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eternalthenas · 4 years

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what bothers me the most about tros and what i’m most unable to accept is how jj managed to destroy and disrespect EVERY single character. even the ones who technically had “happy endings”🤡

ben - i feel like this one doesn’t even need to be said, but i’ll say it anyways. after years of emotional abuse from palpatine, it’s disheartening to see that jj gave no explanation as to why palpatine wanted ben (personal vendetta against the skywalkers i guess??) when it semed like he only needed rey AND that ben never really triumphed over palpatine in any way. it hurts to know that leia straight up had a vision about her son’s death but that she still seemingly gave up on him despite knowing that he was struggling and that she sent him off to train to be jedi with a luke, when apparently she could’ve done that herself. it’s disheartening that luke who believed even vader could be turned back to the light also gave up on his nephew, when he was just a boy no less. it’s disheartening that although he was the last skywalker (a fact only palpatine acknowledged!), none of his family nor his namesake reached out to help him. instead of telling the last skywalker to rise, they ignored him (as they had apparently done his whole life) in favor of a palpatine. ok. even though as the last skywalker, he really should’ve been the one to have the final kill against palpatine since it was HIS family that palpatine destroyed, he doesn’t. he’s motionless in a pit for the whole final battle. ok. that will never not leave a bad taste in my mouth. his whole family (except for han apparently i love him) gave up on him and clearly so did the writers. as a fan of the skywalkers and their story, this isn’t the ending i wanted for them. especially when luke and leia and han had given their lives to see him turn to the light. and for what? so he could be used as a plot device to conveniently bring rey back to life and then promptly die (even though they’re a force dryad and, according to jj’s own fucking canon, supposedly one) without any fanfare, emotional reaction whatsoever, or later mention? wtf? it’s disrespectful not only to ben solo, who is easily the best character in the sequel trilogy and one of the best characters in ALL of star wars, but it’s disrespectful to the entire skywalker line!! (and to adam driver, who deserved so much better than this shit. go get that oscar)

rey - by making her a palpatine, jj completely disregarded her arc. whatever your opinions about rey nobody, once they went with it, they never should’ve retconned it and turned her into a legacy character in the final film. it felt cheap. in my theater, there was no cheering about this reveal. because jj had never properly set it up and he didn’t even bother to reveal it an impactful way. but what’s most annoying about rey suddenly being a legacy character is that it completely disregards the fact that she was powerful on her OWN, without any famous blood making her that way. furthermore, by turning her into the chosen one and giving her the entire skywalker legacy (which felt like a slap in the face to the skywalkers imo), she did turn into a mary sue, one of the biggest complaints about her since day 1. she was overpowered, morally perfect, and never faced any failure. i struggled to root for her as the “hero” because i felt everything was handed to her on a silver platter. so not only did jj turn her into a mary sue and take her power away from her by turning her into a legacy, but he also destroyed the fact that her whole arc had been “seeking belonging” and a family. rather than having her final scenes be with her new found family, she ends the movie with her canon soulmate dead and no one but a droid by her side on a desert planet of all places. to add further insult to injury, she also disregards her family name even though they supposedly loved her and sacrificed themselves for her (despite the fact that they sold her but whatever) in favor of a last name of a guy she had barely known. she had more emotional connection to han or leia, but she didn’t take their last name. she took luke’s, the guy who had refused to teach her and who she had come to view in a more negative light towards the end of tlj. in this house i will not EVER be calling her rey sky- i can’t even say it🤢

finn - in all honestly, they screwed finn’s character arc in episode 1 when jj turned him into a lovesick sidekick who served as comedic relief. as a deserted stormtrooper, he could’ve had the most interesting storylines. and he should have. but apparently the writers forgot about him. although they mention his past BRIEFLY, it’s paid no real weight or attention. instead, he spends the whole movie once again trying to (possibly) confess his feeling for rey. and for what? probably just to bait finnrey fans and prove the character’s heterosexuality bc it goes absolutely nowhere. although we find out he’s force sensitive, that too is glossed over and has no lasting effect. he’s also made co general, which okay cool, but then he does nothing?? so while finn could have and should have been a main character with an interesting storyline, they turn him into your average run of the mill action hero with an occasional quip. john boyega, sweetie, i’m so sorry (but i guess that’s kind of what he wanted since he hated tlj, the only movie where he actually had a main role with any character growth?? idk)

poe - it’s once again evident that they originally intended to kill off poe bc he has no arc whatsoever. he gets a little backstory as a drug smuggler now ig, which really came out of left field considering the already established canon with his past as a pilot. he’s more of the same in this movie, except more unlikable than usual (imo). he’s still stubborn, occasionally funny, but mostly he just bickers with rey, which isn’t funny, at all necessary, and doesn’t add anything to the “trio’s” dynamic. he’s at his best when he’s with finn but then, of course, jj has to remind us of how straight he is every single scene so. another character like finn who could have been great, but with the lazy writing, he has no arc, no backstory, no character growth, so he’s just mediocrity personified and just kind of there.

zorii & jannah - both could’ve been awesome. both are just there for a brief introduction and to help the heroes with maybe one thing and that’s it. both deserved better.

the skywalkers - yeah jj really said a big fuck you to luke, leia, and anakin most of all. the WORST part of tros is the fact that it basically makes the previous six episodes useless. anakin’s redemption arc? what does it matter now? he didn’t successfully bring balance to the force. he didn’t successfully kill palpatine. and now his entire bloodline is dead. ok cool😎 thank you jj!!!! what a hopeful end to the skywalker saga!!!! i love seeing that anakin failed and wasn’t REALLY the chosen one. i love that luke and leia gave their legacy to a descendant of the guy who tried to tear apart and terrorized their family. that’s really nice. i love that anakin NEVER reached out to help his grandson who struggled with the dark just like he did. but that he came in just in time to tell palp’s granddaughter to rise😍 really hopeful, lovely ending. thanks again jj! thanks for making leia seem like a bad mother who sees visions about her son but just throws in the towel and doesn’t really try to help him?? wtf??? not my princess leia. also tros luke? truly the worst luke. i really have no other words, i’m just disappointed. jj let me down in every single way possible and ones i didn’t even realize he could.

palpatine - jj also managed to ruin the best star wars villain, a feat i didn’t even think possible. palpatine had always seemed scary to me because of his inhuman qualities. but in this one, he’s back with no explanation whatsoever. he just is. he somehow managed to survive (ok🙄) and furthermore he had a kid. what in the fuck? jj clearly read harry potter and the cursed child, but he clearly also forgot to read the reviews. NOBODY LIKES IT WHEN THE PREVIOUSLY UNTOUCHABLE/SCARY VILLAIN HAS A KID OUT OF NOWHERE. NOBODY. i seriously spent the entire movie wondering who the heck would sleep with him? that’s it. he didn’t seem menacing or at all like a threat. this movie genuinely had no stakes whatsoever (that’s why ben’s death feels so out of left field bc literally for what?! but i digress) also the final “fight” where rey kills him??? very lame. he supposedly survived all those years to be taken out like that?? no thank you, i’d like a refund.

in conclusion, thank you to jj for ruining my favorite franchise by killing off every last one of my favorite characters, destroying the skywalker legacy (& killing them off), ruining seriously every character, and leaving me with despair!!! while i’ll continue to watch star wars without including episode 9, it sucks that some of my joy is zapped from my favorite series. because this is how future generations will know star wars. with this shitty ending. and any future movies will have this canon. and that really fricking sucks. thanks, i hate it.

anyways feel free to message if you’re also in the depths of despair about how this all ended!! bc the more i think about it, the sadder/angrier i get.

