Rabid Fiction Consumer

I probably won't post on this much, it's mainly to follow other blogs.

[unpretty]

have you seen there are some studies about melatonin being potentially helpful with gerd? i seem to remember you mentioning acid reflux (or was it other digestive issues? sorry if im wrong about this) in the past so now that you mentioned youre taking it im wondering if you personally have experienced any kind of difference with or without melatonin

i hadn't seen that! i tried melatonin to help me sleep for a while, but gave up on it because even though it worked i always had a fucking impossible time waking up in the morning?? i have no idea why that would be since it's only supposed to trigger the sleepytime feelings, but getting out of bed in the morning when i took melatonin the night before was a fucking nightmare for reasons that are a mystery to science.

[recklessprudence]

I had the same thing! My best guess as to why it happens is because I (usually) less have Insomnia and more have Delayed Sleep Phase Onset cos ADHD, where I only start feeling tired around 2am. So when I took melatonin, I got the 'go to sleep' amount, and then some hours later my body produced its normal 'go to sleep' amount, ending up in effectively an overdose of the sleepy chemical, that would have me sleep up to fourteen hours and feel literally hungover for up to another four or so hours after waking up, only I didn’t get to have any fun beforehand to justify the hangover. I stopped taking it, and began needing almost half the sleep I did before, and waking up ready to go most mornings, instead of needing 2+ hours to truly wake up.

[gentrychild]

Hey Gentry, just thought of something! So Izuku is always very good at English in your fics, right? Top of Mic's class, and everything? I'm sure you've got that because All Might sometimes speaks in English and bby!Izuku wanted to learn what his idol was saying, but he also SWEARS in English, so what happened when bby!Izuku was fluent enough to understand that? Did he repeat it to Inko? It would be so CUTE, because Inko would have to explain that All Might said something he couldn't repeat!

Honestly, this is less about Izuku imitating All Might and more about baby Gentry becoming fluent out of spite in order to get access to more content so of course, all my main characters can do the same.

I feel that Inko would be "You can only use that kind of words if you're fighting villains able to level buildings" and it quickly backfire on everyone involved.

[recklessprudence]

Your/Izuku’s actual reason was my second guess, as every ESL author I have ever known has that as their reason, but character limit got in the way. But I’m glad to know that Izuku, good son who loves his mother that he is, stuck by his mum’s words. Of course, she may have worded them a little incautiously, but in her defence, she wasn’t expecting her beloved kid to end up actually fighting villains like that! (she says as the news cameras catch Izuku really letting rip at the umpteenth villain attack that week and - exhaustion plus all the pent-up irritation at unceasing villain attacks plus suddenly realising that this fight matches his mum’s criteria equals a diatribe that’s stripping paint off the walls and making small birds fall smoking from the sky (is that a new quirk?) at its vehemence)

[recklessprudence]

From an alternate timeline where the Jedi and Sith decided to decide the fate of the galaxy through ritual musical combat. They saw it in some old historical holos about a great war, known as the Battle of the Bands. (aka someone mixed up the historical documentary holos with the old movies again. But hey, it got Jedi to stop being so uptight about Attachment after they heard about how the Power of Love could triumph over any evil)

[recklessprudence]

So I feel like this is Hogwarts’ music professor (they had a choir, therefore they have a school band, therefore they have a music professor. Facts.), and she’s used some kind of charm to duplicate herself, but with different aspects of her personality emphasised (drum is Dramatique, violin is a mix of happy and intense, I’m still getting a feel for the third one).

And I also feel like this duplication charm is relatively unknown outside the magical music community, who invented it because when aren’t you short one person for a piece you want to do, and when you do find someone they turn out to be a total arse and try and install themselves as Dictator of the thing that was just you and your mates, which in non-magical bands translates to either the wannabe-dictator leaving or everyone else leaving, and it being called in the press release ‘creative differences’, or 'wanting to pursue their own career’, or if someone ended up quitting from music entirely because they were exhausted from all the drama/sulking because the band resisted their takeover, ‘wanted to focus on their family/other parts of their life’ - ANYWAY, if the rest of the magical community knew about this charm they’d have stolen it immediately, because can you imagine how useful it would be for duelling, or for ritual magic, or something? But since Hogwarts doesn’t seem to have a well-advertised music department (certainly HARRY never noticed it on elective sheets or anything), people probably don’t keep close track of what the magical musical community is doing - and honestly, it would probably be pretty hard to. Musicians can be pretty eccentric anyway, combine that with the levels of eccentricity that seem to be inherent to being a magic-user and WOW. I mean can you imagine what, for example, David Bowie would have done with access to actual-factual MAGIC? Where the big limitations are how imaginative you can be and how much work you’re willing to put in to master the skill? With MUSICIANS??!? Especially ones that can make over TWO CENTURIES if they're lucky?

It would also mean that true musical masters in the magical community master multiple instruments, and then get together with their friends and ALL do the duplication thing, so you’ve got like five or six people and, after charms, have a small orchestra.

And she probably is a master of illusionary magic, too - so she can wow her students with being seemingly taken from their (as always) small, stuffy classroom (’Why can’t my classes be held in any of the hundreds of larger, better-ventilated disused classrooms in the castle, Headmaster? And while we’re at it, can I have a larger budget for instruments?’ ‘I’m sorry, do you work here?’ ‘I’m the music professor. You HIRED me.’ ‘Ah, music, a magic beyond all we teach here...” “We DO teach it here! I teach it here!’ ‘Please excuse me, have we met?’ *music teacher storms out, muttering* ‘Old bastard, faking being senile to get out of approving a bigger budget - well bugger him, I’ll find another way...’ ‘Heh, it worked! She bought it! Now, to try it out on Cornelius...’ (THAT won’t backfire on you and have Fudge start to ignore your advice when you really need him to listen AT ALL Dumbles 9.9)) to whatever setting she wants for the music she and her duplicates are playing, and at first purely illusionary pyrotechnics, but later contract with Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes to have fireworks that can respond to her magic, and maybe have some illusions set up specifically to mirror the music for HoH people, along with real-time subtitles for lyrics and things, but subtitles that respond to the emotion and energy in the song and are more full of LIFE than normal subtitles.

(Credit for the video goes to Taylor Davis and her team)

[pocketramblr]

Suspected Nomu AU weird idea

Okay, but in the ‘Bakugou fixes things by lying and sorta telling the truth at the same time’ version, what about if a conspiracy theorist (a Todoroki cousin?) put some things together later on, maybe even after Izuku is Pro Hero Deku, new #1, and released it to the public through a ranting youtube video with a conspiracy corkboard in the background:

1) the fact that All Might and All For One obviously KNEW each other at Kamino and it was PERSONAL, even if no-one could hear exactly what was said.

2) All For One obviously knew All Might was deteriorating. That is what little WAS heard.

3) Villains for YEARS now have been talking about Deku as The Traitor Nomu, even before he was a pro.

