i've been thinking about this a lot and wanted to say something since i'm still in the early stages of this blog. people might not like this, so just a reminder that no one is forcing you to interact with or follow me. i'm not on tumblr to debate, and i love the block button.
i know a lot of adults don't want kids in their online space. personally, i was a teenager on tumblr reading smut, and it didn't "corrupt" me. i made friends with adults who supported me more than anyone offline, and i needed that. censorship is harmful. creating rigid separation between adults and kids online is harmful (not that separate spaces shouldn't exist).
kids are part of our communities, sorry. we don't get to just decide they're not. we don't get to push them into a corner, go hang with the adults, and then be baffled when they're using AI to write essays. (i am not pro-AI. sit back down.)
if we want kids to act like they have worth, we have to actually show them they do. if we want people to invest in sustainable and ethical practices, we have to ask why they don't want to. and no, it's not just "because they suck." it's almost like we're living in a christofascist white supremacist eugenicist imperialist genocidal hellscape during a pandemic that adults are choosing to ignore. oh! and, y'know, the fucking climate crisis.
if you want kids to invest in themselves and their futures, you have to leave them a future worth investing in. if you don't care about kids, i can't make you. but i do think a lack of basic sympathy for the most marginalized and underrepresented group in our society is one of the biggest red flags i can imagine, and i'm sure it has nothing to do with how you feel about your own childhood.
if you're a kid and you want to follow me, please do. you are welcome here. i'm not going to water anything down to make this "kid friendly." you do not need to be shielded from hard topics. you're living in the same world as i am with even less systemic power and no representation. i love you, and i would be happy to hear from you.
i'm comfortable with being an older sibling for people of any age. i can listen and sit with you. you can always reach out, but i am very deliberate with my time and energy as a disabled person. i might not get to you for a while, so it's important to be honest with yourself about the kind of support i can offer.
if you are in immediate crisis, i am not reliable because of my availability and my capacity. i don't want personal details about you, so i would be unable to contact anyone offline who could help. if you are worried about that kind of emergency, i am willing to help you figure out a safety plan in advance. i do not believe in calling the police under any circumstances or in involuntary hospitalization. i am not going to shame you for how you cope with pain. we all deserve a say in our lives, and i'm so sorry that so much of this world is designed to rob us of choice and then punish us when we inevitably show symptoms of trauma.
by the way it's fine to like sexual content just for the sake of it. "we can't ban porn because other stuff will get banned" "sometimes nude art has value" "the government will classify queer people as sexual" this is all true but it's okay to just like porn. its okay to not want porn to be banned because you like it.
This is like the “people use birth control medications to treat lots of other health conditions so it’s important we protect their access to it” argument. It’s actually okay for people to take a medication solely for the purpose of having sex without getting pregnant, and access should be protected even on that basis alone.
i bring a sort of “you should maybe interrogate your so-called ‘preferences’ to make sure they’re not literal textbook examples of severe unconscious bias” vibe that my woke gay friends dont really like
If you are a white person in a racialized person’s life, especially as a partner or close friend, you should go out of your way to ask regularly “hey is there anything you have been holding on to that I did?” and critically both fix it and NOT DO ANYTHING TO PUNISH THEM FOR TELLING YOU.
As a white person raised in a white supremacist society, you’re gonna fuck up sometimes. That’s just a fact. But racialized people often aren’t able/comfortable speaking up when y’all do some shit because of the power imbalance/not feeling up to educating when you may be resistant/don’t think the “fight” will be Worth It.
Show initiative without making it A Struggle or playing the white guilt card. Show you actually care about them, their struggles, and the way you interact with them BEFORE they have to have a bigger Conversation with you, beyond when they need to yell about someone else being racist.
And for fucks sake if they’re making/showing you something from their culture fucking act like you realize the importance of that, that they’re showing you shows they grew up with or making you food they made with their families, that they’re letting you in and trusting you more than other whites in their life.