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radramblog · 3 years

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Star Wars Battlefront II (the good one)

My nonfunctional internet is preventing me not only from finishing off my essay, not only from watching the lecture that I would have shown up for were it not for mediary COVID restrictions, but it’s also stopping me from writing anything here that would require any sort of research or confirming details. That leaves me with less options that I would have thought.

Browsing through my Steam collection for ideas on what to talk about, and something jumped out at me pretty quickly.

Star Wars Battlefront II (the 2005 game, not Star Wars Battlefront 2, the sequel to the EA remake much maligned for malicious microtransactions) is a first/third person shooter that, while showing its age, remains one of the best games the franchise has ever put out. This is, of course, an opinion coming from someone who has yet to play Knights of the Old Republic, but it feels like Star Wars as a franchise has more misses than hits. So what makes this one land?

While I’m woefully unfamiliar with the early 00s shooters that Battlefront II was competing with (aside from Counter-Strike Source, but I’d argue that’s a different target market), I am extremely familiar with this one. I think part of why Battlefront II is so fondly remembered is on account of it being almost a gateway game for people getting into shooters in general- I for one played it extensively on my mate’s PS2 in primary school, and later on someone else’s PSP, and I doubt I would later have clicked so strongly with Halo if I hadn’t.

But what Battlefront II has more than anything else I feel is ambition. After the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, Star Wars’s universe was big, and the developers seemed interested in representing about as much of what we see of it’s style of warfare as they possibly could. As a result, the maps are a glorious smattering of worlds and terrains, loving and detailed recreations of places from the various films as well as a few that are probably new (I might just not remember them), each drizzled with vehicles and turrets and resources. Each of the game’s four factions share the basic units with very few differences (except for the Super Battle Droid), making them easy to understand and grasp for newer/younger players, with the complexity of each’s unique units paying off those willing to grapple with their weakness and play to their strengths. Some are definitely better than others, but that isn’t especially obvious at first. The basic classes reflect tropes seen in other games and while again some falter it’s not by enough that picking them in the wrong situation is a guaranteed blunder.

There are, of course, the heroes, major characters from the series granted to a player who’s doing pretty well, and I feel like this is another pretty well handled mechanic, even if a little awkward. There are enough of them, and they’re distributed enough between maps and factions, that they don’t tend to feel stale, and it’s pretty obvious that while they can absolutely ruin a team it’s also pretty easy to mishandle them. Unfortunately, heroes are related to one of my biggest complaints about the game, but we’ll get to that later.

One of the biggest selling points in my eyes are the dogfight levels. Now, I’ve never played X-Wing or the like, in fact my experiences with dogfighting games is extremely limited. But this part of the game fucks so hard. The design ideas begun with the class selection continue with the (admittedly small) range of starfighters you can pilot, with specialised interceptors, bombers, and landing craft to go alongside the effective all-rounders. The mode offers a variety of playstyles, between hunting down opponent’s fighters to bombing their flagships to boarding said flagships and destroying their systems from the inside. There is also the option of manually controlling the turrets, as well as acting as a gunner for someone else’s bomber/lander, but these positions are unfortunately underpowered and underexplored- they’re also, ultimately, less fun. But the dogfighting just feels right. I can’t really explain it, but moving in that 3-dimensional space feels not only satisfying but accurate to the source material in a way I don’t think any future Star Wars game has yet replicated.

I suppose the various game modes are worth discussing. Skirmishing on whatever map you want is the standard, at least in multiplayer, but there are a few unique offerings you won’t see in other modes- Hunt, where it’s a faction versus some of the series’s wildlife in a mode that always feels imbalanced towards one side or the other. There’s obviously Assault- the standard name for the space dogfights but on one ground map (Mos Eisley) it is of course the ever-popular heroes free-for-all, a chaotic mess but one where you can test out each one and figure out what their abilities actually do. But in the broader strokes, you’ve got the story, and the Galactic Conquest, as the two main other modes.

(oof, they really didnt build this with this resolution in mind huh)

That’s right, this game has a story, and it’s…okay? Ultimately it’s just a series of missions with the 501st, as they fight in the clone wars, turn on the Jedi, and ultimately become the Empire’s tool of oppression, separated by exposition. You get to run through some scenes from the movies, including the boarding at the start of the first movie and the Battle of Hoth, though some of the missions feel harder than intended- no matter how good the player is, the AI is not going to fare well in the tougher missions and you have a solid chance of ending up on your own.

Galactic Conquest is the game’s more unique selling point, being something like a basic version of Risk but with the dice-rolling battles replaced with Star Wars Battlefront II. You earn credits over time and through victory that you can spend unlocking types of units, getting new fleets to improve how many fronts you can wage war on, and unlock powerups for use in the actual battles. It’s largely fine, feeling like a bit more controlled and strategic version of just playing randoms in Instant Action, but it suffers the most from the biggest problem this game has.

The game’s truest flaw is its AI. They are dumb as a sack of potatoes, and the main thing holding the game back from perfection. And it was the early 00s so imperfect AI was to be expected, but it’s a bit more than imperfect here, I guess. Robits standing still while shooting you (or just at all, while you’re sniping them), extremely questionable vehicle and turret usage, and literally crashing starships into you, your flagship, or their own flagship. Bumping their difficulty up doesn’t really help, either. Even more egregious is the AI’s usage of heroes- or rather, that they don’t. If you’re playing single player, the game will always give earned heroes to you rather than your robot teammates, will not let one of them take if it if you decline to use the character, and you will never see one on the opposite side. This would imply that there wasn’t code for the Ais to use them, except there clearly is because Assault Mos Eisley exists- and they’re arguably much better there than in any other mode! It’s a real shame, because the low quality of the AI combined with the nature of the games means that victory is extremely polarised based on the player’s skill- if you bad all the way up to pretty decent at the game, your input basically doesn’t affect the outcome, whether you win or lose. If you’re good at the game, you will never lose at singleplayer, possible exception again being Assault Mos Eisley. It’s a little absurd, honestly. Also, I’m not even sure they go for the flag in CTF in space.

I am, however, willing to look past these flaws. The game is far from perfect, but it’s just incredibly fun. It’s a type of gameplay that they’ve tried to replicate, but never quite recaptured- and I think part of the reason for that is because the awkwardness is part of the charm. It’s nostalgic- both for those who played it when they were younger and just those in my generation who grew up on the Prequels. It’s also way more expensive on steam (bruh 14.5 AUD for real?) than I expected, but it goes on hard sales pretty often (I think I paid like a buck fifty for it), so it’ll be within budget at some point. I don’t know if I can recommend it for those who aren’t nostalgic, though, solely on account of those awkward features you likely wouldn’t be able to ignore like I do. And that’s a shame, because it’s not like they’ve made a better version of this game.

