Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

lesliecrusher:

it absolutely blows my mind when i think of how much star trek is just straight up bad…..like three entire movies are irredeemably Bad ™, 5-10% of the episodes are Bad, so many tie-in novels are Bad, and yet i love it with my entire body and soul and would die for it

I want to be offended, but you’re not even wrong.  And I would still die for the Federation in a heartbeat.

(via academicfeminist)

thefarfire:

david-tennants-little-fangirl:

neverthehurricane:

sherlockchins:

sunshien:

my mom asked why i don’t read as many books as i used to and i just said it was because i read a lot of unpublished stories from independent writers online and she thinks that’s very good of me to give undiscovered authors a chance

hahaha

i just read gay porn

#unpublished stories from independent writers online

#so that’s what we’re calling it now

Never stop reblogging this

(via lupinatic)

skymurdock asked: Star Wars/Star Trek? pls imagine Han and Jim having the weirdest friendly rivalry ever bc Han maintains the Millennium Falcon is the Best Ship and Jim maintains the Enterprise should have that honor.

littlestartopaz:

buckygreyjoy:

words-writ-in-starlight:

I just got out of Beyond last night and I am DRUNK on the Star Trek thing right now.  LET’S GO.  I did a little more with the crews than the ships but like.  Yeah.

• The thing about exploring space is that it’s big, but not infinite.  So sooner or later the final frontier pushes right up to the raggedy edge of a galaxy far far away.  Specifically, a ramshackle ship at the outermost edge of Republic space.  (They’re on a sort of ‘remember the good old days when the three of us plus Chewie and a couple droids were on the fucking run’ sort of trip.  Han doesn’t know why he’s doing this but sure, Leia, for old time’s sake, something like that, and Luke just looked at him and blinked and somehow the farmboy eyes still work on him after all this time.)  The Enterprise sees it on its radar and…well, to be completely honest, Spock takes one look at the readings and announces that there appears to be a ship in distress.  They go investigate—the Enterprise makes the Falcon look like a slightly haphazard guppy beside a sleek and shining whale, a sheer wall of matte white kissed with space dust.  (Inside the Falcon, everyone has a completely independent moment of holyfuckingkriff we’re going to war again before the polite text hail comes through and the ship translates the message.)

• Okay so…it turns out that Republic Standard and Federation Basic have basically nothing to do with each other, and the universal translators aren’t in the mood to translate an entirely foreign language.  The crew of the Falcon and the Enterprise away team spend a good long while cycling through every language they know (and with Uhura with them, that number is prodigious) before they figure out that there seems to be at least a degree of commonality between Bocce and Ferengi, and between an archaic Vulcan dialect that even Spock barely knows and an equally dated Naboo dialect that Leia knows a few scraps of and C-3PO knows a few more scraps of (Padmé believed in knowing her planet’s history).  They cobble together a pidgin that at least lets them introduce themselves while half the engineering team scrambles to clap together a translator.  (It takes two hours and Scotty is bursting with pride over the thing, which turns Basic into Standard and back again with no trouble at all.)

• First contact with a foreign Republic: pretty much par for the course for the Enterprise, and hey, they have a Senator of said Republic right there, so for Kirk and his crew this is going great.  They have a war hero, a general in the military, and a political figure on hand, in addition to a droid loaded with a massive amount of history and a soldier.  The Falcon’s crew is pretty much exactly the diplomatic cadre most planets send out to meet the Federation, so it doesn’t even occur to them that they’ve pretty much caught the Falcon with their pants down.  The Falcon isn’t a diplomatic vessel on the best of days, and even if it was, the Republic hasn’t made a business of making first contact with anyone in quite a long time. So when a clutch of various aliens—including humans, who aren’t so alien after all, and ain’t that a kick in the head, as Han says—in brightly colored uniforms introduces themselves as members of Star Fleet, representatives of something called the United Federation of Planets…that’s new.  Leia pushes Han out of the way with an elbow, and shuts Luke up with a glance, and does her best to look Senatorly and In Control.  