This would honestly be life changing for me. The idea came up because I feel so incapable of telling the people in my life when they do racist shit. And like furthermore, actually respond beyond just an I'm sorry. Like for the love of god actually internalize the shit the Black and Brown folks say to you.
I'm seeing a lot of tags from white people saying something along the lines of please tell me if I fuck up and like that really goes against the point of the post. Racialized people have to swallow so much racism on a daily basis and it's impossible to tell who is safe to confront.
Even close friends or partners are not necessarily safe. I have had partners dismiss accusations of racism just off hand, I have had partners treat me like a repository for knowledge on Muslim cultural practices despite the fact that *my family has been Christian since Jesus,* hell I have had a partner say I was overplaying my pain at the genocide to get sympathy.
Racialized people are constantly waiting for the other shoe to job. Constantly waiting for their "antiracist" white friend to decide they have learned all they need to. We need you to ask. We need you to care enough to be proactive literally at all. Stop asking us to trust you without doing any fucking work to prove you are trustworthy.
cassian andor and kleya marki bogo fictives i guess 😭 an older brother healing his little sister's daddy issues? a younger sister healing her older brother's survivor's guilt? except guess what losers they're both me 😎*
*narrator: blue is cool and fine and absolutely can exist without thinking about andor for 2 minutes**
**lies, if they stop thinking about kleya for even 1 second they start crying
i know i already rambled about this, but the ending of andor where cassian brings kleya to yavin means so much to me because it's representative of two parts of myself, and it was really healing for both of them to witness and reflect on over the last week. everything i'm talking about is happening within my system, so i would like to talk about it more. please forgive any redundancies.
Cassian chose to investigate something bigger than himself as a child, and he walked away from his sister to do so. That shot of her in the distance haunts his entire narrative. The Alliance tells him to ignore Luthen's call for help, and he actively disobeys them. He makes his own decisions, no matter how much he is repeatedly told to stop because he's putting something more important at risk. He goes back for Luthen the way he never got to go back for his sister. He finds Kleya instead, and she practically begs him to leave her there because that's how little value she places on her own life. But like Maarva, he refuses to leave someone behind knowing what's coming for them. He saves Kleya in a direct reflection of the way Maarva saved him, an insistence that no life is disposable, even if that truth requires you to behave irrationally, disobey direct orders, and risk your own life. Refusing to leave Kleya behind marries his hatred for the Empire with the love of his sister. By saving Kleya, he frees Kassa from his guilt and completes his arc. He steps consensually into a bigger circle rather than being brought into it by someone else.
Kleya chose to dedicate her life to something bigger than herself as a child, but she only had ghosts to leave behind. Luthen isolated them both in order to turn them into the most effective version of that commitment. Luthen shows and tells her that she must view her life, and therefore the lives of others, as necessary sacrifices for the greater good. It is inherently dehumanizing, so the characters who have community abandon him, but not Kleya, because she has no one. By killing Luthen and relaying the Death Star plans, she completes the mission they started when she was a child. She is no longer Kleya but returns to being a little girl hiding, afraid for her life, with no idea what to do. Someone finds her again, but it's not Luthen telling her they have to go it alone. It's Cassian, and he's saying the exact opposite. She no longer has to choose between doing what's right and being human.
The reason this shift from Luthen to Cassian is so impactful for Kleya is because she feels Cassian's offer can't be realistic. She wants justice, and Luthen insists that she deserves it. They work towards it together. She does this knowing that the reward for her efforts is one she will probably never see and internalizes that to such a degree that she is resentful of Cassian, Vel, and Mon. Kleya and Luthen make constant assessments of people and whether they can be used in the fight. They determine objective value free of sentimentality. They play god and leave countless people to suffer. The longer Kleya spent fighting for justice in the future, the more she feels she can't possibly have it in the present. Her allies hate what she's done. She got her hands too dirty. If justice can be hers, it certainly can't exist alongside community.
