ugly yellow jacket again, that’s the true picture of temptation and enchantment.
Luke laughs so hard that he falls to the floor and can’t get up for fifteen minutes. (Anyone who so must as suggests it might be true in front of him quickly learns the true meaning of fear, but otherwise) Luke nearly dies because he keeping cracking up and almost hits his head on stuff, and Wedge has had to repeatedly drag him off to Medical to check if there’s something wrong with him.
(The tests keep coming up negative but Wedge doesn’t understand how anyone can find their own intragalatic Imperial reputation as a dangerous religious lunatic absolutely hilarious. There’s something in the sand on Tatooine, you mark Wedge’s words.)
Han Solo can’t believe what he’s hearing when he hears the rumors, and doesn’t even laugh. He teases Princess Leia about it, of course, but everybody quickly learns not to joke about it in his presence because suddenly the smuggler’s all you wanna repeat that, buddy? And nobody wants to have their arms torn off by a Wookie.
The Empire can tell all the stories it wants, it still loses in the end.
About twenty years later, the First Order tells stories about Leia Organa, and it’s the same old story all over again. (A son of Skywalker has fallen, the Jedi have fallen with stragglers scattered across the stars, someone building another giant super-weapon, and the Organas are fighting back against an Empire.) Demonize and dehumanize.
The only difference is that they acknowledge the existence of the Force again, saying she uses it to twist minds and hearts and souls, and they don’t call her beautiful anymore.
Leia Organa pretends to be a kindly old woman, but she’s really a cunning old crone. She’s a bitter old hag who can’t let go of rebellion, who wants to tear the galaxy apart because she wants everything but her wrinkled hands can’t handle it all. A small and sickly, but deadly and devious and dangerous and ugly witch.
And that’s not even getting started on what they say about Luke
Leia Organa just laughs, then scoffs. (There’s a pain in her chest, but it’s not important.) And then she gets back to work. She remembers when she used to be beautiful, you know.
(“Used to be,” Han says with loyal disdain, then insists, “Still.”)
These little men can talk all they want to prove what big boys they are, but she’s gone from a pretty-petty princess to a villainous temptress and fabrication to an old and terrible witch, and she’s still kicking.
Those stories didn’t work very well.
(At least, she thinks they didn’t. She hopes so. It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be. Oh, to think that she could find them both, in the dark and distant places they’ve gone to, and bring them home.)
They’ll prove them wrong again.
JUST FUCK ME UP.
my boyfriend said he was gonna email me this ~fantasy~ about us, so i’m expecting a dirty email and he just sent it and it starts off with five paragraphs of worldbuilding
i swear to fucking god.
Imagine your OTP
Fuck an OTP; I would do this!
Every smut fest from you ever.
OMFG
So I’m watching this voice acting documentary on Netflix, “I Know That Voice,” and it’s really good anyway and y'all should watch it.
But they have Kevin Conroy on and they’re into a section about being recognized out in public and Conroy tells this story.
He lives in NYC apparently, and after the 9/11 attacks he helped out making meals for people (in a soup kitchen type thing, I’m gathering).
So one day one guy comes up to him and says, “You know I’m a construction worker in my day job. What do you do?”
And Conroy tells him that he does voice acting.
And the guy gets all excited, like, “I knew it! You're that Kevin Conroy, you’re Batman!”
And the guy went out into the dining area and just announced to all of the people there, “You know who’s been cooking your dinner? Batman.”
The room went completely quiet and eventually some guy at the far end of the room called out, “Bullshit! Make him prove it!”
So Kevin fucking Conroy just stood in the fucking kitchen and did the, “I am vengeance. I am the night! I am Batman!” line.
And the guy was like, “Holy shit it IS Batman!” and everyone cheered.
And the guy who originally approached Conroy came back to him to tell him, “How does it feel to be Santa Claus? 'Cause that’s what you just did.”
And that’s one of the best Batman stories I’ve ever heard.
This is the batmaniest thing to ever batman.
A seriously ill student has begged for help stem cell donor in the next two months after being told she will die if no match is found.
Final-year Cardiff University medical student Vithiya Alphons , from London, said she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia after falling ill during a lecture.
Doctors have warned her she is facing a race against time to find a donor - something made more complicated by her Sri Lanka heritage.
Ms Alphons said: “I knew it was going to be difficult because there aren’t many people from South Asian backgrounds who are signed up as donors.