• By the end of a few hours’ meeting, there’s a tentative alliance drawn up and a friendship in place between Leia and Jim, who, Bones and Han agree, have bonded over being reckless idealists too stubbornly brave for their own health.  Spock interrogates Luke at length about the Force—fascinating, he pronounces at once—and is disappointed to find out that the Jedi have largely been wiped out will all their information.  (Luke, on the other hand, is a little dazed from the rapid-fire queries and thinks that, if all Vulcans are so emotionless, it’s probably for the best that the Jedi never met them, because can you imagine if that was the Jedi standard for emotional control.  Also, Luke is smarter than your average bantha, thanks, and knows a telepath when he sees one, so he makes a mental note to look into testing the Vulcans for Force-sensitivity, if he can figure out how the hell to do it.)  Uhura corners 3PO and commands him to start teaching her Republic Standard.  She makes terrifying progress, and also learns enough Shyriiwook to understand Chewbacca’s careful and kind farewell (C-3PO is in love, he’s never met someone so brilliant in his entire existence, he almost follows her home like a lost puppy).

• Regarding the ships: Jim is very polite about the Falcon because there’s just no point in being rude about other people’s ships when yours is so evidently the best in the universe—honestly, if Han tried to insult his ship, Jim’s response would be a blank expression and “Are you blind?  We can have Bones look at that.”  Han grumbles a bit, but he’s not an idiot, and the Falcon is a damn good ship, he mutters, even if she’s not flashy.  (It should be noted that, here, ‘not flashy’ means ‘occasionally unwilling to hit hyperspeed without some serious antics,’ which is kind of the equivalent of saying, about a car, that ‘not flashy’ means ‘hope you don’t want a second gear that works all the time.’)  So the two captains get along pretty well, because if there’s anyone that Han Don’t-Tell-Me-The-Odds Solo is going to click with, it’s Jim Rules-What-Rules Kirk. Scotty, on the other hand, is apoplectic the first time he hears Han compare the Falcon to the Enterprise.  That bucket of bolts!  Falling apart at the seams!  Compared to his lady!  The Falcon is unworthy to pass through her ion wake! Chekov sees the Chief of Engineering puff up and Jim shoots him a look, and Chekov claps a hand over Scotty’s mouth, towing him out of the room with Sulu.  Han’s back is turned and the nod Luke gives, to say nothing of the hidden smirk, suggests that he won’t be telling, so Jim has avoided, once more, starting a diplomatic incident because of Scotty’s determination to defend the Enterprise’s honor.  This is a fairly regular occurrence, and a large part of the reason that Scotty is on probation from diplomatic missions.

• Bonus sixth headcanon: Jim is the most fucking Force-sensitive.  They find this out because Luke, still half-trained and a bit prone to error, brushes a brief mental probe across his mind and gets thrown out with all the violence of hitting warp three from a dead halt.  Luke asks where his mental shields came from and Jim gives him a blank look and Luke has a moment of horrible revelation: he’s not only going to have to scrounge up some teaching ability, he’s going to have to comb an entire Federation for Force-sensitives. When the nav officer—Chekov—sees the look of appalled shock on his face and politely offers brandy, with the additional remark that the Captain can have that effect, Luke takes him up on it.
  

Luke does not know how he’s going to get around to DOING that - searching through a whole Federation and then teaching the people he finds to use the Force. Luke kind of wants to cry a little. (the Vulcans are - a whole ‘nother bag of Loth-cats that Luke is going to poke when he is SOBER, okay, but right now the brandy is calling his name.)

(years later, Jim has his very own lightsaber, not that he uses it very much outside of “glorified laser cutter”. he runs into Luke at a Federation-Republic thing and one thing led to another and they’re going to check out an ancient Jedi temple now - with a full expedition team by the Federation’s insistence bc they’re all about exploring new things and this is a New Thing and Luke does not actually mind - he is SO EXCITED, the nerd.)

Bones takes one look at the Millennium Falcon - held together by spit, duct tape, prayers and the Force - and immediately starts screaming internally. he can list about fifteen things off the top of his head that could happen to the inhabitants of this ship should this thing finally give out, and also ten viral diseases that this could possibly be carrying from its history of smuggling, how have any of you SURVIVED in this hunk of junk.

(“HEY,” yells Han, Offended.

“true,” says Leia, affectionately patting the walls.)

Artoo is having the time of his life onboard the Enterprise, by the way. Sulu walks in on him beeping away on the bridge, plugged into the console. is he having a conversation with the Enterprise? (he most definitely is.)

Luke eventually figures out a method to hash through Star Fleet for Jedi, and ends up with a surprising number. To his joy, they’re not all human (to his equal dismay, easily half are Vulcan). He ends up with a whole academy and is the Republic’s first diplomat who stays there out of necessity. But only for half a year. He reasons he needs to search for Jedi in his own galaxy as well.

