#my sharpening kind of ugly sorry

[j2zara]

*tapping on your window* Hi I’m sitting in my car exhausted and about to drive home but I just wanted to let you know Ellie is. In my thoughts. This is a threat. And by that I mean. I am thinking so much about her and what it means to desperately want freedom and fear that if you get it you won’t know what to do next. The goal has been to fight until you die and you didn’t realize it until you got the chance to Live. It’s not that I don’t think she can’t be gentle bc she can be. She does her best to take care of Bluejay she’s kind to J3. It’s that I think when she’s. On her Own. And there’s no one to look after except for herself. And she’s forced to look inwards. She’s terrified there’s nothing there except the parts she desperately fights against becoming. Did she ever actually train her kindness for herself or does it always have to be given to someone else. Did she accidentally train herself for a purpose after all.

Anyways yeah so she’s in my thoughts and will be during my drive home that’s all hope you’re having a good night 💖

HIIII sorry it took me a sec to form coherent sentences and not to lump this in with your tags on my "Ellie was so afraid of becoming Jace she forgot to account for becoming ankarna" post but i also know (think?) that this was sent like RIGHT after that lol.

You've kinda articulated something i didn't really think about which is such a good point in that like. I think despite trying to push for personal autonomy and choice, ellie has sharpened herself into becoming very.... specific, due to her circumstances. She wants the freedom to be small and unextraordinary and messy but she can't afford that, i think she still has to be a tool of war in order to fight at all. idk if that makes any sense. She can't back out of her path—robbed of choice when choice is all she wanted, right? She needs power in order to get anything done and she doesn't particularly want it but it feels good when you have it right? At the very least when you have it nobody else can make you feel small. Maybe that's the Ankarna impulse. To learn about war to save yourself from doom even if it contorts you into something ugly and alienated from who you used to be.

But. What even are Ellie's impulses when the fight is gone. Who is she underneath that. Like. Yeah you're right in that its like the goal is survival for so long that its like who is she when she gets a chance to just LIVE? If you define yourself against something, is that really free will, is that really freedom from the determined path? Is it freedom to be an antithesis to a thesis when you're still defined in opposition to the thesis? Is it fair to have an identity defined by hardship and struggle and opposition, would that make happiness something unfamiliar, not yours? Is it fair to anyone that if you were to get better that would make you stop being you? Like. Something something gilear—there was something about the failure i could take in stride because within it i had some sense of identity or self. Except not a bit. You know what I mean? Or is it all change. Is it unfair even on my part that she had to be defined by like. Misery and the will to fight.

(And i think i do that b/c i like that she's unpalatable, i'm always so so so resistant to impulses to characterize her as secretly soft and maternal and nurturing. But is that fair to keep her all hard edges because maybe she deserves better)

She deserves. so much. She deserves a shitty, unfurnished apartment with a small portable fan and a mattress that's still the floor b/c she still hasn't gotten a bedframe. Maybe a lawn chair and an old tv. She has to start somewhere.

I don't know where the thought of the Ankarna-Ellie stuff came from—i think from working on LJ3Porter, i felt like. I think the reason why Ellie tries to put on a show about caring about other people is b/c she's scared that her real impulses are actually selfish. Power-hungry. Afraid that her objections are not because they've all been wronged, but that she's personally been denied something. That she's not just porter-coded, but she wants to transcend porter. Be even more powerful and frightening than him. Be the thing that He covets (even if he never really saw Ankarna). Jace wants to be at Porters side as equals, J2 wants to be beneath them, and J4 wants to be above even Porter. And. She does care about others its not just an act! But I think she's just. A lot like fig. But Fig's preoccupation is about being afraid of being so so so ontologically evil b/c she's infernal. But yeah. Dedicating themselves to others b/c they're afraid of interrogating themselves, asking themselves who they really are underneath it all.

[indignantlemur]

What's Andorian jewelry like?

Hello! Sorry it took me to long to answer - it's been crazy busy over here! So, the short answer is: it varies. Andorian jewelry runs the gamut from traditional to modern, with a full spectrum of complexity and styles in much the same way that Human jewelry does.

Andorians don't generally go in for piercings, so their jewelry choices are largely limited to rings, bracelets, necklaces, antennae rings and/or antennae bells, fine hair nets, ornamental belts, and body chains.

Traditional pieces strongly resemble armor. Examples include heavy gorget-like necklaces and collars, rings that evoke images of gauntlets and claws, bracelets that were basically just bracers with decorations, girdles with overlapping plates and all heavily engraved with complex imagery, often specific to the family of the wearer. Hair ornaments in this same tradition tended to be incredibly sharp, be they hair sticks and combs or strings of carved beads featuring a sharpened metal point at the end of the strand. Most of these items originate during the warring eras of Andorian history, where form and function were blended heavily in function's favour. While the original historical artefacts are usually preserved in a Clan's vaults or a museum, recreations are still worn in Emigre's modern era, but as statement pieces more than anything else. That being said, it's considered somewhat... gauche to wear too many such pieces.

Courting and marriage antennae rings have been around for hundreds of years, if not longer. There are trends - this generation favoured rings with embellishments like stones or engravings, while that generation preferred more plain but lustrous metals, and so on - but the basic form stays more or less the same. It's common for high ranking Andorians to have particularly ornate courting and marriage bands, but nowhere is it actually required - a loophole Thoris cheerfully exploits, to his spouses' general exasperation. Likewise, there is nothing stopping a lower ranking Andorian from having complex and highly detailed bands. Unlike most Andorian ornamentations, one cannot tell a person's rank or Clan just from their marriage or courting rings.

More modern jewelry range from plain pieces polished to a mirror shine all the way down to stone-studded and filigreed. Lightweight and delicate ornaments (often perched upon the nose, hung over the ears, or even dangling lightly between the antennae) which emphasize the wearer's face, particularly the eyes, mouth, or antennae, are a newer addition the market and steadily gaining popularity across the board. Some have taken this idea a step farther and created custom works which are moulded to an individuals chitin patterns, which were initially regarded as odd but have since been embraced by the younger generations quite enthusiastically.

Conversely, there's also been an alternative aesthetic growing popular on the fringes which features blocky, unpolished jewelry designed to frame the jaw and lower face almost like a muzzle. Some of these pieces give the impression of jagged teeth, while others more strongly resemble parts of dull, blank masks. It's not the sort of thing one would see often, and never in public spaces; this particular kind of jewelry is considered subversive - and ugly - by many. Humans inquiring after why this is so generally find themselves confounded by vague explanations and exasperated comments of, "Look, you have to be Andorian to understand, alright?"

In terms of other options, body chains are popular due to their versatility, as are hair ornaments and antennae rings, and finger rings of the more ordinary (or rather, less claw-like) variety. Armoured girdles have gone out of fashion entirely, though ornamental belts are still acceptable so long as they remain tasteful.

I don't really have any visual examples for this at the moment, but I might try my hand at jewelry design soon!

Hope this answers everything!

[novvaable]

Get to Know Me- Sims Edition

thank you @hurricanesims for the tag <33

sorry for taking so long to reply, for some reason it took me ages to actually answer these questions🤠

What's your favourite Sims death?

i hate when my sims die.. i can honestly say i’ve never forcefully killed any of my sims as I get so attached to them. in this case, id probably say death by old age.

Alpha CC or Maxis Match?

alpha! back when I used to play ts4 i gravitated towards maxis match.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

seems pointless to me lol

Do you use move objects?

yes!🫡🫡 impossible to build /decorate without it

Favourite Mod?

nrass master controller - it so universal and makes life a lot easier 🥺

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

my first expansion was university life. it will forever have a special place in my heart, I love it so much

Do you pronounce live mode or aLIVE or LiVing?

never even thought about it honest, probably like alive??

whos your favourite sim that you've made?

my girlie marcie, she’s come so far with me so I just have a special kinda attachment to her lol

Have you made a simself?

no i think this would just make me miserable

Which is your favourite EA hair colour?

none. I always find the tones of ea hairs to just be a little off? i just use custom colours

Favourite EA hair?

well i dont use any EA hairs they look ugly I have default replacements hairs by maryjane

Favourite life stage?

young adult

are you a builder or are you in it for gameplay?

only recently have i been in it for the gameplay. but i use that phrase lightly. i wil forever be a builder at heart.

Are you a CC creator?

barely lol. sometimes i post occasional things for dl. my knowledge of cc making only scratches the surface. i can do the basics like make poses, and custom photos (alongside sims and builds - but who doesnt).

ive tried to get into cc making a couple of times but its so complicated? i have mad respect for cc makers in the community. ill leave that job to the professionals.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

back in my day... lol not so much anymore. after i took a fat hiatus a lot of the people i used to regularly talk with moved on.

@pixelevia is still my girlie. she doesnt post much, but we talk all the time off tumblr and regularly get each other excited about sims storylines that are yet to come to life lol.

Do you have any sims merch?

yes.. i am embarrassed to say that when ts4 was release i pre-ordered the deluxe version. it came with a mouse pad.. its long gone now. but i always remember it having a funky smell ??

also i dont wanna talk about the fact i paid an arm and a leg for ts4 (i dont even play it?!) and now its free. forever going to be salty over this fact.

How has your ''Sims Style'' changed throughout your years of playing?

i'd like to think it has! considering my blog is old, i feel like it has grown with me and that reflects in the style of my sims. recently ive been striving for a slightly more realistic looks to my sims

Whats your Origin ID?

i do have an origin id unfortunately. (is it stil even called that?)

i have a lot of opinions on this new ea app bs. but we wont go into that.

Who's your favourite CC creator?

everyone! honestly anyone who has the skills to be able to make beautiful and functional cc are brilliant.

but just to name a couple:

@rollo-rolls

@smallsimmer

@martassimsbook

@sourlemonsimblr

@satellite-sims

How long have you had simblr?

I had to check my email for this.. as of feb 2023, my blog turned 9 years old?! so I guess almost 10 years. (thats kind of mad)

How do you edit your pictures?

depends on the picture! usually for scenery pics I will just sharpen them and adjust the brightness / saturation / contrast.

for sim pics it really just depends on how bothered I can be.

I’ve recently made the change to gshade so that’s been doing all the heavy lifting for me.

I use hunnybee’s moon syrups preset <3

What expansion/ stuff pack is your favourite?

university life!! it was the it was the first expansion pack i got and so it holds a special place in my heart. its also a pretty awesome pack too.

tagged:

@satellite-sims / @smallsimmer / @pixelevia @kitty-pixelz

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

I know you’ve probably been asked this before, but do you have any advice for someone wanting to write fan fiction? I’m thinking about making a side blog for just writing because I’ve got so many ideas in my head but I’m anxious about starting without any kind of following or practice

You don't need a following to start writing fan fiction, and you'll never get any practice if you don't start writing, so my advice is just take the leap and go for it.

I have recently made a point of refusing to look at that ugly little bubble with the number in it at the bottom of each of my fics. I write because I enjoy writing, I find it fun and it's a skill I want to sharpen, so I do it often, because I know with every story I write I learn something new about my style, and I grow and improve.

Focus on engagement and notes/kudos is the ultimate creativity killer. I find when I'm obsessing over who has interacted with my work and who hasn't, that it zaps all of my motivation to be creative, because I hinge whether I'm any good or not on the opinions of other people. Don't allow anyone else that power. Sure, validation is great and it's nice when people enjoy what you've written, but when it becomes about whether you're gaining any traction or not, you need to step back and ask yourself "am I doing this for the love of telling the story, or for the attention I anticipate getting?"

If the answer is the latter then it's time to down tools. Fandoms are fickle, fast moving spaces and people lose interest quickly. There is no rhyme or reason for why some fics do well and others don't, and you'll drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out.

Don't write to be popular, don't write for notes, write because you enjoy it and because the story you want to tell tickles your brain in a way that nothing else will until you get it down on the page.

Jesus, this is really long, I'm sorry. Anyway, if you do end up taking the leap, please tag me in whatever it is you write, I'd love to read it!

[whoislio]

Several Days Later

The crystal turns, night becomes day, a brief respite.

I've reached Mereldar in Hallowfall, the fight with the Nerubians and followers of some dark master brought me here. I took the time to restock my supplies, sharpen my blades, and grab a drink at the local tavern. Those like me, those from the surface, are scattered about the town here. Some merely seeking to aid the people here, others searching for lost loved ones from Dalaran or the various battles that have ensued since arriving on the Isle. I am an outsider on both fronts, no one lost, no skin in the fight, merely here because the surface held no answers for me.

The Empire's Edge is packed as I take a seat with my mug of something the Innkeeper called Blessed Brew. All that mattered to me was that it was cold and the drink would muddy and blur some of the images in my head from the battles that brought me here. One of the servers brings me another mug, setting it on the table before I've finished the last gulp of the first. I can feel a warmth begin to spread as I gulp down the second mug and finally relax against the back of my chair. My eyes wander as my thoughts return to my completely blank slate. I still don't know who I am, though given my ears I assume I am some sort of elf, I've seen others like me but no one looked at me as though they knew me so I didn't bother them with my problems. I sigh, just about ready to get up and explore the town when another elf sits at the table next to me.

