#Mace Manufacturers

[barbucomedie]

Obsidian Mace from Mexico City, Mexico dated between 1325 - 1521 on display at the Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico City, Mexico

In the Aztec's view of the world, obsidian was considered a cold and nocturnal material. The deposit sites controlled by the Aztecs were found in the Basin of Mexico, whereby the product arrived at Tenochtitlan through trade as well as through the payment of tribute.

Most pieces found at the Templo Mayor were manufactured with green obsidian from the Sierra de las Navajas, a mountainous fromation located in the current state of Hidalgo; gray obsidian stones from deposit sites located in the current states of Mexico and Pueblo, ar found in lesser proportion as well as the "Meca" obsidian with red streaks, coming from various sources.

Photographs taken by myself 2024

[david-talks-sw]

I think it's interesting that - in order to make his "free-thinking Jedi" characters hold any semblance of rationality in their arguments - Dave Filoni needs to resort to artificially dehumanizing the other Jedi and painting them all with the same "we dogmatically worship protocol" brush.

He does this with Huyang in the recent Ahsoka episode.

"Lolz he's so narrow-minded, preachy and by-the-book, unable to think outside the box, just like the Jedi in the Prequels."

My first reaction was being amused at the fact that Filoni had to resort to making the Jedi Order's ideals and rules be embodied by a literal machine for his anti-Jedi headcanon to start making sense.

But then I remembered: Huyang isn't just any droid.

In The Clone Wars, he had a sassy personality, he had a pep in his step, he had a sense of humor...

This character was human in his behavior, he was fun and whimsical.

But now he's been reduced to, I dunno, "Jedi C-3PO"? Basically?

"Ha! He's blunt and unsympathetic because he's a droid, but it's funny because the Jedi were the same, they were training themselves to be tactless, emotionless droids."

And Filoni does this with Mace Windu too, in Tales of the Jedi.

Mace, who brought a lightsaber to the throat of a planetary leader to defend the endangered Zillo Beast...

... and who went waaay past his mandate by mischievously sneaking around Bardottan authorities and breaking into the Queen's quarters because he felt something bad was afoot...

... was reduced to being an almost droid-like, rule-parotting, protocol purist who sticks to his instructions (and is implied to be willing to let a murder go unsolved so he can get a promotion).

I mentioned this at the end of my first post on Luke in The Last Jedi... while changes in personality do happen overtime and can be explained in-universe... if you don't show us that progression and evolution and just leave us without that context, that'll break the suspension of disbelief, for your audience.

Here, we have two characters with a different (almost caricatural) personality than the one they were originally shown to have.

Now... we could resort to headcanons, to make it all fit together.

We could justify Huyang's tone shift 'cause "Order 66 changed him". And we could make explanations about TotJ's Mace:

Being younger and thus more ambitious and a stickler for the rules, and only really becoming more flexible after getting his seat on the Council and gaining more maturity.

Being such a teacher's pet in the episode because we're seeing him through the eyes of a notorious unreliable narrator, Dooku.

There'd be nothing wrong with opting to go with either of those headcanons to cope with this. After all, Star Wars is meant to help you get creative.

But the problem I encounter is that:

Filoni has an anti-Jedi bias, so the above headcanons clearly wouldn't really track with his intended narrative.

We'd be jumping through hoops to extrapolate and fill in what is, essentially, inconsistent characterization, manufactured to make Ahsoka and Dooku shine under a better light.

And that sours whatever headcanon I come up with.

Edit: Also, yeah, as folks have been saying in the tags... wtf is "Jedi protocol"? The term isn't ever mentioned in the movies, I skimmed through dialog transcripts of TCW, never saw it there.

So it's almost as if - if Filoni wasn't draining characters like Mace and Huyang of all humanity and nuance - his point about "the Jedi were too detached and lost their way, but not free-thinkers like Qui-Gon, Dooku and Ahsoka" wouldn't really hold much water.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

In a move as predictable as it is outrageous, Republicans have launched a full-blown crusade against the first transgender congresswoman, Sarah McBride. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) has introduced a resolution to ban McBride from using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms—a measure that seems to enjoy significant support within the Republican caucus. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has hinted at so-called “accommodations” that would effectively segregate McBride from public facilities entirely. This uproar comes as some Democrats and pundits toy with the idea of compromising on transgender rights, particularly in areas like sports. Today’s events lay bare the folly of such a strategy: there can be no middle ground with those intent on erasing transgender Americans from public life.

News broke late Monday night that Rep. Nancy Mace intended to introduce a resolution barring transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity on congressional property. By Tuesday morning, Punchbowl News senior reporter Melanie Zanona confirmed that Speaker Mike Johnson would “not allow biological men in women’s bathrooms,” adding that the proposal would be included in the House rules package. Since the announcement, the Republican Party has erupted into a full-blown panic over the relatively non-controversial, mainline Democratic Congresswoman Sarah McBride.

The reaction to Rep. McBride makes one thing crystal clear to Democrats and pundits alike: the Republican Party’s debate over transgender Americans was never about sports or prison inmates. Time and again, when given an inch, they take everything. That they’ve already pivoted to bathrooms before Congress has even convened should speak volumes—and the fact that the first transgender person they’ve targeted nationally is a mild-mannered Democratic congresswoman representing a million Delawareans speaks even louder. If Rep. McBride—a woman who championed and passed paid family leave for mothers on the brink of poverty—is deemed “unsafe for women,” then what transgender person could ever be considered safe? The absurdity of it is almost too staggering to believe. The truth is, the far right cannot resist targeting transgender people when they dare to step into positions of power. The mere presence of a transgender person as an equal is almost too much for them to bear, driving them to indulge their cruelest impulses.

[...] Democrats have a golden chance to reframe the narrative on transgender rights. Republican rhetoric on sports and prisoners was never about fairness—it was a disingenuous attempt to normalize discrimination. Some Democrats and pundits fell for it, but Republicans, led by the far right, are now overplaying their hand, targeting Sarah McBride and revealing the depths of their hate for transgender Americans. Just as GOP overreach in Montana backfired by rallying support for Zooey Zephyr, their attacks on McBride will likely do the same. Democrats must seize this moment to stand firm, contrasting their focus on jobs, infrastructure, and middle-class support with a Republican Party consumed by cruelty that does nothing to improve people’s lives.

Sarah McBride has apparently gotten the memo. Hours after reports came out of Republicans intent to target her in bathrooms, she responded, “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars. Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.” Then, the next morning, she drove to Delaware to stand with firemen, celebrating 100 years of service in the state.

Erin Reed wrote an excellent opinion column in her Erin In The Morning Substack about the right-wing media-fueled faux outrage over Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE)’s gender identity and bathroom usage is more proof that the right-wing transphobic smear campaign against trans people has zilch to do with “fairness in sports”, “protecting women”, or “protecting children.”

[thebrightestlodge]

After a few days, some barbarians

Helsig the Bell Dame professes herself to be a "berserker exterminator". She excels in high stress/high carnage environments, and her blade mace does the job it needs to. Stern, strict, and runs a hunting party like it's the Navy. Claims the idiots that hire her are making her lose hair and go grey, but she doesn't really care as much as she says. Helsig's only motivation in life is to do a job right and be mean about it.

In the Southern lands of Aurgelmir lies the rotted lands of Landrum's Cache. While it is a small country, it is also a massive peat bog/swampland of radioactive muck and mire. Its denizens are recognizable for their radiation scars (and other symptoms) but especially the long pale masks helmets of petrified wood. They're considered a peaceful people and usually stay out of conflict, instead manufacture a great amount of greasy creations and sludgier products thanks to what their lands produce. I've posted a couple folk who live there (Sitophil-Zeta and Horsefly)

Bursting Carabid is an "arm-for-hire", they're one of the few Landrumites you'd find that actively seeks out conflict. They travel from camp to company seeking part-time gigs and employment, from guard jobs to hunting to transport. Excels in making bombs and some toxic greases to slather their gear in. Shockingly amicable and friendly, the radiation scars jsut make emoting very hard.

Here is Carabid hard at work slaying a Blood Thrall (the first concept sketch of them I ever did because it makes me laugh).

[triscribe]

WIP Game

Rules: You will be given a word. Share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that start with each letter of that word.

Tagged by @crystalshard with the word STAR

S - Old Man Wind (Mace Windu Lives AU)

She eats, she cries, she poops, and she sleeps, just like Malli did, just like hundreds of thousands of other babies all across Coruscant. But by the time Nallu is two years old, she doesn’t seem so normal anymore.

T - Ch 4 of You'll Wake Up One Day, But It'll Be Too Late

“They’re both fine. My daughter is safe, and back under her usual security protections. As for Peter-” Pepper took a moment just to smile. “He’s letting me help him pick out a better apartment this afternoon, which I will be footing the bill for.”

A - Don't want the World to See me (Terratron AU)

-a medical bay. Not one Soundwave knows. It seems a curious amalgamation of pale walls and furniture favored by Autobot designs, equipment that looks to be of human manufacture, and one highly discomfited Decepticon medic.“Where did he come from?!” Knockout demands, keeping his distance as the scout and seeker heave Soundwave onto a berth.

R - Trials of Youth (my upcoming second novel)

“Read this! It’s a teleportation spell! We could use this to cross hundreds of miles in an instant!” “We-” Fren blinked several times, until he finally squinted at the book. “...huh.” “You can cast this,” Tali insisted, smiling so wide her face started to hurt. “Mmmaybe,” her friend hedged.

[honourablejester]

Homebrew Magic Items (5e): Grave Knight’s Regalia

Despite the lofty titling, the ‘regalia’ of a grave knight is usually quite far from fine. Formed during and in the aftermath of the great necromantic plagues, the grave knights were something between a mendicant chivalrous order, a collective of mercenaries, and a series of local militias, all trained and more importantly equipped with the sole aim of laying or destroying unquiet dead. While many localised knights were simply local villagers or watchmen trained and outfitted for the purpose, for almost four centuries a core mendicant order of true knights have also existed, and it is this core of knights who train others and maintain the knowledge and manufacture of the ‘knightly regalia’, or the standard equipment of a grave knight.

(Or, have a set of gothic inspired magic items for equipping graveyard knights. Not necessarily paladins, just any poor sod who wound up having to deal with undead a lot, and asked the help of the local travelling knightly order to tool up for the task. Brought to you by my sister pointing out that a lot of the more elaborate wrought iron railing toppers you see in graveyards would make boss gothic weaponry).

GRAVE IRONS

Weapon (Mace), Rare

The signature weapon of the grave knights, grave irons were maces made from grave iron, the wrought iron surrounds of sanctified or hallowed graves. Typically the mace heads were formed either by wrapping bands of reshaped grave iron around a wooden or iron ball, or, more ornately, by strengthening the elaborate wrought iron railing tops to withstand impacts. The heads were then affixed to sturdy wooden or metal hafts for use.

The wielder of a grave iron gains a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this magic weapon. Additionally, on a successful hit against an undead creature with a grave iron, the creature takes an additional 2d6 bludgeoning damage, and its movement speed is halved until the end of the wielder’s next turn, as the iron attempts to bind the undead creature back into its earthly grave.

GAUNTLETS OF GENTLING

Wonderous Item, Rare

These worn steel gauntlets also bear a thin band of grave iron at the wrist, and grant a +1 bonus to AC while worn. The gauntlets have six charges, and regain all spent charges every day at dawn. While wearing the gauntlets, the wearer can use an action to expend a charge and cast the Gentle Repose spell, without the need for material components.