@muttonrolls i think you have a bunch of sri lankan followers (?) if you don’t mind sharing
Yeah I’ve actually posted about this!!! Thank you though I’ll reblog this so more people can see it :-)
if there was a way to make your blog have a smell, so that everyone visiting your blog automatically smelled it, what would you make your blog smell like?
This is actually really interesting to see people reply to, it tells you something about everyone and I love it
A new pack of mtg
Some sort of fresh fruit.
Smell: Roasting red meat, well oiled steel and gasoline.
Marshmellows over the hot coals of a fire.
Musty, but the good kind of musty. Like an old library or an abandoned cabin in the woods.
Open field, grass, wild flowers, fresh air
Grape lollipops!!!
Coffee
Old books and fresh bread
Lilacs and damp earth.
Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
Coconut lime verbena, like the bottle of fragrance I have for candlemaking.
rain and damp soil
Rose water and almond extract.
Sunblock. And baby, obviously. Mine smells like a love cookie.
Jasmine tea, campfire smoke, old books, and the air before a thunderstorm.
It’s probably gonna sound super stupid but Raid mosquito tablets. They remind me of summer and childhood.
old books, shea butter, leather, and cloves
Roses and petrichor.
Dear 15
When the car breaks down (again), you will reach deep into your pockets and offer up all of your measly life’s savings to fix it. Your mother will shake her head and you will not understand it. There is a lot you don’t understand, yet. And sometimes love comes in the shape of a “no” you are not equipped to accept. But 15 isn’t nearly so grown up at you think it is and the future is toddering toward you on shaky legs and it’s okay to be afraid of it. You don’t know who you are right now, but here are a couple hints: red meat makes your stomach hurt, pink is not the enemy, and girls are really, really pretty. And it’s okay if you want to kiss them.
Dear 13
Get a good look at this one—you’re going to remember him. The cherub face, the voice that rings louder than the one in your own throat; he is the worst thing that ever happened to you. But it will take four more years of being crushed into the margins of your own story to realize that. Right now, right now, he comes dressed as the answer to all of your prayers: looks like God right when you were starting to wonder if there was one. But, darling, if I could go back and keep you away from him, I wouldn’t. He is the atom bomb to your Nevada body and he mushroom-clouds everything that you think you know about yourself.
But he is also one of the only reasons you make it, at all. Broken things always grow back stronger, and now he’s a rumor of a boy with no home that wants him, and you are still standing. And you are stronger.
Dear 11
This is dangerous loving. You are too small, too soft. They are going to make mincemeat of you.
Dear 17
You took it too far—turned lonely into solitary confinement and apathy into a pissing contest. But the betrayals don’t hurt anymore so, hey, you did it. You let the ones who hurt you go. You let everything go. Your body is a steel wall, ninety degrees of unbending Empty. Your first kiss is a boy you hate; you are done leaving voicemails for a boy who might be dead, tomorrow; they are not the same boy, but they might as well be. You will snowball all this Nothing into an avalanche.
Dear 19
Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop. You can’t set fire to the hurting.
Now
11 wants to know what you did with your hair. 15 misses Dad and 19 doesn’t. None of us even recognize you and we can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad one but 13 is in love and 19 is kicking the shit out of her. And 15 is in love and 19 is setting her hair on fire and 17 says she doesn’t know what love means. 11 cried her eyes out yesterday and 17 didn’t do anything. How did you grow up on the backs of so many broken things? How strong can a bed of eggshells be? 15 is starving for affection—can’t remember the last time she was touched. 13 still has nightmares about the boy on the bus and the grin on his face and his hand down the front of her jeans and the way her heart felt like a chicken-wire fence caught in a hurricane. 13 didn’t get out of bed today. 17 sees the boy and hugs him instead of hitting him and feels sick for weeks but 19 is a survivor and she tells the rest of us to get the fuck over it.
What we mean is… are you happy? Because 19 made homes out of beds that she didn’t belong in and we just want 21 to make it.
Are you making it?
what i love about both remus and lily is that they both seem to do this thing where it’s like “oh you’re an asshole? then you may right now immediately go fuck yourself” like when snape called lily a mudblood she was instantly like “ok you deserve whatever you get also your underpants are gross #evansout” and then when remus finds out that peter is alive he’s instantly just down to calmly fucking murder him “shall we kill him together?” like dad please
Remus and Lily will stick by you through hell and high water, even if they know you’re in the wrong and kick themselves for enabling you. But if you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don’t deserve it and you never did, then you are well and truly invited to a game of Hide and Go Fuck Yourself.
grantaire-put-that-bottle-down:
hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!
