Trans guy looking fly

Music

Gnoosic is your place go for new music recommendations. It asks for three of your favourite bands, and based on them, spits out an artist that you might like. You can also “like”, “dislike”, or mark it as something you aren’t familiar with – which further refines the results.

NoCopyrightSounds is a copyright free / stream safe record label, providing free to use music to the content creator community. NCS Music is free to use for independent Creators and their UGC (User Generated Content) on YouTube & Twitch - always remember to credit the Artist, track and NCS and link back to our original NCS upload.

Radio Garden take a trip 'round the world's airwaves! Just pick a city — literally any city — and Radio Garden will play you whatever its local radio station is broadcasting.

Radiooooo Radio Garden walked so Radiooooo could run. This site adds a timeline function so you can listen to radio from not just anywhere, but anywhen. Get down to those 1910s Germany bops!

Art

Krita free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation.It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and Chrome OS

29a.ch interactive site that lets you color what looks to be a map of the cosmos, but I'm honestly not sure. Whatever it is, it's mesmerizing.

Games

Patatap is an interactive website that responds to the keys on your keyboard with a sound and a brief animation. Now imagine hammering in entire sentences – and you got an explosion of sounds, colors, and movement! Once you start typing in random paragraphs, it becomes almost hypnotic, in a way.

Drench a very simple browser game, Drench gives you a board with different colored tiles, and you use the buttons to flip the colors around. Do this until your board is full of tiles of a single color only.

River Styx an interactive point-and-click game that takes you through the river Styx and the Underworld. You will meet many Greek Gods and Goddesses here, and you will also be learning a lot about their myths and legends.

2048 this website lets you play a game called 2048, which is kinda like Tetris but with addition. Use your arrow keys to try to combine numbers until you reach 2048, or go ~beyond~ and try to reach 4096.

Little Alchemy 2 fun little time killer. As its name suggests, the website deals with the process of transformation you achieve when you start mixing different things. You start with Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. The goal is to create as many different materials or objects as possible. For example, earth and air will form dust. There are no rules just mix and match your creations to create new ones. You will not even know where your time went.

Akinator website is magic or rather feels like one. You can think of any character in this entire world and through a series of question, it will deduce the name. Don’t believe me, go try for yourself.

Find the Invisible Cow You’re going to want to make sure your sound is on in this fun finding game! Find the invisible cow in this laugh out loud version of hot and cold.

CookieClicker How fast can you click for cookies? Level up and become a cookie pro with this fun time-wasting website!

Knowledge

Zooniverse A really neat website that brings people together to create one of the largest platforms for people-powered research. Volunteers come together to assist professional researchers. There is no need for a specialised background or training; all you have to do is to answer simple questions.

Cool Hunting is a really cool publication platform that uncovers the latest in design, technology, style, travel, art and culture. If you are into art, architecture, and culture, then this website is perfect for you.

OCEARCH Shark Tracker This one looks right on the money for the folks who can’t get enough of sharks! With OCEARCH Shark Tracker, you can keep a track of tagged sharks as they are busy swimming around the deep ocean. Moreover, the website also lets you zoom in on a particular location to check where sharks have been swimming for the past year.

Ad Astra-app An essential tool for every astronomer. The star atlas and skyguide that makes it really easy to pick the best objects, make your own observation list and use it when you are outside

100,000 Stars is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on the web. It shows a representation of galaxy with stars inside it. You can take a tour which starts from the Sun and takes you to the outer edges of the galaxy while teaching you valuable insights in between.

wikiHow is an online wiki-style publication featuring how-to articles on a variety of topics. For example: How to make ginger ale, How change a lock or How to survive an encounter with an ostrich.

Cooking

Cooking for Engineers is a godsend for those who love to cook. This website has it all, from recipes, to kitchen gear, to cooking tests, down to a handy dictionary. The best part about this website is its classic 90’s layout, which makes accessing the recipes and files intuitive and easier.

My Fridge Food at this point, your fridge probs has, like, three random items in it, and you're starting to panic about meal options. Enter My Fridge Food, which inputs everything you have in your kitchen and outputs a recipe. Bless.

Work, or relax

Da Font Tired of your basic Times New Roman? You can spend hours downloading new fonts from typography artists to spice up your new document!

