Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:
Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience.
Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength.
So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face.
I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage.
From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.
This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.
My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.
This may be my all time favorite post.
I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.
Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them
This post holy shit
I once worked on a production of spamalot, and we had this really wobbly wooden map that the narrator would use in his opening monologue. He would act like a weather reporter,only instead of sticking on clouds/sunshine and telling the weather, he would stick in skulls and tell how the plague was spreading. One night we were running as usual when suddenly the narrator slaps a skull on a little harder than usual, which throws the map off balance and tips it straight into the orchestra pit. This huge, heavy-ass map built from 2x4s and plywood hits the pianist on the head and knocks the lamp- the orchestra’s only source of light- onto the floor, and the lamp shatters. The orchestra goes the rest of the show squinting to read their music by a tiny book light, and mess up about half a dozen times because they can’t see shit
I was once in a production of the lion king at my school. There were 3 guys on the entire sound crew. J my superior who dealt with the more complex soundboard, me, who dealt with the less complex soundboard, and since I had graduated from running sound cues (my school is sorta poor with no orchestra and a very very poor sound system) off of my laptop, my old job was handed off to a newbie. Which would’ve been fine,,,, if the newbie had the desire to work at all. She just joined because her boyfriend worked backstage and when J and I found out we were livid. We continued as normal through rehearsals with the exception of one tiny thing. Our microphones frequently cut in and out. Our Simba had the worst microphone out of all of em and we weren’t able to reroute the mic plot in time. Come Friday the following happened. – during the scene in which Simba trys to roar but fails to and then Mufasa comes in to save the day, our newbie played the cue 3 liNES EARLY. Which was obviously bad, but it was made worse by my saying to J “hey this sound cue is a little quiet,, why don’t you turn it up??” – that little stunt deafened the audience and there was stunned silence on stage until the hyenas burst out into scripted laughter as if Simba gave the weakest little roar ever – when it came time for the actual roar to occur we stopped silent as to not give away our mistake and to somehow blame it on the faulty sound system. Mufasa was left screaming by himself – our newbie was sulking so she missed the very next sound cue – during intermission apparently a 2 year old had unplugged our entire sound system via 2 cables we had daisy chained to the outlet. The place where the two cables connected was left exposed on the floor. – because of this we had to crank up all of our volume because the only way we got sound then was from speakers backstage. This nearly deafened out vocal pit backstage – we found the problem to late into act 2 which immediately launches into 2 of the best numbers in the entire thing in my opinion. The actors were the real troopers, singing out. Half way through a song, our director plugged in our sound system, deafening our audience again – during the remember who you are scene, Mufasa was supposed to come out on a tall rolling platform behind a second set of curtains further upstage. Those curtains were supposed to close when he finished his scene, they didn’t – Mufasa was forced to stand up there for a solid minute before the backstage people realized something was up – on the very last number, where rafiki was supposed to lift simba’s daughter to the sky, two things happened – someone foRGOT THE BABY – our lights system decided to cut out for whatever reason – and finally, the next showing, there was no newbie to be seen. That left me to pick up her slack. needless to say this was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had working in the theatre program ever
“The medieval warrior, realizing the consequences of his impulsive act, immediately approached the owner of the drone and offered to pay for the damage.
The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.
Drone owners have another year to develop a unique “dragon-like” design for their flying machines.” (x)
I am 100% cooler with this knowing that the spear-thrower realized “oops maybe I shouldn’t have done that” and tried to make it right, and that the guy who the drone belonged to was cool with it
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie – the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels – it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
It may also interest someone to know that swans can projectile poop.
I know a real-world mama swan who got shot in the wing and walked four miles overland to get back to her babies and dad swan, with her broken wing bleeding and dragging the whole way. She just kept going. Don’t mess with lady swans.
Also? Swans don’t have a lot of obvious physical markings that divide the males from females. So some idiot might be like, “damn, that’s a sexy bird, I wanna marry her” and then like. It’s a dude swan. You just transformed thirty pounds of angry aggressive bird into 200+ pounds of angry aggressive adult man, who will totally kick your butt. (Also I’m pretty sure that if you turned a lady swan into a human, you would not get a willowy little 5′0″ girl. You’d probably have a 6-foot amazon with biceps the size of your head. Swans are heavy birds and it takes a LOT of muscle to get them into the air. They are among the baddest bitches in the bird kingdom)
And when a swan decides to beat you up, it is not with fancy martial arts. Swans are brawlers. They have bone clubs built into their wing joints specifically for beating people up. A human swan is gonna come at you screaming and spitting and just keep punching you in the face until you regret every decision you have made ever in your life and also some of the ones your parents made too.
I want a movie where the swan is either played by The Rock or Gwendoline Christie and the screaming brawls are the centerpiece.
The sorcerer’s eyes scan the lake greedily. He’s been coming here for months, dreaming. Waiting.
Choosing.
And now it’s time.
“That one,” he tells the two men he hired earlier this morning, pointing one long, ring-adorned finger at the most beautiful swan. “Bring her to me.”
The henchmen don’t ask questions. He paid them specifically so they wouldn’t ask questions.
Even so, henchmen A glances at henchman B from the corner of his eye.
“Dude,” he says when they’re far enough way from the cackling sorcerer that they won’t be overheard, “why the hell does he want a swan?”
Henchman B shrugs. “What do these sorcerer types ever want?”
They near the water’s edge. “Okay, but,” Henchman A says, “he’s not going to try and fuck it, right? Because I’m sort of uncomfortable with beastiality–”
“Oh my god,” henchman B groans. “Just grab the swan.”
It takes a bit of cursing, flailing, and begrudging team work to grab the swan. When they finally manage to tuck her wings against her sides and grab hold of her neck to prevent her from biting she goes limp, making the strangest, saddest sound that the henchmen have ever heard.
“It’s okay,” Henchman A tells her bracingly, feet squelching as they haul her from the muddy lake’s edge to the sorcerer. “He’s probably not into beastiality. Very few people are.”
Henchmen B coughs and averts his eyes. “Uh, yeah. Right. Hey, you don’t think this was too easy? I mean, the other swans are just…watching. Us.”
Henchman A glances over his shoulder. Sure enough, floating on the lake are about two dozen swans, all curving their elegant necks so they can watch the fate of the swan hanging in between them. Rather than seeming alarmed, they seem…amused?
Henchman A looks away. “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”
The sorcerer jumps from foot to foot when they approach, clapping his hands together. “Good, good! Now just hold her there, hold her!”
The henchmen watch as the sorcerer visibly reigns himself in, breathing deeply. He begins to mutter in tongues for a very long time, an awkwardly long time. The henchmen glance at each other with their eyebrows raised. Sorcerers, man.
Suddenly the sorcerer’s head snaps up, eyes glowing a blazing black. He points his bejeweled finger at the swan who has remained suspiciously limp between them and hisses a short, ominous phrase.
Henchman A fights not to scream as a bolt of blue lightning flies at them. Henchman B drops his side of the swan and Henchman A follows suit just in time. The bolt strikes the swan and there’s a blinding flash as the sorcerer begins to cackle again.
“Behold!” he screams to the sky. “My bride!”
