"To die hating them, that was freedom."
— The free Hork-Bajir, probably (via incorrectmorpherquotes)
dragons don’t ever really leave their princesses
(and their princesses never really want them to go)The first thing she remembers is the warmth of scales beneath her hand, a voice crooning a lullaby that she feels in her bones as much as she hears. The first thing her watery, stinging eyes behold are a loose circle of shining claws and the translucent dome of blue wings blocking out the rest of the overwhelming world. A shining blue nose, deep as sapphires, leans down and nudges her gently.
:Wake, little hatchling.: Warm, feminine, loving; it rings with will-not-be-harmed and safe-under-wings. She can’t make herself be afraid. A forked tongue gently touches her cheek and she smiles, giggles, puts a hand out to gently push it away.
There is something she ought to be worried about, but it runs from her thoughts when she tries to remember. The world has narrowed to the warm safety of the circle, the fires burning in bright yellow eyes. The dragon nudges her again before ever-so-delicately picking up a loaf of bread in her long white teeth and depositing it in her lap.
:Hatchling must eat. Lady-who-burns left food.: She obediently begins to eat, leaning back against blue scales and smiling brightly up at her guardian. There is only one word her limited memory can assign to this giant being, and as she finishes her bread and snuggles up to a warm claw before falling asleep again she whispers it-
“Mama.”
x-x-x-x-x
When she wakes again, it’s to a much smaller version of the blue snout- this time in red- peering into her face. She jumps back; he jumps back. She tilts her head; he tilts his head and snorts, confused.
A laughing rumble comes from the mother dragon curled around them both.
:Red-hatchling, meet Human-hatchling. She is one-of-us. Play nice, do not bite-claw-harm. She has no scale-coat.: Images as much as words, like before. The red hatchling snorts again and shakes himself, small wings thumping on the ground, before squawking in a rather undignified way and jumping up.
:Come play pounce-and-pin!: He dashes away, looking over his shoulder, and Mother nudges her towards him with another amused chuckle.
Tentatively at first but then with more confidence, she chases after the red hatchling to play a rough game of tackling and wrestling. The red plays fair and does not use his talons or teeth, as Mother warned, but he is larger and stronger than her and she ends up on the ground much more often than she manages to pin him. Nevertheless, the old castle hall is filled with the sounds of human and draconic laughter as the blue watches on with happiness shining in her eyes.
x-x-x-x-x
Time passes. Her memories slowly come back, of a place where “mother” means a tall blonde woman, her smiles always forced and distant and her voice always ready to scold. Where “brother” means cruel laughter and taunts made by a man who looms tall over her, solid boots ready to crush unwary little fingers.
She stops missing them after a few days.
Her time is filled with laughter as she and the red hatchling invent games for themselves through the castle’s abandoned halls and gone-to-seed courtyards. They gorge themselves on sweet berries from bushes long gone wild, they hunt for rabbits that Mother will cook for them, they mock-duel with her holding a stick and he pretending to flame her.
She teaches him to read, from what she remembers, curled side-by-side in the dusty library. He tells her the stories Mother has told him, how when he breathes his first fire he will earn his name and become a true dragon. And at night they sit by Mother’s side and listen to her sing as they fall asleep, safe under her wings and warmed by the fire inside her.
Sometimes other humans come to search the castle. She and Brother hide while Mother scornfully tosses them aside. One day Mother gently herds a terrified horse into one of the large inner courtyards, and once he has adjusted to his new neighbors she teaches herself to ride the rather placid gelding.
She teaches herself to sew, eventually, and makes herself clothes from the cloth brought each month by the strange woman who is the only other human Mother will tolerate. One day she begins to gather the scales Brother and Mother shed and sews them into tough cloth for armor; the interlocking patterns of blue and red entertain her for hours, and the extra protection gives Brother more leeway with his growing claws when they wrestle.