"Hi there!" She was quite cheerful given the grim path it took to get here. "I haven't seen many of us down here, I'm Romassi, but everyone just calls me Roma. What's your name?"

I contemplated just walking away, but the way she said us piqued my interest. "Lio, just Lio." I force a smile that seemed to appease Roma as she smiled back.

"Boy my wings are tired, having to fight those flyers so they stopped swarming the fighters on the ground nearly wiped me out. Is that any good?" She pointed at my mug.

I was a little confused by her words, I remembered seeing odd creatures, something of a mix of dragon and humanoid, flying about the skies and battling the winged Nerubians. But she neither looked like one, nor did she have wings. Perhaps she took a particularly nasty bump on the head. I was just about to start inspecting her for any head injuries when she spoke up again.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She raised a brow, tilting her head as her hair parted from the shift to reveal a broken horn at her hairline. "Are you well?"

I stared, I admit it, not in a creepy way, but in a way that Roma apparently found funny as she started to laugh.

"You know, not that I am complaining, but compared to most of our kind your visage is somewhat plain. Beautiful in its own way, don't get me wrong. But plain. No horns, hardly any jewelry, no scales. It's like you said I want to be pretty but boring and instead your look became pretty boring." She continued to laugh.

"I'm sorry.. what? Visage? What are you on about?" I couldn't quite wrap my mind around what she was saying, was she calling me boring? Ugly? Dull? I don't think I've heard those words used to describe me. Before I could dig through my head to decipher her meaning two things happened all at once. Where a lovely elven woman with a broken horn, and laugh that was beginning to irk me, sat one of those humanoid dragons now did, their wings folded beneath their neck like a leathery, scaley cloak. And I fell out of my seat.

Nearly the whole tavern turned their attention to us, some craning their necks around those at their table to get a look at what was happening, but I seemed to be the only person shocked by her sudden shift in appearance.

"I.. you.. wha-.. huh?" I swore I knew how to speak, honest, but the words just tumbled out of my mouth and they weren't the ones I wished to use.

Roma chuckled and shook her head, her crimson scales catching the lamplight in an almost mesmerizing way. "What's wrong with you, Lio? You act like you've never seen this before."

"I haven't." Well look at that, chose the words, spoke the words, and they were the right words!

Roma appeared confused, though it was harder to tell with this face than the elven one she had only moments ago. "Surely this is some kind of joke?" From my place on the floor I could see her tail twitching, the spiked, club-like end rolling back and forth behind her seat. "You.. haven't? I.. aren't you.. I mean you have to be, aren't you? I can't be wrong. Aren't you?"

"Aren't I.. what?" I may as well get off the floor now, this conversation felt like it was taking a serious turn and me getting up might stop people from staring.

"One of us?" She leaned forward, glowing golden eyes searching for something in my own.

"You mean.. can I turn into something like that in the blink of an eye? No. Just an elf, sorry to disappoint. Nearly a month ago I woke up on some ship during a storm, crew said they found me in a wreck. All I had with me was a satchel and a book, Lio was written on the inside cover so I took it as my name." I looked over to the innkeeper and gave them an apologetic look for the scene I'd caused and tossed a few coins onto the table. "Anyways.. this has been fun, but I should get going. Best of luck with.. well.. whatever you're doing." I didn't spare her another glance, the look she'd given me stirred something dormant inside me and I didn't like it, it made my skin crawl. I'd barely made it out of the door, one foot on the path when I felt hands wrap around my arms and hoist me up. Only.. the up just kept going..

"Stop squirming! I don't want to lose my grip!" Roma shouted through the rushing winds as she flew higher and higher.

"ARE YOU INSANE!?" The ground was rapidly getting further away and all I could think about was the soldiers I'd seen being dropped by the flying Nerubians exploding against the ground like sack of meat and bones. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?"

"Just proving a point!" She yelled hovering in place.

"And what point is that?!"

"This!" And she let me go.

Looking back this was sheer insanity, not knowing who or what I was, no proof beyond whatever crackpot idea she had in her head about me. Was she hoping an instinct that had yet to surface in my entire fight down here would suddenly come? All I knew for certain in that moment was that I was about to die and there was nothing I could do about it but hope she came to her senses before I hit the ground like some sort of nightmare water balloon.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" I tried to flatten out in vain, hoping to slow my rapid descent to no avail. "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- "

Something stirred once more, this time stronger, I felt it reach into my very core and rip away the shackles of fear. It was instantaneous, one second I was falling to my certain death and the next I was leveling out and just missing the rooftops before banking left and coming back around towards the tavern. I could see her crimson form at the entrance, wings spread, arms pumping in the air. She looked happy. Did she not know I was coming? Did she not sense the approaching danger?

I crashed into her, slamming her to the ground, my momentum sliding us both several yards and nearly a foot deeper into the ground. "I should kill you!"

Black and silver scaled hands with curled black talons closed around her throat and through her struggles for air she managed to squeak out. "See... I.. told.. ya..."

I let out a growl of frustration as I released her, staring at these odd hands and arms that moved when I moved them. Standing up and inspecting myself further, I found that these scales covered my entire body, wings curled in, hooking together under my neck, something dragged behind me as I continued to examine every inch I could see, bringing my attention to my tail. MY TAIL! I HAD A TAIL! AND WINGS! I was one of those.. one of those THINGS! Unlike Roma's tail, my own was like a long and bladed spearhead that carved furrows into the dirt and clanked against the cobbled path as I turned.

Consider the shock I must have experienced, one moment thinking I was an elf, one moment thinking I was about to die, and the next.. I am something else, something entirely different that I'd believed myself to be all this time. I wasn't an elf, no, like Roma I was a Dracthyr, and the form I'd thought was just me was merely a visage. Take that in for a moment. Good? Great.. let's get back to it.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!"

Again, remember.. this was a shock to me, okay?

"Calm down! You can't tell me you didn't know this was who you really are, Lio." Roma chuckled as she got to her feet. "I've never heard of any of our kind not knowing." She gave me a once over. "Though the visage is starting to make more sense.. wow." Roma recoiled as she took in my form.

"I.. didn't.. know.. and you.. you.. y- ARGH!!!" I tackled her again. "WHAT IF YOU WERE WRONG!!?"

"HEY! KNOCK IT OFF!" The clank of armor and the song of drawn steel snapped me out of it as the guards approached.

I didn't wait to face the guards, I thought about being away from here and pushed off the ground suddenly finding myself hurling through the skies with Mereldar disappearing behind me.

"HEY! Wait for me!" Roma had followed me. "Come on! Let's touch down there!" She soared beside me, pointing to a nearby cliff overlooking the water.

I wanted to tell her no and fly away from her but I figured she'd just keep following me so I turned and began circling the cliff, slowing myself down before attempting a landing. I will admit, not my most graceful landing, but I did land on my feet, sort of, and Roma landed beside me a moment later.

"You really didn't know?" She asked, concern, the same expression she had at the tavern etched her scaled face.

"No. I didn't." I searched within, trying to find a way to turn back. I was about to give up when Roma placed a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry.. I thought you were pulling my tail." She paused briefly before continuing. "Focus on the image in your mind, hold it there, and push it towards the front of your mind. Do you have it?"

I nodded, struggling to keep my thoughts on the face I'd seen in the mirror so many times before today. I felt the stirring, only instead of breaking free, this felt more like bundling up..

"There you go.. not so hard, right?" She clapped me on the shoulder. "Of all the things you thought you were.. I bet this was the furthest from your mind."

I couldn't help but smile as I opened my eyes, seeing she'd returned to her visage as well. "This wasn't even a consideration."

I finally knew what I was.. but the question of who still remained. Was Lio even my real name? Was it short for something? Was I good? It would be a long, long time before I learned the answer to who I was, and how it came about was not in a way I'd ever thought of. But I like to think that it was moments like this that helped shape me into something better than I was. Because knowing what I know now.. there's no telling what kind of monster I'd have become.

[completeinx]

THE STAR

[isa-ah]

anchor sword is here! :-)

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“Freedom of Speech”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Reith Lecture, 2022

Full transcript, with a link to watch at the end of the post.

“It’s a bit disturbing to have people be forced to clap for me. And I’m sorry. Thank you all for being here. I’m really happy to be here and I’m happy that you’re here.

It is a privilege for me to be here today to join in the distinguished tradition of the BBC Reith Lectures. When I was growing up in the 1980s on the campus of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, I was a very curious child keen to hear every story, especially those that were no business of mine. And so, as a result, I sharpened very early on in life the skill of eavesdropping, a pastime at which I am still quite adept.

I noticed that each time my parents’ friends visited, they would sit in the living room talking loudly, except for when they criticised the military government. Then, they spoke in whispers. That whispering, apart from testing my eavesdropping capabilities, was striking. Why speak in such hushed tones when in the privacy of our living room, drinking brandy, no less? Well, because they were so attuned to a punitive authoritarian government that they instinctively lowered their voices, saying words they dared not say in public.

We would not expect this whispering in a democracy. Freedom of expression is after all, the bedrock of open societies. But there are many people in Western democracies today who will not speak loudly about issues they care about because they are afraid of what I will call, “social censure,” vicious retaliation, not from the government, but from other citizens.

An American student once accosted me at a book reading. “Why,” she asked angrily, “Had I said something in an interview?” I told her that what I had said was the truth, and she agreed that it was and then asked, “But why should we see it, even if it’s true?” At first, I was astonished at the absurdity of the question, then I realised what she meant. It didn’t matter what I actually believed. I should not have said it because it did not align with my political tribe. I had desecrated the prevailing orthodoxy. It was like being accused of blasphemy in a religion that is not yours. That young woman’s question, “Why should we say it, even if it’s true?” illustrates what the writer Ayad Akhtar has called a moral stridency, “a fierce, perhaps even punitive adherence to the collectively-sanctioned attitudes and behaviours of this era.”

To that, I would add, that this moral stridency is in fact, always punitive. We now live in broad settled ideological tribes. We no longer need to have real discussions because our positions are already assumed, based on our tribal affiliation. Our tribes demand from us a devotion to orthodoxy and they abide not reason, but faith. Many young people are growing up in this cauldron afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong questions. And so, they practise an exquisite kind of self-censorship. Even if they believe something to be true or important, they do not say so because they should not say so.

One cannot help but wonder in this epidemic of self-censorship, what are we losing and what have we lost? We are all familiar with stories of people who have said or written something and then, faced a terrible online backlash. There is a difference between valid criticism, which should be part of free expression, and this kind of backlash, ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children’s schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs.

To anyone who thinks, “Well, some people who have said terrible things, deserve it,” no. Nobody deserves it. It is unconscionable barbarism. It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking. There is something honest about an authoritarianism that recognises itself to be what it is. Such a system is easier to challenge because the battle lines are clear. But this new social censure demands consensus while being wilfully blind to its own tyranny. I think it portends the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity.

No human endeavour requires freedom as much as creativity does. To create, one needs a kind of formless roving of the mind, to go nowhere and anywhere and everywhere. It is from that swell that art emerges. The German writer, Gunter Grass, once reflected on his writing process with these words: “The barriers fell, language surged forward, memory, imagination, the pleasure of invention.” As a writer, I recognised this intimately. As a reader, I have often felt the magic of literature, that sudden internal shiver while reading a novel, that glorious shock of mutuality, a sense of wonder that a stranger’s words could make me feel less alone in the world.

Literature shows us who we are, takes us into history, tells us not just what happened but how it felt and teaches us, as an American Professor once put it, about things that are “not googleable.” Books shape our understanding of the world. We speak of “Dickensian London.” We look to great African writers like Aidoo and Ngugi to understand the continent and we read Balzac for the subtleties of post-Napoleonic France.

Literature deeply matters and I believe literature is in peril because of social censure. If nothing changes, the next generation will read us and wonder, how did they manage to stop being human? How were they so lacking in contradiction and complexity? How did they banish all their shadows?

On a calm morning in New York this August, Salman Rushdie was attacked while just about to speak, ironically, on the freedom of speech. Imagine the brutal, barbaric intimacy of a stranger standing inches from you and forcefully plunging a knife into your face and your neck multiple times, because you wrote a book. I decided to re- read Rushdie’s books, not only as an act of defiant support but as a ritualized reminder that physical violence in response to literature can never, ever be justified.

Rushdie was attacked because in 1989, after his novel, The Satanic Verses was published, the Iranian regime declared it offensive and condemned not just Rushdie but all his publishers, to death. Horrors, of course, then followed: His Italian translator was stabbed, his Norwegian publisher was shot, and his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered in Tokyo. Here is a question I’ve been thinking about: would Rushdie’s novel be published today? Probably not. Would it even be written? Possibly not.

There are writers like Rushdie who want to write novels about sensitive subjects, but are held back by the specter of social censure. Publishers are wary of committing secular blasphemy. Literature is increasingly viewed through ideological rather than artistic lenses. Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of “sensitivity readers” in the world of publishing, people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words.

This, in my mind, negates the very idea of literature. We cannot tell stories that are only light when life itself is light and darkness. Literature is about how we are great and flawed. It is about what H. G. Wells has called ‘the jolly coarseness of life.’ To that I would add that just coarseness alone will do, it need not be jolly.

