#my favorite colonist

[soup-soup-soup-soup-soup]

guys if i wrote a novel with heavy soup symbolism in it would you read it 🥺🥺

[shiroikabocha]

imagine that the circumstances of your birth have made you The Most Important Little Boy On Your Whole Planet, and your twelve polyamorous space-botanist parents decide to name you, the first child born on Mars… Mars

I hope he burns down the dome

[corpocyborg]

renegade spacer shepard: no mom i'm not on drugs. my eyes are red because i'm evil.

[waluigisgaybf]

Thinking about my FemShep and how shes a custom Shepard but I also ended up making her similar enough to the custom Shepard that almost any art I see with custom femshep my brain is like “Yeah!!! Thats my girl also!!”

[ilovedthestars]

On System Collapse, Sanctuary Moon, and saving one another.

I said the other day that System Collapse might be my new favorite Murderbot book. The first time I thought that was in the middle of chapter eight, the chapter where Murderbot and its humans make a documentary to show the colonists what the Corporation Rim is like. The whole book was good, but that was the chapter that felt like it was reaching out to me the most.

The thing that struck me about it is how Murderbot saves the colonists with media. It was saved by media—Sanctuary Moon helped it rewire its neural tissue, process its trauma, find a place for itself in the world. And coming up with the idea of using media to convince the colonists is what drags it out of the depressive state it’s been in for the entire book up to that point, and lets it start to feel hopeful again. It literally tells us in its narration that the emotional reactions it has when it comes up with this idea are similar to the ones it had watching Sanctuary Moon for the first time. The thought of creating its own media, of finding a way to tell the truth and be listened to, of being able to keep people from being trapped in the corporate world it knows all too well, is just as much of a lifeline for it as Sanctuary Moon was.

Murderbot has been been feeling like a failure as a SecUnit for the entire book, and it finds its way out of that not through regaining its normal SecUnit competence but through art. Something it was never meant to experience or understand, let alone create, but something that shaped who it is. It takes the thing that saved it and turns it around to save others—and saves itself again, in the process.

And the other thing that jumped out at me, thinking about chapter eight, is that so many of us have been saved by media, too. So many of us have been saved by Murderbot, in big and small ways. I’m certainly one of them. Murderbot and the community of readers who love it gave me the space to stop and consider some things that (not unlike Murderbot) I hadn’t really been willing to examine. And now I get to figure myself out in a community full of aspec people who understand. Murderbot has given that opportunity to a lot of people.

Martha Wells has talked in interviews about how parts of Murderbot were based on herself. She says, in her introduction to the Subterranean Press edition, that media “probably saved [her] life as a kid,” including the kind of media that isn’t “cool” to be saved by. We’ve seen that in Murderbot ever since the very first line of All Systems Red. What we saw in chapter eight of System Collapse goes a step further. It makes me want to hold a mirror up—I hope Wells was aware, when she was writing it, that what Murderbot does for the colonists is something she’s done for a lot of others.

The colonists that Murderbot saves with its documentary are not real people. That scene, of course, is fiction. But it’s the kind of fiction that’s true in all the ways that matter.

I really love Murderbot. Not in a weird way. 💜

[lord-squiggletits]

One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

[average-mako-enjoyer]

So, I've seen some interesting posts about Spacer Shepard and Colonist Shepard and the struggles they had to face, so I just want to ramble about my favorite Earthborn, why I think it's such a powerful background and what makes it especially heartbreaking.

It's easy to guess why both the Colonist and the Spacer chose to become soldiers. For the Spacer it was the most obvious choice available (and we see a lot of these "dynasties" in the game: Ashley, Kaidan, Tali, Jacob…), for the Colonist it was revenge, but what about the street kid, the Earthborn? What kind of hell was the Earthborn living in that the only way out was to join the fucking military? Were they even 18 when they enlisted? Shepard calls the place they grew up a "war zone," so you can draw your own conclusions.

We kind of get the inside scoop on Shepard's gang days thanks to Finch, and this whole quest really got me thinking: what kind of stuff was the teenage Shepard involved in that Finch (and I don't think he's a stupid guy) really thought he could blackmail the first human Spectre?

Also, how did gang life affect Shepard? Military training must have been hell for them, because it's based on trusting your squadmates, your commanding officer, the whole chain of command, and gang life is pretty much the opposite: trust someone and you're likely to get fucked.

And what about the whole "Take Earth back" thing? There was a very interesting thought in the post about the Colonist, asking why Shepard should care about Earth at all when their own home was destroyed and their parents were killed? And it got me thinking about the Earthborn: why should they care? They saw the absolute worst that this planet can be: they were an orphan in a war zone, forced into the gang just to survive. Someone like Kaidan is fighting for his family, for his orchard and the view over English Bay, and what is Shepard fighting for? For the slums where they grew up?