Years later, Luke’s Federation personal apprentice becomes a full Jedi and takes over teaching at the Federation, so Luke can focus on the sudden influx of Republic Jedi students. Among them is one Ben Solo. And when Ben goes on a rampage, the Federation Jedi hear, because they just lost students from a cultural exchange. And the Federation is Pissed. Luke’s former Federation apprentice grabs Luke as soon as they can get there, and drags his depressed ass across the galaxy looking for Ben. They find him and arrest him and his storm troopers (and find Vader’s half melted helmet on a veritable alter, to which Luke is seriously disturbed) with permission from both the Federation and the Republic.

(He happened to be away from the main First Order ship he’s been apart of, much to the Republic’s dismay.)

Among the troopers with him is one who is so tired, an outcast despite being top of the class, and he defects willingly. His first partner in the Republic is one certain pilot who refuses to use his designation, instead dubs him “Finn.”

Luke’s not-apprentice refuses to leave Luke alone, makes arrangements, and moves in with him. Together they start a new comb of the galaxy for Jedi students, coming across one desert child sleeping in a fighter. And a certain missing ship. (“You want the trash?!” The apprentice laughs. The Flacon of notorious among Star Fleet because how is that little piece of junk so agile and a main ship used in the Republic’s rebellion. How.)

phoenixcollective:

Reblog if you would be comfortable living in a dormitory with an openly transgender or intersex individual. We’re working on a campaign for gender neutral housing and we could use your support.

(via skymurdock)

peggycarterogers:

Honestly I think my fav part of Beyond was at the end when do the “Space the final frontier.” Montage and THE WHOLE CREW JOINS IN AND OVERLAPS with each other AND UHURA FINISHES IT with “Where no ONE has gone before.” And then my soul ascended into heaven.

(Source: stevetrevorr, via skymurdock)

sparrowsfallingfromthesky:

Part of me is like “Jean Valjean is the main character of Les Miserables and that’s very important and maybe the miniseries will remind people of that” and part of me is like “listen. I literally only care about Les Amis and would watch six hours just of Enjolras and Grantaire sitting in the same room doing nothing” so I’m a little conflicted

(via permets-tu-not-permettez-vous)

oh-snap-pro-choice:

reginaeinferos:

therevenantrising:

reginaeinferos:

therevenantrising:

reginaeinferos:

Nothing is going to change. Americans love their guns more than they love people and after Sandy Hook we decided that killing over 20 children was acceptable and not outrageous enough to make reasonable restrictions on guns. This is America, a country that has been around for 200 years, a superpower, a 1st world nation, and one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and we refuse to protect our own people. We respect guns more than we respect the lives of people. 

What specific gun control measures would you propose and how would they directly and effectively make society safer?

• Absolutely get rid of all AR-15′s and the like.
  
• Intense background and criminal background checks and anything violent automatically disqualifies you.
  
• Make getting a gun/gun permit more like getting a driver’s license:
  
• permit to learn
• includes an exam with 18 or more questions on the policies, laws, and etc of guns and gun ownership
• if you get more than 8 questions incorrect you must retake it.
• 30 hours of practical experience at a gun range with a licensed teacher
  
• Must take a 5 hour class on the dangers of guns and how to use them safely which will then yield you a certificate that grants you to take the practical exam and lasts for one year. If you don’t gain the license within the allotted year you must retake the class.
  
• A practical exam with a licensed instructor who will grade you on various skills. If you pass you may be granted a permit on the weapon of your choice, the exams may differ on the type of firearm you want.
  
• Follow the Japanese model where you must have two gun safes in different areas of the house, one to store the gun and one to store the bullets and you must provide the police with information on where those safes are.
  
• No concealed carry and only handguns may be allowed to be out in public.
  
• If transporting a weapon, it must be in the trunk of the vehicle, in a bag or some other case, safety on and unloaded and may not leave the vehicle until you are at the destination.
  
• If you’re a hunter or some other gun hobbyist that requires a functional weapon other than a handgun then the gun must stay on the premises, whether that is a gun range or the Fish and Wildlife facility.
  
• If you live in a rural area where police (and people, for that matter) are few and far between, something akin to a deer hunting rifle should provide plenty of protection from predators and poachers, you still have to follow the aforementioned steps.
  
• This doesn’t cover everything but I think it’s a good place to start.
  

Can you show me evidence that this would directly and effectively create a safer society?

