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𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐤𝐞𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐬

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I love when the Disney princesses are just hanging out together

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Did you ever see such a beautiful dress? And look! Glass slippers. Why, it's like a dream. A wonderful dream come true.

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Did you ever write more to the "vader finds out that leia I'd his daughter" story?

No but it’s been percolating in my head for a while so let’s go

(continuing from this)

The first thing Vader does is cover his tracks. Wipes the security cameras for the whole cell block, wipes the prisoner logs, makes sure that no trace of Leia’s capture or escape will be in the files synced daily with Imperial Center. Puts in transfer orders for that nervous junior officer to somewhere very far away and very quiet. Saves only one short vid clip, to the secret hard drive hidden in his own respirator.

I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.

While he’s doing this, his children (children! plural!) are getting themselves into trouble, and out again. Apparently the trash compactor was involved. He will have more footage to scrub. Somehow they’ve acquired a Wookie.

Kenobi is with them.

Vader should have foreseen this. Of course, Kenobi.

His presence saturates the Force, nearly drowning out Luke— and Leia, too, now that Vader knows to look. It’s enough to break Vader free from the chill of shock, his rightful fury seen as through a window right up until it shatters, and engulfs him again.

But he forces it back. He wants answers, before he kills Kenobi.

(I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.)

He hasn’t played the clip again, but it echoes in his ears nonetheless.

When he faces Kenobi, Vader is still off-balance. Kenobi seems as calm, as unruffled as he ever did, though he’s far too obvious in buying time for Leia and Luke to attempt an escape.

Vader asks him: “Do they know?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Kenobi says, light and unconvincing.

“You kept them from me,” Vader says, and that is a thought that feeds the Dark, that lets him hammer at Kenobi’s saber until he’s nearly past his guard—

“I kept them from your master,” Kenobi says, his voice still even and pleasant and false, hardly betraying his exertion.

“I’ll kill you for this,” Vader vows.

“I expect so,” says Kenobi. “I swore I’d die before I let Palpatine harm another child in my care. If dying will keep them from him, it’s well worth the cost.”

(I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.)

By the end of this speech Kenobi recovers a little of his old skill, turning Vader’s blows aside instead of merely bearing up under their weight. Too soon, Vader falters, losing the momentum of rage. They both fall back to defensive positions. Any living troopers have long since cleared the area; the whole deck is a ruin of saber gouges and shattered armor.

Vader rarely speaks without thinking. The nature of his breathing apparatus makes this a necessity, more often than not. But the words escape him anyway.

“Who named them?”

And now Kenobi is the one who falters. It is satisfying, if short-lived. “Their mother,” he says. “With her last breaths.”

A long time ago — a lifetime away — there was a list of names. Two lists, really, to start with, and then another of the names held in common to both. No record of it survives, not even on the hard drive hidden next to Vader’s heart.

On Naboo, children are often named for virtues. A child might be called Aluuk, for kindness, or Alié, for wisdom.

On Tatooine, a child’s name is the parent’s hope for its future. Perhaps Lukka would grow to be free; perhaps Leyah would grow to be fierce.

And perhaps they have. Vader does not know. Kenobi took that from him.

Vader won’t kill him yet, though. He still has questions.

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here is a fun little star wars scenario that has been pinging around inside my head like a screensaver:

so let’s say there’s some very zealous, very low-ranking fresh young Imperial officer on duty the day they take the Senator from Alderaan into custody. 

and he is very very nervous because a) he’s been here for like a week and b) none of that week required him to be in a room with Darth Vader. which he now is. so he is trying to focus very very hard on Doing Everything Exactly According To Protocol, as a means of not focusing on the seven-foot evil wizard standing fifteen feet away.

and part of the protocol for processing new prisoners is to make a new file for them in the prisoner database, and enter all their biographical details and vital statistics and a gene sample and their known associates and the nature of their terrible crimes against the Empire and so on. which he does! very meticulously!

except the computer keeps throwing an error message. the stupid thing keeps beeping at him, this awful grating little noise that makes his shoulders ratchet up tighter and tighter every time it honks at him, and he can’t fix it and Darth Vader is right over there—

except oh god oh fuck the beeping noise must be annoying Darth Vader, too, because he’s coming over here and our poor junior officer is convinced he’s going to die before he even lives long enough to send his first paycheck home to his poor widowed mother —

he stammers out an apology. Vader just stares at him. he swears he’ll figure out the problem right away, sir, it’s probably a bug in the system, it’s just that for some silly reason it keeps saying this gene sample doesn’t match the one on file for the Senator so he can’t get her logged as a new prisoner just yet —

“Dismissed,” says Vader. the poor kid flees, gratefully.

Vader considers the matter. in fact, his underling was correct: the gene sample, which he saw taken through his very own helmet lenses, does not match the official record of Senator Leia Organa, heir to the throne of Alderaan. so: perhaps the sample on record was falsified. not impossible, but very, very difficult. and ordinarily a crime attempted by the lowly and desperate. he cannot see any need for it, in the daughter of a queen.

another possibility presents itself. Alderaan has no history of using royal doubles, as some worlds do. but Bail Organa has worked closely with royal houses where the practice is long-established. perhaps he was inspired. perhaps the girl they captured is not Leia Organa at all.

