Eddie | 31 | white | queerio | biased in favour of the trans lobby | satanic whore | transmasc but any pronouns work | suspected of being a member of the terrorist group antifa | spoilers are tagged but are here Mobile header by undomielle
Links lead to AO3, unless specified otherwise. Anything NSFW is labelled as such. PROMPTS FOR DADWC OR STAR WARS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME.
Dragon Age
DADWC Writing Info, including prompts.
Assorted Tales of Thedas (one shots)
The Prayer || Blood of the Lion || Blood of the Crow || Two Hands Longing (for Each Other's Warmth) || Tempting Fate || An Unfriendly Wager || Shadows and Tall Trees || Sanctuary || Easy Like a Sunday Morning || From Childhood's Hour || Scathefire || A Rose Upon a Thorn || Let Me Walk (Before They Make Me Run) || An In-Tents Situation || Risk My Hands to Pick Up Shards || All the Time in the World (nsfw) || The Morning After || Fair Game || Blessings of the Hearth || A Path Once Taken || Safe Under Cover || The Beginning of All Things || Aisling Lavellan Makes Her Mark || The Safest Place to Hide (nsfw) || You Will Find Him Next to Me || Wine Upon the Lips || Don't Look Back Into the Sun || Welcome Distraction (nsfw) || Pillow Talk || Planning Permission || The Nug King's Prize
Chaptered Fics
Steps of Faith (Cullen, Eireann, Alistair, Kali) || A Small Quiet Companion (1,2)
The Lion and the Hind
In the Oak, I Found the Arrow || Knight's Gambit
Star Wars
Blessings || A Ghost of Lasan
Star Wars: Children of the Force
Prequel: Saudade
Part One: Awakening
Prologue: Leaving Home | The Exercise | Unmasking | The Scavenger | Interlude: Desperation | Imposition and Invention | Man Against Fire | TIE Hard | Sand and Ruin | The Garbage Does | Truth and Honest Lies | The Ghost and the Runaway | Interlude: Spectres | The Castle of Maz Kanata | The First Steps | Purifying Light | The Lightsaber | Convergence | The Resistance | Battle of Wits | Interlude: An Invitation | Infiltration | Behind Enemy Lines | Stars, Hide Your Fires | Mundicide | Open Wide, O Earth | Restoration | Rarely Pure and Never Simple | The Island | Epilogue: The Day Poe Dameron Broke His Wrist
Part Two: The Return of Skywalker
Prologue: Mirrorbright | Skywalker | The Dreadnought | Paige | Finn Filled In | The Jedi Tree | Interlude: The High Council of Lira San | Silence | The Admiral and the Mechanic | Rose’s Lament | The First Lesson | A Caged Bird
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everybody: you’ve got to advocate for yourself in medical settings!
medical professionals when a patient advocates for themselves in a medical setting (x100 if that patient is a part of any minority): damn. you’re a hypochondriac crazy bitch who has every mental illness and is seeking every narcotic in existence. that’s the only reason you’d be disappointed in the care you’re receiving here. in retaliation, we will be even less helpful and less sympathetic. our jobs are hard. people are dying. we don’t have time to deal with anyone who is slightly inconvenient for us.
Yeahhhhhh. Whenever someone comes online to speak about a negligent, discriminatory or extremely unprofessional and uncomfortable experience they had in a medical setting, medical professionals tend to swarm them just to remind them over and over again that their job is sooooooo hard and patients are soooooo mean to them and that there are soooooooo many sicker people, like the sicker patients aren’t also being humiliated and abused, like hospitals do not stabilize people and dump them back on the street to die, like deaths due to medical errors aren’t a major problem, like racism, ableism, classism and misogyny isn’t rampant in the medical system from the top down, perpetuated systemically and individually by providers. So many doctors and nurses hate to admit they’re wrong, they hate to admit they’re complacent, they hate to admit that their patients are all people, often having the worst day of their life.
