#content warning: war

[1ore]

speaking of deserts, im sad this article isn't available to read publicly because it whips ass, but i can do what i always do. quote heavily

From 'Without Form and Void: The American Desert as Trope and Terrain' by John Beck:

The Hebrew word tohu is usually translated in two ways. It can denote an arid wilderness, a desert, and it can refer to chaos. In this latter sense it is usually paired with bohu, which signifies emptiness, desolation, formlessness, confusion. Tohu-bohu, desert and desolation, chaos and confusion, or “without form and void,” as it is translated in Genesis. Chaos itself denotes a vast chasm, an abyss; in other words, it is a gap. Yet can a gap be without form, since it exists as the opening between things, as the interval that separates? [...] the abyssal chaos, which is also an arid wilderness, is far from being the vacuum of worthlessness it is often read as being. It is, instead, the ground of potentiality, the necessary generative stuff of creation. The void, then[...] is a place rather than a nonplace, and, as the place where God performs His differentiating acts—dividing earth from sky, sea from land, day from night—it is the location of differentiation itself, the place of infinite multiplicity. An actual desert place is thus burdened with a double conceptual significance: it is read at the same time as evidence of an absolute void and as the place for boundless free play, and deserts invariably elicit responses of both terror and ecstasy, of disgust and liberation. The idea of a desert, then, at least in cultures that draw upon Hebrew and Christian traditions, involves a cluster of notions including vacancy, expansiveness, and fearful potentiality. Not surprisingly, actual deserts carry the burden of this metaphorical overlay, a burden that manifests itself not just in the artistic responses to the physical space but in the institutional practices that govern its economic and political uses. The impact of this metaphorical construction of landscape is nowhere more pronounced than in the deserts of the southwestern United States.

[...] From the overarching conception of the desert as vacancy, at least five main rhetorical tropes emerge[...] first, that acceptance of the desert’s emptiness, and thus its uselessness, allows the space to become the venue for unhindered experimentation, a testing ground both physical and spiritual. Second, the desert is a metaphor of apocalypse, evidence of the ultimate wasteland. Third, the desert is often apprehended as the limit to reason, its vastness and tendency to alter habits of perception making it a physical challenge to expected modes of comprehension. Following from this, the desert can become either a venue for an escape from modernity, an elemental alternative to the rational order of “civilized” life, or, conversely, representative of the chaos of an unordered primal “nature” that must be resisted and expunged. Finally, as the American desert lies within the economically emergent post–World War II “New West,” the desert can increasingly be seen as representative of aspects of contemporary capitalism: a space without boundaries, unhindered and unregulated by old practices and habits[...]

[...] What is striking is how these rhetorical constructions accommodate both negative and positive readings at the same time. The desert is glorious and horrible, a refuge and a danger, horizonless and thus a threat to sanity, and so on. These paradoxes not only appear irresolvable, they tend also to be intrinsic to the ways in which the terrain is put to use, both figuratively and literally. This is a space of everything and nothing, a space of visual intoxication and invisible toxicity. In this ostensibly most exposed of environments, exposure functions, perversely and disturbingly, as a form of concealment.

---

[...] For a nation concerned with agricultural expansion as the primary civilizing force, hitting arid lands meant that “the project of mastering the continent seemed to have reached a non-negotiable limit. By all the conventional standards of value and habitability, the desert was an irrational environment, a betrayal of abundance fulfilled everywhere in North America."[...]

[...]The American desert, like its biblical counterparts, could be a site for testing, for challenging and overcoming the temptations of civilized life. While the desert became, after the mid-nineteenth century, a site of economic value due to the discovery of minerals, by the turn of the century monetary gain was not the only attractive force drawing people toward a reconciliation with the desert West. Growing dissatisfaction with American capitalist culture among the well-off, educated middle classes made the deserts inviting as a purgative space of romantic sublimity and aesthetic purity. Even as the evangelism of Progressive irrigationists began to display an increased confidence in the possibility of redemption for the terrain through cultivation, as if technology could finally fill the gap and convert the land to the righteousness of agriculture, aesthetes like Rutgers art historian John C. Van Dyke were writing about the visual splendor of a land that should remain untouched by base economic interests.

