A Jedi in Arrakis II (Paul Atreides x Reader)
Summary: While on the run from Empire troops, Jedi padawan Y/N comes to find out that hyper-driving in a compromised craft can have some major setbacks when she discovers not only is on a new planet but a whole new galaxy as well...
Warnings: eventual 18+, eventual smut, pinv!sex, currently FLUFF, eventual NSFW, jedi!reader, simp!Paul, Bene Gesserit ideology, Bene Gesserit breeding ideology, spoilers for Dune I and II, angst, talks of questioning the Force and teachings
A/N: I am changing the timeline of the Dune plot and certain events
Dividers by @firefly-graphics Banner by @vase-of-lilies
Part I
A total of one month had passed since her arrival on Arrakis, the Duke have been kind enough to allow for her to stay with them. And during these few days, she had found Paul's company to be welcoming with the way he was intrigued about everything from the Force to her home on Naboo. It made her feel warm inside but she tried to ignore it, but she knew if Anakin was here, he'd been teasing her about it.
"What was that you did with the sandworm?" Paul asked, she looked at him.
"I used the Force", she answered with a frown. "Have you not heard of the Force?"
"No, never", Paul breathed, "it was... amazing. And what is that you carry?"
"It's my lightsaber", she answered as BB trailed next to her. "This is all so confusing, we are only a universe away and yet it's so different. This planet is really similar to Tattoonie and is very strong with the Force"
Paul let out a light chuckle in agreement, "it is. I would like to know more if you don't mind and tell you about Caladan, it's where I was raised."
"Of course", she said with a smile. "I'm only a padawan, if my Master was here, he'd probably get a big head and I'd love to hear more about your planet later."
"So, I'm assuming you're a student?"
"An apprentice, I don't become a Master until I am found ready to conquer the trials by the Jedi Council."
As she continued talking about the Force, the teachings, about Naboo, Paul seemed more interested as he listened intently and hanging off every word of hers. He did look over anxiously over at BB a few times before they came to one of the many loading bays at this compound as Paul asked, "can you really understand it?"
"BB? Yeah, anyone where I'm from understands basic droid language", she answered with a shrug. "BB's just a big goof, he's a prototype I was given."
BB let out a little offended noise and she patted his head.
"We have A.I. and robotics banned after we had a war with them", Paul said, she nodded.
"Atreides!" a booming voice declared and she saw a tall, tan skinned man with a big grin coming to Paul.
He looked like a warrior but the way Paul was excited to him let her know of the friendship the two had.
"Duncan", Paul said with a grin, "you're back from the South."
"With barely my life and oh! Who is this, Paul? A lady friend of yours", Duncan joked, she laughed. "I will say that those Fremen fight for blood."
"My name is Y/N and I... crash landed here when I hyper jumped", she said, BB whirled. "Oh and this is BB."
"I still don't understand how that is possible without Spice", Paul said. "You said Spice doesn't exist at all where you are from."
"I'm assuming my galaxy's technology is more advanced", she answered, "since we use droids and such, even our medicine is more advanced."
"Well, it is nice to meet you, Y/N, BB", Duncan said with a knowing grin, "I'm heading to my room to get some much needed rest."
Duncan turned and left with a grin as Paul watched as BB approached him, a finger poking BB on the head who let out a little war cry and began to bump Paul in the shins.
Paul had training to do and he had lend her to a quiet spot where she and BB could be, where she could focus on strengthening her Force training. Y/N had already done her lightsaber training, making sure she was still honing her skills even while on this odd planet.
"Ok, BB", she said, "let's get to it."
Sitting down with her legs crossed and her eyes closed, Y/N sucked in a deep breath and began to let her mind clear, remembering everything Anakin had told her and Ahsoka about being one with the Force. She had to empty her mind, allow herself to fully feel for the Force and as she evened out her breathing, she allowed for her mind and breathing to lull her...
🪐
The Reverend Mother had come earlier than expected and Lady Jessica found herself trailing behind her old teacher as the woman was scolding her for having birthed a son.
"What is this of a newcomer?" Reverend Mother asked. "I have heard whispers of a woman from another galaxy who possess odd abilities."
"She is no one", Jessica answered, "merely a lost traveler."
Jessica could feel the older woman's glare from behind the cage veil and felt like a student all over again.
"A lost traveler who held back a sandworm with a unseen power", Reverend Mother spat.
Jessica held back her emotions as she watched as a sudden thought passed over her mentor's eyes and Jessica felt unsure as to what she was thinking, but she held a hope it wasn't what she was thinking.
Had Paul been born a girl, he would have been married to na-Baron Feyd-Rautha of House Harkonnen, but Jessica had never intended to fall for Leto. It had been her greatest failure in the eyes of her Sisters when she chose to give Leto a son, that she chose to give her dearest love what he wanted: an heir.
At the time, her pride had made her even think Paul could become the Kwisatz Haderach, but now, she wasn't so sure and with the arrival of this strange girl, Jessica wondered.
She wondered if the Reverend Mother was plotting once again, she recognized that glint in the old woman's eye when she found a new individual to add to their growing breeding program.
Jessica tried to push down that curiosity and that anxiety that always seem to come when she thought about Paul's future.
🪐
"C'mon, Paul", Duncan encouraged, "focus. You need to always keep an eye on the enemy, it could mean life or death."
Paul nodded, "my mind was wandering, sorry."
The girl he had been dreaming about was here, he had first thought she could have been a Fremen with her garbs that she would sometimes be in the dreams, but no, she was from beyond their galaxy.
Paul sucked in a breath as he tightened his stance, trying to listen to Duncan's advice despite the way his mind was recalling the dreams.