Not to sound like a broken record but does it make anyone else viscerally angry how we realized in the very recent past that we can successfully eradicate devastating human-specific diseases (smallpox) yet now there's a million people telling you not to vaccinate your kids against measles. I know I know "everyone will not just" but also for real we could never have measles again if everyone would just be cool
people have said it before but if you read a lot of historical literature you do begin to just sort of think in that style of language. I’ll put down the 18th century journal I’m reading and have to resist the urge to send academic emails with every Noun capitalized and punctuated only by the profuse Usage of the Em-Dash — it is a deceptively challenging Instinct to resist, & worse is that Instinct when spelling certain Words to utilize what would, some Centuries prior, be an appropriate Spelling, excepting that my Correspondence occurs in the Twenty-First Century, where Men are inflexible and uncreative in their Methods, & this Propensity of mine would appear only foolish & incorrect, instead of suggesting what it in actuality reflects, which is that I am simply an Incorrigible Nerd — O! the Woes of modern Sociability! Why should I be compelled to conform to these d——d modern Conventions! Is it not enough to be unabashedly and impudently Autistic?
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Emmaera paused one step out of her new room, surveying the space. It was not entirely cleared—that would take weeks, surely—but the worst of the piles of debris had been shifted aside or removed, and the center of the hall was clear for the ragged remains of the Inquisition to fill. She was surprised, too, by the number of people there—for it had seemed a silly sort of human custom, this fealty ceremony, and she’d assumed the rest would feel the same.
But no: all of her friends and companions were there, clustered near the front or perched to the side. All the soldiers she’d seen and spoken to on the long walk up the mountain were there, too, even a number of those still wounded. Not all of them would swear oaths; some of them did that in a more conventional sense, with contracts and agreements, the paperwork in its way more binding than words might be.
But for some of them—for their leaders—there would be a ceremony. Tradition dictated it, Josephine had told her, and Leliana had nodded along.
And Cullen—Cullen, who’d been odd since their conversation directly upon their arrival at Skyhold—had simply gripped his sword and looked down at the map laid upon the war table. He would be the first of them to reach her, to kneel before her and swear. Or…or so Josie had told Emmaera while she’d been getting ready.
Getting ready—that was funny. She didn’t feel ready. Not for the new title, nor this ceremony. None of it. But she was wearing finer clothes than usual: a halla-leather dress sent by her clan back when the Inquisition had first offered aid to them. The leggings, woven from strips of the same material, hugged her thighs comfortably, and the fine embroidery along the bodice and hem made the ensemble more remarkable than her customary armor or the gowns at Josie’s disposal. This was fortunate, because she was not fond of human dresses with their stays and laces and things. This dress, which seemed almost to glow in the abundance of candlelight, was far more to her liking.
Everyone was watching. Everyone was waiting.
Emmaera straightened her back and ascended the few steps to the throne, lonely and stark in the center. It was uncomfortable to sit in; she’d tried it out earlier. But that hardly seemed to matter at the moment, when her hands felt so cold and her heartbeat seemed so thready. Josephine stepped forward, saying…something…her voice ringing against the abundance of stone in the room. The assembly straightened, focused, and then turned their eyes on her.
Inquisitor Lavellan.
That’s who she was now; not Mae, as her family called her, or Em, or First, or Herald, but…Inquisitor.
A flash of light on gold; Cullen, sure as ever, striding forward from the group. They’d discussed this; they’d practiced. She knew what to expect. Emmaera took a slow, shaky breath and shifted slightly forward on the hard seat, holding out her hand to him.
The Commander was wearing gloves, as always, but when he took her hand she fancied she could feel the warmth of his hands beneath. He regarded her for a moment, his fingers steady under hers, the ring with a seal they’d given her just this morning winking in the movement of the candles. Then, he bowed his head and knelt, the movement far more graceful than it ought to have been for a man wearing so much armor. He knelt before her like he was meant for it, like he’d practiced it at length, like the movement was as natural to him as breathing or swordwork.
They’d practiced this; she knew what to expect. But at no point in their practicing had she felt like that when he’d told her what would happen.
Cullen’s thumb traced the edge of the ring, and in a loud, clear voice he spoke:
“By the Maker and Holy Andraste, from whom this Inquisition and its servants derive,” he said, “I will be to Inquisitor Emmaera Lavellan faithful and true, and love all that she loves, and shun all that she shuns, according to the Maker's laws.”
Her lungs felt stuck, somehow, and something was buzzing just under Emmaera’s skin. It was an effort to draw a slow, even breath, but it was no effort at all to keep her eyes fixed on the gold of his bent head, on the edge of his face that she could see past it.