Kleya trusts no one except herself. Being confronted with the end of her mission means having to look at everything she's done, and that creates an internal crisis. Luthen is gone, and she is left with her mind and unfathomable pressure. We see her using the radio in the dark, and Cassian leaves Yavin in the early morning. When he gets to Coruscant, it's fully daytime. That's hours of pacing and thinking and trying not to relieve the pressure by using that blaster too soon. She can only cling to the knowledge that the Empire is bad, that they have to be stopped, that everything she sacrificed has to have been leading to this, and anything else is a threat to her mental stability. Cassian's insistence that her life is worth saving just as much as any intel is threatening to the idea her sanity is clinging to that the only valuable thing about her is her sacrifice.
Cassian is one of the only people in the galaxy who could get through to Kleya because he has direct experience with her. She says "you told me you were done once," and he says "and you told me I was wrong." He reminds her that his arrival is a result of her actions, that she can trust herself, that he wants to save her because she deserves to be saved, even if he disagrees with Luthen's methodology. It's not just that no human being is disposable; it's that Kleya, specifically, is not. He sees her efforts not as a flaw that will weaken the Alliance but as its unacknowledged foundation. He gives her the credit she deserves, which reestablishes a sense of trust in herself that gives her the room to agree to go to Yavin, even if she's not thrilled about it.
By choosing to go with Cassian, that little girl embraces the narrative that she deserves safety without detachment and justice without sacrifice, while simultaneously, Kleya is validated for her efforts and shown that she is good by someone she's resented. It has to be someone she's resented because that makes the kindness undeserved, and that heals the part of her that views people according to their worth. It reconnects her with her humanity. She is brought into the sanctuary she helped create after being told for years that its existence depended on her absence, that people who refused to sacrifice like she had would never want her there because of what she did, even if she did it for them. A heaven she never gets to see because she held hands with the devil and, worse, came to love him.
Until Cassian. Cassian who not only insists she belongs there but who fights tooth and nail for her right to be there, in front of her face and behind her back. His defense of her and of Luthen is the evidence for Kleya that they were right, that hard choices had to be made without the promise of reward. Because here's Cassian, who knows personally how messed up things could get, adamantly saying so. He provides a way out of her cycle and then defends what she did while she was in it. Meanwhile, Kleya's existence on Yavin is evidence that he was right, that no one can do this alone and that individual people are worth saving, as opposed to playing some fucked up chess game with real people's lives. He literally breaks himself free from his inner child's cycle and then holds out his hand and lets Kleya choose to break her inner child free too, while acknowledging that part of his adult freedom is directly thanks to her adult choices.
It's one giant feedback loop of healing and empowerment, and I cannot stop thinking about it. They are both opposites and parallels. They are reflections of each other. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
Actually making your selfinsert overpowered and friends with all your faves and a hybrid of the coolest species and in a relationship with your crush and the long lost sibling of the villain is called having fun and its cool as fuck
One of the captivating things about Andor's tonal grief is the places we never go back to.
Once Cass & friends leave Ferrix, we never see it again. Kenari, Aldhani, Narkina, and most hauntingly Ghorman- once the characters leave, there's no going back.
The excellent production design made these places tactile, vivid, real. And then, once the characters survive the horrors and count their dead, the places are left behind. And we grieve them just the same. When Cassian and Vel toast to their lost, they toast to Ferrix, the Dhanis and Aldhani itself.
Star Wars is a franchise that struggles to leave just about anything behind, its places among them. How many times have we returned to Tatooine, somehow the most galactically important middle-of-nowhere? It's evident in the RotJ special edition and TRoS celebration montages, and in the countless video games, comics, and series that keep finding contrived ways to return to the same five-or-so planets, even those presented as specifically backwater or secluded.
But Andor makes us familiar with these spaces, planets, peoples and cultures, and lets their stories end in potent uncertainty. And it's more powerful than seeing what became of them. Cassian's life and story is one of constant displacement and motion. We feel it.
It all comes to mind as I face my own displacement from a location and community that I loved and hoped to be able return to. My path ahead will be a change, but it looks stable. It's not the end of the world, or of my world, but it is an ending. The nooks and crannies and oddities I'll never see again. The faces and names that might be sequestered to memory. There's a bell you'd ring to mark the end of your time there, and I never did get to ring it myself.