While I insist that violence is never an acceptable response to speech, I do not deny the power of words to wound. Words can break the human spirit. Some of the deepest pain I have experienced in my life have come from words that somebody said or wrote, and some of the most beautiful gifts I have received have also been words. It is precisely because of this power of words that freedom of speech matters.

‘Freedom of speech.’ Even the expression itself has sadly taken on a partisan tribal tint. It is often framed, and I will put it crudely, as “say whatever you want” versus, “consider the feelings of others.” This, though, is too stark a dichotomy.

I cannot keep count of all the books that have offended me, infuriated me, disgusted me, but I would never argue that they not be published. When I read something scientifically false, such as that drinking urine cures cancer, or something gratuitously hurtful to human dignity, such as that gay people should be imprisoned for being gay, I desperately long to banish such ideas from the world. Yet I resist advocating censorship. I take this position as much for reasons of principle as for practicality.

I believe deeply in the principle of free expression, and I believe this particularly because I am a writer and a reader, and because literature is my great love and because I have been formed and inspired and consoled by books. Had any of those books been censored, I would perhaps today be lost.

My practical reason, we could also call it my selfish reason, is that I fear the weapon I advocate to be used against someone else might one day be used against me. What today is considered benign could very well become offensive tomorrow, because the suppression of speech is not so much about the speech itself, as it is the person who censors. American high school boards are today engaged in a frenzy of book banning, and the process seems arbitrary. Books that have been used in school curriculums for years with no complaints have suddenly been banned in some states, and I understand that one of my novels is in this august group.

I confess that there are some books I would fantasize about banning. Books that deny the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, for example, because I detest the denial of history. But what if someone else’s fantasy was to ban a book about the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinians by Zionists in 1948? Or a book about the Igbo coalminers massacred in Nigeria by the British colonial government in 1949? Above principle and pragmatism, however, is the reality that censorship very often does not achieve its objective. My first instinct, on learning that a book has been banned, is to seek it out and read it.

And so, I would say, do not ban them, answer them. In this age of mounting disinformation all over the world, when it is easy to dress up a lie so nicely that it starts to take on the glow of truth, the solution is not to hide the lie but to expose it, and scrub from it, its false glow. When we censor the purveyors of bad ideas, we risk making them martyrs, and the battle with a martyr can never be won.

I read newspapers from both sides of the political spectrum. I am, by the way, still puzzled that newspapers, ostensible bastions of objectivity, are politically differentiated. And I often say when I am feeling a little sanctimonious, that I am interested in the ideas of people who disagree with me because I believe that it is good to hear different sides of an issue. But the truth is that I am interested in their ideas because I want to understand them properly and therefore be better able to demolish them.

I believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech, and I recognize how simplistic, even flippant, that can sound. This is not to suggest that one should be allowed to say absolutely anything at any time, which to me is a juvenile position, for being fantastical and detached from reality. Free speech absolutism would be appropriate only for a theoretical world inhabited by animated ideas rather than humans.

Some speech restrictions are necessary in a civilized world. After the Second World War, when countries gathered to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, most agreed that “incitement to violence,” should be punished, but the Soviet Bloc wanted to add “incitement to hatred,” citing the Nazis as an example, which on the surface was reasonable. But their opponents suspected, rightly, that “incitement to hatred,” would end up being interpreted so widely as to include any criticism of the government.

This raises the question: who decides just how narrow and how clear restrictions should be? The nineteenth century English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, wrote that all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility, and with all due respect to the Pope, nobody is infallible. So, who decides what should be silenced?

Mahatma Gandhi, after he was arrested for sedition, wrote: “Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence.”

Most people would agree. But what about speech that does not directly incite violence but has nevertheless led to deaths by suicide, as has happened with people is so harangued on social media, so insulted and abused, that they take their own lives? I, by the way, use the word ‘violence,’ assuming that its meaning is self-evident. But is it really? For what is to be said of the idea prevalent today that speech does not merely incite violence – the kind of physical act as suffered by Salman Rushdie – but that speech itself IS violence?

The expression, ‘the answer to bad speech is more speech,’ in its beguiling simplicity, also fails to consider a central motif, which is power. Who has access? Who is in a position to answer bad speech with more speech? In arguing for the freedom of speech, one must consider all the limitations placed by unequal power relations, such as a mainstream press owned by fewer and fewer wealthy people, which naturally excludes multiple voices.

Even the definition of speech can be limiting, such as when the US Supreme Court decided, in the case of Citizens United, that money is speech. All those not wealthy cannot then ‘answer back,’ as it were. Most of all, the Social Media companies, with their mystical algorithms and their lack of transparency, exert enormous control on who can speak and who cannot, by suspending and censoring their users, something that has been called ‘moderation without representation.’

Yes, these companies are private but considering the outsize influence they have in modern society, they really should be treated more like a public utility. There are those who think that, because of these sorts of power limitations, we should robustly censor speech in order to create tolerance. A well-intentioned idea, no doubt. But as the Danish lawyer, Jacob Mchangama, has argued: “To impose silence and call it tolerance does not make it so. Real tolerance requires understanding. Understanding comes from listening. Listening presupposes speech.”

For all the nobility in the idea of censorship for the sake of tolerance, it is also a kind of capitulation, an acceptance that the wounded cannot fight back. When an anti-black poster was once displayed on the campus of Arizona State University, the university chose not to expel the perpetrators. Instead, a forum was organized, the poster discussed, and an overwhelming majority of students expressed their disapproval. One of the black students who organized this said, “When you get a chance to swing at racism, and you do, you feel more confident about doing it the next time.”

A troubling assumption underlying the idea of censorship for the sake of tolerance is that good people don’t need free speech, as they cannot possibly want to say anything hurtful to anyone. Free speech is therefore for the bad people who want it as a cover to say bad things. The culture of social censure today has, at its center, a kind of puritanism that expects us to be free of all flaws, like angels, and angels do not need free speech.

Of course, we all need free speech. Free speech is indeed a tool of the powerful, but it is also crucially the language of the powerless. The courageous protests by Iranian women, the ENDSARS protest in Nigeria, where young people rallied against police brutality, the Arab Spring: all wielded speech. Dissent is impossible without the freedom of speech.

The biggest threat to speech today is not legal or political, but social. This is not a new idea, even if its present manifestation is modern. That famed chronicler of American life, Alexis de Tocqueville, believed that the greatest dangers to liberty were not legal or political, but social. And when John Stuart Mill warned against the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling,” it reads as though he foresaw the threat that orthodoxy poses today. The solution to this threat can only be collective action. Social censure creates not just a climate of fear but also a reluctance to acknowledge this fear. It is only human to fear a mob, but I would fear less if I knew my neighbor would not stay silent were I to be pilloried. We fear the mob but the mob is us.

I want to make a case today for moral courage, for each of us to stand for freedom of speech, to refuse to participate in unjustified censorship, and to make much wider, the boundaries of what can be said. We must start again to assume good faith. In public discourse today, the assumption of good faith is dead and speech is by default interpreted in the most uncharitable way. Yes, some people are not of good faith which, I suppose, is what that modern word “troll” means, but we cannot, because some people do not act in good faith, then decide that the principle of good faith itself is dead. It is instructive to be reminded of American President James Madison’s words: “some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.”

We must start again to make our case, respectfully and factually. We must agree that neither sanctimonious condescension on the left nor mean-spirited hectoring on the right qualify as political arguments. We must insist not only on truth but also nuance. An argument for any social justice movement, for example, is stronger and more confident when it is nuanced because it does not feel the need to simplify in order to convince.

We must hear every side and not only the loudest side. While social media has re-shaped the traditional power dynamic by giving some access to the powerless, it has also made it easy to mistake the loudest voices for the truest. We must protect the values of disagreement, and agree that there is value in disagreement. And we must support the principle of free expression when it does not appeal to our own agenda, difficult as that may be, and I find it particularly so.

We must wean ourselves of the addiction to comfort. When I first left Nigeria to attend university in the US, I quickly realized that in public conversations about America’s difficult problems – like income inequality and race – the goal was not truth, the goal was to keep everyone comfortable. And so, people pretended not to see what they saw, things were left unsaid, questions unasked, and ignorance festered. This unwillingness to accept the discomfort that honesty can bring is in its own way a suppression of speech. Some Americans argue, for example, that students today should not be taught about the racist Jim Crow laws of the 1950s, because it will make them uncomfortable. And so, they prefer the disservice to young people of making them ignorant of their own history.

We must stop assuming that everyone knows, or should know, everything. I was once struck by how quickly an American journalist was fired from her job for saying something racist. Little was made public about exactly what it was she had said, and this not only gave a certain unearned power to her words, but also darkly suggested that perhaps they contained an element of truth. The public was also cheated of its right to hear, and perhaps, potentially learn. What was said? Why was saying it wrong? What should have been said instead?

We must demand that people behave on social media only as they would in real life, and we must also demand reasonable social media reforms such as the removal of anonymity, or linking advertising only to accounts with real names, which would provide an incentive to promote voices of actual people and not amoral bots.

What if each of us, but particularly those with voices, gatekeepers, opinion shapers, political and cultural leaders, editors, social media influencers, across the political spectrum, were to agree on these ideas as broad rules to follow? A coalition of the reasonable would automatically moderate extreme speech. Is it naïve? Perhaps. But a considered embrace of naivety can be the beginning of change. The internet was after all designed to create a utopia of human connection. A naïve idea if ever there was one, but it still brought about the most significant change in how human beings communicate.

Sometimes it takes a crisis for a naïve idea to become realistic. President Roosevelt’s New Deal itself was based on ideas that went against the prevailing consensus of the time and were generally considered naïve and impossible. But when crisis came in the form of the Great Depression, it suddenly became possible.

Social censure is our crisis today. George Orwell wrote that, “If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it.” To that I would add: We can protect our future. We just need moral courage.

Thank you.”

[powderpinkprincess]

Can't do it [Legolas x human! reader]

I think this one is my longest so far 🤔

Description: Legolas comforts you

tw: mentions of war

Heavy raindrops fell from the sky.

You looked up and all you saw were the grey clouds covering the sky. Misty darkness was all around you, and there was no way out now. You inhaled the thick air deeply. It couldn’t fill your lungs enough. Your hand wandered to your sword. You felt slow. Anxiety gripped your chest and you forced yourself to breathe in again.

Your eyes wandered to Legolas and Aragorn in front of you. They were talking in Elvish so quietly that you barely heard them. Not that it mattered as you spoke no more Elvish than ‘Mae govannen’. On your better days, you could even add ‘mellon nin’. Too bad you didn’t have enough Elvish friends to actually use the sentence. As if Gimli was reading your thoughts, he grumbled at your side.

 “The politeness is appreciable. I feel so honored by them waiting for us and involving us in their conversation.”

You chuckled. It didn’t bother you as much as it used to. You learned that Aragorn and Legolas had much more experience than you did, so there was no point in involving you anyway. You were tired enough to just be grateful for a moment of peace. It was enough if they found out something safe and filled you in later.

Suddenly, Legolas stopped. He placed an arrow on his bow before you could even comprehend that something was happening. He glanced around. You could practically feel his focus on his surroundings. Elves had this strange ability to hear and see things no one else could, so when you listened and heard nothing, it didn’t surprise you. Gimli opened his mouth to speak, but Aragorn raised his hand to silence him. When Legolas sharpened all his senses to find out what he heard in the distance, it was not smart to talk near him as he found it unpleasingly loud.

You even held your breath as you stared at his face, hoping to see any kind of a signal to know if you were in danger. His eyes were so blue. His soft features now looked stiff with concentration. Even in this humid darkness, his hair held a light, sparkling shade of gold that you admired. Next to him, all of you looked so dirty and ugly. At first, it really bothered your sense of confidence that you felt like an Orc when you saw him, but now the feeling melted into simple adoration.

Therefore, when Aragorn gestured to you to come closer, you were still staring at Legolas, not noticing the hole in the ground. You landed on the ground with a thud, and unwanted tears pricked your eyes when you felt the sharp pain in your left ankle. Now you were entirely doomed.

 “I’m sorry,” you whined as you looked up at your companions. Legolas lowered his arrow, and Aragorn reached out a hand toward you.

 “Are you hurt?” the ranger asked with a frown. He pulled you up and sat you on a rock by the pathway.

 “I can walk,” you insisted quietly, though your voice held some uncertainness. You twisted your ankle badly when you fell. Shame and guilt filled your heart. Shame, because if you could take your eyes off Legolas for merely a minute, you would have noticed the hole. And now your companions had to deal with you, too.

Aragorn untied your boot without a question and his eyebrows rose.

 “I do not think you will walk,” he shook his head. You glanced down, noticing how your ankle already started to swell.

 “How did you not see that hole anyway?” Aragorn asked, looking back at the obvious sight on the path.

Your cheeks reddened.

 “I do not know,” you lied immediately, hoping that he will let his question unanswered. He looked slightly amused.

 “I will carry you out. Legolas, how much we have left?” he turned to the Elf, whose expression was unreadable to you. Did he know why you fell? You would die if he did.

