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dnangelic · 4 months

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IM DONE WITH THE FIRST LN..... it was rlly cute and idk how much i trust my summarizing skills (or google translate wheelchairing me thru everything) but ill try, disclaimer that not all of this will necessarily be in perfect detail or order bc i'm horrible at that but it's a gist(tm). LNs take place really early on in the series so daisuke still likes risa and hasn't properly figured out he likes riku yet, dark is WAAAAY more of a creep, etc. also putting it under a read more because it's enormous. open at your own discretion, this is ~200 pages condensed into one post

first few chapters is mostly shenanigans/general chara introductions and setting up the fact daisuke's class is doing a sleeping beauty school play. risa's the princess, hiwatari's the prince, daisuke and riku are basically fairy extras, but daisuke is also the last fairy with important lines that basically help to wake up the princess in the end. in the midst of all this daisuke transforms a couple of times but mostly keeps control of his body, clumsy gap moe darksuke stuff ensues, dark in his head even tells dai to go have some fun and daisuke snaps back that fun for dark is either stealing or flirting with girls and he's NOT doing any of that. 😂

daisuke kind of huffs and mopes about what's going on between him and dark a bunch, with dark 'stealing' risa away from him and simultaneously taking over his entire life, to which emiko offers to listen but daiki tells her that 'a confrontation with dark is a confrontation with oneself' and 'there's nothing you can do.' there's also this very nice passage about dark and his relationship with the artworks that happens:

daisuke was looking at the weathervane spinning on the roof of a certain western-style building. there are many buildings like this, which have both a profound sense of history and delicate beauty in the area where daisuke lives. as his mother once said, the townscape was perfect for a gorgeous phantom thief. these are precious objects that survived an era when art in general was treated badly by the rapid development of science and technology, and the people who used it. as works of art and the techniques used to create them were lost, their rarity value and prices soared, and now they were treated with more respect than before. daisuke had heard stories like this from his grandfather and mother. most of what dark aims for is something imbued with that lost technique. however, these items are not sold and are still sleeping in the basement of the niwa family's house. high tech is progressing in areas that can't be seen, and efforts are being made to prevent intrusions by unscrupulous people. ironically, the same science and technology that eliminated traditional crafts and their techniques are now being used to protect what little beauty and skill that remains. for daisuke, who transformed into dark, breaking through multiple security devices and traps to steal wasn't difficult to do. but how to earn the heart of the one he loved?

daisuke also misses kosuke (his dad) a whole bunch cause he isn't home yet and is still on a trip (he doesn't even know what his dad is really doing,) cue this portion too about his personal anxieties. interesting bits about how daisuke's family doesn't mind how daisuke does at school/goes as long as he prioritizes his skills as a phantom thief because a certain level of educational mastery is needed. daisuke wonders to himself whether or not his mom and grandpa would 'cry again if he asked them to be sensible' lmao.

anyways, emiko pulls out a couple of date tickets to a newly built aquarium/museum called the aqua dome/deep blue, says she'll pick out a cute and cool outfit for daisuke, dark offers to go in daisuke's stead, daisuke tells both of them to shut up and says that he can do it all himself. 'i'll never let you go!' he tells dark. at the aquarium itself it turns out the two tickets that emiko gave him provides admittance for two people per single ticket, so even though he expected a solo date with risa, riku and saehara show up too.

riku actually gets a lot of character focus for being 'strong' and not 'cute' like risa. she's simultaneously insecure/jealous but considerate of risa while risa likewise complains that no matter what she does, she'll still be the younger one with an older sister, and that can't change. riku's sense of conflict over liking daisuke while daisuke (at this point) still likes risa is described as her feeling both a 'burning feeling' and also being 'cold and dark as ice,' which i liked, given the way dnangel usually handles that thematic.

everybody (riku, risa, daisuke, and saehara) goes to a haunted house attraction. daisuke is willing to go because he thinks it's a good chance to show off his cool side since he's a pro at walking in the dark. there's a mechanical 'killer' that chases anybody in the haunted house, which daisuke immediately figures out in regards to how it functions. riku and daisuke also have a sweet moment where in the pitch dark daisuke starts shaking because he's terrified he's suddenly transformed, (he didn't) and gets misunderstood for constantly looking at the emergency exit, but riku grabs his hand and tells him everything's okay in a big sister-ly way, even though she's actually really afraid of blood and is trying to act tough to comfort/encourage him. she tells him not to be afraid because she's with him, daisuke says thanks then grabs her hand back. 'her hands, still a little smaller than the small daisuke's, stopped shaking a little.' 😭😭😭

they leave the haunted house attraction and figure out that saehara has pretty much gone off on his own. saehara comes across satoshi in a fancy suit inside an area 'modeled after some traditional opera house' (POTO REF POG) and satoshi gets described as 'some rich guy's bonbon' LMAO. wiz is also there and starts 'playing tag' with a guard. around the actual aquarium daisuke's having a great time, risa calls a sea otter cute and daisuke can't bring himself to say 'you're cuter,' which he's sure that someone like dark could have said without any embarrassment. (MY SON'S HIDDEN RIZZ!!)

daisuke finally gets to see the mermaid's tears (an artwork/red gemstones) being showcased at the bottom of the attraction, has this crazy moment:

'the reason for the "please do not lean over" warning on this fence is because the 3d light that is projected from the floor covering the mermaid's tears doubles as a sensor to detect intruders. the security device activates when the light is blocked. daisuke carefully listened as a security guard gave an explanation to two young women who were trying to touch the 3d mermaid.

that means we have to do something about security first.

reflexively thinking that, daisuke scratched his head and said 'no way, are even my thoughts turning into dark's?! i'm not going to turn into dark anymore!'

he screams internally while risa gets lost in the daydream sauce, they go to the gift shop, the great phantom dark is a broke ass middleschooler moment. all of the sudden, riku starts shouting at someone to give back risa's wallet- it's a pickpocket. daisuke's legs start moving as soon as he sees riku get pushed away and the pickpocket starts running. daisuke reminds himself he can't cause a commotion only as he's already tackling the guy, who he had absolutely no trouble catching up to/keeping up with. only, he's too small and there's no way he can compete with a grown man in strength, so he gets flung away. he stays where he is 'suppressing the urge' to throw a punch, hiwatari shows up above him sending security to catch the pickpocket, but also softly compliments daisuke for a 'great performance' while lending him a hand to stand up. turns out daisuke had stolen risa's wallet right back and still had it in his hand.