The spots clear from the henchmen’s eyes and they gape at the swan. Or rather where the swan should be. Instead there’s a woman there, crumpled on the ground, in a white, soft dress that’s already muddy.
She slowly lifts her head, her face pointed towards Henchman A. Her eyes snap open to reveal a swan’s eyes, a deep unending black that looks… not right on a human.
“Oh what the fuck,” Henchman A says.
The swan woman levers herself up. And up. And up. And up until she towers over them. There are thick cords of muscle at eye level, thick arms and a broad chest that lead to a very strong neck . Most of her body is hidden by her dress, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that she’s built like a fucking tank.
She is very, very swan-like, henchman A realizes.
“Oh what the fuck,” henchman B says.
The woman smiles, showing off white, small teeth. “Welcome to the thunderdome, gentleman.”
Her fist feels like steel when it connects with Henchman A’s face and he thinks he hears his cheek break. He falls to the ground hard and doesn’t even try to stay conscious after a hit like that. The last thing he hears is what sounds like laughter from the direction of the lake.
Henchman B tries to run, but the swan woman is fast. She grabs the back of his collar and slings him to the ground, hissing and spitting. She hikes up her dress, showing built calves, and brings her heel slicing down onto his stomach. He reaches and chokes at the same time, moving belatedly to cover his head.
He needn’t bother. The swan woman seems to be done with him.
The sorcerer’s still standing in the spot from which he cast the spell, mouth agape. “B-but, you– you’re a swan? Wha–”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the swan woman says. Her voice is scratchy and growls like she’s swallowed glass. It sounds a bit like the hissing merriment happening on the lake. “I’m not a swan. I’m your wife.” She cracks her knuckles. “And it’s time for our honeymoon.”
The sorcerer picks up his robes and flees into the forest. The swan woman is fine with that. The swan who’d had to deal with this last week said that its more fun when they run.
She’s not surprised to find that he’s right.
OH MY GOD.
IT GOT BETTER.
Okay, okay, but what about when it goes the other way? A gander once fell in love with my father and followed him around boop-ooping in the most adorable way. This gander was a fierce warrior who bit everyone else (except my sister who BIT HIM BACK) but he just up and decided that Dad was his true love. This often happens a LOT with birds, especially flock birds like geese, ducks, and swans.
So what does the wizard do when a swan comes to him wanting to be turned into a human? Does he summon his daughters to help her dress and makeup? Does his wife give her tips on seducing men? Cu.z heaven help her if she gets advice from a giant nerd like a wizard
“But I thought wizards were supposed to know everything!” the swan woman protested. “Nope!” The wizard replied cheerfully. “We get a pass on all the humanities at Uni so we aren’t distracted by unnecessary human interaction. The best I can tell you is that usually when I send folks off to get something they have to kill a dragon or save a princess or something. So go impress the object of your affections with grand deeds I guess!”
So swan woman goes off to woo her chosen, flexing her biceps thoughtfully as she went.
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
You really want a human.
“Looks like someone for you.”
Jon kicked Ginna’s boots, which were currently resting on the table, and she glanced over toward the door. A clump of knee-high aliens, plump and round and covered in golden fur, were lifting their little pink noses into the air – scenting the air in the bar.
Sashrans. Perfect.
Ginna quickly downed the last of her drink and dropped her feet to the floor. The Gentleman of Fortune was full to the gills of professional companions looking for work, she wouldn’t be the only one in here with a fondness for sashrans. She needed to work quickly if she wanted a chance at whatever job these ones were hiring for. The sound and vibration of her boots caught the attention of the group, and Ginna followed it quickly with a greeting in the quiet shushing sounds of their own language.
A universal translator would take care of most of the talking, but by knowing a little of their language Ginna proved she had worked with their kind before and cared enough to learn it. Caring was probably the most important skill a companion could cultivate.
It paid off. The group of sashrans centered quickly on her and darted over, still in their clump.
“I am human Ginna, companion for hire,” Ginna introduced, tapping the side of her visor to activate the display.
“Sala and Rini, with crew. Spice collectors,” the largest of the sashrans introduced, tapping at their own earbud. Their information began to stream onto Ginna’s display, while her own would be playing in their ear. She was proficient in everything from weapons to mechanics to medicine, xenobiology to politics, and of course survival in any kind of situation from atmosphere decompression in space to a tsunami on a planet. The more varied the knowledge they had the better a companion a human could make, and Ginna prided herself on being one of the best.
As for the sashrans, they’d found a jungle planet with a plant that was delicious to their senses. Cultivation efforts had failed thus far, so the price was high enough to support the risk of hunting for it on its home range. A six-month tour was on offer. It seemed they’d contracted with another professional companion a few times, a man named Drix, and Ginna quickly switched over to the guild’s internal records to see what he had to say of these sashrans and the planet they were harvesting from.
The sashrans themselves would be able to check what Ginna’s former employers had to say about her too.
Drix had enjoyed working with Sala and Rini’s crew, it dripped out of every line of his reports. He’d included good detail about life aboard their ship and the risks of the planet, that Ginna would have to look into closer later to be prepared.
All she needed to know at the moment was that they paid well, the risks were not unacceptably high, and that they treated their human companions well. It sounded like a job for her.
“Sala and Rini and crew, I would take this job,” Ginna told them.
The sashrans shushed and buzzed together, their tones sounding happy to Ginna’s relatively untrained ear, and she hoped she was reading them right. They were such beautiful little creatures, and she’d always enjoyed working for their kind before. They were close enough she could have reached out to touch them, pet their soft velvet fur, but she resisted. Touching them uninvited would be rude.
Finally they turned back to her. “Sala and Rini and crew will, with joy, contract to hire companion Ginna,” the lead one answered.
Contract negotiations went quickly enough, using the standard guild template and modifying it here or there as both parties preferred and agreed upon. Sashrans were easy to haggle with, not like the argumentative akskar. Soon enough Ginna had a contract and three days to prepare her effects for travel.
“It has been a pleasure,” Ginna told the sashrans. “I look forward to being your companion.”
She would have expected them to leave, then, go get their own things ready for launch. Instead the smallest one pushed forward – all wrapped in pale gold velvet fur and their sweet little pink forepaws resting on Ginna’s knee.
“Companion Ginna will now engage in petting for promotion of pack bonding?” they asked hopefully.
“Of course,” Ginna reached out toward the sashran, let them smell her palm, but it seemed this sashran wasn’t shy at all. They immediately pushed their head into her hand. There was nothing in the galaxy so soft as a sashran’s fur. Ginna dug her fingers in around the ruff of the sashran’s neck, gently scratching, and then smoothed the fur all the way down their back.
The sashran made a dreamy-soft pleasure sound, and Ginna mimicked it back. “Oh you sweetheart,” she murmured. Already she could feel that little melting tug in her heart, that protective urge that set some humans on the path to professional companionship.
Come hell or high water, Ginna was going to keep these sashrans safe.
Aw, yes. Look at the adorable scifi! I’m proud to have inspired it.
(I’m so glad you enjoyed it!)
Six months was just about right for a jungle planet tour with a group of sashrans. Ginna loved Sala and Rini and the crew to distraction, and there was still nothing in the galaxy softer than sashran fur, but she was ready to move on. Being regarded as furniture a lot of the time, once they were used to her presence, got tiring after a while. Sala and Rini weren’t looking for a permanent companion, and Ginna wasn’t looking for that either. She’d joined the guild because she wanted to see the universe and meet all the peoples in it, after all.