His eyes were closed, she thought, somewhat faintly. She wasn’t sure why that mattered to her.
“Never will I, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught that is loathsome to her; on condition that she keep me as I am willing to deserve, and fulfills our compacts as agreed upon when I to her submitted and chose her will.”
The Commander took a breath and went on, his fingers gentle around hers despite the strength of his words. His eyes were fixed on her hand, tracing scars and burns and ink stains she’d accumulated these past weeks. It hadn’t occurred to her to be self-conscious about her hands before, but she couldn’t help thinking about it now, when he peered so closely and intently at her skin.
“I shall not bring it about by deed, word, consent or counsel, that she be placed into dangers of any sort beyond her choosing. I will impede harm to her if I know of it, and will cause harm to be removed from her if I shall be able. Any counsel which she entrusts to me through herself or by envoys or missives, I will keep secret; nor will I knowingly disclose it to anyone to her harm.”
Cullen hesitated for a moment, and again she thought that must be it; the hall was not warm, but her face felt hot. Her hand had been cold before he’d taken it, but it was sweating now. What was this? Why should she be so affected by a custom her people did not hold?
“Inquisitor,” he said at last, tilting his head up and meeting her eyes, “My sword is your sword, and my hand is your hand. Let my body act as a shield between you and all ills; let my knowledge and my will protect you when arms cannot. Command me to move, and I will act; command me to be still, and I will remain thus. I am at your disposal, from now to the moment that you dismiss me from your service—if that is your will.”
She had to speak; there were words she was meant to say. But Emmaera could not seem to drag her eyes away from his face, from the solemn twist of his mouth when he spoke, nor from the warmth of his remarkable eyes. His hand was steady on hers, though, and his thumb moved—the slightest of movements, so slight she might not have noticed if she hadn’t been so transfixed—just barely over the knuckle of her ring finger.
Cullen bent his head and pressed his mouth to the ring. She would not have thought that this could feel like very much; it was a ring he was kissing, after all, not her hand proper. But it felt like a great deal when his breath skimmed over the fine hairs along the backs of her knuckles, when his lips barely, barely touched the skin surrounding it.
Only a few words; only a few. She remembered them. She’d practiced them before the mirror earlier.
Emmaera straightened her back and looked down at him, squeezing his fingers in return.
“I grant and behold it,” yes; that was what she was meant to say; but there was more coming out of her mouth, against her will.
“Commander Cullen Rutherford, I witness and hold your oaths,” she said, the words feeling as formal and oddly archaic as the rest of this strange ceremony, “I commend you for your service to the Inquisition and I will hold this vow in good faith, until you are dismissed from service or until you have will to depart.”
And then, the line she knew she shouldn’t be saying even as she spoke it; there would be some stir amongst the humans for bringing Elvhen into this ceremony, and most of them would have no idea what she was saying. But…it felt right to speak these words, too, for she’d practiced them once as the First of her clan:
“Mythal’enaste; ma melava halani, Cullen.”
There was a murmuring in the crowd, a stir at the edge that might have come from Solas. She ignored it, tried to go on acting like this was all something she’d meant to do and say even as her felt her pulse pounding at the base of her throat. Cullen’s eyebrows lifted slightly, as if asking her…she didn’t know what, and Emmaera inclined her chin faintly.
A blessing of Mythal—and her thanks. That was all.
Or…it would be all, if she hadn’t chosen such a courtly way of saying it. You have spent your days in my aid; a fanciful thing, something the elves of Halamshiral would once have spoken to an Emerald Knight in their service.
Well. She didn’t care; she’d wanted to say them, so she’d said them, and she’d meant it.
Cullen didn’t let go of her hand or stop looking at her when he rose, and it took her a moment to realize that she was the one still holding on; that she was the one not allowing him to walk away. She let go at once, turning her eyes to Leliana, who would approach next.
If she had kept looking, she would have seen the hitch in his step when he walked away, the way he lifted his gloved hand to his lips as soon as he took his place to her right again. Emmaera did not look, and so she saw none of it, nor the color in his cheeks, high on his cheeks against the paleness of his skin.
But the words of the oath—those she did remember and dwell on, for long, long after the words bound either of them at all.