'what? ah ... ah .... '

it's obvious, after all. daisuke, holding risa's wallet in hand, could only laugh.

in fact, the split second daisuke was clinging to [the pickpocket,] he slipped the wallet out of the [pickpocket's] pocket, and just before he was hit by an elbow, he let go and fell. what he miscalculated was that he couldn't slow down enough and fell on his face. and then there was hiwatari. without him, this "perfect crime" would have been completed.

daisuke immediately starts considering satoshi and his own's circumstances.

'i once heard that people with cold hands have warm hearts. hiwatari is always alone. but is that what he wants? just like saehara, who is always chasing scoops, and like his classmates who attend cram school with their future in mind, i wonder if hiwatari is also trying to do something, at the expense of a normal, enjoyable school life. i wonder why he's going to such lengths to pursue dark.

even though i'm being chased, i have no goals. even though i'm just desperately struggling to escape from dark.

turns out deep blue if not the entire aqua dome was built Specifically with dark in mind, and that's why the area where the mermaid's tears' are is called the special exhibition room. daisuke bursts out laughing at the fact and hiwatari briefly touches him to ask if he's okay. daisuke blurts out asking if he wants to have fun too and hiwatari basically declines with nothing more than a 'faint, gentle smile' and a thank you. risa and riku rush over and start to fret over daisuke because his face has gotten all messed up; he tries to laugh it off and say 'it's no big deal' until riku's expression darkens and she asks him 'why are you being so reckless?'

even if someone asked me why, i couldn't answer because my body moved without any time to think.

(MY SON'S HIDDEN PROTAG SYNDROME!!) risa gets her wallet back and calls dai manly, dai gets rocketed into heaven just from that sole compliment. they go to the artificial beach that's part of the area, daisuke has a moment over risa and starts to transform.

daisuke ran as fast as he could, interrupting the love stories of the couples scattered on the beach. no matter how far you run, no matter how hard you run, your shadow will follow you. the strong midsummer sun gives the shadows a sense of presence. there is a clear boundary between light and shadow, but this is the opposite. what is shining is not the owner of this body, but dark, who's supposed to be a shadow...

... i'm embarrassed, pathetic, and angry because i was so excited. daisuke is always there. it's my other self who effortlessly accomplishes the things i want to do but can't.

dark walks out of the banyan forest daisuke had dived into and onto the beach like he's hot shit. unfortunately for everybody involved he is because the very first thing he does is start flirting with an icecream lady, who gives him an icecream cone 'about three times the height' of a normal ice cream cone, calling it a service. dark offers to give a picture or something in return to her btw, but she declines and only asks him to come again. dark says 'of course, i'll come to see you,' and winks swaggering off. he immediately hands off the icecream to some other girls who cling to his arms and bring up that he looks like dark, to which he has a total tony hawk moment.

'i thought i've seen you somewhere before, but don't you look like dark?' 'they look alike, it's so cool!' 'oh, did you find out? actually, i came to steal the mermaid's tears.' dark grinned, and the girls gaped for a moment, then burst out laughing. 'i almost believed it!' 'it's the truth.'

dark and risa have a moment, daisuke starts to fall into total despair. riku appears and dark hauls ass to transform back. everyone starts to leave the aqua dome because it's getting late, and it's riku and not risa who notices that daisuke is suddenly intensely depressed. he says he's fine and gives a half-hearted smile that looks like it's about to burst into tears, they fall into silence. cue a lovely image of daisuke staring blankly at the nighttime scenery. 'the image reflected in the window glass overlaps with the pitch-black town. without realizing it, he was gradually becoming darker.... daisuke couldn't escape.'

later in bed daisuke wakes up in a lot of pain to turn on the lights. he's relieved because 'instead of the beautiful phantom thief who is said to be more popular than idol celebrities, he saw a very ordinary face that is sometimes said to be cute.' turns out his back's hurting for the past few days harshly enough that he's getting sleep deprived. after transforming back from dark he fell about two meters (6~7 feet) and insists that he could have broken one or two bones if he weren't trained. emiko had laughed saying it was a product of his training, but for daisuke it wasn't any sort of laughing matter.

the pain is similar to the pain that occurs when transforming into dark. it slowly melts out from the core of the body. ugh, it hurts. it was a pain that felt like something was trying to forcibly reshape daisuke's body.

the next day at school saehara and daisuke start doing a manzai routine over wiz being caught transforming on camera. there's an ominous note in the midst of it regarding change: 'even if it transforms, then like a chrysalis, it won't go back to normal.' daisukes goes into the art room to finish on the last piece for the school play.

a forest of thorns covers sleeping beauty's castle. countless fingers that obstruct those who try to break the curse. i layered many kinds of dark colors on that forest. on her 15th birthday, sleeping beauty's future is suddenly closed to her, and her sadness is midnight blue. the thorns that cause anxiety are spruce green. the feeling of trapping despair is the same as dark's wings.

the glue made a clear shadow of daisuke on the test paper. the shadow of the brush that was creating the deep forest suddenly stopped moving.

it won't go back to normal. the curse can't be erased. i can't get those words out of my head. the only girl who can erase the curse is, of course, the only one who can see the curse itself. will i continue to be myself and no longer myself without anyone knowing?

hiwatari puts a hand on daisuke's shoulder as he's going unsteady and daisuke immediately says that he's fine, just not getting enough sleep- but also he hasn't made any progress on his homework, he has to memorize his lines, and he's being swayed by saehara. dai finally brings up that he's never really thought abut the future, and he immediately berates himself for talking about something like it in front of satoshi, who had excellent grades and was already part of the police force. hiwatari surprises him by saying 'me too, i've never though about the future. i've lived my life thinking only about one thing.' no further elaboration is given as hiwatari offers to help out and immediately picks out daisuke's coloring as 'the color of despair.'

daisuke laughed. i tried my best, but i ended up slipping up quite a bit. it's like i painted myself. like sleeping beauty, everything is taken away from her. her love, her body, even her future... she becomes dark and may never be able to return to her former self.