The spice expedition had been a great success. The sashrans’ hold was full to bursting of dried twigs and leaves, and Ginna had gotten a healthy bonus on top of her already generous pay. There’s only been the one incident with a large angry herbivore who decided the sashrans were infringing too close on its breeding grounds. Still, Ginna had thwacked it in the face with a dead branch and distracted it long enough for the sashrans to make their escape, and only gotten the one cracked rib for her trouble when it tried to run her down.
Ginna hugged and kissed each sashran on the crew one last time. “If you ever need me, don’t hesitate to call,” Ginna told them, wiping a stray tear. Sala and Rini and crew endured this human foible, and were off to sell their goods.
The Gentleman of Fortune was the same as ever, serving interesting foods and drinks from across the galaxy and full of professional companions between tours. Her friend Jon had shipped out with a hunting pack of akskar, but May was finally back from er three-year stint in a lintran colony and they had a lot of catching up to do.
It was great to be back among humans, it really was. Ginna sent some money home and laughed and drank and celebrated with people who had the same base template and urges she did. For about two weeks, it was great. Then Ginna got that itch again and started watching the door of the Gentleman of Fortune, scoping out her options.
Vivid jehes, stolid orhides, hovering mellisugans – none of them felt quite right, and Ginna didn’t approach any of them. Other companions gladly worked up contracts and left for exploration expeditions and disaster relief efforts and new colonies.
Then a big bull barbax pushed into the bar, weight resting on xir heavy knuckles and ducking far far down to fit but still scraping xir cracked and weathered shoulder-spikes on the frame. The barbax swung xir heavy head from side to side, small beady eyes – well protected under a heavy brow – sweeping the space.
Perfect.
Ginna jumped up to stand on top of her chair and screamed as loud as she possibly could. The barbax rocked back, then sprang forward toward her, slamming xir knuckles hard against the floor in pleased approval.
.
Three days later Ginna was shipping out for a nine month tour with a crew of barbax miners. The desert planet they were headed for would be a nice change of pace from the muggy humidity of her last tour, and the barbax being so much bigger and heavier-armored than she was meant she didn’t have to worry about being a body guard on this trip. Much more relaxing.
Barbax liked shiny things, and already they’d bought Ginna a cute cropped jacket with imitation shoulder spikes to match them, and several bracelets and necklaces. It would have been rude not to wear them, and Ginna had to admit she looked good even if it wasn’t her usual style.
The bull barbax, Zab, absently grabbed Ginna by the waist and settled her on xir shoulder. Ginna easily settled in between the big spikes – they made good handholds as she was carried onward to the ship.
“Twisted xeno freak!” some human snarled after Ginna and the barbax crew. “You’re a traitor to human-kind. You make me sick!”
Gina laughed. “Jealous you lack the emotional capacity to cut it as a companion?” she mocked.
The xenophobe’s embarrassed and angry expression was the last thing Ginna saw of the station. Then the ship doors closed behind them, and she turned to face her next adventure with a smile.
Ginna returned to her home base at the Gentleman of Fortune absolutely glittering with platinum and rough citrine.
A fact – For all their strength, a barbax is not fast enough to evade a nest of sand snakes. For all their armor, a sand snake’s teeth can still pierce them.
A human companion, fueled by adrenaline, is more than fast enough to evade. But they might instead dive in between the panicking barbax and destroy the sand snakes attacking them.
Another fact – a sand snake’s venom is deadly to a barbax. Their blood coagulants are destroyed and they bleed out from even such a tiny wound. Their armored hide is too strong for the tourniquet that might save them. A human, bitten by a sand snake, gets off with a painful wound and some bruising.
Ginna tied her bandana around the bleeding wound on her thigh and got to work. Zeb and Gnar and Agi were bitten. The crew, their family, piled around them, drumming against their hides in mourning. They had two hours to live, according to the barbax medic.
Ginna delivered a cure in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes with the clock racing. Thirty minutes far too long, with death creeping up on her friends. She drew a liter of her own blood, repurposed a mining centrifuge to separate it, and filled three big syringes with plasma. Her red blood cells would be toxic, foreign to the barbaxes bodies. She could only hope her plasma was less so.
They might die of it; but they would die if she didn’t try.
Facts – the only place a barbax is tender enough to be injected by even the strongest medical needle is in the vein along their gumline.
– it takes five minutes for blood to circulate all the way through a barbax’s body.
– it takes another minute after that for a sand snake wound to clot, and the blood loss to cease.
The barbax crew trumpeted and pounded their knuckles against the floor with surprised joy. And only then, only when the slow bleeding had finally stopped, did Ginna sit down and cry with relief. She was shaky and dizzy from drawing so much blood, and badly bruised from getting jostled by the panicking barbaxes, and the wound on her own thigh was very painful now that she had nothing else to focus her mind away from it, but she’d done her companion’s duty and saved her friends.
She was fussed over, tended to and praised. She explained what she had done, and was given far more sweets and water than she could possibly consume to replenish herself when she explained that’s what she needed to recover.
Zeb and Gnar and Agi were sick for a week, with the aftereffects of the sand snake poison and purging their bodies of her alien plasma, but they lived. That was the important part.
It turned out that having given a part of herself into the barbax (nevermind that it was just plasma and their bodies purged it afterward) Ginna had done literally what was done symbolically for a barbax crew-bond. She was now crew-bond to the barbax she’d saved, and since Zeb was the senior bull and crew-bond to the entire crew, that meant she was too. She was family – married to the whole lot of them, in essence.
Ginna was not exactly sure how she was going to break that to her moms.
Thankfully the barbax had a laze faire concept of marriage. None of them thought it odd that Ginna planned to leave still at the end of her contract. They would have gladly kept her if she wanted to stay, but she didn’t.
They would have weighed her down with a quarter ton of jewelry, to be decorated the same as one of them, but thankfully Ginna talked them out of it. Her crew were miners by trade, but they were craftspeople by inclination, and they made her beautiful sets from the platinum they were mining that weren’t too heavy for her fragile human limbs. The style was armor-like and spiky and set with beautiful rough citrine that would have been discarded as mining waste otherwise.
Ginna wore it proudly. She spent one last evening drumming with the barbax crew, and then she was back among humans, back at the good old Gentleman of Fortune. Elizabeth was fresh back from the jungles of Shur with a lathan colony, and they had a lot of catching up to do.
Ginna was in no rush to head out again. She took some classes offered through the guild, brushing up on her knowledge base, and pondered her options carefully. She wanted something new, something different.
Late one evening – or maybe it was early morning by that point – a faint high note echoed through the Gentleman of Fortune. There was a collective intake of breath, an uncomfortable quiet, and Ginna looked to where everyone else was looking. A roughly human-sized shimmer was drifting deeper into the bar.
A tintillian. Ginna had never actually met one, she’d only ever heard of the telepathic aliens. They were not strictly corporeal in the same way most contacted species were.
The tintillian chimed again, hopeful, almost plaintive. And no one was answering.