The dreams where he could taste a unique drink as she smiled at him, it was a blue drink with the consistency of milk; another dream where they were here in Arrakis, the Spice in the sand glittering as they sat on a tall dune, watching a sandworm pass them by...
Arrakis was beautiful at night, Y/N concluded as she looked at the dark horizon; the air was cooler as she stood on the balcony. BB was in his hibernating mode to charge as Y/N was dressed in a thin nightgown meant for this weather, her robes folded up neatly as her hair hung loose from its hairstyle.
A knock came from her door and she sensed it was Paul, she walked over to the door and opened it.
"Paul", she greeted with a smile. "Shouldn't you be asleep? Being a Duke's son and such?"
"I wanted to talk more", Paul replied with a smile. "I decided my beauty sleep could wait a little longer."
"How kind of you", she joked, letting him in.
"I wanted to ask about your saber thing", Paul sheepishly said, "I've never seen anything like it and I wanted to ask more about you."
Y/N felt her eyes widen at Paul's statement about her, it made her heart thump in a way it hadn't before and she sheepishly looked away before moving to grab her lightsaber.
"It'd be too heavy for you to hold", she softly said, moving a bit aways so the heat of the saber wouldn't startle Paul. "Ready?"
Paul nodded with a boyish grin as she pressed the button, the hum of the lightsaber coming to life and the bright white of its color showing.
Paul looked at it amazed as she twirled it to show-off.
"How is it not heavy for you?" Paul asked.
"They train us from when we were young", Y/N said, "they give us little ones to get us used to the weight."
She shut the lightsaber off and put it on the dresser.
"Your galaxy seems so amazing", Paul softly said, walking in front of her. "I hope to see it one day."
"And Caladan sounds beautiful", Y/N replied back.
They were silent as they stared at one another, a small smile gracing Paul's lips as he said, "you look different with your hair down. I've never seen it."
"Oh", she said, flushed a bit. "Space Puffs are very popular on Naboo."
A strange feeling was in her chest, one that seemed to make her feel fuzzy and light as she stood in Paul's presence and she wondered if this is how Anakin felt when he saw Padme. One had to be a idiot to not see the glances the two gave one another.
"I better go back", Paul said after a minute, a boyish grin on his face. "If anyone saw me, they'd throw a scandal."
Y/N bite her bottom lip as she watched Paul leave and sucked in a breath as she contemplated these new feelings.
TAGLIST
@cloudlst
@khaleesihavilliard
@colors-for-the-world-please
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hours have past and i now have a full belly and my nap meter has been fulfilled and so i am no longer angry but i will still insist that people thinking thistle is a child are, in fact, bitches
There is not a single suggestion he is a child through that entire manga. the most we get is a fan translation of a piece of that adventurer's bible that says it's "ok" if he wears elf earmuffs but "just ok" if pattadol or marcille wear elf earmuffs. but the same fan-translated blurb also says "children and young people" wear them, and specifies that young women often do not - implying that the difference in "ok" and "just ok" could be that Thistle's more fine to wear it as a man, versus Pattadol and Marcille.
We do not actually know the ages of any of the people from the Golden Country. We have nothing we can go on beyond estimations from the Tall-men aging. People saying "Thistle is short he must be a child" are full of it, because elves ARE short - he is the same height as another adult elf, Otta.
We physically see Thistle age through his backstory. We know he is fully grown.
He had to have been at least around the human equivalent of 10 when Delgal was born. We do not know a pureblood elf's equivalent to this, but it is going to be older than a dwarf's since elves live longer. To put it in perspective, Senshi, at 13, was the human equivalent to a 6yo:
Able to do simple chores. About 6 or so. So dwarves likely age at about half the rate of humans. Elves live even longer than dwarves, and likely age even slower. So a human 10yo would be a dwarf 20yo or so, and for an elf, that is likely 40 years old since they live 400 vs dwarf 200 years - So when we're looking at Thistle at Delgal's birth, what looks like a 10yo tall-man child would be a 40yo elf. It is highly likely around there unless it's said otherwise anywhere.
At 40 at the time of Delgal's birth, we could just add how old Delgal is. We don't know his exact age, but this man looks at least 40. He already has a son.
So going by this, Thistle is probably about 80 at the time he officially becomes Dungeon Lord. This is the elf age of maturity according to the Adventurer's Bible.
And you need to remember, while immortality exists in the Golden Country, it does not mean aging is ground to a halt.
Delgal's son continues to grow, and has a child who grows into adulthood all within the dungeon. Delgal continues to age:
Absolutely nobody is stunted in aging since the start of the dungeon. There has never been a suggestion of that. At some point it appears he made sure to lock everyone in the age of their prime, but Thistle continued to physically age at least through Delgal seeming to be at least a 70yo man.
So Thistle is solidly an adult, in body and mind, ESPECIALLY at the time of the story but including when he became Lord of the Dungeon. At absolute best, if you shave off years, possibly initially he could have been maybe the elf equivalent to late teens, but that's really pushing it.
Not a single time in the entire series, even when the Canaries see Thistle, does anyone remark that he is a child, or even exceedingly young. He is treated like an adult by absolutely everyone.
Every single person that says he is a child is working on pure headcanon or are overly distracted about his size and cute face, which is ironic since that's an ongoing issue elves deal with with with non-elves. He is not any shorter or any less babyfaced than other adult elves we know.
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So why do you hate the advertising industry?
Hokay so.
Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.
I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.
I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.
Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.
Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.
Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.
I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.
And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.
Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.
Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.
And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.
Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.
It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.
It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.
And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.
Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.
Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.
However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.
I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.
Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.
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