I have never laughed so hard at a gun law post. Like seriously, the evidence is in fucking reality. The proposed restrictions are just fucking logic.

(via muteelfmoonmoon)

livia-carica:

Reblog if you’re currently writing a novel, even if it’s only in your head or scribbled in the back of a notebook somewhere.

Think about how many books don’t exist yet.

(via yea-lets-do-this-shit)

Anonymous asked: Headcanons for your Claire Temple Ao3 fic? Maybe five random run ins Claire has with superheroes while not on the clock saving their lives. Also, since I know you are a bastard, preferably /funny/ or happy run ins. Try to rein in the pain, agony inc.

Oh God, that’s right, that fic exists.  For those of you who are new to the party, it’s this, and I haven’t updated it in literal months, for which I am formally sorry.  In unrelated news, yes I am a bastard, and Agony Inc. is my new favorite thing, I will be tagging all upsetting writing as such.

• There’s actually tentative plans for this to be a sister-fic, but since it’ll obviously take me a millennium to write that, here: Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, facilitated by Natasha Romanoff (who won’t hear argument that she’s a superhero, and therefore part of the problem) and enabled by Pepper Potts’ gold card.  It starts after Natasha comes and gets Claire to help her fish Clint out of a dumpster, and when Natasha turns up not a week later Claire’s first response is to grab her first aid kit.  Instead, Natasha waves her down, hands her a jacket, and steers her out of the apartment and drives to a bar—it feels more like a kidnapping than getting drinks with friends, but Natasha generously pays for drinks all night, and Claire could stand a few more kidnappings like this.  This proceeds to happen about once a week for two months, at which point Claire gets a call from an unknown number on her personal cell, and a polite voice asks, “Would you mind if I accompanied Natasha to your girls’ night tonight?” Pepper proves to be a riotously funny drunk, with enough stories about her time as Tony’s PA to keep them laughing too.  The next time Claire treats Jessica for acute failure to demonstrate the common sense God gave a squirrel (technical terms) and sees Malcolm silently working up a stress ulcer, she invites him out with them—he gets juice rather than liquor, but he’s witty and wry and only a little starstruck, all in all a good addition.  Karen is the next addition, after she spends a full hour shouting at Matt while Claire stitches him up, and it’s lucky that she doesn’t bring Foggy that first week, because there’s a deeply awkward moment where she and Natasha eye each other like feral wolves and greet each other by strange names.  “Vasilisa,” Natasha says, “I thought you were dead.” Karen bares her teeth politely and replies, “Natalia, I thought you were a better spy.”  Pepper looks up at the ceiling like she’s praying for strength and orders an entire bottle of vodka, setting it between the two other redheads like an olive branch.  All is calm, after that, although the two are eerily alike, dark gallows humor flecking their speech.  Foggy comes, the next week, then a woman named Candace who drops into a chair like she belongs there and introduces herself as ‘an ex of an X-Man’ and snickers at their faces, then a dark-haired twenty-something in glasses who complains about Asgardians, then a cranky blind woman who refuses to talk about her roommate…. It snowballs pretty bad, is the point, and it gets to the point where Pepper is comfortably dropping a grand on drinks.  Claire likes it, though, it’s the most normal thing she’s handled lately.
• Also: she’s not sure how anyone finds out about Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, but apparently it’s sovereign, because through mysterious happenings there’s never once an attack or other disaster on the night in question, even though they’re a perfect target for any enterprising villain in the mood for hostages. “Mysteries of the life,” Claire says dryly.  “Another round of tequila, I think.”

• Claire definitely sees Steve Rogers in her preferred grocery store.  Actually, she sees him in her preferred grocery store a lot, so much that she corners him and interrogates him about who made him follow her.  He looks pretty alarmed—for a six-foot-plus brick house, he does ‘alarmed’ remarkably well—and sheepishly admits that if he gets groceries anywhere closer to the city center and the Tower, he gets accosted.  Hell’s Kitchen is a little out of his way, but apparently it’s worth it for a few minutes of peace.  Claire huffs, grabs the cheap box of cereal he’d tossed into his basket, and informs him that if he’s shopping on seventy years of back pay he can afford to get the name brand stuff that doesn’t taste like paper.  They see each other about every other week, and Claire works really hard not to laugh at his offended tirade about bananas.