this might be a serious passage but daisuke comparing himself to a fairy tale princess is so funny and on point for me. YOU CAN DO THIS CHRISTINE!!! later after school emiko shows up with the entire aqua dome's cutaway floor plan, and daisuke has NO idea how she managed to get it but starts planning the heist out. everything is practically set against him; darkness is prevented, there's only one vent that's' too small to get through, and there are hidden passages not shown in the drawings. daisuke reaaally wants to stop being dark, dark himself yells NO!!! and emiko and daiki also barge out from the hallway to immediately berate him. 'don't be selfish! if you don't do it, who will? even though mother wanted to be dark, dai-chan just throws away his chance! that's terrible!'

daisuke shuts them out until they finally relent and his mother leaves him with a few last words of apology and this.

daisuke, don't blame dark for things you can't control yourself. i don't want to hear anymore about dark. daisuke covered his ears. what you're worried about now is nothing special. although it's a little different from what everyone else is having. don't be afraid. everyone notices their own carvings that they didn't know before. i'm going to go... his mother's voice did not reach daisuke.

emiko reminisces about her own mother telling her that while dark was never caught by the police and was sure that he had stolen a beautiful jewel, it was actually dark himself who had always been caught but never realized it.

several years have passed since then, and the time has come for the girl who wnated to be dark to be glad to be a girl. she meets the young man who will become daisuke's father and falls in love... the jewel in her heart shines like it's on firer. just for one person. you've already found your true treasure, right? aim for it. she imagined her son alone, waiting for the moment to take off into the great sky.

daisuke himself in the meanwhile is going thru it. he considers how his father can't be dark and wouldn't know dark, and likewise would be able to listen to daisuke's woes.

but where are you? when i woke up, my father wasn't home. that doesn't mean there were any problems, and judging from my mother's reactions, it seems like they were still passionately in love with each other. i've heard that he moves around the world for work, but i don't really know what kind of work he does. i can't believe that my father was also a thief...

...this may be the first time i've felt my father's absence so much. my mother and grandfather were enough to care for me, and even more, they always played with me when i got home. hide and seek, tag, and dogeball. survival versions with traps. ah, now that i think about it, i can only think that it was meant to help me escape when i became dark. once, when he was caught in a trap and injured, daisuke asked his grandfather, 'why do i have to do this?' now is not the time. when the young boy complained in tears, his grandfather flatly told him, ' the time will come when you understand.'

baby daisuke calls his grandpa a shitty old man (kuso jiji/くそじじ) which he apparently picked up through imitation from saehara without knowing what it meant, absolutely flooring poor daiki for a second before he decides to give daisuke a hint: 'all of this is to steal the maiden's heart.' dark pops up and he and daisuke bicker a little, which is really more like dark keeps his casual, annoyingly playful attitude while daisuke gives him a cold shoulder.

'i don't know dark. i don't even know what's going to happen to me...' ---isn't it interesting? i'm excited to see what happens. daisuke didn't have anything better to say to dark, who kept his playful tone. 'anyway, dark is special. he can do anything and knows everything.' --- ah, i've been perfect since the moment i existed in this world. but that's also boring... i need to refresh myself by playing with a pretty lady.' 'that's just a hobby, isn't it?' ---'i wouldn't say so. an unapologetic, bright voice. daisuke felt silly worrying about something like this. why did i talk to someone like dark... well, it would have been understood even if we didn't talk. dark, who seems to have fun doing everything and never takes anything seriously. while concentrating on the conversation in his mind, daisuke forgot about the pain in his body and fell asleep. ---do you know what it means to never change? daisuke couldn't hear it. dark's voice was a little serious. big deal... if you really want to win against me, you should change it. our destiny.

emiko and daiki warmly send daisuke off to school with a sports bag containing dark's clothes and some other supplies, daisuke apologizes to them in his mind and swears to himself again that he wouldn't turn into dark, which is a goal he terrifically fails as soon as the day is up thanks to riku. dark heads off to the aqua dome to finally get the heist started. cue the cool heist stuff, which i'm too lazy to transcribe the majority of rn, but trust me it's pretty cool and wiz is once again not getting paid enough for all the shit dark and dai make him do. daisuke refuses to speak throughout about half of the heist until dark cracks a joke about how 'loved' he is, and daisuke finally snaps that it's not the time to be joking and he's worried about getting caught and how he has to go to school tomorrow. (daisuke...) dark grins and brings up that daisuke finally spoke, then he immediately gets waterboarded and sent off to a different area by a flash flood. they're now stuck outside the area of their plans, daisuke starts having another moment of doomspiralling before dark tells him to quit it -

'don't think so darkly. i won't get caught.' ---where does that confidence from from...? 'where is this?' with the thumb of his tight black glove, dark pointed to his chest. 'are you that worried that you're being hijacked?' dark laughed arrogantly. 'there's no way anyone would like something like that.' daisuke felt as if his chest had been sliced open. he should have been able to feel the pain in his body right now. even though it's not there, there's still an unbearable pain. if you like and love something so much that you can't accept the growing feelings, it might be easier if they just disappeared. after all, it was my fate to be swallowed up by dark...

some more running around, risa clings to wiz-dark, saehara's somewhere in here too, you kids are crazy. at some point dark and dai start having this conversation:

inside dark, daisuke was devastated and drenched with worries. i don't want to think about anything anymore. then i'll happily take over your body and your future, just as you wish,' happily spoke a deep voice. 'and the one you like.'

daisuke remembers riku and unconsciously calls out to dark, who tells him 'don't yell. it's too late now. if it's fate, you'll just follow it while crying the whole time.' daisuke hits back with 'you don't know that yet! i'll change it!' to which dark grins and eggs him on a little more with a 'you tell me.'