Sisyphus learns to push a new boulder. One always finds one's burden again.
Is it a headmate? Is it a fragment? Is it a facet? Is it a persona? Am I subconsciously masking? Am I subconsciously/involuntarily otherlinking/copinglinking? Is it a kinshift? Is it a ’flicker? Is it age regression? Is it a mood? Is it impulsivity? Is it an intrusive thought that I’m reacting to? Is it genderfluidity? Is it pronoun/namefluidity?
Who knows! Who cares! I don’t need to stress about this, it doesn’t matter! It’s a mode that the “I” is in, the way I feel in that moment! And I will make a pluralkit/tupperbox/simplyplural for it so I can express myself and decide the rest later! Or never! These labels are a construct! Personhood itself is a construct! I don’t need to box myselves! I can just live!
"support all queer people yes even Those ones!!!!' coming from white ppl has always been annoying to me becuz theres countless examples of white queers on here being blatantly racist and it gets swept under the rug and forgotten in a week and black queers like me are just supposed to let it slide becuz theyre trans or gay or bi or have bpd or depression or
Pairing: Kleya x Reader
Summary: Reader is having a panic attack and questions the deeper meaning, but Kleya is there for support. They have a conversation about the Force and Reader's past trauma.
Warnings: panic attack; discussions about involuntary hospitalization, medical abuse, and saneism; obsessive thoughts potentially bordering on spiritual psychosis (I don't know if this description fits exactly, but it's the closest I can get, and I would rather be safe than sorry)
Tags: panic attack, hurt/comfort, emotional support, philosophical musings, Yavin fic, post BBY, g!n reader, reader has trauma, protective girlfriend!kleya, lowkey domestic, "you're the only person I feel safe with"
Word count: 2.1k
Author's Note: Wrote this mid panic attack, so if it sucks, that's why. Sorry about the title, I'm too over it to think of a less ironic one. Kleya Marki, they could never make me hate you. Also, in case it's not clear enough from this fic, I do not trust doctors or hospitals. I do not want to hear about how they have good intentions or are helpful for some people. They're not helpful for many of us. I am not being paranoid, but even if I were, that does not make you a credible, sane person deserving of autonomy and me a disposable, self-sabotaging problem who deserves no say over how I receive care. I know what I need more than anyone else does.
You felt it in your chest first, that light, airy feeling that felt like maybe it was supposed to be good, like a part of your heart opening, something unlocking, but it was none of that for you. It was discomfort. A sign that you were going to start panicking.
And then your forehead. Right in the center. Could be some sort of connection to the Force, at least that’s what you’d heard people say. But it hurt. It scared you. Knowing that it could mean something deep and spiritual and powerful only made the panic worse. Your hand pressed against it, willing it to stop as you back thudded into the wall, and you slid down onto the floor.
“Hey.” A voice came out of nowhere. Someone else’s hand on your knee. Your eyes went up. Kleya. “What’s happening?”
“Make it stop” was the only thing you could get out, tripping over the words. “Please make it stop.” Your fingers clung to her arm tighter than they ever had, and you knew it. You’d felt these things before, but the thoughts that followed them were scaring you worse than usual, like if you didn’t open yourself up to them you were letting somebody down. Like if they knew you could use the Force and you were running away from it, they wouldn’t let you stay here.
Kleya’s eyebrows were furrowed as she watched you, trying to assess the situation and figure out the best plan, but you didn’t have time for that. “Kleya..” pushed past your lips in a desperate whimper, a sound you had never made before.
Immediately, her eyes shifted. She became something else, something focused and incapable of doubting itself. “Hold on to me.”
You did. You were not letting her go for anything. You could walk, but you were leaning on her like you couldn’t because you couldn’t keep up with your body enough that it was making you dizzy. And every time you remembered you weren’t breathing, you were flooded with fear that stopped you in your tracks.
Kleya led you into the kitchen first, pulling out something small and relatively tasteless from one of the shelves. “Eat this. You always get like this when you don’t eat.”