• Claire’s pretty much over the shock of having someone knock on her bedroom window, which is inaccessible by human means and on the fourth floor besides, but she’s used to having it happen at night, not three in the afternoon.  But she opens it, lets the person—people—through and starts working up to a lecture about how she gives them a phone number for a reason before she realizes that it’s just Peter, sitting on her floor, apparently uninjured and dressed in civvies and dripping dismally onto the carpet from the downpour.  “You could’ve been seen,” she says automatically, and he slants a look up at her through the floppy locks of wet hair falling into his face—it’s pouring, and has been for hours, so it’s unlikely anyone was exactly paying enough attention to see a kid crawl down a building.  “Mind if I hang out here for a couple hours?” he asks, and when she doesn’t answer immediately he flicks his hair out of his face, looking uncomfortable, and adds, “Um, it’s the anniversary of my uncle’s death and my aunt’s not home and I…didn’t really want to stay there alone.”  Claire sighs and throws a towel at his face, and walks out into her kitchen, calling back to grab some dry clothes out of her closet before he gets her couch wet.  She’s no great shakes in the kitchen, but she can make tea, so she does, the chamomile blend Abuela gives her in vast quantities as a remedy for stress.  Peter sits on her couch in sweats that are about four sizes too big—most of her spare clothes are for people who aren’t nineteen—and drinks the tea in silence and watches a Harry Potter marathon on TV while Claire lays out her first aid kit and sorts through it on the floor.  When she joins him on the couch, he leans his head onto her shoulder and falls asleep, face twisted into a frown and his hair drying into cowlicks.  She sighs, the deep, from-the-soles-of-her-feet, why-does-this-happen-to-me sigh she perfected after the second time Matt called her, and shifts them so that Peter’s head is in her lap and her hand is in his hair. It eases the frown, so maybe it’s okay that this specific thing is happening to her.

• This is how Claire Temple meets Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, AKA a dead guy: she gets a date.  She goes on the date.  She brings the date back to her place.  She finds a tall and menacing guy standing outside the door of her apartment building, dressed in a long coat and a shoulder holster and a black eye under his military buzz cut.  He stops her date with a look like steel and offers Claire a file without a word, and she takes it, because that’s what her life is turning into these days.  The file is either a threat (unlikely, because Buzz Cut Man is armed and hasn’t directly threatened her yet) or something that someone thinks will help her (more likely, because Buzz Cut Man is glaring at her date like he’s pissed him off personally rather than standing there and looking pale and scared), so she opens it because either way, it is what it is. It turns out that the file is a terrifyingly complete background check on her date, all the way back to grade school and annotated by three people, and includes his marriage certificate, with a post-it note in Karen’s tidy handwriting that says ‘no divorce in the works.’  Claire sighs—the guy seemed like a pretty bad lay anyway, too narcissistic—and closes the file.  “You,” she tells her date, “go home to your wife and ask for a fucking divorce if you’re going to sleep around anyway.  You,” she tells Buzz Cut Man, “can come inside and I’ll give you some ice to put on that eye.  And tell Karen and Natasha that I can vet my own dates.”  He mutters something, and stands to attention when she arches an eyebrow at him. “You can tell them,” he repeats, and she snorts.

• And a sneak peek of the next chapter, if I ever have time to write the damn thing: Claire has a lot of friends in the medical field, and even though she hasn’t spoken much to this particular friend since undergrad, the Organic Chemistry bond is real, so when her friend calls, Claire answers.  Her friend helps run a women’s health clinic that offers abortions and has been facing increasingly aggressive harassment, not to mention their financial problems, and she’s been calling around looking for anyone, anyone at all, who’s willing to help protect the women trying to get into the clinic.  Claire’s response is “Well, I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll come up on my next day off.” And then she calls Jessica, because Jessica knows everyone, and explains, and Jessica’s whole response is “Leave it to me.”  So when Claire goes up to help out on her next day off, she’s more than a little surprised to find Captain America, Luke Cage, and Colossus all standing in front of the doors and looking solemn.  Not nearly as surprised as her old friend, though, who’s talking to Natasha and Kitty and a blonde woman—is that Trish Walker, Claire wonders, making a mental note to invite her to the Drinking Nights—and looks about a second from fainting.  
  
• “Claire, who the fuck are these people?” her friend hisses when the protesters start turning up and Steve, Forties charm in full swing, offers his arm to the first girl he sees, shooting a venomous look over her head at the closest sign-bearing man.
• “Uh,” Claire says blankly as she catches a familiar pair of figures on a nearby roof—one horned, one sleek and bright red and blue.  “My…friends?”