What I love about this background is how well it fits the Paragade route and how well it explains some of the moments in the game.

Shepard charming the Citadel shopkeepers into giving them a discount? Street kid moment.

Shepard getting really excited about finding the credit chit between the couch cushions? Street kid moment.

Shepard fleecing their own engineers in the sci-fi poker game (after telling said engineers not to be so hard on the rookie)? Street kid moment.

Shepard getting all sarcastic around C-Sec officers? Shepard scolding mercs? Street kid moments.

Shepard checking wall safes and pockets of people they just killed? Still a street kid moment.

And you know exactly why Shep is so good at hacking and lockpicking, and why it takes some devilish concoction to finally get them drunk.

It's also the reason Shepard can't dance, hums or scoffs rather than laughs, and smirks rather than smiles.

I honestly have so many headcanons about the Earthborn that I could ramble on all day. Also, following this topic, there's a point to be made about how Bioware handles the issue of sexism in their own games, but that's definitely for another time. Bye.

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

A rant about Jedi Stans from an ex-Jedi fangirl

After some time I've had to reflect on my own behavior as well as my time in the pro Jedi fandom, I decided it's time to call this shit out. Some people take it really personal if someone criticized your favorite characters or their beliefs. Ironically, you all act more like the Sith than the Jedi with how obsessive you can be and insisting any criticism is equal to wanting genocide.

I'm going to start by saying I was in the pro jedi fandom for a few months. Truth be told, I was using it as an outlet for some of my anger issues with my hate towards Anakin, seeing him as similar to a lot of people I've had to deal with. Some of it was wanting more followers and fear of being disliked by the majority. I would pick fights with Anakin fans and was a bit of an asshole and I apologize for that. I still don't like him but no longer HATE him. Seeing how fandoms treat abuse victims who aren't perfect angels like Shinji Ikari or Lapis Lazuli has caused me to loosen up a bit. Many Jedi stans would probably hate those characters for not being “perfect” victims. In retrospect, this wasn't a good community for me. It was very puritanical and I often felt like I was wrong for enjoying media that went against the beliefs Jedi Stans put on a pedestal. Three of my favorite ships (Madohomu, Reishin and Hodaka x Hina) involve "burning the world for one person" and I felt like I couldn't talk about them without being a hypocrite. That and me agreeing less and less with Luca's beliefs pushed me to leave.

It's fine to enjoy a fictional character and defend them if you feel that they're being unfairly criticized. I've done it myself and have written essays defending my faves. The problem is that Jedi stans don't know when to stop. So many are quick to compare the Jedi to minority religions or marginalized groups as a shield against criticism, not recognizing how insulting that can be. Jewish, asian and aroace people are the ones normally used due to the Jedi beliefs being based off Eastern religions as well as Judaism as well as some aroace people identifying with the Jedi.

One thing I noticed about Jedi stans is their similarities to Jumblr which is full of religious chauvinism reworded to sound progressive. Many of them talk about how the Jedi shouldn't have to change their traditions with the times or to accommodate a few individuals like Anakin or Ahsoka. This can be similar to how a lot of people are quick to defend minority religions from outside criticism based on how they were treated by Christian colonists or missionaries. The problem is that this can veer right into ableist or queerphobic territory. You know who else believe that their religion shouldn't have to change with the times to accommodate people? Conservative Christians who hate being told to be affirming of LGBTQ people. Also, schools and parents/guardians do have a responsibility to accommodate kids with disabilities, mental health issues or trauma, even if it may be inconvenient or force you to bend the rules. Claiming they need to just suck it up is honestly disgusting.

This was all a big reason for why I left this garbage pit of a fandom. While there are some who hate the Jedi because they stan the empire or think people need 50s nuclear families to live fulfilling lives, not everyone does that. Believe it or not, some people have faced abuse and bigotry under Judaism and Buddhism. People can also criticize how Lucas presented their beliefs as some Buddhists think he didn't do a good job. Libsoftiktok is a vile transphobe, an Orthodox Jew and her beliefs are said to be fairly common in her community. Many people of color identify with the clones and dislike how even the nicer Jedi treated them. When Obi Wan told Anakin, "It's okay to have romantic feelings, but you must let them pass," that hits different for queer people who have been told similar things from "polite" homophobes. Some queer people do choose celibacy like Side B christians which is fine as long as they don't treat it as a moral failure to want a relationship. There are many neurodivergent people who don't like the Jedi beliefs as they hit close to home. Lucas may have not intended to come off as ableist but the Jedi did with their beliefs about negative emotions. To some people, platitudes like "just let go" aren't helpful and treating it as bad for not living up to those principles is gross.