 “Not so much. I can already see the end.”

 “Another five hours or so, then,” Gimli mumbled sarcastically. You could tell he was already done with this forest as much as you were. He leaned on his axe, panting slightly. Keeping up with human-sized creatures over a long distance was not the easiest thing for him as his small legs needed to carry him almost as quickly as he was running. You found it really funny when Legolas sometimes turned back to him saying something like ‘come on, Gimli, we need to hurry’, not knowing if the Elf was really that clueless or simply was just teasing the Dwarf.

***

Aragorn ended up carrying you until you reached your spot for the night, which you found impressive. Legolas volunteered to do the first night watch as he needed much less sleep than any of you did. You adored his heart. He stayed up significantly more than the rest of the small companion, even if he could just let you all split the watches equally. Aragorn told him to wake him up on time when it was his turn, though at this point of the journey everyone knew that Legolas would let him sleep in longer. Seemingly the sleep deprivation did nothing to the Elf. He slept three or four hours a night, which was enough for him to function. Moreover, there had been a rough night when you all could not stop to rest, and he did not seem to mind that either.

You fell asleep almost immediately when you got the chance. In the middle of the night, you were awoken by your bladder, and you winced at the thought of pushing off your blanket and finding a bush in the cold darkness. However, nature was calling you, there was nothing you could do against it.

You felt absolutely horrible. Your ankle hurt a lot and you were miserable. Being away from home was always so much worse in the darkness. You glanced up at the stars. They kept shining, no matter what. They held the same light months ago as now, when a war was about to start at any given minute. A war. It was unfathomable to you. You grew up in peace. Even if you would survive a battle somehow, who knew what came after? And what would happen to all the people you loved? You were too small and weak to save them all. Hell, you could barely even protect yourself. Merely the thought of it gave you a feeling of anxiety that led to tears. You were terrified.

You limped back to your blanket, wiping your cheeks and sniffling. You nearly screamed when you saw a shadow moving right next to you.

 “It is just me,” you heard Legolas whisper on your side.

 “Why on Arda are you still awake?” you questioned. Your heart was still racing, and you blew out the air to calm yourself. Elves walked so quietly that your human ears were unable to hear their footsteps. Legolas had scared you quite a few times already.

 “I do not need as much sleep as you do.”

The faint flames of fire gave you a sight of his form. You forced your eyes to see him better. His presence always comforted you.

 “You are crying,” he noted the obvious.

 “I am not,” you replied, and then sniffled again. His lips curved into a small smile. You turned your head away.

 “Why are you crying? Does your ankle hurt that much?” he asked, his eyes puzzled. Not only you had never seen him shed a single tear, but you had never seen him suffer any sort of an injury, either. He could not understand you, yet he tried to put the pieces together, and you found it adorable. You chuckled and wiped your eyes again.

 “No, it really does not. I am just- A little homesick, I guess,” you admitted finally.

Silence fell between the two of you. Legolas took a step closer to you, scrutinizing your form, his eyes deep with thoughts. He did not really know how to comfort anyone that was crying. Elves barely even cried, you knew that. As his glance found yours, a question slipped through your lips.

 “Legolas- Does anything ever scare you?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but then he closed it. You were not sure if he got what you meant behind the words. You were not sure what kind of an answer you looked for, either.

 “Like- The war. Does it scare you?” you breathed out.

 “Of course it does. I am pretty sure it scares everyone that has any living spirit in them here on Middle Earth. Even the trees feel different, you know. They grew silent.”

Here he was, talking about the speaking trees again. Another thing you could not understand. You inhaled sadly, and looked away for a second before finding his blue irises again.

 “What do they sound like?”

Legolas put his palm on your forearm, gesturing towards the fire. You grabbed your blanket and sat down on the ground. He followed you.

 “It is not really a sound. It is more like- A feeling,” he replied to you, deep in his thoughts. “I do not really know how to explain. You can feel them with your whole body. Like the resonations of music maybe. Some are vibrant, some are slow and sad. And these days, lots of them are just silent.”

Before you could speak, he continued.

 “It is not shameful to fear something so devastating. And for you, maybe even unknown.”

A new wave of tears clouded your vision.

 “I do not think I can do this all,” you choked out. Legolas hummed.

 “You would be surprised to see what the race of Men could endure. You are stronger than you think.”

 “Legolas, I have no magical powers, I can not see the enemy coming from miles away, and I have not lived thousands of years to gain enough experience for a battle. I know nothing. I am nothing like you,” you admitted bitterly, this time letting the tears run down your face. Your heart hurt too much to move.

 “You do not even have to be,” the Elf shook his head. You could feel his stare on your face, but you refused to look at him. “Elves do have the experience, but humans have the ingenuity. Your lives are short, therefore you are able to adapt like no one else. You all are strong enough in your own way. Otherwise, the race of Men would have not survived among all the other creatures of Middle Earth.”

You said nothing.

 “And you are my friend, Y/N. If I see that you are in trouble, I will not hesitate to help you out, I promise you. There is no need for those tears of yours. You are safe as long as you are with us.”

His words made your chest feel warm again. Yes, you were still terrified, but the uncertainty felt much less excruciating with someone like him by your side, and you were truly, entirely grateful for that.

[twentytarot]

wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? sorry that i kinda dropped off the map there, but you know how it is. life calls when it does. anyway, today we’re doing a reading on your next five years. for this reading in particular, if you’re drawn to more than one group then i’d suggest you read them both, because 5 years is a long time and it’s definitely possible for bits and pieces of your prediction to be scattered around this reading. devise a strategy that works for you even, for example, if i’m drawn to pile 1 first and then 4, maybe the beginning of pile 1 is more relevant to me but the end of pile 4 will resonate more. enough of my rambling, on to the reading!

*year 1 means from now till year from now, year 2 1-2 years from now, and etc.

PILE ONE: GLASS PANELS

overall, the next five years has you waiting for the right moment to begin living. currently you are stuck in a place where you’ve been hurt and betrayed— yet you cannot leave yet. you’re probably trying to plan a way out, but perhaps, surrounded by the unbreakable glass panels in your life, you’ve come to the same conclusion as me: it’s not going to be any time soon. for the next two years, you will have no way out. however, you will become much more resilient so that 3 years from now, you have the power and strength to break out of your current situation and build your dream life. it seems that there will be a lot of movement leading up to this event; perhaps you will be moving house and leaving most of the people around you now behind. whatever the case, in year 3, you will be building a new foundation for yourself. if there are responsibilities and duties you cannot fully leave behind from your past, you will learn to balance them in year 4. in year 5, you’re building up your finances, having found your footing at home and at work. finally, five years from now, you will finally feel like you are in a place where you can feel stable and secure financially and emotionally.

in other words, the main message for you is “one step at a time”. you will have the life you want, but it will take a while. for now, you will have to heal your inner wounds and learn to brave the coldest of storms on your own. then, the next step will be to gain the courage to forge ahead and create a foundation that will allow you to build your life the way you want, away from the toxic people that you have had to rely on. once you have found your own independent footing, then the next step will be to go after you want, especially in career and life purpose. don’t be afraid if things start coming down, almost no one goes through their 20s and 30s without having to destroy something fundamental. finally, once you have learned to juggle all of this alone, the final piece will fall into place, and that is the rest of the world. friends, a new family, and days that make you so excited you want to sleep early so that the sun rises faster tomorrow. this is a long journey, but i’m confident it’s worth it. you got this! :)

PILE TWO: APPLE PASTRIES

for the next five years, you will ride a wave that brings you to the top of the world, and then you’ll prepare for the next chapter in life. we start off in year 1 with you being a little unsure of what it is you want to do long-term— perhaps you’re aware that it’s about time you start settling on a path with how responsibilities are piling up, but you’re also rather reluctant to let go of all your ideas and inspiration. that’s alright, you don’t have to decide just yet. in year 2, things get a little more exciting in the personal department: you might meet your future spouse, get engaged, get married, or even have a kid, depending on where you are in personal life right now. i’m leaning towards you being pretty young and just beginning to entertain the idea of marrying your special someone. whether it’s navigating a new relationship or wedding planning, you’ll be pretty caught up in it in year 2, and your work life will naturally fall into the background. not for long, though, because someone enters your life in year 3 and they don’t have your best interests in mind. they’re not out to get you, but they also don’t care if they had to step on you to get higher. this person brings you a whole lot of clarity on your life purpose and career, though, and so you transform your life quite rapidly, especially in view of the fact that you’re getting older and it can’t be helped, you’re going to have to start making some commitments. the transition is very successful and in year 4 you reap all the benefits. you are like water, you balance the push and pull effortlessly like the waves, you bring energy wherever you go, you complete the cycle and finish what you start. you’re in a position to give advice now, and people begin to look up to you. life’s... well, it’s actually pretty good.

year 5 is whole new chapter, likely on patience. the bliss of making it through one chapter in life never lasts long enough, and it is time for your life to move on. take care of yourself and always be open to growth. take the people that will betray you as lessons on how to better watch out for and protect yourself. wield the sword of clarity with conviction. before you know it, everything else will follow.

PILE THREE: FLAT WHITE

your next five years is about breaking free. you are often harshly judged by the people around you, and it’s like you can never catch a break. you wished for a peaceful getaway, and your wish is only partially granted. let me stop for a second and explain. for example, if you’re harshly judged at work, you might be able to get out of working with the particular team that makes your life difficult, but you won’t be able to leave the company entirely. something like that. you’ll have to do more than what you’re doing right now to truly get out of this situation. thankfully, towards the end of year 2, your heart hardens. enough is enough, you decide, and with your sharpened sword, you go after what you want.

the battle in year 3 is ugly. you say things you wish you didn’t have to, you do things in ways that keep you up at night. sometimes we don’t have a choice, though, because it was the only way you would be able to take what is yours and run. just in time, too, because in year 4, you will realise the stability you thought you were being offered was as strong as a house of cards. by defying expectations and going out on your own, you have nudged this house and cause it to topple. you get to watch from somewhere a little further away, but it’s still hard to deal with the questioning, the anxiety, the wondering whether you shouldn’t have left in the first place. no, darling, of course you should have left. year 5 is a year filled with so much more stability and happiness, it’s like you can’t recognise the person you used to be, the world you used to live in. if you thought that you will never truly make it out of there, my cards are here to tell you that there is a day where you will stop wanting to cry before you go to sleep, there is a day where the demons will shut up for good. so don’t give up! you’ll make it out of there if it’s the last thing you do, because that’s you: strong, persistent, and forever optimistic in your heart. and this personality of yours is what makes you lucky. when you want something with all of your heart, the universe can’t help but want to give it to you.

PILE FOUR: NIGHT

pile four, your reading is all about finding love! things are about to slow down for you now, and it looks like it will continue to be slow for awhile. and honestly, for you i don’t think that’s a bad thing at all, seeing as you are just coming out of having had to make difficult choices and work hard for what you want. for the next year or so, you’ll simply be continuing what you’ve started and letting the payoff roll in. in year 2, however, you’ll begin to look around at your life again and find out what is it you want next. at that point, perhaps you will come to the conclusion that it is love you’re looking for. or maybe it’s just excitement, since you’re pretty collected yourself. you’re the kind to meditate and sleep on things before you decide, and the person you meet in year 3 is decisively... not that kind of person. they’re hardworking, smart, funny and honest, but they’re also rather blunt and impatient. they’ll jump from one thing to the next without thought; they’ll argue with you through the walls of your room is it means they’ll win. you may wonder if this person is going to force you become their parent. well, no. this person has entered your life to show you that the world has so much more to offer if your just take the leap and jump. this person is here to show you that sometimes, you don’t sleep on decisions. you just go for it. once you begin to see the charm of this person, they will light up your life as a friend, a listening ear, then a worthy partner, then a worthy opponent, and then finally, in year 4... a worthy soulmate. and you will realise that taking risks is actually not as scary as it seemed, because this person is right next to you, and will be there to help you pick up the pieces should you fall. this might be a new feeling for you, because you come from a background of having to watch your own back all the time. being able to take calculated risks is what pushes one up from being a prince to a king. it pushes you and your life purpose to its full potential, and even if the ride of taking risks and forging ahead is rocky with this person in year 5, you will come out hardships closer than ever, stronger than ever.