4) Deku’s eyes only glowed green at first, when he was only using super strength, even before he could really control it. The Nomu eyes came later, as he started using more than one quirk. EXCEPT for when he was under MIND CONTROL.

5) Nomus are known to either have no will of their own (most) or have a constructed persona that is effectively controlling the body of the poor bastard that got Nomu’d. Which sounds a LOT like mind control.

6) ALL MIGHT’s eyes only ever glowed blue, but he only ever used super strength and was never mind-controlled, was he? (I’m assuming he was never mind-controlled, mainly because other heroes wouldn’t have stood a chance. If he was, and if it was brief like Izuku’s first brush with it, said conspiracy theorist would be combing old media to find if his eyes went rainbow)

7) Both All Might and Izuku have the DNA of multiple people in them, confirmed by their own legally disclosed tests. Just as Nomus have been documented to have.

8) The paternity test has always been disputed, since there’s been rumours of either the Hero Commission or All Might himself strong-arming the lab to give the results they wanted. And if it were true, why didn’t they go public with it earlier? Even assuming they wanted to keep it secret as the 'official’ story claims, you’d think they would have revealed it before it got to the point it did if it were TRUE.

9) All Might’s real name is Yagi Toshinori, as revealed after Kamino and his retirement. A combing of old records found Yagi Toshinori listed as QUIRKLESS, same as Midoriya Izuku. They both developed EXTREMELY POWERFUL quirks later in life than anyone else ever documented. Both of them have the Quirkless Toe Joint.

10) Garaki Kyudai aka Ujiko Daruma aka Tsubasa [NAME REDACTED], All For One’s doctor and Nomu specialist is KNOWN to have experimented on children and teens for decades, as seen in the declassified documents regarding Nomu.

11) Said doctor was Pro Hero Deku’s childhood physician, the one who diagnosed him as Quirkless.

12) In his Tsubasa persona the doctor had a family, including a grandson Deku and Dynamight’s age who went to the same primary school as them but went missing during their childhoods. According to seized documents, said child was made into the Nomu that briefly captured Deku during the Hosu Incident of Deku’s first year and attempted to FLY OFF with him, rather than kill him like the three Nomus had been doing all night.

Conclusion? Pro Hero Deku is a Traitor Nomu, like the villains have been saying. But something NO-ONE has realised, possibly because it’s been a state secret for longer than most of us have been alive, is SO IS ALL MIGHT. Currently unknown whether the Nomufication bred true and any of Pro Hero Deku’s kids will ALSO be ridiculously powerful Nomus (assuming said kids are through a surrogate instead of adopted, considering his widely-documented relationship with Temperance), or if Traitor Nomu All Might managed to rescue another Traitor Nomu. Either would have precipitated All For One to move before he was ready, leading to his (temporary? Depends how the AU plays out) defeat at All Might’s hands. But All Might obviously pushed himself too far, and the Nomufication (which MUST have been in a prototype stage at the time, considering the timelines and that such a powerful Nomu escaped) completely fell apart - which All For One KNEW would happen, because he had intimate knowledge of both the Nomufication process in general and All Might’s prototype process in specific.

Just IMAGINE what all this information being laid out would look like, without the knowledge of One For All!

—–

Pocket: wow. I’m thoroughly impressed by all the details caught here, and I’m also now imagining that Cousin Brian David Gilbertodoroki is absolutely losing their mind as they go on through this video. Also, oh my god, this theory like five years after the fact, just when everyone was slowing down and accepting that All Might fudged his tests to explain how the kid got powers, but then No Cousin Bdgodoroki throws fuel back on it because if the new reveal of quirkless Toshinori and the past AfO encounters and how they know a nomuzation can be impacted and not work a la super Tomura…. Then it’s not just All Might being himself and going plus ultra to keep the traitor nomu boy he rescued safe…

It’s that All Might is also a traitor nomu. I’m not sure what benefit Cousin gets out of this, or how much is split between awe and fear of that but yeah …. Sorry izuku, you thought you were getting a break now? No lol

[recklessprudence]

Fuck, forgot to include:

13) According to interviews with 3A alumni, Dynamight was the one to 'reveal the secret'. DYNAMIGHT. DEKU'S CHILDHOOD FRIEND WHO HAD A FALLING OUT WITH HIM BEFORE MAKING UP IN UA. And in those same interviews, Dynamight is said to have been having meetings with Deku and All Might for some time beforehand that no-one has admitted to knowing what they were about, and any attempt to ask Dynamight, Deku, or All Might about these meetings has been met with various deflections, denials, or in Dynamight’s case the same, but with more curse words.

14) Shigaraki Tomura, a clear Nomu-process-derived artificial enhancement, referred to Midoriya Izuku as LITTLE BROTHER, presumably referring to a shared heritage of experimentation, but also was completely fixated on All Might, both killing him and tearing down his legacy.

The bit about Nomu being documented to have multiple people’s DNA was supposed to be ‘...UNIVERSALLY documented to...’, and the bit about the Doctor was also meant to mention his clinics under other identities all over the country being used to scout for Nomu candidates.

And, in the Conclusion portion, there was meant to be a section saying that while All Might almost certainly had more quirks than super strength, and probably kept them secret to pass/in reserve for an emergency, given his debut was later in life when he had more control as opposed to Deku who didn’t get that option with the early brainwashing incident and then the public reveal of the Nomu, and then when he really needed them against the man he was experimented on to create a servant for, his modifications had already broken down to the point he couldn’t do so, there are other options. For example, because of the prototype process he was subjected to, that they weren’t as powerful/stable/controllable as the Super Strength that seemed to be a near-standard across most combat Nomu to at least some level, so probably the one that had had the most work put into it before what was done to All Might. It’s even possible that the injury that led to the ending of his career some years later was because he got desperate enough to attempt to use them in THAT battle with All For One, only to have them either cause the injury themselves, or their failure/uncontrolled nature leaving him open to his opponent.

All those errors and omissions’ll teach me to make such a thinky post after local midnight. On the other hand, being high on fatigue toxins probably made my phrasing more accurate to the cracked-out-on-no-sleep-and-red-bull Todoroki Cousin’s video, so swings and roundabouts.

(I also REALLY wanted to include something about Izuku and Bakugou’s initial falling out possibly being due to changes in Izuku from human experimentation and failed mind control, referencing his characterisation of Izuku as ‘weird’ and ‘creepy’ found out through the Bakugou-led investigation of Aldera Middle School for institutional Quirk Discrimination and encouragement of abuse (because bullying IS abuse, just one society is weirdly okay with for all it can leave lifelong scars) and the fact that the official story is so ‘patently unbelievable’ (you hated him because... he tried to HELP you? WTF?). but eventually decided it didn’t fit the timeline Cousin Todoroki would think most likely, although it might still get mentioned in an aside)

Also, can you believe that initially I was deluded enough to think I could fit enough of Cousin Todoroki’s theory to be worthwhile in the ASK BOX?!?