The first time she uses the scales to deflect her brother’s full-force blows successfully, Mother’s pride can be felt from across the room.
x-x-x-x-x
Brother earns the name :Heart-of-Burning-Star: when he breathes his first flame; she sings along with Mother to honor him, her heart bursting with pride.
Mother takes her flying, perched securely on her shoulders and Brother frolicking alongside, to see the mountains and the marshlands and the ocean and the forests. She teaches them how to tell hungry predators from those who are well-fed, how to sneak up on unsuspecting prey, how best to avoid the sword striking for their hearts. At night she tells them of magic, of the world’s mysteries, of how a dragon can change their shape if their need is great.
When at last she bids them farewell they let her go with sorrow but not despair; she has taught them well how to fend for themselves, and the girl will not be alone. Brother will never leave her while she has no wings of her own.
Before she leaves, she touches her nose to the girl’s forehead. :Adopted-child. You will not breathe flame, but you are grown, with a dragon’s heart; I name you Lover-of-Life. Honor and love and wind for your wings, my hatchling-now-grown.:
Their lives continue as they always have among the ruins of the castle; supplying for themselves, and needing no luxuries but the warmth of their sibling by their sides.
x-x-x-x-x
Though Brother fights valiantly when the men come again, he is smaller than Mother and not quite as wise; he is young, and proud, and easily drawn out of his defenses by their taunts. She screams as fireproofed ropes encircle his proud limbs and he is dragged to earth, easy prey for their blades.
One of the men catches hold of her as she tries to run to his side.
“Easy, easy fair maid!” She flinches from the sound of words spoken to ears, not to heart. How can they speak truly to one another when their words are so flat and depthless?
“We shall rescue you from this beast which holds you captive here. Only look away a moment and it shall trouble you no more.”
Rescue? Rescue? From what?!
She cannot form the words on her lips to make them understand, and none of them hear when she reaches for their hearts. She screams and cries, fighting with all the muscle she gained wrestling a young dragon, as they drag her away from her brother. It is still not enough to stop them. Her brother lies still on the ground with dirty men laughing over his helpless body. She cannot take the indignity to the noblest, best friend she has ever known, and fights all the fiercer.
Eventually they force some bitter drink down her resisting throat, and it makes her sight grow dark. She screams for Brother one last time as she drops down into unconsciousness, and she hears him call back with desperation,
:Will come find you! Sister-of-my-heart…:
He keens as the men drag her away, before the sound abruptly chokes to nothing. Her tears burn as they fall.
x-x-x-x-x
The world has changed to something she doesn’t understand.
She is surrounded by humans, women clucking at her in concerned tones, men speaking over her head as if she doesn’t exist, little children stopping to point and stare and whisper. The world is a mass of noises she only barely comprehends, missing the touch of heart on heart that made all emotions seem real.
They take away her scale armor; she later finds and rescues it from the dung of the stable midden, crying as she cleans each scale and remembers what she has lost. The too-soft fabrics tie her up and trip her. Her bed seems cold, no matter how many hot bricks they add, with no warm heartbeat beside her. They make her sit all day, surrounded by chattering women, and she fidgets with the need to roam, to stalk, to ride, to fly. She thinks with longing of her quiet castle and Brother’s uncomplicated love.
At night she creeps out the window- the chiseled stone is hatchling’s play to climb- to run through the gardens and smell air that isn’t perfumed to cover the human stink. Even that brings her little joy; the gardens are all carefully cultivated patches of life with sterility in between, and there are no rabbits to chase or berries to pick. All too soon, though, her guards come grumbling to seize her arms and drag her in, back to where even the cleanest dirt is not tolerated against her skin and her own scent is washed away under the gagging stink of dying flowers.
She wilts, day by day, her eyes losing their sparkle and her bright gold hair losing its shine. Food tastes like ash in her mouth, her sleep is fitful. Her not-mother pretends to fret over her when people are looking, her not-brother makes snide comments about her appearance. She barely hears them anymore. Mother would not recognize her now; there is no love of life in her heart.