[djarin]

would you mind posting a tutorial on your coloring (esp for the last set you made of poe dameron) it’s really amazing and i’d love any tips you have. if not that’s totally okay too! have. a good day!

hi there! 

i do have some answered questions/tips/tutorials about how i colour here and here (these 2 are specifically removing green tint; kind of outdated  though because i follow a slightly different process now), here, and here! these last two are tutorials for more vibrant colourings though, so if you want a regular colouring tutorial, just let me know, i’d be happy to make one!

since you specifically mentioned the poe dameron gifset, i wanna let you know that that one was different from how i usually colour! i’ll show you why under the cut!

this gifset’s colouring process was kind of different because the movie was an HDR download, which means my screencaps were washed out in colour like this:

(i was too lazy to sharpen properly sorry HJSGJS) 

anyways, it was my first time colouring hdr and one thing i can say is that i found it A THOUSAND TIMES easier colouring it vs a non-hdr download, which looks like this: 

@sith-maul has a fantastic tutorial which explains how to colour hdr gifs, which you can find here! i highly recommend it if you’ve never worked with hdr before!

to add my non-expertise thoughts: upon first glance, it probably looks like the non-hdr file is easier to colour, but (personally) i find it 10x harder to remove the yellowish tint while keeping people’s skin colour looking more natural with the non-hdr. (and i know this because i struggled to colour the non-hdr for a while before giving up and downloading the hdr file without even knowing it was hdr at first; lol it was a nice surprise to see how well it worked after the initial struggle). 

this was my first time using hdr screencaps, so i’m not sure if i could do a thorough tutorial or anything, but i can show you the adjustment layers i have for this gifset specifically! 

if you look at my tutorial(s), you’ll see i always put brightness/contrast on “screen” for blending mode, then use the first and third dropper of curves in order to build contrast + take away any green/yellow tints. with one curves layer using the mentioned droppers, my gif looks like this:

i used levels because i wanted some parts of the gifs to be darker. mostly random clicking around until it looked good because i don’t know how to use it properly lol (i promise you my colouring consists of just pure luck 99% of the times, where i’ll click and click until something finally looks good)

channel mixer is a big big big lifesaver for colouring / getting rid of ugly yellow/green tints, play with all the reds, greens, and blues! after all of those layers, selective colour will help you bring out natural skin tones and pretty colours (i.e. the sky). remember that your layers build upon/depend on each other, which i explain in one of the linked tutorials above the cut! 

anyway, i hope this helps! it was very brief because again, i’m not an expert on colouring hdr files or anything, this gifset was legit my first try. but if you still have questions or requests for a regular colouring tutorial, please feel free to come back and ask, i don’t mind answering questions at all! <3 

[ahsxual]

Save Me

Pairing: Detective David Loki x Reader

Summary: You and David have been together for a few months now. You knew his job was exhausting and obscure, but lately he had been spending less time with you and being more distant, until something he wasn't expecting happens...

Genre: Angst, fluff

Warnings: Kidnapping, violence, lots of swearing, children kidnap (since it's based on the movie)

Word Count: 4,1k

A/N: This one is dark!!! I'm so happy for finally writing a fic about Detective Loki, my sweet and handsome savior <33 I personally think that this piece is really cute and romantic, yet terrifying... Sooo, I hope you enjoy it! ^-^

You had no idea of what was happening... You didn't know why the love of your life has been so distant lately, and acting so weird every time he was around you... Had you done something wrong? Didn't he love you anymore??, you asked the same torturing questions to yourself every day, non-stop.

You were currently drinking a hot cup of cappuccino under five, comfortable, warm blankets while watching your favorite series, since it was really cold outside and you were by yourself. It was the middle of winter, so whenever you looked outside the window, all you could see was bright, comforting and gorgeous shades of white of sweet snow. Winter used to comfort you in a way no other season did: on those freezing days, you were able to spend all day in bed with David, warming each other's bodies in your tight embraces, and making love until you started feeling so hot that it seemed like summer had already arrived. But this time, you didn't feel any of that: you painfully missed your boyfriend. You missed your moments together, the sweet, yet rare laughs that managed to come out of his well-defined lips, knowing you were the only one that could achieve them... and that's why you were so special to him, because you were the only woman and person in this world who was able to make him feel truly happy, loved and accepted. Before you started dating, he was so worried that you would leave him sooner than later, or that anything bad would happen to you if he let you enter in his life so deeply... and he was also terrified of falling in love with you, because then it would too late for him to turn back.

It was already 1 am, and you had no messages, calls or even a sign that he was still alive.This was pure torture. You were trying to hold your tears back so hard, not wanting to feel weak once you let them fall, but it was inevitable for carrying so much suffering and not letting even a gasp out of your lonely and unloved body... at least that's how you felt. When you were about to turn off the lights to get ready to sleep, so you could refresh your mind and relax a little bit, you suddenly heard your front door being calmly knocked. It was strange since David would always use his keys to enter your house, but you had been missing him way too much to think properly, so without thinking twice, you got out of bed and ran as quickly as you could to open the door for him... or at least that's what you wished.

"David!" you instantly called your lover's name, not having time to react once you realized it wasn't him.

"Sorry honey, David is not coming soon." with a maniac grin planted on his creepy face. That was all the stranger said before you felt a strong knock on your head, making you instantly fall unconscious.

---------------------------------------------------

A few hours passed when you were finally able to open your eyes. Your entire body was sore and shaking from the freezing weather, and you could feel your own blood dripping down your forehead where the agressor had beaten you; your arms and legs were tightly tied with some cheap rope, and the only thing you were sure about was that you were inside someone else’s house.

"Where the fuck am I?! GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW!" you screamed as loud as you could, hoping that someone would check up on you, so you could at least recognize the person who abducted you. You then heard excited whispers from a man saying: "She's awake!!", and you couldn't help yourself, but to feel disgusted and utterly scared of what could happen...

"Well, well, the sleeping beauty has already come to her senses!" an old woman entered the barely lit room you were currently being kept hostage, and you didn't hesitate to express your confusion.

"What the... who are you? Where the hell is your ass-hatted companion?" you blantantly asked, referring to the man who you saw previously at your front door. Out of the sudden, you felt a hard slap on your face, leaving a red mark behind.

"Fuck you, you crazy bitch!" you screamed at her, feeling a burning and painful sensation on your left cheek, spreading slowly all over your face.

"Watch your mouth, girl! Only because you're detective's whore doesn't mean you can say whatever you want! Here and now you will respect and obey me, until your sweet, handsome boyfriend comes find you. Then, I'll torture and kill him right in front of you... I mean, that is if he notices your absence at all." she started to laugh exaggeratedly at your face, her words hurting and cutting deeper than a sharpened kitchen knife. You turned your face away from the crazy lady, trying to cover your suffering and heavy tears from her... but it was useless.

"Aww, did I hit a soft spot, honey?" she pretended to be worried about you, moving closer to you and hunching over next to you, making you find the perfect opportunity to spit right onto her maniacal face. "Ughh, you fucking bi-"

"Wait!" the stranger who seemed to be the one who abducted you, interrupted her. You both looked at him confused, not understanding why he stopped her from beating you.

"Let me do it. I want to beat that fuck-head's girlfriend." the abductor approached you slowly, rolling up his sleeves excitedly before you felt the first punch of many on that night.

"Good job, boy. Entertain yourself while the detective wastes his precious time looking for that bitch instead of the kids." the psychotic woman said, casually, like what she just said wasn't an devilish plan at all. She must be so used to do this... poor children... if only I could save them like David does..., you devastatingly thought to yourself.

"How can you hurt the poor childrens who are so innocent compared to your disturbed mind?! How can you get pleasure out of it, you sick BASTARD?!!" you screamed with all the strenght you had in your throat and lungs. Oh, how you wished to kill those two pieces of trash with your own hands...

"You don't understand..." the man tried to excuse himself from the horrifying crimes he enjoyed so much to commit.

"OF COURSE I DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND, AND I NEVER WILL!! THEY ARE JUST CHILDREN, FOR FUCK SAKE!!" your lungs were burning by now, and your stinging tears were uncontrollably running down your beaten and sore bruised cheeks.

"Let her spill all that anger out of her chest, honey. We don't want her to get exhausted already." she smirked wickedly at you. "She will be our guest for a long time..."

---------------------------------------------------

Two days had passed, and you were still in that dark, small torture room that was once just a casual room. They barely fed you and offered you water to drink, causing your lips and mouth to be tremendously dry. Your face was covered in bruises and cuts, some deeper than others, yet they all bled and hurt like hell. You had lost track of how much time had passed that night. All you knew, was that you were suddenly awaken by a strong, yellow light and some little girl's deafening screams and pleading cries.

"Please, let me go!!" the poor young girl pleaded, yet no pleads of her were enough to stop the devil himself, also known as the owner of the house you were currently on.

"I brought you company!" she then carelessly pushed the little girl to the rigid ground. "Seems like your boyfriend is getting suspicious, so while I distract him, you two will remain shut before I kill you all. He’ll be the first one to go, surely." she smiled once again, before closing the door harshly. David is here?

The innocent girl cried harder when she heard the door being closed roughly, and since you didn't want anything bad to happen to both of you or to your boyfriend, you did your best to calm her down.

"It's ok sweetheart, I'm here with you now, you don't have to feel alone anymore. I promise I won't let anything bad to happen to you from now on, ok?" you sounded like your boyfriend and that thought made you smile weakly for an instant. The girl was still absurdly scared, all her trust and hope in human kind being completely destroyed by the terror she had been through at such a young age, which was totally understandable. She stepped back away from you when you tried to reach for her small and fragile hand, since you had managed to get your hands free by patiently untying the tight ropes like David had taught you. It was a technique you used in emergency situations, and this was one of them. He always prepared you for the worse, teaching you everything he had learned, so you could save yourself when he's not capable and things like this would eventually happen. You immediately withdrew your hand by instinct, but you weren't one to give up so easily.

"Can you... can you tell me your name..?" come one Y/n, you can do better than this. "I'm very hurt too... you see? So my only intention here is to get both of us out of here... she is a very bad woman, but I am not. You know, I'm detective's girlfriend who is looking for you since... the beginning. And your father is helping him! They are our saviors, so they will rescue us from this ugly place very soon." you kindly explained to her, trying to give her some faith and remind her of her family... remind her that this wasn't her reality. The world out there, united with her family and friends, is where she truly belongs. She looked at you intensely, and you could finally see some light of hope in those big, gorgeous eyes. Once again, you remembered your stunning lover and the loving stares he would give you all the time, the ones that never failed to give you goosebumps all over your skin.

"Is... is my father looking for me..?" she finally spoke to you. If you didn't know it was coming from her, you could swear that her voice belonged to an angel because of its sweetness and innocence. You almost let heartbreaking tears escape your tired eyes... but you had to remain strong for her.

"Of course, darling. He loves you so, so much, and he would never forget or give up on you." for the thousandth time, you remembered your sweet and lovely boyfriend again, and on how you deeply craved to hear those reassuring words come out of his mouth, instead. A moment of silence was installed for a few seconds, before she decided that trusting you should be probably the best, yet the only option available.

"I'm... I'm Anna by the way..." she whispered shyly, or should I say still afraid and suspicious. You then offered her the most gentle smile you could give in response.

"You have such a beautiful name, Anna. I'm Y/n, and I'm so glad to meet you. Of course I would prefer to meet you in any other circumstances, but..." you needed to change the subject urgently: she was just a child, so she wouldn't get your sarcastic comment like others would. "What about we all get a delicious ice-cream once we get back home, huh? You, your family, me and... my... boyfriend." you hesitate a little bit, still hurt because of your boyfriend’s behavior in the last few weeks. Why was he taking so long to save us?

"Yummy, ice-cream!" she said excitedly, yet you could notice how tired she still was.

Tired of waiting, you finally decided to use the technique you had learned that previously had helped your hand's blood flow properly in your veins, by successfully untying the ropes out of her sore wrists. The poor kid's hands must be so badly hurt as well...

"Come here, sweetie." you untied the old ropes that were restraining your leg's movements in case someone came in unexpectadly, that way you could defend you both. You then helped her by untying her own ropes and when you did, you suddenly heard a gun shot.

Anna started to scream while covering her ears, and you instinctively pulled her near you to protect her from the horrors outside. Out of nowhere, the door was abruptly opened and the old lady came up being extremely stressed. Your first instinct was thinking that Loki had been shot by her, so all your courage and hope had vanished in a single second.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!!!" you shouted at her and ran in her direction to beat her up as hard as you could without fearing the consequences, when suddenly you felt a hard sting in your arm: she pricked you with a needle that contained a drug that causes a person to have a heart attack in the next few hours or even minutes, if they aren't correctly treated urgently.

"Goddammit!" you then felt extremely dizzy and fell to the ground. The last thing you saw before falling unconscious, was David entering the room and putting the evil woman on the ground, trying to arrest her with any gentle manners, before she managed to pull a gun from her pocket and shoot herself, and Anna's screams for your name... however, you were too nauseaus to distinguish if all of that was really happening, or if it was just a hopeful hallucination of yours.

---------------------------------------------------

"Y/N!! Please baby, don't you dare to die on me... please wake up... FUCK!" David was starting to be quickly consumed by pure despair, shaking you to no end, hoping you would open your eyes in his arms and return to him, safe and sound: he had finally found you and Anna after spending the worst week of his life, but even then he still couldn't feel utterly relieved. He then grabbed the two of you carefully, and drove you to the nearest hospital.

"Please Y/n, stay with me, do you hear me?! I will not let you leave me that easily... please honey..." he was talking more to himself since you couldn't respond, and his distressed tears were difficulting his vision and eventually his driving, which wasn't a good thing at all.

"Don't worry detective, she will be fine... your girlfriend is a really strong woman." the young girl tried to calm the desperate and protective boyfriend, just like you did with her a few minutes ago, and he couldn't help but feel so proud of you, yet guilty for being so focused on work lately, instead of giving you the attention you so dearly deserved from him...

