Karikki was sitting in the ship’s mess when the most recent addition to the crew stumbled into the room and collapsed into a chair with a relieved groan, dropping her head onto the table.
“Rough shift?” ie said, making a sympathetic noise as ie broke off another piece of ir food pack.
Melanie Dupré, recently hired on as a ship’s mechanic and as of one month ago the only human crewmember of the Xanaki Star, mumbled something into the table before lifting her head so that her translator could actually be of use.
“I could swear the ventilation ducts actually hate me personally,” she said. “I’ve been running around all day.” A look of horror crossed her features then, and she groaned again, dragging her hand across her eyes. “And I left my food packs in my room. Goddamn it.”
Karikki churred soothingly. “Don’t worry about it, you can have one of ours,” ie said, getting to ir feet and digging one of the vacuum-sealed silver packs out of the pantry.
Melanie made a noise that Karikki had learned to interpret as grateful and peeled the pack open, looking down at it dubiously. “You’re sure this is okay?”
“We’re nutritionally compatible!” Karikki said. “The captain checked, before we hired you on. Just in case you ran out of your own supplies. It should be fine.”
“Okay. Thanks,” she said, breaking off a square of the compressed nutrition block and popping it into her mouth.
A look crossed her face then that it took Karikki a moment to identify: disgust, ie realized. That was disgust–which was made all the clearer when Melanie gagged and grabbed a napkin, spitting the square out into her hand. “Oh my god,” she said.
Karikki could feel ir antennae fluttering anxiously. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is that a bad texture for humans?”
Melanie wiped her mouth, scrubbing at her tongue with the side of her hand. She shook her head. “No, the texture’s fine, it’s just like one of our protein blocks. It’s the [——], I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but it’s awful! How can you eat that?”
Karikki flicked ir ear. “Sorry, say that again? I think your translator cut out in the middle. It’s the what?”
Cellulite is a female secondary sex characteristic and should be celebrated as a rite of womanhood, not despised or eradicated.
it’s really a secondary sex characteristic?!
It is. It has to do with the way our bodies network fat. Female bodies create sort of a mesh network to support fat (female bodies are MUCH more hardy in times of stress) and it can present as delightfully lumpy. More than 90% of women have visible cellulite, but all women store fat in this manner.
why did no one tell me this?!
You know why :/
Spread this. I only just started to see mine and I started to freak out a bit. More people should/need to know about this
Here’s an illustration of the aforementioned difference in fat storage.
Men’s lattice pattern collagen threads holds subcutaneous fat in a way that, when the skin expands because of the fat storage, it expands evenly. Women’s “pockets” expand unevenly when we accumulate fat, creating that orange peel effect. Our storage pattern means we can healthily store more fat than men. Like a woman with 25% body fat is average, a man with 25% body fat is chubby. Because of that, like OP said, women are hardier in times of stress or famine. It’s also one of the reasons why our bodies can survive pregnancy, which is a massive energy demand on our system.
And there’s absolutely NO “treatment” for cellulite that will work. They are all bullshit designed to separate you from your hard-earned cash. It’s a secondary sex characteristic, it’s perfectly normal and it’s not going away no matter what you do. Like I’m very lean myself and I work out 5~6 times a week, and I still have cellulite. Someone giving a woman shit for having cellulite is akin to giving her shit for having skin. It’s just a mixture of misogyny and corporate greed.
Love your lumpy skin, ladies. It means you are a badass surviving machine shaped by millenia of evolution.
u wanna watch a video thats any amount of time??? thats too long, even if the video is like 10 seconds
becoming too aware of how things feel or how u do certain things or just regular bodily functions like breathing or blinking
staying up until 4 AM or later for no reason aside from adhd said so
that sinking feeling when u realized uve spaced out for most of a conversation and u feel too bad abt doing it to ask the person to repeat what they said
overstimulation
meltdowns
when u have the motivation to get shit done, but executive dysfunction is like “lmfao nope”
trying to get certain stuff done and ur managing ok, but u still get distracted on occasion and u scold urself every time u do but u cant stop urself from doing it
the antsy anxiousness that comes with being confined to doing smth for too long
“i hope i remember this” u didnt remember it
outbursts which cause u to snap at ppl and then u feel bad but u couldnt help it
no volume control so ur constantly told to stop yelling but u cant make ur voice quieter
*someone explains instructions and its a rather simple thing* “ok got it” u dont got it
getting irrationally irritated over the smallest shit but u cant help it everything is just So Frustrating
“u know what i think im having a good day” and then mood swing that makes u either Super Sad or Super Mad for no reason
having what ur gonna say right in ur head but somehow u still space out in the middle of talking and forget what u wanted to say
forgetting why u were upset but still feeling upset
the sinking feeling of remembering why u were upset and now ur even more upset
when rsd is being extremely irrational and u know its bullshit but u dont have the energy to fight it so u just sit there in sadness
when rsd makes u self conscious abt stimming in public
having absolutely no time perception at all. what even is time ive never heard of that in my life
needing to get smth done and u manage to focus, but ur focusing on the wrong thing
overanalyzing past stuff thats happened and realizing other shit u couldve said that wouldve helped the situation and damn why didnt u think of that when u were in the situation
look, whatever the han solo series ends up claiming as “backstory”, you and I know that what really happened was that han solo grew up an orphan of the late republic in the slums of corellia.