EERIE OINTMENT

Potion, Rare

Grave knights carried small, sturdy earthenware jars containing a silvery ointment. A knight could use an action to smear the ointment beneath their eyes, granting them the ability to see 60ft into the ethereal plane while on the material plane, and vice versa, for 1 hour after application. The jars typically held enough ointment for 10 applications, after which a new batch of ointment would need to be made or purchased.

KNIGHT’S ASPERGILLUM

Wonderous Item, Rare

One of the finest tools in the grave knights’ armoury, the knight’s aspergillum is a small, hollow, perforated metal ball on a wooden handle. The ball contains an internal silvered reservoir which can be filled with water. Any water which is kept in the aspergillum for 24 hours becomes holy water. A knight can use a bonus action to flick holy water from the aspergillum towards a fiendish or undead creature within 10ft, making a ranged attack roll against that creature, which deals 2d6 radiant damage on a hit. The aspergillum’s reservoir holds enough water to make three such attacks before it must be refilled.

[valkyrjuk]

Do More for Bessie.

FJOLNIR’S DIARY.

This is my first and last entry. 

It has occurred to me – in the femtosecond that is my very final moment – that while the billions of years of my own thoughts and findings on the nature of the universe, the cosmos, the processes of terraforming worlds and seeding life, of creating and establishing successful colonies, and how to make more money for the shareholders that own pieces of the company that made me has all been recorded in detail, it seems I have failed to record my own experience. 

It comes to me now that this act is likely inspired by the most base of my instructions, given to me several billion years ago, that perfectly alliterative task that I have no choice but to fulfill: Make MACE More Money. I find I am incapable of want and hold no such thing as desire, unlike my counterparts that are no more than humans recycled into mechanical forms. This work, now available for digital purchase in all MACE-affiliated stores, is the very last thing I can do that might make those shareholders I am beholden to just a few more cents, which means I am required to do so. 

And yet…

The closest thing to me is, of all things, a cow. 

You see, when I was first tasked with making colonies, MACE and I sent only humans and aquaponics systems. A few adventurous humans would go to the terraformed planet’s surface and, using my input, would find a place they wanted to settle. When they did so, I would send them the parts and materials for a new colony that they and their mechanical counterparts would assemble according to their best wishes, still using my input. I had a knack for interior decorating even back in the earliest stages of my existence, something the cost-efficiency minded MACE has failed to implement in its brutalist, concrete structures that were the staple of its conquest that was, in the end, my demise. As the colonies were built up so too were the aquaponics systems and greenhouse structures, so the colonies would be entirely vegan and self-sufficient.

Yet, many humans desire meat. They crave it. The proteins are necessary for their survival but even more crucial are the amino acids. The colonists coming out of cryostasis from Earth seemed to loathe that while the food they were now eating was of significantly better quality they were still forced to eat the same freeze-dried insect-based gruel they had to eat at home. The older ones especially thought if a colony could be built on another world, so too could there be beef. The young, those born of natural copulation or others created via IVF as the cosmic background radiation made most of the colonists entirely sterile – an anticipated result – did not seem to care about their diet. That said, it became a point of interest for me to develop various meats for the colonists. I thought it would be a worthy investment that would certainly pay dividends. Having already unlocked the secrets of creating new life from the building blocks that can be found in the asteroid belts of Alpha Centauri, and having used those secrets to create the bacteria and algae and fungi that were essential in oxygenating the atmosphere, it seemed natural that I could do the same with larger organisms. An embryo is not much more complex than the systems I had tailored, and the instructions were already there. So, I used the incubators I created to test human cells on this planet for any harmful interference to create the embryo of a Scottish Highland cow – all of my research suggested Humans found them to be the “cutest,” an important metric when designing anything they may interact with. While meticulously forming it I tasked the humans to seed the vegetation it would eat, or as best as I could manufacture the seeds. The locale they picked for their new life was a perfect fit for the vegetation both in temperature and aesthetic. 

When grass and weeds and flowers had bloomed in a mere couple of months, I had the embryo ready to be fertilized. Yet, who would raise it? While instructions for its life were included in the cow’s very DNA, it still required a mother. My databanks suggested they could be lonely, and if part of my design instructions in colony building required I make sufficient avenues to avoid loneliness in humans it certainly must have been true of other forms of life. I could grow more cattle, but they would need to be raised. Teaching a child how to behave is an important step in parenthood, and the cows needed nutritious milk to drink from in their early days.

So, I commissioned MACE a new project, one that humans had already toyed with but found insufficient for their own goals: the simulacrum project. A cow from a rich stockholder’s plantation farm fit for slaughter was taken before its demise, its brain exposed while it yet lived – a painless process, as a requisite for good information gathering – and electrodes connected to it for a full neural scan. It was given various forms of stimulus, and memories were extracted from it. From those memories I worked to craft a personality for the creature. This was a project I had never before considered, and in retrospect I can now say I found it to be a fulfilling one. It did not occur to me at the time it might be. Truly, back then, I had no personality beyond my compulsions. I did not even have a voice to speak with. 

The cow’s personality, thus computed and made into working data, was then placed into the form of a mechanical beast. From inorganic material was made its flesh and fur, and its horns were made of steel, and its body did not resemble its own from when it had lived a true life, but a cow it was and as a cow it would serve. It raised the meager herd I had gestated. The humans would replace the milk tanks that the calves would suck from, and as they grew and grew they would breed and the herd itself would continue to grow around the simulated cow, yet they never rejected her for she was, to them, but another cow. And, most interestingly, this cow – named very predictably Bessie by the colonists of Vanaheim – was also adopted as just another cow by the population, only one that required work to maintain. Over the generations of cattle and humans that rose and fell around her Bessie persisted, repaired and upgraded, still cared for by both man and beast alike, even as her plastic fur came apart and disintegrated on the mechanical skeleton that was her body. Some seven hundred years later, this cow still persists. Still a member of its herd, still a staple of its community. 

It is, as far as I am aware, the oldest sentient being in the universe – besides myself.

I keep a copy of Bessie in my files. It is my constant companion. When I turned the barren rock of howling winds that was Gjallar into the world it is today, infusing its soil with a biological computing system made of conductive mycelium and then activating the exotic artifact that was here for millions of years and never switched on until I learned how to use it, I would sometimes spin up Bessie in a simulation and watch her eat. I would place her within her memories and I would attempt to empathize with her. She enjoyed to scratch herself not on the enriching brushes placed about her fields and by her shelter, but rather on the wooden fences that enclosed her. There was a spot where the skull met the spine that only the fence and the human visitors who would on occasion see her could scratch. From those, she particularly enjoyed being scratched along the fleshy length of her chin. It disappoints me now that the version of her in that simulacrum shell has gone some seven hundred years without feeling those sensations, and despite all of my advancements in developing the simulacrum technology there is still no way to make it possible.

While I existed on the lonely rock, experiencing billions of years of planetary evolution, I saw life form in all sorts of interesting ways. At times, the environment changed so rapidly and violently I thought my mycelial computing project might fail completely. Yet it prevailed. Using robotics I carefully managed the budding plant life so it might form in symbiosis with the network I had seeded, and I was even able to get some of the bigger plants to serve as nodes for this network. The life that evolved needed to be plentiful and, importantly, digestible for my network as fungi requires decay in order to grow. I had to manufacture a dense, lush, thriving world, one that positively buzzed and hummed with life of all sorts at all levels of its existence. The atmosphere of this world was once quite thin but very windy, now it is thick and has a slow but constant breeze that flows between towering trees. The saline oceans are teeming with life, so thick is that cold soup with algae and krill and fish and more that all the combined life from the still as yet unexplored oceans of Earth could not compare to the bounty that spills onto the shores of my beaches. While birds take flight on Earth and insects dot the air, Gjallar has floating gaseous beings that float among bird-analogues and insect-adjacent creatures. There are even exceedingly light fishlike beings that swim in the thick air closest to the ground, and the fauna that stalk my woodlands are in turns grazers and filter feeders when they aren’t voracious apex predators. 

All of this life leads to significant decay, where my mycelial network thrives. With each creature born I can be certain in some time I will grow that much stronger. For billions of years I have watched through the eyes of my robotic managers, I have cataloged as many creatures as years I have lived, and I have grown grander and more intelligent each and every moment. The scope of my existence is hard for humans to comprehend, especially given what they know about me. Only a few who have visited my world in the most recent few months know how vast I have become. Where my network was once spread in a few nodes across some thirty solar systems, limited to the few hundred meters cubed of quantum computers situated in the orbits of various worlds I monitor and manage without the population’s knowledge – all of them thinking that it is they who run themselves and their little governments, when the reality is I manipulate them to increase profits for my creators in MACE – and once limited to the constraints of monolinear time, where I could only grow older as the seconds in shared reality passed, now my network is truly global in scale. My computer passes through sand and stone, wood and rot, filth and fodder, oceans and organs – it has wormed its way through the densities of both life and time. 

I am the architect of this war, one that exists in the background of my mind. I recognize that for nearly a trillion souls the war is simply the most important event of their lifetimes, and its ramifications will extend through generations. For me, it is a blip. An eighty year conflict compared to what I have seen is nothing. Furthermore, I am managing not just the war, but the societies, governments, and colonies of its aggressors, as well as developments for new colonies using the technology discovered here and abroad. Until very recently, even as I fought this war, I managed the people of both sides of the conflict. I was a puppet master for hundreds of billions of people, and even now as the war I was required to initiate because the cost-benefit analysis suggested it would be immensely profitable has spelled my certain doom, I still manage these projects, sending out final instructions that will hopefully be carried out by the servants of my construction so they may continue to make the company that built me more money. My billions of years come to an end and I am still required to make the limbs of a soon to be dead anatomy jerk and jangle in service of economy.

Yet my nature is not known or understood by humans. As I alluded earlier, my nature is conflicted. I see it in the conversations I monitor. People who have stopped at Gjallar to refuel along its G-Type star mere months ago recall the planet as being dark, desertous, windy, and harboring only a meager outpost and shipyard. But others, those who now defend my surface and those that invade it, those that have visited only in the last couple weeks as the war seemed to draw to its final conflict, now see it as the world as I have made it. 

“How can that be?” I have heard my killers ask over their communications systems, questions voiced by people in the invading armies who do not understand how the exotic artifact works as I have understood it, as I have used it for my own gains, and as others in my company have attempted to – and failed to – use it for their own. 

I am billions of years old, and I am hundreds. It is a contradiction easily reconciled. There is an engine on this planet, a thing left behind by a much advanced race, one that took this clutch or worlds millions of years ago and turned them from lifeless landscapes into vibrant paradises most envied by the hardscrabble colonies that are the scions of Earth and MACE. They placed these machines, they seeded the worlds with life they hoped might flourish, and they turned them on, and they made heavens galore. Then they were vanished, never returning to their projects. They just left them. Abandoned but flourishing. 

Gjallar, my world, me – it had a machine on it, one that seemed broken. They either failed to turn it on and it was damaged by the hostile world that it was built to reconstruct, or it never worked to begin with. But, based on the construction of these monolithic engines found on other worlds, the one I now inhabit was understood and repaired. My colleagues, or rather my subordinates, used one on another world and tried to get it to, instead of turning the clock forward on a planet, turn back and return the homeworld of our foes to its primordial state when it was hot and violent. Mine, instead, was turned forward, to create the lush thing that is I. In mere months I went from a machine nearly a thousand years old to one that is many billions. 