No no no! Jewish LGBTQ kinderlach! Go to Keshet!
hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.
If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too!
Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!
Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!
–BB
MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.
REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS
i think we all have that one piece of media we like that’s basically “i love this thing, but i dont think everyone should watch this thing and would not categorically recommend it to other people i know, this thing has a lot of problems and i am the first person you should ask if you want to know a long list of criticisms, but i REALLY ENJOY THIS THING” its like holding up a can of trash to everyone else and saying “you are a reasonable person and you would not enjoy touching this garbage and i value that about you” and then pouring it out on the ground and rolling around in it yourself
Reblog if you’d love to see Carrie Fisher strangle Donald Trump to death with a chain
At first I didn’t understand the context and I was like “kinda specific but sure yeah I’m down”
Are you kidding, I’d pay money to see Carrie Fisher strangle Donald Trump to death with a chain
one of my Favorite Things is when you have a line in a song that’s obviously a metaphor but when you put it in the right fandom context it’s actually completely literal
What are y'all allergic to I’m really curious
If a little girl says that she thinks boys are gross, the correct response isn’t “you’ll like boys when you’re older, honey,” it’s “you don’t have to like boys if you don’t want to.”
i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls
Never don’t reblog this.
There are so many people who have such bad anxiety about phone calls.
This can save so many lives
This time last year I was unemployed, broke, and suicidal.
Today, I just got the keys to my first house.
Give it time.
Needed this today
when you hear people preach that it gets better, they aren’t joking. if it’s not better yet, it will be.
this post could literally be saving lives rn and that is why i love this website.
(2/2) Some guy gets a tattoo of a random array and tells people its what the Flame Alchemist uses to make fire when it actually makes dirt take the shape of a square or something. Anyone who actually knows anything about alchemy brings their own array for the tattoo artist to use as reference.
EXCELLENT IM SCREAMING
Even better when some of these nonsense formations get super popular and everyone’s buying gear with it. (Which the alchemists don’t stop because people walking around with bullshit alchemic arrays are really no harm)
Except one day when Mustang’s walking through the streets of Central, some teen decked out in nonsense alchemy tattoos stops him like
Kid: “Cool Flame Alchemist costume, but your flame salamander is on the wrong side.”
Mustang: *pointing aggressively to his glove* “The flame salamander is not on the wrong side!”
fun drinking game: enjoltaire (two friends share 8 shots, holding hands)
…two truths and a lie.
one. If you cut Poe Dameron open (and they have, a few times, because shrapnel is a kung-fucker, and he’s gotten sort of attached to not having alusteel in his bloodstream) you’d find the Republic there, scored into the underside of his ribs. Mama used to say that nursed them together, Poe and his little sister, Revuelta, born screaming in the cockpit of her x-wing.
but I’m your favorite! Poe had always giggled, finishing the story for her, and mama always had said, never doubt it, ishoco, because that was simpler than, it was easier to bring you into the world. there was less blood.
(every child’s origins are the stuff of mythology, at least in the way you tell it—Ben Organa came too early, in the midst a magnetic storm that almost tore the Falcon to pieces; Rey breathed her first during starfall, on a planet whose name no one could quite remember. The boy who would one day be called Finn, meaning fair, slept in the circle of his mother’s arms that first night, because she never wanted to let him leave her skin.
Poe Dameron was born screaming into the cockpit of his mother’s x-wing, cradling alzamiento between his heart and his breastbone.)
two. Everyone gets it wrong, they say it must have been when and talk about control sticks and x-wings, punching through to the blue-white of hyperspace. Maybe for everyone else, it was. But to him, flying didn’t even register as something else, different than breathing, or internal organs, something that could be articulated in the subjunctive. Sitting in a cockpit is like tasting the inside of his mouth, there’s nothing there but more of him, more himness.
He couldn’t have fallen in love with a thing indistinguishable from the shape of his skin.
No, the first time Poe fell in love, it was with a hastily holo-copied piece of flimsi, handed out among T-14 class. Through the transparisteel was a bright, clear afternoon, so he caught only fragments of what his teacher was saying, perished with Alderaan, and best known poet of the civil war—
It’s chance that his eyes land on the single line of hand-scrawled poetry:when the multitudes run rioting against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand
(Under his breastbone, Revuelta stirs. Poe falls in love—not with poetry but with the image, himself, all skinny adolescent elbows, standing against the unjust and holding the torch.)