Ginna was singing back the tintillian’s note before she really thought it through. It chimed again, a lower note thankfully or Ginna might not have been able to hit it, and Ginna again mimicked it. As Ginna held the note, it chimed a double note in harmony with her, and drifted closer.
The note Ginna was singing cut off, her heart in her throat, but the tintillian recoiled and drew back before it touched her. Began to drift away.
Metal. Right. They couldn’t abide concentrations of heavy metals and Ginna was encased in platinum. Ginna began ripping all her jewelry off, stacking it in a loose pile on the table. What had possessed her to wear so much of it?
“Help!” Ginna pleaded, turning her other ear toward Elizabeth as she struggled with the earrings. “Liz, please.”
Elizabeth laughed and relented, quick to help her out of all her platinum. Ginna took her boots off too, they had metal eyelets. And her pants had zippers, so they had to go. And her bra had an underwire, so Ginna wrestled that out through her sleeve and finally stepped toward the tintillian in just her shirt and boxers.
No one else was trying to approach the still-chiming tintillian. Telepathy was beyond what most of them were comfortable with. There would be no universal translator for this interaction, it would be direct. Mind to mind.
At least Ginna halfway stripping was far from the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the Gentleman of Fortune.
Ginna sang the note again, and the tintillian harmonized and moved back toward her. It changed as it got closer, until Ginna was almost looking at a mirror – a transparent shining woman. It lifted its hand, and Ginna echoed the motion. Her fingers were shaking, but Ginna cleared her mind and was full of only curiosity and affection when the tintillian merged hands with her. Like a point of golden light.
Suddenly, through it, Ginna was weightless, boundariless, her self wrapped around by the fear and curiosity of the others in the bar. Ginna laughed aloud, that joy echoed, rebounded, and strengthened as the tintillian drifted forward to merge completely.
Ginna’s affections were bare, all the connections she’d made with her contracts exposed, her trainings mulled over, her self weighed and judged and found adequate. The burning curiosity that had made her approach it pushed Ginna to delve into the tintillian in turn. It was all starlight and nebulas, ancient and brand new.
The job on offer was midway between exploration and rescue – a star nursery where an expedition of the tintillian’s mind-mates had disappeared. They had two months to map what they could, and recover the lost mind-mates if possible.
Ginna’s physical and psychological needs would be met, and the terms of her regular contract were seen as acceptable.
The merge faded, and the tintillian winkled out – off back to its vessel to prepare. Ginna dropped back into her own body and sagged into her chair.
“So?” she was asked, people crowding around. She didn’t need the tintillian to practically feel their burning curiosity.
“I got a two-month contract,” Ginna said.
She took a small seated bow for the cheers that echoed through the bar, and accepted the celebratory drinks that were passed her way.
First professional companion to contract with a tintillian. This was definitely going to be one for the history books.
[ THE END ]
I will write no more of these. Thank you! I’ve had a lot of fun in this ‘verse.
If you want to read about Elizabeth, please turn your eyes toward the very cool fill that Chrissy did utilizing the Gentleman of Fortune and companions guild concept. [link]
(if anyone else uses these headcanons please let me know I’d love to read it!)
(lol I lied have another Ginna fic)
Loren’s first run as an apprentice companion was supposed to be an easy one. A short contract, with low danger and a seasoned companion of the guild as mentor. Loren got along great with both Jon and the akskar crew. Every conversation was an argument, a test of skill and ingenuity. Some humans found akskar to be exhausting, but Loren felt right at home. It was just like being back at the old shipyards with er sibs.
So it was great, it was really great until they ran into danger way above Loren’s paygrade. Space was dangerous, vast and unexplored and unpredictable. So on Loren’s first practice run e ended up stranded with a dead ship on a dead planet. At least Jon and the akskar weren’t dead too.
Theirs wasn’t the only ship downed.
“Jon? That you?” A voice crackled faintly in through their companion visors while the akskar were still folding their long limbs into their own protective gear.
“Ginna!” Jon answered, relief obvious in his voice as he tapped the side of it to answer. “I’ve got an apprentice and a family of young akskar politicians. What have you got?”
“Jehe musicians and a dead ship. My scans show a cave we can shelter in near enough to both ships for scavenge. Coordinates incoming.”
Loren had no idea how this Ginna had managed to scan for a cave through the radiation bursts, but e was glad of it. Loren was surprised the coms were still working when everything else was totally fried–but they did say that companions guild coms and universal translators were always the last thing to go. They could pass through the pinch of a black hole undamaged, they said.
Jon relayed instructions, which Loren and the akskar followed, so they were weighed down heavy with emergency supplies and broken ship bits when they headed out onto the planet’s ravaged surface.
Ginna and her crew had already made it to the cave and were sealing it into a habitable zone by the time Loren’s group arrived. Loren couldn’t tell much about Ginna other than that she was tall and she’d managed to keep her jehes from fluttering and panicking, which was impressive.
Once they were sealed in, and the akskar were comfortable enough to start a circular argument and the jehes to rest, Jon pulled Loren over to conference with Ginna. Ginna’s hair was all tight corkscrew curls tied back with a bandana, her smile big and friendly, when she took off her helmet.
“We’ve got food, we’ve got water, we’ve got radiation shielding – but we’ve only got about a day’s worth of air,” Jon started, once brief introductions were over.
“A day and a half,” Ginna corrected. “The akskar and jehes balance each other out a little bit.”
“And I can give us another two or three if I can repair the jehe and akskar air filters, or splice them together. There’s got to be enough working parts between them to make one functional filter.” Loren volunteered. It wasn’t so different from tech splice e’d done as a kid, just to see if something could be made from what was supposedly junk. Loren had grown up doing this stuff.
“Air first.” Ginna nodded. “Then we need to get word out, let people know where we are. It’s time to call in favors. What are our best contacts, other than the main guild office?”
“These akskar are offshoots of the grand trunk,” Jon said, which Loren had not known. They were practically royalty! Minor royalty, but still. “If we get word to the trunk, they’ll send help. And their line is allied to the fruiting bough consortium. One of their main officers owes me a favor.”
“Good,” Ginna nodded and turned toward Loren as if expecting em to chime in.
Ginna’s expression softened. “First time out?“ she patted Loren’s shoulder when e nodded. “Don’t worry. Jon and I have both been in tighter spots and lived to tell. I’m thinking my best contact will be the barbax miners. A little radiation storm like this is nothing to them, and they’ll send people if I call. I’m kind of married to over fifty of them now, they keep expanding the crew.”
“Married? To fifty barbax?” Loren boggled, but Ginna and Jon just laughed.
“It’s the kind of thing that happens on accident,” Jon said. “It far from the weirdest thing you’ll see if you stick with the guild.”
Loren kind of hoped e’d live to see weirder things. Being stranded on a dead world with two dead ships was bad. Really bad. But Jon and Ginna kept joking back and forth with each other, smiling and laughing. And if experienced companions like them were in good spirits that had to be a good sign.
Loren worked on the air filters. E worked on the air filters for a very long time. Loren got one working at about 31% to give them another half day, and then went back to the ship to scavenge parts from the kitchen to get the other one up to 67%, and that was the best e could do with what was available.
