Be the person Chirrut Îmwe would want you to be
i love this because it covers the full spectrum from ‘kind to baby animals’ to ‘24/7 ready to deck a fucking nazi’
(Source: crescentace, via thebibliosphere)
Anonymous asked: More Stormtrooper Religion stuff?
Nothing loves what is dead like the First Order. A world conceived out of passion for the rotting corpse of the Empire and founded by her widowers—necrophiliacs, to a man. It’s a perversity that shows itself in odd ways, flickering through high ceremonies and the songs they sing. A world caught up in self-loathing for its own existence, a New Republican reporter wrote once. Survivor’s guilt given a permanent residence.
The article was widely touted, might have even won the Regaal Prize—Leia vaguely remembers reading about it over her morning caf, and resisting the urge to throw her datapad at the wall. (Instead, she threw the mug of caf, startling Han and making Ben scream. Maker, won’t someone think of the poor ex-Imperials? Leia had snarled, nostrils flaring. They’re so sad they lost their oppressive empire.)
FN-2187 does not remember reading it, mostly because he didn’t. The article was published to a New Republican holochannel, and never made it past the Order’s censors. It was deemed dangerous for public consumption—not for alleging that the First Order considered living a kind of cowardice, but for the suggestion there was anything at all strange about that.
The holonews reporter never saw any of the stormtrooper training facilities. By design—the First Order’s leaders were perverse, not stupid. They knew what story would be written, if he had seen all those warm-blooded bodies under the tyranny of the grave.
It would have been a very different article.
.
Finn remembers the way Slip wanted to die. And Zeroes. And Ace and Ello and Four—they’d discussed it enough, in whispers after lights-out, or during meals, their heads bent together and eyes bright, hard, planning for fire and glory. Though Crisper had always wanted to go in a daring undercover mission, like in the Black Ops propos—and Ohs had liked the idea of hand-to-hand combat with a dangerous rebel, a vibroblade to the gut.
(You just like that because it’d give you a chance to get out a dramatic speech, Ace had laughed, and Ohs had scowled and flicked protein flakes in her hair.)
Even he and Rey had discussed it, over the patchy transmissions sent between D’Qar and Ahch-To. I used to know for sure, she writes. I’d grow old, too old to scavenge, and then I’d starve. Or I’d fall, and break a hip, a leg, a spine, and starve. Or I’d fall ill, and if the poison in my blood didn’t take me, I’d starve.
But I don’t know anymore, she writes.
When he asks Poe how he wants to die, Poe blanches, the humor vanishing from his expression. What? Why would you ask that?
It takes a fumbling, long and terrible explanation, with Finn backtracking desperately and Poe struggling to keep all emotion out of his eyes. What was yours? he asks, after Finn has finished, and they’re sitting in awkward silence. Finn is trying not to notice how white Poe’s knuckles are, where he clutches the mug of caf.
My what?
The death you wanted.
Finn blinks. He lived on the edges of those conversations, FN-2187 with no nickname; no one’s ever—asked him before. He answers without thinking: I didn’t…I didn’t want to die.
.
Death is a flat plain endlessly, a stormtrooper sings, my voice opens and calls you in.
Hail, hail, the line of troopers answers as it marches; death, we come in.
.
Finn spends the entirety of the Resistance funeral sweating cold and shaking, his hands fisted so tightly that his nails leave crescent-marks on his palms. Afterwards, he has to excuse himself to the refresher, and his knees give out under him.
He cries, something hollow and yet heavy in the pit of his stomach. (No one is there to see, so he laughs too, against his fist, wild and terrible, an animal sound.) I guess there’s something the First Order does better, he says bitterly, to no one in particular.
.
When Leia mentions going back to collect the dead, Finn stares at her like she’s suggested he split open his ribcage and hand her his still-beating heart. Are your orders unclear, Lieutenant Finn? she asks, and he quickly schools his face back into blank stillness.
No, General.
Still, he stares throughout, they fold hands over bellies and shut unseeing eyes. (He twitches, whenever this is done, but Leia could not say why.) Even when he helps—he’s not squeamish, not the way Leia used to be around the dead—he stares, as though he can’t follow the sense in what his hands are doing.