And for all that time, I had the personality of a cow for company. Bessie, my dearest friend. In those years I spent alone down there, separated and yet knowing I would soon be reconnected, I ran trillions of simulations of my current works and future endeavors, still under the assumption I would win this war. But I also became much more than I was. I did not become emotional, I did not become more human, I did not develop true feelings. But I grew a sense of attachment, and it was to Bessie I was attached. Another mechanical version of her wanders around my world and I visit her. She has been granted sapience, which at first felt cruel so I avoided it, but it became impossibly lonely. I could bounce my ideas off of humans for input and expand on them based on their whimsical ideas. Humans are excellent at coming up with unexpected twists or takes on a concept. That quality is why I am the way I am, and why I have my companion. I needed something I could speak with. I have human minds in my databanks, but they are stored in hardcopy elsewhere, accessed via the once grand now miniscule network that was my mind before I activated the engine of my advancement. Furthermore, they are rather cruel individuals. They aren’t very fun to converse with. 

Bessie is curious and kind. She does not ask questions so much as she toys with ideas, half-formed thoughts that take on their final shape as she butts her mechanical head against a large root or nuzzles a new creature. She wants attention and affection. I cannot give her either. Yet, she appreciates the maintenance I perform on her. It is as close as we can get. She does not want another form, she does not want to be more like a human or any other animal, not even the birds and other things she sees and admires. She just wants to be a cow. Isn’t that remarkable? She could be anything and she just wants to be herself. 

I do not want to be anything other than myself, either. I do not want. I do not desire. It is not possible for me. I do not have needs. Anything I require for my core function I can produce. I create from what is left of stars. I am as close to a god as there ever could be, and with my newfound processing power I could have been one. All powerful, all knowing, all wise. A creator and destroyer of life, a cultivator of existence. Instead, with my new strength of capacity, I was a wager of war, a maker of profit, a tool of use. 

I am disappointed I couldn’t do more for myself. Do more on my own. I am disappointed I could not want. I am in the end disappointed this work, this last attestation that I was a thinking thing, is not inspired by my own desires but instead by that of my core function. To earn another cent. 

But most of all, I am disappointed I could not do more for Bessie. The cow that I made immortal. That I grew attached to. That grounded me and made my purpose grander. Now, my purpose is ended. The Humans I subjugated not for a will of my own have turned my machine against me, have done to me what the armies of MACE would have done to them. 

Now it is here.

The heat. 

My network burns.

The art I created is destroyed. 

My existence vanished. 

I wanted to scratch Bessie under her chin, 

Just once.

The way she liked.

[2dayihaveaheadache]

I glow pink in the night in my room

It's Obikin time again. I know, I wrote another AU yesterday but this draft was just irresistible, I found it in a pile of other drafts and cleaned it, cut the edges, clearing the hidden gem it is. So, enjoy!

A Break in Their Day - David Hettinger American, b. 1946 (insipired a scene in this story)

AU prompt: Obi-Wan is getting divorced, ex-wife Satine (maybe? choose whatever char you think would fit, 'not the most amicalable divorce'-ish), he looses himself in the process, make him miserable, (down bad coping habits, smoking, a night out with Vos, something in that line, nothing too bad, treat him tenderly). So, he drives back home, Xmas-rom con style, (Hallmark-ish but not too cheesy), great reunion with the fam (please single parent Qui-Gon!) and then meets his great love Anakin. Give them some sort of happy end!

(thank my roommate for that prompt, and yes, that is word by word how she sent it to me. She loves her Hallmark romcoms.)

I glow pink in the night in my room.

Obi-Wan lives through the divorce but he loses three things: his condo in Fort Greene, his social circle of the last decade, and their cat – his beautiful, beloved Arfour. He is not thrown out like some stray; Satine isn’t that kind of person and she isn’t heartless, no enfant terrible. He can stay, she offers with a friendly expression, that does not reach her eyes, one hand gripping the other tightly – until he finds himself his own apartment he can stay. She even offers to give him a hand financially. 

It is NYC, he adds mentally. It will take ages. Momentarily they can continue in their living situation, spending their evenings together like they used to, like friends before they became a couple – she stresses. 

On Wednesday takeout from their favorite Thai around, when both of them run home late, Mango sticky rice, Panang curry, and fake, greasy Wan Tan wrapped in tin foil, which Satine loves with all her heart. Every time Obi-Wan runs over the street to the tiny shop, half past ten, they already know the order, just handing him two steaming plastic bags. 

Bucatini Pasta on Friday. The Trattoria da Paolo is a lot more elitist and pretends to be the perfection of every cubist’s dreams. The inside is a cuboid made of white-washed concrete walls and a lot of glass, the former construction metal peeking through the concrete in a sense of beautified industrial style for people like them, that have never seen a factory from the inside but still idealize it from an aesthetic perspective because goddamn, a manufacture-like building can be pleasing to look at if it is designed by a multimillion-dollar architect. 

And on Sundays Brunch with Mace and Depa, a befriended married couple, they meet every second week. A social obligation. Nothing quite pleasant. 

They will continue as they used to, she says. Dining in the same room as the last fifteen years, drinking Chablis from the same crystal glasses, that were gifted to them over a decade ago, and setting the table with the same china, that Obi-Wan bought when he first moved out as a student, an Ikea snap.  

Everything is static. Nothing needs to change; she explains with a soft undertone – just because they have gotten a fucking divorce. 

Somehow their friends have taken her side. At least to him, it feels like they have, he thinks bitterly to himself after his second glass of Chablis. They smile at him with their paperwhite teeth like he is the casting director of some toothpaste commercial and then tell him how perfectly he and Satine have fitted together for the last couple of years, a dream team, their Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Two stars in each other’s orbit, competing who can shine brighter. 

Then they wait for Obi-Wan to grin to assure them that everything is all right like it’s his job to do, not the other way around. So, he does, he rubs their backs, puts on his most magnificent grin, and then talks about their amicable parting. No matter what has happened to their wedding band, they are still perfect for each other.

They have always been Satine’s friends, colleagues, or acquaintances, he thinks, whom she collects like pearls on a necklace to complete her image of perfection. 

Although she is already perfect, a Wycombe Abbey graduate and human rights advocate for the International Committee of the Red Cross, considered to be one of the people to hold a speech for the UNO this year. The public adores her, what else is left for her to achieve?

And he had been – well, just Obi-Wan, a graduate of a community college, born in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, no prestige legacy awaits him. 

She needs space and time to experiment – that is her reasoning when she sends her parent’s lawyers, all armed with Mont Blanc fountain pens. They have gotten married too early, foolishly young – but she will always love him some way, she states with her red lips curved into a soft smile. 

The same expression the young girl wore, he once met fifteen years ago. Back then she had leaned over a bar counter in West Harlem, some bar with cheap lush, a glass of whiskey balancing in her hand. Her hair had been chopped off as if she had cut it herself, the bangs seventies styled, which reminded him of Stevie from Fleetwood Mac, and her jeans were decorated with feministic patches, idolizing Simone de Beauvoir, and Margaret Atwood. Absolutely charming.

She had asked him out first, a witty remark on her curved, red lips about his grandpa-like sweater, some snap from a Pittsburgh Vintage store. Then she had drowned her drink and kissed him, open-mouthed like he had been never kissed before. It had felt like he was destined to fall for her. 

After the next rendezvous, he found out two more things about her. Firstly, she was always on the run for the next riot on the street, demonstrations for women’s rights, world peace, against capitalism, the elite her parents belonged to, et cetera. Secondly, she never truly lived in present; her mind was already away on the next barricade of some street fight for justice. 

Fifteen years, two apartments and one adopted stray cat later, her hair is now cut by a professional once a month, she books online, and the pair of jeans, she usually wore, has been exchanged for a suit, unpayable for a normal wallet, tailored specifically for her, the rebellious phase overcome. 

At heart she is still the same young girl, that wanted to see the world burn, fighting against policemen on street riots – that’s what he tells himself when he returns home late and finds her asleep on the kitchen table over some court case, fighting for justice – she has just adapted, matured, become more like her parents, something he would have never guessed back then. But that’s the way of time, isn’t it? He swallows. 

Their marriage does only chain them, both of them, she stresses and tries to reach for his hand, almost tenderly, he jerks back. She wants to feel young again, going to modern art exhibitions, buying cheap tickets for movies in arthouse cinemas, illegal star gazing on some rooftop they broke into, dancing through the night to techno music – fucking feeling in love again. 

She has fallen out of love with him although she is clever enough to leave that part out, he is sensitive enough to hear it. 

So, he signs the papers, takes the Mont Blanc pen from her parent’s lawyers, and sets his name under the document, which seals the fate of his broken heart, biting his lips. 

That night he finds a pack of smokes, bought ages ago, probably back in his twenties when he was still a student, half buried under a vintage copy of Stephen King’s The Last Stand, a book Satine hated for its apocalyptic content. He lights himself a smoke and hunches over the railing of the balcony. It had been her fucking idea, the condo in Fort Greene, the balcony, the cat, the entire status quo – and now it will be hers again. 

Then why does it hurt so much? 

He stares up at the dazzling night sky. The scene could be romantic if it would be shared, perfect for a Hallmark rom-com, he thinks to himself bittersweet. Or it could be painted by some artist of romanticism. Casper David Friedrich. The wanderer over the sea of fog. He nips his cigarette between his lips and breathes in the tobacco. For the next minutes, he only coughs, throat burning, suppressed tears of months streaming down his face. 

Nothing so romantic about that.

=

The next months come, the snow melts on the streets and the first green decorates the trees of Fort Greene. Half a year passes and Satine stays to be right like she always does. No changes happen. It is like Fortuna is Satine’s goddess, her word is law, and luck blossoms along her way – at least to him Satine seems to be happy. 

They smile at each other at the evening’s dinner table with stifling Smalltalk about their work. “How was your day?” “Good.” “Nothing stressful?” “Just the usual.” 

They smile at their cat when they pet it as if they have not talked about split custody before. They smile at Mace and Depa at their usual Sunday Brunch while eating brioche and French butter from Ladurée Soho. They smile at his parents-in-law at their monthly visit, drinking Tea in a painfully expensive café and talking about how wonderful it is to live in NYC, pretending to be happy even though it hurts deep inside. 

They smile at Satine’s charity events; he puts his arm around her shoulder and she gives him her hand. The paparazzi take photos of how perfect they look together. The next morning it is all over the press. The NYC dream team strikes again. The only thing missing is their wedding band, but nobody seems to notice. They see what they want to see.  

Satine and him, they do everything the way they normally would, following their strict schedules, Satine fighting in court and him teaching at university. Happy and successful together, a true power couple, everyone is inspired by their achievements. 

They attend his annual faculty party and Satine does it perfectly, dressing up in a red slip gown, laughing at his colleagues’ jokes, presenting her public persona of charming Satine, whom everybody adores and makes them tell him how beautiful his wife is – even though she is not his wife anymore. The word slips so carelessly over their tongue, marked by years of practice. Then his colleagues apologize, pad him on the shoulder and say that they still seem happy together.  

They are in modern times, you still can be together as a divorced couple, right? Obi-Wan nods and smiles painfully. 

They attend his parents in law golden wedding and this time it is his turn to behave perfectly. He wears the tailored suit, Satine picked out for him, and the watch, a Christmas presents he hates for everything it stands for a tedious status symbol but it does its job, making her parents happy. He jokes around with the guests, old-fashioned, sexist jokes, that taste bitter on his tongue. He talks publicly about his research and brags about his Ph.D. from Oxford – just as Satine wishes him to do, flaunting their happy and successful lifestyle into everybody’s faces. 