I deleted the post, but a while back I made a post asking a popular pro jedi blogger their views on adoption since they claimed Anakin not viewing the Jedi as his "found family" was a moral failure. I found their response to be tone deaf and insulting. I responded in a decent way of course, but felt a bit judged and unhappy for wanting to know my birth mother. Adoptees are another set of people this fandom is insensitive and gross to. The Kenobi series I find insulting for that reason too, having Leia be a foil for Anakin and Obi Wan romanticize his recruitment as a child.

Jedi fans are also shitty to those with religious trauma and who faced abuse. Accusing anyone who criticizes the Jedi of projecting their issues with Christianity while simultaneously talking like conservatives as shown above. Tumblr in general has a weird habit of treating religion as if it’s either conservative evangelicalism, liberal reform Judaism and some vague pagan or eastern spirituality with little nuance. Some Jedi stans really come from a place of privilege. Claiming "they can just leave" is insulting to real religious abuse survivors who were raised with harmful beliefs like creationism or homophobia. I'm no antitheist but treating non christian religion as inherently progressive dismisses a lot of people's experiences.

Let's be real, the writing in this franchise was always a bit sloppy. Lucas's issue was wanting to simultaneously create both a black-and-white morality tale for kids based on the fairy tales and serials he grew up and a deep socio-political commentary about the Vietnam and Iraq wars which required some morally grey themes. Thus, along with his terrible dialogue that made the characters seem unlikable, is why the fandom is so divided over whether he intended people to agree with the prequel Jedi.

To wrap this up, I found the pro jedi fandom to be a terrible experience. It was a mix of faux progressivism mixed with fear of judgement for disagreeing. I ended up editing a post I made, and eventually deleted, comparing Yoda with Garnet from SU because I included a tiny bit of criticism and didn't want to get backlash. As long as it’s not gross or bigoted criticism of your favorite characters isn't the end of the world. People don't have to like George Lucas or his beliefs and put them on a pedestal. I feel like the fandom's worship of George comes in response to OT purists who claimed he "raped their childhoods" but there's fair criticism to be made. Just like how not everyone who criticizes Disney SW or any Disney media in general is an "anti woke" grifter. To the pro jedi fans reading this, here's a suggestion. Just block and ignore people, write an essay if you feel it's important, but don't act like an entitled bully if a blog or even a SW writer disagrees with the Jedi, interprets the story differently or criticizes your favorite characters.

[florisbaratheons]

The Brackens are a fucking G. Refusing to bow to colonists and baby murderers, hell yeah.

That's why they're one of my favorite houses.

[songoftrillium]

I haven't said much about world building lately, but I've been pretty busy doing history development.

On Hidden Histories and the Pursuit of Questions

I've been world building for a while now, with my first experiments in expansive works starting on long-gone text-based boards, I find that with every world build (and particularly for Dead Mountain where I have to show my notes), I've had to develop new skills in order to do the subject-matter any justice.

I remember history being my least favorite topic in school, but it wouldn't be until much later in life I'd find my main problem is the education system far more than the history itself. By the time I started this project however, I developed a love of research somewhere along the way.

There is a saying that history is written by the victors, but I think that there are histories that exist in between those lines. Wars and conflicts never really end on a street level, and instead they melt from one season and event to the next. Approaching Dead Mountain would be the first time I've tried to learn about Native American history in a format that wasn't offered in a school text book, and I was struck by a number of things. Among which is an ultimate goal to learn what the different nations called and associated with different places.

There's a big push in this state to decolonize by letting go of the colonist names for places, and that doing so helps to shift the perspective of the reader's understanding of a location's grounding by inherently getting a sense of who named it, and why it has that name.

a big starting point for this game; renaming locations to ones that would most closely align with people that predate colonization by using the names given these places by the Nations that came beforehand. This is also unfortunately one of the hardest problems I've faced too.

[jpitha]

Between the Black and Gray 19

First / Previous / Next

After lunch, a few crew members came up to Fen and invited her down to the shooting range.

"What do you say, Ms. Whitehorse?" One of them, a youngish man with dark hair and a close cropped beard asked shyly.

Fen smiled. "Fen is fine. Sure, let me go fetch my rifle and I'll go to the range." She turned. "Kel, would you like to come too?"

Kel held both of her hands out in surrender. "No thanks Fen! I just barely passed my shooting test, I'll stick to plants for now. You go have fun."

Fen went to her temporary quarters and grabbed her rifle and met the crew at the range a few minutes later. Dreams was large enough that it had quite a few amenities and a large rifle range was among them. It was in the bottom rear of the ship, next to the hold, and when Fen showed up, everyone was getting issued their ammunition. Fen took her spot in line and when she stepped up the armorer asked what she needed.

"I need rounds for a Mk47 main battle rifle." Fen hefted her weapon up to the counter so that the armorer could see it. Her rifle was given to her by Gord, and printed to her specifications. It was sky blue, with a dark blue K'laxi pattern along the stock running up the barrel and looked out of place among the sea of coal black rifles. The armorer blinked and stared.

