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

Anonymous asked: Leia Organa for the headcanon meme thing?

notbecauseofvictories:

Leia can fall asleep any place relatively quiet that isn’t actually moving under her. 

She did not—contrary to Han and Luke’s teasing—pick that up during the Rebellion; she learned how to hunker down and drop away from the world when she was Alderaan’s special diplomatic envoy to the Imperial Senate. Long nights spent poring over complicated trade agreements or debating the exact credits necessary for the revitalization of the Hosnian Sector (read: extermination of non-humans.) She learned to steal what sleep she could because they would be back there come morning with the same dry texts, the same dull men; the same compromises made while she carefully didn’t think about her father; somewhere in the galaxy quietly fostering rebellion. 

(Something she doesn’t talk about all that often: not all her memories of the Empire are war and blood and running and terror. There was paperwork too; and state dinners and heated discussions about subsidies. Imperial generals carried holos of their children just like everyone else. And she had hated it—she was never built for diplomacy; that was her mother’s skill and the Queen was always apologizing for her, this wayward daughter who wore her disdain and dislike on her sleeve and didn’t know what “compromise” meant—or even her father’s art, no one could look the flower but be the rebellious serpent under it quite like Bail—but Leia remembers all the same. 

The Empire was terrible; the Empire was an enemy to be broken and destroyed so the Republic could bloom again. But it was not all terror.)

hacash asked: for the valentines' day prompts may I ask for legolas/gimli and the different courtship rituals of elves and dwarves?

notbecauseofvictories:

the courtship of gimli son of gloin and legolas greenleaf, son of thranduil is a disaster from beginning to end. Because elves really only have two romantic settings:

1. “no romantic feelings whatsoever” 
2. “undying love that withstands the ravages of time and yokes two hearts together such that neither death nor fire nor void could cleave them in twain unto the coming of Dagor Dagorath, Amen”
   

which means that when legolas figures out that this strange bright-hard lightness and gladness and warmth he feels around gimli is love, that’s it, game over, his expectation is that they will either be married and live forever in joyous bliss or gimli will refuse him, and legolas will spend all his days wandering in middle earth, singing ballads he himself has composed about the prowess and kindness of gimli, son of gloin.

(elves…..don’t really court one another. Either your love is returned, or it’s not. “Not” is a perfectly acceptable answer, there is lots of room in elvish culture for unrequited love—it’s very courtly, their idea of “not”. It comes with an expectation you turn that pain into something Ennobling and Grand, and remain true to the ideal of your beloved. But that’s it, the matter is settled, and it takes monumental shifts to make either party reconsider.)

unfortunately, this means that after their shaky declarations of mutual feeling (to call it a hatchet job, gimli insists, would be an insult to perfectly decent hatchets) legolas takes it as a personal affront that gimli wants to court. To him, it seems unimaginably cruel, to spend time with a person in that way while always keeping one eye on the door, as though to say, you are perfectly nice, but only for now.

not all of us have forever to promise, amralime, gimli says, very gently.

(really, gimli’s argument is—look at how much grief has been brought into the world by elves who loved, but did not know what came after. Who did not know how to compromise, when to let a disagreement go; who struggled against their beloved’s seeming lack of affection, to give gifts that were not Portentous and Doomed. 

maybe the immortal Firstborn can afford to spend their lives desperately unhappy in a match made with love and little consideration. But dwarves do not have the luxury. All metal is tested by fire, to burn away impurities; it is not a condemnation of the ore.)

finally, finally, gimli manages to talk him around by assuring him that their courtship will mostly involve wandering in the woods of ithilien and making out against trees. “gonna smith you…so much jewelry” gimli mumbles sleepily, as their argument winds down, fading into the night. (It hasn’t been an argument in earnest for a few hours now, especially once they crawled into bed together.)

legolas smiles a little, and sleeps.

#legolas is literally so offended     #“YOU THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN ME???” in equal parts indignation and hurt     #he literally does not tell thranduil they’re dating because a) dwarf     #and b) “you couldn’t even get A DWARF to marry you on the first go-around he had to think about it first? what son of mine—”     #ah good times     (x)