She paces her chambers like a beast in a too-small cage, claws removed and fangs filed to nubs, and stares out the window with dull, lifeless eyes.
x-x-x-x-x
She is wakened from fitful sleep by a calloused hand pressing over her mouth. Only a moment’s panic crosses her mind before her heart begins to sing; she’d know that amber-eyed gaze anywhere!
:Sister-mine!: She throws her arms around her brother and weeps, silently, reaching out for the only being who feels real in this land of perfumed, empty words.
:Thought you were dead, saw you fall! Saw so much blood…: He shudders, and she feels scars across his back, only recently healed.
:Wing-torn, lost much blood, but not yet dead. Men grew bored, left. Was able to stop bleeding, heal. Searched for heart-sister, found you, could not reach you. Reached for magic to be human. Climbed wall.: He huffed and stroked her hair. :Humans not guard well from other humans.:
She lets out a broken, teary laugh and wipes her face with her sleeve. :Looking for me-escaping, not you-entering. Won’t be easy to leave.:
He grins, all teeth and dragon’s fire.
:Easy not fun.:
x-x-x-x-x
They sneak their way upwards, towards the castle walls. He can only hold this form until daylight, as young as he is, and it’s fast approaching dawn; the plan is for her to ride on his shoulders away from the castle as dawn takes back his human form.
They’re caught halfway up, by a knight sneaking back from a maid’s room; she takes him down with a swift slash of a stolen knife, but not before his yell alerts the castle.
The warriors bring them to bay on the parapets just as light crests the horizon; her brother is forced to leap from the walls as he loses human form and hovers just out of bow-shot, desperately calling her.
She cannot reach him…. But she refuses to be taken again.
Her eyes locked on her brother and her scale armor turning gold in the morning light, she leaps from the wall. She ignores the screams of the humans, listening instead to the despairing heart-call of her brother who cannot reach her in time.
Her mind flashes back to a lesson of Mother’s; “a dragon may change shape if their need is great.”
Mother had named her a dragon at heart.
Her roar splits the air as her armor grows, turning into golden scales the color of morning sun, and her wings cut the air like butter.
The golden dragon joins her brother in the sky, crying out her joy as they circle one another, and as the humans gape they turn to the mountains with their wings nearly touching as they fly.
From that day forth, the armor coat became her dragon-skin; when she wore it, she would be the golden dragon her heart knew her to be, and when she removed it (as she did only rarely) she would be the human woman she was born.
The armor’s scales all stayed golden, even after she removed it; all except two, that is. They rested directly over her heart, one a gorgeous sapphire-blue and the other a deep, fierce red; for no matter how much you change your shape, you keep your true family close to your heart.
(via littlestartopaz)
I am everything I’ve learned and more, still it calls me.
Here it is
The gifset I’ve been waiting for
*tenderly frames this for my wall*
(via skymurdock)
concept: jack and bitty get engaged, and shitty and tater fight for the privilege to be jack’s best man the way phoebe and rachel battled it out over who would be monica’s maid of honor
they’re tied after five rounds of questions, so ransom and holster decide on a sudden death round to see who’s willing to sacrifice the most for jack.
tater promises to give up his basically-a-part-time position as host of falcstv for three months, and stop roping jack into unplanned appearances for one whole season.
shitty immediately goes into the bathroom and shaves off his ‘stache.
shitty wins.
holster: okay shitty, you’re jack’s best man. you win
tater: no!! i’m take bullet for zimmboni. i’m DIE FOR ZIMMBONI. i should win. i’m be best man.
ransom: dude. look at shitty. look at that hairless face. there’s already been a death in this room today. shitty wins.
(via itsybittle)
#mutants are a metaphor
People ask why I like the X-Men so much. Shit like this.
