think i'm not a goddess? try me.

tell someone "congratulations!" tell them "I'm so happy for you. I know you've been trying for a really long time." ask them "do you need help with anything?" throw them a party with loved ones where you all give them some gifts in acknowledgement of how expensive it is. celebrate how far along they are. take photos with them so they have a record of being loved while their body changes. allow them to voice fears and doubts and anxieties about how it'll go, and reassure them that they'll get through the intense medical procedure coming up & you'll be there for support no matter what. let them tell you about the gross parts and laugh together. really listen to them when they talk about how amazing and profound it is that the human body can do this. share in their excitement for beginning a new stage of their life.

I think cis people (especially queer cis people!!) tend to think of it more like a mental health struggle. Not in a “you need help” sort of way, but in a more “this is a personal journey for you, something that has been bothering you for a long time, something that eventually you will come out of a better and happier person, but right now all I can do is offer comfort and support because this is a battle I cannot fight on your behalf” kind of way.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries), Aylen (Murderbot Diaries), Mish (Murderbot Diaries), “Human One” Refugee (Murderbot Diaries), Original Non-Human Character(s), Soire, Dr. Ratthi - Character, Dr. Mensah (via feed), Pin-Lee (via feed) Additional Tags: discussions of trauma, Gurathin Backstory, Ratthi Backstory (brief), (I made it all up I have no idea what Martha’s plans are for this (if any)), The Corporation Rim is terrible, You Know You’re From Preservation When You Adopt Traumatized and Potentially Dangerous Refugees With No Real Plan, (congrats gura you’ve gone native I guess), Post-Book 6: Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries) Summary:

Talking to refugees is not Gurathin’s job, nor was it his idea. If Aylen sends him in and something goes wrong, it’s going to look terrible. And Pin-Lee will absolutely do something about it. But also, this whole situation has been a clusterfuck of people not knowing that a situation or a person or a bot was dangerous until things went terribly wrong, and for all I know the refugees have been waiting for someone like Gurathin to come along so they could hold him hostage.

And that wouldn’t be as bad as GrayCris taking Mensah hostage again, or even as bad as Ratthi or Pin-Lee or Arada or Overse or Bharadwaj or even Volescu being taken hostage by literally anyone. But I still don’t want that to happen. It would look terrible, for one thing, and also Gurathin is one of my humans. I’m done letting people take my humans hostage.

I’m coming with you.

Person on screen: needs a couple pats of butter, a splash of olive oil, simmered on low with a bay leaf and a cinnamon stick. What?! You never seen a boy who knows his way around the kitchen? 

Yeah my mom always wanted a little girl but she got stuck with me instead. That wasn’t gonna stop her though so all my friends were opening up nerf guns and bmx bikes on their birthday, I was getting crockpots. 

(scene changes to the person dressed in a nice black suit jacket, bright pink dress shirt, and black tie) Yeah laugh it up! Take a picture while you’re at it 'cause this is the last time you’ll ever see me in a suit! How do boys wear these things??

Unfortunately, the hotel the team is staying at has really thin walls and consent king Troy is in the room next door. Despite his many flaws, Troy is not going to stand by and let another teammate assault someone. (He's actually so upset and angry because he thought Ilya was a great guy who always seemed to treat everyone, but especially his husband well). So Shane and Ilya, and the whole team on that floor, are interrupted by pounding on the door and Troy bellowing "Rozanov get the fuck off of him and open this door so I can kick your ass."

YES. Finally, someone asking the IMPORTANT questions!

“Well I would have brought my comb. But you kidnapped me.”

“You are just not gonna let that go, are you,” Sokka said.

“Sokka,” Katara said. “Aang did pull him into the saddle. While he was saying ‘no.’ And then we didn’t ever bring him back.”

“Because there is an evil fire-shooty admiral guy after us! ‘Us’ including him! Which I am still waiting on an explanation for, but I will at least accept a ‘thank you Team Avatar for saving me!’ ”

“Well,” Spirit said.

“Do not–”

“I would have brought my gratitude–”

“–finish that.”

“But you kidnapped me.”

He didn’t even say it accusingly. He said it while scratching the sweet spot at the base of a lemur’s tail, smiling with airy indifference, as Katara sat behind him combing out the bison-flight tangles from his ridiculously luxuriant waves of hair.

“Did you leave your dignity behind, too?” Sokka accused. “What kind of man has hair down to his butt–”

“Longer than that,” Katara reports, running her comb through just a section of that hair because they would probably both have to be standing for her to get a full swipe in.

“–and lets another man’s little sister play hair stylist? Do you not know the danger of surrendering hair control to a little sister?”

“I can think of worse things a little sister could do.” Their demure firebender kidnappee continued to smile. Sokka would have really appreciated if he’d been a surly firebending prisoner instead.

“I’m going to give you hair loops,” Katara said. “Beads or no beads?”

“No beads!” Sokka snapped.

“Just do the opposite of whatever your brother says.”

“Beads!”

“I’m so glad you agree,” his little sister said, sickly-sweet, her smile matching the firebender’s smirk.

It was stupid how good his hair looked when Katara was done. All… loopy, and beady. And every day on the flight north it got more and more complicated because there wasn’t much to do on the back of a bison, until there were tiny braidy loops and swirls intertwining everywhere and a loopy-beady high bun, and still so much hair left to cascade down his back, and it didn’t even get sufficiently ruined when the Northern waterbenders attacked even though Sokka’s hair looked like a hare-possum had died in it.

And one of their warriors offered the guy a hand down from Appa when they got to the city. What was with that?

