Tw// Loss Of A Pet

Liminal

Airport terminals, stuffy and somehow freezing, eerily silent in the wee hours of the morning when the few red-eyed flyers exchange the occasional nod and heavy sigh like silent monks as they try to make themselves comfortable on the cold, sectioned metal benches.  But not too comfortable-  Flight control likes to change gates to the other side of the port with only a single, half-garbled announcement.  "Bunch of sadistic devils.“  The woman next to me curses, not realizing how correct she is.  One of the other travelers blesses himself and maintains his silence.

Otherwise it is the middle of the day and full of the stickiness and undulations of the crowds. The air goes from stuffy and freezing, to stuffy and reeking of a thousand kinds of armpit.  Some people like to compare mass-travelers to cattle, but I’ve seen cattle, and cattle are a lot more organized and patient.  Parents hiss at small children who bolt up and down the terminal, shrieking in terror and glee, unheeding.  They are the only ones who can perceive the true nature of the situation-  they, the people they love and a hundred strangers are about to be crammed into an explosive-propelled tube, and react appropriately.

It doesn’t matter which ‘port it is- sure, some of them have better heating or less-disgusting food, but really, they’re all the same.  Nobody lives there.  Event the staff are migratory, coming in every day from dozens of miles away.  The things that stay in airports can’t really be described as living.  Lost maybe. Trapped definitely.  The same white-haired man in the brown overcoat is buying butterscotch candies every time I’m in Atlanta.  He’s going to see his granddaughter in Columbus, he says. We always say hello, he tips his hat like a gentleman and I wonder what happened to his eyes.

There are gates that do and do not exist.  Gate A51 in DIA is one of the more famous ones.  You can walk up to literally every gate present and count them- A48, A49, A50, A52, A53.  They got rid of it when they were re-modeling the terminal, they say, had to keep the old numbers due to regulations.  But if you listen between the calls for so-and-so to pick up a white courtesy phone, or that the threat level is orange, keep an eye on your bags etc.  "Flight 456 Leaving from gate A51 in ten minutes.” You will see people que up and get on board.  Do not interrupt them.  They are going where they need to go.

There’s also rest stops along and freeway- You can actually sleep on those benches, but not for long. Montanna has excellent rest stops, Ohio is a goddamn disaster.  Just stay out of the midwest in general if you can help it.  There is nothing for humanity there. Again, where you are only sort of matters- it’s all checkered floor slicked in thousands of layers of disinfectant, only contributing to the grime at this point.   Maps of whatever highway you’re on, road safety advisories, the large poster telling you that Meth will turn you and everyone you love into toothless deviant sex zombies.  Reality is much worse, but reality has a better imagination than the DEA.

Families huddle from the weather in the covered picnic benches outside, regardless of the actual conditions.  It could be perfectly ambient, pouring sunshine with happy little birds hopping about and they still recoil, peering over their shoulders at the space behind the stop.  Sometimes, a child will break off from them, and get close to the edge- peering into the trees or grass or the river.  They bolt when they see things peering back.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and there’s some sort of historical plaque. Go.  Read it. Imagine the people it talks about- the people who worked this mine, the explorers that found it, the native beings they displaced.  They don’t usually mention the last one, but they exist and they deserve your thoughts more than anyone.  These stories live here, in a place where no-one else does.  Think of them, and carry their ghosts out with you. They will be grateful and pay you back in kind.

The road is a strange place. There are a great many places where it repeats itself several times over, a mobius strip with a speed limit. The evergreen forests on the northwest coast, trees endlessly appearing through the fog.  Cattle-plains in Montana- that fence is infinite and you have seen that Angus Bull seven times now.  The entire state of Nevada.  (Vegas isn’t really in Nevada.  It’s a pocket dimension caught in the center of a looping current.  This creates interesting transportation logistics, which is why, despite allegedly being in the middle of cattle-country and nowhere near the coast, lobster is cheaper than rib-eye).  

Other times, it layers in with another dimension.  There are gates on I-80 between Rawlins and Laramie to keep people from driving through when the maw to hell opens up.  I got through five minutes before the gate went down and entered the frozen edges of the ninth circle.  White, white, nothing but white swirling in all directions.  There was no road in front of me, and none behind. The best I could do was to try to guess at the shape of the road by the differing textures of white.  

Cars sometimes have extra passengers.  The only reason I made it off of I-80 alive was the something sitting in the passenger seat beside me, alternately reassuring me of my ability and chanting something against the storm outside.  It was much larger than I am, intricately twisting and rustling, and blue. I didn’t dare look.  It’s not good to stare directly at a god.  But they were kind, and thanked me as I let them off at the sushi restaurant at the interchange of I-80 and 287.  "Riverton’s a shithole.“ They laughed in half a dozen voices.  

Redraw of the Halloween Lego short story :)c sorry for being gone for so long I hit an artblock but I'm back >:D

I need everyone to know that the ship Götheborg, the world's largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship, answered a distress call the other day.

Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.