Fuck EA, basically.

#ramble #video games #star wars battlefront 2 #(the good one)

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saintheartwing · 4 years

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Lily’s Post about Mary Sues

Let’s analyze this.

None of those series you mentioned have characters that could be labelled as Mary Sues

Clark Kent, Goku, Luke, Anakin, Kirk.

Okay, a Mary Sue or Gary Stu has to be, basically, either an author avatar or stand-in, they tend to be beautiful or really handsome, have unusual, or dramatic backtories, are “chosen one” types, all of the main characters in the group will love them or admire them and those that don’t are always portrayed as in the wrong for not doing so, this kind of thing. They tend to be overpowered as well and they possess unique, special powers. They’ve basically overpowered, over-idealized, beloved by anybody and if you DON’T like them, you’re clearly in the wrong. Oh, and everything they do is treated as good, and if they DO screw up, hey, it’s no big deal. Any actual flaws are negligible or nonexistent. Like being “Naive” or wearing their heart on their sleeve.

Let’s take a look at...Superman. Well, he’s got several big weaknesses. Kryptonite, for one. And Magic. HUGELY weak against magic. He IS overpowered and he is mostly beloved by everyone...but he has made a LOT of mistakes. Especially when it comes to Batman. Whenever Batman is involved in a story with him, it’s Batman who’s right, and Superman who’s in the wrong. Pretty much all the time. “Darkseid is dead, Superman.” “You know what Bruce? You’re not always right!” But Batman WAS right, at least technically. Batman regularly beats Superman in several stories. So Clark isn’t always treated as right. On top of that, he does have some real character flaws of constantly being torn between wanting to do more and being afraid of how far he should go. And when you have GODLY strength, that’s a huge exploit, especially for supervillains. But...he does fill a lot of the Mary Sue tropes, so we’ll give Lily some credit.

Goku? Well Goku is a moron. The story always treats his stupidity as being a huge problem. One that CONTINUES to cause issues, and has even nearly gotten his world destroyed a few times. He’s even gotten himself and his friends KILLED cuz he couldn’t think of any other way but to sacrifice himself or the like. AND he has serious anger issues. When he’s furious, he’s almost uncontrollable. The only person more so is Vegeta. He’s also a pig who eats too much but we can sorta overlook that last one because being a glutton is played more for laughs and “He needs it to keep up his strength”. How about his powers? Well he’s DEFINITELY overpowered. Is he handsome? Well, he looks pretty good. And he’s well-liked by pretty much the whole main cast except for, of course, the villains. So we could say...yeah. Goku’s kinda Mary Sue-ish.

Luke? Well...not really. Luke isn’t naturally gifted or talented like Goku or Superman were. Despite having the POTENTIAL to be great, his Jedi skills started out so poor he couldn’t even block blaster bolts using the force alone. He had to train for weeks if not months under Yoda just to get somewhat up to snuff and he STILL failed. “Don’t go into that cave with your weapons”. He goes in. Sees Darth Vader and...oh, wait, it’s HIMSELF he’s killed! You were put to the test and you failed. He can’t lift large objects with the Force. He’s reckless, he doesn’t think things through and he often has to rely on help from OTHERS to succeed. He only got that one-in-a-million shot on the Death Star because Obi Wan’s ghost spoke to him in his head to help guide him. He only got away from the first Death Star because Obi Wan sacrificed himself. Throughout the first two films, he’s just not good enough. He loses to Darth Vader MISERABLY, and he even loses his HAND. A real Mary Sue would have won, or at least held Darth Vader off, or tied. Worse still, he’s not just dangerously reckless and kind of whiny...he’s got a serious anger problem that rises up in the films, he almost outright gives in to the dark side. But other than that, he’s just some country bumpkin who happened to luck out at finding the right droid. All his powers, he basically earned, showing a classic heroes’s journey growth. So that, combined with the huge failures in the first few movies and even if we factor in the sequels and the stupid, dumb decisions he made...he’s not a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue wouldn’t f--k up that much. Or if they did, it wouldn’t be treated as his own fault, or as a bad thing. It’d be brushed off.

Anakin! OHHH boy. This guy is a whiny little brat. I don’t know if people realize this, but...Lily, NOBODY LIKED ANAKIN. Anakin was unlikable BECAUSE he was a Mary Sue. You DO realize this, right? He was overpowered, treated as the chosen one, and he was super whiny at that. But you know what? At least the story treated him doing awful stuff as the wrong thing. Him being reckless? A bad thing. He should listen to Obi Wan more. Him casually killing someone through the back in the Clone Wars? A bad thing, he could have just knocked the guy out or cut his arm or hand off, what he did was murder. Anakin murdering the entire tribe of Sand People that kidnapped his mom, leading to her death? Shown as a VERY bad thing because he slaughtered ALL of them, even women and children. Anakin becoming Sith and killing kids? SUPER bad thing.

So at the very least, him doing morally reprehensible things is treated as genuinely bad. At least the story calls him out on this.

Kirk? Uh, Kirk is just a random human. He’s not exactly super strong or super intelligent. He’s clever and he’s fairly skilled in combat, and he’s definitely good looking, but he’s no ‘chosen one’ like so many of the others. Has he got flaws? Yeah, he’s got a temper. And he flagrantly disregards the rules. And he DEFINITELY is something of a skirt chaser. But he’s not exactly overpowered enough to be considered a Mary Sue. He hasn’t GOT enough powers at all to be counted as one. Plus, when you consider how he died? A real Mary Sue would get a far better and more dramatic death, if they died at all. So Kirk? Ahhh, not really. He’s not a Mary Sue. He’s just not powerful enough to be one and he’s no chosen one.

But your characters? Well, let’s see. Rey is a chosen one. So is Aliana. And Aliana is descended from a LONG LINE of superpowerful Sith. She’s basically “old money”. It runs in the blood. Pretty Mary Sue right there. They’re overpowered? Yep. Very. They easily beat the crap out of Kylo Ren. Do all the main characters like them? Yeah. And any that don’t are always treated as wrong, like Leia, or enemies, like Kylo Ren. They fit the definitions to a T.

can never be wrong

“So are a lot of characters in popular culture”

Except that’s not true. Superman, as I’ve shown, has been wrong quite a lot, especially when arguing against Batman, or Wonder Woman. Superman having to kill three Kryptonians who had did a literal genocide of an alternate Earth was portrayed as VERY wrong and it haunted him for years and years. Anakin was VERY, VERY wrong. The minute you do mass murder, you kinda instantly become wrong. Kirk ends up being very wrong in the final film he’s in. He doesn’t want to leave his heavenly alternate reality, it’s PICARD who has to convince him to stop being selfish. Goku is stupidly wrong when dealing with Cell, he really screws up and it gets his mentor and a few of his friends killed because he couldn’t think of a better way to get rid of the about-to-explode Cell than to teleport him to King Kai’s moon. He could have just teleported him, say, the serpent bridge, THEN teleported back if he really thought the explosion was gonna be so big it’d take out the entire world but...nope! Then there’s how he handled Majin Buu. He THINKS he doesn’t have to use fusion with his son. After all, Majin Buu has just lost a ton of power! He and his son can beat him normally...then Majin Buu catches him off guard and claims his son. Nice going, Goku, he was weak and instead of doing what everyone told you to do, you whiffed because you assumed you could handle it. And then there was his whole “Okay Vegeta, you finish off Frieza while he’s all Golden”. Big mistake. Frieza does a self-destructive attack that BLOWS UP THE ENTIRE WORLD and Whis has to literally TURN. BACK. TIME to fix this. Thanks, Goku. You COULDA just finished Frieza off like you did last time, but noooo! You had to indulge your friend’s ego. Luke? Luke’s been wrong a ton of times. Even if we ignore the sequels and the stupid way he handled Kylo Ren and hiding off on some podunk island, he ignored Yoda’s advice multiple times, he took off to fight Darth Vader, and he lost miserably.