Stan Lee made X-Men to address all the social issue through his passion: comics. That’s why X-Men is generally independent from his others works. Professor X represented Martin Luther King Jr while Magneto represented Malcom X. When the mutants were forced to register as mutants, that represented the Jews being forced to wear the Star of David. He even addressed gay rights. There was a disease that was spreading rapidly. It was believed by the general public to be mutant-based disease. Incredible hostility towards mutants was a result of the disease. This represented the AIDS outbreak in the 80s that was believed to be a “gay disease”. There are tons more.
*cartwheels* And that’s why the X-Men are the love of my nerdy little life.
(via littlestartopaz)
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
(via minutia-r)
more adventures of hamilton in the mcu
- He wakes up and the first word he hears is wait! and his lips start to form the word burr? but then he sees the speaker: a woman with red hair wearing something obscenely, splendidly tight and he wonders if this is heaven and God is more of a tomcat that he suspected – but then he tries to move and pain flares down his spine, one greedy white jag, and he amends his original assessment: this is Hell, surely. “Pray tell,” he says, “where am I?” and the woman is joined by a sandy-haired man with some strange flesh-coloured apparatus curling around his ears. “New York,” says the man, “who’re you?” The man has a bow. The arrow is notched and aimed at Hamilton’s face. It is frightfully, laughably primitive – but then again the Indian braves have done much damage to westbound farmers with less and so Hamilton bites his tongue on some of his more hysterical questions and says, “My name is Alexander Hamilton. I’m at your service, sir.”
- They tell him where he is. He does not believe them. They tell him when he is and he does not believe them – just a moment ago, just a moment ago, there was Burr, the gunshot, the smoke and the blood and I died I died I heard my heart lurch to a stop I saw God, the great beyond and –
- They say a lot of words. There is a man in a slim black suit with obnoxious facial hair and he talks far too much and Hamilton is too quivery and out-of-place to understand the absurdity of such a condemnation (Hamilton says Tony Stark talks too much; in other news, a garden pond accuses the Atlantic of being overly wet.) He understands. He weeps. His children are dead, his grandchildren are dead. His legacy is –
- there’s a musical, says Stark in a hush to Captain America (tall and blonde and how ridiculous, how perfectly absurd, this nation should not have saints or idols or – )
- “A musical?”
- There is a musical. There are books and television and the internet – God help the modern world, Hamilton learns about the internet and the first thing he does is write a twenty five thousand word blog on why the memory of Jefferson is overrated and false. He gets Jarvis to proofread it. He gets Jarvis to stick it on the New York Times and there’s a mass panic about someone hacking into the website for the sole purpose of slagging off a long-dead Founding Father. Nick Fury explains about firewalls and internet security. Hamilton rants at him – the Avengers listen through the door, hear things like Sally Hemings and how would you feel if the worst person you knew was remembered a hero and the article is taken down but somehow, somehow Hamilton learns what a blog is.
- Things Hamilton loves about the modern world: twitter, blogging, Lin Manuel Miranda, swearing, loose sexual morality, Starbucks, minimal slavery (it still counts, he says hotly, in Africa and Asian it’s still there it isn’t gone yet – )
- Yes he meets Lin Manuel Miranda. He rebukes him at length about inaccuracies. He thanks him. He sees his own play fifteen times and starts thinking about a sequel.
- Oh yes. There’s a sequel.
- Because the fact of the matter is this: Clinton’s corrupt and Sanders is well-meaning but doesn’t have the support and Trump is just…well. Hamilton breaks his nose and writes op-eds for every paper in the country declaring why he was right to do so.
- Look: American politics is a mess. And in comes the Founding Father Without A Father, the Bastard Son of a Whore and he says: so what did I miss?
- And he claps his hands and grins and says I’m not throwing away my shot and the internet goes mad and the public goes mad and no one is saying he’ll win this election but the next one, oh the next one. Four years is an eternity in politics and Senator Hamilton has the one thing he needed most: more time.
(via skymurdock)
Do you have a shorter name?