'keep going like that and get out of here. please, brother. (kyodai/兄弟) ---we're not brothers. however, it wasn't a complete denial. in truth, somewhere deep down he was enjoying stealing beautiful works of art and playing chase with the police. maybe it was just as my grandfather had said, or maybe i was just being dragged along by dark's heart. what daisuke hated was himself. i found myself being dragged along by a situation that was unexpectedly changing at a dizzying pace. daisuke laughed. perhaps only dark can see that expression. because right now, in reality, this body is not my own. this heart is the only thing that keeps it alive. that's why you can't use it unless you feel strong. even if no one can see you, even if no one can hear you, this is proof that you are definitely here. daisuke can't help but recognize dark's true strength. and for the first time, i called out to my other self from the bottom of my heart. ---we're accomplices, right? we're the only companions who share everything, including our bodies and memories. a phantom thief who violates a maiden's heart. however, i don't like how he's always one step ahead of me.

this cuts into daisuke looking through dark's eyes trying to figure out a way to escape from the area they're trapped in, and the hilarious description of 'the artificial beach where dark was picking up girls' being the location right above them. hiwatari shows up and pulls out the cuffs, daisuke can't do anything but watch as he and dark dodge and squabble. hiwtari pulls out the heartwrenching line 'how many sacrifices have been made for your existence!' at dark, and hiwatari's suffering and pain is described as 'something that daisuke also knew well.' even though daisuke in truth had been enjoying himself, he couldn't anymore with hiwatari like this.

but... now, while he's cornering dark, there's hiwatari who feels like he's been cornered himself. i don't want him to look at me like that anymore.

hiwatari slips after cuffing dark and daisuke freaks out for him, 'reaching out for him' despite not being the one in control of the body. satoshi's glasses break but dark catches their owner, while hiwatari himself looks up at dark 'as if he to ask why he helped him.'

'there's someone who wants to help you.'

dark pulls out a flare/lighter of sorts and sets off a fire alarm and lets him escape, he turns back into daisuke who ends up meeting up with riku and risa. daisuke thanks wiz for helping him and being willing to jump into water even though wiz hates water, daisuke goes home clutching the mermaid's tears, a red gem that 'shines like a flame.' hiwatari muses that dark is an opponent you have to be careful with and that if you let your guard down or get impatient even a little bit, he can easily escape. later daisuke heads off to school again and 'mobilizes all the gods and buddhas to pray at the last minute that he would not transform into dark' during the school performance. riku's trembling from stagefright and when the trade glances she says 'it doesn't matter, i don't have many lines,' to which daisuke says 'don't say things like that. everyone has a role to play. besides...' the stage is set, the lights go out, and in the darkness, daisuke holds hands with riku. 'i'm with you.'

sleeping beauty turns out to be a huge success, the kids pour soda water all over each other instead of champagne, and the daisuke from a while ago probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy that sort of nonsense.

'i'm soaking wet, i'm covered in bruises, all sorts of things happened... i don't know what's going to happen to me, but something is starting to move. daisuke thought it might be a good idea to let the wind blow around him, because the future can be repainted freely.'

the LN closes with emiko finding a picture of riku that daisuke can drawn into his sketchbook, the mermaid's tears beside it.

the light reflected by the jewel, which contains intense feelings that cannot be expressed in words, appears to be lighting a red flame on the chest of the girl in the painting. the flame of my heart burns brightly.

#fav #reference.#*･ﾟ⊰ 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒. ⊱ ✦ › OUT.#nd that's book one. my brain hurts now #somewhere in the earlier section is sato going full vampire n putting his lips to a wound #dai gets while they're painting #so that it doesn't get their work ruined #the detail shows up a few times #what with dark n dai sharing wounds #but whatevs #i couldnt figure out how to put it into the post after i had already started writing it. rubs my fingers into my temples

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fromtheseventhhell · 3 months

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It's crazy that people still uphold show!Sansa as a well-written character and pretend that liking her is the pinnacle of feminism when it would be infinitely more impactful to acknowledge her terrible and misogynistic writing. This is the same character who, while written by two men, was thankful for the abuse she suffered because it allowed her to grow. The same character who we had to be told was smart because the writers were too lazy to develop or show her intelligence. The same character who had to rely heavily on the men surrounding her and ended up accomplishing nothing on her own merit ( and no, thinking that she deserved to be Queen doesn't mean that she earned it). She is not well-written, she is not complex, and she is not a feminist character. Which is fine! If you enjoy her then good on you, but please stop pretending that she's something she isn't just because you feel the need to justify liking her character

#anti got #anti d&d #anti show sansa #anti sansa stans #like literally one of the worst written characters on that show because they tried so hard to make her the most important #while being entirely incompetent and their only method of doing so was to steal from other characters which ruined the plot #the only arguable achievement was defeating LF but even then it's written in the script that she had to go to Bran to explain things #/she rallied the Vale army!/ no she didn't 😭 she wrote a letter to LF and he did everything. instead of showing her arc in the Vale and #her learning about politics to rally them herself they took the quickest route to give her a /badass/ savior scene #which only ended up making her look selfish + power-hungry for putting her brothers' lives at risk for not telling anybody about said lette #and idiotic in the aftermath after relying once again on LF even though he was very obviously manipulating her #/pawn to player/ sounds catchy on paper but without seeing that growth/development it doesn't work #Arya was terribly written but at least we /saw/ her training in a way we never did with Sansa #and people try to apply this same logic to the books and think she's gonna suddenly spring forth as a political mastermind #when that's not how George writes...we see characters develop and make mistakes on page and get actual earned growth #feminism isn't defending the writing of two men who gave her a rape plot not in the books because they thought it was /interesting/#when the only aspect of that plot they adapted was a woman suffering abuse :/#and as per usual with stansas their only /evidence/ of her being well-written is accusing you of being misogynistic if you don't like her

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jessicas-pi · 2 months

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📔

Ooooh.... Here's a crack AU I made up ages ago!

So, in this AU, when Ezra was young (like... three, maybe,) there was an accident and his parents were killed. And something happened in that accident that revealed he was Force-sensitive. He was brought to Vader, and Vader sees this child—small, but VERY Force-sensitive, and born almost the exact same day Padme died—and his reaction is just, "SON?????"

So... Ezra grows up believing that Vader is his dad.

Anyway, several years pass. Ezra is about twelve now, and he gets his first mission.

It's on Mandalore.

One of the instructors there is beginning to suspect that Sabine Wren is considering treason. Ezra is sent there, disguised as a new student, to "befriend" Sabine and discover if this is true. It backfires spectacularly!