Basically, every time these people do something wrong...it is, for the most part, TREATED as the wrong move by the story. That’s NOT the case for Aliana or Rey. Casually killing a guard for harassing a refugee? Cold blooded murder? Not portrayed as wrong. Overkill of guards at Canto Bight? Not even REMOTELY called out, nor the whole “mass forced suicide” thing. Killing Rey’s parents in cold blood when they were unarmed? Barely glanced over. What’s portrayed as wrong was keeping that a secret, not the MURDER thing. SHOOTING LEIA WITH ELECTRICITY? Not even REMOTELY treated as going too far.

are always victims

“Can’t imagine why a woman who suffers from PTSD writes characters who have suffered trauma in their lives. It’s a fucking mystery.”

You realize though this makes Aliana an author-avatar/stand in though, and that enforces the whole “she’s a Mary Sue” thing, right?

and bend the narrative to suit their needs

“If they were villains you wouldn’t complain about it this insessantly.”

But they’re NOT villains. When a story has a hero doing this, even when it has a villain doing this, that’s bad writing. Having Leia reasonably point out the fact that the Republic has every good reason to not trust a Sith and Aliana can’t just bully them into going along with everything she wants...and then having Aliana just SPONTANEOUSLY summon her own WAR FLEET to go “Sword of Damocles” on Leia and the Republic? That’s bad writing. It comes out of nowhere, no build up, and exists ONLY to tell Leia and anybody who has a problem with how Aliana’s doing things to SHUT UP I’M IN CHARGE. It’s bullying, bad writing.

Also, those other characters mentioned have other characters who will call out people like Luke or Kirk if they mess up. And Luke and Kirk or Goku will go “Yeah, you’re right, I should listen to you” and they have to change...or at least say they’ll try to. Does anybody in your story do that? Well...no. Because ANY objection to how Rey or Aliana does things is treated as BAD and WRONG because they’re the main characters, and thus everything they do is right, even if it’s morally repulsive and if ANOTHER character shot lightning at a middle-aged woman for a nasty comment, they’d be the bad guy.

Anyway, said my piece. Lily really has absolutely no self-reflection on this. She can’t handle actual criticism. All this is is DEFLECTION and PIVOTING away from your own story’s problems. It’s very easy to crow about how popular your work is when you dismiss and delete all actual critique and criticism.

#Star Wars #Sith Resurgence #the sith resurgence #lily orchard #mary sue #fanfiction #fanfics #Aliana #Rey

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spell-cleaver · 4 years

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(Luke Palpatine AU) Since becoming Emperor, Luke had grown accustomed to the fact that people were going to spy on every little thing he did, so when he started watching a holo drama, he knew that it would not last long. What he didn't expect was for Nova to join him.

Previous parts on the masterpost here!

Since becoming Emperor, Luke had grown accustomed to the fact that people were going to spy on every little thing he did, so when he started watching a holo drama, he knew that it would not last long. What he didn’t expect was for Nova to join him.

But there she was sitting next to him, just as swaddled in blankets as he was, the long colo claw fish V— Luke had received the previous night acting as a pillow long enough for both of them to use. The rest of his gifts were snuggled around them on the large sofa as well, and Luke felt so… comfortable, lying atop cuddly toys and watching something pathetic and ridiculous like this, like he was half his age.

When the episode finished, Nova glanced at him. “Do you want to watch the next one?”

Luke blinked. “I can?”

“Of course you can,” she said simply and patiently. “Do you want to?”

He glanced at the holo projector. “It’s not a good show.”

“It’s really not. But it’s fun to watch.”

“And it’s getting late.”

“Yes.”

“And I shouldn’t waste my time on this sort of trash.”

Nova pouted. “That’s your father talking.”

“It’s me talking—”

“C'mon, you’re fourteen. You should be having sleepovers and watching trashy shows until your eyes bleed.” She swatted his arm. “Do you want to watch the next one?”

“I— no,” he decided, getting up. The nexu toy tumbled off his lap and landed on top of the holoprojector, its face being cast into odd, slightly comical shadows by the blue light. “No, I don’t want to.”

Nova said, “Hmmm,” and watched him go.

And then the next morning, she said to him, “How many times how you spoken to someone your own age?”

He looked at her. She knew the answer to that. “Zero,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose.

“Well then.” She patted him on the shoulder and walked away. “We should fix that.”

“Nova,” Luke said that afternoon, staring at the two teenagers sitting awkwardly on one of the sofas in the entrance chamber to his quarters, as far away from each other as they could get without standing up and being explicitly rude, “what did you do.”

It had to have been her. No one else would’ve done this.

“You said you’d never spoken to someone your own age,” she said cheerfully. Luke flushed berry-red, and hated the look one of the teenagers, a girl dressed in white with a bun of dark braids, gave him at that. It was far too close to pity.

“These two agreed to meet you, and you just have to watch one movie together,” she badgered, taking Luke’s shoulder and steering him closer. He felt like a five year old. “If you decided you all hate each other, then you never have to socialise again, but until then, please give it a chance, Luke.”

She whispered. “It’ll be good for you.”

Luke swallowed tightly, hating the way the two teenagers—likely infinitely cleverer, more socialised, more experienced than him—were gazing at him. It was probably scorn—scorn for the child emperor who couldn’t even talk to his peers—

Then Nova ushered them all into the living room of his quarters and sat them down around the holoprojector. They each took separate chairs or sofas, and Luke was intimately aware of the confused glances his Noghri bodyguards were giving and receiving from the newcomers, but he stubbornly tried not to flush again.

“So, uh,” he said. “I’m Luke.”

“We know,” the girl said.

He nodded. “Right.”

She took pity on him and smiled. “This is Zevulon Veers,” she said, and the other teenager—a tall, dark-haired human—gave her a look.

“I was going to introduce myself, thank you.”

“Well, now you don’t have to.”

“Any relation to General Veers?” Luke asked tentatively.

Zevulon… didn’t frown, but he didn’t smile, either. “My father. I hardly ever see him.”

Ah. If only Luke had had that pleasure with his father, he might not have disappointed him as much.

“I met him yesterday,” he offered. “Apparently Vader roped him into teaching me how to shoot.”

“You don’t know how to shoot?” asked the girl. Her voice was loud, regal, and it brimmed with confidence. Luke felt like a shadow next to her.

“No,” he said tightly. “My training never covered that. But Vader and Nova thought it would be a good thing to learn now.” He decided not to mention the whole fight there’d been about that. “The general was a good teacher.”