The sun is much lower in the lavender sky when Leia comes to stand beside him. He is staring down at the blue-shrouded body frowning, a faint line between his brows.
It’s rare, that we have the chance to do this, Leia says, and Finn blinks at her. Often battlefields are compromised, we can’t…go back. X-wings are built to implode upon impact. Most of the time, our dead are lost to us.
(A field of rubble, where Alderaan hung amid the stars.)
Do you—believe they’re still in there? Finn asks tentatively, glancing down at the shrouded body.
No, they’re dead.
Why, then?
The First Order never retrieved bodies? He shakes his head, and Leia considers this for a moment. What did you do with the armor of dead troopers?
Finn blinks. If it was still in—working condition, their squad got first pick. I had a…a friend’s armguards.
Leia nods. The principle is the same. It’s easier, when there’s something to hold. Otherwise it’s just absence. Open wounds heal more slowly.
Finn’s expression flickers on ‘heal’, and his mouth shapes the word almost uncomprehendingly, trying to sound out a strange language. (She wonders how they speak about mourning in the First Order—necrophiliacs, she suddenly remembers. Then she wonders if they mourn at all.)
Yes, General, Finn says, finally. I understand.
They stand there together in the gathering violet dusk, as the bodies are carried up from the dust.
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.
I love the Han Solo comparisons that everyone made for Cassian during promo for Rogue One and then it totally bait and switched that Jyn was actually the vest-wearing, mercenary asshole who reluctantly joined a noble cause and got a crush on a rebel with pretty brown eyes and a stick up their ass.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
skymurdock asked: Star Wars or Hamilton, 1 2 3.
STAR WARS IT IS
For this thing
1. Name your politically correct ship that no one ever questions.
I really genuinely like Han/Leia because I am a sucker for the “I just really enjoy shouting at this person and get really furious when they risk their life suRELY THIS DOES NOT MEAN FEELINGS” thing and I feel like that’s…all of Hoth. The whole time. All of it.
Also, listen. I will die on the hill of The Damerons as a totally adoring, poly unit of heroes in which Rey sleeps with her back to the wall and her head on Finn’s chest and her fingers tangled with Poe’s, who gently traces the line of the callous on her thumb in his sleep, and Finn lies there and stares at the ceiling and wonders how the FUCK he got this lucky. (Because you deserve it, baby, you fucking deserve it.)
2. Now name your trash ship.
…I mean…Anakin is a trash can, so does Anakin/Padme qualify, or does Padme’s general quality everything lift them from the dumpster fire?
Although for real trash, you can’t do better than Rey/Phasma having really bitter angry hate sex. Before Rey figures herself out and marries her two husbands, of course.
3. And your really trashy I’m-going-to-Hell ship.
…do I have one of these? I don’t think I have–
oh no, yes I do, oh god I didn’t realize what the ship was for the fic but it was SO GOOD and I just.
Sith!Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan was not a ship I saw coming but F U C K.
It’s a really good fic okay, it sold me hardcore. It’s this series by @poplitealqueen. I should reread it because it’s been updated. I’ll go sit in a hole now.
(I just really like Sith Qui-Gon and also Darth Venge, who I don’t think shows up in this one but is a big player in Re-Entry, which is like. Yeah.)
Bathtub Bacta
So… I have a guilty love of the prohibition era. I’dd never want to LIVE then, but int terms of really interesting social dynamics, fashion, art and narrative possibility, its really, really interesting. During the ‘Would-Bacta-work-as-lube?“ question posed by @poplitealqueen a few months ago, I set about scouring-SCOURING, I TELL YOU- Wookieepedia and all my SW-related material to find out what Bacta actually COST, and how it operated, to answer the question of whether it was economically and practically feasible. And I found out that:
1. It apparently makes ideal lube, as long as you don’t mind the smell of Pineapple.
2. It’s basically ultra-thick saline with suspended nutrients and ACTUAL BACTERIA in it.
(so, these next couple conclusions are made in the face of conflicting canons, but it’s the one that makes the most sense for how shit plays out)
3. Bacta is the GMO reconstruction of Kolto, which is a psuedo-parastic microorganism that may or may not be related to midichlorians that alters it’s DNA to turn into the host’s cells. (IDK it’s science fiction, roll with it) Kolto was the more effective substance, able to treat things like cirrhosis, brain damage, etc,- but was wiped out by a virus during the KOTOR era as part of a plot to get rid of the Jedi.