The conflict between contesting impulses toward either exploitation or conservation of the land is, then, present from the beginning of U.S. interest in its desert dominion, yet both positions derive at least part of their authority from the imposition of ideas of vacancy onto the terrain. Both read the space as empty and see this emptiness as its source of value, whether it be to extract from, build upon, or contemplate as evidence of some cosmic truth. Yet this notional vacancy, saturated as it is in the Hebrew and Christian traditions of desert iconography, functions also as a form of selective blindness that eliminates consideration of native inhabitants, indigenous traditions, and other, alternative spiritual and utilitarian values that may have prior claim to the land. Speculators and aesthetes alike need the tropes of emptiness and uselessness in order to validate their construction of the landscape as available space. Do the Pueblo Indians, for example, see the terrain they have inhabited for thousands of years as a gap, a vacancy, a howling wilderness?[...]

---

[...]Given the persistence of desert readings that seem to find apocalypse in the terrain even before the military managed to enact one, is it possible that the landscape somehow invites thoughts of destruction? For a topography that reveals to the human gaze the elemental resistance of the nonhuman to recuperation must then suffer the vengeance of a frustrated conqueror. Is the pursuit of desert destruction an implosion of anxiety in the face of the inscrutable landscape? Faced with a space that refuses settlement and that, in its taciturnity, overturns the logic of expansion and ownership, reason folds in on itself and results in the mentality summed up by the now infamous comment of the general during the Vietnam War that “we had to destroy the city in order to save it.”[...] Could the desert, as a particular topographical site, stand for the terminal point in an entire history of U.S. pursuit of a tabula rasa? Such a history would include, but would not by any means be exhausted by, policies of deforestation, the extermination of Indians and of buffalo, the gridding of the territories, and the marking-off of national parks as managed wilderness. Manifest destiny is here rewritten to mean an unlimited attack on the desert as Other, which culminates in the desert as all-encompassing, the obliterated, uninterrupted space of absolute power.

[...]This is precisely what Leslie Marmon Silko’s Tayo, traumatized by battle and captivity in the Pacific, perceives in a moment of clarity as he cries with relief “at finally seeing the pattern” that connects the alienating deterioration of his southwestern Laguna Pueblo community and military operations overseas:

He had been so close to it, caught up in it for so long that its simplicity struck him deep inside his chest: Trinity Site, where they exploded the first atomic bomb, was only three hundred miles to the southeast, at White Sands. And the top-secret laboratories where the bomb had been created were deep in the Jemez Mountains, on land the Government took from Cochiti Pueblo: Los Alamos, only a hundred miles northeast of him now... There was no end to it; it knew no boundaries; and he had arrived at the point of convergence where the fate of all living things, and even the earth, had been laid.

The apocalyptic power of America’s nuclear weapons has not only been achieved by yet another assault on Indian sovereignty, cordoning off and irradiating great swathes of terrain; this power has, in an inversion of crushing irony, brought everything together in one final communion. After Los Alamos, “human beings were one clan again, united by the fate the destroyers planned for all of them, for all living things; united by a circle of death that devoured people in cities twelve thousand miles away, victims who had never known these mesas, who had never seen the delicate colors of the rocks which boiled up their slaughter.”

[cccrouton]

he can have death sticks sometimes. as a treat.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Every time I watch the cold open of Memorial and B'Elanna tells Tom about how she ASSEMBLED a 50's television set from SCRATCH just to surprise him (there's no reason beyond that - just an incredibly sweet and thoughtful gesture) and replicated popcorn for him to eat while he watches and Tom says "They didn't have remote controls in the 50's ♥ Also where's my beer?" I contemplate murder ESPECIALLY because B'Elanna responds cheerfully to it - GIRL!!! LEAVE HIM!!!!!! IS HE SUPPOSED TO BE CHARMING IN THIS SCENE????

