Dons Blag

 Thomas in dress: “Wow.”

Girl in princely outfit: “Way to assume. Did you also think I was a guy?”

Thomas in dress: “I can rock this dress. Disappointed in you.”

I don’t care if it’s embarrassing

That’s why anon exists

I will literally tag whatever triggers you have

he walks past me and i’m about to relax but then he, stops, backs up and looks me up and down. i’m sweating bullets because we knew nothing about what kind of a cap was he going to be like was my shirt untucked or something oh god what did i do now???

and he just goes “where’s your book?”

and i blink because i am a third class petty officer but a captain is still kind of terrifying and he’s new and I DON’T KNOW WHAT BOOK HE IS TALKING ABOUT is he a stickler do i need to have a copy of the bluejacket’s manual on me at all times or what?

so i screw up my courage and ask him, “my book, sir?”

and he checks my name patch again and says, “you’re petty officer xxxx, you always have a book. where is your book? are you okay?”

like

cap has been onboard for less than 24 hours HOW DOES HE KNOW THIS?

(i mean, he’s not wrong, i got a lot of shit from other senior personnel about the pocket on my uniform being stretched out because it always had a book in it.)

but i have an answer and he’s the new cap, so i give it: “i finished my last one and haven’t had a chance to get to my bunk and grab a new one.”

and his eyes bug out

shit

i broke the new captain goddammit LT is gonna kill me

and he goes “BUT YOU JUST STARTED THAT ONE YESTERDAY!”

and i’m just staring back now like HOW DOES HE KNOW THIS OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK OUR NEW CAP IS PSYCHIC OR SOME SHIT

and because my brain has broken under the stress of this encounter i ask him

and he’s like “i saw you on the mess decks on my tour with [old cap] and you were on like page ten that book is like 400 pages how did you read it in one day?”

and i’m like SHIT he’s gonna be pissed because he thinks i was slacking because i read a bigass book in one day fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK

like this was not the first time i’d gotten in trouble for reading when i was on watch or whatever but i had maintenance watches i’m literally waiting for something to break and my chief didn’t mind

BUT THIS IS THE CAP IF HE MINDS CHIEF’S OPINION ISN’T WORTH A FISH FART IN THE OCEAN

and so i stammer, “i read a lot? so… i… i read fast?”

and he just stares and i don’t know what the expression on his face means

before i can process this though and come up with a new response, he’s grabbing my shoulder and turning me and pushing me ahead of him where little baby petty officers do not walk because CAPTAIN GOES FIRST

and i’m like “welp this is how i end up in the brig i get to be the new cap’s first captain’s mast it was nice knowing everyone”

idk that or he’s gonna throw me over the side honestly who knows my whole world was upside down at this point

and then he starts talking

he’s like “go get a new book what are you reading next did you like your last book tell your chief i sent you if he asks why you were gone what is your favorite genre and author have you ever read” and basically escorts me to my berthing grilling me about books and everywhere we go people are staring and oh god i’m going to die i am just going to die of shame and horror and this is it this is what takes me out does this count as dying for my country i don’t even know

and that’s how we learned that our new cap was married to a librarian and an avid reader and was not going to have an illiterate crew, dammit.

Leia has, for various reasons, a very dubious outlook on classic Jedi training methods. This is not just because of various circumstances surrounding her son, she’s had this opinion for many years before his birth. But Luke was insistent when Ben proved Force sensitive and there was nothing Leia could say otherwise that had any documentation, any records, any proof.

(she’s concerned that her use of the Force might be considered Other, or Grey, or Dark)

It’s like this: the Jedi are unsubtle.

It’s like this: Moving a blaster’s nose a half centimeter causes the shot to miss by a feet. It’s much easier to make 5 blasters miss than to throw 5 Stormtroopers backwards.

It’s like this: when Leia speaks, she is Forceful. When she speaks to a room, she starts with nudges to make everyone listen, she slides in quiet elation at her words, she ends with encouraging a feeling of being able to do absolutely anything in the Universe. 

And she lets her speech carry out the rest of the details, rather than her Force, she lets her people decide how to act, she lets choice finish their decisions and these decisions and choices lasts longer when she leaves the room than if she simply Forced someone to say, “I will do as you command.”

(she takes after her mother, she hears)

Leia wonders if that was how Palpatine caused her father to go Dark, and remains quiet when Luke trains her son.

And when Ben turns, she feels the reverberations, and can’t find it in her to blame Luke for it entirely.

The base is collapsing around their ears, their TIE fighters are falling from the sky, and That Girl has come back with That Lightsaber and more training and for the life of him Kylo cannot hold his ground against her so he’s running but those are things he’s not examining too closely. Instead:

“HIGHLY TRAINED FIGHTERS, he says,” Kylo swears under his breath and dodges around more Stormtroopers, hoping they’d stall his pursuit. The Force tells him they don’t do a damn thing. “PICKED from a YOUNG AGE, he says, BETTER than CLONES, he says, THEN WHY CAN’T YOUR STORMTROOPERS HIT THE BROADSIDE OF A DEATHST–”

Hux suddenly skids to a stop. “She’s here.”

“WHO’S HERE?!”

“I don’t know what she has, the scientists can’t figure it out but when she’s around,” Hux staggers, panting, “at this point, no one can aim straight if she’s even on the same planet, let alone the same room and–”

“WHO?!” Kylo reaches out and grabs Hux by the throat, pulling him to his toes. “GIVE ME A NAME.”

A throat clears behind him.

“Ben,” His mother says.

Kylo freezes.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.