It didn’t feel like scolding. It felt like being known. You had eaten today, but somehow you never ate enough. It always caught up to you eventually. You were already feeling a little more secure with her there, one hand always touching you no matter where she moved because she knew you needed to feel her when you got like this. She didn’t rush you, and when you were done, she walked with you until you were outside, surrounded by trees and a blanket of stars.
You pressed your stomach into the railing, letting it take your weight. It wasn’t cold, but the air was cool enough that it held your attention, and that helped a lot. Kleya mirrored your posture and put her hand on top of yours. “I’m here,” she promised softly. And that was all you needed really. That was what made it stop.
“Can.. Can I tell you something?” you whispered, facing forward deliberately. “You can’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t.” Simple, but you knew she meant it. Kleya was like you; she enjoyed the comfort of staying on Yavin surrounded by likeminded people fighting for something bigger. But neither of you felt allied to them, not really. To the fall of the Empire? Always. To freedom for the entire galaxy? Undoubtedly. But not to the Alliance.
“I think.. something is inside of me that I don’t understand.”
You paused, giving her room to doubt, to ask questions, to interrogate. She stayed silent, giving you equal space to continue.
“It feels like it’s always been there, but it hasn’t been safe to feel it until I got here. And I know if I told anyone else, they’d probably talk about the Force or something, assuming they don’t just send me to the infirmary, but.. when it gets like that.. I just want it to stop.”
“Do you believe in that, the Force?” Kleya asked, still mirroring you, both looking out at the base hidden only by massive leaves and tree trunks.
You hesitated. You’d been raised on stories of the Jedi and the Sith. You could probably still recite many of them. But whether you’d believed in it was another question. There’s a big difference between memorization and belief. “Parts of it, I suppose. I know the Force exists. That’s not a question to me. But I don’t know what it is, not really. Everyone has a different opinion, and a lot of them seem to involve a kind of neutrality. Like it can just know everything that’s happening in the galaxy and watch. I don’t like when powerful things watch. What’s the point of being some grand, mystical power if you’re just going to make us do everything? We’re the ones living through it.” You’d been speaking longer than you thought, so you forced yourself to stop. “Do you believe in that kind of stuff?”
The corner of Kleya’s mouth lifted into a smirk in your periphery. It made your entire being relax. “No. I don’t.”
“Well.. what about the Jedi?” You turned to face her properly now.
She mirrored you again, her fingers running absentmindedy over yours on the railing. “I know the Force exists. I just don’t bother with it. There’s enough to worry about that I can see to spend time on all the things I can’t.”
You felt your eyebrows crinkle as you took that in, not sure what to make of it. You weren’t necessarily surprised by her response as much as by how comforting that sounded. It didn’t feel like an option, even now.
When you didn’t say anything, Kleya kept going, “That sounds scary, what you’re going through. To have something happening inside of you that you’re aware of but you can’t control? That’s my worst nightmare.”
“It is scary,” you admitted. “And I think that’s why it’s coming out now because back home.. if this happened when I was young and I had told my parents.. they’d probably have sent me to be a Jedi. And once you’re a Jedi, you can’t ever see your family anymore. I know what the Jedi mean to people here and..” You shook your head, getting stuck on the movement for a second before Kleya gave your hand a gentle squeeze. “That’s too much pressure.”
“You don’t have to tell anyone.” Her voice was almost dark, a little deeper than usual. She was looking right into your eyes.
“I should. That’s what we need, right? Something big?” Even as you said the words, you wanted to put them back. You didn’t want this, and it was impossible to stop discovering that. "Something good?"
“Why? So you can die? So you can put the whole Rebellion on your shoulders? You practically begged me to make it stop.” You weren’t sure when you had made her upset, but you had. Kleya could get frustrated very quickly, and that wasn’t a moral failing, but you were still learning that anger wasn’t inherently unsafe. “You are good,” she insisted.
“Maybe it’s not about what I want,” you mumbled, wrapping your arms instinctively around your stomach. “I mean you know what the alternative is, right?”