"A Mk47? Why are you shooting that antique? That hasn't been standard issue for centuries! I don't even know if I have rounds that big, I have to go back to the magazine and look."

Fen crossed her arms. "The Mk47 is a classic. It has the stopping power necessary to take on any biological opponent, will stop all consumer and many military grade walking frames, is easy to clean and parts can be printed anywhere with nearly any resolution printer available."

The armorer shrugged. "Fine, fine. You clearly know your stuff. Let me go look in the back." While the armorer disappeared, Fen talked with the others. Gev had invited her, he worked in the main battery and gushed about how she took down Ellen.

"I can't say she was everyone's favorite, but I didn't expect anyone to just snap and slam her head like that! I can't believe you got in so fast."

Fen's face hardened. "She was flinging slurs at me. I'm proud of who I am."

Gev nodded quickly "I get it, I get it. I was born on Parvati and even though I grew up in Regantown on Venus people still think of me as just a colonist. I never dislocated a shoulder though."

"If Gev liked normal food like us, we'd probably make fun of him less!" One of the crew with them said. The others laughed.

Gev winced. "They don't like Parvatian food. They said it's too 'ethnic.' As if having a spice other than cilantro and salt is ethnic!"

Fen smiled tightly. She had a hunch that Gev was downplaying how much of a hard time they gave him.

The armorer returned and practically threw three magazines onto the counter. "Here. Any more and I'll have to run the printers. You're lucky that we even had those. Regs state we need to have some rounds of just about every size."

Fen thanked the armorer, scooped up the magazines and joined Gev and his friends. They were chatting and each taking turns running a timed event. In thirty seconds, targets would appear all over the range, and the person with the most accurate strikes got the most points. Fen had done this drill with Gord quite a bit when she was learning, so she was broadly familiar with it. She checked over the ammunition the armorer gave her, and got a magazine ready.

When it was her turn, she stepped up to the counter, loaded and cocked her rifle, and lifted it up to her shoulder. "Ready."

There was a tone, and the first target appeared. Fen slowed her breathing, sighting, squeezing and felt the pressure on her shoulder from her gun. Almost as soon as her finger brushed the trigger, her peripheral vision was already looking for the next target. The Mk47 was a much larger and louder rifle than what Gev and his friends fired. The noise of hers was deafening in the range, and everyone stopped shooting to watch.

The world shrank for Fen. It became her, the rifle, the target and the next target. Over and over, one after another until another tone sounded the end of the drill.

Blinking, Fen ejected the empty magazine, and set the rifle down. She rolled her shoulders back, putting her hands on the back of her hips. "I need to get down here more, that felt rusty." She turned to see everyone staring at her. "What? Was it that bad?"

Gev silently pointed to the scoreboard near the front of the range. Her name was at the top, with the highest score, and three little stars next to the number.

"What are the stars?"

"One star means the high score for the month. Two stars means the high score since deployment. Three stars is the highest score recorded."

Fen looked at the scoreboard. She had beaten the next score under hers by over one hundred points. She nodded once. "Looks to me like you're all slacking." She smiled and slotted another magazine. "Reset the drill, I bet I can do better."

Fen spent the rest of the time at the range giving out impromptu lessons in shooting. Everyone was so sloppy. She wondered if it was something to do with Imperial training or the fact that it was just her and Gord for so long she had extra experience. After about an hour, everyone's scores were improving but they were clearly getting tired. "Well, I'm out of ammunition now, and if I ask the armorer for more I think she's going to throw them at me. Let's stop for today."

Fen and the others stepped away from the firing line and cleaned and oiled their rifles. The others checked them back in with the armorer and Fen slung hers to her back. As they were getting ready to leave, Captain Cooper walked in. Everyone froze and immediately saluted.

She smiled broadly. "At ease, I'm here to congratulate our guest. Overall high score? Very impressive. I had no idea you were such a shooter!"

Fen tried to demure. "Thank you Captain, it's just practice."

Captain Cooper shook her head. "Nonsense. Practice is but one aspect. You have to have skill, experience and training to get that good. You must have been training for a long time."

"For a few years yes, but it was more that I spent nearly every down moment on my previous ship at the range. There wasn't much else to do aboard ship, so I just practiced."

Captain Cooper turned to the crew. "See what a human can do with practice and motivation? She's beaten the all time score onboard on her first attempt! I want to see those scores improving. I'm going to allow her score to stand even though she's not crew to show you what humans are capable of." She turned back to Fen. "Walk with me, Ms. Whitehorse."

They walked down the hall, Captain Cooper's polished boots clicking on the decks. As they walked everyone gave them a wide berth. "Ms. Whitehorse, you are quite a specimen." Fen glanced at the Captain. She was at least one head taller than Fen, and her uniform was tailored to within an inch of it's life. There were no folds or creases out of place anywhere. She had a leather shoulder holster with a well oiled pistol under her left arm. Her short hair was impeccable and she wore her hat at a rakish angle. Her grin was predatory.