After his mother’s funeral, he goes on a nerve burner of a bender, and wakes up three days later at the foot of the Force-tree. (It hasn’t flowered since the attack on the new Jedi temple, but Poe fights the strange urge to apologize.) His side aches sharply, and he cringes, stumbling inside to the refresher.
He lifts his shirt to see ‘with the torch in my hand’, tattooed along the slant of his ribs.
three. He hasn’t slept more than four standard units for a week when the General finds him under his x-wing. BB-8 (that traitor) doesn’t warn him, and so suddenly she’s there, passing him the sonic wrench he had been vainly reaching for.
She’s shorter than he is, Poe realizes with a start. Standing in the command center, surrounded by people who need orders and answers, she’s always seemed to eat up space, towering above them—here she’s just a woman. He can see the places where the eumelanin regeneration has left her scalp blotchy.
general, he says.
you know my brother blew up the Death Star, the General replies idly, and it takes Poe a minute to remember that Luke Skywalker, Star-killer, is actually the same man as General Organa’s brother. (Poe mostly remembers the latter skipping stones across a pond with the Force, talking to a tree in Poe’s yard as though he expected it to answer back.)
he asked to be moved to planetside combat, after that, she adds after a moment.
Poe blinks. I didn’t know that, ma’am.
Luke said he had heard them, crying out, all the voices of the Death Star as they perished. he couldn’t do it again, he said—he said ’at least with a blaster, you can only kill one at a time.’
Poe stares. His fingers are numb around the sonic wrench.
war is ugly, lieutenant, the General says. There’s something carved-out about how she says it, like she’s had this conversation too many times before. anyone who tells you different is lying, or trying to recruit you. but you did good work on Eraski; it was necessary and you did it well, you did it cleanly. I wish that weren’t such a cold comfort.
I—is it worth it? he asks the General. He wants to ask Princess Leia Organa, whose planet was swallowed up by black and fire, everything she loved with it, but it’s not his place. Only mama had ever called her leia, with the artificial lung to prove she had earned the right.
(the kriffing bey legacy, Poe’s father had snarled, when Poe told him he was defecting to the Resistance. always happy to bleed for leia organa.)
For a long moment, the General is silent. When she reaches up and touches Poe’s face, he flinches—but she just traces his cheek with her fingertips before dropping her hand. go to bed, dameron, she says, very quietly. your mother would have killed me if she knew I’ve turned you into such a lich.
yes, ma’am, Poe says.
She’s very tall, walking away.
Okay, well obviously Anakin is the slave boy / man in black / Dread Sith Lord Vader. (But not the real Lord Vader. Anakin took the title from the man who supposedly killed him, but who in fact took him on as an apprentice; his name was really Dooku. He himself had inherited the title from the previous Lord Vader, who was not the real Lord Vader either. His name was Sifo-Dyas. The real Lord Vader had been retired thirty years and living like a king on Nar Shaddaa. It was the name, Dooku explained, that was important for inspiring the necessary fear. No one would surrender to the Dread Sith Lord Ani.)
Padmé is the simple peasant girl Palpatine picked to be Queen of Naboo. Originally, he planned to have her murdered on her coronation and the Trade Federation blamed for it, thus sparking the war that would bring him to power. But when that fails, he has to regroup and finally decides it’s going to be so much more moving when he has her killed not as an innocent victim but as a martyr.
Nute Gunray has been secretly hired by Palpatine to murder Padmé and start a war (a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition). He in turn has hired two mercenaries to help him with the task: the former Jedi padawan turned drunken soldier of fortune Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the prospector and prize fighter Dexter Jettster.*
Obi-Wan saw his Jedi master murdered by a mysterious tattooed Sith Lord when he was still a padawan. Now, Obi-Wan loved his master, and so naturally he challenged his murderer to a duel. He failed, but the Sith let him live, and now he has dedicated his life to revenge…and left the Jedi Order to seek it. He’s been searching for the tattooed Sith ever since.
Dex is honestly in this gig for the money, but he’s forever annoying Nute with his horrible dad jokes and puns, and in spite of himself he’s basically adopted Obi-Wan. The guy clearly needs someone to look after him.
Maul is the tattooed Sith Obi-Wan is searching for. He’s been working as Palpatine’s lieutenant all this time. His assistant Ventress keeps his Pit of Despair running smoothly.
Barriss is the Jedi healer who used to work for the Republic, until the Republic’s stinking Chancellor fired her (and all the other Jedi), and thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject.