Ezra decides that Sabine is The Coolest Ever, Actually, and sticks to her like a barnacle. They run away from the Academy together (though Ezra does leave a voicemail for Vader telling him everything is OK. He just doesn't want his dad to worry!)

Ezra says he'd like to go live quietly on Lothal (he doesn't remember it's his home, but something about the name sounds Familiar and Good), but Sabine doesn't want to. She says she'll drop him off and then she'll go and be a bounty hunter, but Ezra, who REALLY doesn't want to lose his new bestie, insists that he could be her bounty hunter apprentice. He's, like, really good at being an apprentice. Honest.

Sabine kind of has it in mind that he's this pathetic kid that she needed to babysit and rescue from the Empire (she doesn't know who he really is; Ezra honestly just forgot to ever mention it), but he convinces her to give it a shot.

So, here's the thing. Ezra was raised by Darth Vader, and though he's not actively evil, Ezra's moral compass is a pinwheel and in his mind, the only reason to not do something is if either Vader or Sabine have specifically said Ezra No That's Bad.

After a lot of bad luck, they finally get a bounty puck, and set off to bring the person in. They get to the planet, and Sabine suggests they split up, because she thinks she'll catch the bounty much faster on her own.

She doesn't.

By the time she realizes she needs to follow the sound of people screaming and running, Ezra has already located, ambushed, and messily dismembered the bounty.

"Did I do good?" Ezra asks eagerly.

Sabine quickly switches mindsets from I have to keep this kid from getting himself killed to I have to keep this kid from having a villain arc.

"Um, are you okay?" Ezra asks. "You look kind of weird."

"I'm fine," Sabine says, smiling nervously. "Y'know, maybe we should just go live quietly on Lothal or something."

As it turns out, "living quietly on Lothal" is fun for about a month (which is how long it takes Sabine to paint the entire inside of the comm tower they've claimed as their headquarters, install bunk beds, dye Ezra's hair, and make mini cardboard mandalorian helmets for the two Loth-cats he brought home.) Then boredom sets in, and Sabine takes to vandalism. Ezra goes with her. He thinks it's almost as fun as bounty hunting.

Ezra also spends time exploring the Force. He's been trained in the Dark side but the peacefulness of Lothal starts to draw him towards the Light. He starts to find an equilibrium.

Sabine and Ezra have the time of their lives.

Then, one afternoon, about a year later, when Sabine and Ezra are working on an art project, Darth Vader barges into the comm tower and demands, "Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in, young man?!"

"Aww, Dad!" Ezra whines. "You never let me do anything!"

In hindsight, Sabine thinks, that explains a lot.

#that's all I have solidly worked out but I have this vague idea of sabine and ezra semi-kidnapping vader so he doesn't ruin their fun #and then the spectres come along and sabine and ezra join them and drag darth vader along #and vader accidentally joins the rebellion #thank you for the ask!!#and sorry it's taking me so long to get around to these!#star wars #star wars rebels #inquisitor ezra bridger #ezra bridger #sabine wren

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friendlylocalwhumper · 4 months

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“I n-need help.” Rain-soaked clothes cling to his body where he shivers on the doorstep.

Just inside the doorway stands Emory, blocking the warm yellow glow of the Christmas tree with his body. His eyes widen but he stays tucked between the door and the frame. “Lux.” He wants to crouch down, scoop him up, carry him in. But there is something dangerous inside: a wonderstruck little girl fawning over all her presents in pretty paper and bows. A little girl who has no idea that anyone ever gets hurt, and who thinks her dad is away on a trip to pick up the best present of all for her.

“It’s Christmas morning,” Emory adds finally, face twisted with distress. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t bring Lux inside, Penny can’t see him like this. But it’s so cold outside, and Lux looks like he’s in so much pain.

“...Need help,” Repeats the miserable warlock. “Just… g-get me to, to the side of the house, to hide. And then - and then - I can h-heal. I just…”

“You’re scared. Okay. Yeah, okay.” Swallowing his fear of ruining their daughter’s magical morning, Emory steps out into the rain. A chill runs down his spine when descending the two steps to the pathway reveals the bad angle of Lux’s leg. In a practiced motion he kneels and gathers his husband up into a better shape to guide him to his feet. Lux isn’t so thin anymore; he finally has enough muscle and dad-pudge to make his shoulders bigger and add some weight to him.

Besides, unfortunately, Emory knows that Lux can limp along on a broken leg without screaming.

The puddles complain with feeble splashes at being disturbed by dragging feet. The bricks on the side of the house catch them as Lux and Emory half-collapse together. The rough stone catches Emory’s knuckles and scores scrapes across the skin there as he protects Lux’s head without a second thought. They’ve fallen together enough times for him to see that coming.

The collision with the wall and muddy ground is finally enough to punch a sound out of Lux. It strikes Emory as horrifying that he was hesitant to come out and help when he hears that whimper. It sounds so different from how Lux’s sounds used to, like he was using a voice back in his twenties that the Hunter would be more entertained by. Letting his voice go high and cracked. Now, his voice is deeper, and that makes the soft, broken sound worse. Lux doesn’t sound like someone who makes pitiful sounds anymore.

“What happened, honey?” Emory asks softly as he checks on those shoulders first. The right one is just tense, the left one being touched makes Lux snap his head back against the bricks. He doesn’t scream, but it’s obvious that he needs to. Rain splatters across rapidly paling cheeks, droplets catching in his short beard that was just scruff a few days ago.

“Him. Just - a popped shoulder, uh, busted ribs, leg needs… you know.”

It looks exhausting for Lux to speak. A soft hand wrapped in band-aids cups his cheek as Emory leans in to tip his head down, their foreheads touching and the world seeming to close in comfortably around them. “Do you want to heal up, come in, get changed? She’ll be so happy to see you.”

It was supposed to be reassuring, but Emory can tell it came off as dismissive instead. Lux keeps his eyes closed and frowns deeper like he does when he’s holding back tears. “Yeah, I just… need a minute?” His voice cracks at the end. “Because I f-felt small again and I don’t feel like a dad right now.”