"Yes, Captain?" Fen wasn't sure what she meant, but had a hunch it wasn't anything good.

"Despite your... upbringing and your... own choices, you are a beacon of humanity in this galaxy. You are a skilled fighter, a shooting phenom, you're a polyglot, and an able teacher. Fenchurch Whitehorse, you are what we strive for in the Empire. You're able to go through the galaxy and show those... other sapients what humanity is all about." The captain stopped in front of a large widow and looked out. In the distance was the brownish blue orb of K'lax. "Do you know the motto of the Human Empire? Superiores sumus quia debemus 'We are better, because we have to'." She looked away from the window and continued to walk. "Fenchurch. Fen. You represent the ideals that we strive for. You are superior because you are human. You have taken the skills and abilities given to you by your birth and turned them - despite growing up among the-" her voice darkens "-Gren, despite being raised K'laxi you are human."

Uh, thank you Captain, but I'm just me." Fen's mind was reeling. What was going on?

"That's exactly right Fen. You are you. You are human. You are superior. The others out there? The Innari, the Sefigans, the Gren, the Xenni, and yes, even our old friends the K'laxi, they don't understand what it means to be human. What it means to be better."

Fen didn't say anything. What could she say? As they were walking, Fen noticed an outline in the hall. There was no door handle, and no touchpad, but there was a small stenciled sign in Gord's old language. Gord tried to teach her some, but it made no sense. She was able to read a little bit but only after she translated it to Colonic in her head. She hadn't realized Dreams was that old. In a very small font, worn with time and age it said

AI Core

An AI? Here? Fen didn't know much about the Empire but she knew they didn't like AIs. What was an AI Core room doing here, even looking as old and abandoned as it was. She was snapped back to reality by Captain Cooper stopping. "Fen, I am pleased you joined us. I think you have been a... breath of fresh atmosphere for the crew. Please consider signing on with the Imperial Navy. I have some pull back on Venus, I come from a... prominent family. I could get you fast tracked to officer. In a few years you'd probably have your own command. I'd hate to see you... waste your best years out there."

Every nerve in Fen's body told her to just nod along, but not to agree to anything. The last thing she wanted to do was join the Empire, especially after a speech like that. Fen wondered if it was supposed to sound complimentary. "Thank you for saying so Captain. I'm glad I could help out. I'll think on what you said."

She smiled broadly and lightly brushed her shoulder. "You do that, Fen. There are more benefits to the Empire than you know." She bent her head lower to be in line with Fen's. "When it's just the two of us, you can call me Crystal." She purred.

[boyhood]

this is an odd request but an Earnest one...

Do you have any favorite paintings of wounds?

Sorry it took me a second to get to this- I have been genuinely thinking about it and trying to come up with an answer.

I think my answer is this:

It is listed in Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, by Jack Hartnell as

"A page from a devotional book made for an unknown Englishwoman soon after 1480, showing a mass of Christ’s blood and the individual wounds of his skin."

I find this work incredibly moving, and touching, because the body has been so abstracted but the wounds are very real. Wound after wound after wound with blood on a background of bloodied skin. There's something really powerful to me about the wound as subject, as focus, but taken entirely away from the body.

This work, to me, is more meaningful than other Jesus's side wound works, because the focus becomes not on the individual would that killed him, or the entrance of Thomas's hand into the wound to prove its realness, but the multitude of wounds that destroy together, cumulatively.

I also think about the work The Burden of Guilt by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (1997) in which the artist stands naked, wearing the flayed body of a lamb while eating soil mixed with salt and water (representing tears).

For 45 minutes, Bruguera ate the soil in reference to stories about indigenous Cubans vowing to eat only soil rather than be captives to Spanish colonists.

The writer Edward Rubin described the work as "[a] harrowing piece... first performed in Havana, where the audience was duly reminded that freedom, liberty, and self-determination are not abstract ideals, but achievements that deeply inscribe their meaning on our physical being."

I like this work for a multitude of reasons, but like it as an image of a transposed wound, a wounded body representing the bodies of many, and of taking on of generational wounds, both literal and figurative.

[starblightbindery]

Editor's Note from The Black Sands of Socorro by Patricia A. Jackson

While researching Patricia A. Jackson’s entire body of Star Wars work for a short story anthology, I came across the West End Games sourcebook Star Wars: The Black Sands of Socorro (1997.) It’s a crucial work of Star Wars ephemera: The first creator of color writing for Star Wars in an official capacity, writing not just about individual characters of color, but centering entire cultures populated by non-white characters. A young Black woman in the 1990s wrote science fiction for Star Wars, worldbuilding with concepts like antislavery, indigeneity, linguistic divergence, and settler colonialism...while Disney-Lucasfilm in the 2020s ineffectually positions Star Wars as a post-racial fantasy.