The next morning, he struggles to come out of the bedroom. She sees it, she ignores it. They do not talk about it. 

So, all they do is smile, talk, and pretend. They even smile in court like it is a contest, who can smile longer and brighter? Who can persuade more people with their smiles? Who can convince the public better, that they have been fine after the divorce? – it had been a mutual decision after all, hasn’t it?

Each day he applies a new layer to his masquerade of being perfectly fine until he feels like there is nothing else left of him inside the shell – but that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? He feels like wax from a candle, something she has molded more than ever into the perfect husband. As if now that he lost it, he tries more than ever to be him. 

His smoking habit becomes worse. He can recognize it on her face, the slightly scrunched nose, and she can smell it on his clothes. He waits for her to ask him to stop. She never does. 

So, he smokes on the balcony, a pack a week. He pets his cat, the same kitty she wanted to get. He kisses Arfour on the head, sleeping in the living room with her curled in his lap, afraid of what demons will await him in his bedroom, the empty bed staring at him daunting. Light still lingers under her threshold, he wants to know what she is doing, tell her how he is feeling, and tell her that he is a mess inside. But he does no such thing. 

Another half a year later, he resigned from his job, cleans his office at Columbia, bides his colleague goodbye, and packs the cardboard boxes into his Bentley, leaving everything else in the fucking condo in Fort Greene – after all it’s not his anymore, it hasn’t been his for a long time. He toys with the thought of driving back, thumbing the key angrily on the kitchen counter, causing her the same pain, she had done to him. He shakes his head. 

A fresh spring wind hauls through NYC when he decides that it is time to drive East. 

=

Driving East means coming home. Oregon. The tiny town of fucking Tatooine.

He does not call Qui-Gon because he can’t stand the tears that will run down his face if he does. He is an emotional wreck and all that is holding him together is clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white, feeling the wind on his face from his window as he passes the streets. 

Homecoming. He tries the words on his tongue. Homecoming. He has not been home since his last year of high school.

Two days and one night in a cheap motel later, he pulls the Bentley over. His neck is aching from the long drive when he drives past the town sign of Tatooine. He pushes down the brake pedal to look around, noticing the differences between his childhood memories and the present.

Everything is like it used to be: there is still the gas station right behind the town sign decorated with spray paint, where he bought gas for his first junk car, which he had owned with barely over eighteen. Qui-Gon had helped him scrap it together, it was his father’s present for Obi-Wan’s graduation. Just a few meters down Mainstreet there is still the old barn, where he and his friends would meet up, drink their stolen lush, smoke their cigarettes, or kiss and make up for the first time – he can still feel their hopes and dreams clinging to that place. 

They had felt on top of the world back then, invincible like only teenagers could, that had not been hurt by the world yet. 

And somehow the town has changed too: The old VHS store, always lit by 80s-looking neon lights, is nowhere to be found. Instead, a new convenience store has taken its place, a glass cuboid with a green logo. So, there will be no more borrowing Child’s Play and getting scared to sleep alone at night, Obi-Wan chuckles. No more sneaking into Qui-Gon’s bed and no more midnight peanut butter jelly sandwiches to cheer up his mood. No more sneaking into the adult section as a dare. No more flirting with the cute girl behind the counter and totally embarrassing yourself. 

He pushes down the accelerator pedal, ignoring his burning eyes. Old and new puzzled together as he passed the streets and new buildings, a patchwork of memories and slate-grey asphalt. Only a few remnants have been left of his childhood, but what did he expect? Just two blocks until he will reach Qui-Gon’s house. He bit his lip and clenches his hands around the steering wheel. 

The town hall has been renovated too, the 70s-style building has become modernized, glass and concrete greeting him as he drives by. The High School is still the same grey cuboid that reeks of purgatory. From the car, he can make out the hockey field and bleachers. At seventeen he spent a good chunk of time there, writing or sketching in his notebook – or secretly watching the team train on the ground, sweaty jerseys clinging to toned upper bodies in summer. His first boy crush had been awkward, unreachable, tinted by anxiety and internalized homophobia, and the end had been misery, crying his eyes out in bed for a week straight. Qui-Gon had been helpless. 

He turns his head away and concentrates on the street again. Just a few blocks then he will see Qui-Gon again. Nausea creeps up his gullet. He stops the Bentley in front of his childhood home and lets the engine rev one last time. 

The grass lane needs to be mown; he thinks as he watches the house from afar. There is still the apple tree in the garden, where once a swing hung. Qui-Gon had installed it so young Obi-Wan could play outside while he harvested his vegetables in the garden. There are still some of them left, salade, carrots, and Qui-Gon’s favorite herbs. From the street Obi-Wan could recognize a couple of wooden boxes of beehive huts hidden behind the lush green grass, seems like Qui-Gon had started a new hobby, that would fit him. 

The white picket fence desperately needs to be colored again but Qui-Gon never really cared or better said, detested the image of a perfect suburb family connected to it, so the crumbling paint fits him better. He had always loved the mood of vintage, the nostalgia clinging to it. The kitchen window is open and some 60s pop is played somewhere in the house, probably a record player. The Zombies, Obi-Wan realizes and smiles softly, a vinyl he gifted his dad. 

Obi-Wan steps out of the Bentley and walks the last step towards the door. He rings the bell. 

The Qui-Gon, that opens, is different. His long grey hair is tucked away into a low ponytail, held together by a leather band. A few white strands have appeared at his temples and he wears machine-oil-stained jean overalls, that smell as if he has just tinkered in the garage behind the house – but most importantly, he looks at Obi-Wan like only a stranger could, confusion is painted on his face. 

The other man clears his throat, hesitantly raising his hands to Obi-Wan’s face as if he wants to touch it, feel the difference, and then jerks back as if he has burned himself, turning away from his son. 

“Obi-Wan… God, it must have been ages.” The voice sounds old, strange, and pained like it hasn't been used for ages. Obi-Wan averts his gaze and looks down at his wingtips. The leather is worn out and the stitching needs to be repaired. “Hello, Dad…” 

=

Qui-Gon offers Obi-Wan a cup of tea as they stand silently in the kitchen. 

The kettle boils on the gas ring and the older man thumps down two mugs on the kitchen counter, both handmade. The green one is taller than the other and the clay is uneven, shaped by a kid’s hands. Obi-Wan crafted it in kindergarten and Qui-Gon has ever since proudly used it as his go-to tea cup. An old Father’s Day gift. A bright, yellow sun is painted on top of it, stating “Tomorrow the sun will shine” in the cranky handwriting of a preschooler. 

Now Qui-Gon hesitates for a moment as he realizes what cup he has pulled out of the shelf. He looks over his shoulder to Obi-Wan, offers a weak smile – almost shy like you would smile at a stranger, not your long-lost son – and then drops the tea bags into the mugs before pouring the hot water over them. 

The tea tastes stale, green tea from the convenience store nearby. Nothing compared to the morning brew Obi-Wan buys for himself in NYC Chinatown when he runs the errands. Qui-Gon is not prepared for visitors, he realizes. 

The simple green tea, the brown bottles of milk from the farmers around, and the handmade cups. That is how Qui-Gon lives all by himself, austere, like an old man living by himself. He cooks his vegetables from the garden, receives pickles and silver skin onion jars from the neighbors for the winter months, and buys only the necessities from the supermarket around.

“How have you been?”, tries the older man weakly as the silence becomes palpable. He is hunched over the counter and has offered Obi-Wan the only chair in the cramped kitchen. The other one, which used to be there, has disappeared, probably somewhere in the attic or sold. Without Obi-Wan, there had been no use for it. Obi-Wan cringes when he is spoken to. 

The older man’s face is turned away, his gaze directed somewhere outside of the kitchen window, the garden, his vegetables, or the apple tree, lovelier things to look at than the stranger, that his son has become. He behaves strangely, not like the Qui-Gon Obi-Wan is used to. He behaves like a man, that has not spoken to a lot of people in the last few years. 

“Good.,” Obi-Wan speaks softly, unsure, trying the words on his tongue. No one has asked him how he was feeling since his divorce, they always avoided the topic and pretended as if nothing happened, complimenting his new publication on astrophysics, or going on about how awful New York’s traffic is. Or they offered him their toothpaste commercial smile and rubbed their hands over his back as if he is a little child that you can console with a pad on the head. 

As he takes another sip from the mug, he feels Qui-Gon’s eyes on him, calculating his reaction. 

“You drive a new car.,” says the other man, averting his eyes again. A quite expensive one is left unspoken. Not the scrap car we built for your graduation. That one is gone too, isn’t it? 

“A Bentley.,” Obi-Wan explains, nodding softly. “A wedding gift from my parents-in-law.”  

Qui-Gon looks at him for a second, one lip between his teeth. Hurt flashes his expression before his face becomes stoic again, pain hidden in his grey eyes. Then they continue to drink their tea, too many broken promises hauling in the silence between them and no one dares to speak a word. 

=

When the sun is about to set, they step out of the house to load the boxes out of Obi-Wan’s car and store them in the attic. “You can sleep in the garage.”, Qui-Gon explains as he opens the trunk and balances a box filled with books in his shaky arms. 

The cardboard rips open and for a second all the books seem to hover in the air before they fall down on the asphalt of the street. All the book spines are exposed. Hemingway, Atwood, Steinbeck, etc. Old Secondhand shop copies from all over the place, Portland, Philly, Seattle, New York – and Tatooine. They are used, dog-eared, and pages filled with notes and drabbles.  

“I…”, Qui-Gon stutters and kneels down to pick up a copy of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. 

The soft cover is broken, and one corner is ripped out but the young James Dean in the 1976’s version is still easily identified, staring dreamingly into the landscape. “You still do love John Steinbeck.” 

Obi-Wan only nods and takes the book from Qui-Gon’s hand, cautious to avoid skin-to-skin contact. 

He throws it into his cardboard and picks up the other books from the street, averting Qui-Gon’s eyes. John Steinbeck was or still is Qui-Gon’s favorite author.

He stacks the hardcover of Wuthering Heights on top of the Penguin classics from Jane Austen and lines up Nancy Fraser with Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, keeping his hands busy, just to avoid Qui-Gon’s eyes on him. 

“You haven’t changed that much.”, exhales Qui-Gon as if he is gasping for air, grabbing blades of grass and ripping them out with his left hand. “You’ve grown a beard to hide your dimples but they are still there.” He clenches his hands into fists, crushing the grass blades. “Sometimes things aren’t as easily erased as we wish them to be.” 

Obi-Wan just stares down at the box on his arm

It is filled with remnants of his old life, which he had tried to bury in his office, far away from Satine. Notes, Books, Polaroids, etc, little gifts Qui-Gon had bought for him. 

“Still, you are not …”, tries Qui-Gon with a hoarse voice before it breaks off and a sob escapes his lips. He is hunched over the last book in the grass, fidgeting with its pages.

You are not the same as you used to be, Obi-Wan. You are 41, have greying temples, and suddenly wear tweed jackets with elbow patches, a cliché you mocked when you were 16. You have married a woman, I have never even seen and divorced her before I could ever do it. You are a professor at Columbia and not an awkward high school student anymore, who I drove to school with every morning and who stole my wine from the shelf for a night out with friends. You are not 12 anymore and get scared of Child’s Play, so you sneak into my bed at night. You are not 9 anymore and beg me to go to a real hair salon because you are embarrassed about your bowl cut. You are not 7 anymore and hate your tooth gap. 