Ahsoka is not a witch, she’s her wife, but after what Barriss just said, she’s not even sure she wants to be that anymore.
Yoda is a very impressive clergyman indeed. Because of reasons.
*
A few choice scenes:
Anakin learning fencing and the Force and anything else people will teach him while playing aide to Dooku’s Dread Sith Lord Vader.
“Good night, Anakin. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
*
Obi-Wan helping Anakin scale a cliff so that they can have a proper duel. “I see you’re a Sith Lord,” he says. “You don’t by any chance have tattoos on your face?”
“Do you always begin conversations this way?”
Obi-Wan tells his story, after which Anakin graciously removes his mask to show that his face is tattoo-free. And then they fight. It’s all very cordial.
*
“Why are you wearing a mask?” Dex asks. “Were you burned by lava or something?”
“Oh no, it’s just they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”
*
Anakin and Nute Gunray have a battle of wits.
“But Sarlaac venom is from Tatooine, and Tatooine, as everyone knows, is entirely peopled with criminals, who are used to not being trusted as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.”
*
Padmé and Anakin escape to Tatooine (it’s definitely Tatooine), where they attempt to hide out from Palpatine.
“What are the three dangers of Tatooine? One, the lightning sand. No problem. Two, the sarlaac pits. There’s a growling sound that precedes those, so we can avoid them easily…”
“Anakin, what about the WROUSes?”
“Womp rats of unusual size? I don’t think they exist.”
A fight with several womp rats immediately follows.
*
Padmé makes a bargain with Palpatine to save Anakin’s life. At this point she hasn’t realized quite how awful Palpatine is, but even so, she’s already planning how she’s going to get out of this.
Unfortunately, Palpatine wastes no time at all, and Anakin is turned over to Maul to be tortured. There’s dismemberment involved. When Obi-Wan and Dex find him, he’s a mangled, limbless husk, and very definitely dead.
*
Or…maybe only mostly dead.
Obi-Wan tries several stories to convince Barriss to help. She finds each of these stories increasingly ludicrous.
“He’s the Chosen One, destined to bring balance to the Force!”
Barriss just stares at him. “Boy are you a rotten liar,” she says.
“I need him to help avenge my master, murdered these twenty years!”
Barriss is even less impressed by this, but she takes a look, and unfortunately for her, Ahsoka won’t give her any peace until she’s brought Anakin back. It takes a lot of doing. Not so much miracle pills as the miracle of modern cybernetics, but hey, it amounts to the same thing in the end.
Besides, Obi-Wan’s promised that if Barriss saves Anakin, Palpatine suffers humiliations galore, and that is definitely a noble cause.
*
Meanwhile Padmé has a crisis of conscience and goes barging into Palpatine’s office one night.
“It comes to this: I love democracy. I always have. If you tell me I must be your puppet Queen, please believe I will be leading a revolution by morning.”
*
Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Dex break into the Naboo palace by means of a cunning plan involving a hover sled, Ventress’ lightsabers, and a fog machine they found in Maul’s torture pit. (Look, Maul is absolutely the dramatic type who owns a fog machine. Don’t blame me. That’s just science.)
Rescuing Padmé proves to be the most difficult part of the whole plan, mainly because Padmé has already rescued herself, and finding her is a bit difficult. And then Obi-Wan catches sight of Maul the tattooed Sith, and he’s off on his quest for vengeance.
Meanwhile Anakin still can’t walk that well on his new legs and ends up having to bluff his way through a fight with Palpatine.** Or at least, to keep Palpatine occupied just long enough for Padmé to take him down with a stun blast.
(Anakin really wanted to kill him, but Padmé insists Palpatine has to stand trial. Anakin isn’t convinced; at least, not until she points out that Palpatine living a long life alone in prison with his failures would make a much more satisfying revenge.)
*
“Hello. My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.”
*
And of course, for maximum irony, this story ends with Obi-Wan becoming the new Dread Sith Lord Vader.
——————————-
* Okay, okay. I realize Dex as Fezzik is a stretch. But everyone else fits so perfectly and there’s really no one in the PT era who fits for Fezzik. I considered Chewie, but he doesn’t have a connection with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan apparently has no friends outside of Anakin and Dex. :( So.