A Soft Murmur If you’re looking to create your own ambient background music to listen to while you work or read, A Soft Murmur is the fun website for you! Create your own mix of white noise and other natural sounds to relax and waste some time.

Rainy Mood Get all the benefits of rain without getting caught in it with Rainy Mood! This is perfect for setting a relaxed and chilled out mood.

I Waste So Much Time The website is designed to literally allow you to waste your time. There are no long articles, just funny pictures with embedded texts. A very good time waster for short breaks.

This Is My Website Now The website truly kills your time. It is just a collection of small games which you can play on your browser. Effective for less than 10 minutes of usage, it’s good for a short break.

Instructables If you’ve always wanted to learn how to DIY but didn’t know where to start, try Instructables. They have community posts with step-by-step instructions to help you become a DIY master in no time.

OBS Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers. only downside to it is that you have a power director watermark in the corner of your video, but its not very large.

Sleepytime is your sleeping schedule out of whack? This fun website calculates exactly when you need to go to sleep and wake up in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Boredom

MapCrunch Go on an adventure without leaving your home — because you can't! This site plops you down in a random location on the globe, and all that's left to do is explore.

List of Conspiracy Theories Get sucked down the dark rabbit hole of the internet that will have you denying history and wearing tinfoil hats. Wikipedia’s list of conspiracy theories will have you scrolling for ages!

This Person Does Not Exist If AI and deep-fakes fascinate you, this is a website that will either make you very excited, or give you nightmares about whether ‘The Matrix’ is real, and if you, at some point in your life, took the blue pill instead of the red one. Either way, the website generates fake people using GAN (or generative adversarial networks), and displays them to you. You can refresh the page to see a different face. Also, if this interests you, you might also like:

This Cat Does Not Exist. You know, because why stare at human faces when you can look at cats instead.

The Useless Web Want to see what the Internet truly has to offer? Take a peek at The Useless Web to see what truly is out there.

Not Always Right Had a bad day at work? Did that one annoying, pesky customer or client who just wouldn’t shut up tried to give you a hard time, and succeeded? Then this website is just perfect for you! It’s a collection of stories about customers who just don’t know when to shut up.

Zoom Quilt If you're looking to be hypnotized, then check out this site, which is basically a picture that infinitely zooms in to reveal new pictures.

Just for fun

Tickld is your go-to spot for anything humorous and funny, for anything that’s really cool and interesting, or stuff that’s just plain WTF.

Paper Toilet Just because stores are sold out of toilet paper doesn't mean you have to live without. This site features some interactive TP that you can roll up or down.

The Passive-Aggressive Password Machine Type a password (real or fake) into this site and it'll shade you for how much it sucks.

CoolThings is a collection of cool things. From entertainment, to gadgets, to even toys and inventions, there is bound to be something here that will interest you.

This Is Why I Am Broke This is a great website for discovering new gift ideas which are distinct. The products range from a few dollars to a few thousand. There’s something for everyone here.

PostSecret is a very interesting website. Visitors are encouraged to send in anonymous postcards on which they write their secrets. There are all sorts of secrets on all kinds of postcards, and the variations make this a really interesting project. However, be warned – these secrets are very real… and very heavy.

NOIYS – Post, read, forget is a place to post an anonymous note to be viewed by many people, only to be deleted within 24 hours. It’s the perfect website for venting anonymously and not worry about the consequences, as it will be deleted within a day. The best part (or maybe worst) is that strangers can reply to your note, too. That way, you can have a running conversation with a complete stranger.

Scream Into the Void Take your outrage about our current situation (or any problem in your life) and throw it into the void. Just type out your feels and then click the "Scream" button, which does exactly what you think it does.

And lastly...

Dildo Generator Welcome, good citizens of the web, to my favorite site of all time. It's right in the name: You can generate a custom dildo by length, width, base, contours, and so many more variables. Things get wild pretty fast.

Eyebleach Did you see something on the internet that was just too scary? Or just need to get it out of your head? Click on Eyebleach to be fed adorable pictures of puppies, kitties, or babies!

- Muspy: Track when your favorite artists have a new album coming out via RSS feed.

