carrionkat

[carrionkat]

Do you think Jon ever wore grey/silver at winterfell? If not, what colours do you think he wore most?

I doubt Jon got to wear the grey-and-white Stark combo, because that says “Jon is a Stark” when Jon is not (technically) a Stark. Especially not if guests were around. His wardrobe is probably a case of “anything but that,” like Sansa must avoid red-and-blue and blue-and-cream when greeting the Lords Declarant in AFFC.

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Ermenegildo Zegna F/W 2018 Menswear Milan Fashion Week

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ANJU MODI

2018 couture collection

INDIA COUTURE WEEK

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who the fuck is this game even for

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#about me

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Talk to me about my bitterness

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Looks like Beauty and the Beast really is a tale as old as time...

GUYS THIS IS AMAZING

SERIOUSLY

6000 YEARS

STORIES THAT ARE OLDER THAN CIVILIZATIONS

STORIES THAT WERE TOLD BY PEOPLE SPEAKING LANGUAGES WE NO LONGER KNOW

STORIES TOLD BY PEOPLE LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME

STORIES

[carrionkat]

[carrionkat]

me: i want to buy new books

the 10 unread books i bought last year, staring at me from my bookshelf:

[carrionkat]

I think you’ve hit upon something here. Their visions benefit them both. Kylo needed someone to believe in him, or he wouldn’t have been able to kill Snoke. Rey needed to know her parents had abandoned her in order to grow beyond her past.

Rey needed to see that Kylo has the potential to do good, or at least unexpected, things. Ben isn’t dead yet, and she isn’t wrong to have hope for someone everyone else has given up on. Kylo needed to see Rey’s past in order to know that she is like him, and to understand that he could have made (and could still make) different choices. 

They’re both still emotionally teenagers at this point; they both see in terms of black and white, they both think being right about a part of it means they must be right about it all. Neither of them has mastered the concept of shades of grey yet. They both have the potential to grow from their experiences with one another.

Thoughts on That “Shared” Vision: What Rey and Kylo ACTUALLY Saw...

So, let’s talk some more about the visions Rey and Kylo had when they touched hands…. visions which most in fandom have accepted as being one in the same – hinting at a future endgame with Rey & Ben fighting for the same side – but interpreted differently by each party.

Having watched that scene in full three times now, I have come to the following conclusion: Rey and Kylo DID NOT have the same vision at all – what they actually saw was a truth that the other was not yet willing to face, and they had to come together in order to force the other person to face it.

Rey tells Kylo that when they touched hands, she saw his “future” in which he does not bow to Snoke and “turns” to her side. It seems a safe bet now that what she saw was simply what happened in Snoke’s throne room – a vision of the very immediate future, not the distant future.

In return, Kylo tells Rey, “I saw something too. And because of what I saw, I know that when the time comes, you will be the one to turn. You will stand by my side. Rey, I saw who your parents were.”

Pay close attention to that wording, and the parts in bold. Kylo did not actually see the same thing Rey did, or even an inverse of it – he did not see Rey “turning” at all. What he saw was her parents, and he assumed that this information would draw her to his side.

Why would he assume that? Perhaps because he just figured that, if Rey acknowledged and accepted that her parents were garbage and just threw her away, like he felt his parents did to him, that she would just naturally choose to turn to the Dark side, like he did. Perhaps he thought that that was the ONLY logical reaction to realizing you have shit parents.

Also, why would these be the individual things that each of them saw when they touched? Was it because they were issues on the forefront of their minds in that moment? It seems to me that the Force provided them both with information about the other that that person was as yet unwilling to admit or accept, and left it up to the other one to draw those hidden/suppressed feelings out of them.

One thing about this is interesting – Kylo saw something from Rey’s past, and Rey saw something from Kylo’s future. Indeed this seems appropriate considering Kylo’s repeated entreaties for Rey to “let the past die” and to stop “holding on”. Meanwhile, Kylo seems so focused on the future – one with Rey a part of it – and trying to bury his own past. Both are tragically misguided mindsets, as we have seen, and have stunted their growth. Both are very tunnel-visioned, and both seem to be trying to bring the other back to some sort of middle ground… a BALANCE, if you will.

So, perhaps the true purpose of the Force visions was to show them how they need to both start living in the PRESENT.

