If You Like It, Put A Ring On It ;)

made a crab out of paper,, life is good

Different Stories Resonate with Different People

Guys look at this GIANT millipede!! Free pattern from Projectarian! 🐛✨

Definitely want to make one myself!

Oh? *perks in interest* Quinlan/Hevy? Is this a Dominos lives fic? Whose the time traveler? I already have so many questions lol

“Of all the places,” Fives complains. “It couldn’t have been Geonosis or one of the fronts or even Coruscant. Of course we’re getting stuffed out of the way on some moon somewhere.”

Hevy rolls his eyes, checking his pack one more time and then closing the pouches. There's something caught between anxiety and anticipation curled in his stomach, and a heavy thread of resignation as well, because he’s not any happier to be heading for the Rishi moon base than Fives is, but—

But at least they graduated. At least they're moving on, and not stuck on sanitation for the rest of the war, or decommissioned. At least they're doing something.

“What, did you think we were going to get assigned to General Windu or something?” Droidbait asks, bemused, and drops from his bunk. “We’re not ARCs.”

“Not yet,” Echo says, daring him to contradict that. When Droidbait just raises his hands in silent surrender, Echo snorts, and says, “Experience is a good idea before we go for the ARC program. The regulations about teams applying—”

Cutup groans and throws a sock at him. “We all want to be ARCs, and we all know the regulations. Shut your mouth already.”

Given the way Echo is eyeing the distance between Cutup’s bunk and the floor, the odds that he’s about to throw himself across the space and wrestle Cutup down are good, so Hevy pitches his voice to carry and says, “An hour at most ‘til we need to assemble, so can it and move faster.”

Cutup huffs, and Echo glares, but before either of them can say anything there's a quiet chuckle. Hevy jerks, wrenching around to find a familiar figure in the doorway, tall and slim and graceful.

“General Ti!” he says, startled, and Droidbait almost falls out of his bunk as the rest of Domino scrambles to come to attention.

General Ti smiles at them, folding her hands in front of her. “Domino Squad,” she says kindly. “Congratulations again on passing your tests. It was most impressive.”

Hevy won't admit to the seed of something that goes hot and liquid in his chest, hearing one of the High Generals say that. “Thank you, sir,” he says. “Is something wrong, sir?” Because she can't have come all this way to congratulate them, even if she’s kind; there are hundreds of thousands of clones she oversees, not even accounting for her duties as a Jedi.

For a moment, General Ti weighs that. “Not wrong,” she allows. “But I have a request to make of the five of you.”

Hevy blinks, glancing over at Cutup, but he looks equally surprised. Echo is frowning a little, and Droidbait is opening his mouth, but Fives beats him to the question.

“A request?” he asks, stepping forward. “For us?”

That edge of incredulity should be insulting, but…it’s really just accurate. Even if Domino passed their tests, they're still rookies. Rancor Battalion is stationed on Kamino, and Colt is never far from General Ti’s side; if she wants something, she can just ask him. Hevy's proud of them, and what they managed, but they're not exactly Kamino’s best. Not by a long shot.

Ti just smiles, though. “Yes,” she confirms, like it’s ridiculous to think that she wouldn’t ask five rookies for a favor. Stepping into the room, she glances around, then says, “I am sorry to leave it to such short notice, but a Jedi I am well-acquainted with requested I assign him a squad of troopers ready to ship out immediately, and I believe Domino would be a good fit.”

Droidbait blinks and closes his mouth.

“A Jedi?” Hevy asks, not quite able to believe it. There are so many clones, and so few Jedi; the odds of serving directly under a general before they’ve even made ARC trooper is almost ridiculous, and yet General Ti looks perfectly serious.

“A Jedi,” Ti confirms, and pauses, expression shifting to something that’s touched with concern for a moment before it clears. “He is a friend, and an…unconventional Jedi, but given Domino’s ability to overcome obstacles, I had thought to introduce you.” Her smile flickers into something warm as she looks them over, and she says, “It is not an order, of course. Should you wish to continue on to your assignment without change, that is perfectly understandable. But I believe you would be well suited.”

Hevy can't quite find anything to say. It seems too good to be true, like everything he’s ever fantasized about when he’s thought about ridiculous scenarios and winning medals right out of training and all the other stupid bantha shit trainees are supposed to dream about, but—

Actually achieving it is something else entirely.

i’m on an fdf kick rn and i’m abt to fucking ramble

ardyn feels like his head had gotten smashed in with the heaviest hammer he can’t even fathom existed. like the draconian just tried to kill him with a sword through his head

it takes him a little while to sort through memories—which is weird, he can’t remember daemonifying someone and taking their memories, but he supposes he will—and then pauses as he remembers the chosen queen ascending to claim her divine throne and kill him, eyes bloody and red, face twisted up in grief and resignation as her sword plunges into his chest to kill him

i await you in the beyond, he’d said. carefully, confusedly, he scans the room. it is his office in gralea, with the paperwork he enjoys to mess up on purpose on his desk with ink spilt over it and onto the floor. ink that matches the black on his fingers. and it is ink—he knows that for a fact.

and then he thinks, chosen queen? the title is the chosen king. not queen—not king—not queen—

ardyn grabs his head and grits his teeth. this, he thinks, is the most disorienting experience he has had.

then more memories sort through, gentle and teasing, just like the oracle and queen who had propped themselves up against ardyn’s side and talked to him in the beyond. well after ardyn had been purified and cured of the starscourge. his niece nocitfera and his granddaughter lunafreya had remained there with him despite them being able to move on, even though ardyn could not.