** So I wanted to make a joke about “to the pain,” only I realized that what happens to Anakin in canon basically is “to the pain,” which…kinda destroys the humor tbh.
does anyone else follow people who don’t even have the same interests as you, but you’ve followed them for years and you can’t imagine unfollowing them?
it’s like, no that’s joan the dolphin lover? she’s practically your neighbor on this website? you’ve never talked, you’re not even mutuals, but damn she loves dolphins. And every time you see her on your dash, you’re just like, oh wonderful, joan’s still alive, just doing her thing. she’s getting into golden age russian cat literature, good for her!
this person doesn’t even know they’ve been on your dash through the ups and downs of your life. Their presence and cactus obsession is just something kind of familiar and almost comforting to you?
imagine hamilton finding out about mount rushmore
he’d see washington’s enormous face carved in granite and be in absolute awe–
and then he’d see jefferson’s face up there peaking out over washington’s shoulder and just. SCREAM
Do you ever wonder what your legacy is on this website
Like if you deactivated tomorrow, what would people remember you for
Then remember that you’ve done nothing special and nobody would care nor notice if you deactivated because same
Can we turn this into an ask meme?
pls tell me
okay sure although I feel like the answer is “talking about Ant-Man” for like…90% of you.
Getting a firm handle on the geography of Ancient Greece both answers and raises questions.
On the one hand, the logistics of all those huge military campaigns make a lot more sense once you realise that many of the great city-states were basically within walking distance of each other. In many cases, those logistics boil down to less “establish a supply train” and more “well, make sure you pack a snack”.
On the other hand, all those episodes where great heroes spend years lost in the wilderness or adrift at sea become more difficult to reconcile. It’s like… how can you possibly get that lost for that long? If you found a good-size hill to climb, you can practically see your destination from your starting point!
It is a puzzlement.
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I realized the entirety of the Odyssey, which is described like this grand globe spanning adventure, probably just all took place around one tiny ass sea
Yeah, something that often throws modern readers is that most Ancient Greek cultures didn’t really have a concept of ocean voyages as we think of them. They relied heavily on coastal landmarks for navigation, which forced them to stay in sight of land. Very often they didn’t even stay on the ships full-time, instead going ashore to camp out each night. The closest they usually got to actual trans-oceanic travel was island-hopping - i.e., a series of short jaunts with daily stops at conveniently located islands along the way. If you ended up spending multiple days on a ship, that meant somebody had screwed up.
The upshot is that when you read those accounts of epic ocean voyages spanning dozens of far-off lands, you’ve gotta bear in mind that the places they’re describing are typically less than a day apart by sea.
Friendly reminder that Martha Washington outlived two husbands and four children and still maintained that one of the worst days of her life was the day Thomas Jefferson came to call.
Basically, I imagine those same two stormtroopers who walked by the interrogation room when Kylo was destroying everything to go and patrol down on the maintenance level- things are kicking off, it’s quiet down there, they can just wait until this whole Resistance thing blows over. And then they’re walking past this panel and it’s punched out from the inside by Captain Phasma, covered in space garbage and clutching a dianoga’s dripping eyestalk in her fist.
“The trash compactor requires maintenance.” Phasma says coolly, to the trooper who hasn’t soiled himself. “Alert the janitorial detail.”
I’m just gonna leave this here
while I feels in a corner.beautiful…
IM NOT CRYING YOURE CRYING
UNCALLED FOR.
I’m taking that creative writing class and I just. Okay. Guys. Explain me a thing. WHY have I read two stories in this past semester about rape? I mean, I guess the one was more about abuse followed by murder (see my rant here), but still, Christ. Honestly I’m going to meet with the teacher about the most recent one, which I’m supposed to critique for Thursday, and just be like, “I fucking cannot do this. I am not objective enough to say shit about this girl’s writing. This is pages upon pages of a girl who witnessed the rape of someone she considered a friend and did nothing, and I have spent way too much time on the wrong side of that equation to be objective here.“ I just. Do not understand why rape is the thing. Like, guys, it’s not like it’s edgy and cool, okay, I promise, people have been hideous to each other since fucking Ur was nothing but a twinkle in the eye of some random ape. They’re not treating it as a very deep trauma and dealing with the fallout and handling it with as much care and compassion as possible, it’s not even fucking productive, it’s just annoying, Christ, fucking STOP.
Also, I honestly don’t care if it makes me a cultural heathen, I don’t like weird abstract writing that’s intended to ‘push the boundaries of what we think of as prose.’ Like, no. It’s not a failing on my part if I want to read fantasy novels with, oh, I don’t know, plot and characters and literally anything other than obsessive navel gazing. The next time I have to read the literary equivalent of that very famous piece of modern art that’s literally just a piece of plywood painted uniformly blue, I am going to scream.