[captainkirkk]

I've been wanting to get a e-reader for the purpose of being able to haul fanfics with me where ever I go-- but I really don't want to shell out big bucks to amazon-- even bigger bucks if I don't want them to put ads on a thing I've purchased (when I saw that option I felt like a bull seeing red), do you-- or any of your followers-- know of a cheaper (or less shitty company) alternative that's specifically for the purpose of Ao3 PDF reading?

You should be able to download fics onto a book app or a kindle app on your phone, both of which are free. Ao3 has a bunch of options for downloading format. I think I use ePub for my kindle app. They download just like formatted books and you can change the font/size/line spacing. I use it whenever my eyes hurt, since I don’t have a light/dark/font change option on ao3 web.

[recklessprudence]

I've got a Kobo ereader that I'm very happy with, and I've heard extremely good things about Onyx's ereaders. Pocketbook are okay and pretty cheap apparently, but I don't think they sell in my country. Afaik all of these can take more formats than a Kindle, some of them have their own stores for if you want published ebooks as weif you look around on the net for a guide, get a free program called Calibre and its deDRM plugin, you'll be able to convert books from the Kindle store into something any of these readers will be able to show.

[mylordshesacactus]

on god i will exorcise the demon that is possessing my shift key

[mylordshesacactus]

if only because trying to figure out what in the unholy name of lucifer is wrong with my laptop is slowly driving my entire friend group out of their minds

[mylordshesacactus]

my laptop keyboard has two shift keys, neither of which are working–well, occasionally they will randomly work for a few seconds and then stop again, which is deeply suspicious. there are no other keys with any issues.

i have updated the keyboard driver.

i have UNINSTALLED the keyboard driver and restarted the computer

sticky keys is off

i have run so, so many malware scans

i have gone under the keys with a can of compressed air just in case

we have come to the conclusion that my laptop is just straight up haunted.

[mylordshesacactus]

dell support center is just straight up refusing to open and at this point i don’t blame it

[lectorel]

IT person here, if you want some suggestions?

Try an external keyboard. See if it has the same issues.

Uninstall all your hardware drivers and restart

Remove the physical shift keys, and clean the board area with q-tips dipped in rubbing alcohol

Check for windows updates and run them.

Google the exact laptop model + keyboard error. You’re looking for reports of people having similar issues, and if they’ve found a fix.

(This concludes Lector’s brief overview of troubleshooting weird hardware issues, laptop edition.)

[recklessprudence]

Could also be that your connector for the laptop keyboard (usually a ribbon cable) has either come a little loose, has gotten a dirty... interface thingy, the exposed bit of metal that carries the signal, or has been damaged a little, enough to give you intermittent issues.

If and only if the external keyboard doesn’t give you any issues, and none of Lectorel’s advice helps, maybe see if you can take your computer apart and reseat the connector? You should be able to find the service manual for your machine by googling ‘service manual [exact laptop model]’.

If reseating it doesn’t work, try cleaning the connector, the same way Lectorel said to clean the board area.

If that doesn’t work, you could try and find that model keyboard second-hand, and replace the faulty part. Ebay can often be handy, people parting out old machines and selling the bits. Usually for $30 or less for keyboards, iirc from the last time I went looking.

If even replacing the keyboard doesn’t do the trick, my instinct would be that it’s the port that said ribbon cable plugs into that’s gone south, and that’s... significantly harder to replace, to say the least. In that case, you may have to resign yourself to dealing with it, either by external keyboard, onscreen keyboard, or buying a somewhat fancy mouse with extra buttons and binding one of those to Shift. You can do that last one either by buying a gaming mouse that has an associated app that’ll let you do it, or just by buying a mouse with those forward and back buttons and using something like AutoHotKey or something to tell your computer that when you press this mouse button you really mean that you’re pressing Shift. Not perfect, but should keep you limping along until you can replace the laptop.

[azulas]

— …This place…is weird.

[charlesoberonn]

All the animals in the Avatar world are hybrids of two real animals.

The only “animals” that aren’t hybrids are the spirits

And Kuei’s pet bear

You draw your own conclusions.

[computationalcalculator]

how could you forget Miyuki

[vstheworld]

Miyuki was absolutely a spirit I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation

[recklessprudence]

@muffinlance, @captainkirkk

[marlynnofmany]

It’s looking like the Humans Are Weird anthology may not make it out of the starting gate, due to a lack of entries that fit the theme.

Feel free to prove me wrong, of course.  Submissions are open through the rest of June. 

My only goal at this point is to avoid the “But I would have submitted if I’d known!” conversation in July.  I’ve tried to reach the right crowds, but… *throws hands in the air* …tell your friends.

Now back to your regularly scheduled 2020.  I’m going to do something fun, like write about alien taxi drivers.  

[mareebrittenford]

I absolutely didn’t know about this, so boosting!

[recklessprudence]

@internutter!!!

[deactivated-blog]

Hi, I know the world is going crazy, so the answer may be "unknown, status tbd", but how is book2 coming? Is there a release date?

Oh, man. I would absolutely love for there to be progress and a release date. Things kept happening to slow it down (oh boy, did they), but also, each time I’ve gone to work on it...things have stalled out. Usually if that happens, it means I’m overlooking something or not seeing something the plot *must* have, but whatever I’m missing, my brain has yet to bloody well tell me what that is. That probably means it’s something BIG.

Which really doesn’t help with my anxiety about this book turning out to be terrible. *G*

[recklessprudence]

Hey, dunno if this’ll help at all, but an author I follow who got really blocked on their fic ended up writing like a dozen different oneshot AUs of their own fic, letting their backbrain work on it while writing markedly different universes with some of the same starting points. They wrote wingfic, and shifter fic, and alternate POVs, and 20-years-later-if-things-had’ve-gone-VERY-differently fic, and soulmate fic, and changing the point of divergence fic, and early-reveal fic, and wouldn’t-it-have-been-hilarious-and/or-painful-if fic, and tons of others, all of which meant that their brain got to examine the problem from a bunch of different angles while writing out essentially fic of their own fic, so when they finally got the answer to what was blocking them the writing just flowed because they had never stopped writing that fic, from a certain point of view.

Of course it meant they had all these AUs beating down their mental door, now, asking for followups or expansions or just being pissy because all the other AUs got written, why haven’t we, author?

As a bonus, you own the copyright, so could either choose to publish the AUs in a collection later or put them on ao3 as your own fic of your fic. Sort of an ‘author’s collection of AUs’. I know of at least one published author with multiple popular series’ to their name who has in the past put fic of their fic on ao3 under a barely-anonymised screenname, and at least one of the primary writers for the TV series Leverage wrote fanfic on ao3 in the decade between the series ending and Amazon announcing they’re resurrecting it with most of the old team, who has posted on social media about being worried that now that they get to write for it officially again people will be able to place which popular fanfic author for the show was an an official writer for it all along and you can bet some of their stuff were AUs.