at some point in his erstwhile adolescence (’erstwhile’ is leia’s word; he remembers a lot more dirt and desperation and starving than ‘erstwhile’ really conveys) he takes stock of his worldly possessions:
a vague, foggy shape in place of his mother, a story she told han (or han told himself, he’s never sure) about a handsome pilot for a father;
four credits;
a perpetually-damp pallet that the Amber Twi’iek’s mistress sometimes rolls out in front of the fire, in exchange for him chasing off the rats in the cellar, running messages, and acting as lookout for troopers;
an itch, in his feet, in his gut, behind his eyes, that demands he get into the sky even if it requires building himself a set of wings out of wax and flimsi, which—well, lends some credence to the pilot story.
(there’s a saying: you can tell a corellian by looking. they’re born with crooked necks, to better stare up at the stars)
by the time he meets lando, he’s been haunting the cantinas around the docks looking for someone willing to take him aboard. they’re all eager—he’s young and strong and naive in certain ways—at least until they see the faint, raised bump in the hollow of his palm.
it’s a galactic crime to take an orphan from their planet of origin without the proper paperwork; it makes him a liability. (part of senator amidala’s anti-sentient trafficking initiative, and if han knew, he’d curse her and all her descendants. yes, even those ones.)
either way—it’s a smoggy night and he’s nineteen, trying to pass himself off as older, which lando finds inexplicably charming (there’s a lot about han’s bravado he finds inexplicably charming, probably because it’s so poorly constructed; probably because it makes lando feel so tender about the whole thing.) you have a ship? he says, and lando likes the way he flushes when lando says yes, leaning in—overeager, artless—and saying, buy me a drink then.
lando is only twenty-five and his ship is a junker, practically a historical artifact, that he won in a hand of sabacc and can just barely fly without a copilot. he buys the stranger drink anyway.
the first time han set foot in the falcon, he came home. lando remembers, because he woke up alone in his bunk the next morning—the attractive stranger from the night before was sitting, shirtless, in lando’s cockpit, touching the controls one by one, like he was turning over something fragile and desperately vital in his hands.
lando had watched, and lando had thought: I wonder if I can make him look at me like that.
(han hadn’t noticed. han had been busy falling headlong, desperately in love, in the way he wouldn’t again, not with anyone)
one night turns into three turns into—well, han crawling between lando’s legs and holding out a vibroblade. Then his hand, palm up. cut it out, he says, and lando looks at him, all that poorly-stitched-together bravado. han is very beautiful when he’s young, it makes him difficult to refuse.
if you want to be a pilot, your hands are your life. can’t risk damaging them, lando says, gently closing han’s outstretched hand into a fist. wait another two years, they’ll remove it—
it’ll be too late, han says, and this is lando’s great fault, he never really learns to predict these flashes of wild selflessness and loyalty, doesn’t know what to do with them. you’ll be gone, you’ll have forgotten me. cut it out.
it’s really difficult to overstate how beautiful han is, at nineteen.
I’ll be careful, lando promises. afterwards, they burn the bloody sheets and the tracker chip along with them. the heap is still smoldering as han watches lando prep for takeoff, and it’s—almost, it’s very close to how he looked at the falcon, that first morning.
(lando is very beautiful too, it should be said. but he will be his most beautiful at thirty-one, heartbroken and standing among the clouds of bespin—it hasn’t happened yet, how beautiful he is. han will never be more beautiful than he is now, the first time he clutches at the co-pilot seat so tightly his hand starts bleeding again and his eyes fill with the stars.)
what next? han breathes, as lando puts the ship on autopilot. he’s staring at the blue whirl of hyperspace like nothing has ever been so beautiful.
(lando is staring at him, ditto.)
anything you want, lando says, and han just—just laughs.