---------------------------------------------------

Hours passed and you were still in the hospital, unconscious. Loki didn't know what to do to himself... he wanted to punch himself so hard for letting this happen to you. And if there was a possibility that you could switch roles, you would have been awake a long time ago.

This was his worst nightmare, to let his work interfere with your relationship in the worst way possible. He didn't want to leave your side for anything: even with the doctors insistence, he threatened to arrest them all if they didn't let him be with you until you woke up, and believe me when I say he was pretty convincing. His strong, tattooed arms were supporting his heavy, anxious and furious mind on top of his legs, they had been shaking for hours now, non-stop. He felt so, so guilty, and he didn't think he could ever forgive himself for almost losing the love of his life because of his negligence... and, on top of that, knowing that he was so distant and careless with you in your probable last days. Out of nowhere, he heard a muffled sound of pain, making him instantly look up at you and ran to your side. His heartbeat increased at a speed which he didn't think it was even possible for a single human being to handle without having a stroke right then and there.

"Honey..?" he called for you, his eyes inevitably watering for the hundredth time that night. You never saw him crying before, so it surprised you to see his eyes glistening. You struggled to keep your eyes opened, because of the strong light that illuminated your hospital room, but when your vision finally adjusted itself and you looked at him for the first time in the last few days, it was like you were seeing God himself.

"Is this heaven..?" you asked confused, making him laugh softly. Only you could rip a smile from him in such a bad situation like this one.

"No honey, this is pure reality. You are at the hospital, but I'm here with you now." he firmly grabbed your fragile and bruised hands into his much bigger ones, and looked at you like you were about to get married.

"Are you... crying?" you asked, feeling worried when you noticed, once again, his eyes being much brighter because of the fresh tears that wanted so badly to come out. He immediately wiped them away with the back of his hand, making you laugh. Your man never liked to show his emotions to anyone, not even to you. Well, at least he tried his best not to show them to you.

"Just got uh.. something inside my eye..." he tried to find a valid excuse, but since you knew him too well, he ended up giving up. He then offered you the most reassuring smile at you, only for you to gladly return it. However, his smile didn't last too long once he realized the severity of your state, it started disappearing slowly while his hands grabbed yours even harder this time, his eyes never leaving yours while analyzing your face so carefully.

"Oh God... what did I do to you..." this time, he wasn't able to contain himself, yet he didn't care anymore to show you how hurt he really was. It was too much guilt for just one man to carry on his shoulders and heart, no matter how strong he was.

"Don't." you immediately exclaimed and he looked at you curiously. "What happened was not your fault, do you understand me? It could happen to anyone."

"No! " he exclaimed. "If I was there with you instead of wear out my mind with this fucking case..."

"Baby, stop. It's your job and you saved that innocent girl. If it weren’t for you, she could have been dead by now." your tone was serious, and he understood that you were the only thing trying to make him not be so hard on himself.

"But..."

"No "but's", David. You are our savior. And I couldn't be prouder of you..." you smiled at him, yet he didn't return it. An intense exchange of emotional glares, and a thoughtful, tense silence was planted for a few, long seconds.

"If... if we weren't together, nothing would have happened to you... I prefer to know that you're safe and healthy with another man, than..." he didn't have sure on what he was saying, it was too much to process... but there was one thing he was sure of: he wouldn't allow anything bad happen to you from then on.

"Don't you dare saying that again, David Loki. You are the man who I love with my whole being, more than anything, and I would give my own life to save you if it was the case. And I don't care how many times I have to be abducted to prove how much I want to be with you for the rest of my life." you never spoke so seriously in your life, and you genuinely meant every word you just said. You just couldn't live without him anymore.

"What the hell did I do to deserve you..?" he carefully approached you, giving you a slow, yet most passionate kiss you had shared in a long time, while soflty grabbing your head between his cold hands. His lips were dry, yet tasted like sweet honey, like they always did.

"Detective Loki- oh, I'm so sorry!" Anna's mother entered the room, feeling ashamed for interrupting your romantic moment.

"No problem, Miss Dover. Do you need something from me?" he seriously asked, getting immediately into the hardworking Detective Loki character.

"Actually, I wanted to thank you for all you did to-"

"Y/n!!" Anna ran towards you as soon as her eyes landed on your weak body. She hugged you carefully, so she wouldn't hurt you, and you instantly felt you heart melting inside your chest.

"Heyy Anna! I'm so happy to see again, my bravest girl!" she offered you a toothy grin, and you were mesmerized by the change of energy that you only knew from her back in that horror house. Both of her mother and your charming boyfriend looked at your and the girl's interaction, not expecting for you to become so close to each other.

"Can we go eat an ice-cream now, like you promised?? I'm so hungry!" she asked excitedly, her eyes filled of hope and joyful.

"She needs to rest, sweetie. Maybe another time. Anyway, thank you so much, detective, for finding my daughter." he nodded to her and then she looked at you with a kind smile in her face. "And thank you for protecting my daughter from those monsters, Y/n. I'll be eternally grateful for the two of you. I hope you get better soon." she thanked the two of you, before leaving the room with her daughter, to give you two some privacy.

"Bye Y/n!" the girl happily said goodbye to you.

"Bye sweetheart, see you soon!" you responded back, seeing her leaving the room right after her mom.

"She really likes you." your boyfriend said to you, wanting to make you feel better since he knew how overwhelming you felt everytime someone thanked you.

"Yeah, I guess..." you laughed. "She kept me company in there, you know? We helped each other so we didn't feel so lonely anymore..." you looked at your fingers while shyly playing with them, hoping that he would understand your attempts of silently saying how hurt you were. You then felt him coming in your direction and sitting right beside you.

"Sweetheart... I'm so, so sorry for letting you feel like you were alone... I was so stressed about work, and I didn't want to discharge everything on you..." he truly seemed regretful of his actions, so of course you would forgive him since he was such a honest man. But you needed to let him know how hurt you felt by his lack of attention and affection with you. "I love you so much, honey... I... I can't imagine my life without you anymore. I would be so lost..." his voice sounded extremely weak at his final words, since he tried to hold back his cry once again.

"I love you too, baby. So, so much..." you caressed his barely shaved cheek and kissed him softly on the lips. When you broke the kiss so you could stare at him properly, you hugely smiled at him out of nowhere.

"What?" he smiled back.

"Nothing. I was just thinking that maybe..."

"Maybe what?" he seemed really curious about what you were about to say. You continued to look at him while bitting your lower lip softly, wanting to see and memorize his reaction by what you were about to suggest.

"Maybe... we could have a baby of our own?" you calmly and very carefully said, not wanting to scare him away. His reaction was expressless, which scared you a little bit.

"Babe, I don't know... what if... what if something happens to our child?" he already started to worry and get stressed.

"You will never live your life if you keep thinking about the worst, on what could happen or not. Think more about you and your happiness... think more about us. With a baby in our arms." this time, his smile expanded until a big toothy grin was revealed on his gorgeous face.

"You're absolutely right. We definitely should have our own princess." he lovely glared at you, kissing your hands with the most gentle kiss he could afford.

"Or prince... Who knows."

[unrestedjade]

Baseless Ferengi headcanons no one asked for and that get increasingly queer-navel-gazing and self indulgent because the horrible space goblins have consumed my brain:

- Mobile ears, because if hearing is so well developed and important to them they should be able to aim those big stupid radar dishes. Also because then they can emote with them and that's cute. THE AESTHETIC IS PARAMOUNT.

- Since they canonically sharpen their teeth with chew sticks and sharpeners, their teeth must grow continuously. So I submit: subcultures that let certain teeth grow out as a fashion/political statement. Ferengi punks and anarchists with 5" tusks. Ferengi with all their teeth filed flat (mom and dad HATE it).

- Corollary to the above, most of their teeth are crooked. At the least, they don't share our fetish for straight teeth. What if their teeth are deciduous, and there's no point in trying to force them into perfect alignment, since they'll just fall out and get replaced? So like, sharks but their teeth can also grow longer with no limit. WHAT HAST EVOLUTION WROUGHT ON FERENGINAR :V

- Parents nagging their kids to sharpen their teeth "or they'll grow up into your brain and you'll die :)"

- Personal space? Don't know her.

Okay I need a cut because there's too many now. WHOLE SOCIETY OF GAY HOMOPHOBIC UNCLES AND AUNTS GO I HAVE A PROBLEM

- I can't remember who on here put forth the idea of them having retractable claws but Yes. :3

- Pushing back against the worst canon episode a bit but: relative ear size being the only obvious sexually dimorphic trait, and even that having enough of a gray area that the only way to be 100% sure you're talking to a male or female Ferengi is if you do a blood test. Unless they're intersex! *shrug emoji*

- This is why they're so fanatical about gender conformity and their Victorian "separate spheres" attitude to men and women's roles. Capitalist patriarchy is fragile! And as artificial to Ferengi as it ever was to Humans! (self-indulgenceeeee about gender shiiiiit)

- You know how with domesticated rabbits, the rabbit getting groomed and paid attention to is the boss? Yeah. Go ahead and paint your bestie's nails, just don't be surprised if she cops a little bit of an attitude with you from then on.

- Their fight/flight/freeze/fawn instincts skew heavily toward the last three, and what a lot of other species read as annoying sucking up is the Ferengi in question feeling anxious and unsafe. Especially if they don't feel integrated into the group. Even being at the bottom of the pecking order is better than not being in the flock at all.

- If they DO opt for fight, it's ugly and typically their last resort. Bites or scratches will get infected without intervention-- microbes that their immune system can handle could cause big trouble for aliens. You might wanna check for full or partial teeth that break off and get lodged in the wound, too.

- Too many of these are tooth related but I don't care. :B More teeth stuff: you know what else has teeth that grow constantly? Puffer fish. Likewise, Ferengi can chew up mollusk shells as easy as potato chips, and they need the minerals for their teeth. (Imagine grandpa Sisko offering Nog a crayfish for the first time and watching as he just...pops the whole damn thing in his mouth and crunches away...)

- Their staple foods seem to be grubs and other arthropods, high in protein and fat. I've unilaterally decided their cuisine also involves a lot of edible fungi, ferns, plant shoots and seeds. Gotta get those vitamins. Overall flavor profile leaning toward umami, vegetal, and fresh herbs, and pretty mild (or "delicate" if you wanna be snooty about it, which a Ferengi probably would let's be real).

- Not much sugary food. I'm basing this solely on Quark's aversion to root beer as "cloying". Which could definitely just be his personal preference, but most of the people I hear hating on root beer cite the actual sassafras/sarsaparilla flavor (saying it tastes like medicine) not the sweetness. Nog might be the weirdo outlier for being able to enjoy it.

- Their home planet isn't bright and sunny, so their eyes are better at discerning shades of gray in low light conditions, with relatively weak color vision. Which could explain why they dress Like That.

- Conversely, human music has a reputation for stinking on ice because a lot of it is juuuuust lightly dissonant or out of tune because we can't pick up flaws that small. Ferengi can, and it drives them up the *wall*.

- Music? So many different kinds. Traditionally, maybe lots of percussion and winds, and water as a common component of many instruments to alter pitch or tone. Polyphony out the ass. Some of the modern stuff is an impenetrable wall of sound if you're not a species with a lot of brain real estate devoted to processing sounds. Pick out one melody to follow at a time.

- Yes, back to teeth again I'm sorry. It's a sickness. At some point in their history, pre-chewing food was just something you did for your baby or great grandma as a matter of necessity. Possibly your baby gets an important boost to their immune system and gut biome from your spit. At some point takes on a more formal intimacy aspect and gradually drifted from something all adults and older kids do to something only women do. Your husband and older kids have perfectly functional teeth, but you love them, right? =_= (Think old memes about husbands being useless in the kitchen if little wifey isn't there to cook, but even more ridiculous. Ishka was right about everything but especially this. Thank you for making your family chew their own food, Ishka. Not all heroes wear capes. Or anything!)

- How did they get started on the whole men: clothed vs women: unclothed nonsense? My equally stupid idea: men just get cold easier. Those huge ears dissipate a ton of body heat. Cue Ferengi cliches like "jeez, we could be standing on the surface of the sun and my husband would put on another layer." At some point, again, this got codified and pushed to ridiculous extremes in the name of controlling women and keeping everyone in their assigned box, to the point that women just have to shiver if they really are too cold and men have to pass out from heat stroke if the alternative is going shirtless, because That Would Be Inappropriate.

- Marriages default to five years, but they're also the only avenue for women to have their own household or any stability. Plus their religion places no emphasis on purity save for pure adherence to the free market and the RoA. So, curveball to the rest of their patriarchal bullshit: female virginity isn't a concern in the least. Bring it up and they'll rightly side-eye you.

- Family law is absolutely bonkers and lawyers that specialize in it make BANK. I feel like custody would default to the father usually but oh wait, the maternal grandfather has a legal stake in this, too, and your next father-in-law is asking HOW many kids are you dragging into my daughter's house, etc etc. Growing up with a full sibling is way rarer than growing up with half or stepsiblings, since it usually takes both men and women two or three tries to find someone they vibe with. (Not love, unless you're super cringe.)

