when I try to hear this in my head my mental voice is incapable of pronouncing it fast enough to fit the timing of the line
“noooo oooone… adjksjfksfjslenry like Gaston!”
and when I try to fit it to one of the longer such lines, my mental voice becomes too confused about conflicting scansion to continue
no one’s droll like gaston no one’s swole like gaston no one fits his assigned gender role like gaston
I’m especially fond of the paaaatriaaarchy
My what a guy that gastooon
Bless you for making it scan
NOW I CAN’T READ IT WITHOUT SINGING IN MY HEAD
No one’s droll like Gaston, No one’s swole like Gaston, No one fits his assigned gender role like Gaston! For there’s no one online half as phony, His tinder’s got dick pics to spare, You can ask any neckbeard or brony They’ll show you (no homo) whose trilby they’d wear! No one drawls like Gaston Or catcalls like Gaston, Or manspreads on the train in a sprawl like Gaston! I’m especially fond of the paaaatriaaarchy! My what a guy that Gastooon!
Okay, so Everyone Lives canon divergent AU, the turning on happens first. Cassian’s out in the field, under fire, things are tight and he’s not sure what his out is going to be. Then Bodhi (who is healing really well, finally got some therapy, taking up old hobbies – including swoop-bike racing) sweeps out of ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE and like LANDS on the attackers, executing the neatest little turn Cassian has ever seen. Cassian jumps on the back of the bike and then Bodhi guns it, Cassian’s heart is in his throat and his blood is somewhere distinctly lower and more obvious.
They get back to the ship, get to safety, Bodhi can’t quite stop himself from teasing Cassian. Cassian decides that he’s been obvious enough about things that he might as well just go for it, and some DISTINCTLY NSFW things occur before they get back to the Rebellion.
Which then begins their Secret Relationship. Bodhi assumes this is because they are at War and Cassian must be Grimly Sacrificial, and sure, that’s fine, he’ll play it cool in public and have his fun in private, there’s a lot of storage closets. Besides, he gets these amazing soft moments now, cuddling Cassian after he sneaks into Cassian’s room, giving him little anonymous gifts. It’s good! Bodhi’s happy.
What Bodhi doesn’t know, is that their relationship is a secret even TO CASSIAN, because he thinks they’ve managed to fall into an oddly affectionate FWB situation, that he has Too Many Emotions about but he is going to be Chill because he is a responsible adult who can definitely handle casual.
Cassian doens’t figure out they’re actually dating until after Endor, at which point Bodhi proposes and Cassian has a lot of Relational Catching Up to do.
I’m sending all the love and good vibes to you, your mom, and your family, I hope she recovers soon!!
“Cassian.”
Air slips into his lungs.
Cold, with the metallic tinge of cleaning solution.
Air flows out. Silent, not a sigh or a cry. Squeezed out by muscles that work relentlessly for the greater body’s benefit, with disregard to the galaxy around them unless something barges in and changes that.
Cassian’s galaxy, now, is the broken tile between his boots. Something heavy must’ve fallen on it, or perhaps an agitated loved one smashed it.
Around him personnel swirl by, pushing hoversleds, checking datapads, hobbling on crutches. The array of sounds falls on uncharacteristically deaf ears. He’s as present as the scuff marks along the floorboards. There, indifferent, unnoticable.
real talk, bodhi looks at Baze and is like “you’re like a dad to us you know” and baze tears up a little and chirrut is like “does that make me the mother duck” and bodhi is like uhhhhh sureeeee???? and baze is just like WAIT HOLD ON I WANT TO BE THE MOTHER DUCK
I wrote a little story fragment a while ago that you might like. It doesn’t have a title (it’s in a file called Fragments)…
All the Jedhan survivors look to Chirrut and Baze as parental
figures and sources of counsel. Outside
of senior command levels elders of any race are in short supply in the
rebellion, and sometimes you need the advice of an elder, both for personal
questions and for practical things you simply don’t know how to do. Things it would be hard to ask an admiral,
even one as approachable as Ackbar.
This short fic is absolutely beautiful, and examines a relationship we don’t see a lot of. I love Bodhi’s role in this. He just… oh… there are a million things I want to write here. Petition to get imsfire2 to post it on ao3 so I can leave long and detailed comments about this story. (And also, obviously, so the story can get the love it deserves.)
hi i’m kitty i don’t know anything about star wars whoops
“What am I looking at?”
Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. “My taxes.” He paused, then gestured to Han. “Our taxes,” he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.
Leia squinted at the datapad. “Tax fraud.”
“Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she said. “He’s a smuggler.”
“Hey,” Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.
“Legally, he’s a long-haul transport navigator,” Lando said, and Leia snorted. “Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession.”
“Wait, credits?” Han asked.
“Because he’s my dependent,” Lando continued, ignoring him.
“The hell I am.”
“That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that’s able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have.”
“But his transport isn’t legal,” Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren’t already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando’s shelves.
“It’s art.”
“What?”
“As far as my taxes are concerned,” Lando said, “Han transports art. They can’t prove that it isn’t. And I’m always careful to get the valuation right.”
“How do you know what I transport?” Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.
“They call me,” Lando said.
“No,” Leia gasped, delighted.
“Yes,” Lando said, grinning again. “They know I’m his partner. They know I can’t be sure I’m getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he’s getting. So they call me.”
“What!” Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.
“They might have been able to catch him smuggling,” Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.
“They would never,” Han sneered.
“But they’re never going to get him on tax evasion. There’s no way he would have been paying taxes on his own.”
“It never even occurred to me that he would,” Leia said.
“I’m right here,” Han reminded them.
“So you can see why I can’t divorce him,” Lando said.
“I don’t follow,” Leia said.
“My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this,” he said, pointing to the datapad. “I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses.”
“Collapses how?” Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Cloud City goes bankrupt.”
Han choked.
“How many people have you married?” Leia demanded.
“Leia, you know that you’re my favorite wife-in-law,” Lando said, “but I don’t think I’m comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life.”
The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.
Concept: a robot who is very, very obviously a powerful wizard, but always has some complicated explanation for why what they just did wasn’t magic, and frankly they’re shocked that you would be so credulously superstitious as to believe that it was.
Off the top of my head, there are at least two routes here.
First is “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Our robot wizard isn’t using magic, they’re using advanced nanotechnology, energy field manipulation, or some other utterly fantastic technology and scientific knowledge to perform feats that are nigh magical to the rest of the party. Either this is the result of advanced technology performing feats that are very similar to magic spells but are fundamentally different (manipulation of natural phenomena instead of supernatural forces), or superscience and magic ultimately do the same thing but approach it from a different angle. The natural philosopher class from the Northern Crown campaign setting of 3rd edition D&D is an example of this.
The other route is “any sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from science”. In this scenario, magic is not supernatural but just another type of natural phenomena. It has rules and laws that can be observed, understood, replicated, and harnessed. This is where you will find mass-produced magitech. In such a scenario, discussions of what is science and what is mere magic and superstition quickly becomes an exercise in pedantry.
Of course, this is more of a spectrum. The robot wizard insisting that they are using science and not superstitious nonsense might be just as close-mindedly stubborn regarding the true nature of the world as the character they are arguing with who is convinced that they’re using supernatural magic.
Two other possibilities you’ve overlooked:
1. The robot is using perfectly explicable technological tricks; they merely like to wave a wooden staff and chant in Latin while they’re at it for the Aesthetic.
2. The robot really is an old school bell-book-and-candle wizard, no “sufficiently advanced magic” about it, and they’re just insisting that there’s a perfectly mundane explanation for everything they do in order to screw with people, like:
“Okay, I’m pretty sure you just summoned a demon there.”
“Nonsense – it was clearly a trained animal in a fanciful costume. I’m surprised you didn’t know that I dabble in exotic animal husbandry, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before.“
“And the part where it popped out of a spontaneously manifesting ring of green fire?“
“Aurora borealis.”
“Wait. You just turned that person into a newt. Don’t tell me that wasn’t magic.”
“Indeed it wasn’t. It was retrograde evolution, induced by a simple dose of reverse RNA transcriptase surreptitiously administered via hypodermic dart – any schoolchild could explain the underlying mechanism.”
“That’s… that’s not. How evolution. Works.”
“Well, listen to Mister Science Guy here! Which one of us is a walking marvel of modern technology, again? I think I know a thing or two about your primitive meatbag biology!”
“I… you…“
Option 4: it’s magic and he’s incredibly embarrassed about it because he’s a robot and it feels like he’s letting down the team. This is closely related to 3, but he does not in ANY way try to explain it, and in fact desperately avoids any discussion about it. “It’s science, very scientific,” he insists as Prince Vassago fistbumps him and helps him find his keys.
I know I’ve built a follower base around drawing ship art for a specific fandom, but it’s time I finally pivoted and announce my new fanzine shipping the bois from chinese/russia propoganda posters
Rebellions are built on hope 