Again, dunno if it’d help you at all, but might be worth a shot?

[jedi-order-apologist]

"Jedi Order to change their entire culture in order to cater to Anakin/the real-world critic." OMG THIS! You nailed it! A lot of Jedi critical posts often, can't stress enough, judge every single Jedi based on how they treat Anakin which is why Qui Gon is awarded Only Good Jedi title. It doesn't matter the Jedi were fine for 1k years but someone was cross at Anakin at some point, so their entire culture was abusive and had to end. They pull out of context excerpts to support their narrative.

Yes, there’s a lot of Jedi-critical arguments that boil down to “Anakin didn’t get what he wanted”. I understand to a degree where it comes from, I’ve said before on that subject:

[It comes from] a combination of the audience buying into Palpatine’s charismatic lies (he’s the one pushing the idea of the Jedi not trusting or appreciating Anakin, and manufacturing tension between them so that it becomes a reality, and the idea that the Jedi’s standard teachings of self-restraint are specifically targeting Anakin to hold him back somehow, that he deserves to get what he wants just because he’s powerful, etc - and some of the audience soaks that up just as Anakin does), and the natural tendency to be more concerned with the personal impact on the protagonist just due to the focus on their character. People want the protagonist to achieve their goals, we’re predisposed to favor their POV, and so when anything gets in the way of that, many find it unfair, especially since Anakin does as well.

But…I mean…not everything is about Anakin. And the idea that a culture needs to entirely change just because it doesn’t suit this one particular person doesn’t sit well with me at all. What about all the people who find that way of life rewarding? Should they be denied their own environment that they’ve thrived in just because some new kid comes along and doesn’t like it? Oh, I know, they don’t think about it like that; they assume all the other Jedi are horribly repressed and no one could ever truly be happy and well-adjusted under such a system. I just can’t ever agree with such a view, since I so strongly relate to the Jedi and find their environment and culture appealing.

The thing is, changing their culture to cater to Anakin or merely handing him the things he wanted - none of that would really help him. It doesn’t get to the heart of his issues; if anything it enables them. Allowing him to openly be with Padmé while remaining a Jedi doesn’t change the fact that he’s willing to burn the Galaxy to the ground to spare himself the pain of losing her. Giving him the rank of Master doesn’t change the fact that he hasn’t mastered himself. Allowing him to do as he pleases without reprimand doesn’t get him to reflect on his actions or their consequences.

And don’t even get me started on Qui-Gon as the One Good Jedi™. I want to like Qui-Gon, I really do, because he’s an interesting and complicated character - but the fandom makes it very difficult for me when they so often tear down every other Jedi in order to prop him up.

[jedi-order-apologist]

#it’s so (forgive me) insidious too#all the way down to how SO MANY fix-it fics are predicated on the Jedi#(a unique minority culture 99.9% of whose members generally show every evidence of loving being part of)#being forced to change their culture in order to better adhere to values deemed acceptable to Anakin/the fanbase#in order to be deemed worthy of survival#as opposed to an author (who has all of the control)#changing another factor to allow them to avoid the genocide brought on by external violence

- @trickytricky1

THIS BOTHERS ME TOO

I mean, I like fix-it fics, but it’s so tiring that most of them focus so much on how the Jedi needed “reform” (usually pressured on them by an outsider - whether a time traveler or a maverick or even a non-Jedi, which really doesn’t sit well with me) and even if the fic doesn’t focus on that aspect it still can’t help but take potshots at the Jedi Order or the Council, with an implication of them being forced to change further down the line. If they’re not outright writing the Jedi off as a lost cause, that is, and just having their faves up and leave.

And yeah, it’s fanfic, you can do anything you want, you really can’t think of another way to deal with Palpatine (as if he wouldn’t just adapt and twist whatever choices the Jedi made against them)? I’m not kidding when I say that my favorite AU concept is “Palpatine gets eaten by the Zillo beast” - there could be some really interesting political fallout and investigation from that, especially when people start realizing that the Separatists, who should really be taking advantage of the Republic’s sudden loss of leader, have mysteriously lost advantage. But unfortunately the only fic with that premise that I’ve come across was standard Jedi-critical fare.

Obviously, people can and should write whatever they want and I’d never go onto their fics to complain about their choices or try to stop them from writing, and I’ve even enjoyed some of those fics, Jedi-critical stuff notwithstanding, but man…it’s tiring. It’s so tiring to see the Jedi and their cultural values constantly be blamed for their own genocide. It’s tiring that the “Jedi Culture Respected” or similar tags are both a) needed (what other culture gets such a tag instead of just “[X] Culture”?) and b) rare. It’s tiring that so many fics don’t allow Jedi to have boundaries and don’t allow them to love their people and culture and traditions. It’s tiring that so many fics force them to change everything they are and everything they value just to make it an easier path to follow, to make it cater to Anakin, to strip away its uniqueness and make it something more palatable to the masses.

[gffa]

I felt this post in my SOUL.

[chancecraz]

So, this is all fascinating to me. Especially since I am someone who is writing a time travel fix it starting about a year before TPM. In it, I have General Leia Organa doing the time traveling and fixing. Shocking I know, given her reticence nature, she’s also the one in story lobbying most of the criticisms at the Jedi Order. But what she is concerned with is not so much changing the Order, but the political function it serves. Because for me, I think what get’s lost in these arguments, is the distinction between the Jedi vs. The Jedi Order.

I, as the person who is outside, looking in at this world, get the points about allowing the Jedi to have their own traditions and culture. And yep, totally see plenty of posts where the Jedi Order is somehow made out to be worst then Palpatine, which, big fat no from me. Dude, it’s not even close.

And god knows fandom’s ability to defend attractive white boy villains, and twist everything into he should have gotten what he wanted, and everything would be fine arguments.  Which is what a lot of discourse about Anakin pops up as.

jedi-order-apologist is right, the Jedi were most certainly “a unique minority culture". But unlike most culture’s like that on Earth, they were also a political faction within the ruling government. The Jedi were most certainly entitled to live their life the way they wanted to, follow the whims of the Force, and study it as they saw best. But the Jedi Order, not the group of people living togther as an  Order, but as a political entity in its own right, had responsibilities and duties far beyond the confines of their own internal culture. And it was the pressure of not separating the two, or I should say, allowing the two goals to be seen as one, that lead to their downfall. Because holy hell, did they fail so badly in their political role.

And not all of that was their fault. There simply weren’t enough of them, to do the job they were tasked with within the Republic. Playing the neutral mediator, the wise counsel in interplanetary disputes, and at times, intergalactic space cop, was definitely something they were well suited to do. But the sheer number of planets in the Republic where they were needed, and their own numbers made it, so they couldn’t be everywhere at once. But there was no other organization within the Republic to help them with this. So, as decades and centuries passed, as more and more responsibilities got shoved on their shoulders, (because they had lost all political power to say “no”), more and more things fell through the cracks.