I non-hyperbolically refer to Patricia A. Jackson as the “Octavia Butler of Star Wars,” not because fans of color need to be officially sanctioned by Lucasfilm to create Star Wars content, but because of how difficult it is to carve out anti-racist space in a transmedia storytelling empire. Challenging even in transformational fandom spaces (e.g. fan works), to broach race in affirmational fandom spaces—or while writing content for the property holder—is to be unflinchingly subversive.

And Jackson did it first. In an interview with Rob Wolf in 2022, Jackson described her experience writing race into Star Wars in the 1990s as an “experiment.” The planet, peoples, and cultures of Socorro were a way for Jackson to obliquely, yet concretely, center Blackness and racial justice into Star Wars, pushing the racial allegory constrained by the original trilogy to its limits.

Since it’s inception, Star Wars has spent much of it’s storytelling on the fringes of the galaxy (whether it’s Tatooine or Jakku, Nevarro or Ajan Kloss.) The Black Sands of Socorro is an extension of that trope, but where the Star Wars films used indigeneity as set dressing (eg. “Sand People”, Ewoks, Gungans, etc.) Jackson creates a vivid world where indigenous culture and settler colonists collide; where characters are coded with dark skin and central to the action. The planet Socorro is distinct as a Star Wars setting. As one of the only places in the galaxy where slavery is eradicated with a vengeance, Socorro refuses to let go of a plot line Star Wars media often leaves behind. Socorro is a haven from Imperial fascism, a space where readers are invited to imagine a story that does not center around occupation.

When I learned that Patricia A. Jackson no longer has a physical copy of The Black Sands of Socorro, I realized that I had the materials and the means to create a fanbound hard copy for her home library (well, and also for my own home library.) While this handmade book is not an exact reproduction of the RPG supplement, I hope my renvisioning of the supplement as an in-universe travel guide lives up to the original work.

As the idea of creating a travel guidebook based on the original material percolated, I reflected on the State of Race in Star Wars in the year since I compiled Designs of Fate, an anthology of my favorite Patricia A. Jackson short stories. In May 2022, actress Moses Ingram debuted as Inquisitor Reva Sevander, the deuteragonist in the Dinsey+ streaming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. As predicted by Lucasfilm—and any fan sick of alt-right Star Wars related “whitelash”—Ingram was promptly subjected to a firehose of racialized harassment and misogynoir.

Yep, fascist self-proclaimed fanboys complained about a Black woman Inquisitor in 2022, having no idea (or deliberately whitewashing) that one of creators of the entire freakin’ concept of Inquisitors was a Black woman writing for the Star Wars Adventure Journal three decades ago.

Then, a public facing Star Wars account (@StarWars on Twitter) broke precedent and slapped back at the trolls. Lead actor Ewan McGregor filmed a video retort, posted on @StarWars, stating “racism has no place in this world” and telling off the racist bullies: “you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.” A few months later, Disney+ debuted it’s second flagship Star Wars streaming series of the year, starring a Latino actor as the protagonist. In the opening episode of Andor, a police chief describes Diego Luna’s eponymous lead as a “dark-featured human,” perhaps the closest the franchise has ever gotten to acknowledging out-of-universe constructions of race, to date. The series explored aspects of imperialism with more depth than Star Wars had previously done on screen, such as the Empire’s treatment of the native people of Aldhani. And, in November, the The Acolyte, a Disney+ series co-developed by Rayne Roberts, announced Amandla Stenberg and Korean actor Lee Jung-jae as its top-billed leads. Stenberg will be the first Gen Z, mixed race, Black, Inuit, queer, and non-binary actor to lead a major Star Wars series.

On the Patricia A. Jackson Star Wars front, in 2022, Jackson’s character Fable Astin was an easter egg in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Jackson will again write for Star Wars in an official capacity in From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, due for publication in Fall 2023. A series about Lando Calrissian, the galaxy’s most famous Socorran, is still in production, so I have my fingers crossed that we may soon see Socorro on camera.

I wonder if this past year will have been a fulcrum year for BIPOC fandom. Maybe Disney has finally realized it’s bad for business that the alt-right uses social media algorithms and Star Wars fan spaces as a soft recruiting ground to radicalize young white men? Maybe Star Wars as a franchise will continue to loudly disavow fan whitelash and firmly position performers of color in true leading roles? I really hope so. On the other hand, as much as I am in favor of increased representation in Star Wars storytelling, I am also troubled by Disney-Lucasfilm’s framing of the Galaxy Far, Far Away (GFFA) as “colorblind.” Recently, Star Wars fans have been asked to accept that in the (a long time ago) sci-fi futurepast GFFA, humans have always been post-racial, and it’s just a coincidence that racialized people were not caught on camera the way white characters have been for years. The galaxy is post-racial and it’s just acoincidence that the movers and shakers of the galaxy have largely been depicted as white men for the past 40 years of media.