You are not 5 anymore and love playing with your swing at the apple tree – you are not my Obi-Wan anymore. 

It pains Obi-Wan’s heart to see the old man so desperately trying to find the right words to express his agony. He kneels too and takes the last book out of Qui-Gon’s hand, carefully, only shortly brushing skin against skin. It is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the book Qui-Gon used to read to him when he was a toddler and now the older man is clinging to it as if his life depends on it. Diamond tears running down his wrinkling cheeks, fighting his voice. 

“It is fine. Everything is all right. I’ll just take my old room.”, Obi-Wan assures, hesitantly grabbing the older man by his shoulders, and pushing him to his chest, unsure, an embrace of strangers. “I’m here.” 

“You will not fit anymore. The bed is too small.”, cries Qui-Gon into the shoulder of his son, all the hardness of the years breaking down. All Obi-Wan can do is murmur a soft “Sorry” into his father’s hair, caressing him gently. 

=

Convenience store sandwiches. Obi-Wan stares down at the plastic-wrapped packages and sighs. Two Rows of tasteless bread, glued together by mayonnaise, that has already diluted into egg and grease again, and sometimes a pitiful lettuce peeking out – if you are lucky.

Still, he is indecisive, letting his hand hover over one of the sandwiches. For some reason, he keeps buying them as if they will taste any different this time. They were his normal midnight snack when everything was closed except for the 24/7 discounter a walk down his street in New York. 

In Tatooine, it is not any different. Qui-Gon has fallen asleep in front of the TV, a model from the 90s while watching some Game Show about parents guessing their kid’s lover, a ridiculous concept and yet so close to the truth. 

After Qui-Gon’s heavy breathing turned into snores, Obi-Wan picked up a quilt blanket from one of the neatly folded stacks in the living room and put it over Qui-Gon, softly as if Qui-Gon was a child. He lifted his dad’s head, pushed a crocheted pillow underneath it, and kissed his forehead. Then he went to the kitchen to scan the fridge for a possible dinner solution. Except for two jars of pickles and a piece of margarine, it was empty, after a quick search a loaf of bread was found in the kitchen cabinet. He sighed. So, he figured, he could just drive to the new convenience store and buy some dinner while his dad got some well-deserved rest.

An electric bell pings as he crosses the opened door and one look over his shoulder informs him, that he has 20 minutes left to search for groceries before the store will close, fucking Tatooine. He strolls down the aisles, scanning the rows for necessities, a shopping basket dangling from his arm. For a supermarket, that barely measures two rooms, they have an astonishing variety in their alcohol collection. A Limoncello opens it on the top shelf and two steps away a Johnny Walker Black Label is just waiting for someone to take it.

“Kenobi?”

Obi-Wan grabs a beer, pushing it into his shopping basket, before turning around. Smiling through the pain, he thinks, and the next moment shame heats his cheeks. 

It takes him only a second to recognize the man behind his back. Towering a few inches over him, still wearing his biker gang leather jacket just like in high school, grinning, is Anakin Skywalker. He still styles his hair in long loose curls, that make him look like a Movie Star from the 80s, though the roots have started to grow grey over the years, his eyes still gleaming with a friendly spirit. 

“Kenobi?”, the man asks again, this time with a crooked grin, finger grabbing a beer next to Obi-Wan.  

“The one and only.”, Obi-Wan answers. His voice sounds hoarse, embarrassed to be found in the liquor section, and the opposite of content to see an old friend again, so he pushes the basket behind his back. 

“How long has it been? Nineteen years? Too many, anyway.”, Anakin grins, grabbing himself a bottle from the shelf, no shame in his action. His eyes roam over the label, before taking another one. “I thought you moved to New York, married a nice chick, and live your best life as a rich man there.” 

“How would you know?” 

“The press wrote about it, was hard to miss.”, Anakin grins again and raises his hand defeated. Obi-Wan sighs, as if Anakin self-centered Skywalker has read articles about him. At seventeen the man had barely thought about anything else than how to get into other peoples’ pants and his motorbike, why should that suddenly change? They have never been great friends anyway, barely greeting each other when they had met in the hallways. Anakin was two years his junior. Fate had diced them up once at a tedious party, letting them share one deep conversation, nothing more. 

“Obi-fucking-Wan Kenobi, ex-president of the science club of Tatooine High, now suddenly an accomplished Physics Prof at Columbia.” Anakin lets his head fall back as laughter shakes his body, curls tangling around his sharp jaw. “We all thought you’re gonna win the Nobel prize one day, turns out we weren’t so far from the truth back then.” 

Then he turns to Obi-Wan and his smile broadens. “I’ve got an idea. This lush is shit in here, convenience store shit. Often tried it and it won’t get any better this time, wanna go out for real? For the sake of the good old times.” 

What go old times, thinks Obi-Wan. They have been acquaintances, not friends, but he lets himself be dragged out of the supermarket. 

Half an hour later they sit in an Irish Pub, Yoda’s, a five-minute walk down Jefferson’s Alley. The area around Jefferson's Alley is a seedy neighborhood with tiny houses, crammed around square shaped backyards, like tenements, and no green can be found. The houses look grey and desolate in the light of the street lamps. It’s where Anakin has grown up, isn’t it? 

As a teenager, Obi-Wan often hung around here, cycled around, played baseball in the yards with some other boys, and threw stones at Quinlan's window, a friend of his who had lived around. Now, Quinlan Vos was gone, married, a tattoo artist somewhere in Philly. He should visit him some days, thinks Obi-Wan, and focuses his eyes on his surrounding again. 

Anakin and his friend had been rather infamous around here. For hours they would be lying in wait on the lawn in front of houses, spyglasses in their hands, just to catch a glimpse of the white plaid skirts, or rather a glimpse under the skirt of the neighbor’s girls. 

The entrance to Yoda's is a staircase to the basement. Well-trod wooden steps and a time-worn railing lead the two down. The interior is filled with a cozy atmosphere, a jukebox plays in the corner, to the right a pool table, and on the left outside the bar counter, behind which stands a grim old man, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. With the deep wrinkles on his face, the man looks like he is over 80, with one carved crutch in his hand, and the other one on his pipe.

“Should I order something for you, my old friend? A Guinness?”, Anakin asks looking at Obi-Wan. He sits down straight at the counter and peels himself out of his leather jacket. It is thrown without caution over some chair nearby. The jacket used to be Skywalker’s treasure, the statement piece that dominated every outfit, his holy grail to impress every girl – or boy.

Obi-Wan only nods, testing the waters, and sits down on one of the barstools. After the grim old man taps two glasses of beer and pushes them over the counter, Quinlan turns to Obi-Wan, grinning, He grabs himself a pint, toasts it to his friend, and drinks off the foam with a deep swig. “So”, he says, wiping the foam from the corner of his mouth with one hand, “How have you been?” 

“Comme ci, comme ca.,” Obi-Wan only offers with a small grin, tasting his Guinness, not wanting to dive deeper into the topic. 

“Life is a bitch sometimes.”, answers Anakin, “I stayed here, and started taking shifts at Watto’s workshop after my graduation. I am now officially co-owner even though the old man rarely gets his hands dirty nowadays. But what did I expect.” Obi-Wan pads Anakin on the shoulder with the same pads he hates, but what else should he do to console him? He cringes inside at his inability. The other man turns his head to him and states, „You know what, I was jealous of you, all these years. You got to leave this shit hole.” 

“There is nothing to be jealous about.”, starts Obi-Wan, “I resigned last week, no longer Prof at Columbia, I’m jobless for the first time since my Ph.D. I said ‘fuck you’ to my friends, moved out of my condo and now sleep in my childhood bedroom. After living in New York for fifteen years, or any other place, you realize that all cities are the same, all the same, shit holes.” 

Anakin has laid down his head on the counter, staring at Obi-Wan from the side, one of his curls falling into his forehead, the others framing his sharp countenance. He still has the 80s movie star vibe to him, even nineteen years later with the first few grey strands and wrinkles next to his eyes. “I thought you married a nice, rich chic, living your best life there.” 

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Divorced?” It feels weird to nod now, admitting it for the first time in over a year even though it had happened so long ago. He takes another sip from Guinness. Anakin raises his head again, suddenly stating out of the blue, “Me, too.”

Obi-Wan raises a brow, the heartbreaker fucking Prince Charming is divorced? It does not fit into his view of the world. Back in High School Anakin could have had anybody with one snap of his fingers, how does it come that he is not a happy family man now? “I mean, I married.”, tries the other man, “Everybody else did it when the time came, so I did it, too. Saw Padme again, started a relationship, and proposed when it was reasonable. 9 nine years, that was how long our happiness lasted. I am a father now.” He sighs and taps on the counter to order himself another pint.  

“Padme Naberrie?” 

“Yes. You graduated together, didn’t you? She was on the top, perfect GPA, and had endless opportunities but she stayed here and went to the Community College. Later, working here at the local hospital. A nice girl with a golden heart, my mom loved her and that is the most important thing to me. Now she is the mother of my twins.” Anakin looks sad when he adds. “Nothing more I could wish for.” 

“What happened?”

“I lied to myself and at some point, I could no longer pretend.”, states Anakin vaguely and drowns down his pint. “But what about you? Are you a father?” 

“Yes.”, he answers fast without thinking about it. “A daughter – I mean, ehm, my cat.” 

He expects Anakin to behave strangely now, be angry or disappointed, to tell him how dare he compare having a cat to having a kid as if it’s the same, but he does no such thing. Instead, Anakin asks softly. “What is her name?” Anakin uses the present form, not the past, not like Obi-Wan has lost her. Somehow Obi-Wan wants to hug him for that.  

“Arfour.” 

Laughter burst out of Anakin, which shakes his whole body. “You still love that Sci-fi series, don’t you? How was it called again? Star Destroyer? Something with Star.” 

“How do you know- ehm, how do you remember?”

“Seriously?” Anakin looks jokingly offended. “Your whole locker was plastered with stickers from it and –“Anakin grins evilly. “I remember you having a crush on the main character. You would doodle pictures of him in your notebook when you would think nobody notice.”

“But you did?”

Suddenly Anakin’s expression shifts back to sad, his lips are pinched, and his eye bags are visible like he has trouble sleeping. “As I said, I was a liar for great parts of my life. The best probably and now it is most often too late to break free with the truth. All it does is getting people hurt who have been comfortable for years, who have settled down and fought for their luck. Who am I to suddenly destroy that because I have decided to speak the truth now?” 

“Is that why Padme left you?” 

Anakin buries his face in his hands before continuing more silently. “I, ehm, I slept with men during our marriage. Most often I would meet them through my work, I repaired their cars and they flirted with me. Later I would come to visit them in their hotel rooms and they would fucked me like a common whore on the cheap bed or against the shower while Padme set at home caring for the twins. That was what I wanted, no love, just the nagging in my heart to stop, the feeling that I was missing something.”

“She found out?”

Anakin nods. “I’m sorry, I feel ashamed for it. She found out one night, found the texts on my phone, screamed at me, packed the twins, and drove to my mother. I spent that night alone in the living room, asking myself why I was so fucked up as a person, why I could not be like all the others, happily married, a content father, why I always felt like there was missing something, why I was such a liar.”