Then Palpatine entered the picture, and used all those frustrations and anger of the general populace outside of the Core to his advantage. But I would like to point out, he did not CREATE it, just exploited the hell out of it.

That’s what I mean when I say their religious mandate, follow the will of the Force, got somewhat confused with their political role, protect the Republic. They were two very different, and I would say, opposing goals.

And yes, I get that criticizing them for how they choose to deal with their connection to a mystical energy field that gave them their very scary powers, is the height of ignorance, because I am the first to admit, trained Force users can do a lot of damage. Since I do not have any Force powers (more’s the bummer for me), I’m not in much of a position to either a. offer advice on how b. criticize how they go about it.

But, given their role in the Republic, a weird combo of the U.N., cop, and SWAT agent, to say that the Jedi can’t be criticized for their role in the Republic, smacks very close to the U.S. modern-day attitude of cop fetishization.

(To clarify, I’m not saying the Jedi were as bad as a good number of police forces in the US are. Hell, I would love it if the Jedi were the police force in the US, it would certainly be a step up in most cases. And with the population numbers the US has, it would actually be something they could handle, which wasn’t possible in the Republic. I’m just saying, that stating a political organization doesn’t need to be held accountable for the choices that it makes, especially ones that effects its citizens, generally speaking, leads nowhere good.) 

And that brings me to Anakin. Here’s where the argument jedi-order-apologist made loses me. For me, it isn’t about changing the Jedi Order to give Anakin what he wanted. It is about the fact, that they knew going into this, training Anakin the way they trained others in their order was a bad idea, and they did it anyway.

That’s where I have problems with how the Jedi Order handled Anakin. It is plainly stated in TMP that he is too old to be trained. Fine, that is very much their prerogative, they don’t have to take in anybody. But then, realizing, oh yes, the Sith are still a thing, perhaps it would be a bad idea to let this very powerful Force User run around unsupervised, they change their minds. Again, their prerogative.

But this is what blows my mind. Knowing that their methods do not work for someone who has not been raised in the temple, instead of modifying their teaching methods to accommodate him, they just treat him like he is any other student.

And even better, they give him not to a trained master, who has experience with several students, and is comfortable with the process, but the goddamn field promoted knight, who is grieving, hurting, and has no experience WHAT SO EVER teaching. I look at that, and go, what the fuck where you all thinking????? Did you want everyone involved to fail? Cause you sure as hell set it up that way.

Anakin is responsible for his shitty life choices, full stop. SW has shown us plenty of other people who had crappy lives and childhoods, who did not go on to become a living nightmare and terrorise an entire galaxy. But, just because that is true, it doesn’t make the Jedi Order any less responsible for their own shitty choices. And they made some pretty bad ones. Not to Skywalker level of shitty (it’s hard to top that family), but still, not good.

[jedi-order-apologist]

Oh there can certainly be criticisms made about their relationship with the Republic government (it’s a complicated situation and there are reasonable arguments both for and against their involvement, and Palpatine would’ve exploited either situation), but most fix-its don’t deal with the complicated political situation, instead it’s attacking their cultural traditions and philosophy, such as their rules on marriage, and restraint, and emotional control, and letting go of attachments, etc. And that’s the sort of thing I’m bothered by.

As for Anakin, we don’t actually get to see that much of his training in the films, so how the Jedi Order treated him is rather up to interpretation, or the interpretation of expanded material. And while I’m not an expert on the expanded material by any means, the current continuity suggests that Anakin was accommodated. If you’re interested, @gffa has a good reference for how the Jedi are characterized in the current continuity.

I’m not an expert on the old EU either, but I did start reading Rogue Planet and so far the Jedi been very reasonable with Anakin, focusing on having him figure out and admit what he did wrong, then asking him what he needs from them. Now maybe this book is an exception - the ending of the Darth Plagueis novel certainly suggests a much stricter treatment of Anakin (though I personally don’t find that scene consistent with the films, considering that Obi-Wan is fine, even sympathetic, with talking about Anakin dreaming of his mother in AOTC) - but I think there’s enough basis to say that the Jedi did their best to help Anakin without catering to him.

Obi-Wan may have been young and inexperienced, but it wasn’t as though he lacked support. They weren’t on their own, there was an entire Temple of older, wiser Jedi who he and Anakin could seek guidance from. TCW also suggests that it wasn’t uncommon for teaching to be a community effort, even around the usual Master-Padawan structure.

And @ladytodd makes good points about how the Jedi way may very well have worked for Anakin had Palpatine not been constantly undermining him. Without Palpatine encouraging Anakin to isolate himself from any support except Palpatine himself, Anakin may have felt more comfortable reaching out for help from the Jedi when he needed it. Because the Jedi, and particularly Obi-Wan, were more than willing to give it.

[gffa]