(Sources: Here for medieval oaths, which I chopped up and recombined)
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Okay, so. Star Wars has all these concepts that weirdo New Left boomer George Lucas tosses in there but because of storyteller limitations it would kill the plot to fully explain them all, so later writers have to come in for the spin-off materials and bat clean-up to fully explain all this crazy crap. And I would like to talk about something that made me actively angry at first, but which I now adore. And that is the Naboo.
So much about Naboo culture is infuriating from a logical standpoint. They have a queen, okay. A constitutionally elected queen? Weird, okay. Don't know why they'd do that but... She's FOURTEEN? Excuse me? Is it a ceremonial thing or, oh no it's not? Legit head of state? Why does she dress like that? Why does she talk like that? I'm so tired.
Here's the explainer. Let me go cook.
There's this joke in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the last living human goes back in time and finds out humans aren't actually from Earth, but an alien culture that tricked all the middle managers, pedantic weirdos, and other infuriating folk into getting in a space arc which they gave the wrong evacuation coordinates to simply get rid of them. The Naboo are like this but they're all artists and poets and hippies, but like classy ones. They fled their home planet during a war and crash landed on Naboo, then did a colonism to the Gungans because, hey, they were fleeing a war and it was do or die. This spiritual rot in their creation story is later rectified by Padmé. But it's super important to their cultural psychology. They're hippies, but will subjugate if needed. They are "peaceful" but I guarantee you every single one of them has a tiny extremely shiny pistol up their sleeve and they will draw down on you if backed against a wall.
The scene that I think says it all is at the end of Phantom Menace when Padmé is surrounded by Nute Gunray and his droids, they've got her dead to rights, but Sabé her double creates a distraction so the queen can make it to her throne. This one piece of furniture is the Naboo in a nutshell. It's richly carved with artistic details, it has two seats to the side so the queen's handmaidens can read the lips of people in the back of the room and use hand signals to communicate with the queen while she can remain focused mostly on who is speaking to her. It is hundreds of years old. And it has a secret compartment in the armrest that is FULL OF GUNS. Layers of artistic opulence hiding their true intentions.
The Naboo were created to be backwards compatible with Princess Leia. They're compassionate pacifists, but they will shot you if needed.
Why do they elect teenage royalty? It's a little creepy. It's giving "age of consent is emotional maturity". It makes no sense.
The explanation they give outsiders is they want youthful idealism untainted by cynicism. What they don't tell you is that they take kids with stated interest in politics and put them in an advanced highly competitive Leadership Academy which is like Model UN mixed with Battle Royale. Well, they don't kill each other but it's intense. It's like what the clones went though just all diplomacy training and tea ceremonies all the time. Which is crazy but so Naboo.
Oh, and all the delegates for the royalty election run using pseudonyms for security. Imagine voting for the head of state but you can't run a background check. It's so crazy.
Why does Padmé dress like that? Well, fashion is one of Naboo's major industries so it's like she's wearing the entire Fall line catalog at once. To advertise not only the talent of her people, but to show how much they favor her. BUT that dress has multiple layers of padding and resin armor. And aforementioned spots for those little silver blasters. And it breaks up her silhouette making her harder to shoot. And it's so elaborate you pay more attention to the crazy dress and not if the person wearing it is really the queen or a decoy. Everything about Naboo is like this.
Queen Amidala has that weird accent while Padmé does not. Because all her handmaidens helped create the accent together so they all can imitate it. It's like if you gave girls at a rowdy sleepover the job of federal counterintelligence. That's what they came up with.
The handmaidens wear colorful identical clothes so you can't tell them apart, hoods to partially conceal their identity, and they don't wear the queen's fancy makeup. So one of them can be the queen and spy on people in the audience. Because the Naboo don't trust shit for shit.
Their public face is so silly to hide all the truly weird shit they do behind the scenes.