[imnotaman]

Hey, anyone else getting REALLY uncomfortable with RainbowcutieYT?

I'm genuinely thinking of blocking them.

[pmpknsoup]

im a firm believer the bees were out getting absolutely trashed with team fnki in that one episode

[ribbonfinale]

Kaiba really listened to Amelda's tragic backstory about how his little brother died as a casualty of war and said, "Wow! That sounds like a fucking skill issue. I simply would not have let my little brother get caught in a bombing."

Like, geez Kaiba, the kid was 10 years old or something. What was he supposed to do about an unexpected air strike!?

[alexkablob]

anyone else have that one fully OC-centric fic they really want to write even though it's so toxic that it'd probably have a target audience of like five people who have the fandom equivalent of flamingo acid tolerance? no? just me?

[tigerbears]

Homestuck Spoilers Out of Context.

[1ore]

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

We Lived Happily During the War

By Ilya Kaminsky

[nozomi-mats]

17th shard commission done back in 2021! Ishar’s Cryptic.

[armoralor]

inspired by these iconic lesbian posts (x x x) ✰ reminder that TERFs can fuck off, and if you reblog this you love trans & nb women ❤️

[kingsleepyhead]

ive been thinking abt this movie all week (couple character doodles + an oc cuz of course)

[iron-crakka]

you WILL eat the bugs

you WILL live in the pod

[obitinenovelwhen]

Satine Kryze Week: DAY TWO - storge

@satinekryzeweek

This is an excerpt from a WIP fanfic. Hopefully I’ll be able to share the whole story someday soon! Also, apologies that this one was so dark. I lost a parent when I was a teen and wrote some of that experience into this fic.

CW: Death of a parent, childhood trauma, PTSD, traumatic grief, implied violence

EXCERPT FROM SANCTUARY, AN OBITINE STORY:

The night everything changes for the Kryze family, when their world as they know it falls apart, Satine is only twelve. Like most her age, she’s awkward, still growing into her new height. And painfully self-conscious—both of the changes to her body and the sudden blush that touches her cheeks whenever she realizes that she a friend or a peer is rather nice to look at. Her people may be locked in one of its bloodiest civil wars—and her parents may be growing more and more concerned for their family’s safety day-by-day—but to Satine, her existence still has its share of preadolescent concerns.

She is, despite her status as the daughter of Mandalore’s leader, extraordinarily ordinary.

So when the night comes, Satine’s thoughts are not fretting over the danger that might befall their family, even though she is acutely aware of these. For now, she is not even thinking of the war, rare as that is for her. Instead, she finds herself reflecting on the past day with a small smile, thinking back on the modest yet meaningful gifts she received for her birthday and the day she spent with her mother, just the two of them. Days like these are a luxury, with her mother and father’s attention being continually drawn away by politicking and negotiation, so she cherishes a day as her mother’s sole focus like a rare gem.

After this night is over, it will be even more precious.

As Satine drifts to sleep in her bed, warm beneath her quilt, she doesn’t know this will be the last time she’ll sleep peacefully. Doesn’t know that in less than two hours, her world will be turned upside. The only thought on her mind is that she hopes she can have tea with mother tomorrow—and maybe even her father, if times allows. Or maybe this is simply what she dreams of once she’s asleep; trauma and the passage of time will make her memories of this night blur together, making it difficult to determine where one memory starts and another begins.

What she does know for sure is that when she does wake up, her heart is hammering like mad.

At first Satine thinks it is because she has had a bad dream, the ones where her parents and sister are executed right before her eyes. But then she hears the sound of jetpacks firing up and she knows the terror gripping her isn’t from a nightmare. Something has happened, something horrible and dreadful beyond her imagination. Something powerful enough to freeze her in place for what seems like an eternity.