- A misogynistic society is a homophobic society. Imo those flavors of shittiness just come in pairs. Homosexual behaviors are fine within certain parameters (aka "always have sex with the boss") but not on your own terms. To add spice, bisexuality is their most common mode (because I'm bi and these are my hcs for my fics I'm not writing, so there), but capitalism demands fresh grist for the mill so you better get het-married and pop out some kids you lowly peons. You have a choice so make the proper one. :)

- Corollary to the above, that doesn't keep all kinds of illicit "we're just friends with quid-pro-quo benefits for realsies" affairs of every stripe and every gender from going on everywhere. Many Ferengi have a lightbulb moment somewhere in early adulthood when they figure out their dad's business partner or the "auntie" who visited their mom every month had a little more going on.

- Plus there's way more gender non-conformity and varying degrees of trans-ing than the powers that be have a handle on. Pel isn't unique, even if most would have to somehow make it out into space to be able to thrive.

Damn a lot of these are just my personal bugbears plus THE GILDED AGE BUT WITH HAIRLESS SPACE RODENTS ain't they

- Women can't earn profit, okay. But lending or "lending" things to each other isn't commerce, riiiiiiight? To be assigned female is to master navigating a vast, dizzying barter/gift economy. Smart boys and men leverage this, too, and there are splinter sects that view this as the purest expression of the Great Material Continuum.

- Of course plenty of women make profit anyway, and just do their bast to dodge the FCA. The tough thing about insisting on using latinum as currency is that cash can be so hard to track, you know?

- Because of the RoA, guys are discouraged from doing favors or giving gifts without setting clear expectation of getting some return on investment. This can twist into an expression of friendship (and of course women do it too), and the ledger will keep cycling between debit and credit among friends for decades. A common mistake aliens make is to tell them recompense isn't needed without explaining why, or return their favor or present with something that zeroes out the debt. The Ferengi will assume you want to break off the friendship. (I cribbed this from dim memories of an African studies course I took in 2007 and whose textbook I know I still have but I can't frigging find it...)

- Flirting, they do a lot of it for a lot of reasons. Roddenberry made it clear that they're just straight up pretty horny, but there's no reason it can't pull double duty for building alliances with other people, smoothing over feuds or disagreements, or cementing friendships. Ferengi who are ace and/or sex-repulsed are possibly viewed similar to the way we'd view someone who's "not a hugger/not big on touching" and if they flirt just don't get offended if it doesn't go any further; aro Ferengi don't garner much comment aside from an occasional "wow how badass, never falling in love with anyone."

- where to even start on making sense of the Blessed Exchequer??? Like seriously, what is this literal prosperity gospel insanity, I need to force myself to re-read Rand and like, some Milton Friedman for this shit. Help.

- fuck I'm probably going to actually do that, RIP me...

[feferipeixes]

Still Alive

After Dipper learns that this whole "being a demon" thing means he's going to live forever, he and Mabel talk about the future, and what he's going to do when everyone he knows dies. It's not until much later that he starts to realize that they'll never truly die -- just like he'll never truly get sick of ice cream.

Thanks to @toothpastecanyon for beta reading!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

“If you could choose one project to do and be guaranteed that you’d finish it eventually, no matter how long it took, what would you do?”

“Hmm....” Mabel replied, itching her scalp with a plastic hand clapping toy. “Oh! I’d get my hands on the Ultimate Magical Shimmering Rainbow-splosion Fluffykins doll! There’s only five hundred in existence -- they’re super duper rare!”

“No no no,” Dipper countered. “That’s too easy, and too short. All you’d need to do is set up some eBay alerts, bribe a few people, maybe sneak into the FluffCorp factory building. Not even -- you could just snap your fingers -” (he snapped his fingers for effect, causing a puff of blue flame to momentarily appear) “and conjure it.”

“I can’t -” Mabel started, but Dipper kept talking over her.

“I’m talking about something really unprecedented. Something that would take a long time, something you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do. Something that would change the world.”

“Oh, I get it now!” Mabel tossed the toy aside and flipped over, letting her head dangle off the end of her bed. “I’d call you a dork a million times.”

Her brother scowled at her and jumped out of his chair and into the air. “Hey!” he yelped over Mabel’s laughter. “I'̼͚̻͓͎̲m̡̖̰̘̣͎ ̖͇̕n̛̻ơ̰t̷̟͇̱ ̝̺̻a̳̦ ̪̟̮͖ḑor̞͓̭k̟̤̖!̛͍ And even if I was, that wouldn’t take you very long! At, uh, a rate of, let’s see, you could probably say ‘you’re a dork’ at least 30 times per minute, and if you didn’t ever sleep…”

Mabel watched the red tinge fade away from his features as he paced around in mid air, doing math in his head. “Yeah. You’re totally not a dork, Sir Maths-a-lot. You sure showed me.”

“- It wouldn’t even take you a month,” Dipper finished. “Besides, how would that change the world?”

“Hmm, well if I call you a dork enough times,” Mabel answered, “maybe my big scary demon brother would decide he doesn’t want to be a dork and instead he’d do something with his cool magic powers that ends up making the world a better place!”

“Mabel?”

“Yeah bro-bro?”

Dipper frowned at her. “Your face is turning purple.”

“Touche,” she replied, rubbing her chin very seriously. She slid the rest of the way off the bed and clutched her throbbing head. “Owww…”

“That's what you get for giving me dumb answers,” Dipper quipped, arms crossed.

“You mean for giving you fun answers,” Mabel corrected, and then winced at another sting of pain. “Why are you asking me these weird questions anyway?”

A panicked look flickered across Dipper's face, and his feet touched the ground. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Mabel, still massaging her temples, pushed herself semi-upright to give her brother a look. “Come on. ‘What would you do if you had all the time in the world?’ ’What movie could you watch a million times and never get sick of it?’ ’Do you think Stancakes have a shelf life longer than 100 years?’ Something is clearly up.”

Dipper giggled awkwardly (was there any other way he could giggle?) and stared at the ceiling. “Nothing. It's nothing!”

“What, are you really not gonna tell me?” Mabel pushed. ”What if I tickle you?”

Her brother recoiled in horror. “You wouldn't.”

There was a tense silence as the two twins considered whose was the stronger will: the expert fighter with a plethora of torture tactics at hand, or the demon. Mabel narrowed her eyes. Dipper sharpened his claws. No words were exchanged. The room was perfectly still.

Mabel jolted forward half a foot and Dipper shrieked.

“Okay, you win, just don't tickle me!” he begged, throwing his hands up. “I'll tell you!”

“Good,” Mabel replied. “Things were about to get ugly. Spill it, bro-bro.”

Dipper sighed. He dusted himself off -- a habit he'd gotten into lately even though he was pretty sure nothing he could do would make his orange shirt and vest look any less weird with his new body.

“Remember… Remember the thing I told you the other day, when I had that infodump and learned more about my powers?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “You found out that your omniscience tells you whenever anyone farts.”

“No!” he squeaked. “Although, you are right, it does do that and it's annoying, especially because now I can smell it from like a mile away.”

He wrinkled his nose, staring off into space for a minute before shaking his head. “But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about… how I'm never going to die.”

It had been about a week since Mabel had walked into the living room to find Dipper writhing and sobbing on the floor. She remembered the way he’d looked right through her, how he hadn’t seemed to even notice her presence when she sat him upright, how he kept muttering “still alive, still alive” over and over again, and it hadn’t made any sense to her then, but when he finally snapped out of it and was able to vocalize what he’d seen…

She shuddered at the memory of it.

“Since then,” Dipper continued, “I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to deal with it. And I had this idea that I could come up with things to do to fill the time.”

“What, so you’re going to plan out your whole life?” Mabel asked, incredulous. “Let me guess -- you’re making a checklist? Hah! Can you imagine?”

She giggled, and then he reached into his vest and pulled out oh sweet Moses.

“I’ve already got some good stuff on here,” Dipper said, ignoring or not noticing his sister’s flabbergasted expression. “I’m gonna learn how to make a sword by hand. I’m gonna watch all of Tiger Fist backwards to see if there are any hidden messages. And there’s this spa getaway weekend that the Multibear invited me on -- shoot, wait, he’s gonna be dead by then, umm…”

Mabel raised an eyebrow as her brother started scribbling on the checklist. “Dipper. This is obsessive even for you.”

“What would you know?” he shot back. “You’re not the one who’s immortal.”

“I know how to have this thing called ‘fun’,” she replied. “Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

He grumbled at her, eyes locked on his checklist. He couldn’t believe he forgot that the Multibear spa trip thing was a limited time offer. That kind of stuff was slipping his mind more and more these days, like the time Mabel asked him to play cards with her and he was so busy alphabetizing his Sibling Brothers books that he neglected to respond to her for three days.

Although, now that he thought about it, that might’ve been before he became a demon.

Something damp and cold hit Dipper in the face, and he spluttered in surprise. “What was that?” he shouted. One of his flailing hands happened to close on the object as it fell, and he held it up to the light.

“It’s a popsicle, doofus!” Mabel said. She’d fetched two from the minifridge in their room while he was distracted, and was busy licking away at her own, which was chocolate. “Remember those?”

He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t have ti-”

“I’ll throw another one at you,” Mabel interrupted.

“- I guess I could have some ice cream,” Dipper finished.

He floated over and sat on the floor next to his sister. He removed the paper from the popsicle and gave the object a sniff. The aroma of orange and vanilla caressed his sensitive nose, and he realized how long it’d been since he had any sugar. Without a second moment’s thought, he threw his head back, stretching both his neck and jaw further than they were supposed to go, and placed the entire popsicle -- stick and all -- into his gaping maw.

“See, what’d I tell you?” Mabel said, smirking at the satisfaction on her brother’s face. She reached up with her popsicle to scratch an itch on her nose, and then went right back to eating it. “I always know what to do with my time. I wonder what it’d be like if I lived forever…”

Dipper eyed the glob of chocolate ice cream on the bridge of her nose. “The world would probably be a much more chaotic place.”

“You mean a much BETTER place!” she declared. “Everyone would have fun and ice cream all the time!”

He grinned. “You’re right. It would be a much better place. Because my best friend would be there.” Mabel looked at him, a twinkle in her eye and ice cream all over her face, and his grin fell away. “I guess this is what you felt like when I said I was going to be Grunkle Ford’s apprentice, huh. I’m such a shitty bro-”

Mabel at once had her hands on his face, squishing his cheeks together so he’d stop talking. “Nuh-uh. Bro-bro you’re gonna stop hating on yourself Right. Now.” She was still smiling, but her tone had twisted into something harsh. “Okay, sure, I’m gonna die someday and then you’re gonna have to figure out what to do on your own. But I’m not ready to think about that and neither are you! We’re hecking 13 years old! We should act like it, while we’ve still got the chance. Please don’t make me think about dying yet.”

Dipper winced, and she let go of him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“S’okay.” She patted him on the back, harder than he’d been expecting, and he was so surprised that he coughed up the popsicle stick he’d eaten earlier.

For a minute, neither of them said a word. Dipper lifted a hand to his face, where he felt something sticky.

“You got chocolate on my face.”

“Yeah. On your vest, too.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “What are you going to do about it?”

He looked at his hands, still small and smooth like a child. With a thought, he bathed both hands in a blue flame, searing away the chocolate and leaving them clean, just the way he liked them. Then he cleared his throat.

“I’m gonna chase you around the house,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Smiling ear-to-ear, Mabel jumped up and ran to the wall. “You’re nuts if you think you can catch me, even with demon powers!” Cackling, she threw the door open, which bathed her in a blinding white light.

Dipper thought about his infodump from the other day, thought about the part he hadn’t told Mabel, the tiny glimpse he’d gotten of his sister when she’d been old, pale, and still -- too horribly, horribly still. It was just a glimpse, but it haunted him -- the thought that one day there wouldn’t be a single trace left of Mabel Pines anywhere in the world. She was right -- as always -- that he was obsessing, that he was letting a thought hurt him when it didn’t have to.

He wasn’t ready to think about growing up yet, either. No matter how strong the pull to obsess was, he had to find a way to fight it.

“You can’t get away from me!” Dipper roared, and flew after his sister into the future.

---

"Wahoo! That was a great idea -- getting ice cream -- Dipper! I feel so much better! You always know how to cheer me up."

Dipper, clad in his usual human disguise, collapsed onto the bench with a grunt. "I dunno, this stuff tastes off. You’d think with all the technological advancements since the Transcendence that they’d have found a way to perfect ice cream."

His friend Arin, who was somehow managing to carry five popsicles in two hands, nodded with a serious look on her face. "Yeah. Oh sure a lot of old timey diseases were eradicated and we've got flying cars and stuff. But not one of these ice pops actually tastes like orange!"

She stared at him for a beat longer, then finally broke into snickers. One of the popsicles fell out of her hand, and a stubby arm immediately shot out from under the bench to catch it.

His face twisting in confusion, Dipper bent over to look under the bench. There were two gnomes right beneath him -- one of them hissed when they saw him, making him jump and making Arin laugh even harder.

"Ha-ha, okay," Dipper said, hand on his chest like his heart was racing. Despite this, he couldn't keep a small smile from creeping onto his face.