Their daughter inside the house, waiting on jumpy legs to finally get to open presents, weighs on Emory’s mind urgently like a stove left lit. But the Lux trying not to weep right in front of him is a concern more of the world-endingly devastating variety. Seeing Lux needing to cry always chokes him up, too, and it takes deliberate effort not to crack right now. “Okay, Curls. Take a minute. You’re home. Let’s get this shoulder healed first, what do you think? Make it hurt less so you can breathe.”

Lux’s staggered gasps stop for a second, and then comes a tense chuckle at the realization that he was struggling to get enough air around the agony. “You think, you th-think, fuck…” The curse comes in a practiced whisper to protect little ears. “Stupid, the stupid stuttering, I didn’t miss that.”

“It still happens when you’re stressed, sometimes.”

“Well I hate it a lot, a lot more when it’s because of him.”

Emory hums, whipping back tangled sopping hair that looks straight right now, but will be fluffy and curly once it’s dried out. “Just breathe and think of bed. The black blanket and the pillows. You can use your magic, it’s safe and we’ll be warm soon.”

A shuddery sigh comes at the guiding reassurances. With the deliberate calm and focus that comes, Lux allows blue-white light to blossom in his palms. His eyes blink open to squint toward the street, because as protected by the side of the house and the fence as they are, someone could drive by and see, and then…

“It’s safe,” Emory reminds, his hand on Lux’s cheek guiding him away from looking compulsively for danger. “Fix that shoulder. We have a few more minutes before she tears the presents to shreds, I think.”

That startles a laugh out of Lux, but at the same time his magic flares and dies out, his brows drawing up in upset. “He - he, Em, he tried to use - he tried to use her. Against me.” It’s all a whisper, a hoarse confession. Emory draws back in instant protective worry as he listens hard. Lux presses a hand to the ground and digs his fingers into the mud. “He made an illusion, a, he used magic on a box so when I opened it, I’d - her earrings were in there. I thought they were. I told him - I told him, I made sure he knew not to, not to ever come here, or even - he knows not to. Not to go near her.”

“We have to kill him. Get someone to. Move, we’ll have to move…”

“Em.” Lux looks like he wants to scream again, but more from emotion than pain this time. He remains quiet and weak against the wall. “There’s nothing else to do. He’s not coming close. I just - don’t try to - I don’t need…” Every raindrop that crashes into him is an assault on his senses. He can’t stand this kind of pain anymore, not when he has things to do. A family to pay attention to. When he was twenty it was fine to spend days curled up whining and crying, sleeping, wallowing. Now it feels like a waste of time to even explain what happened to Emory. “I made him sorry. Scared him. He erased my, made it so I couldn’t…”

It’s just a fact that the Hunter erased his memory of opening that gift, and that Lux found the mind magic in his own head and tore it apart to remember. Mentioning the assault on his mind is still hard, though, and he chokes on it.

“...Just. He knows not to, and I got out. I’m just s-, I’m - yeah. Scared. God, I miss being an annoying crying kid and Anders bullying me into taking a break.” A self-interrupting, chaotic sob-sigh, and he sinks further toward the ground. Impatiently he lifts a hand, summons that magic back to his palm, and heals the dislocated shoulder. He takes the joint thunking back into its socket like a punch to the gut instead of bone grinding on bone and nerves twisting unbearably. “Fuck,” He whispers again, as if mentioning Anders makes it impossible not to curse.

“Sorry.” Emory crouches close again, taking the liberty to adjust Lux’s broken leg so it’s closer to the core of his body. Lux is pale as a ghost but doesn’t complain, as he can finally reach the limb with his magic and pour some light into it. “Sorry, Curls. I know you didn’t ask for this. I know you… you can keep her safe.”

The warlock hums in agreement, then squeezes his eyes shut and raises his free hand to bite down on the side of it. Shaky breaths hiss out around the bite as his leg straightens and mends itself.

“H-hard to, to numb at the, same time,” He pants as Emory brushes his hair back.

“I know, honey. Come on, gotta get up.”

The puddle that they passed through earlier sloshes back out of the divot in the yard as they trudge through, and the front door opens with a squeak of complaint.

There is a tremendous racket of clinking glass, crumpling paper, and what sounds suspiciously like a pine tree knocking back against a wall. Penny comes running out into the hall with pine needles in her hair and a cloth snowflake ornament trapped in her sleeve. Her eyes go huge and round when she sees both of her dads, not just the one who stepped outside.

“Dad needs a break,” Emory says with quick, practiced ease before she can run in and hug Lux. “He fell down in the rain coming home! Isn’t that silly?”

“Daaaaaad,” Penelope complains and rolls her eyes, sending her whole head lolling back and her arms flapping once at her sides with the exaggerated gesture. “Ew.”

Lux tips his head down to see the mud they tracked in, and the growing puddle beneath them. “Ew,” He agrees, and smiles. It’s so warm in here, he almost wants to just sink to the floor and sprawl across it. “I’m gonna go take a shower get on my Christmas jammies. Then presents?”

The little girl stands still, suddenly, and clearly has a miniature crisis. “Yeah, uh - uh, Papa, you can, you can help, you can go help.”

Emory tips his head. “I don’t think Dad needs help with-”

Off she goes, unleashing a tornado in the living room to try to clean up and hide the evidence of her sneaky present opening.

#dad lux and dad emory are so cute #it's so messy and heavy how they try to keep penny protected #make sure she doesn't know about torture and mind magic and death #it involves a lot of lying and hiding aches #but they work so hard for her to has a safe spoiled happy life #and lux would be devastated if he didn't even get to come home from the hunter #without ruining her childhood and her special christmas morning #ugh i am having so much fun with slightly gruff dadlux #mine #lux #emory #penny #broken bones

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krafterwrites-alt · 1 year

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I read some Youtube comments (a mistake) and apparently some people don't like how Frontiers looks? Like ?????? HOW

#''Oh it's too realistic it doesn't work with Sonic'' It works fine you just have a skill issue #The Cyberspace stages also look great and are closer to the traditional artstyle but the islands would not be as visually stunning #If they resembled the Cyberspace levels instead of having the artstyle that they do #This reminds me of something stupid my brother said about the game's trailer where he said it ''didn't have art direction''#Just because something isn't heavily stylized doesn't mean it doesn't have art direction you dense motherfucker!#Look at the beautiful ruins and tell me that this game does not have art direction #Sorry for the rant that was just so dumb it pissed me off and I had to get it out of my system hjlfghjgfhlj #Krafter Talks