In actuality, Satine only lies there, stock-still in her bed, for only a minute or so. Not very long, in the grand scheme of things—but this hardly comforts her. To be frozen, locked in place, makes her feel powerless and small, as if she is a single grain of sand in the center of a blackhole. As if she is nothing, no one, and never will be again.

If only this would be the last time she feels this way.

Thoughts of the future, however, are far from her mind in this moment. When her body finally lets her move, she’s no longer thinking of how she might again feel small and helpless, at the mercy of the world around her. Instead, Satine feels her whole being coursing with a sudden burst of energy, alight with the adrenaline and fear and a singular need to find her.

To find her mother.

It’s strange, in retrospect—that she somehow knew, in this moment, that it was her mother who was in danger. But this strangeness does not occur to Satine. She does not wonder why her body screams the truth—that her mother is dead, gone, taken from this life—while her mind is still reeling. She doesn’t think of anything, really. All her attention and energy and focus are on moving her body forward, toward the direction of where she last heard the jetpacks.

When she gets to her parents’ bedchamber, it’s just as she feared.

Just as she’d seen in her nightmares.

Where the stone wall of her parents’ chamber should be, there’s simply rubble on all sides, tons of carefully placed rocks and minerals spread like shattered glass across the ground, the night sky suddenly peeking through. Though there are no flames to be seen, she can smell smoke, acrid and tart in the night air. A moment or two later, she actually sees the smoke, curling lazily up from the smoldering debris, and she wonders what could have burned. Especially in this place, where she is surrounded by stone on all sides.

And then her eyes drift downward, and Satine sees her mother.

For as long as she has left to live, Satine never forgets this sight. She never forgets the shock, the disbelief, the sudden feeling that she has lost a part of herself that she could never, ever, get back. And she never loses the memory of how she wasn’t sure what to do—of what she even could do—until…

Until she hears her sister’s voice just behind her, small and uncertain.

“Satine?”

Satine whirls to face her sister, almost crying out in shock. For an unguarded moment, her sister sees all of her—all of her terror, all of her panic and fear. Then she sees the look on her sister’s face and she knows that she must put on a mask. That she must shield her younger sister and be the strong one, the one who makes sure they all make it to another day.

“Bo,” she says calmly, evenly. “You need to go find Father.”

Bo blinks, tears beginning to pool in her soft green eyes. “But—“

“But now, Bo. Go find Father. He’ll know what to do.”

Bo opens her small mouth again as if to protest, then snaps it shut. She immediately takes off the down the hall, to find wherever their father is instead of being here. Instead of being with their mother.

She feels sick, even thinking this. Because the implication is simple: If he were here, he would be dead, too.

And she doesn’t want this—doesn’t want her father dead alongside her mother. Several years later, when she receives word of his death while attending university on Coruscant, she is almost as devastated as she is now. Almost as broken. It’s just that…it’s difficult for her to define, but perhaps she could describe the feeling as resentment. Resentment that he was somewhere else, that he let the insurgents cut through their guards and security measures and get to their mother. That he let her, and their family, down. Not by being cruel or neglectful, but simply because he fell asleep while reviewing the security measures in the family’s cellar, insulated from the attack that awoke twelve-year-old Satine.

Because this is something people often forget about the Duchess Satine: Despite all her accomplishments and poise, despite her formidability in the political arena, her mother died when she was twelve. Only twelve. And like every other twelve-year-old in the galaxy, she reaches for something familiar to hold onto in this moment. Something to ground her and remind her that the current terror gripping her body is not all there is left in the world.

So as she waits for her sister to return with their Father, as she waits to put on the mask of strength again, the future Duchess of Mandalore reaches into the pocket of her nightgown and holds onto the first thing she touches.

She doesn’t let go.