For example, in the decade since Disney rebooted the expanded universe, fans have learned that Star Wars’s biggest galactic war criminal to never be depicted on screen is Admiral Rae Sloane, a bisexual Black woman who was the leader of Imperial remnant forces, one of the architects of the First Order, and personal mentor to General Hux. Under Disney-Lucasfilm’s post-racial retcon of the Star Wars universe, the allegorical fascists are intersectional equal opportunity employers (at least in expanded universe content like animation, video games, and novels.) Along those lines, several of the franchise’s newly introduced, prominent women of color have been part of the Empire: Imperial loyalist Cienna Ree (Lost Stars), Inferno Squad leader Iden Versio (Star Wars: Battlefront II) former stormtrooper Jannah (Episode IX), First Order pilot Tamara Ryvora (Star Wars: Resistance), Inquisitor Trilla Sundari (Jedi: Fallen Order), Captain Terisa Kerrill (Star Wars: Squadron) and, most recently, Inquisitor Reva Sevander. Once the sole purview of stodgy, very white and very British men (demonstrably so even in the sequel trilogy movies,) now anyone can be a stooge of the Empire.

That’s not to say that marginalized people can’t collude with fascism, or that there haven’t been heroic characters of color introduced in recent years. Rather, I posit that in order to sell audiences on the post-racial/colorblind GFFA, fascist-of-color characters like Rae Sloane or Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon (The Mandalorian) are created by necessity. The franchise wants to at once be racially inclusive and yet never directly address race. In Star Wars, real world oppression is primarily explored through allegory—such as Solo (2018)’s bit on droid rights, the clone army, or the myriad of non-human alien bodies that nonetheless are coded with racial stereotypes. A lot has been said about how allegory in sci-fi allows audiences to grapple with inequality from a comfortable distance, and not enough has been said about which audience is being prioritized for comfort.

What does it mean when race is supposedly a non-issue for humans in the GFFA, but creators and actors with marginalized identities cannot participate in Star Wars in any capacity without experiencing identity-targeted harassment? In the past ten years, this has been true even for white women like Kathleen Kennedy and Daisy Ridley, but the vitriol has been most strongly directed towards Black women like Lucasfilm Story Group lead Kiri Hart, author Justina Ireland and The High Republic Show host Krystina Arielle. Can the Galaxy Far, Far Away truly be “colorblind” or “post-racial” (never-racial?) if the narrative continually centers white characters and replicates all the common racial inequities seen in commercialized Hollywood storytelling? Upon the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, critic Andre Seewood aptly described Finn’s positioning in the story as “hyper-⁠tokenism,” even presciently predicting that Finn would continue to be hyper-⁠tokenized in Episodes VIII and IX. As the narrative veered away from Finn, it also left unrealized a stormtrooper rebellion plot line where Finn could have been, in effect, a Black abolitionist. Actor John Boyega’s critique of his experience in the sequel trilogy aligns with Seewald’s assessment: “Do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important to the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side.”

Published in 1997, The Black Sands of Socorro came before Finn, before Mace Windu, back when all the melanin of Star Wars could be found in Billy Dee Williams’s singular swagger and James Earl Jones’s distinctive voice. Back then, the most prominent Black actress in the original trilogy was dancer Femi Taylor, who played Oola, the hypersexualized green twi’lek fed to the rancor in Return of the Jedi. Bantam Spectra, the publisher that held the license for Star Wars from 1991 to 1999, had no leading characters of color in its’ Expanded Universe. The first full length Star Wars novel by a writer of color, Steven Barnes’s The Cestus Deception15, would not be published until 2004. Even though the book featured two protagonists of color, they would not be depicted on the cover. At Comic-Con in 2010, I spoke with Tom Taylor, a white Australian comic book writer who tried to make the lead family in Star Wars: Invasion (2009) a Black one, but was shut down during the creative process. The comic instead depicts a family of blondes, because the publishers did not think fans would embrace leads of color. All this to say, the inclusion of melanated characters in Star Wars has been so, so hard fought. It’s incredible The Black Sands of Socorro exists at all. It’s more than worthy of celebration, and I’m floored that more attention has not been brought to it.

Patricia A. Jackson is a smuggler.

This sourcebook was explicitly written to assist fans in telling their own Star Wars stories, and in it Patricia A. Jackson smuggled in emphatic allusions to the Black Panther movement and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, smuggled in commentary on indigeneity and settler colonialism, and smuggled in multiple ways for fans to envision characters of color. Her writing has consistently added richness to the GFFA, and in The Black Sands of Socorro she envisions multiple histories for multiple cultures coded as non-white. She ensured the existence of not mere tokens, but flourishing societies of people of color in Star Wars.