“I couldn’t have done better myself,” Jon praised. He and Ginna were working on cobbling together a communications array that would punch through the radiation storm, which was difficult with everything fried. They tried and tested and argued companionably back and forth–when they weren’t looking out for the crews they were contracted to. The emotional labor of keeping the akskar from falling into despondency while confined and the jehes from fretting themselves sick, and keeping them from antagonizing each other with their different needs and ways of being, was weightier than Loren would have expected.
Jon and Lauren had their work cut out for them figuring out new arguments and games to play with the akskar to keep them entertained. Ginna spent a lot of her time grooming and singing to the jehes in their own chirping language to keep them calm.
That was what being a professional companion was all about.
Not that Loren was all that sure e was going to get the chance to earn professional status. One day became two, became three, and nothing any of them tried was working to get a message out. Loren scavenged from both ships over and over again, with Jon and Ginna and alone, but nothing e brought back helped.
Loren couldn’t give up, though. That was why peoples from all over the galaxy hired human companions. Because humans didn’t give up, not until their last breath. Loren repurposed parts of a water filtration unit to get the more broken air filter to 72%, but that was only going to give them a few more days, and e went back to figuring out ways to make a stronger emergency beacon with Jon.
Ginna didn’t.
Loren found her up in the top of the cave, right by the entrance where their radiation shielding was weakest. She’d stripped down to her underthings, her body marked with scars here and there, and decorated over and around them with gleaming ivory-white tattoos against the warm brown of her skin. Loren could see the languages of akskar, sashrans, barbax, and others she wasn’t familiar with. Ginna was sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed and face turned up to the dark sky. She was humming a long droning note under her breath.
“What are you doing?” Loren demanded.
“Trying to think in tintillian,” Ginna answered in a faraway voice, not opening her eyes.
“What? Why?”
“We can’t send a pulse, ping, or beacon out of here strong enough. So tintillian.”
Loren stamped er foot. “What good is thinking like another species going to do!? You could be helping us brainstorm better ideas. You can’t just stop. You can’t give up and die. We’re companions! Our contracts are counting on us!” Loren’s voice broke, tears far too close to the surface, and Ginna finally opened her eyes.
“Nothing in the galaxy can communicate better than a tintillian. They are connection,” Ginna explained, very gently. “They’re not individual. They’re like… fractals. Music where each note is a symphony and what we perceive as an individual is just the echo of a single riff. I contracted with them, once. I was inside it for two months, like a misplaced f flat in a nebula-choir of angels and starlight, and sometimes I can still feel it. Connect.”
Loren’s breath caught at the realization. “Stars and galaxies. You’re that Ginna,” e breathed. She was only one of the highest ranked professional companions, and came up in dozens of case studies. She’d provided the baseline measurements for companionship in more new species than anyone else. There wasn’t a species she’d shun, or a challenge she’d back down from.
Ginna smiled, that warm friendly smile that immediately forgave Loren for interrupting and being suddenly starstruck. “I’m that Ginna.” She tapped her visor where it was laying beside her. “And I’ve got two hours left before I have to do a radiation decontam, so I’m going to spend them being a very loud f flat.”
“Right. Sorry,” Loren backed away as Ginna’s eyes closed and she took her hum back up. “Thank you.”
Loren retreated, awkward stumbling back over er boots, and hyperventilated at Jon for a little bit. Jon just laughed.
“Careful with that puppy-crush, kid,” he teased. “Ginna’s ace. She doesn’t go for anybody.”
About an hour and a half later–when Loren was in the middle of a spirited game of leapfrog with the akskar crew to keep them entertained–Ginna returned. There was a pinging sound, like metal heating under the sun, a faint smell of ozone, and Ginna walked into the main part of the cave haloed in a shimmering glow. There was music, vast and incomprehensible under her voice when she spoke.
“Strip to your skivvies, Jon, and figure out what you want to say to the guild! We’re in contact.”
AMAZING!! I dunno what my favorite part is?? The tiny braid in his swooshy hair. (And the lil bit of grey!!) The gaping tunic. The CLOAK. The half circles symbol on his remaining armor. The definitely non-regulation blaster and the Thigh Holster. Gosh.
This is truly the Obi Wan who accidentally liberated Tatooine from the Hutts. This is truly the Obi Wan who someone gifted a Moon (I mean. Look at him. I too, would give him the moon). This is truly the Obi Wan who is also secretly the Duke of Mandalore and has accidentally started accruing his own empire. Hondo Onaka is Ecstatic.
ACCIDENTAL SPACE PIRATE OBI WHO IS SECRETLY THE DUKE OF MANDALORE!! AND WAS GIFTED A MOON THAT HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH EARLIER BUT NOW USES AS A BASE OF ACCIDENTAL SPACE PIRATE OPERATIONS
Listen. He does the one soresu stance. You know the one.
Except this time, instead of two fingers, there’s this ridiculous non-regulation uncivilized blaster. Mostly sentients are smart enough not to stay and fight, though a lot of them swoon and it’s a bit of a problem, really. Obi Wan wouldn’t just leave someone unconscious in the desert like that, so now they have to be taken care of. With plenty of fluids and the occasional smelling salt, naturally.
Guys… theoretically… if I were to draw a comic-book cover of the imaginary ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi: Accidental Space Pirate’ issue 1… which character/s would be on the cover with him??
Part of me is thinking Jabba’s palace on fire in the distance…
😬
Dear Lord in heaven I love all of these comments. And I am still 10,000% on board with Accidental Pirate Obi-Wan being gifted a moon.
And yes, @jerseytigermoth, he is totally running from some kind of burning building/explosion in this comic cover.
I do love the idea of Ahsoka being part of his pirate crew. Or a tiny, sassy little Luke Skywalker who’s been brought into the fold. Obviously Hondo would be a strong contender for inclusion here, too. He is LOVING Obi-Wan’s pirate years.
Vader is going to faint when he lays eyes on pirate Obi-Wan. The Empire does not stand a chance.
When Lira Tideen was first assigned to Darth Vader’s personal squadron aboard the Executor she had been so proud that she’d rushed straight back to her bunk and commed her parents. Only best and brightest of the Imperials were assigned to Vader’s detachment (only the most reckless and foolhardy as well, which accounted for Lira’s lack of concern over the future integrity of her windpipe).
Her parents had been less than thrilled of course but that was par for the course.
“Couldn’t you come home and find a career planetside?” Here her mother paused to think of something that might tempt her adrenaline junkie of a daughter into leaving the Death Squadron.
“I hear that stunt podracing is becoming really big.” She’d finished. Her voice didn’t hold very much hope. She’d done her best. Her father had just pinched the bridge of his nose and tilted his head back. He’d largely given up on attempting to prevent his youngest child from finding new and creative ways to die.
Lira had ignored their lack of enthusiasm. Life was going to be properly exciting now. Death defying chases, skirmishes with the really dangerous rebel cells, dogfights… everyone knew that Vader’s personal squadron saw the toughest action. That had been what she thought anyway. Then Republic high general turned rebel, Obi Wan Kenobi had reappeared.
Suddenly the Empire’s toughest troops were reduced to tromping around dusty Outer Rim backwater planets with their blasters set to stun (”The emperor wants him alive,” Vader insisted defensively) collecting “evidence” of Kenobi. This evidence mostly consisted of security footage, ‘Wanted’ signs and suspiciously, issues of the wildly popular flimsi-comic ‘Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi: Pirate and Gentleman’ that had sprung up since Kenobi had reappeared.