They use their reputation as artist hippies to conceal multiple layers of subterfuge and disguise their methods of self defense and assuage their paranoia due to wartime trauma and their disturbing colonial past. All of them are completely off their rocker even by Star Wars standards. And I love them so much. They put on a show so everyone thinks they have them figured out but what they have going on is far more weirder and more sinister than meets the eye. You know how catty, neurotic, and competitive art school students stereotypically are? Yeah, planet art student. Love them!
honestly this goes further than anything else to explain why padme heard this bonkers greasy teenage anakin confess to her that he wiped out the entire village of native people who killed his mother, and padme (ostensibly our conscience) (actually a valedictorian of the naboo political school of move fast break things and look gorgeous doing it) was just like '👍'
also Darth Sidious is from there, too, so you can interpret him as to some extent the intersection point of everything weird about the Naboo and, uh, everything about the Sith.
like...a planet destroying laser is pretty Sith Lord, and having a Galactic Empire is classically Sith, but faking your way into being Emperor via elaborate indirect election fraud and a whole faked-up proxy war, and mounting your hyperspace-capable space laser on a deeply gratuitous whole-ass artificial moon? there's distinct traces of Naboo aesthetic sensibility showing through there.
also he hates his home planet, which we may assume is why after becoming emperor and having no more reason to please anybody but himself, he wore nothing but an ankle-length hoodie for twenty-five years.
An idea, a feeling became clear to me. The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. Perhaps, I thought, this was the way of the world. It would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.
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"Death before detransition" as a rallying cry may feel good to repeat.
But ultimately I don't think it's helpful. The people who want you to detransition don't want you to exist. A dead trans person accomplishes their goals just fine.
Our goal is to survive. By any means necessary. Some people that will mean detransitioning for safety. It's soul crushing, but one day you'll have the opportunity to be yourself and you have to be here for it. Some people will have to go or remain stealth, severing any ties with their transness for their own safety. Two closets across the hall from each other each with their own challenges. But there is safety in the closet and you can survive in there despite the challenges.
Your only responsibility is to survive.
There are going to be visible trans people. People who can't or won't detransition for their own reasons. Or who have enough safety that they don't need to. Some who won't survive if they detransition and some who are staying visible so that they can be seen. To remind every we are here.
Fuck death. Your only goal is to survive by any means necessary. Your existence is resistance enough.
#we don't need more voices telling trans people to die # we need more voices telling them to live #so consider this me running through the hall telling everyone to live that one day we will get to stand in the sun #but you have to be alive to make it there
It was right those are good tags. I'm putting them in the post.
Existence is resistance. Survive by any means necessary.
I think maybe there is a bit of a misunderstand or assumption about phrases like this, and it comes from blending the messaging of a movement and the individual choices of a trans person.
There are many trans people who would rather die than be forced to live a lie. There are people who ultimately will take their own lives because they cannot live how they need to. There are also people who will go stealth and keep their head down. There are people who will stay closeted until they can live their lives how they need to. Some will stay closeted for a long time. Some will take the secret to their graves.
"Death Before Transition" is not the insistence that every trans person must either be out and open or die. It is not opposed to doing what one must to survive. I think you are absolutely right OP, about how we need to live, but I don't think the messages are in conflict.
Because those who are stealth, those who are quiet, are not spared from death WITHOUT people being loud, being proud, being OUT and fighting.
There is no shame in being stealth, there is no shame in being closeted, there is no shame in detransitioning--either because you weren't what you thought, or it isn't safe to be what you are.
But being quiet, keeping your head down, does not move the needle. It doesn't even guarantee safety. And it does not free us.
Individual safety and collective liberation are two elements, but the individual relies on the movement to ever have a chance to be anything but stealth and closeted.
It is "I'm doing what I must to survive" and "I'm doing what I must so that we all can live"
"Death before detransition" means we are prepared to fight to the death for our right to live, and you (our oppressors) will not take that from us.
We need more people to live to see the day the fight is won. So yes, survive by any means possible--living to see another day is its own resistance in a world that wants us gone!
At one point I wanted nothing more than to be stealth and quiet and live my life without scrutiny, then I realized that the silence did not give me more freedom--those loudly fighting did.
I firmly believe in "death before detransition" not because I'm never stealth or that I'm out to everyone I meet, but because we as a collective will never go back to secrecy, the only path forward is our liberation, and we are gonna fight for it.
Yes, some who fight will die, some who don't fight will die too, by their oppressor's hand and by their own. The closet can protect you, but it is not bulletproof.
But if everyone stopped fighting and focused on just surviving until tomorrow, we will lose.