Ultimately, what we really learn from these visions, and their respective reactions to them, is that these two really don’t understand each other at all. Kylo thought it would be THAT EASY to lure Rey to the Dark side. Rey thought it would be THAT EASY to convince Ben to come back to the Light and help the Resistance (which was the impetus for his feelings of abandonment in the first place). They really should have known better…. or maybe they did, but they are so blinded by their own perspectives and desires that they can’t (or won’t) see it. They clearly have compassion (and even care) for each other, and their shared loneliness is what drove their connection, but that’s not going to be enough. Eventually they really are going to have to meet in the middle in order to make it work together. They are going to have to give up these preconceived ideas of what the other SHOULD be that they’ve been so stubbornly holding on to. They need to truly understand where the other is coming from in order to know where to look for that Balance.

#tlj spoilers

[carrionkat]

NASA created retro travel posters for different locations in our solar system in hopes of inspiring young people to imagine a future where common space travel is a possibility. 

Source

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[carrionkat]

I’m actually going to go see TLJ (and the Shape of Water!) on Saturday, so I’ll have a chance to check out what you’re bringing up here :) I, too, have been having that issue where the endless gifs and stills are kinda mucking with my memory of the context of the scenes, so I’m really glad to be getting a refresher.

I’m glad your mother can see the basis for Kylo/Rey. It seems like a lot of people who aren’t immersed in the fandom do notice it. My husband, who likes Star Wars but doesn’t engage in fandom in any way and has zero emotional attachment to any ships, also sees Reylo in TLJ. So it’s not just we crazy few anymore.

I’ll definitely be paying more attention to the music this time around, and I’ll be paying more attention to that mirror scene. The first time watching it I was too busy flinging out theories of what was happening to pay proper attention :P I’m still kinda hoping it was a hint at Flow-Walking but I’m not clinging to it. I like your point about DJ. It’s at least introducing the concept of shades of grey into the awareness of the main characters. Even though his point is kinda muddled and weak, he’s still making Lightside-oriented characters question the morality of their actions; that’s a new step for Star Wars.  On my first viewing I definitely got a kind of wistful feeling from that shot of Rey watching Finn and Rose. She’s always been lonely, and now her best friend (of all of a week. Sometimes the fairytale pacing of Star Wars drives me crazy) is connecting with someone else in a way that she can’t give him and that she does want for herself. I think this is what makes her falling back into a relationship with Kylo possible, especially if they still can’t control when the bond connects them. If they end up connected while mournful and lonely, will they be able to turn away from each other? It could go either way, yeah, but there’s a very real path to reconciliation here. Entire fanfiction empires have been built on less. Response to Question One: Honestly I think Kylo was just too distracted by the fact that his uncle was standing right there. His volatility simultaneously gives him strength and blinds him. We, as the audience, are given the opportunity to work it out before Kylo does. We see the supposed-to-be-destroyed saber, we see that Luke doesn’t make footprints. If we aren’t tied up with emotions and can watch from a distance, we can easily tell Luke is a projection. I’ll fully admit I didn’t figure it out on my first watch. I noticed that Luke didn’t make footprints, and thought it was strange, but I was too excited about the showdown to bother putting it together. In a similar way, Kylo can’t reach the distance needed to have that realization. He’s furious, and likely terrified. Luke chose to appear to Kylo as his former teacher, as he did before he nearly murdered the kid. Kylo is simply too emotional to put two and two together. He may notice that Luke has the saber, and that it’s whole again, but figuring out how that happened is of little consequence when you’re staring down your worst nightmare. For Question 2: Yeah, that was a thread that was just never picked up. Either it got cut for time or we’ll get a comic or something with the answer. It sucks that we didn’t get the answer in the movie, but I’m willing to hand-wave it and hope we get the story before IX.

Second time seeing The Last Jedi

Went to see TLJ again today, and my mom loved it, LOL. She says she totally gets why I would feel the way I do but she disagrees – she totally thinks Kylo will be redeemed and that he and Rey have to be together in the end. She actually gasped and grabbed my arm when he said “But not to me” and let out this moony little “aw” when he said “Please”. Mind you she’s not a shipper (she’s all about Poe, lol), but she said she could totally see the dynamic continuing and she could understand why they both made the decisions that they did (i.e.: Rey rejecting his offer and Kylo’s ensuing flip-out). She picked up on A LOT of the nuances without me having to point them out, so that’s good. I told her that I’m glad she disagrees with me, LOL.

I feel largely the same even after a second viewing, tbh. I’m still super worried that TLJ was just a brief diversion for Rey and Kylo on their way to becoming straight-up Hero and Villain in Episode IX, but at the same time it’s hard to ignore all the seeding and groundwork and it’s hard to believe JJ would just let it all go. Some other thoughts below:

About That Shared Vision

So, most if not all of us Reylos have been holding onto Rey and Kylo’s shared Force-vision as a beacon of hope that Reylo is endgame – they both saw themselves fighting for the same side (however badly they both misconstrued that concept) but the common thread being they WILL end up together somehow… in the future.