Boba Fett: I feel like I can be myself around you

Din Djarin: You are weird and quiet around me

Boba Fett: Yes

The Warmth of Your Skin Like the Heat of Our Hearth

Got something cute for you today :)

13.02.2022

Prompt: Domesticity

if you tag me in a chain post and i don't do it it's not because i hate you it's because i am very lazy. i love you thank you for tagging me.

and boba makes 3

Boba Fett’s reputation as the best bounty hunter in the galaxy comes from him pulling off an insane number of jobs throughout his life, some of which were even deemed impossible for a lone hunter to pull off

funnily enough, he doesn’t actually remember completing all of the ones people attribute to him, but after seeing the footage and biometric proof, he assumes that he’s been blacking out and entering some sort of exhaustion fugue state, or maybe he’s just had a few too many concussions

it’s not until he tries to claim a puck from the guild and is told that he’s already working that job that he starts to figure out that something more is going on, and decides to investigate who it is that’s been working this job

as it turns out, there’s actually like ten different escaped clones pulling bounties under his name, considering they all share the same DNA and face, who’ve put together a few fake versions of his father’s armor

many of them even work in teams, trading off who gets to ‘play Boba’ to the guild or clients

(they’ve also been using their shared DNA to access his space netflix account, which explains why the recommendation algorithm never seems to figure out what he likes and keeps telling him that he’s already watched shows he finds)

(strangely, he realizes that they haven’t touched any of his bank accounts, despite the fact that they could certainly have gotten through their security measures the same way)

after discovering this, he considers confronting them, killing them, even just turning them in to the guild

but then he’d lose some of his reputation if it comes out that impersonators can mimic him well enough to get the job done just as well as he could

so he just sends them all a message telling them to not fuck this up and continues with this life

Rated M for 18+ themes in later chapters.

When Boba Fett walks into the coffee shop Din works at, Din knows he wants him.

Cara cautions that Boba is a bad idea. Din knows he should be looking for something more stable for Grogu and himself.

Luckily, Din has never met a bad decision he didn't want to make.

@bobadinweek

I think my favorite part about Boba's daddy issues is the fact that they aren't your traditional flavor of daddy issues

Like

"Oh my dad never loved me" or abusive, or anything to that degree

Like on all accounts Jango loved him and did his best. Some of his methods are a little unorthodox but such is life when you're a war vet with PTSD that doesn't have a healthy coping mechanism besides having a son. No no no. Boba's daddy issues are that he simply is his father and he will never escape that shadow. (Well there's Din who just flat out doesn't know. But my point is there)

He is his father and he will never be the man his father was and isn't that the kicker. You know how Robert Irwin's life revolves around everybody and their mother feeling as though they need to include his father in the conversation whenever it pertains to him in the slightest?

Jango Fett was the blue print and Boba is simply his copy and I cannot imagine hearing about your dead father every time a fellow bounty hunter opened their mouth the second you stepped into a room. At least until Boba got fed up and pulled a blaster on the poor bastard and promptly shut him up for the moment.

And as fun as it is to imagine Jango in the aftermath shaking his head as his child inevitably falls down the very rabbit hole that got himself killed. But, that sentiment aside, I cannot imagine a moment Jango isn't proud of that boy and Boba simply cannot see that. Boba is in no way perfect and Jango was also the blue print for that, but Jango will be damned to feel ashamed of his kid for making the same mistakes under zero guidance. Jango's fucked up, and likewise his child is as well but that's his boy, his pride and joy.

And I don't think Boba's knows that. Most people didn't know his father. They knew Jango Fett the bounty hunter. They knew Jango Fett the Jedi killer. They knew a man, mostly ruthless, that hunted his prey with an expressionless face that waited until the right moment to strike.

And thats not to say that's all Jango was. But who was going to tell Boba that? That the man's hands were as gentle as they were calloused and that despite his dark unassuming eyes that dared one to speak against him, he was a family man at the end of the day and although all the family he had were long since dead he carried their remembrance with a guilt like no other and he loved his boy.

But a 10 year olds memory is a fickle thing. And when ones face is tilted towards the light it's so easy to be blinded by it.

Jango was never cruel, but his hands have left their stain no matter how many times he's washed them and when the only people left alive to speak your name are the hunters you gnashed teeth with and the child you left orphaned despite the promise that things would be different this time around it's too easy for the truth to fall between the cracks.

Because while Jaster would have beamed down at Boba with pride and Myles and Silas would have lifted that boy high above their heads and recounted tales upon tales of what trouble his father had dragged them along for, and Zam had brushed his fair back behind his ears and read him stories and left him books at his doorstep, Aurra Sing was not as kind.

And while she wretched alcohol away from too small hands she had just as easily belittled and abandoned him in the same breath. And while Hondo has described Jango as an honorable man, what good did that tell a boy who had been thrust into prison just a few hours later.

Because whether they'd told Boba his father was a too gentle bastard or a man that striked fear into the hearts of whoever heard his name, he was an unobtainable goal and Boba was a cheap imitation.

And while he rose against the ranks, and learned to strike fear into all who opposed him then learned to love above all else, there's not a soul alive to tell him that his father would be proud of the man he'd become.

And maybe at long last he can sleep at night, because what good is a dead man's approval anyway? But he will never know that at the end of the day, through the shadow and the haze of blurred vision Jango loved him above all else, everything else be damned.