I had to deal with this recently after years of labouring on a manuscript and stressing about criticism and backlash (because writers get loads of negative attention now) and had to basically drop this project and not write for several weeks because that was causing the burnout.

I floundered for a while.

I figured making things with my hands was probably good. As was learning things and exploring new stories by watching movies I'd never seen before, learning about parts of movie history I had never known--found some really good documentaries on exploitation films, 80s horror, nudity and censorship in film, drive-ins--and generally just trying to take a vacation from my profession--which, I realise now, I have never done before in all my 20+ years of writing.

I think the solution to burnout is a vacation. A real vacation. A leave-your-phone-behind, don't-post-about-it vacation. Even a weekend would help. If you can go somewhere else for a weekend, do it. If you can't, well, put your phone away and go to the movies, or just watch an old movie at home. If you can walk, go on a walk around your neighbourhood and explore like you might have if you were a kid. Ride bikes. Roll in the grass at a park. Go to the thrift store and find something you can fix up or decorate and make it yours--we found a little bookcase and painted stripes on it and now it holds all our board games, as an example. If you have a yard, go mess around with it. If you don't, find some containers and put dirt and flower seeds in them--even dandelion seeds, which are free and everywhere! Draw on the wallpaper with sharpies, or get some acrylic paint from the craft store and paint an old bedsheet and hang it up if you rent.

Engage with the world that materially exists and do something that only benefits you, that only you know about--don't post about it! Try not posting about your life for a while, not scrolling. Put the phone down and change your environment a little.

I started really throwing myself into this lately, and it helps.

I think burnout is talked about like some big scary monster that can't be solved by regular people suffering it (because who the fuck has the money to do nothing for YEARS on end???). But I truly think burnout is just what happens when you don't take a vacation regularly.

You don't need a lot of money to take a vacation, you can do it with your regular days off. My mom used to take us on random vacations on weekends. She didn't know where we were going, we just started driving and she would keep turning toward things that were interesting to look at, until we were in Solvang or Idyllwild or somewhere and she would see a neat little motel and we'd stop and stay there for saturday night, and on sunday we'd wander around and go places that looked interesting in that little spot, and then go back home. This was back when gas and motels were a lil cheaper, but the idea is you don't have to plan a vacation and it doesn't have to be very long to be good and fun.

In the sunfish’s defense!!!!!

Revolting little machine I hope someone guy fawkeses you too.

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!

Cody's trembling breathing sounds very loud in the confines of his helmet.

The sensory ports have shut down. Exactly what they're designed to do, when external input exceeds capacity-- preventing permanent blinding, reducing the risk of hearing loss.

His heartbeat jackhammers at the base of his throat.

He's braced forward. Unbalanced, far enough that he would fall flat were it not for an existing opposition, and then he registers it: the shifting pressure of a terrible wind. Beyond that, the isolation is total. The darkness is absolute, without a hint of shadow. The only sound he can hear is his own panting. Underneath his hand, through his feet, the ground is rumbling.

He'd only been a few feet away from Kenobi. He'd sat close enough that their knees brushed, then-- to his feet, a step backwards in the rising-- had he moved forward at all, when he'd realized? Not wanting to die alone? And then, the lurch away, the twist into a crouch--

He could just stay here.

Keep the helmet on, keep the world narrow, and let death-- if it comes-- take him by surprise. If it doesn't, well, someone will draw him up eventually. There will be a friendly hand, and a living brother, and a next battle.

But what if there isn't?

Most of the camp had been asleep. They'd had, what, fifteen seconds' warning? They would've reached for blasters and comms, not buckets. What if inhalation is ignition? What if this narrow air is the only safety left? What if they're already dead, and he is alone--?

No.

He reaches up, cracks the seal, and lifts the helmet.

The storm slams in like a tsunami.

Cody stays close to the ground. Nearly blind in the face of the unending flash, deafened by the undying roar of noise-- he crouches in a crab-walk, shifts sideways, forward, sweeping the ground in a slow and regular motion with an outstretched hand. Echoes of vast convulsions shudder up his arms and make his teeth jump in his skull. The dust smears across the fingers of his glove, slivers of copper on black. He resists the urge to raise a sheltering arm and stares determinedly ahead. A few feet forward. Three feet, maximum--

There. A flash of red. He claws his way forward, faceplants when the ground convulses under him and gags on a mouthful of dust--

"Sir!"