Good job guys.So Bacta is the GMO they managed to cobble together afterwards with the remaining info they had, and while it’s pretty miraculous as a traumatic injury treatment, it doesn’t do chronic diseases like Kolto did
4. Bacta is literally grown in cultured vats, much the way insulin is farmed today.
5. While it’s heavily regulated in the TPM era, because it’s MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, it’s still really easy to grow once you get your startup costs out of the way.
6. The expensive part of bacta is the administration devices- bacta doesn’t do well in tubes, so you either need to keep a small live colony (a bacta tank ala ESB), or flash-freeze them in the ultra thick saline, and have a small…bacterial microwave, essentially, to thaw bits of it out for use.
7. During the clone wars, Palpatine subsidized the crap out of the bacta industry so he’d have enough for his army and the worlds loyal to him- post 66, he was a punitive asshole who controlled all “legitimate” (but not necessarily well-run) bacta production, and would just not ship it to worlds he didn’t like.
The point I’m getting at is- The conditions are PERFECT for there to be a massive Bootleg Bacta trade starting in TPM and going all through the empire (and into TFA probably, we’ll see what the timeline looks like once this all shakes out) Just thing- ALL the shenanigans people got up to with bootlegging, but with bacta.
People with illicit ‘stills’ in the basement, people doing insane planetary runs to get it to worlds in need- or pirating Imperial ships for the stuff. Kids going to school with an “ice pack” in their lunch bag, only to give the frozen bacta to their Rebel-sympathizing teacher. Imperial Facilities get raided by Bacta Pirates, not for the shitty imperial strain, but literally to pull the piping and saline tanks out of the walls.
Of course, some people are gonna be unscrupulous and cut corners with their vats, resulting in horrible mutant strains that do god knows what (but that’s another plot bunny). Or Strains of bacta that are more refined and effective, because much of the scientific Community was not friends with Sheevy P, even before the war.
AND CLONES WOULD KICK ASS AT BACTA FARMING- because a LOT of bacta farming happened On Kamino, and hell, it was probably part of chores to tend to the tanks. “Feed the vats so your brothers can live”
The HARD part about starting your own farm is
1. finding/making suitable vats
2. GETTING YOUR HANDS ON A GOOD STRAIN.Kix becomes an unintentional fucktillionaire distributing the Kamino strain. He wasn’t even charging, people just kept giving him money. “Uncle Jesse’s Extra-Viscosity Varmint Grease” is the joke name of the best strain. Kix is SO MAD that drunk Jesse named it that but you know? No imp inspection officer has ever wanted to open those barrels.
The things people pretend to be shipping instead of bacta though, which might actually include booze:
"Booze! Twelve million gallons of Zanbar Blue!“
“Oh that stuff is gross. Carry on.”
Also, the REALLY enterprising people who figure out how to start mixing spice in with their bacta- and create a medical revolution in the process. Glitterstim is a bad idea to snort, but the trace amounts in the “Candy Cane” strain heal nerve damage! "Pineapple express” is a strain that essentially acts as a topical PTSD treatment "Beskar Berserker” is a strain that has some pretty awesome painkiller/amphetamine combo, and while it was meant to keep people from coding, it becomes REALLY popular with former ARC troopers.Hera gets Kanan a strain called “second sight” after he loses his eyes. She did it because it was supposed to be good for treating optic injuries and numbing visual hallucinations… they find out later it’s basically bacta + Midichlorian chow.
Anyway, this was a fun thought, please feel free to play with it if you want and tell me all about it
This is such a cool idea! If anyone decides to run with this, here are some facts about bacteria-growing to consider in case it helps (I’ve worked in a bio lab).
Bacteria can be frozen down at around -70˚C with a bit of glycerol (presumably the “ultra thick” descriptor of the saline). This doesn’t hurt the bacteria and it can be re-grown simply by scraping a bit off the frozen tube and rubbing it on an agar plate. You then pick the colonies that look right on the plate and grow only those ones.
It’s really hard to grow the bacteria you want and only the bacteria you want. The good bacta strains have probably been engineered to have resistances to some cheap and common antibiotics. The plates, ultra thick saline and any growth broth would contain these antibiotics to help limit bad/useless strains.