Zevulon nodded. “He is. When he’s around.”

“When he’s not off slaughtering people?” the girl chimed in.

Zevulon tensed. “Excuse me?”

“What? He’s a general. That’s what he does.”

“It’s his job, he’s good at it. Doesn’t mean you get to insult him for it.” He bristled. “Who even are you? It’s pretty creepy that you know who I am but never thought to return the—”

“I,” she said, glaring daggers, “am Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.”

Oh.

That made sense—Luke recognised her now. She’d been dragged in front of holocams just as much as he had as a kid.

Zevulon snorted. “Ah. That explains it.”

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. She puffed herself up. “And what does that mean?”

“You’re all Rebel sympathisers on Alderaan, aren’t you? No wonder you hate my father.”

“We're—” That seemed to have taken the power out of her engines. She grimaced and said, tensely, “That’s not true, and I never said I hated him—”

“No, you just—”

“Can you two… not fight?” Luke asked. “It’s kinda awkward sitting here watching it.”

Zevulon stopped immediately. Leia’s mouth opened and closed for a moment before she did the same. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Luke winced. “Don’t do that. Don’t call me Majesty. I’m just Luke.”

The princess actually smiled a little, at that. “And I’m just Leia.”

“I’ve met your father as well,” he said to her, smiling back. “During the talks with the senators. He was nice. Had some good ideas.”

She nodded. “That’s my father.”

He turned his head. “And Zevulon—”

“Zev.” He fidgeted. “While we’re exchanging names, I’m just Zev.”

Luke nodded. “Alright.”

Then he glanced at the holoprojector. “Do either of you know what you want to watch?”

“This is stupid,” Leia said, her mouth full of cake. “Monarchies don’t do arranged marriages anymore, that’s archaic.”

“Hey, you’re the one who randomly decided we should introduce Luke to daytime holonet shows. It’s called Crown of Stars, what did you expect it would be like?”

“I have heard of a few arranged marriages in recent years, mainly between magnates and industrial leaders and Moffs and stuff,” Luke admitted, reaching for the tray of food Nova had sent a droid in to deliver for them. The jogan fruit was sweet when he bit into it; juice dribbled down his chin. “But yeah, it’s not that common. And why does she need to marry that guy anyway? His system doesn’t exactly have any resources that her family would exactly need, and they’re on the edge of Wild Space.”

“It’s a holodrama, it’s not meant to be logical!”

Luke shrugged. “Shouldn’t they at least try?”

“They’re more interested in the drama,” Leia said, drawing out the word a tad longer than needed. “To keep their viewers hooked.”

“To keep their viewers confused?”

“That too.”

“Oh stars, the wedding scene.” Zev cringed away. “I can’t watch.”

“Getting invested, Veers?”

“She’s about to marry someone twice her age while her one true love watches in agony! I can’t bear it!”

Leia rolled her eyes. “Then let’s turn it off—”

A pillow smacked her in the face.

“Hey!” She glared at Luke.

“Shhh, it’s getting tense.”

She chucked the pillow back at him. He threw himself against the sofa to dodge it.

“Oh no,” Zev whimpered, peering through his fingers, “he’s gonna kiss her…”

“Wait, look!” Luke leaned forwards. “Is that—? I don’t understand.”

“Shhh, let it finish.”

“The lover burst in and read out a law that declared the marriage illegal,” Leia drawled. “A law which doesn’t exist, by the way—”

“Oh, that’s a sweet ending.” Luke smiled at the projector.

“They’re kissing and riding off into the sunset together, it’s literally the most cliché ending in the galaxy.”

“But it’s sweet.”

Leia had to smile when she glanced at the holo again—at the woman’s beaming face.

“Okay,” she admitted, “it is pretty sweet.” She glanced at Luke and Zev, and cackled when she saw they’d both inched their chairs and sofas closer to the holo, as well as closer together. “You sappy romantics.”

The credits began to roll.

Luke glanced at the time. “Uhhh,” he said, “the time Nova said she was going to lock us in for is up. If you don’t want to stay any longer…”

“Are you kicking us out?” Leia asked. Zev looked hurt.

“No! I just thought… if you did want to leave…”

“Well.” Leia grabbed the remote. “He can leave, but I’m not going to go until you’ve been introduced to a holonet show that is actually good. How about—”

“Are you kidding?” Zev burst out. “They haven’t resolved the secret letter arc yet, and the Count is still missing! Luke has to finish watching the series!”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“One against one.” Zev crossed his arms. “You’re a senator, Leia—”

“Aspiring senator, I’m actually an apprentice legislator—”

“—you like voting. Luke gets the deciding vote.”

Luke smiled. “Crown of Stars.”

“No!”

“There’s too many plotlines that haven’t been wrapped up yet!”

Leia glared at Zev. “You’ve ruined his taste forever.”

“Shhh,” Luke said as the theme began to play. “It’s starting.”

Send me the first sentence of a scene from this AU and I’ll continue it!

Beginning | Previous | Next

#luke palpatine #sabé #leia organa #zevulon veers #space twins #my writing #random words on a page #luke skywalker

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

Text

I am reading the Rogue One visual guide and I’m going to ramble at you about it

Starting with Baze and Chirrut facts because nothing is more important than Baze and Chirrut

- The Guardians of the Whills believe very deeply in the Force but their cosmology doesn’t center any fight between light and dark and they believe mortal minds can ‘encompass the totality of the Force’ with the right training (seemingly even for non-Force sensitives). *thinks of a little green baby who’s going to need some help with his place in the universe one day and how reductive the light/dark side dichotomy can be* good to know good to know. yes everything eventually comes down to baby yoda and his poor stressed out dad. protect them

- “Opposites in balance. Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus share a homeworld and a history, although they strike a compelling contrast. Baze is a hardened pragmatist, while Chirrut’s faith flourishes even in trying times. They both claim to act as the protector of the other.”

in every way they are #goals. bffs/partners to lovers is Everything. ‘They both claim to act as the protector of the other’ is very funny and very sweet and very true; my favourite thing

- this book describes chirrut as baze’s ‘best friend and moral compass’, which is a funny way of spelling ‘husband of 30 years’ but who am I to criticize

- baze is just. he’s so good. they say here pragmatism is his biggest trait but you can tell how much love has been at the center of him (and probably continues to be under it all) from the totality of his rage. I don’t think you can be this deeply hurt without loving just as deeply first. (like chirrut says, he used to believe more than anyone and now he’s thrown aside literally everything about the guardians except chirrut) it’s like he’s suffered a moral wound just seeing what’s happened to his home and it won’t heal and it never does, he just loses chirrut too and then at least it’s over. jesus christ it’s so soul crushingly sad in a quiet undramatic way

- “Though both are Guardians of the Whills, Baze and Chirrut could not be more different in their approach to combat. Traditionalist Chirrut still carries weapons associated with the ancient order, while Baze adopts an implement of modern warfare. Their methods suit them individually, and both are effective extensions of their distinctive personalities. Though Baze may chide Chirrut for his antiques, and Chirrut may decry Baze’s reliance on soulless tools, they trust each other’s defences to such weapons.”