The noise is unbelievable.

And the light--

Kenobi didn't stop the explosion. They're in the explosion.

And yet. Not dead.

Cody stumbles back to his knees and crawls forward. Head down, bracing, reaching out. It feels interminable, feels like miles, but finally he catches another flicker-- closer, this time-- of red hair, of a brown robe, of a scabbed hand clutching at the dusty earth. He reaches forward, closes a hand over Kenobi's--

His fingers go straight through.

Cody stares for a long, horrible moment.

Then the ground bucks again and the horror is broken. He loses his balance once more and tumbles onto his side, squeezes his eyes shut against the rushing light, thinks furiously--

Okay. Okay.

He just missed. That's all. He's as Force-sensitive as a brick; he doesn't get to fade through things. He just missed. Never mind that Kenobi has pulled off miracles before. Never mind that he's huddled in the midst of another one. He just missed. They're crouched in the middle of a lightning strike; what visibility exists is patchworked and streaked. He just missed.

People don't turn transparent.

Cody knows this. He knows this. He thinks about how much he knows this; he grits his teeth and focuses and holds it in the center of his mind until the rest of the world fades around it. He knows as well Kenobi's hands: broad and gentle and stained with blood in every crease. Patting shoulders and patching wounds and and punching like a brawler and constantly losing his godsdamned lightsaber.

He does not think. He does not hope. That's for people who don't know. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and knows where Kenobi's hand will be, and he clambers upright and reaches, fumbles, scratches through dust, and when his fingers close over scarred knuckles he does not permit himself relief-- he slides his hand up, knowing he will find wrist and arm and all the rest, and when he does he hooks an arm around Kenobi's shoulders and digs his fingers into the muscle and holds the knowing of him too tightly--

Patchwork glimpses:

Underneath them, a splintering ground. The groaning earth sounds in his bones. The cracks open narrow but deep, webbing out from seized-up fingers and vanishing into a distance made unreal.

A radiating heat, along every point of contact. Plastoid softens, begins to bubble. Pain knocks at the edge of his awareness; Cody ignores it.

Too much give under his hand. Sensation, not sound: of tearing, warping, the wrong kind of remaking. He tastes copper, turns his head to the side, spits. The wad of bloody phlegm vanishes before it hits the ground, into the rush of light and wind and roaring sound.

From above:

A burst of white light.

A heat that makes the shields glow red.

A hollowing out. Draining a yolk without breaking the shell.

A cracking of the shell, and a disintegration.

An unexpected carpet of green.

There is only so much to be seen, a hundred miles up. Landing transports are dispatched immediately.

There are no scouting droids to be found. But if one was discovered and prepared and loaded and deployed in the time before the transports were launched--

(A tall order, to be sure, for the crew left aboard the ship will move very quickly indeed to maintain their refusal of stunned dismay--)

And if it were to dive down--

Down through the thick and fan-like leaves, each one larger than a man's head; down through the knotted wood from which sprout buds of shimmering white; down through the yellowed ivy shading eucalyptic bark; down through the tiny, star-like flowers dotting towering trees with splashes of orange--

Down through pink and draping pitcher plants, suffused with a sickly sweet scent; down through branches laden with violet figs so ripe as to be splitting at the seams; down through waxen, pebble-like leaves that glint oddly under the dawning sunlight; down through colonies of pale blue fungi looping across trunks large enough that a dozen men with their arms outstretched could not cover the whole breadth--

Down towards clusters of red pickleweed that fan in sweeping carpets across the cracked earth; down towards frond-like ferns embossed with fingerprint-like whorls; down towards dew-dappled moss that bounces back when touched and betrays nothing of its dusty roots; down towards the low-lying bushes bearing all manner of wildberries; down towards the patches of four-pronged nettles that rattle threateningly at the change in the wind--

It would find, in the middle of all of this, a barren crater.

It would find, in this cracked and splintered pit, two men.

It would log without understanding: the first figure crouched over the second, twisting, auditory input spiking, the cracking shout of Helix! Helix!; the latter thrown prone, spasming, back bowing clear off the ground, white lightning cracking muscle and bone--

Perhaps it would linger long enough to catch the third: slip-sliding down the last fifty feet of a towering redwood, leaping the last ten and rolling into a sprint, skidding down the side of the crater in a cloud of dust, the vanguard of a churning movement in the canopy--

Perhaps.