But… like… their vision already came to pass, didn’t it? In Snoke’s throne room. He didn’t bow to Snoke, like she said, and he stood beside her, like he saw. The end. Right? Or is that just what we as viewers (and Kylo and Rey themselves) are supposed to believe? I’m really torn on this one…

Musical Cues

Something I noticed this time around was how much the musical cues were informing my perceptions of certain moments. For the past week-and-some-change since seeing TLJ for the first time, I’ve been on a steady diet of screencaps and gifs which are, of course, silent, so it’s easy to project my own “music” onto them, you know? But seeing those moments again in the context of the film, I realized that it’s the MUSIC played during key moments that have influenced how I feel about them. For example, the kind of angry, resolved music played when Rey shuts the Falcon door on Kylo… instead of something a little more wistful or regretful. The music seemed to indicated clearly that Rey is just straight-up DONE with Kylo, with no room for negotiation… As a filmmaker, I understand completely how music is used in movies to manipulation emotions, and it seemed clear that the emotion they were trying to manipulate here was “she hates him again, they are mortal enemies again.”  

Kylo Never Smirks

I’ve seen people claim that Kylo smirks (a) after Rey asks him to cover his pecs and (b) when he’s looking down at her in her transport coffin. No, he did not on either one of those occasions. I was purposely looking out for both of those moments.

Kylo’s Foot in the Salt

I’ve also seen some folks make a big deal out of Kylo’s foot sliding in the salt on Crait to reveal the red beneath, saying that this is evidence that he will be redeemed. But literally 10 seconds later, they show Luke’s foot do the same thing, without exposing the red. So, clearly the shot of Kylo’s foot was simply to contrast/foreshadow Luke’s not really being there.

Did Leia Know?

Upon seeing it a second time, I feel like Leia 100% knew Luke was just a projection. She was talking to him the same way Harry Potter was talking to his parents and loved ones after turning the Resurrection Stone.

The Mirror Sequence

I can’t say with total certainty that I believe the figure Rey sees in the mirror is Kylo but that silhouette is definitely NOT Rey’s. The fact that the concept art apparently originally featured Rey’s face merged with Kylo’s mask is, of course, pretty good evidence that that silhouette WAS Kylo’s. ;-) If they’re trying to be less obvious about Rey and Kylo’s fate, I can see why they would want to make that more ambiguous in the finished cut. 

Benicio’s Words of Wisdom?

I was only half-paying attention to anything going on with DJ the first time around, but this time I thought it was very interesting how he himself seemed to be an odd sort of embodiment of the theme of “balance” – he’s neither good, nor bad… somewhere in the middle. While they’re on the ship that he rescues Finn and Rose in and is talking about the previous owners of the ship, he discovers that it was someone who sold technology to both the First Order and the Resistance. Perhaps this is not necessarily the “balance” Rey and Kylo should be aiming for, LOL, but I can see what Rian was trying to do there.

Rey Looking at Finn and Rose

The first time around, I obviously noted how Rey smiled when watching Finn hold vigil over Rose. But what I noticed this time around was the shot of her immediately before that – a wider shot of her sitting by herself, to emphasize her being alone, while Finn doted on Rose. She seemed almost envious… not that Finn was paying attention to someone else, but simply because he had someone at all. It seemed clear that Rian was not only trying to show that Rey was cool with Finn and Rose but also how isolated she still was, and how she still yearns for connection for herself. (Which…. she already has…. just not in the form she expected….)

Those were just a few things from off the top of my head. Curious, as always, to hear other people’s opinions!

#tlj spoilers #star wars meta

[carrionkat]

sending this as an ask so that you can reply at your leisure, but i'm really curious about how you feel about/take the line, "and I will not be the last of the Jedi." either from a storytelling/analytical perspective or even personal preference. to put it mildly, I struggle with it because it seems to undercut the otherwise coherent thematic reevaluation that happens in the third act of TLJ. less mildly, it makes me want to smack my face into the nearest flat surface.

I actually really loved that line. (The Last Jedi spoilers)

(as you already know, and forgive me for talking out loud to order my thoughts) the whole movie, director and Star Wars fan since childhood Rian Johnson is asking the audience really grossly meta questions about Star Wars as a collective intergenerational cultural experience. He’s asking the audience whether Star Wars has inveterate, unmovable qualities that it MUST have to BE Star Wars, asking the audience what their nostalgia means to them, asking the audience if Star Wars can be dynamic, or if their nostalgia makes it impossible to both enjoy Star Wars and be surprised by it. 