#when action movie heroes look at the badass leading ladies with heart eyes#this is my aesthetic
This was the beginning for me
This was the first time I realized I had an aesthetic, before I knew what the word meant.
Beautiful, brightly-colored futures no matter how dystopian the government. Art and culture and music and fashion and joy as a sub plot, with aliens that are eight flavors of weird but recognizably human, with the same kind of love and dedication and all new kinds of beauty to discover.
Technology that is both breathtakingly futuristic and endlessly recognizable, that fails in a recognizable way. Bureaucracy without Kafka.
Angry action heroes who claim to have no fucks and no skills, secretly filled with care and kindness and ambition and cleverness and talent, who break out of their stock-still inertia to help a beautiful stranger save the world.
A gorgeous woman, surprisingly less sexualized than you’d think for all the nudity, smarter and kinder and faster and gentler and better than everyone else in the movie.
The pinnacle of masculinity being a fast-talking black man who covers himself in elaborate hairstyles and beautiful flowers and extreme outfits, clearly cultured and an unquestionable good-guy despite all the queer coding, someone who loves his job and dedicates himself to it entirely, who has friends and who doesn’t put on a fake persona on the air.
The funny bits are funny, not gallows humor but delightful giggly silly funny and quotable, endlessly, in contexts that are not at all grim. And the dramatic bits are glorious. And the good guys win.
This is why I loved Jupiter Ascending. This is why I adore Pacific Rim. This is why I stan for comic books that’ve forgotten about Watchmen. This is the definition of formatlive, y’all. If you don’t understand this movie, you don’t understand me.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
Having grown up in DC, statues of various dead guys on horses are basically background radiation, or they were before I became Hamilton trash and started noticing them again. Now it’s like every time I turn around there’s a Founding Father looking at me like I personally disappointed him, and it’s getting a little unnerving.
Although: as a result, I sort of want to write a magical realism thing where that can really happen. Where if you do something they would have disagreed with strongly enough, the statues climb down off their columns and lumber down Mass Ave to the Russell Building or the Capitol, where they stand on the sidewalk, arms crossed, glaring into the window of whoever’s just introduced legislation that offended them. They don’t speak, or attack anyone, or damage anything– well, they do tend to bump their heads on low-handing streetlights, sometimes, but that doesn’t count. Mostly they just stand there, mournful, accusing, for everyone to see.
Sometimes lawmakers can talk them around, convince them they’re not actually betraying the political ideals of their predecessors. Politicians who are good at this tend to have much, much longer careers than the ones who aren’t. Politicians who piss off the wrong statues seldom get reelected.
George Washington rarely budges, and when he does it’s front-page news, nationwide. Madison’s always been easier to talk around than most. Hamilton spend more time off his plinth than on it, but he cools off fast. Jefferson holds grudges, to the point that hardly anyone worries too much about making him mad.
It’s not just politicians, either, and they don’t always come to life in anger. Joan of Arc’s bronze horse will shiver to life in Malcolm X Park, sometimes, and carry her off to join protest marches, when she thinks their cause is just. Gandhi walked with Iraq War protestors. The Spirit of American Womanhood, outside Constitution Hall, danced on the day that Roe v. Wade was decided, and when Obergefell vs. Hodge went through, Eleanor Roosevelt taught a clumsy Lindy to Baron von Steuben.
Lincoln has only risen from his seat once since he was put there in 1922, and that was to nod in solemn approval at LBJ from the White House lawn.
Some cities rarely put up statues, and many have taken theirs down. Paris has a great many artists and writers memorialized, and curiously few politicians. In London, during the Blitz, Nelson shinned down his column to help dig people out of collapsed buildings, until he was broken to pieces himself; he stands atop the column again today, reassembled, but has never moved since. In the last moths of the Soviet Union, a desperate Communist Party had the statues of Moscow chained in place. These days, Monument Avenue in Richmond is punctuated with a long series of empty plinths and bare columns.
But DC keeps theirs, and keeps building more.
(via academicfeminist)