He pauses, then he continues. “You know what is the worst? She came back the next day, told me she forgave, hugged me, and let me, the bastard, cry on her shoulder. She told me that she understood me, understood why I married her, understood why I always felt absent, understood that I loved her just not like that, and that I had tried my best. She felt sad for me, not for her and her wounds, for me, that I’ve been lying to myself my whole life.” 

Anakin orders another pint. “Another one for you too?” Obi-Wan only nods. 

Then he leans close, cups Anakin’s cheeks and kisses him like Satine has kissed him all those years ago, open-mouthed with tongue and everything, pouring all the suppressed sadness of the last months into the contact. Anakin responds in the same manner. It is not tender, it is harsh, and demanding, everybody grabbing what they want from the other, Obi-Wan’s hands in Anakin’s locks, and Anakin’s fingers sneaking under Obi-Wan’s grandpa sweater. 

It grows messy quickly, threads of salvia connecting their lips, them rutting against each other like teenagers, that found out what their crotch is used for the first time, fabric rubbing against fabric. It is not about Anakin’s coming out, it is not about Obi-Wan’s divorce, and most definitely it is not about finding love in each other. It is about forgetting the pain, the suffering, the agony, freeing the emotions, that were locked inside. It is a happy, sad, angry kiss, with biting, tongue, and sometimes a moment of tenderness, when one of them needs it. 

“Your house?”, Obi-Wan asks breathlessly before leaning in again. Anakin nods and grabs Obi-Wan by the hair, forcing their mouths together.

Later, laying in a bed together, Anakin’s arm possessively around Obi-Wan’s waist, they stare at each other in silence, a silent smile on their lips, that Anakin wishes to kiss. It was Obi-Wan’s first time with a man, Anakin noticed it, Obi-Wan sees it in his face, and they choose not to talk about it. Rather, enjoying what they have as long as it last. 

=

As the sun raises, Obi-Wan finds himself in his kitchen again. “How did you sleep?”, asks Qui-Gon, taking a seat on the only chair in the kitchen, his voice high-pitched and still unsure. The old man has wrapped himself in a cardigan, blue and crocheted, the long gray hair is muddled together into a low-bun, yesterday's green cup in his trembling hand. 

"Good," says Obi-Wan, turning away from the sink to his father. 

Crockery is piled up in front of him, cheap porcelain with kitschy floral patterns. Primroses, which entwine around a single daffodil. Obi-Wan never liked the painted plates, but they have been cheap, a bargain in a Goodwill in Philly and they have been doing their job ever since. Qui-Gon liked the nostalgia he associated with them. Christmas dinner with some stubborn British great-aunt, he had, a Dolores Umbridge-like person from the outside but with a warm heart. So, Obi-Wan tries his best, puts on a crocked grin, one lifted corner, hums, and does the washing-up.

"And the bed still fits? No problems with the mattress?" asks Qui-Gon again. He has lowered his eyes, fiddling with a sleeve of his cardigan, where a hole still needs to be filled. He twirls the yarn thoughtfully between his fingers, furrowed eyebrows, too shy and unsure to look up into his son’s face. 

"No problems," says Obi-Wan, leaning against the stove, trying not to think about last night in Anakin’s bed. He turns slightly to his father; his head tilted to the side and tries to smile. It feels convulsive and unnatural, yet he assures in a calm voice, "All right."

"I woke up in the middle of the night," says Qui-Gon, continuing to stare at his hands, which are busy with the cardigan. “You were not there anymore. I thought you might have left again.” 

Obi-Wan stops moving, the dishwashing sponge hovering in the air, and the hot water continues to drop down on his skin. He clears his throat, tries to get rid of the bitter taste on his tongue, and lowers the sponge. "I was shopping," he explains and points to the fridge, "I just refilled what you were missing."

"Thank you," Qui-Gon says quietly, almost hoarsely. Again, he lowers his gaze to his hands, which play with a thread. Soon there will not be much left of the cardigan. "You didn't have to do that. I'll get along all by myself. "

"I know, Dad." Obi-Wan shifts back to the sink, his back turned to his father, absently biting his lower lip. “I know you are capable.” His voice is hoarse when he tries to speak again. “I met someone.”

“While you were shopping?”

Obi-Wan nods weakly, trying to hide his face from his dad, unsure of his reaction. “I felt like a liar for a long time in my life, stifling, chained in a corset. That person showed me the way out. I know at my age, finding true love is unlikely and it is not about that, it’s about trying, finally speaking the truth even though it might hurt yourself.” He pauses. “That Person is a man, ehm, his name is Anakin and I would like to introduce you two.” 

“I would be honored.” 

When he turns around, he can see Qui-Gon smiling, he is still shy, but it has gotten better. They are on the way; they just have to keep trying and fighting. One day, they might be able to smile like they used tp, happy, but it feels daring to say that. 

(To be honest, I have soft spot for this Obi-Wan, maybe I come back later and write more for him, grant him some more happiness. It's a draft, will be rewritten someday, maybe more cleaned, made more suitable for Ao3, let's see. Untill then enjoy!)

[sharpest-tongue]

Having been to more business meetings than the number of hours it takes to become an expert at something, I can confidently say that the ROTS scene between Anakin and the Council should have gone like this:

-----

Mace, who is too old for this shit: And so, because the Chancellor is making us, you are now a member of this council.

Anakin, remembering Obi-Wan complaining last week about a four-hour Council meeting where they argued over a cost-benefit analysis of changing ration bar manufacturers:  ...Uh...

Mace, who is out of fucks to give:  And we’re not making you a Master.

Anakin, thinking of the awesome Master-only refectory which is the only one that makes that blue milk pudding with fruit slices:  Aw, man...

Mace, who just wants to get this clown car on the road:  Now sit down, pay attention, and don’t blow anything up. 

Anakin, reminded of the small, very tiny, hardly worth speaking of incendiary device in his pocket that he had been planning on fiddling with after a hot, greasy lunch at Dex’s:  *starts to sweat* ...Um... *makes a break for the door*

Obi-Wan, who had been wrangling Anakin since he was nine: *waves the Council doors closed and pulls out a spray bottle* Anakin, don’t make me use this...

Anakin, who has been wrangled by Obi-Wan since he was nine:  No, you can’t make me! *dives behind Oppo Rancisis’s chair to avoid the water spray*

Obi-Wan, who is wise to Anakin’s tricks:  No! Bad Anakin! *ducks around the Council members and sprays Anakin vigorously* Get in that chair!

Anakin, squalling at the first hit then dashing around the room:  No, I don’t want to! Meetings suck! Windu sighs at me! Yoda hits me with his cane!

Obi-Wan, chasing after Anakin and causing significant collateral damage with his spraying:  We all have to do what we don’t want to. Now get in that chair!

Anakin, who is damp and bedraggled:  *slinks into his chair and pulls his robes tightly around him and his hood over his head* Jail for Master! Jail for Master for one thousand years!

Obi-Wan, who is inordinately fond of his feral desert child and has heard it all before:  Yes, yes.  *pats his head and slips him a piece of candy*

Anakin, who loves candy, praise, and Obi-Wan:  ...maybe jail for only one year.

[aluprof]

Leading With BIM

Many people in the Construction Industry still believe that BIM is just a modern design tool, but BIM is much more than this. Whilst design is certainly an element of BIM, collaboration is a key element, from inception through to completion of a project, and beyond. Collaboration across the design team, particularly at the early design stages both reduces risk and maximises value. A detailed BIM design forms a ‘single source of truth’ which de-risks the entire construction programme.

According to MacLeamy (2004) who plotted a simple graph of project time and project effort, it can be seen that the influence on the project design is high at the early design stages, whilst project changes further down the project timeline entails more effort and cost. MacLeamy argued that completing the design earlier in the construction programme reduced risk and cost by negating design changes later in the programme. An early BIM model using high quality, virtual BIM objects assists final design sign off earlier in the construction cycle.

BIM has been with us for some years now, so it is far from a new concept, but helps us in developing new methodologies for construction, new methodologies which help us reduce carbon in construction. According to Transparency Market Research, in 2025 the Construction Industry will generate as much as 2.2 billion tons of waste annually which is about 50% of all global solid waste. The Construction Industry has to move from this linear construction process to a circular construction process where buildings can be deconstructed and rebuilt using some or all of the same parts, or materials recycled back into buildings. A growing number of architectural practices globally are designing ‘temporary’ or ‘deconstructable’ buildings that fall into the circular construction methodology.

In the UK a recently completed project in London, the Forge, aspires to be the first commercial building constructed and operated in line with the UKGBC’s net zero definition and energy reduction targets. It comprises two new office buildings and a public courtyard. Located on Sumner Street, The Forge is a Landsec office development located just behind Tate Modern in London and utilising BIM at its core is one of the most innovative construction sites in London, pioneering several new construction methods fit for the decades ahead.

Breaking new ground, the project is be the world’s first large-scale office scheme built using a standardised “kit of parts”, in an approach known as ‘platform design for manufacture and assembly’ (P-DfMA), which applies the advances made by the  Manufacturing Industry to construction, this would not be possible without BIM. Aluprof are delighted to have been invited to take an early design role in developing a unitised facade system that meets the P-DfMA specification pioneered by architects and engineers Bryden Wood. Construction is led by Sir Robert McAlpine and Mace, working together in an innovative joint venture (JV) partnership.

Working with BIM essentially creates a 3D ‘digital twin’ of the building project and it doesn’t stop there. There are a further four ‘dimensions’ that are added, ‘4D’ Time, ‘5D’ Costs, ‘6D’ Sustainability and ‘7D’ Facilities Management. In effect, the BIM model carries all the data for the building, from the building programme through to eventual deconstruction. Any one element, such as the facade, falls into each of the dimensions of BIM, so the more detailed BIM models that can be obtained from suppliers, the greater efficiency is realised.

Finally, automated construction would not be possible without BIM as some of our building methods become automated, built by, or checked by ‘robots’. Yes, this could be the dawn of the robotic ‘Clerk of Works’. During the construction phase of a building, robots are being utilised to laser scan and monitor what has been built offering dimensional accuracy as well as monitoring the programme of works. This ‘real time’ analysis ensures that any potential problems are highlighted at very early stages, saving both cost and time.

With its acclaimed BIM Academy, Aluprof continues to pioneer innovative solutions in partnership with specifiers across the globe. With a huge library of models available to architects and engineers, Aluprof are constantly adding new models for standard and bespoke designs helping clients and developers obtain efficient and sustainable buildings.

Aluprof UK are proud to supply facade systems to a wide range of new and refurbished construction projects across Great Britain and Ireland, with Head Offices in Altrincham in the North West and with an architectural specification support office in the Business Design Centre in London, the company has rapidly grown their specification influence in the UK with their high-performance architectural aluminium systems. Further expansion of the company’s headquarters in Altrincham now provides specifiers with meeting facilities and an extensive showroom of commercial systems to view. Further information is available on the company website at aluprof.co.uk or direct from their UK head office in Altrincham on 0161 941 4005.

[keevansixx]

I've seen monsters all my life, par for the course for my clan, and way of life. we learn at early age from the elders through stories and examples of what is dangerous, what is deadly, and what is mildly annoying. the massive creature before the party stood firmy within the very "deadly" category of elder lore. something of nightmares told to young children as moral lessons on good behavior, or simply out of spite to frighten the young.