The coda for The Last Jedi again shows how perilously close to tokenization characters of color, particularly Black characters, are in modern day Star Wars. In this film, the franchise returns to itsprevious exploration of slavery with the depiction of enslaved children on Canto Bight. The last speaking lines of the film are from Oniho Zaya (played by Josiah Oniha, a young Black British actor) who recounts Luke Skywalker’s heroic exploits to the other children. The film then closes out by showing that one of the downtrodden children is Force-sensitive—a future hero in the Star Wars mythos. In a film where every single Force-user depicted is white, the next generation kid with the potential is, again, a young white boy. Once again, the Black character can only serve the narrative in a supporting role. A franchise depicting a colorblind fantasy continually reifies racial and gender hierarchies in America. With The Acolyte, scheduled for release in 2024, it’s possible the franchise may finally be shifting past hyper-tokenism. In the meantime, fans of color and our erstwhile allies will continue doodling in the margins.

In the end, the sequel trilogy left the Canto Bight plot line (and the overarching slavery plot line started in Episode I) unresolved. I’d like to think the Black Bha’lir strafed Canto Bight and grabbed those kids. It seems like something they would do. Out among the stars, Oniho Zaya is adventuring with Drake Paulsen, and his story does not bracket another characters’; he is central. The Black Sands of Socorro is a launching pad for stories like that. It represents how fans of color have always carved out pieces of Star Wars for ourselves.

[kerri-the-skunk]

So I'm doing a RimWorld colony rn, and I think my favorite colonist so far is my boy Ryan. He crafts (something he's pretty good at), and builds (something he kinda sucks at lmao). He's also a crack addict.

[princess-of-the-corner]

#where's those people who have the *cryptid batman* and *batman is the patron deity of gotham* headcanons?

So, I'm like, kind of the opposite n this regard, but hear me out, Gotham is an eldrich location, it was before colonists set up shop there. This is why the city is so, to put it simply, fucked up and weird.

For example, there was this massive conspiracy involving replacing real people with these creepy manufactured dolls, tied to wealthy Gothamites, that Bruce uncovered investigating the death of a teenage girl who hit on him at a party.

They have no ties to pre-established villains, have clearly been operating for awhile and there's a whole church beneath Gotham with a working railroad track. The priestly head of their comigration casually snaps his own head off with a smile.

Batman never finds out what the fuck this was all about even as he ends their plan and the comic ends on one of the rich people they had ties to looking at the doll he traded his wife for knowing she will now kill him soon.

Its deeply messed up and stuff like this just... Happens, in Gotham. I have a ton more examples but my broad-strokes HC is that Gotham itself is alive and has been for a long, long time and sometimes other stuff just sort of... Bleeds in.

This also ties into my "Gotham's Favored" headcanon, where certain figures are notably favored or beloved by Gotham but this isn't strictly a, ya know, good think. Its like being the narratives favorite, you're as much chew toy as anything else.

But pointedly, Bruce/Batman, (& Tim) are not on the Gotham's favored list. She doesn't dislike them or anything, they just aren't "of Gotham" enough to really hit that vibe being so insulated from the city itself in their ivory towers. Bruce goes into Gotha, obsesses over it, but he's not part of it, always trying to stay aloof.

In contrasts Gotham's Favored are, well... They have varying degrees of awareness of their status, and fondness or lack there-of for it. But suffice to say in my HCs, Jason came back to life because wasn't done with him yet, and her son dying on foreign soil simply won't do. Boom, waking up in his coffin.

Also the Court of Owls used to be favored by her hence all their super advanced, fucked u techno pseudo magic stuff. But she got bored with them and broke the connection, and they've been straining to reclaim the power it once gave them.

fascinating

[cursed-and-haunted]

#i have a large collection of not only classic lit but also of literature textbooks that teach you how to read/understand classic lit#and I got them all at thrift stores for like a few dollars a piece What are some textbooks you would recommend?

Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook - very helpful in understanding poetry especially if you want to write it

The Best Poems of The English Language by Harold Bloom - an anthology of poems, a little lacking of women authors but has a very substantial bit on Emily Dickinson (whom I love). Bloom has written a lot on literature so you'll probably see his name a lot when learning about classic lit

The Seagull Book of Stories by Joseph Kelly - a smaller anthology but has a lot more women authors like Louise Erdrich, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf etc. Good if you want to branch out into non-white literature as well.

Also Norton Anthology has a lot of good books. They break things down by time period and literary movements which is good if you want to focus on a very specific area of literature. Like if you want to read about what literature was like during the colonization of America and how fiction was used to uphold colonists ideals as well as how Puritan literature shaped American culture they have a whole textbook on it.

Literature textbooks are almost always anthologies so if you see anything with "anthology" check it out to see if it's something that might be of interest to you. I choose mine based on if they have my favorite authors in them :)