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storfulsten · 6 months

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my silly viera wol alt bc reasons uwu

#very messy tablet doodle could be better but eh it's something lol #anyways ye this is my edgy bunboi alt whom I like very much #it's about the vibes #I guess #if you don't get the vibes then congratulations I envy you I wish I wasn't so hung up on them tbh geez #ye he's silly af but I'm just having fun so lol #and really he doesn't look all that silly ingame I'm just projecting nonsense quite a lot I guess ha #his hair is actually black with purple details not all dark purple but I improvised and it ended up like that so eh #it works I suppose #he ninja'd his way up through hw danced through sb and is now reaping his way through shb and beyond yeehaw #shame his favorite facemask is bound to ninja only though bc the one he has to use as reaper is so clunky but eh it works #and there's always the bandana options for variety I guess ha #gonna continue through shb with this guy soon when I get the time #catboy's 'bout to ruin this poor bunman's life even more letsgooo #anyways enough random rambling sorry #enjoy or don't it's whatever #ffxiv viera #wol #idk if I should tag the finger flipping but eh let me know if I should I guess idk lol #I draw what I want #also unrelated but go stream DISDAIN on your platform of choice or don't I'm not your mom but either way yay music highly recommend yessir #anyways next artpost will be bombeep or at least fnf related in some way I swear to jeebus #fingers crossed something'll be doodled soon yeehaw

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sharkneto · 1 year

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Why don’t you want five in school?

Oh, I've ranted about it before in the tags of THIS POST but in general it makes me wildly uncomfortable. As an adult, the thought of hypothetically being forced back to high school is the fucking pits, you could not pay me enough to do it - and I even had a good time in high school! Five is almost 60 years old and they're going to force him to go to classes and hang out with teens? That feels bad from every angle! It forces Five to act in a way he'd only do under great duress and fucks his agency and autonomy as an adult so badly. There are better, more interesting ways to play with the consequences of his physical vs actual age than sending him to goddamn high school. There's other, less dominating options for the "he looks like a kid and never actually graduated" problem.

You do you if that's your jam, don't let a random dude on the internet yuck your yum, but Five in high school is a squick for me.

#i'm not here to tell anyone to do one thing or another #or ruin anyone's fun #but it's a thing i will not engage with (except to complain because that's my right on my blog in asks asking me specifically about it)#anyway #it really just comes down to how badly it fucks five's autonomy and erases his actual identity for it to work and him to cooperate #he gets absolutely *nothing* out of the situation #he's so wildly in a different life stage and situation than anyone in high school #and forcing him to hang out there for a quick gag is a waste of the limited time we have left with him as a character in a final season #use that moment for some actual character exploration and something that actually tells us more about him #and how he deals with no powers and new universe #my personal pick is he's drinking A Lot and doing Not Much because he doesn't actually know what to do without a Goal to work towards #and passed between siblings because he can't get his own place because he Looks Like Child #the dichotomy between his physical and actual age is one of my very favorite thing to explore for five - the consequences of it for him #and this does it in a Bad Way imo #makes me feel Bad and Uncomfortable #a squick!#ask response #shark's enemy: five in high school #i have strong feelings about this thing that has a sliver of a chance of happening #but it does have that /sliver/ of a chance so i can't just dismiss it #and this is the end of shark's negativity corner now

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tardis--dreams · 3 months

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I was so concerned with the horrors of making a doctor's appointment and the horrors of finding a job that i completely forgot about the worst horrors of them all. Finding an apartment.

#i just realized that yesterday #after my appointment #and now my rest of my time off is ruined #because i have to find a place to stay and the chances are low that I'll find something okay #the student dorm apartment was the hight of luxury (pretty new. good stove. good bathroom. hot water....)#now I'm most likely going back to broken showers‚ old almost unusable stove‚ hot water every once in a blue moon‚ no room to move #ugly depressing dirty #my dream is unattainable i know #i don't even want more than one room (even though in the long run i would love to have an apartment with a kitchen in a separate room)#but i would love to have an oven #i know it's too much too ask and i should be happy if i have a functional stove #also a bathroom that doesn't look and behave like it's 100 years old and is fully functional would be so nice #and my actual most important concern is having enough space to work out #it doesn't need to be much. i just wanna be able to move freely enough so i don't have to worry about bumping into anything #when doing burpees and whatnot #but I'll take what i can get #if have no choice #i can't commute. the train connections are too bad.#alright #I'll message some people now and get rejection after rejection after rejection 🥲#void screams

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fromtheseventhhell · 3 days

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Every time I see people talk about Sansa and Arya's relationship as "just sisters being sisters" I think about that one girl on TikTok who was basically stalking her sister who went no-contact and kept responding to comments criticizing her with "it's just a sister thing, you wouldn't get it". Like! Being shitty to someone isn't okay just cause you're related to them. Personally thinking a certain behavior is normal/harmless does not mean the person affected by it feels the same way! Arya being mocked and having self-esteem issues is referenced often throughout the story, all the way into ADwD. How people read that (jk I know you guys don't actually read her chapters) and think their issues will magically disappear is beyond me. "Stark sisters lover" but the only time you talk about them is when you're centering Sansa and her feelings 🤨

#it doesn't escape my notice that every single /stark sisters 4ever/ post ignores all of Arya's self-esteem issues #almost like pointing that out ruins the idea that they had just a normal sibling relationship...imagine that #it's literally never about Arya or addressing her feelings cause people only think of her as a prop #/I can understand why Sansa acted the way she did/ is the extent of the analysis people are willing to do #and the thing is we can acknowledge that they have love for each other as siblings and still have issues #those things aren't mutually exclusive! they'll likely be very happy to reunite and still have things they need to work out #this is how I know Arya is gonna get demonized if we get their reunion because she isn't going to fall on her knees in front of #Sansa and take the blame for all of the issues they had like people fantasize🥴#arya stark #anti sansa stans #have to tag this so I can find it later ugh

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milkweedman · 2 years

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what do you recommend for dying with beets? Use raw fiber, batts or already spun yarns? Cotton or wool? Do I have to shred up the beets or can I use the juice in the can and eat the beets myself ? Does it smell like beets? Use color fixer or something more natural? Dyou tbink I can like speckle it on an already commercially dyed pink yarn for pops of darker pink? or dip dye it for pink gradients?