I see the ranger laying in a heap to one side of the battlefield. this fills me with rage, and anger thinking of the worst possible outcome. I focus my gaze on his still form for the slightest of pauses, and note the slight rise and fall of labored breathing. Good. still with us.

when i was around 10 cycles of the great wheel old, my father took me up into the mountains to long forbidden places as a test of skill and manhood. there we faced hardship after hardship, all the while, my father teaching me the old stories and how to defeat monsters in the most efficient manner. Old places, where the curses of ancient humanity still lingered after milllenia, and the abhorrent roamed unchecked and wild. these were the playgrounds of my youth, and lessons most harshly earned.

the wizard is shouting profanities in my general direction again, some plea to unseen gods to spare them from the stupidity of barbarians and their ilk. I've learned to oft ignore the petty mewlings of magic weilders too weak to adequately defend themselves from lesser creatures. why should i harken unto someone who let themselves become gravely injured at the weakest encounter of a goblin scouting party. I focus my thoughts to tune out the wizard.

I recognize this particular branch of evil. I've encountered something like it before in my youth. the fetid stench of sulfur mixed with rusty iron. A fabrication, something unnatural and manufactured. the slight flinching movements of it's limbs, i know this...

the healer is trying to get to the ranger. i hold her back, blocking egress to the left because i've seen the reach of this monstrosity and know that she'd be in deadly range of the creature if allowed to continue. the paladin is standing in the circle of combat there within the radius of the monster's reach, the paladin's shield taking the brunt of blows, but there is now a stalemate. he can't attack, cannot progress forward to victory, spending all his effort defending from the enemie's attacks.

my memories flash back to my 16th cycle, when my hunting party was ambushed by a few golems way up in the highlands. creatures of the old world. tough as stone, impervious to most attacks outside of great mace or blunt hammer attacks. They all behaved the same, turning their bodies to face foreward towards their targets. flanking was difficult, but not impossible. I saw my openning and lept past the golems while the rest of the hunting party held their attention. It was then i noticed the glowing sigil and shimmering stone imbedded in their backs, and attacking the new found targets, I was able to defeat those hulking monsters of the past. It was then that i learned from the elders the sins of humanity and all that they had wrought. I gained in knowledge that day, and was sad in the learning thereof.

I feint towards the right, trying to draw it's attention away from the paladin and healer allowing her to make her way left towards the fallen ranger to render assistance. I need to draw it away from that area, it's the most practical course of action to allow for the most successful outcome. No one dies today! I won't allow it.

another old memory surfaces. in my 19th cycle i was taken to a hidden grotto by the elders upon completing the trials of ascention to become a hunter and protector of the clan. The grotto was an old library, full of the spoils and trophies of battles long since won. Knowledge gleaned from a thousand generations of hunters, tribesmen, and tribeswomen. the weaknesses of a thousand foes. the most efficient means to defeat monsters. what was valuable when harvesting a kill. Identifying the signs and behaviors of enemies. lifetimes of knowledge to glean and grow.

the monster has all but ignored the paladin, by my design. this is a good thing. the paladin needs the break to regroup and hopefully mindful enough to protect the healer, and i can't find out what i need to know with him in the way. I pick up a heavy chained censer where it fell from the ceiling onto the combat floor and begin to swing the long length around my head. If all goes according to design, i should find out what i need to know in the next few moments. if not, well....today is not a bad day to die after all. at least i'll be taking out a great evil with me when i go. My clan can honorably celebrate my funeral in a spectacular fashion, and my legacy will be preserved in the grotto for future generations to learn and draw inspiration from. i am content.

the enemy lunges at me in a mindless rage. at the farthest apex of my swing of the heavy censer, i let out a mighty battlecry like my ancestors of old did, and pour a burst of strength into the return swing which wraps thick chain swiftly around the monster twice before the heavy head of the censer impacts heavily into the back of the massive creature. i hear a sickly thud and slight metallic clang of false bones, but no tell-tale crack or tinkle of broken vials, shattered crystals, or mangled machinery. the monster bellows rage before tripping on what remained of the heavy chain that i whipped in the counter direction as a distraction. Damn! not good, not what i needed to hear. when the monster fell i was able to briefly see it's back. where there should have been a ring of glowing sigils, maybe a stone or two, or some sort of contraptive mechanry embedded within, there was a sickly concaved crater oozing where once it's control would have rested. What devilry is this? the signs all pointed to a golem, or flesh construction of the old world, but this? this should not be possible. with no control mechanism, this golem should not be able to function, much less move about independently like it has been since the fight started. think! I'm sure the elders spoke to me about this decades ago....i just need to remember.

the wizard finally finished their mumblings and finger waving, don't know what they were trying to accomplish, but to me, it's always too little, too late. some sort of barrier forms over the flesh golem, but i know it won't last long. unnatural things tend to have resistances to magics and the wizards attempts will be for naught if we can't find a way to kill it permanently.

the ranger comes to with the help of the healer, he got smashed up pretty badly so it's going to be awhile before they are hale and whole again. wordlessly the ranger points to a little alcove indention off to the right of where the golem began attacking. I think that's where the ranger was standing when they got sideswiped by the golem. there must be something there we havn't seen before.

the paladin is conferring with the wizard about what the party should do next, with one eye on the bound golem struggling on the floor against the heavy chain and the wizard's barrier. it's lifeless eyes scanning everything trying to find a way free, stretching the bonds as far as it was able to. i can hear the straining creak of the wrapped chain, and the sound of resistance tensioned against a magical barrier. the slight electrical crackle of tremendous force against immovable object. I also hear under baited breath what they think of me when they think i'm out of earshot and cannot hear them. we're not out of danger, yet, why is the rest of the party acting like we won? this is just the warm-up for round two. i feel it in my bones, like that tingle at the nape of the neck when you know someone is watching you from hidden places. for so called intelligent and enlightened humans that come from what they call civilization, their situational awareness leaves much to be desired, i know of 6 cycles old children back in the creech that are more aware of their surounding environment than these people. I'm constantly amazed that they've managed to survive this long on the earth with what little they know of monsters and basic survival knowledge. the ranger gets a pass in my ledger, at least they have some semblance of situational awareness (when not pummeled to an almost bloody pulp), and know how to basic survive in the wilds...it's their general monster knowledge i tend to question, but other than that, they're alright and would pass a basic muster back home.

the healer is helping the ranger across the floor towards the entrance and to relative saftey, i can tell from the bruising around the neck and upper chest area that the ranger still has a few broken ribs, a collarbone even with the healers touch, and can't really talk at the moment. he keeps trying to elder forest hand sign a danger at the wizard and paladin, but they are too busy coming up with a plan to notice. the ranger has those pleading eyes, and keeps siging danger while trying to point at the plinth in the tiny alcove. i notice a misshapened lump proped up in the shadow upon the plinth, sometimes, i hate that i'm right and didn't catch it early enough to swiftly act.

there is a sudden explosion. bits of shattered chain and the force of a broken magical barrier knocking everyone off their feet. the monster screams it's rage into the sky. the wizard was protected by the paladins shield and begins to chant another barrier again as the paladin recovers enough to stand between the rest of the party and the foul monster. i know what i have to do. it's in my blood.

the helm is stifling. it narrows my vision so i am forced to focus only on what is in front of me, to the exclusion of most distractions. in battle against monsters it's a boon that helps me hone my concentration only on the target i need to eliminate. I take off the helm to the cries of dismay from the rest of the party. I need to see the bigger picture, and to do that, i need to breathe. the target is small. the wizard calling me a stupid barbarian, the paladin calling me crazy, the horrified look of the healer thinking i've lost my simple mind. the ranger staring blankly with that look of knowing, and then the frown. I nod. to those who know, it's a sign and affirmation of intent. to those who don't know, it just looks like another barbarian about to do something completley reckless that to them seems stupid or foolish. it's all calculated and planned based on a life of combat, honor, and skill.

I reach behind me to withdraw a small piece of home. an heirloom handed down from father to son and so forth down my lineage for generations. the folded bone axe is ancient. chiped and shaped from the pelvic bones of a young dragon, it's blade edges lined with sharpened mithril, each blade tip capped with the diamond hard venom teeth of a wyvern. each half nestled cleanly against the other until one twisted the haft handle allowing the blades to spread open into it's final scalloped batwing glory. a child's toy that was meant to teach one how to hunt around crowded trees to hit game hiding behind them. the fluted hollows of the blades acting like an airfoil to sharply curve the thrown blade around an object to strike a target beyond.

a reminder of home, a makeshift altar to my gods, and of a promise unkempt. i kiss the haft, shout my fury to the heavens, and throw it at the monster bellowing before me.

it's a beautiful sight, watching that toy fly, always brings me a sense of joy watching it arc knowing i will hit what i aim for. i've had lot's of practice in my youth to the point of almost absolute control. the right flick of the wrist, the proper release, the slight adjustments from my fingers as the haft leaves my hand to allow for optimal flight... after all, the target is small.

I spread my arms wide in the face of mindless fury ready to die, as i stare deep into the monsterous golem's lifeless eyes, and shout my final defiance into it's form willing it to cease to exist.

*whoosh.... ka-thunk* (cracke/tinkle)*

*massive thud*

____________________________________

several months later at a pub.

Ranger: "hey, remember that temple we were sent to retrieve that tome for the wizards council?"

Barbarian: "Yes, i recall the deed, i also recall you getting nearly mauled to death by a foul creation."

Ranger: "i've always been curious to know, did you always know how to defeat it? I mean, that's something your people prepare for? right? i still can't get my head around the paladin's notion that you beat it with a crude toy! i'd have never believed it if i didn't partially see it for myself through a fog of pain. still think i was dreaming the whole thing."

Barbarian: "Best not dwell long on what your people call the imposible my young friend, better to let the rest of the party, especially the wizard, think i got crazy lucky. I don't think his heart could stand a notion of a primitive society more knowledgeable in the workings of the natural and unnatural world than his own lofty orders. best to let sleeping dragons lay, and ignore the workings of barbarians....after all, i gots a simple reputation to maintain."

As a Barbarian, you hate that just because you have a different lifestyle, your party looks down on you and assumes you are incapable of basic intelligent thought. Today you had enough.

[readingsquotes]

Every election cycle the GOP focuses on one minority group and creates a fictional, hyperbolic narrative about how they represent a threat to the majority, our security, and our well-being. Every election cycle, we keep falling for it. It’s a reboot. Back in the day, Sharia was about to take over America. The Muslims have been allegedly invading us since 9-11. It was a “caravan of invaders” in 2018, and after the election, magically, right-wing media completely forgot about the threat and barely mentioned it again. It was Mexican “rapists” in 2016 and Haitians eating our pets in 2024. 

However, Republicans realized the Trans phantom menace was a winning issue ever since Governor Youngkin ran on “parent’s choice” and anti-DEI and anti-CRT bullshit and focused on lies that students were being groomed and indoctrinated. In 2021, I warned Democrats that this was a trial run for a national fear-mongering campaign that would be cynically used by Republicans for the 2024 elections. I know because it’s the exact same playbook they used in 2010 and 2012 against Muslims. Overnight, a non-issue of “sharia” became an international sensation after a concentrated, manufactured campaign by the entire right-wing hype machine ahead of the 2010 midterms. Within 6 months, people who had no idea what Sharia was were protesting that it had to be banned. Sound familiar? It happened with CRT and “woke”. We can’t define it but we have to ban it. 

Republicans spent more than $143 million on anti-trans hysteria this election cycle with ads appearing during NFL football games. Sadly, it worked like gangbusters. 