"Talk."

"He ate a neutron bomb," Cody grits out. He'd slipped a hand under Obi-Wan's head when the latter had folded into a seizure, but the next spasm had hit with an inhuman force and he'd felt something crack. Helix's hands are moving very quickly from where he's crouched over Obi-Wan's chest-- something sharp catches the light, but Cody refuses to be distracted; he cannot look away from his face.

Whatever he'd done-- it's eating him alive. Cody had caught him when he'd first fallen, had already been braced for it, only to let go almost immediately when he'd looked down. A flash of white lightning tore a bloody gash down the side of his face, deep enough to see bone, but he'd barely had time to realize what he was looking at before the next streak seared it shut like a bad dream-- only for a gaping wound to open over the cloudy eye, reducing it to pulp until a half-second later all was well again-- then a spray of blood from a freshly-opened jugular caught Cody on the forehead, too hot, the next second the only proof of its origin--

His fingers, curled in Obi-Wan's, slip slick and red for one terrible moment; he doesn't dare look at his gloves. Splotches of a dark wetness bloom on dusty tunics that cave in suddenly in odd places; Cody forces his thoughts to rain and nothing else. A blast radius opens up across his lower jaw, showing teeth from the wrong angle; Cody folds over him and snaps don't you leave me to do this by myself, thinking very hard not of those who did but rather of every brother who still breathes--

And it works.

Half-lidded eyes shine a terrifying, too-bright, crackling white, but what remains of the explosion lancing across visible skin draws no more fresh blood in its wake. The worst of the bone-cracking seizure eases into a wave of full-body trembling; arms and legs twitch inwards as if trying to keep warm. Fingers clench and relax in an unsteady rhythm around Cody's own, and Cody presses his forehead to Obi-Wan's and hisses it again: an order, good soldiers follow orders,but the latter half catches in his throat and it turns into don't you leave, don't you leave, don't you leave--

Then Helix skids to a stop next to them, and the world opens up.

Talk, he says, but what is there to say? The words are too glib but they're the only ones he has. Helix is too good of a man to waste time on questions, and in truth it doesn't matter if he believes Cody or not. Metal flashes once, twice; Helix makes a satisfied noise and leans back on his heels, and a silence Cody hadn't even recognized yields to a whistling wheeze through the straw in Obi-Wan's throat.

"Collapsed airway," Helix says shortly, misreading Cody's expression. "It'll hold until a medevac gets here. Needle'll take over here, I'll comm the secondaries on board to prep the theater. Anything I need to know?"

Above them: the growing whine of engines.

He can't say it out loud. If he speaks it into existence, it becomes real; if it becomes real, Obi-Wan is dead, because there is no way a body survives all of that. It had been only him who'd seen it, after all, and Helix has mentioned nothing about the smear of blood, wet and hot, that had caught him in the face. Perhaps he'd only imagined it. Extraordinary exposure to neutronic radiation messes with perception; they'll all have to go through a decontamination cycle back on board. Maybe it wasn't real. It doesn't have to be real.

(But if Helix leaves, not knowing--)

"Don't let go."

Helix glances up at him, startled, and Cody recalls the way Obi-Wan's hand had slipped through his own like so much light and thinks he turned into a reflection--

"Don't let go of him," he repeats, and Helix, unquestioning, nods.

He curles a hand around Obi-Wan's wrist, fingers to the pulse point. Looks up, nods again.

"Easy," he says, and his lips quirk upwards in a humorless smile. "I don't think I'll be letting go for a bit."

So Cody untangles his fingers from bloody hair. He catches the edge of Obi-Wan's hand, eases his own out, and tells himself he doesn't see blind eyes flick towards him or hear a wounded sound from a torn-open throat. Obi-Wan would not want him to abandon their men, especially not for him.

The first transport lands.

And Cody unfolds himself, steps back on shaking legs, and turns away.

He trudges up the side of the barren crater. His fingers twitch at his side, uneasy at the empty space. Behind him, Helix's voice rises like thunder, shouting orders and cussing out the hapless pilot in equal measure.