Even more suspiciously, Vader insisted on spending hours “reviewing” the “evidence” they collected personally. Rumor had it that a stormtrooper had walked in on Vader stroking the hair of a particularly dashing illustration of Kenobi muttering about how “swooshy” his hair was. The trooper had managed to back slowly out while Vader was distracted and thus escaped with his life.
The final straw for Lira though was when they finally caught up with Kenobi. Vader had spent hours locked in his quarters and had come out looking especially dramatic and imposing. Every line of his clothing was immaculately black and straight, it looked like he’d ironed them, his cape was new and made out of a heavier, richer fabric than usual, which allowed it to fall around him in especially dramatic folds, his helmet gleamed.
“Move out,” he’d ordered and he’d sounded almost giddy. Then he’d proceeded to draw out the raid in such a dramatic fashion that there’d been zero rebel casualties. Instead, he and Kenobi had flirted while “fighting” for a solid forty-five minutes. The rebels and stormtroopers had been reduced to shooting each other desperate looks, united in a profound desire to be anywhere else.
“We meet again, Obi Wan, but now the student has become the master,” Vader said. Kenobi had winked (kriffing winked, Lira had to admit, it had been extremely attractive) and flourished his lightsaber in a way that was somehow both deadly and filthily suggestive.
“There is still much I could teach you, Darth,” he said and oh Force his tone was even more suggestive than his, ah, lightsaber. The Togruta female behind him actually face-palmed. Lira sympathized. Stars, did she sympathize. That night, she submitted her resignation to the Imperial fleet and took the first shuttle home. Maybe her mother had a point. A woman could go far stunt podracing these days.
HAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD THEY WOULD THOUGH.
Can you even imagine what a menace to society PIRATE Kenobi would be though? Like, the winkity-wink flirting stuff would be OUT OF CONTROL. There would be galaxy-wide WARNINGS about this.
I legit laughed out loud at the idea of DARTH VADER SOUNDING “GIDDY”. Also that there would be dimestore novels or comics written about the saucy exploits of Dashing Pirate Kenobi IS KILLING ME. SOMEONE WRITE ONE I WANNA READ ABOUT HOW HE FLIRTS HIS WAY INTO VAST RICHES.
Guys stop I am CACKLING IN THE MIDDLE OF LIFE DRAWING CLASS DURING THE TEA BREAK
THIS IS VERY INAPPROPRIATE
Making people laugh about Star Wars with me is like…pretty much one of my favorite things in the entire world, so…I do not apologize.
If you didn’t want to read about Pirate Kenobi’s Saucy Dime Novel Adventures, then you shouldn’t have drawn him in the first place! I mean, look at that guy! He is Legendary.
He makes men and women swoon from one end of the Galaxy to the other! He liberated Tatooine from the Hutts! His hair is the swooshiest! He owns a moon! At least twelve drinking songs/sea chanteys have been written about his daring adventures across the Outer Rim!
There are all kinds of crazy stories floating around about how even the terrible Sith Lord Darth Vader is not immune to his saucy, flirtatious winks and stirring renditions of old Tatooine love ballads (some claim it’s through Kenobi’s, er, influence that the Empire’s just never seemed to quite be able to finish that long-rumored Death Star project. Vader’s reps had no comment.)
Some say that Kenobi and Ahsoka Tano – one of the most trusted members of Kenobi’s pirate crew and a legend in her own right – were the ones behind the daring heist of the artifacts at the Sheev Palpatine Museum on Naboo. (The artifacts have never surfaced on the black market. Some say they stole them just to burn them.)
For years, gossip columns have said Kenobi is a frequent guest in the bed of the Duchess of Mandalore (there are even rumors that they may be secretly married, and that technically Kenobi is not only a Pirate King, but an actual Duke as well.) The Duchess, for her part, has declined to elaborate as to why so many of the storied pirate’s adventures seem to take him through her part of the galaxy, though she does admit that she is grateful that Kenobi’s crew has gotten the Death Watch out of her hair once and for all.
DUCHESS OF MANDALORE SHENANIGANS!! yes she’s declined to confirm or deny any rumors, but what about the one time the space paparazzi saw her arriving on Kenobi’s moon? they camped out in space around the moon forEVER, and everyone swears the duchess didn’t leave for a week. What were they up to? why was Ahsoka Tano flying up to join them three days after she landed? why was Senator Organa and his family involved too? did this mandalorian retreat have any connection to the rumors of Vader throwing a fit about “not being invited, damn you, Kenobi, I waited for yEARS—”? and if we listen to the more. enthusiastic space tabloids, was this a renewing of their vows or did they only now tie the knot?
It was a beautiful ceremony. Hondo Ohnaka officiated (he got a license on the holonet, I ’s completely legit for sure). Everyone cried when Satine dipped Obi Wan into a long kiss and then the kiss kept going, and going… and going so the crying did turn into wolf-whistling but that only detracted from the dignity of the ceremony a little. Vader did crash it but he was polite and brought a bottle of fine wine and only one squadron of storm troopers, which everyone agreed was pretty restrained of him.
It was the event of the century! Even Bail manages to attend, and with him a tiny princess doing a terrible job of trying to hide her excitement (pirates! ) right up until Flower Boy Luke manages to dump a bucket of space-rose petals on her head. ( they’ve managed to keep his last name hidden, but Kenobi’s tiny accomplice has become rather infamous – mainly for his ability to turn up where least expected. Speculation abounds about his origins – orphaned urchin, the newlyweds’ secret love child, spawn of chaos… )
Leia is of course outraged, and demands he show her around a genuine Pirate ship as recompense. Which is how they discover what is CLEARLY a map to secret treasure and decide it would make the perfect wedding present so they steal Vader’s shuttle and that is how we lead into an epic, galaxy spanning adventure in which Pirate King Kenobi races to recover both the children and the map (it leads to Dagobah) before Vader takes them into custody (even without knowing his identity he knows Vader’s jealousy and Luke’s adorableness means he’ll want to keep Luke as his new apprentice, and that will not end up well for anyone).
There will be firefights! Daring space manouvers! Bounty hunters! Exotic locales full of shady lowlifes and dingy bars! Epic taunting via holocom! Flirting across bottomless chasms while explosions whip capes and hair dramatically behind them!
And in the end Ahsoka and Korkie save the day with the assistance of an ex clone trooper or three 🙂
FLIRTING ACROSS BOTTOMLESS CHASMS 😂😂😂
Now that’s the kind of quality content I’m looking for. Quitting my paying job to spend all my time writing the SW fan comic of the exploits of Accidental Space Pirate Obi-Wan Kenobi for absolutely no income is starting to sound like A Good Life Choice at this point tbh.
… given how amazing your artwork is I could see that working actually!
Look, there are soooo many cliche movie scenes that can be made better with Accidental Pirate King Kenobi :
– the dramatic sword fight lightsaber duel across the deck as the ship sinks disintegrates and splits with Vader on one piece clutching a torn piece of clothing armour and Obi-Wan on the other, shirtless, as they slowly drift apart.