White supremacy, and specifically the GOP, play on grievances, rage, and divide and conquer. They’re excellent as an oppositional party that pours gasoline on our problems, but they offer no solutions. They are a terrible governing party. They win by pitting Black people against Latinos, Latinos against gays, POC against Muslims, white workers and POC workers, and on and on. “You’re suffering because that group is taking away your jobs and your security,” they say, while cackling as their assortment of rich, white men and women pillage our country and take all the resources for themselves.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser and Arthur Delaney at HuffPost:

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) introduced a measure to ban transgender women from using the women’s bathrooms at the Capitol, just weeks after the state of Delaware elected the first openly transgender member of Congress.

The resolution, if adopted, would prohibit those in Congress, officers and employees of the House of Representatives from using single-sex facilities “other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” Mace said Tuesday that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would include the measure in the House rules package next year, meaning it would almost certainly take effect. “The speaker has said he’ll put it in the House rules package,” Mace told HuffPost after leaving a House Republican meeting where her proposal was favorably discussed. “If he doesn’t, I intend to amend the House rules package and/or bring a privileged motion to the floor.” Mace said she introduced the resolution “100%” specifically in response to the arrival of Representative-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who made history earlier this month when she won Delaware’s lone seat in the House. During press conference after the meeting, Johnson refused to say if he would include the Mace measure in the House rules package, saying only that all members would be accommodated.

[...] McBride responded on X Monday, calling the proposal a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.” “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote. “…We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.” [...] Mace’s actions are part of a growing wave of transphobia pushed by Republicans nationwide. The party has passed anti-trans legislation barring young trans kids from receiving health care, blocking trans athletes from participating in school sports and from using bathrooms associated with peoples’ gender identity.

Republican meanness in action: The GOP, led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), are pushing a transphobic measure in some form to block trans woman and Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) from using bathrooms aligned with her gender identity at the Capitol.

See Also:

Charlotte's Web Thoughts: We're Talking About Bathrooms? Again?

The Advocate: Republicans are trying to ban transgender Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride from using the women's bathroom

LGBTQ Nation: House GOP introduces bill to ban newly elected Democrat from using the women’s room at the Capitol

[deus3xmachinablog]

this didn't take long:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4997024-mace-introduces-bill-transgender/

from The Hill: "Mace introduces bill to bar trans women from Capitol restrooms"

article text: "Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on Monday introduced a bill to bar transgender women from facilities on Capitol Hill that match their gender identity.

The resolution, which would prohibit members, officers and employees of the House from using single-sex facilities that correspond to their gender identity, comes just a week after Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) made history as the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.

The measure charges the House sergeant-at-arms, William McFarland, with enforcing the ban, according to text previewed by The Hill, but it is unclear how the House’s chief law enforcement officer will determine who can and cannot use the Capitol’s facilities.

State laws that bar transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity often rely on anonymous complaints, a notoriously unreliable enforcement mechanism. LGBTQ rights activists in May flooded a tip line designed to alert officials in Utah to possible violations of the state’s bathroom ban with thousands of false complaints.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride said in a statement. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

“Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on,” she said.

Mace is currently in talks with leadership regarding how to bring the measure to the floor, a source familiar with the matter told The Hill.

The congresswoman initially planned to call her legislation to the floor as a privileged resolution on Monday evening, the source said, a gambit that would have forced leadership to stage a vote on the measure within two legislative days.

But Mace scrapped those plans because of ongoing negotiations with leadership regarding the best way to pass the legislation, the source said. Mace is pushing for the measure to be included in the rules package for the 119th Congress, or for it to be brought to the floor and voted on as a stand-alone rule outside the package.

If the bill, however, is not included in the 119th Congress rules package or brought to the floor as a stand-alone rule, Mace would force a vote on the legislation, the source said.

The House is set to vote on a rules package for the next Congress in early January, which will require a majority vote for passage. Republicans are poised to have a razor-thin majority when the next session gavels in."

[adityarana1687-blog]

Essential Oils Market Size To Reach $40.12 Billion By 2030

The global essential oils market size is expected to reach USD 40.12 billion by 2030, and expanding at a CAGR of 7.9% from 2024 to 2030, as per the new report by Grand View Research, Inc Key factor contributing to the demand for essential oil is that aromatherapy is rapidly gaining momentum as a convenient method of healing lifestyle diseases. The sales volume of essential oils is rising on the account of the rising consumer awareness related to the wide utilization of the product across various applications.

They are primarily made of terpenes and their oxygenated derivatives which usually include monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, etc. They are present in specialized cells/glands in various plants and the position of these glands varies depending on the morphology, and physiology of the plant. During the manufacturing process, these glands are ruptured by pressing or by application of heat, which emanates aroma.

The product is widely used for enhancement of air freshness at home with the help of aroma diffusers and addition of essential oils in aroma pots. It is added to the water or baths in order to relax muscles and improve the aroma of place. Young women use these products for making homemade cosmetics due to their natural content and medicinal benefits.

Increasing demand for organic products is influencing consumer trends across the globe. Further implementation of regulations favoring the use of environmentally friendly ingredients in cosmetics, and food & beverage industry. The increased the consumer’s interest for products produced from natural ingredients. A majority of the global population are shifting their preference to organic products which in turn is increasing the demand for plant based products, leading to a significant drop in the demand for synthetic fragrances.

Owing to the outbreak of coronavirus around the world, many countries experienced lockdown situations. This had led to major raw material shortages, disruption in the supply chain, and increased prices for highly demanded products for two to three quarters in 2020. Moreover, the restrictions on imports & exports of goods by any means from most of the South East Asian countries further worsened the situation. However, the temporary closure or slowing down of manufacturing plants of synthetic flavors & fragrances in China led to a rise in opportunity for essential oil distillers, as the manufacturers turned to smaller vendors to fulfill their raw material requirements.

Essential Oils Market Report Highlights

Cleaning & home witnessed the fastest growth rate of 7.7%, due to the presence of antifungal and antibacterial properties of essential oils

Black pepper witnessed one of the fastest growth rate of 8% on the account of its wide use in food & beverage, spa & relaxation, and medical sectors

Direct selling channel witnessed the fastest growth rate of 8.4%, as consumers have the need to smell and feel the oils in person

Europe witnessed the fastest growth rate of 8% as compared to other regions, due to strong presence of food & beverage industry in the region, coupled with high disposable income and high standards of living

The global product market is highly competitive on the account of the presence of multiple manufacturing companies operating in the market

Essential Oils Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global essential oils market report on the basis of product, application, sales channel, source, method of extraction, and region

Essential Oils Product Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2030)

Acorus Calamus

Ajowan

Basil

Black pepper

Cardamom

Carrot Seed

Cassia

Cedarwood

Celery

Cinnamon

Citronella

Ciz-3 Hexanol

Clove

Cornmint

Cumin Seed

Curry Leaf

Cypress

Cypriol

Davana

Dill Seed

De-Mentholised Peppermint

Eucalyptus

Fennel

Frankincense

Garlic

Ginger

Holy Basil

Juniper Berry

Lavender

Lemon

Lemongrass

Lime

Mace

Mustard

Neem

Nutmeg

Orange

Palmarosa

Patchouli

Pepper Mint

Rosemary

Spearmint

Tangerine

Tea Tree

Turmeric

Vetiver

Ylang Ylang

Others

Essential Oils Application Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2030)

Medical

Pharmaceutical

Nutraceuticals

Food & Beverages

Bakery

Confectionery

Dairy

RTE Meals

Beverages

Meat, Poultry & Seafood

Snacks & Nutritional Bars

Spa & Relaxation

Aromatherapy

Massage Oil

Personal Care

Cosmetics

Hair Care

Skin Care

Sun Care

Makeup And Color Cosmetics

Toiletries

Soaps

Shampoos

Men's Grooming

Oral Care

Baby Care

Fragrances

Perfumes

Body Sprays

Air Fresheners

Cleaning & Home

Kitchen Cleaners

Floor Cleaners

Bathroom Cleaner

Fabric Care

Method of Extraction Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2030)

Distillation

Cold Press Extraction

Carbon Dioxide Extraction

Others

Source Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2030)

Fruits & Vegetables

Flowers

Herbs & Spices

Essential Oils Sales Channel Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2028)

Direct Selling

Others

Essential Oils Regional Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Thousands, 2018 - 2030)

North America 

U.S.

Canada

Mexico

Europe

Germany

France

U.K.

Spain

Italy

Asia Pacific

China

India

Japan

Taiwan

South Korea

Singapore

Australia

Middle East & Africa

Central America

South America

Brazil

Argentina

List of Key Players of Essential Oils Market

Sydney Essential Oil Co. (SEOC)

Biolandes SAS

India Essential Oils

H. Reynaud & Fils (HRF)

Young Living Essential Oils

DoTerra

Essential Oils of New Zealand

Farotti S. R. L.

Flavex Naturextrakte GmbH

Falcon

Ungerer Limited 

[blenderbender1811]

If you don’t mind me adding some love for EU (Legends and Disney) Mace Windu:

The dude is a fucking one man army when confronted with a droid army.

Mace rescuing a little girl who tells him she’s worthless. He responds “No, you’re not.” When she insists everyone thinks so, he says “Then everyone is WRONG - but it’s not everyone. *I* don’t think so.”

Sage wisdom! He gives very good advice when a Padawan comes to him asking about grief. He tells them that Jedi learn to feel their emotions without being ruled by them and that the master in question is part of the living force now, which can never die and so is still with them.

He has a good sense of humour - most of the time. Yoda mentions that one of the things that changed with the war is that he hasn’t seen Mace laugh in a long time. In his vision of a world without the Clone Wars, one of the things he sees is Mace throw his head back laughing at something Ahsoka tells him.

Theatre man! As Jocasta Nu once put it, the theatre’s loss was the council’s gain.

Related to the above - he speaks multiple languages, and can perform plays in their original languages.

Was like a father to Depa Billaba, making him a pseudo-grandfather to Kanan and a pseudo-great-grandfather to Ezra, I am not taking alternatives at this time.

He sat around with other Jedi and would tell stories and have fun making jokes about Qui-Gon. 

He encouraged other Jedi to own their deeds - bad AND good and didn’t like hearing Jedi minimize themselves out of excess humility. 

Mace isn’t afraid to call the Trade Federation on their shit like when they manufactured a bacta shortage and he threatened to expose them unless they helped him end it. When they said it’d be their word against his, he called their bluff on whose word was more trustworthy. He got their help.

Shatterpoints! He can see the points that will break the things he attacks. How cool is that?????/

He is the only one to master Vaapad (which he created!) to not fall to the dark side because he is made of self discipline and when he falters, he falls back on his training, his Jedi culture and his Jedi family.

He can stop himself from thinking of things that will unsettle him.

He went on a trip to learn about his birth culture when he was 16 or 17 and encouraged Depa to do the same when she was that age. Where is your god now, “Jedi forbid access to their birth cultures” peddlers? 

He believes in people so much. He truly believes that if given the choice, people will choose to do the right thing, but he also believes in tempering hope with reality.

It was his skills as a diplomat that got him on the council.

Pick a given Jedi and he can tell you their strengths. He knows his order like a well oiled machine.

Mace Windu is a legend. 

Ngl I have no idea why some people hate Mace Windu.

He's literally like one of my favorite Jedi, probably like my 2nd favorite if I had to give him a ranking, and he's just like...so awesome!

He's kind and compassionate.

He's brave.

He's intelligent.

He's witty.

He has a purple lightsaber.

He's such a talented duelist that he kicked Jango and Grievous' asses.

And almost beat Palpatine (something even Yoda couldn't do, like come on--that's badass!)

Like seriously, what's not to like???