As of this morning I was reluctantly looking for jobs because I love my job and don't want to leave it, but see: $10k raise problem solver.

As of noon today this was no longer an issue, because my boss called me with the news that I was getting a $10K merit raise.

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This is roughly $200 extra per paycheck. Enough to pay off debt faster, rebuild my savings, and spend a weekend a month in Milwaukee getting obscenely laid. The sex I'm going to have on $200 extra per paycheck. You can't even.

@jedijune // Compassion

Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.

Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.

Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.

I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation

Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!

Cody's trembling breathing sounds very loud in the confines of his helmet.

The sensory ports have shut down. Exactly what they're designed to do, when external input exceeds capacity-- preventing permanent blinding, reducing the risk of hearing loss.

His heartbeat jackhammers at the base of his throat.

He's braced forward. Unbalanced, far enough that he would fall flat were it not for an existing opposition, and then he registers it: the shifting pressure of a terrible wind. Beyond that, the isolation is total. The darkness is absolute, without a hint of shadow. The only sound he can hear is his own panting. Underneath his hand, through his feet, the ground is rumbling.

He'd only been a few feet away from Kenobi. He'd sat close enough that their knees brushed, then-- to his feet, a step backwards in the rising-- had he moved forward at all, when he'd realized? Not wanting to die alone? And then, the lurch away, the twist into a crouch--

He could just stay here.

Keep the helmet on, keep the world narrow, and let death-- if it comes-- take him by surprise. If it doesn't, well, someone will draw him up eventually. There will be a friendly hand, and a living brother, and a next battle.

But what if there isn't?

Most of the camp had been asleep. They'd had, what, fifteen seconds' warning? They would've reached for blasters and comms, not buckets. What if inhalation is ignition? What if this narrow air is the only safety left? What if they're already dead, and he is alone--?

No.

He reaches up, cracks the seal, and lifts the helmet.

The storm slams in like a tsunami.

Cody stays close to the ground. Nearly blind in the face of the unending flash, deafened by the undying roar of noise-- he crouches in a crab-walk, shifts sideways, forward, sweeping the ground in a slow and regular motion with an outstretched hand. Echoes of vast convulsions shudder up his arms and make his teeth jump in his skull. The dust smears across the fingers of his glove, slivers of copper on black. He resists the urge to raise a sheltering arm and stares determinedly ahead. A few feet forward. Three feet, maximum--

There. A flash of red. He claws his way forward, faceplants when the ground convulses under him and gags on a mouthful of dust--

"Sir!"

The noise is unbelievable.

And the light--

Kenobi didn't stop the explosion. They're in the explosion.

And yet. Not dead.

Cody stumbles back to his knees and crawls forward. Head down, bracing, reaching out. It feels interminable, feels like miles, but finally he catches another flicker-- closer, this time-- of red hair, of a brown robe, of a scabbed hand clutching at the dusty earth. He reaches forward, closes a hand over Kenobi's--

His fingers go straight through.

Cody stares for a long, horrible moment.

Then the ground bucks again and the horror is broken. He loses his balance once more and tumbles onto his side, squeezes his eyes shut against the rushing light, thinks furiously--

Okay. Okay.

He just missed. That's all. He's as Force-sensitive as a brick; he doesn't get to fade through things. He just missed. Never mind that Kenobi has pulled off miracles before. Never mind that he's huddled in the midst of another one. He just missed. They're crouched in the middle of a lightning strike; what visibility exists is patchworked and streaked. He just missed.

People don't turn transparent.

Cody knows this. He knows this. He thinks about how much he knows this; he grits his teeth and focuses and holds it in the center of his mind until the rest of the world fades around it. He knows as well Kenobi's hands: broad and gentle and stained with blood in every crease. Patting shoulders and patching wounds and and punching like a brawler and constantly losing his godsdamned lightsaber.

He does not think. He does not hope. That's for people who don't know. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and knows where Kenobi's hand will be, and he clambers upright and reaches, fumbles, scratches through dust, and when his fingers close over scarred knuckles he does not permit himself relief-- he slides his hand up, knowing he will find wrist and arm and all the rest, and when he does he hooks an arm around Kenobi's shoulders and digs his fingers into the muscle and holds the knowing of him too tightly--