– Obi-Wan and Vader tied back to back in a crude net as cannibals Ewoks dance around a fire beneath them
– Obi-Wan and Ahsoka dressed up as nobility imperial higher-ups in order to infiltrate a ball social gathering for information. Vader is there in his fanciest cape.
– The time they have to infiltrate a brothel seedy cantina and Obi-Wan ends up in a lacy dress
– a heart-racing chase through a crowded marketplace, Obi-Wan bouncing off stalls and fruit carts and turning back occasionally to launch sassy quips and shoot down convenient canopies to hinder Vader’s bullish pursuit. Vader of course ends up covered in various foodstuffs while Kenobi gives a jaunty salute as he hangs precariously from his getaway vehicle
– the comedic interlude where Hondo is babysitting and loses Luke in a bar and has to find him before he gets arrestedis accidentally sold into slavery starts a riot only to have Kenobi turn up holding the little terror saying “Missing something?“
– the drinking contest where Obi-Wan drinks everyone including Rex under the table and waking them up the next morning with cheery singing and banging pots (he cheated of course)
… And many more! I could go on forever 🙂
BRILLIANT @lurkingcrow. And all these scenarios need an artist with the genius to capture Obi Wan’s swooshy hair, artfully exposed chest hair, and sassy expression. *waggles eyebrows @jerseytigermoth*
I am actually jotting down ideas for lyrics for a pirate!Kenobi song, in the spirit of the The Rodian and The Ghest.
malachite is a poisonous mineral. please do not fuck the malachite stalactite
@lizaleigh do you know any rock people that can confirm/deny because I am very curious and really don’t feel like getting into a conversation with my geophysicist brother that MAY somehow get back to the fact I saw a malachite that looked like a weird dildo.
…sadly, I am not on good enough terms with any of our partner geologists to just attach this to an email with the subject line: “EXPLAIN.”
Although I think @mollisaurus is a mineral person. Thoughts?
oh geeze, i’m kinda rusty on minerals but malachite is just copper carbonate and is really common in both antique and modern jewelry so i think like if you were really gun-ho about it you could go ahead and put it wherever you want?
It’s really only a problem if you’re polishing or cutting it. The particles would be bad to breathe. It’s rather porous too, so I would worry about bacteria growing. Well, being literal anyway… Better to leave the poor thing alone. ._.
I mean it kinda depends on where you stick it because malachite does not like acidic environments very much and the malachite will degrade and also might dye your bits blue-green as the copper dissolves out.
So use a condom when fucking rocks is the takeaway here.
Oh my god guys it’s poisonous
It is super poisonous
There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more
Not even with a condom, do not fuck the rock
Try this one instead.
malachite literally explodes in water does it not?
I… no… I think you’re thinking of pure sodium?
Malachite is however water soluble, which really just means it will poison you quicker
This is both hilarious and cool as fuck because you’re getting all this information on minerals and rocks. You’re also watching people argue over wether or not you can fuck this rock
I go on hiatus for a week and come back to find tumblr molesting my post, but hey, at least we all learned something so yay tumblr, you just keep on being you.
I’m still not sure if I can fuck this rock.
I’m looking into it.
UPDATE:
Today in “I’m so sorry, coworkers, it’s for Tumblr,” I brought this post to the attention the science reporters at BuzzFeed. Dan Vergano did a some research and weighed in on the question “Can you use malachite as a dildo or is it toxic?”
The answer is “It’s probably fine, just wash it first and maybe use a bunch of lube.”
Oh man this got so much better than the last time I saw this post
This is my favourite. Science side of tumblr: asking the REAL questions
*biologist crashes through the underbrush*
Ok so here’s the thing though
Malachite is not poisonous to YOU. BUT fucking this stalactite will probably wreck your vaginal flora and leave you with a gruesome infection within a couple days.
Want details? SO GLAD YOU ASKED, ‘CAUSE HERE THEY ARE.
• Malachite is not copper oxide. It’s Cu2CO3(OH)2. Like most carbonates it’s water soluble– that’s how it became a stalactite in the first place! And technically any given chunk of “malachite” isn’t just malachite– it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. This will become important later.
• When malachite dissolves it makes a bunch of copper (Cu++) ions. Cu++ is GREAT at killing bacteria and fungi– so good at it that sprays with Cu++ get used a lot as a spray in agriculture to stop plant disease. It takes such a large dose to harm larger organisms that copper sprays are used a lot in organic agriculture (like Bordeaux mixture).
So bottom line, yes malachite is technically nontoxic to humans. But it kills bacteria when it dissolves and releases Cu++.
• Malachite dissolves somewhat slowly in water– but vaginal secretions aren’t just any water. A healthy human vagina has a pH of 3.8-4.5 and a salinity of about 0.9%. It’s also warmer than your average underground cave at 37°C (or 98.5°F in American meat units). As luck would have it, acidity, salinity, and warmth all make malachite dissolve faster.
• In other words, the human vagina dissolves malachite.
• I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.
• Gonna to take a quick moment to point out that sex toys that dissolve when you use them are maybe not the best investment.
• Anyway the key question now is “how fast does the human vagina dissolve malachite?” Are we talking geological timescale, a Nazis-in-Indiana-Jones situation, or something in between? If the reaction kinetics of dissolution are very slow, then there’s nothing to worry about. An encounter with a stalactite would have to last years for enough Cu++ to leach out to cause problems. If it’s quick then we’re in trouble.
• Unfortunately it looks like nobody really knows. One of the best sources on how malachite dissolves & precipitates in water– an EPA document on how to avoid too much Cu++ in municipal drinking water systems– helpfully says “The kinetic constraints on the formation of these solids in water systems are largely unexplored” (p. 42) because end equilibrium points is all you need to run a city water system safely. In other words, the experiments that would tell us how fast malachite dissolves in various types of water just don’t exist because nobody’s ever needed to know before. So we’d better assume it’s going to happen reasonably quickly, #for safety.
• So in best scientific fashion, we’re just going to bullshit our way ahead using what facts we DO have on hand: endpoint equlibria.
That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly less salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly lower than people. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.
• Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely
unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides,
and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper
concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.”
In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.
• Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.
^This would happen. These are the counts of 4 E. coli strains exposed to various levels of lactic acid & Cu++ for 8 hours. This table only shows the end counts but it represents the death of 99.7% of bacteria*.
• Losing 99.7% of your vaginal flora is seriously bad news. You’re looking at really good odds of a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, and/or other infection issues. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not be in the 4% of the population or so that’s sensitive to skin contact with copper.
• The good news? Biochemically speaking, you’re probably ok to put it in your butt. It’s not as acidic or salty in there, plus there’s a huuuuuge stockpile of gut microbes right upstream that can quickly repopulate the colon after spelunking is complete. However this stalactite is not flared at the base so it is the wrong shape for putting in your butt. Do not put this stalactite in your butt.
• This all looks like fun and games, but I think it’s really interesting that the internet’s mistake in concluding that this stalactite is fuckable is very similar to the mistake made by the Flint water management system. Hear me out.
• Central to the Flint lead poisoning crisis is that authorities only looked at & tested Flint’s water in its central treatment plant before it went out through the pipes. Not after it went through the pipes. They did not consider what would happen biochemically as it went through the pipes and metals started dissolving.