Both @jedi-order-apologist and @chancecraz are bringing up a lot of good points–and I want to make it clear that I really enjoyed all of them, I think a lot of us are probably closer to being on the same page on some of this than it might sound like, as well as we’re not trying to overwrite anyone else’s views, but that this is a discussion where, eh, if we wind up agreeing to disagree, then that’s fine, we’ve all come from places of good faith and give interesting viewpoints put forth.  (Ie, I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR, YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN SO SWEET.) I tend to agree with @ladytodd about Anakin never really gave the Jedi way a fair shot, that it’s backed up by George Lucas saying that Anakin didn’t want to accept their teachings emotionally: “The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally.”  (Attack of the Clones commentary) In addition to that, we see Obi-Wan reaching out to Anakin more than once to talk, like in the Age of Republic comics (both the Obi-Wan and Anakin ones), in Attack of the Clones, in Revenge of the Sith, in The Clone Wars (like in the Rush Clovis arc and the Crystal Crisis arc, off the top of my head), and that usually it’s Anakin who pushes him away or lashes out, because he doesn’t want to. And, ultimately, Anakin knew that he could walk away at any time, he even very nearly did at least once.  The Jedi are open about people leaving–they have the Lost Twenty busts out in the open in the Archives, in Dooku: Jedi Lost a youngling asks about them and Yoda makes a point to stop and talk about them, how they just wanted different things, some of them go on to be leaders or teachers, some of them just go live quiet lives.  We saw in the Dooku issue of Age of the Republic that Jakzin still thinks highly of Dooku after he left and indicated that most thought he was forming his own Force teachings school and were fine with it, Attack of the Clones had them defending Dooku until it was clear that he was behind the Separatists.  There was no stigma over leaving, so it seems entirely reasonable to think that the Jedi were trusting Anakin to make that choice for himself–if their path didn’t work for him, he knew he didn’t have to stay.  They trusted him to make that decision for himself, whatever advice they gave.  (Obi-Wan advises him to stay, because he sees Anakin as needing the structure, but he also makes it clear that it’s absolutely Anakin’s choice and it will be respected.) Which makes me think that, even if the Jedi had “reformed” their ways to change for Anakin, it wouldn’t actually have made a difference.  Look at his relationship with Padme–she poured every ounce of love into him that she had and he still couldn’t trust that it was enough, he still couldn’t escape his fears that she would leave him, either through betrayal or death.  The Jedi suddenly saying, sure, you can get married wouldn’t have changed anything re: Anakin, imo. We don’t actually see much of Anakin’s training, we don’t really know why the Jedi changed their minds–was it because Obi-Wan was going to leave? The Council seemed to have decided to vote for training Anakin before Obi-Wan said any such thing?  My feeling is that they were like, shit, the Sith are back, we absolutely have to protect this kid and not let him fall into their hands, even if we think there’s a much higher chance than usual that he won’t want to accept our ways–so it’s hard to say how much the Jedi ways did or didn’t work for Anakin and what they knew of that. We don’t see much of a young Anakin interacting with others, but we do know that he at least attended classes with other younglings and that, when Obi-Wan had a mission, he said “You can continue your training with Master Yoda.” and that Yoda talked to Obi-Wan about Anakin because Obi-Wan’s not sure about a lot of stuff, helping nudge Obi-Wan back on track.  Also, when they’re at odds in Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure, Mace and Yoda and Bant all also intervene to help get them back on track, which indicates to me that other Jedi were at least monitoring things and helping out when needed. As for the political stuff, chance has a great point about the Jedi vs the Jedi Order being somewhat separate things, even as I think it’s complicated, because what the goal of the Order is is at heart of who the Jedi are, which is why there absolutely is a difference between the two, but that they’re not wholly divorcable, either.  Also, I think context creates massive amounts of pressure that the Jedi were under–like, we all agree that being soldiers in a war really sucked for them, they weren’t meant for it, they were being pushed to their limits (Obi-Wan himself says this in TCW, that they’re all being pushed to/past their limits in this war).  So, it’s easy to say that they shouldn’t have fought in the war, that they shouldn’t have been any kind of political entity within the Republic. But how could they not?  When the Separatists started the war, when they started invading planets and oppressing populations, should the Jedi have just said no?  Should they have let those people die?  Should they have left the clones alone, who had no real experience yet, even with their training on Kamino (which presumably wouldn’t have yet had the same training programs set up that we see in TCW, because the Jedi weren’t aware of them until AOTC, and Jango basically says he has nothing to do with the clones), as the clones point out to Depa, that they needed a chain of command, because otherwise people were going to get killed?  Hera Syndulla was one of the people that the Jedi and clones saved on Ryloth, because the Jedi and the clones worked together. How could the Jedi separate themselves from being a political entity within the Republic, when that would almost assuredly mean that they couldn’t go around helping anyone?  The Guardians of the Whills existed similarly to the Jedi, as far as we know, they seemed to help people on Jedha, but look how small their reach was.  They seemed to mostly keep to themselves, nobody really knew who they were because they weren’t out there, helping people.  The Jedi were.  (And ultimately it didn’t save the Guardians from the Empire wiping out their Temples and their home anyway.) And the Jedi were allowed to do that precisely because they were a political entity within the Republic.  Queen’s Shadow does a really good illustration of how going around the Senate is a bad idea.  The Clone Wars shows a really good illustration of why Mandalore spurning the Republic and the Separatists was a bad idea.  You’re cut off if you don’t work with the system, you can’t help anyone who really needs your help within that system of government, if you don’t work with them.  And there was no way they would be able to do it on their own, they wouldn’t have money for ships, fuel, food, their home, etc., unless they wanted to charge people money for it and the people who needed their help the most were the ones who couldn’t have paid them. Being cut off is probably the most charitable interpretation–I mean, look at what happened with Mandalore when it looked like Death Watch was a threat:  The Republic was going to forcibly invade the planet.  Look at what happened when it looked like the neutral Scipio and the Banking Clans were going to be under control of the Separatists:  The Republic forcibly invaded. There’s no way the Republic or the Separatists were going to let a bunch of super powered space monks just sit there and do nothing, when they could have turned any number of tides in the war.  The Jedi were getting drawn into the politics of the war, just by the very nature of their abilities, one way or the other, whether they were affiliated with the Republic government or not. So, I actually do agree that being a political entity within the Republic is what really strangled the Jedi to death, that Order 66 was able to happen because of all the politics stuff, but I also think that I don’t know a better choice, not with the Jedi still being able to help the people who needed their help.  And this isn’t even getting into how they absolutely needed to have oversight in the eyes of the galaxy because a trained Force user could do so much damage. Ultimately, I’m less, “The Jedi were perfect and this was absolutely the right path!” and more “I genuinely don’t see any other path that they could possibly have taken re: being a political entity within the Republic that would have still allowed to them to help the people they wanted to help.”  That the bigger context and consequences of the other paths are really important for why the Jedi didn’t try those options, why they didn’t just leave their position in the Republic. One of my real criticisms is that–despite that I get why they didn’t, because we see them shot down for it again and again and again–I do think the Jedi could have pushed harder for reform within the system.  I do think they were trying, we see Mace trying to save the Zillo Beast and he gets overriden.  Yoda tries to ask for files on Sifo-Dyas and Palpatine overrides him and Yoda’s like, “That went exactly the same as always, sigh.”  Mace tries to object to Palpatine talking with Anakin, but has no grounds to stand on and is overriden.  They try to object to sending Anakin and Ahsoka to Tatooine in TCW and are overriden.  Mace tries to ask for leniency for Boba and the Judiciary overrides him.  Shaak Ti practically breaks her back trying to get Tup and Fives to be taken to the Jedi Temple and is overriden at nearly every turn. They don’t have nearly the political clout that we wish they did and I do think they did try for internal reform, but I think they should have leaned harder into politics even more than they were already, because if you’re part of a system, you have a responsibility to make it better and hold people accountable.  That includes the Jedi!  But also I think they were still doing more than the general public was doing and I’m not going to rake them over the coals when they were at least genuinely trying, if imperfectly.  If the general public had actually done something about all of this shit that affected them, then the galaxy wouldn’t have been in the state it was, either. Yoda has a line in “The Lost One” when they’re trying to unravel the big mystery of what happened with Sifo-Dyas and the clone army: “Are you sure we are taking the right path?” “Hmm, the right path, no. The only path, yes.” That’s my feelings on the Jedi–the right path?  Not really.  The only path, given all the other context?  Yes.