Vader runs the gene sample against the ship’s database. it is woefully incomplete, of course, containing only a fraction of the Empire’s billions of citizens: the ship’s own complement, a selection of known criminals and Rebels they might encounter, high-ranking officials whose identity must be confirmed should the Emperor require their presence. unlikely that this girl, whoever she is, would have a record here, or even a partial match—

the computer beeps at him. it’s a cheerful beep, this time, not the error message that stymied the junior officer. the computer reports that the gene sample is a partial match for Pooja Naberrie, the Senator from Naboo. they are, with eighty-nine percent probability, first cousins.

and Vader just. kind of stands there. for a minute.

when he goes to Leia’s cell, there’s no interrogation droid with him. he goes in. he shuts the door behind him. he stands there, silent, for frankly a worryingly long time, until Leia has run through her entire stockpile of  “how dare you, I’m a member of the Senate on a humanitarian mission” and “whatever you want, you can’t possibly think I would be of any help” and “well, if you’re going to interrogate me, get on with it already” and “are you even listening to me?” and  falls silent herself. 

Vader has been listening to her. he has also been listening to the Force, which seems to think that she’s not lying. obviously the humanitarian mission part is bullshit, that goes without saying. but the “I’m Senator Leia Organa” parts and the “I won’t help you” parts? yeah. he searched his feelings. he knows them to be true. the Force is singing in his head, bright and clear, in a way it hasn’t for nearly twenty years.

there’s still Tarkin to deal with, though. Vader turns and leaves the cell without a word.

Tarkin wants to blow up Alderaan. this is unacceptable, obviously, and Vader forbids it on the grounds that the Queen and the Viceroy possess vital intelligence, not disclosed to their daughter, that must be acquired. said intelligence being, not that he’s saying this out loud, how the fuck Bail got his hands on his daughter, and who else knows about it.

“the fate of the galaxy rests on it,” is what he does say out loud. from the way the Force harmonizes with his words, that might even be true.

so the Death Star just. parks there. in an incredibly threatening orbit around the planet. they issue a demand that the Organas surrender themselves, or else, but apparently the happy couple just left for a low-tech weekend retreat in the mountains, what awful timing, they’re sending someone to fetch them right away. Vader shuts himself up in his quarters, to seethe and watch the surveillance feed from Leia’s cell. he’s not really paying attention to much else. 

and it’s not like a random freighter getting tractored in for being an incredibly obvious smuggling vessel is the kind of thing you’d alert Darth Vader over, anyway. 

so he’s still sitting there, one great big thought filling up his whole entire head, watching Leia take a frustration nap, when her cell door opens. 

and a trooper comes in.

and the trooper takes off his helmet.

and he says, “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”

(continued here)

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One should always have at least 2 craft projects going. That way, when one of them is messed up and misbehaving, you can switch to another, and let the first one sit there and think about what it's done.

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A while back my pharmacist saw my deadname on my profile and accidentially called it out, he corrected and deleted my deadname from the system so only my preferred name shows up now. There was a crowd of people behind me, so as he hands over the pills he apologized, in equal tone and volume as when he called my deadname and lied saying it's been a long day and he didn't mean to call out -his own- name. I quietly told him it was fine and he didn't need to do that for my sake.

His response: "No, it's my name now."

I went to the pharmacist yesterday, his nametag is my deadname. He informed me he's immigrating and in the process he's changed his first name to my deadname to have an English sounding name. That's why he's now able to get a reprint of his nametag to be my deadname. And repeated, with the intense seriousness of someone who is going to die on this hill: "It's mine now. Not yours. I'm taking." His tone indicated that decision is final.

Bro literally deadnamed me once, and has committed to flat out stealing my deadname. It's his now. Legally. Officially. I over heard his co-workers call him by the name.

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wh- what did you just say to me

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a cute but disastrous old habit between a dragon and her foster knight

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You know what fancy feature I want on my fridge? Not a damn a screen, but a fucking nightmode button that only turns on a very dim light when I open the door.

I want to get my 3am handful of shredded cheddar cheese without experiencing the power of the sun.

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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

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yr locked in a room alone with three adult men but you feel perfectly safe. who are they

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Since the whole thing with NaNoWriMo has gone down, I've noticed that one of their former sponsors, Ellipsus, has cut contact with NaNoWriMo because they do not support their stance on AI; I didn't know what Ellipsus was, but upon further research I've found that they are a writing platform that works a lot like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, only with a heavier leaning on the story-writing aspect and connecting with other writers - and they also completely denounce any use of AI, both in the writing process itself and in the use of their platform. I really appreciate that.

Since this is the case (and since I've noticed Google has begun implementing more AI into their software), I've decided to give Ellipsus a try to see if it's a good alternative to Google Docs (my main writing platform). It's completely free and so far, I've found it simple to use (although it is pretty minimal in its features), and I really like the look of it.

I figured I'd spread the word about this platform in case any of you writers would want to give it a try, and if you do, let me know how you like it!

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History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang

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(Original Tweet)

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Enbaru River, Yamagata City, Japan // 癒しの自然風景 ♡