THEY TRUST EACH OTHER’S DEFENCES TO SUCH WEAPONS. YOU HAD TO WORD IT LIKE THAT HUH. YOU HAD TO GO AND MAKE IT CLEAR THEY’RE EACH OTHER’S MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. WHAT. THE FUCK

- it’s implied baze’s hair used to be shorter when he was a Guardian! he’s just let it grow past what’s customary for them (and an excellent choice too his hair is wonderful)

- his repeating blaster is described as ‘modified and highly illegal’ hahaha

it also weighs 30 kg and is meant to be mounted on a tank

baze is the best

- chirrut built his own lightbow! apparently used to be a thing the guardians did to symbolize the end of their training. I wonder if baze used to have one too? even more I wonder if they’ve always been part of the same uh ‘divisions’ or what have you within the guardians, because I think there are some implications that baze has been more of an assassin/focused on violent conflicts even before the empire came and chirrut hasn’t

- this book does not adequately capture chirrut’s trickster/funny side, making me wonder how much of that was an addition by the actor and how much was planned out

- honestly... more baze & chirrut (well baze/chirrut let’s not play here) prequel books WHEN. what does their living room look like (because we do know they live together) how did they meet, when exactly did baze lose his faith and chirrut his sight, what was their first kiss like

inquiring minds want to know (it’s me I want to know)

- unless the wording is deliberately misleading here chirrut was not born blind (though he won’t discuss how he ended up this way) and he’s learned his current fighting technique over a prolonged period of time

- bodhi is a bit of a gambling addict! and specifically one who’s pretty good at it; even after the empire knows he’s a defector he gets past their restrictions because he’s saved up all the credits/favours/even id-vouchers he’s owed by other imperial grunts fsdhfksdjf precious I love him

- saw gerrera’s medical droid a) has been modified so its programming won’t stop it from being able to dispense drugs at dangerous intervals, b) professes sheer bafflement that saw is still alive and c) is ‘frequently deactivated to prevent it from building an ethical case to discontinue treatment’. I find the whole thing darkly hilarious.

- there are literally whole subplots going on in the crowd scenes on Jedha about a mad evil surgeon who ‘decraniates’ people (essentially turning them into mindless servile husks with all of their head above the nose cut off, somehow), a masked cop from the Milvayne Authority who’s gone rogue to do the right thing and hunt him down against orders, a death cult, a bunch of different religious sects, a translation droid who has befriended a group of local orphans and shares his credits with them so they can eat and he’s SAVING UP FOR A PROCESSOR UPGRADE SO HE CAN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF SPIRITUALITY ;_____; what the fuck I want a tv-series about this droid IMMEDIATELY

- this book shows you just how crucial K-2 is as an asset and what a masterstroke cassian’s reprogramming of him is... and it says some very, very sweet things about cassian as a person under all the trauma and spy stuff that he essentially treats him as his best friend instead of a tool. cASSIAN he deserved to survive and have SO much therapy ;_____; ah well at least we’re getting a prequel series about him right? pls be good

- oh cassian was a proper separatist during the clone wars! he probably has some very interesting points of view about the republic pre- and post empire huh (this is what I love about the clone wars era; they have built SUCH a believable and interesting political world here, all shades of grey. there were separatists with very valid points even thought they were lead by a guy named COUNT DOOKU played by CHRISTOPHER LEE, the first sign that you should look inwards and ask yourself... wait are we the bad guys)

- it’s so much more understandable to me now who in the rebel leadership is for following jyn’s plan and who is not. (namely: the ministers of finance and industry are both Not Into challenging the empire directly, kind of understandably)

in depth description of weapons technology... I sleep. deep dives into the political structure of the alliance leadership and their backgrounds and motivations? I have never been happier

(this. sort of should have been in the actual movie tho things would have made more sense)

- BAIL ORGANA Leia’s actual dad out there lookin’ fiiine, being righteous and good, almost making me forget he’s going to die SO SOON oh fuck :(

- orson krennic is, presumably straight faced, described as ‘a cruel but brilliant man’ which is PATENTLY LUDICROUS because krennic is by literally every indication a fucking idiot, he needs galen to do all the real work for him, he mouths off to DARTH VADER and then tarkin just effortlessly swoops in and fucks him over in the end, easily outmaneuvering him... orson krennic is a fucking loser I don’t care if he’s the one who introduced brutalist architecture to coruscant

lol lol lol *arrow pointing towards krennic’s head* ‘Keen mind dissects architectural puzzles and conspiratorial plots’ okay I see what happened here orson krennic wrote this book

- oh galen erso is kind of one of the most interesting and heartbreaking characters in all of star wars. (and I do not say this just because of mads mikkelsen’s cheek bones) he’s incredibly intelligent but from a really poor family and wanted to eliminate the difference between rich and poor and invent a new form of infinitely renewable energy... and technically he did achieve that, except his old college buddy orson krennic immediately found a way to use his technology for genocide and he didn’t realize until it was too late :’) there is something so comforting in the fact that in the end galen still got the last laugh in the most epic but unsung way. he’s the sort of quiet Magnificent Bastard who doesn’t even care he’ll never get the credit as long as it worked. u did good on that one jyn

also several of the scientists galen is leading on eadu are in the same category as him -- captured and forced to work for the empire. so that’s great and not at all upsetting

- galen and lyra’s falling in love story is kind of sweet (though naturally it pales against baze and chirrut’s whole deal but then who could compare) and the sheer effort and detail that’s gone into building the farmstead in the beginning we end up seeing for 5 minutes... dude (it feels very convincingly like somewhere a family would live though)

- *sees that ‘databook’ is a concept that exists apparently; groans in fic research I thought ‘holodisc’ might do the job but maybe this is a better fit*

- I will say that my largest gripe with this movie is how glaringly unnecessarily male it is. there’s literally no reason for most of the rebels and ESPECIALLY all of the scientists to be male but here we are.

well the stormtroopers could all canonically be any gender behind the armor so uh that’s. something lol

- despite being all desert-y jedha is apparently quite cool! temperature-wise I mean though the huge ancient statues lying everywhere are pretty awesome too

- wow stormtrooper armor really does just suck huh. it’s like ‘well it might protect you from a blaster bolt if you stand upwind and angle yourself just right, who knows’. I guess this is why everyone and their grandmothers are drooling over mando’s beskar lol

- star wars’ insistence on sticking to single-biome planets is so silly and I love it. stick to that incomprehensible world building decision lucasfilm I respect you

- mon mothma! basically the most important character in the star wars universe who most people won’t know about lol she’s like the anti-palps. for the most part she is one of the most Big Goods in all of star wars (along with bail) but also she’s played by the actress who voices moira in overwatch so I do instinctively distrust her whenever I hear her talk haha. called palpatine a ‘lying executioner’ to his face which is both admirably bold and remarkably restrained, considering all the things palpatine is.

- oof the two people mentioned the most on anakin/vader’s pages are palpatine and obi wan. that’s. hurtful and bad and awful. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making me watch ‘clone wars’ because watching ‘clone wars’ actually made me care about anakin skywalker :(

-ah shit this is a lot of pages about pasty empire dudes i’ll uh come back to these lol

#first post of 2020! keeping it on rambling brand into the new decade #star wars #rogue one #baze x chirrut #meta #if you're here for information about baze's hair and how overwatch has coloured my view of a star wars character...#boy have I got a post for you lol

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poesreyofsunshine · 4 years

Text

My Thoughts on TROS

I’ve been wanting to write my thoughts on episode ix but i’ve been busy and i’ve gotten the chance to watch the film 3 times now.