[recklessprudence]

@gffa, while @chancecraz didn’t expressly say so in their post, they actually agree with you 100% about the Jedi Order needing to take more of a political role in the Republic, rather than less. Both of chance’s two main fics have a time-travelling Leia Organa (/Organa-Solo, depending on how you think those two figured out what happened to their names when they married - personally, I’m fully on board with Han taking Leia’s name) talking about how the Jedi are/were (one fic has Leia travel back to pre-TPM, the other has her travel back to her cell on the Death Star, shortly before dear ol’ dad walks in, in that one she’s talking to Obi-wan, who didn’t commit suicide-by-Vader because he couldn’t bear to fight Anakin again) part of the Republic and part of their political structure/landscape, but a part with no voice, and that if they had more say in the doings of the Republic, they may not have been in the position Palps exploited in the first place.

That having the duties and responsibilities they did, without any input into how they were deployed, even to the point of not being allowed to go to the Outer Rim and really work on the injustices there, because it would be against powerful people’s interests, was what set them up for Sheevy-boy (I refuse to give him the dignity of referring to him by his full last name, he should be viciously mocked as all fascist and/or authoritarian arseholes should be) to put them in the position he did. If the Jedi had, over the last several generations, been allowed to work according to their mandate, instead of limited by the Senate from doing what they agreed to after the Ruusan Reformation (or whatever new-canon has it as, need to catch up on a lot of it), if they had’ve had some say in how they were used and the direction the Republic was going, rather than being negotiators and enforcers for a government they were not allowed to have any say in because ‘the Jedi keep out of politics’, things might have been different.

But whoever agreed to that, whoever came up with the idea that the Jedi should have no say in the government they both represented and served as high-level operatives of, that is who set up the Jedi to fail, who set things into motion that would leave the Jedi vulnerable to the Sith plots.

They needed to be more involved in the Republic’s running, not less. Just like they needed more Jedi, like the numbers the Temple was designed for or the numbers they used to have in the past. Just like they needed to be more active in the Outer Rim, so tensions didn’t build and build over generations until they could be used by unscrupulous greedy rich people who were in turn being used by the Sith. None of these are the fault of the modern Jedi (likely not even Yoda, since the Ruusan Reformation predates his birth by a century or more, and we’ve recently been enlightened as to how long it takes his species to mature), but it’s what their predecessors left them with, and it’s what the Sith used.

The Jedi of the Late Republic Era have many faults, and are by no means perfect, but they didn’t deserve genocide. Unfortunately, being a minority with no political presence or power often leads to that kind of thing, especially when someone who hates you is using the levers of power you do not have access to against you. By retreating from the galaxy and handing all authority over their doings to the Senate, that is what their predecessors set into motion. The prequels are a tragedy, and it’s not just the tragedy of the Skywalkers.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Bathtub Bacta

So… I have a guilty love of the prohibition era.  I’dd never want to LIVE then, but int terms of really interesting social dynamics, fashion, art and narrative possibility, its really, really interesting.   During the ‘Would-Bacta-work-as-lube?“ question posed by @poplitealqueen a few months ago, I set about scouring-SCOURING, I TELL YOU- Wookieepedia and all my SW-related material to find out what Bacta actually COST, and how it operated, to answer the question of whether it was economically and practically feasible.  And I found out that:

1. It apparently makes ideal lube, as long as you don’t mind the smell of Pineapple.

2. It’s basically ultra-thick saline with suspended nutrients and ACTUAL BACTERIA in it.

(so, these next couple conclusions are made in the face of conflicting canons, but it’s the one that makes the most sense for how shit plays out)

3. Bacta is the GMO reconstruction of Kolto, which is a psuedo-parastic microorganism that may or may not be related to midichlorians that alters it’s DNA to turn into the host’s cells.  (IDK it’s science fiction, roll with it) Kolto was the more effective substance, able to treat things like cirrhosis, brain damage, etc,- but was wiped out by a virus during the KOTOR era as part of a plot to get rid of the Jedi.

Good job guys.

So Bacta is the GMO they managed to cobble together afterwards with the remaining info they had, and while it’s pretty miraculous as a traumatic injury treatment, it doesn’t do chronic diseases like Kolto did

4. Bacta is literally grown in cultured vats, much the way insulin is farmed today.

5. While it’s heavily regulated in the TPM era, because it’s MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, it’s still really easy to grow once you get your startup costs out of the way.

6. The expensive part of bacta is the administration devices- bacta doesn’t do well in tubes, so you either need to keep a small live colony (a bacta tank ala ESB), or flash-freeze them in the ultra thick saline, and have a small…bacterial microwave, essentially, to thaw bits of it out for use.

7. During the clone wars, Palpatine subsidized the crap out of the bacta industry so he’d have enough for his army and the worlds loyal to him- post 66, he was a punitive asshole who controlled all “legitimate” (but not necessarily well-run) bacta production, and would just not ship it to worlds he didn’t like.

The point I’m getting at is- The conditions are PERFECT for there to be a massive Bootleg Bacta trade starting in TPM and going all through the empire (and into TFA probably, we’ll see what the timeline looks like once this all shakes out)  Just thing- ALL the shenanigans people got up to with bootlegging, but with bacta.

People with illicit ‘stills’ in the basement, people doing insane planetary runs to get it to worlds in need- or pirating Imperial ships for the stuff.  Kids going to school with an “ice pack” in their lunch bag, only to give the frozen bacta to their Rebel-sympathizing teacher.  Imperial Facilities get raided by Bacta Pirates, not for the shitty imperial strain, but literally to pull the piping and saline tanks out of the walls. 

Of course, some people are gonna be unscrupulous and cut corners with their vats, resulting in horrible mutant strains that do god knows what (but that’s another plot bunny).  Or Strains of bacta that are more refined and effective, because much of the scientific Community was not friends with Sheevy P, even before the war.

AND CLONES WOULD KICK ASS AT BACTA FARMING- because a LOT of bacta farming happened On Kamino, and hell, it was probably part of chores to tend to the tanks. “Feed the vats so your brothers can live”

The HARD part about starting your own farm is 1. finding/making suitable vats 2. GETTING YOUR HANDS ON A GOOD STRAIN.

Kix becomes an unintentional fucktillionaire distributing the Kamino strain.  He wasn’t even charging, people just kept giving him money. “Uncle Jesse’s Extra-Viscosity Varmint Grease” is the joke name of the best strain.  Kix is SO MAD that drunk Jesse named it that but you know? No imp inspection officer has ever wanted to open those barrels.

 The things people pretend to be shipping instead of bacta though, which might actually include booze:

 "Booze! Twelve million gallons of Zanbar Blue!“ “Oh that stuff is gross. Carry on.”

Also, the REALLY enterprising people who figure out how to start mixing spice in with their bacta- and create a medical revolution in the process. Glitterstim is a bad idea to snort, but the trace amounts in the “Candy Cane” strain heal nerve damage! "Pineapple express” is a strain that essentially acts as a topical PTSD treatment  "Beskar Berserker” is a strain that has some pretty awesome painkiller/amphetamine combo, and while it was meant to keep people from coding, it becomes REALLY popular with former ARC troopers.

