Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Jun 19
clones-away-deactivated20161015 asked: Padme is gonna fix it right? I mean, we haven't even gotten to the handmaiden-ing thing. Those girls will raise Anakin well, I think. ;)
“No one owns you, Ani,” Padmé repeats, not understanding how he can ask that like he’s worried. Except–she does. Of course she does.
He’s nine. And she’d even thought it herself, too.
Of course he’s worried about not being owned.
“You are a friend to Naboo, and you have done a great thing for our people,” she tells him quietly, again barely resisting the urge to grab his hands. She knows she would still grip them much too hard, especially now. “You will never be a slave again, but I promise, you will not be abandoned. Naboo will take care of you as one of our own, if you will have us. We would be honored to take care of you.”
“I can fix things,” Anakin says, ducking his head in a very young way, his hair hiding his eyes. "And I can fly–you saw, I’m a really good pilot. And I know how to–”
“Ani,” Padmé interrupts carefully, and allows herself to settle her hands very gently on his shoulders. “I know that you are valuable. You are very valuable to me. You are kind and you are brave, and–”
“I’m not brave!” Anakin blurts, shaking his head. “The Council would train me if I was brave. But they looked, and I’ve got too much fear in me.”
“That makes you no less valuable. We all have fear in us,” Padmé says, mystified as to how fear could possibly be a hinderance to a peacekeeper. Fear is like pain–a needed warning, and a lesson. “Fear is a thing that you feel, but brave is a thing that you do. And I have already seen you choose to do it time and again.”
Anakin ducks his head again, looking very small, and Padmé wants so badly to wrap him up in her arms and all her regalia and disappear him someplace where the Jedi and the Gungans and the Supreme Chancellor and just–none of them are, not a one, just herself and Sabé and Rabé and Eirtaé and–
Someone like Anakin should never look so small. Really, no one should, but Anakin of all people even less so.
“I can read Huttese and Bocce and I understand Binary, and I can fix anything I can take apart, and I can take apart anything if I’ve got tools. And I know how to build a portable vaporator and I built C-3PO all by myself, and I know how to find food and water in the desert and cook porridge and stew, and, and I–” he stutters, and Padmé just listens helplessly as he keeps obsessively rattling off his skills like he thinks needs to prove something about himself to her. She lets him, because he seems just as helpless to stop himself. She doesn’t know what to say anyway.
Maybe she has a little more sympathy for Obi-Wan holding back from telling him about the Council just yet, though. Listening to this hurts.
“That’s very good, Ani,” she manages once he finally runs out of words, or maybe just runs out of breath, and swallows hard at the sight of him. He’s flushed and half-panting and looks like he might cry. She feels like she might cry, and she wants to disappear him more than ever. She wishes Master Qui-Gon had lived. She wishes Obi-Wan could do–something. “I’m sure you’ll do very well on Naboo, if you stay.”
“Stay where?” Anakin asks, giving her an unnerved look, and Padmé thinks of his fear and uncertainty and poorly-defined concept of “freedom” and has a strange, irrational urge to never trust another sentient near him again.
“Wherever you want to,” she says anyway, because Anakin is free, even if he still doesn’t fully understand what it means, and she can’t answer that question for him. “We’ll help you find a place you like. Naboo will take care of you no matter where you are.”
“I’m scared,” Anakin says, shoulders hunching again and expression ashamed.
“That’s okay,” Padmé says, tightening her grip on his shoulders hopefully not too much. “You can fix things and fly, and you are a very good pilot. And you are so, so brave and kind.”
“I’m not,” Anakin says, shaking his head.
“Would an angel lie to you?” Padmé asks with a weak attempt at a smile. Anakin tries to return it, she thinks, but his attempt is even weaker. She does not blame him. “You can feel as afraid as you like. That’s fine. We’ll be here to help you be brave, too. We are Naboo. That is what we do for each other.”
Anakin stares at her for a long moment, nods helplessly, and then starts to cry. Padmé is certain she grips him too hard when she pulls him into a hug, but he only pushes in harder.
“We now know that 24 hours without sleep, or a week of sleeping four or five hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1 percent. We would never say, ‘This person is a great worker! He’s drunk all the time!’ yet we continue to celebrate people who sacrifice sleep for work.”
—
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.
Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.
Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year. “By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.
Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”
I am 100% behind this idea.
YESYESYESYESYES
This is brilliant, and should absolutely happen.
Or it shouldn’t happen, and the insane, racist, classist policy of drug testing welfare recipients should be ended immediately.
I don’t understand why High School Musical 4 is going to get an entire new cast when all they had to do was set it at Chad and Ryan’s wedding
Sharpay - mellowed out some with age, still struggling to make it big, chronically single - insists she’s happy for Ryan but quickly devolves into her obligatory show-stopper about how she’s sick of waiting to meet someone who’s right for her. (Mostly the song entails Sharpay singing her ridiculously long laundry list of requirements while trying on bedazzled wedding dresses.)
There’s a running gag that Troy is supersupersuper late for the wedding. We may or may not ever actually see him, since Zac Efron didn’t even come to the damn ten year reunion and is apparently a huge party pooper. What we do see is Gabriella on the phone with him every fifteen minutes or so, urging him to hurry up. Eventually she decides that he’s obviously stuck in traffic because he doesn’t care about their friends enough and wonders if she should break up with him. Cue the obligatory once-a-movie Gabriella Is Sad song.
Taylor and Chad are SUPER amicable exes and she’s organizing the entire wedding with an iron fist. Chad and Ryan didn’t have to do anything. Kelsey is on piano. Zeke is baking their cake, obvs.
Troy is SUPPOSED TO BE Chad’s best man, but again, he’s supersupersuper late. At one point while Gabriella’s on the phone with him, Chad runs up behind her and yells “DUDE. GETCHA HEAD IN THE GAME” into the phone.
Honestly I’d watch this in a heartbeat and I hated HSM.