SPOILERS AHEAD

(pretty long post)

I’m going to start with what I LOVED/ENJOYED

Chewie/ Poe/ Finn Falcon- I loved this scene so much well any scenes with Poe and Finn because of the beautiful natural chemistry John and Oscar have with each other. I loved how they both know wookie now. The light speed skip was fun getting to see other planets.

Rey Meditating - My baby girl and her floating rocks, she’s come so far. I love how BB-8 keeps her company during her training. He really loves his Mom. Leia is her master (cried when she called her Master). I love the relationship between Leia and Rey.

Rey Training- Rey doing the training course was EVERYTHING!!!! Her saying that she will earn Luke’s saber like she wants to be worthy to earn it. Never underestimate a droid. (My heart)

Falcon Arriving- Rey reading her Jedi Text Books she’s so cute and i loved how the other resistance members their reaction to the Falcon coming back and the pilot letting her know the Falcon is here and how she runs to go see her friends. ugghhh my heart.

THE TRIO !!!!!!- OMG THE BICKERING WITH POE AND REY WOW WE’VE BEEN BLESSED. TO TALLY HANLEIA VIBES. YOU’RE A DIFFICULT MAN. FINN BEING THE MIDDLE MAN. JOHN BOYEGA HAS THE BEST FACIAL EXPRESSIONS EVER !!! OBVIOUSLY THEY’VE BEEN BICKERING SINCE AFTER TLJ AND I WOULD PAY BIG MONEY TO SEE THAT. OK SO BACK TO THE TRIO IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY THAT THIS IS THE ONLY DAM MOVIE WE SEE THEM AS A TRIO. I’VE BEEN EXPECTING THIS TRIO SINCE TFA WAS ANNOUNCE AND WELL TLJ (don’t even get me started on that movie) YOU CAN FEEL THAT TIME HAS GONE BY.

PASAANA- MORE TRIO SCENES YES YES YES !!! I loved loved how Poe was getting down to business right away and Rey is taking everything in, she’s like a little kid. That scene with her and the child was so sweet. LANDO’S INTRODUCTION i’ve missed him. THE CHASE SCENE, POE DOING THAT SWERVE THING UGGGHHHHH the NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A DROID part and Rey’s little smile.

CAVE SCENE- Poe catching Rey and calling her name out first (MY DAMEREY SHIPPER HEART) C-3PO “You didn’t say my name sir but i’m alright” . Poe being jealous of Finn & Rey. “You mean when poe’s not here?” Poe using his flashlight after Rey takes out her lightsaber such a cute funny moment and again Finn’s face. They find the dagger and Rey healing the snake was cool because we can see how advanced she is with her jedi training so that was cool to see.

CHEWIE’S FAKE DEATH- the force lightning (i predicted that in one of my awful fan fics i wrote after tfa so jj i’m waiting for my credit)

FOR CHEWIE/ D-O- I loved the hand holding scene. Finn is so comfortable with human touch and Poe not wanting to hold his hand then C-3PO joins in and Poe looks annoyed. D-O Rey being so comforting to that droid because she knows she’s been hurt before and now she’s with great people in her life. ugghhh my heart.

KIJIMI/ BABU FRIK- TRIO WEARING THE JACKETS ALONGSIDE C-3PO we stan. When Poe warned Zori and her crew and Rey just kicked everyone’s ass. Zori and Rey moment i loved. Zori sacrificing something that was going to get her out so Poe can help his friends was a really sweet moment. BABU FRIK i’m obsessed. Rey fixing D-O’s wheel so it won’t squeak again. C-3PO sacrificing his memory so he can help Rey. I was so happy how much C-3PO was used in this film.

RESCUING CHEWIE- AGAIN MORE TRIO. JJ REALLY SAID TRIO RIGHTS. I really enjoyed the scenes with Poe Finn and Chewie.

REY IN KYLO’S QUARTERS- I hate reylo but i have to admit this is one of the strongest scenes of these two. Daisy’s acting ugghhhh *chef’s kiss* It was so good. I liked how she was trying to ignore him while grabbing chewie’s belongings.

JANNAH- I had a feeling she was First Order, i loved how she reacted when Finn told her who he was. He really inspired other stormtroopers to leave the First Order. This is the Finn content we’ve been missing.

DARK REY: That was really cool. The teeth. SCARY. I wanted more of her lightsaber duel with Dark Rey.

REY KILLS KYLO- That moment was so powerful to me. She killed this character who has been tormenting the Galaxy. She was scared of what she did she left like Luke did.

BEN/ HAN SOLO: I Know part that hit me uggghhhh i loved that we got to see Ben reborn and at this moment I knew that he was going to sacrifice himself because of what Han said about Leia always fighting for the cause. t was a beautiful moment.

LEIA’S DEATH: Rey & Kylo feeling her die. Well Ben lost his mother and Rey lost a mentor so that was nicely done. CHEWIE’S REACTION TO HER DEATH wow that broke my heart into a million little pieces. I couldn’t stop sobbing.

GENERALS POE/ FINN: Poe asking Lando for advice and Poe asking Finn to command with him and they’re both generals. It was such a cute moment.

REY/LUKE & LUKE/LEIA JEDI TRAINING: THIS HAD TO BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCENES. The Luke that we saw was the Luke I wanted in TLJ. From him giving her Leia’s saber and the small scene we got to see of Luke and Leia training like can we get a series of that PLEASE. Luke using the force to lift his x-wing from the water. His little smirk when he finished, yes YODA would be proud.

REY FLYING LUKE’S X-WING: She gets to fly an x-wing after watching them from jakku and putting on the helmet. Rey deserves the world.

BEN SOLO- I WANTED MORE BEN SOLO AND WE WERE ROBBED. He’s such an interesting character and I wish we would’ve seen more of Ben Solo before TFA. He’s very much like Han. The shooting without looking and when Rey passed him the lightsaber through their bond i was shook. That scene was so powerful. She finally got to see Ben who she’s been seeing in this visions that we never see. Ben & Rey teaming up was awesome. That fighting sequence against the knights of ren was amazing choreography.

THERE ARE MORE OF US/ WEDGE ANTILLES- That moment of poe losing hope it broke my heart we had that moment when he was talking to Zori about he feels like no one is going to help them. He’s apologizing to everyone uggghhhhh and then Lando to the rescue with the main star wars theme song playing in the background. *chef’s kiss* and wedge antilles’s small cameo my heart. I almost fell out of my seat lol i got way too excited.

REY’s & BEN’s DEATHS- I know people hated the fact that she killed Palpatine but I really liked that scene. She used both Skywalker sabers to defeat Palpatine and she had all the jedi with her. It made sense for her to die in that moment. Because Ben rose and wow that scene when he was holding her again this is Adam’s best acting. Again i’m not a reylo but i felt his pain. He finally did what Anakin never did he saved someone he loved and that was so significant. His death made sense to me. Honestly they wouldn’t have accepted him in the resistance because of everything kylo did. He sacrificed himself do Rey can carry the Skywalker legacy. Leia giving him the strength he needed to save Rey was beautiful and both disappearing. He gets to reunite with his family as Ben Solo.