Hera gets Kanan a strain called “second sight” after he loses his eyes.  She did it because it was supposed to be good for treating optic injuries and numbing visual hallucinations… they find out later it’s basically bacta + Midichlorian chow.

Anyway, this was a fun thought, please feel free to play with it if you want and tell me all about it

[noriannbraindripshere]

Okay but that sound like how we grow E. coli because this baby love nothing more that adding genome bits to itself and is the less fussy bacteria ever, so looking up how E. coli is grown industrially would give any fic a nice realistic patina!

[systlin]

“Making furious notes”

[twilightofthe]

Ok so in the actual Prohibition period there were rum-runners and people responsible for getting the booze from Point A to Point B because not everyone has it at the source and supply and demand is the whole point of transferring it around the galaxy, like to the places where Palpatine denied aid like you said.

That means bacta smuggling is a thing.

Like, large cargo holds worth of it possibly.

I’m just imagining how much of a bitch and a half this stuff would be to transport. Like OP said, if it’s premade stuff you’re dealing with, it’s gotta stay frozen which means you gotta be able to either turn your ship hold into an industrial freezer or have a specially-made ship for it. Regular smugglers looking for credits would probs just go with fiddling with temp controls to keep the stuff frozen, which of course can lead to screwups that end in the unfortunate ship being flooded with sticky yuck (Han’s boots still stick to one patch of floor near the smuggling hatches months after the Incident, and poor Chewie’s fur still smells slightly like pineapple…)

Having a big fancy transport ship to get the bacta places would be almost near-impossible— unless you were, say, royalty and had government backing.

What I’m getting at is, we don’t really know what exactly Alderaan’s “mercy-missions” consisted of. Rebels tells us that one of Bail’s plans to supply the Rebellion with ships by having his mercy ships get conveniently attacked and stolen, oh rats, what a shame. What was on them?

What I’m getting at is, one of the best centers for a bacta startup would probs be in a palace with restricted access.

What I’m getting at is, on top of shadow-funding the rebels for years, Bail and Breha were ABSOLUTELY also bacta-bootleggers and one of Leia’s first jobs for the alliance was running bacta during those “mercy missions”.

Han is beside himself when he discovers later that at one point Leia was better than he was at a smuggling job.

[systlin]

OH THAT LAST PART TOOK THIS FROM GREAT TO AMAZING

[rowanthewizard]

I mean Leia was obviously better, do you know how many of Han’s jobs went bad? Dozens! Hundreds! How many of Leia’s ‘mercy missions’ went bad? One! She got caught once! And that was because Vader literally watched her ship get away and did the Star Wars version of jotting down the license plate number.

[systlin]

“YOU WEREN’T A SMUGGLER PRINCESS THERE IS NO WAY.”

“Han, the best way to smuggle something is if people don’t know that you are a smuggler. So unlike you, I didn’t put ‘smuggler’ on my business cards and didn’t get caught.”

“….NOW WAIT ONE DAMN MINUTE HERE I AM PRETTY SURE YOU DID GET CAUGHT.”

“Once, and even then they didn’t find the merchandise.”

[recklessprudence]

@chancecraz, @deadcatwithaflamethrower, @fialleril

[jaiwithanadult]

We will never know their names.

The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it - victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done - humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.

It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow.  In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).

Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.

For a long time, there was no hope - only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.

In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.

It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it - but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.

An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.

A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.

And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.

At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.

The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.

The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.

They found none.

35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.

This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world - was destroyed.

You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.

[chancecraz]

I would just like you to know that every time I have read your rough dialogue form of Anakin and Obi-wan's last conversation in the twinswap AU, I have gotten chills JUST as strongly as the first time. The sheer EMOTION you managed to pack into those few lines of pure dialogue, with no description accompanying them, is INCREDIBLE. So, kudos!

Aww thanks, honey! Although I think that is the time-traveling Anakin one, where he meets 16-year-old Leia. At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t write any Obi-Wan/Anakin dialog for the twin swap.

[recklessprudence]

It was a small part in this post, where you talked about Obi-wan being alive in the other verse both making the other verse have gone too well given all the OTHER people who are alive, and make it harder to make the story work. Now that I go back to that post I notice it’s not tagged with anything, not your asks tag or your twinswap au tag. I like the whole post for the insight into the verse and the writing process, but those few lines of dialogue where Obi-wan PLEADS with Anakin not to follow them when they go to confront Palpatine, that he didn’t want to see Anakin have to fight someone he counted as a friend, and that if they failed Anakin had to protect the younglings... it is somehow heartwrenching AND heartwarming, while at the same time being FILLED with painful irony since we know how it went down in canon. It hurts so good!

[chancecraz]

In the twinswap AU, consider: Luke (and Leia, ofc) may have more than two aunts - how many of Padme's former handmaidens still survive? You can BET they'd want to be involved in raising the twins, as well as being heavily involved in the Rebellion (I imagine they were in canon, too, in remembrance of their former Queen)

Ohhh, I completely forgot about them. Huh, I’m going to have to think about that.

[recklessprudence]

As well as the handmaidens for found aunts, there’s Sola Naberrie, Padme’s elder sister. She had two daughters, Luke and Leia’s first cousins, Ryoo and Pooja. Not much is known about Ryoo or canon!Pooja, but Legends!Pooja was in the Imperial Senate at the same time as Leia and only a few years older than her. They became close friends, and Pooja was an Alliance sympathiser - although if she was an agent Leia seems to have not known at the time, which would make sense for trying to prevent the loss of all the Alliance’s agents in the Senate if one was compromised, to make sure each only knew a subset of fellow Senatorial agents, if they knew any outside their own staff. Also in Legends, Leia met with Pooja when the twins were around 55ish and told her they were cousins through Padme.

Dunno how much of that you want to integrate into Queens, but assuming Pooja became a Senator in canon as well, which we have nothing to say otherwise, it could be an interesting dynamic.

[historyarchaeologyartefacts]

“Small Knife with Sheath” The Ottoman Empire, 18th century. Material: steel, silver, bone, horn, mother-of-pearl, enamel [1359x1920]

[recklessprudence]

Hey @muffinlance! Look at the patterns on the blade! Katara’s gaudy bootknife, anyone?

[sokkable]

sokka: wHeRe ArE tHe MeN wHo CaPtUrEd Us???????

kyoshi warriors: um we were the ones who captured you

sokka:

[sokkable]

for anyone wondering, yes there are two different ways to read this meme

[recklessprudence]

@muffinlance​, I only discovered your writing two days ago but I would already die for. all of your Zukos. Even though none of them actually WANT anyone to die for them. At all. I thought you might appreciate this, as I finished the Kyoshi Island stuff in Little Zuko earlier today, in between appointments, and when I saw this I thought of your stuff.