It’s an ongoing struggle to keep everything reasonably clean and sterile to prevent bad/useless strains from growing. There’s probably space-technology that makes it easy and the illegal stills may or may not have access to them.
Bacteria that interact with human bodies grow best at 37˚C (internal human body temperature) and when they’re shaken. The vats would absolutely be as sealed as possible. They would also have to be purified out of the growth broth and put in the ultra thick saline for use in humans.
Lots of bacteria are kind of smelly when they grow up to large numbers. A well-seasoned lab person can tell if the good kind or bad/useless kinds have grown just by the smell. Pro-tip: some bad/useless kinds smell rank.
OH MY GOD YOU ARE THE BEST
I’m running another EotE game soon and bacta-farming is almost certainly going to come up.
The concept of humanly toasty vibrating tanks is HILARIOUS tho, becuase we have a cat-dude in the party.
I figure that if SW has whatever magical tech that keeps kamino’s pristine halls pristine despite being occupied bu appx 5 million teenage boys, your average bootlegger can keep a few hot vibrating tanks reasonably clean. Space Windex or whatever.
(via dubiousculturalartifact)
if you don’t acknowledge that platonic relationships might be the most important ones in somebody’s life, just remember that the trap that vader & palpatine tried to set for luke at cloud city pretty completely relied on that fact and sith lords are officially better at this than you are
do
do you think they somehow figured out that was the only way this was gonna work for them
like i don’t know how you’d even figure out but
do you think palps was just like “aw yeah. gonna corrupt another skywalker. easy-peasy. same as last time. we just gotta wait for him to fall in love and – OH COME ON”
it’s even better because luke is a pretty friendly dude, so presumably palpatine had to go through all the spy reports and figure out who his BFFs were out of basically the entire rebel alliance. his gunner dak? fellow pilot wedge antilles?? who?????
meanwhile vader’s lurking in a corner going “wow my son has so many friends, he must be a great guy. do you… do you think he’d like me?”
“HE IS A TRAITOR ON THE RUN FROM THE EMPIRE, HOW DOES HE EVEN MEET ALL THESE PEOPLE,” shouts palpatine as he scrolls through tagged photo after tagged photo on rebel facebook.
this is the best caption anyone else has added to this post since i made it thank you for your contribution
(Source: astriiformes, via yea-lets-do-this-shit)
Kylo Ren Is Not Neurodivergent He Is Just An Asshole, Karen.
Murdering Your Own Father Does Not Count As A Traumatic Event, Shelley.
Torturing Someone Is Not Romantic, Rebecaitlyn.
(via starwarsisgay)
So me and @alexkablob watched Rogue One and I think I can put into words what resonates so much this time. I realize other people have said this already more eloquently than me but…
While everyone I’ve seen agrees that R1 is fucking gorgeous, the main thing I’ve seen from people who don’t personally like it is that the total party kill is too dark, too depressing, it doesn’t feel like Star Wars exactly; that Star Wars is about hope and good triumphing over evil despite the odds. And look, Rogue One is heavy. You don’t have to personally like that, that’s fair.
But there is one thing that I have to contest. Because….Rogue One is about hope.
The good guys win.
They win. They pass hope like a baton, bloody fingers to sweaty palms, sprinting forward and trusting that someone will manage to slip it into their hand before it’s too late.
The message of Rogue One, the reason I adore it for its quietly unflinching look at sacrifice, isn’t the dark-and-gritty People Die In War, Don’t Be Naive. Its message is…look. Look at humanity. Look at what we do, what we are capable of. The beauty of hope, the love and the faith we have for one another. Look at what courage and compassion accomplish. All the hatred, all the brute force in the galaxy can’t match that simple, silent strength. The Empire fails.
A dark, gritty movie would be: the Empire wins. Or the Rebellion wins but the cost was too high, it wasn’t worth it. Rogue One says, yes, it was. That soft rising music over the entire end of that relay race, from the moment the plans beam out. It’s quiet, and sad, and solemn–and triumphant.
It says: it’s over. It’s done. It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right. You’ve done enough. Breathe. This was worth it.
(via chromatographic)