[mumblingsage]

Monte Cristo raised enough of a hankering for Adoptive Dads with Revenge Plots to set me to completing the Black Company trilogy, of which so far I'd read the first book. Raven might be an inverse Dantes in that we meet him at the tail end of what was probably an elaborate revenge plot, and then he dives right into adoptive fatherhood at the first opportunity. And adoptive fatherhood for him implies a lot of moral compromises and terrifying, competent violence. What a guy.

[din-miller]

Blue Ink

Pairing: Clone Trooper Fives x AFAB reader

Word count: 1.4K

Summary: You got Fives’ tattoo tattooed on your hip and lets just say you won’t be leaving the bedroom for a few days.

Warnings: 18+, hand job, respectful possessiveness, fluff

A/N: I have no excuse for this. It’s my birthday and I wanted to write smutty smut. The divider is brought to you by @djarrex . The summary is lacking finesse but please read. Rex’s version < cause I’m obsessed with tattoos apparently. And after seven months I finally finished the clone wars and have thoughts

Fives hands are all over you. Pushing and pulling, fabric going this way, your body going that way. Hands hard and fast then slow and gentle. Too much and not enough.

And then it stopped.

He stopped.

Fives’ mouth separated from your skin, your neck suddenly cold without the warmth of his lips and you made a noise of protest. His left hand, which is currently settled on your hip, carefully explored the unexpected bulk of cloth underneath your shirt. He must have been able to tell what it is because his hand fell away from your body like it had been burned.

“You’re hurt.” He said, alarmed, drawing back as his hand hovered over your side.

It took you a second to chase away the lust over taking your mind to figure out what he’s talking about but once you do, you laughed, “No, I’m perfectly fine, my love.”

His hand grabbed the hem of your shirt and slowly started to lift it up, giving you plenty of opportunity to stop him. When you don’t he lifts the shirt all the way up and his eyes narrowed in on your bandaged hip, “Explain this then.”

“It’s not what it looks like-,”

“Really? ‘Cause it looks like a bacta patch to me,” He dropped the fabric and started pulling you towards the front door, any signs of arousal vanished as concern overtook his expression, “We need to get you to Kix. He’ll patch you up while I find whoever is responsible for this and break every bone in their body.”

“I did it to myself,” You rushed to say, not wanting to hear from Rex that your boyfriend tore apart the mess hall in search of a person that doesn’t exist, “Well technically it was Jesse, but I asked him to.”

“I’m going to kill that osi’kovid.”

“Would you-,” You stepped in front of the door, blocking his escape, “Please just listen to me?”

“Gladly,” He said and you breathed out a sigh of relief, only it’s short lived as Fives tried to push past you, “After I kill my brother.”

“Maker, you’re impossible!” You exclaimed, yanking your shirt off. Once the fabric was discarded somewhere to your right, your fingers found the edge of the bacta patch but before you could rip it off, Fives’ hands brushed yours away. His fingertips ran over the edge of the patch until it found a small gap where it had separated from your skin. Delicately, more so than it really called for, he pulled the patch from your skin.

Then he just stared.

Eyes tracing every ink made line, every detail that is displayed on your skin before those eyes darken, brown orbs becoming black as lust swallowed all colour.

Fives crowed you against the door, your back hitting the wood and you couldn’t suppress the shiver that raced down your spine, nor the involuntary gasp that left your mouth. Fives doesn’t say a word, doesn’t look away from the blue ink and you should probably start panicking.

Then, taking you by complete surprise, Fives is on his knees in front of you, face inches away from your hip as he closely examines the tattoo. His tongue darted out to wet his lips while his thumbs hooked under the band of your pants. With your help he pulled them over your butt and down your legs.

A low whine left your mouth when he groaned appreciatively at the sight of your bare pussy that is meant for his eyes only and your hip marked with his tattoo, “How long have you been walking around with this?”

“Since last night.”

His lips hovered over the tattoo before pressing an open mouth kiss just shy of the ink, “Who else knows?”