She forced herself to take a small breath, though she still looked like she might breathe fire if the wrong person walked by. “What’s the alternative?”
Your eyes bounced nervously between hers. “That I’m crazy. And they’re gonna put me in the infirmary and not let me out or let me see you and I’m gonna have to talk to doctors and have things in my arms and I’ll be numb forever and - ”
“Slow down.” The anger disappeared. Her hands slid up to hold your face, forcing you to realize how much you needed her touch, the low, soothing rhythm of her voice that no one else in the galaxy got to hear. “I won’t let that happen.”
“Won’t?” you repeated, your voice small and stuck in your throat like a child.
Kleya shook her head. “No one deserves to live like that. Whether they’re crazy or not. People deserve to choose. They deserve dignity, no matter what. I know what happened before. I remember you telling me, alright? That’s not going to happen. And if it does, I will kill anyone who tries to keep you from me as long as you want me around.”
If you were supposed to feel scared, you weren’t. Not for a second. Knowing that someone loved you like that grounded you. You knew she meant it. You believed her. “You’re the only person I feel safe with,” you whispered, reaching out so you could hold onto the fabric of her clothes again.
“Then I will always come get you. I’ll find you, and we’ll go wherever you want. We’ll leave the people who’ve consented to be there and free the ones who haven’t. We can even bring them with us if you’d like.” Her brown eyes were bearing into yours, her rage completely shifted into something protective. She knew how much she meant to you, and she took that responsibility seriously. She believed you when you told her the things that you’d been through, the lack of dignity and autonomy in places like that, hiding behind masks of wellness. It scared you more than the Empire. At least when the stormtroopers came, you knew exactly where they stood and what they’d come to do. “You don’t have to put yourself in situations you don’t want to be in to receive support anymore. You don’t have to convince yourself you want something that you don’t in order to be treated like a human being. If they lock you away, you hold out until I get there because I will get there. Do you understand?”
You nodded, feeling the tears welling up in your eyes. It meant so much to you that Kleya took your fears so seriously, like she’d been put here to protect you. You knew she didn’t talk like this to anyone else. She didn’t touch anyone else. She didn’t love anyone else, not like she loved you.
“Can I say something that might make you grumpy?” Kleya asked, her hand lifting to brush your hair out of your eyes.
You just nodded again. The exhaustion was starting to hit you, making your eyes burn and your mind shut off.
“Is it possible that you’re just hungry and tired, and that’s all your body was trying to tell you?” She wasn’t teasing. She wasn’t implying that she didn’t believe you or that she was right and you were wrong. But she knew. She knew how much you struggled with noticing your body’s signals, how hard it was for you to keep up with those things.
Of course it was possible, but that made you feel worse. Until her fingers tilted your chin ever so slightly. “Stay with me, angel. It’s just a possibility.”
Kleya was so much smarter than anyone would ever give her credit for. She knew just how to pull you back, a single term of endearment making you weak in the knees. Bringing you right back to her.
You gave her a sleepy pout. “Maybe..” It was a begrudging mumble, but it was the best she was going to get, and you both knew it. “I’m tired now.”
“I bet you are.” She intertwined her fingers with yours and tugged you lightly in her direction as she moved back towards your shelter. “Come on, let’s get you lying down.”
“Scandalous,” you mumbled, trying to make her laugh even in your exhaustion.
It didn’t work, but it did earn you an eye roll and another affectionate smirk. “Don’t start something you can’t finish. Save it for tomorrow.”
That put the smallest pep in your step. “Really?”
And of course that was what got her to laugh. “Yes, fine. If you lay down and don’t try anything because you actually need to rest,” Kleya gave you a pointed look, stopping in front of the bed, “I’ll make sure it’s worth it.”
You didn’t wait, crawling immediately under the covers and closing your eyes as a gesture of commitment.
“Unbelievable,” you heard her mumble as she got in next to you, but you heard the smile in her voice too.
A deep, fulfilling breath moved through you as you settled against her. “Love you,” you mumbled into her shirt.