So much had changed in the last five hundred years, and yet so much else had stayed the same. Wars were fought, societies had formed and collapsed, but people were still people, and Dipper was still Dipper. Even though he’d had more than a few incidents where his demonic nature overcame his humanity, he always seemed to land back on his feet again eventually. Sometimes all it took was a friend.

Right now, his friend was a girl named Arin who he’d saved when someone else had tried to sacrifice her to him. He remembered how grateful she’d been, how she gave him a hug despite him being a void black monster splattered with blood, and how she then spent 20 minutes chatting with him about dragons even though she’d just had a very traumatic experience. She seemed, in other words, cool. So he later presented himself to her as fellow undergraduate student Dipper, without revealing that it was him who’d saved her that night, and they’d been good friends ever since.

Arin sat next to him and started taking bites out of her ice pops. "Yknow, the Transcendence-era wasn't that great," she said, although with her mouth busy it sounded like she was drowning.

Dipper's brow creased. "What do you mean?"

She gulped down the hunk of ice in her mouth. "No offense -- I know you're totally obsessed with Transcendence history stuff -- but that was soooo long ago. There's no one left who was alive back then, except like vampires I guess. But vampires don't eat ice cream so it doesn't matter."

Dipper bit back the urge to say "I know a vampire who loves ice cream as long as there's blood in it". What came out instead was "So?"

"So!" Arin shoved an entire popsicle into her mouth, and then had to take a minute to cough up the stick. "S-so," she continued amid gasps, "no one knows for sure what ice cream tasted like in the year 2012. And that includes you, Mr. Argues-With-The-Teacher! For all we know, old timey ice cream tasted like sawdust!"

Dipper considered his chocolate popsicle, which he's barely looked at since the first taste. "I guess you're right." He gave it another wary lick.

It didn't taste like chocolate the way he remembered it, but it was close enough.

"Do you ever think," he asked, unable to meet his friend's eyes, "about all the stuff that used to exist but doesn't anymore? All the ideas and food and... people?"

Arin groaned. "Is that what this is about? My best friend of the past 2 years -- secretly one of those 'I was born in the wrong century' people?"

"No!" he shot back, before taking another lick of the popsicle. "I just think it's sad that stuff goes away and no one's there to remember it."

"Well, maybe no one remembers that stuff, but that doesn't mean it's forgotten."

Dipper looked up. "Huh?"

Arin scarfed down her remaining two popsicles, which had begun melting onto her hand. "People die and ideas change and the world moves on. It happens constantly! But those people influenced their friends and their family and their coworkers. Who in turn influenced other people. Those people might be dead, but they live forever in the words and actions of everyone who came after."

Dipper just stared at her, jaw dropped. "Where did that come from?" he managed to get out. "Five seconds ago you were gagging on frozen sugar! You're not allowed to be this insightful!"

"Sugar rushes always make me super thoughtful," Arin said, patting him on the back. "It's 'cause I'm a genius. I'm probably gonna crash hard later though. Also by the way your ice cream is totally melting."

"Ah, shoot." Dipper hurriedly tried to catch the melting ice cream with his tongue, and Arin giggled again.

"The point is," she said, "if you've always got your head stuck in a history textbook, you're gonna miss out on the present. If you're always thinking about the dead guy who invented ice cream, you won't be around to eat any with me."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he said. He felt an itch on his nose, so he wiggled it. "Thanks, Arin. I feel better- why are you looking at me like that?"

Arin was indeed staring at him with a perplexed look on her face as if she was not the one who'd just swallowed a metric ton of ice cream. "Why do you do that?"

Dipper frowned. "Do what? AGH-"

He yelped as Arin whipped out her phone and snapped a photo of him, blinding him with the flash even though it was a bright, sunny day out. "What was that for?"

She didn't say anything, simply handed him her phone. It certainly was not the best photo ever taken of him. It was blurry, his hair was a mess, and his mouth was contorted in shock.

On the bridge of his nose was a dollop of chocolate ice cream.

"You do it every time we get ice cream," Arin said, taking her phone back. "I mean, you call me weird, but I'm not the one always itching my nose with an ice pop."

"Oh," Dipper said. He paused and looked at his fingers, which were all chocolate-y too now. "I didn't even notice I was doing it."

"Suuure, weirdo," Arin chuckled. She stood up, wobbling a bit as she did so, and steadied herself on the back of the bench. "Listen dude, this was fun but I think the sugar's starting to hit me. I'm gonna head back to the dorm before I collapse. Wanna hang out later?"

"Definitely!" Dipper replied. "You should get some rest! Try not to give psychological counseling to anyone on the way -- you're gonna burn out your brain!"

He waved at his friend as she staggered away, and watched her until she turned a corner around a building. Then he sighed, and wiped his nose with his finger.

"Hey Mabel," he whispered, looking at the chocolate he'd collected. "It’s me, Dipper.”

A passing jogger sent a pointed look at the young man who was talking to his finger, but Dipper ignored them.

“I seem to remember you saying something to me about living forever. You said that one day you’d be gone, and I’d have to find a way to carry on alone.” He thought about Arin’s words, and felt something swell in his chest. “But I guess you’re still alive after all.”

He sniffed, and looked up at the sun as it started to bathe the sky in the pinks and purples of evening. He saw people in flying cars, people rushing through pneumatic tubes, people high fiving on jetpack because it was a wonderful day to be out. And he thought about what Arin said; thought about all of the sicknesses he'd seen friends and family afflicted by that no one ever had to suffer from again. He thought about all the preters he saw walking freely and happily on the campus, without worrying that they'd be attacked.

"And you were right," he said. "The world is a better place."

Dipper licked the remaining chocolate off his fingers, and got up. As he headed back toward his dorm room, he wondered what other legacies his loved ones had left in him.

(AO3 link)

[glimmerglanger]

For a possible Make Your Bed snippet - reunion with Rex and/or Ahsoka, perhaps??? I also find myself super curious about how things ended up between Mav and Mirrti. Anyway, gorgeous finale, I was having heart palpitations throughout the last two chapters and I thank you dearly for them. ♥

remyblue said:

If you're still taking prompts for Make Your Bed, background Mav/Mirrti? Finding Rex and Ashoka? Also your writing is lovely and every update of Make Your Bed was a highlight/a wonderful gift these past weeks so thank you! >_<

Gooood morning! Since I’ve done Rex and Ahsoka, this one focuses on Mav and Mirrti. Set during Chapter Five. Angst and a lot of feelings. Discussion of mind control.

~~~~~~~

It had only been a handful of days since Mav stepped through the door to Mirrti’s quarters.

It felt like a lot longer.

He looked over the space while Mirrti made her way in, moving over to the small bench that served as a couch and just sinking down. The quarters were tiny, but they were private. He had...a lot of pleasant memories about the bunk along one wall; all the blankets were in order. Usually most of them were on the floor.

Last time he’d been in this room, Mirrti had helped him put his armor on, because they’d indulged, and he was running behind to get down to Utapau. She’d kissed his forehead before he pulled his bucket on.

He reached up, rubbing at his brow, chest and gut tight, and she said, “I’m sorry.”

Mav winced, looking over towards her. She’d bent over her legs, pale hair loose and falling down around her face. Parts of it were stained dark with blood. Not hers. He’d checked. She was still wearing a jumpsuit from the brig. And, when he’d first come around the corner, after she’d commed him, he’d thought--

“I know you must be furious,” she said, voice muffled by her hands, over her face.

Mav considered that. His emotions were all a tangled mess. They felt sharp-edged, in a way he wasn’t used to. Like they’d been sharpened into blades and turned against both him and everyone around him.

He said, “I think I am angry, yes.” He watched her nod, watched her shoulders shake, something simmering up his spine, thinking about the feeling of being trapped in his own head, screaming where no one could hear. Thinking about the nat-borns. Jocobi and Tullop had gloated, and - and gone further, but--

He flexed his fingers in and out, looking down at his own hands, surprised by the itch in his knuckles and the hot boil of emotion in his gut. His voice was sharp when he said, “You just left -- us.”

He heard her make a sound. Her voice cracked when she said, “I didn’t know--what was going on. Admi--Jocobi got a message. Over Utapau. It said - it said the Jedi had attempted a coup. That they were traitors. And that you - you all had received new orders. That you’d--listen better. Follow your orders. I… and then you were. Blank. Empty.”

He stared at the far wall, his jaw aching. He was grinding his teeth together. He tried to make himself stop, with limited success. She said, quietly, “You wouldn’t talk to me.”

Mav swore, and it was easy enough to slam the side of his hand into the closet wall. The wash of pain down his arm felt… grounding. Mirrti made a ragged, startled sound, and-- He’d wanted to talk to her. To beg her for help, at first.

And then to beg her to stop.

The thing in his head hadn’t appreciated her continued attempts to speak with him. It had taken him back to his bunk multiple times and grabbed a pad, opening a form to report behavior that indicated sedition and--

Mav had fought it, as best he could. He’d tried to focus on the fact that she was a junior officer - she had no real power, he’d tried to convince the thing in his head. And - and he’d focused on his memories of their time together. The way they tangled close. 

It wasn’t sedition. Just - just a lonely officer, who wanted physical release from his body. 

The thing in his head must have believed it. It hadn’t filed any of the reports, anyway. 

“I couldn’t talk to you,” he said, finally, his voice in shreds. 

She looked up, her hair stuck to her cheeks. “You could have, I would have helped, don’t you know that I--”

“I couldn’t, Mirrti. Physically. There was.” He blew out a breath, gut sour and burning. Cody hadn’t given him orders not to talk about the thing in their heads. But, likely, that was because Cody was barely managing to keep things running. He looked terrible and was furious with the nat-borns. All of them.

Mav had never seen Cody really angry, before. It made him uncomfortable. The way he’d looked at Mirrti, like he wanted to shake her or - or worse, had made something burn in Mav’s throat. He shook those thoughts aside and swallowed. He said, “There was something in my head. In all of our heads.”

Mirrti turned to look at him, finally. Her face was streaked wet, darkened to purple under her eyes. “What?”

Mav grimaced, waving a hand out to the side. It ached, where he’d slammed it into the wall. “Some kind of kriffing chip. I don’t know. The Kaminoans put it there and when they turned it on…” He snorted, an ugly sound. “We got blank. Empty. I couldn’t do anything except watch what was happening. And you - you just stood there. You watched Tullop--”

He trailed off, throat closing around the words, strangling them. Strangling him. Jocobi had been smug and awful, but mostly kept to his own quarters. Tullop had taken inordinate joy from wandering among them, in ordering them to do degrading little tasks, just because he could, and--

“So, yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m angry, Mirrti.”

It felt good, naming the emotion. She nodded, head dropping, shackles still around her wrists because Cody had been lenient enough to let her come back here, but there’d been limits to how far he was willing to stretch any magnanimity.

She hadn’t asked to have them removed, anyway.

Mav swallowed, his own eyes burning. He was angry, and didn’t know, really, how to process the swell of it. There was so much. And it hadn’t crept into his chest alone. He panted out, voice cracking all at once, “And scared. I was so - the chip wanted to report you, Mirrti. As a traitor, and you wouldn’t stop coming around. And…”

She looked up at him again, expression frozen into place, fresh tears on her cheeks. And he’d thought Cody was going to throttle her, earlier, after the breakout. After she commed him, told him in stuttering breathes that the other nat-borns had gotten away, and--

She could have run with them. They’d have been able to reach a comm station. The Empire would know. Know what they were doing on the Vigilance. Even if they’d caught the nat-borns after that, it wouldn’t have mattered. A single message could undo all of them.

His heart had lurched when she commed him, going so fast it had hurt. It was still racing. He was angry and he’d been worried and currently he did not know what he was feeling, only that there was too much of it, all crowding together inside his head, tangled with memories of - of being in this room, of Mirrti leaning her arm on his chest, her skin so blue as he trailed fingers through her hair and they discussed taking leave together, her body soft and warm against his, the way she laughed when he got tired of talking--

He blew out a breath, running a hand back over his head, wondering what the kriff they were supposed to do next.

[evermore-fashion]

Can you say who's accusing you of stealing posts I wanna unfollow them if I'm following them. I'm not trying to minimize your or anyone's hard work but seriously, it's cropping and sharpening and adding a little color. What's the big deal? It's only normal the edits look similar. Why are people so rude? With you, I only follow 3 fashion blogs because even I've had enough with all this baseless accusations and stupid unnecessary drama. I'm really sorry this is happening to you. You wouldn't have had all these followers if you stole posts so I want you to know I don't believe none of that crap. Anyways I wanted to send you this. Some people really suck! Have a good day! 🌸

If you message me privately (outside of anon) then I’m more than happy to tell you, but for the moment I won’t publicly name them... unless the problem continues to persist and I can no longer stay quiet. To which I won’t lie is getting harder every time this issue rears it’s ugly head, my patience and niceness can only hold out for so long. However I will agree with you that it’s completely ridiculous considering what both of us are doing is minimal compared to those who create art out of pure talent etc.  Anyway thank you for your kind message and I hope you continue to enjoy my blog for a long time to come. 💜