“Jesse. He did the tattoo,” You answered, knees quivering in anticipation when his lips trailed lower toward your sex, arousal gathering between your folds, “Kix too. He insisted on being the one to apply the tattoo bacta patch.”

“Good.” He hummed, satisfied with your answer. Whether it’s because Kix was making sure you got proper care, or that him and Jesse are the only people who’ve seen your tattooed skin, you’re not sure. Probably both knowing Fives.

“It looks healed.” He commented and pulled back, looking up at you, eagerly waiting for your response as his tongue pushed past his lips to wet them again. The sight made a wanton need shoot through your body.

“It is.” You confirmed, eyes falling shut as your walls fluttered helplessly around nothing, feeling empty and you really want him to just forget the tattoo for the moment and bend you over the nearest surface until you’re a sobbing mess.

His lips pressed against the middle of the tattoo without warning and your back arched towards him, a breathless sigh passed your lips. His tongue, warm and wet, lapped at the inked skin, “Tell me if this hurts at all.”

“You’re good Fives. You're always so good to me.”

His lips formed a seal over the tattoo in response to your praise and he gave an experimental suck, watching your facial expressions for any sign of pain. There is none. The tattoo is completely healed; matter of fact you left the patch only longer then Kix said too, just to be cautious.

He’s careful not to bruise your skin as he shifts from sucking to nibbling at the tattoo. Your hand shot down to his head, fingers tangled in his brown locks as his teeth bit down with just enough pressure that your toes curled against the floor beneath you, “Fives!”

“Yeah, shit, bed,” He said breathlessly, squeezing the base of his cock over the material of his pants as a few colourful curses fell from his lips, “Lay down for me.”

You did as he said and with deft fingers you undid your chest band, letting your breast bounce free as Fives’ groaned, “You’re killing me here. I’m not sure how long I’ll last.” He admitted with a tinge of embarrassment filling his words.

“That’s okay, my love. We have all night.” You softly reassured him with your back flat against the sheet, your body naked across the beds silk fabric as your arousal soaked the sheets. You beckoned him over with a finger and a sly smirk on your lips.

Fives mirrored your expression and straddled your thighs, trapping your lower half against the bed, clothing removed and his cock heavy in his hand as he stroked himself above you, pre-cum aiding as lubricant as he began thrusting into his own fist, your name falling from his lips.

You made a move to replace his hand with your own, a need to feel his hard velvety heat in your palm, but he’s quick to grab it and he somehow managed to lock both of your wrists in his free hand, placing them above your head, watching as your body stretched tall for him.

Maybe it’s the way you yield underneath his touch or maybe it’s the tattoo, his tattoo, on your skin that sent him crashing over the edge, a wrecked moan filling the room, bouncing off the walls and going straight to your core.

His orgasm is intense and vocal as cum paints your body – more precisely, your tattoo – in hot spurts as he breathed heavily, barely managing to keep himself upright as his cock twitched feebly, drops of cum slowly dripped down his length and onto your hip.

“Oh, Kriff,” Fives swore, running the swollen tip of his cock through his spent, rubbing his cum across the tattoo, another claim of his on you, “Don’t take this the wrong way, cyar’ika, but seeing you inked with my tattoo is fueling me with this possessive side. You are your own person, but fuck, all I can see is how you’re now claimed as mine.”

“So you're not mad?” You asked playfully, freeing a hand to cup his check. He tilted his head down to press a kiss to the inner part of your wrist.

Fives released your other hand and lowered himself slowly down until your chest met his, letting his weight press you further into the mattress and you made a noise of satisfaction, not caring about the drying cum smearing between your pelvic and his. You leaned up to capture his lips in a hungry kiss.

Fives groaned, pulling back from you enough to growl, “Let me show you just how not mad I am.”

“Your wording could use some improvement.”

“I guess I should put my mouth to better use then.” He winked before disappearing between your thighs.