noctifera had done something (of course she had, his niece was many things, but overly lucky she was not) and the beyond began to get swallowed up before all six of the astrals came swooping in and panicking and sweeping them away—

and then ardyn woke up in his office in gralea with another set of memories. and they were another set of memories, ardyn can tell. he is not the ardyn that had been purified and bonded with those two girls in body even if he most certainly is in mind and heart. no, he was the ardyn that was fated to be killed by a chosen king not a chosen queen.

and he was still infected. the starscourge was crawling at his mind, slithering around in his body. he frowns as he turns away to look at the mirror and looks at unnatural gold eyes—different from when he overused his magic. this was from the scourge and it makes him frown harder at the mirror.

then he pulls away and answers a call from verstael with a half-hearted tap of the phone screen and lifts it up to give route greetings and go through the motions when verstael eagerly cuts him off, talking about a fleuret and a lucis caelum practically landing in his lap.

ardyn nearly smashes his phone to bits, but acts pleasantly surprised and intrigued and extracts a location with only minor buttering up and a promise to not start anything until he got there. he wants to say hello to these two wayward souls.

and... even if they’re not noctifera and lunafreya, they’re his. his nibling and grandchild. verstael’s hands would get sawed off if he even thought about touching them without any given permission.

but there they were. noctifera and lunafreya, both seeming to be teenagers and trussed up with cuffs and magic suppressors. both of his girls glaring at verstael and only looking at him when he says, “well! i must say, this is a surprise!” and he looks over them worriedly, frowning.

then he spins on his heel and demands, “let them out.”

verstael pales and ardyn distantly registers that his true face is on and the scourge is flowing in the air around him.

“uncle,” says noctifera. ardyn looks over at her. “you can’t just daemonify him.”

“i wasn’t planning on it, my dear niece,” he informs her honestly, but dramatically. “i don’t want him in my head.” then he perches his hands on his hips and saunters forwards, watching the cuffs pop open and feeling the jammer turn off. “you two should be home, my dears.”

“what,” wheezes verstael in the background.

“in a moment,” ardyn says dismissively. he grins at them, winks, and then crosses his arms, mock-sternly.

“it’s not our fault astrals decided to kidnap us,” lunafreya defends half-heartedly. “well, it’s not mine.”

noctifera huffs, but doesn’t argue.

ardyn sighs and then resigns himself to secretly buying a new house in gralea—his was too small to have housed two girls and an adult man for long. “i suppose if you’ve been abducted by the astrals, it’s fine. the least they could’ve done was put you closer to me, honestly. you two aren’t allows to go off on your own.”

“we try not to,” lunafreya tells him. “but sometimes the temptation is there and we do.”

oh. so they wandered off. did they land close by and see him dissociating through sorting the influx of memories and wander away? probably.

ardyn turns to verstael, who’s watching this with a pale face. “regardless, girls, we seem to have been rude. verstael, these two are—”

“i’m flora izunia,” lunafreya says, “ardyn’s daughter.”

“vespera izunia,” noctifera says, “his niece.”

and ardyn grins at verstael’s suddenly chalk-white face.

Dragon Comic - Table of Contents

I've noticed that a lot of people started following me for the dragon comic, so here's a sort of landing page (pinned post) where I'll keep all the parts if and when I update the story!

pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4

From a Christian stand, would it be fair to consider Nationalism the worship of a false idol?

You know those anime meta posts along the lines of “I was born with pink hair. The doctors told my parents I was a Main Character and ever since my life has not known peace from demons/spirits/sports competitions/harems who find me”

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

He’s rising up, his every dream within his grasp. Until one day he gets a note under his door, taped to an old picture of his Normal Boring self from middle school, that says “You don’t belong”

RB if you think CD drives in computers are not obsolete, but in fact still necessary, despite being artificially phased out

OK So with the shit with the USPS going on:

1. Check your Voter registration to make sure everything is up to date.  If you can, request a Mail-In Ballot.  I live in CO, where all elections are Mail-In only now, so I get one anyway.

2. Fill out your ballot per the instructions on your Ballot.  Some Notes:

Read Instructions thoroughly, and fill out your Ballot in private.

Do NOT post pictures of your Ballot as this may invalidate it.  DO Post pictures of your “I Voted” sticker.

Make sure to vote for all the offices up for election- as important as the presidential election is, your mayor, governer, local school board and sherrif have a MUCH bigger impact on your immediate safety and quality of life.  Google your candidates, look up the Leauge of Women Voter’s Guides for a reliably Impartial rundown of your local candidates. 

Remember also that it is better to have someone in office that is only moderately incompotent, than it is to have someone that actively wants you dead.  It is the first step to having someone worthwhile next time.

If you wanted a third party option, your local elections are the best place to do this- my own city council has several Green Party members and it got me city-sponsored single-stream recycling! Its also moving the state legislature significantly farther left.

3. INSTEAD OF MAILING IT- LOOK UP WHERE YOUR BALLOT DROP-OFF LOCATIONS ARE. 

They’re boxes you drive or walk or bus or bike or whatever up to and drop your ballot in, and the elections officials will have it that evening. Pros of Ballot Drop-Off:

Can be turned in the same day you reccive your ballot, if you want to get this over with ASAP

Open 24/7, so you can drop it off whenever

Absolutely guaranteed to get your vote counted, regardless of what Donald does with the Post Office.

No waiting in line

No exposing yourself to the coronavirus

Most cities will have several ballot Drop-Off locations, at places like the grocery store, the county courthouse, city hall, at high schools etc.  Google your town or county name and “Ballot Drop Off Locations” and it’ll give you directions even.

Absolutely Save the USPS, but this is the BEST way to make sure your vote gets counted this