• Similarly, in concluding that the stalactite is fuckable, the internet only considered the stalactite itself. Not the biochemical processes that would happen to it as it, welp, went through the pipes.
• Media frequently reports that the Flint River’s water is “corrosive,” leading many to believe the river is full of industrial waste. This ain’t the case. You’d need industry to fill a river with industrial waste, and industry left decades ago. That’s why Flint’s so poor. So what IS in the water? Road salt. Plain old stupid road salt. The old Detroit-based source didn’t have salt because it came from Lake Huron which has a large, mostly rural watershed. Meanwhile the Flint River runs through a lot of towns, making it slightly salty as everything melts down in spring. And as we recall from the stalactite experience, a little salt is all it takes to get metals to dissolve.
• Information on this engineering problem was not coming through clearly from the engineering or chemistry sides. It took a biologist, pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, to document the real-time results and provide the data to kick-start a high-level investigation.
• Morals of the story: when dealing with a biological system pls consider asking a biologist, your vagina and/or city could depend on this
• Pls use a condom when fucking any water-soluble material
• Still don’t put the stalactite in your butt -3/10 do not recommend
OK, I haven’t reblogged this before now but the final post takes it to a whole new level and I can no longer resist.
fuck I love the internet
Oh my God you guys, the malachite dildo thing is still being debated. I love Tumblr.
Couples receive “parent points”, which they can use to purchase their children. Most parents wait for a few thousand, but you chose to buy the cheaper, 100 point child.
Shane knows what it’s like to be a 100 point child. He knows how it feels to see potential parents–potential families–come through the facilities doors, faces bright with excitement. He knows how it feels to see them reading the little plaques on the nursery doors, scanning the lists there for the right bits of knowledge and etiquette and grace that they want their baby to have.
He knows how it feels to see their faces pinch outside the window before they hurry to the next room.
Shane grew up in a 100 point nursery. They had torn, ratty, books and no teachers, and when snack time came, the tray was pushed through a slat in the door. They were called “unruly” and “damaged” and “stupid.” A lot of the other kids threw tantrums and broke furniture (and sometimes other kids). A lot of the other kids went quiet after the first few years when they realized they’d never be adopted until they were old enough (or pretty enough) to be useful. A lot of the kids cried and didn’t stop until they got taken away or were aged out.
Shane’s grown up a lot since aging out. He put himself through school, got himself a job, shed his 100 points like the torn clothes he’d left the facility in. He’s powerful now, successful, and he’s grown out of the twisted nose, big ears, and gap-toothed smile that had made him one of the less attractive 100 point babies. Or maybe he’s grown into them. Who’s to say?
It’s taken him a long time to get enough Parent Points to do what he wants. Being a man is, for once, somewhat hindering as most of society equates “parental” with “maternal.” He’s lost count of how many social workers have politely hid expressions of surprise when he told them he wanted to adopt stag, that he’s willing to take the classes, get the grades, make the oaths to get even one Parent Point.
Pete and Jane Carson were poor, so poor, and lived so far out away from town that they had trouble managing to earn many Parent Points. The points were awarded very strictly, and since their truck was…third-hand at least, well, they didn’t always make it everywhere exactly on time.
But they were so in love, and so enthusiastic about it, that as soon as they managed to reach that magical hundredth point, they practically ran to the Ward Building.
The lady took down their information and showed them all the brochures and read them all the disclaimers with a distinct air of disdain. It was obvious she thought no one had any business taking in any child worth less than a thousand points. Still, there was nothing to stop them from doing it–at least, nothing she could legally get away with–so she showed them to the hundred-point children.
It was agony making a choice. There were so many children there, and they were all so obviously in need of help. But one boy, the oldest and he was probably about seven, pointed them to a tiny child who’d been very sick lately and explained that the heat in the room didn’t work very well, and so when the little ones got sick, their tiny bodies sometimes couldn’t work hard enough to keep them warm and get them better. There was a look in his eyes that said sometimes there had been sick children who’d been eventually taken away and hadn’t been brought back.
So they took the sick child, whose name was Jakob, and gave him a home in their big, rickety farmhouse so far away from town, but they agreed. “That’s our next child.”
It was so much harder for single people to gain Parent Points. Lisbeth had sat in the same room as dozens of happy couples; had taken the same tests and had received the same courses, and yet had earned less than half the points that they did. Every time she first introduced herself to an instructor, they asked when her significant other would be coming, and wrinkled their nose at her when she made it clear to them that she was alone. It seemed like every time the topic of Parent Points were brought up, someone was telling her to wait. Wait until she found a husband or wife, wait until she was older and wiser.
the fact that the Russian language doesn’t have articles makes me go ??????????????? because in a native English speaker’s head it sounds like a hilarious shitpost type thing
so when you ask someone “Где водка?” it translates to “where is the vodka?”
but in my horrible backwards english brain if I don’t see any articles I assume they aren’t there, so yelling “ГДЕ ВОДКА” translates to “WHERE VODKA” like some kind of drunken maniac who you definitely should not give vodka to
Speaking as a Russian-American who speaks the language and knows a fair share of Russian-Russians, even if Russians did have articles they would still slam open the door yelling “WHERE VODKA” at all times.
I see nothing inaccurate here.
Fun fact from learning Church Slavic Russian (? Церковнославянский, если чо) and Old Russian back in 2013:
Russian language DID have auxilary verbs back in the day. The key difference is every language’s tendency to shortcut as much as possible, rendering auxilary verbs into useless within a couple of centuries.
Аз есмъ Анна – Я Анна
I am Anne – I Anne
Basically Russian people did the “new phone who dis” instead of “New phone, who is this?” thing and made it gramatically correct just to save those 0.0036 secs it takes to pronounce articles.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
‘But surely you have records of volcanic activity doing tremendous damage to human settlements.’
‘Yep. Pompeii is legendary. Entire cities went. Towns buried under lava, peoples’ brains boiled in the first rush of heat, loads more killed by falling pumice.’
‘ah, good, they learned their lesson and didn’t build there again.’
‘…well…’
‘Are you seriously telling me this volcano is legendary for killing several urban conurbations and you built on top of it AGAIN?’
‘In our defence it hasn’t actually done it since.’
‘What about earthquake-prone areas? Tell me you’re at least vaguely sensible about those.’
‘Oh yeah. After the first major earthquake that flattens a city, we build them better.’
“So you’re saying that the air in these areas can kill you. Physically, not chemically. It just moves… how did you phrase it? ‘Stupid fast’?”
“Yeah, pretty much. It can pick up livestock, dismantle structures- it’s bad news.”
“That seems frustrating, to have such wide swathes of otherwise habitable land rendered unlivable.”
“What’re you talking about, unlivable? Nothing a storm cellar can’t fix.”
“A… storm cellar. A room dug slightly below ground level.”
“With a door, yep.”
“Your atmosphere can without warning violently pick you up and fling you- and your buildings- and your response was to dig holes?”
“…we put up sirens, too.”
“To warn the other humans to get into their holes. Very prudent.”
“TO WARN OTHER HUMANS TO GET IN THEIR HOLES…”
As someone whose family is predominantly in the south this makes me so happy. I wonder what aliens would think about mobile homes in tornado alley? That sounds like a fun conversation.
Steel Phoenix Studios 