Rian Johnson is asking us if we’d be ok if we wanted to watch a movie that was more than just a rehash of the old, if this time the characters didn’t have their hands chopped off in the second movie, if the characters didn’t turn out to be secretly related, if there was no legacy, if it was more than just a collection of movie references to the original trilogy. He’s asking if our experience would be ruined if Luke Skywalker was a dynamic character and not a myth from the 70’s. Woud it be ruined if Star Wars didn’t have a lightsaber fight? (The Last Jedi does not  actually have a lightsaber-on-lightsaber fight - no two lightsabers physically strike each other in this movie!). Would Star Wars be ruined if Star Wars didn’t have any Jedi? Does Star Wars need the Force? What makes Star Wars work?

Ben Solo/Kylo Ren takes the metatextual stance of just throwing everything we know about Star Wars away. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be. It’s time to let old things die. Snoke, Skywalker. The Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels… Let it all die.” Let our preconceptions about Star Wars die, let nostalgia and old ties die. out with the old, in with the new. A story must have surprises.

By the end of the movie, we see Ben Solo brought to his knees by nostalgia/realizing that nostalgia and the ties that bind him (and the audience to the Star Wars series) are important. “[Luke Skywalker and Han Solo] will always be with you,” he’s told. So, Ben’s burn-it-all-down answer is not exactly what Rian is looking for or entirely agrees with. A story must have connection, and nostalgia is one of the biggest selling points to Star Wars.

Specifically about the flawed concept of the Jedi and whether it belongs in Star Wars, we get Rian’s answer through the interactions between Rey, Luke and Yoda.

Keep reading

#tlj spoilers #star wars meta

[carrionkat]

I’m probably not the right person to make these predictions because I do not have a good grasp of the kind of narrative priorities that value Power and Dark Prince stories in general. But I will be stunned if Supreme Leader Kylo lasts for more than a weekend. Like… people are talking about him ascending to power and crossing the ultimate line by becoming the ruler of the galaxy, but let’s be real about this guy’s leadership abilities. What qualities do we associate with a strong leader? Clear vision, high executive function, the ability to inspire respect and loyalty from their subordinates. Kylo Ren… where do I even start. We have yet to see him complete a single task, whether he fails OR succeeds, without having a massive mental/property destruction breakdown. He can’t get anything done because he’s constantly falling into dramatic meltdowns over his personal and spiritual problems. He screws up almost every villainous task he’s given in the entire first movie. I guess the raid on Takodana isn’t a complete disaster, but immediately afterwards he flips out and is back on his bullshit destroying infrastructure because he can’t and won’t regulate his emotions, because part of him hates the First Order and hates his job and wants to smash it all to pieces. I think the only time anything he does in TFA goes according to plan, it’s Han Solo. This fucks him up so much he loses his focus and is more or less directly responsible for the rebels destroying Starkiller Base. Hux hates him. All the First Order officers and stormtroopers we see steeling themselves to walk into or nope away from a room he’s freaking out in hate him. Even the red guards, who you’d think would be hip to Dark Sider power struggles, don’t recognize the apprentice gaining mastery by killing the master and attack him. How long can you hold a military organization together on the basis of personal magical powers alone? Because that’s really all Ben has going for him when it comes to the First Order. My son doesn’t have any friends at his school. He is 100% going to get fragged. He is a logistical disaster. A more entrenched dictatorship could probably survive that kind of volatile figurehead, but the First Order hasn’t been in at their current level of power for more than, what, a week? If I were a higher ranking officer who actually believed in the First Order and didn’t want the organization to implode, I would want him gone ASAP. If I were a petty officer, trooper, radar technician, or anyone else more anonymous, I would probably run. If I were Hux, I would just ditch him on Crait. I’m probably biased because the thing I want most for this guy is to be sent on the run and given a Zuko Alone arc to pull himself together as a human, but I really do not see this Emperor gig working out.

#star wars spoilers #star wars tlj #hux is going to try to gank him the moment he gets the chance

[carrionkat]

“Finn didn’t have an arc in tlj” i mean i dunno what movie you watched but going from “ready to cut and run as soon as he wakes up” to “flying headfirst into certain death on the slightest prayer of a chance that it’ll help the Resistance” seems like a pretty fucking significant arc to me

#star wars spoilers #the last jedi #finn #sweet sweet charater development