Tbh I would recommend absolutely none of this, for the sole reason that beets, like red cabbage and tumeric, do not produce lasting dyes. The colors you get from them don't want to stick to things and even if you do manage to transfer color from the dyebath to your fiber, it will come out pretty quickly (within months at best) and usually the end result is something that kind of just looks stained.

To attempt to answer most of your questions though (which are very good questions, but would be answered with an unequivocal No if you're asking them about beets specifically):

I personally prefer dyeing things as washed fleece (not raw--you need to remove the dirt and lanolin or no dye will stick). It feels safest to me and I enjoy the extra freedom it gives over dyeing as yarn--with dyed fleece I can alter the color just by mixing other things in as I card it, or I can pull out the most vibrantly dyed sections and process them separately for different effects, etc. But it's entirely personal preference, and you can dye either yarn or fiber using natural materials without much difference.

I would not recommend dyeing batts using any traditional dyeing methods (except perhaps solar dyeing, which is very gentle), as the likelihood that you come out of it with a batt that's still spinnable, at least without reprocessing, is definitely lower than with fleece. I have heard of people dyeing batts by cooking them in a tray of dyebath in the oven, but I've never tried it and can't speak to how well it works. Batts should be alright with acid dyes, but natural dyes are (for the most part) not instant and require more time, heat, exposure, etc.

Wool is much easier to dye than cotton. I would always recommend testing new dyeing ideas on wool rather than a plant based fiber if possible.

Dicing or grating the dye material is not strictly necessary but is a good idea for larger or less permeable materials--for example, I don't bother shredding avocado peels because they just don't need it as they're very thin. But I do always chop avocado pits into small pieces, because cooking whole avocado pits is not very energy efficient, and possibly would not get all the dye out.

I definitely would not recommend trying to dye things using cans of food (especially the juice or canning water from said foods). You will get better, more vibrant color with fresh dye materials than with dried or frozen dye materials, and I have to imagine that extends to canned goods as well. Generally you also want to use both the juice and the fruit/vegetable/whatever, as you'll get a lot more color that way. I suppose if you were only dyeing a tiny amount of fiber, just using, say, blueberry juice and keeping the blueberries to continue cooking into jam, you'd be fine. Same if you had tons of blueberries and could easily amass large amounts of blueberry juice. But a definite limiting factor in natural dyeing is the amount of dye material that you can get your hands on, so people usually use all of that material instead of trying to reserve parts of it for eating.

I have never found that the smell of the dye material transfers to wool when it's dyed. Once it's dry it just smells like wool. Not necessarily the case with plant fibers, but I would generally not worry about making your wool smell like food permanently.

I don't know what color fixer is (the only thing with that exact name that came up was a laundry detergent for colored clothes that may have fugitive dyes--definitely do not use this in the place of a mordant), but the majority of natural dyes need things called mordants to adhere the color to the material. The more natural types of mordants are minerals (copper and iron are very commonly used) or tannins (such as from soaking acorns or from walnut hulls). Unless you are using a dye material that doesn't need a mordant (indigo and woad, for example, are well known for not needing mordants--although you also can't just throw them in a pot with water and simmer for a while to extract the dye from them, it's more involved than that. So there are trade offs), you will always need to mordant your fiber to get a good and long lasting color. For example, if you want to dye some wool with yellow onion skins and you don't mordant the wool, you will still end up with dyed wool. But it's a very light wheat color. If you want rich colors, you need to use a mordant.

Natural dyes are not suited for speckling yarns. Acid dyes work great for that, but natural dyes usually require you to fully immerse the fiber in the dyebath, and then expose it to heat over a long period of time. I do know that you can get speckled yarns using resist dyeing methods--essentially, if you take a skein of yellow yarn and tie sections of it very tightly and then dye it all in a red dyebath, you would get a primarily red (or reddish orange, perhaps) yarn with yellow speckles wherever those ties were. So that is one method that you could use to get a speckled yarn with natural dyes. But the method you're suggesting (just speckling it with a paintbrush or your hands for pops of different colors) is not suited to natural dyes. The most likely outcome of that would be no obvious change whatsoever. The second most likely outcome is probably just yarn with intermittent and random stains.

Natural dyes are not suited to dip dyeing, either. I think you could potentially get it to work, or at least get similar effects--you could mordant a piece of fabric/hank of yarn and then cook it in the dyebath like normal except leave part of it sitting next to and above the pot, which would then remain undyed. But whether the yarn would felt or get weird or whether there would be any unforeseen complications, that I don't know. It sounds like a good thing to experiment with once you already have some foundational knowledge of natural dyeing. But I wouldn't recommend it as a first project, for sure.

It sounds like the parts of dyeing that you have an interest in are better suited to acid dyes, so that might be a better route for you to go down ! If you do want to try natural dyes, I would recommend starting out with some good beginner dye materials, such as onion skins (by far the easiest and least bad-smelling dye material I've ever used, this would be my firm recommendation). Another good option would be powdered madder or other powdered dye materials (I specifically say madder, though, because it yields beet reds) that can be done without much fuss.

I hope this was helpful !

#i assume (possibly incorrectly) that was prompted by the comment i made in the tags #about dyeing some yarn with beets for my sweater. but that was like... not actually something i was considering #and more a joke to get 'beet colored yarn' that is not the color of beets but is color FROM beets #which would not be good color. hence the joke #i learnt my lesson about dyeing things with beets as a kid bc the one year my family got tasked with making #the pascha eggs for our church my mom dyed them with beets and guess what happened ?#they were sort of a weird off brown and the color came off every time you touched it and then stained the hands #it doesn't work and shouldnt be tried on anything that you care about or need to get good results with #by all means if youre determined to get good lasting color out of beets give it a few shots #but try it with scrap and in small amounts so that you dont waste the stuff that is almost certainly about to be ruined #by beets.#i do love beets but they dyeing is not among their many uses #natural dye #natural dyeing

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