“She’s pretty,” said warrior sighed, as all that hair went swishing after Aang and Katara.

Sokka squawked.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “Your sister?”

If you wanna land a woman like that her family ought to know you can provide for her. Just about every day some fellow or other is stopping by to drop off gifts. Fine, sharp bone needles, nice fatty blubber from the last harvest, enough meat to get into Sokka’s good graces. A basket of newly hatched puffinlemmings, they’ll be real tender simmered up in broth-

Sokka blinks and the bearer of delicious snacks is flailing and splashing in the canal. Spirit swishes inside with the meeping basket while Sokka is busy saving his fellow young water warrior from the icy grip of icy drowning. 

“So, uh. Sorry about the hypothermia, man, I guess this is it, thanks for all the meat, it’s been real-“

“Wow. She’s gonna be SUCH a great mom.“

This is what having a big sister would be like, isn’t it?

Meanwhile Sokka started out nonverbal on all this because what is his life, and progressed to playing along because even more healer training for their healer is a good move.

Having now seen and overheard way too many comparisons between his sweet demure absolute lady of an older sister and his wild boyish younger sister, Sokka is now in the Carry His Club And Use It Liberally stage. Because these northerners wouldn’t know a lady if she water-whipped them and also what does either fighting or healing or doing chores when they need doing have to do with being a lady. Or a gent.

She’s too pale, with too bright eyes, which speak of the realities of what’s been happening in the South, and other things Tarkik really doesn’t want to think about, just like her scar. But. But she’s so very, very pretty. She practically glides down when he helps her off the Avatar’s sky bison, floats over the ice. Its almost like she’s dancing, sometimes. He’s never seen her slip, never seen her anything other than graceful, even in the face of her little sisters ridiculous show of power against the North’s most powerful Waterbending Master. 

(That’s not necessarily true. She had clutched at Katara’s arm and tried to convince her to stop, he’d overheard as they’d past him while he stood on guard at the doors, panic clear on her face, marring it more than the scar ever seemed to.)

She’s graceful even when she dumps him into polar waters to save puffinlemmings from the literal stew pot. Its so sweet, he thinks, that she’s so concerned about such soft, little creatures. 

Of course, he would never presume upon her. Her younger siblings, and to a lesser extent, the Avatar, are willing to step in and defend her honor. And they’re all equally terrifying in their very own ways. Ways he grows to accept when he see’s Spirit (and what a strange name, but oddly fitting) catching the Avatar by the edge of his robes to ground him, or bullies Sokka into sitting down with them all and taking a breather, or wraps her hand around Katara’s arm to keep her from launching herself at the other benders who talk shit about her loud enough for her to overhear. 

If Tarkik sighs dreamily and leans against his spear a little when he see’s Spirit walking along the canals with Princess Yue, well. His fellow guards stopped teasing him about it days ago. After all, its hard to not appreciate just how graceful she is next to the Moon Graced Princess herself. 

He’s also noticed both the Princess and Spirit have beads and ice in their hair, now. From Spirit’s little sister, and her hair sparkles like the stars at night, and oh. Well. Quimmiq’s hand holds fast to the back of his parka, keeping him from falling off the edge of the wall. And Spirit and the Princess turn the corner and he can only grin sheepishly at the man who really looks like he was considering thumping him with the end of his spear. As if that would keep him focused on guard detail with a paragon of Northern Water Tribe femininity right in front of his eyes. 

Bro you are interrupting dress up night

First: Sokka pushes aside a door hanging. Text: Hey guys have you seen–

Second: Sokka pauses in the doorway. Just. Just staring. Text is a dot-dot-dot.

Third: We see what he’s seeing. Katara, Spirit-Zuko, and Yue are arrayed on a fluffy rug in a North Pole room, having a girl’s night. All are looking fabulous in their best outfits.

Katara leans over, chatting with them, as Yue sits behind Spirit doing their hair. Spirit is holding a hand mirror and looking mighty pleased. Behind them is an open clothes chest that has clearly been raided for dresses and other pretties, given that the extras are spilling over the side.

okay listen! the idea of herbalist!zuko form @muffinlance is funny and keept me motivated last week. there is for the first time not additional angst there. just zuko/spirith joining the gaang early with loong loong hair.  i needed to get this images out of my system. 

so thank you for muffin and every anon and person that contributed to this au! and now my bain is thinking of iroh joining his nephue, making pakkun and sokka more confused/disdraught(?)  _________________________

"We could... you know," Suki said, gesturing vaguely. "We're doing makeup already."

"I know," Spirit said, trying their hand at applying the Kyoshi Islander's lipstick the way they'd been shown. "But I like the scar."

And there was that familiar silence, of people being awkward on their behalf. Spirit pressed their lips together, evening out the red, and evaluated the results in the hand mirror another warrior had let them borrow.

"I got it trying to save lives," they said.

"Oh," one of the warriors started in, like people always started in.

"It didn't work." They handed the mirror back, and smiled. "I don't want to hide it. How about we have some fun with it, instead? And maybe afterwards you can show me how those fans of yours work."

"Do you have any experience with weapons?" Suki asked, letting the topic shift.

"Used to. Haven't touched the dao in years, though."

"Dual dao?" Suki asked. And oh, she liked the way Spirit smirked.

Which was how Spirit ended up going through the Serpent's Pass with a spare set of bladed fans, and fire lilies painted in cascading blooms over their left eye. A complement, not a cover up.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

In a book about an overbearing and baffling and misogynist God and the heroes being a ragtag regiment of literal women and monsters, I punched the air on that one. The layers of pun are built up like a millefeuille.