FINN FEELING REY’S DEATH-

TRIO REUNION- Poe and Finn reunion was so cute the way Poe reacted to seeing Poe. Both of them looking for Rey and her looking for both of them.THAT FUCKING HUG WAS EVERYTHING BETWEEN THE 3 OF THEM. FINN BEING IN THE MIDDLE AND HIM CRYING MADE ME SO EMOTIONAL. THERE EACH OTHER’S FAMILY. POE AND REY HAND HOLDING.

TATOOINE- Full Circle, ending where it started was a perfect ending. Her coming in the Falcon and sliding down the sand just how she did in TFA. She buried the skywalker sabers in luke’s home. And ending with her saying she’s Rey Skywalker like yes you are going to carry that legacy and her walking with BB-8 and the twin suns was just in my opinion a good ending. NO SHE DID NOT END UP ALONE. SHE HAS FINN, POE, CHEWIE, ROSE, LANDO, C-3PO, D-O, SHE HAS A FAMILY. THAT WAS SOMETHING SHE HAD TO DO ON HER OWN !!!!!!!!

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE .....

OPENING- With Kylo i hated the way it was show the slow motion it was just unecessary. Exogol was really scary I liked where Palpatine was it just seemed very Sith like. There wasn’t really a clear explanation on how he survived (maybe i missed it) but like how has been alive?????? It would’ve been great to see little clues of Palpatine since TFA. That delivery line of Poe “Somehow Palpatine is back...” was just like okay he’s back accepted without an explanation. Where did all the people for the final order come from. They’ve been inside those star destroyers all this time ?

REY LOOKING AT ? - Um maybe im dumb but what was Rey staring at before they left to Pasaana and Poe asked her what is it and she said nothing.... like okay what was it???? PLEASE SOMEONE EXPLAIN !!!

ROSE?/ CONNIX/ SNAP/ DOMINIC MONAGHAN/ BLACK SQUADRON - So Rose was given like 3 lines um JJ WTF her character deserved better and what about that scene with Rose & Rey why was it cut ???? Same with Connix i really enjoy her character and was disappointed there was barely any Connix. SNAP DYING HURTED SO MUCH. I am a huge fan of the Aftermath series and knowing Wedge was there ugghhhh im so mad he had to die. Dominic Monaghan was a pointless character who had more lines than Rose why was he in this movies he served NO PURPOSE AT ALL !!! AND WHERE WAS BLACK SQUADRON ???????????????????

Lando/ Luke- We should’ve seen them together in TLJ or TFA trying to find the wavefinder or whatever it’s called. Or at least Luke mention it to Rey that he was in search for something or he’s heard rumors about palpatine being alive and he went looking for clues. Why did Luke want to go find it ? Was this after Ben became Kylo Ren?

REY’S NECKLACE- WHY ARE REYLOS ROMANTICISING KYLO YANKING THE NECKLACE OUT OF REY ???? THAT’S NOT ROMANTIC OR WHATEVER THAT’S LIKE WHAT ABUSERS DO ....

Finn’s Secret- Poe is one of his best friends and also Rey like why does he want to hide that from Poe. I know Poe would understand and if we were given a scene with the trio and Finn explaining him being force sensitive that would’ve been *chef’s kiss* they would be so supportive and Finn deserves the world.

Chewie’s Fake Death- Rey had a way stronger reaction to his death than Poe and Finn they were kind of like we have to go and didn’t really comfort Rey or seemed afraid or confused it was just kind of ignored like let’s go... idk it was very weird to me the way it was handled.

KNIGHTS OF REN- I WAS SO EXCITED TO FINALLY SEE THEM ACTION TO REALIZE AGAIN THEY WERE A WASTE. I WISH WE COULD’VE SEEN MORE OF THEM. DISAPPOINTED.

FINN TRYING TO UNDERSTAND REY- Rey was starting to piss me off when all Finn was trying to do was understand her and for her to talk to him. The fact that Finn’s story arc in this movie is all about Rey and him chasing her all the time. FINN DESERVED A BETTER ARC

POE BEING A DRUG DEALER- I’M BEYOND PISSED OFF ABOUT THIS !!! YOU’RE TELLING ME THE SON OF 2 REBELS BECAME A DRUG DEALER. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS UGLY BACKSTORY. HE WAS ON A SECRET MISSION THAT WOULD’VE MADE MORE SENSE !!!!!!

FINN NOT WANTING TO SHARE HIS SECRET YET AGAIN- FINN NOT TRUSTING POE ABOUT HIM BEING FORCE SENSITIVE LIKE MAKE IT MAKE SENSE THAT’S HIS BEST FRIEND !!!!

HUX BEING THE SPY/ DEATH- THIS WOULD’VE BEEN MORE SHOCKING IF THIS WAS BUILD UP SINCE TFA BECAUSE HONESTLY I WASN’T SHOCKED WHEN IT WAS REVEALED. HIS DEATH WOULD’VE MADE MORE SENSE.

FINN/POE ARGUMENT- I get it friends fight but that was kind of low. “You’re not Leia”

FINN RUNNING AFTER REY- YET AGAIN, I know he cares but at this point I was over it.

KYLO/ REY DUEL- It started off good but it became too long I became bored.

ALL THE JEDI- FORCE GHOSTS OF ALL THE JEDI WOULD’VE MADE THIS SCENE MUCH MUCH BETTER. I loved hearing the voices but just think of the impact if we would’ve seen the past jedi.

REYLO KISS- Maybe because i’m anti-reylo but that kiss seemed very awkward and not in the right place. It felt like it wasn’t needed. That’s my 2 cents.

FORCE GHOSTS AT THE END- I know we only get Luke & Leia but what about Anakin and Ben they are also Skywalkers. If all of them would’ve been looking at Rey when she said Rey Skywalker. SHE IS CARRYING ON THEIR LEGACY !!!

Anyways it seems like I was more of a fan of seeing the trio together and that’s that. A lot of unanswered questions that they completely ignored. Like Maz how did she have Anakin’s lightsaber?????? Who gave it to her???? It was never touched again. They left so many plotholes in this sequel trilogy.

#tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #episode ix spoilers

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tariqk · 4 years

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So I watched Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker last night

TL;DR: Glad I got that out of the way.

Spoilers under the cut.

J.J. Abrams can’t write or direct to save his life. It was evident that he had a lot of help this time from an editing and pacing perspective, because 1) Rey and Kylo were put in a lightsaber battle on a place with ocean spray and she was wearing a white outfit and there were no gratuitous nipple shots, and 2) there seemed to be less of the classic Abrams fakeout than usual. Which means that there were still an egregious amount, but it felt like the other adults in the room reined him in.

Even despite all of that? The end result was mostly… bland, apart from the few moments of outrage, annoyance, and occasionally (occasionally) squealing joy.

I’ll get to the parts I did like first:

Wedge Antilles (played by Denis Lawson) makes a very brief cameo. Like, a very brief cameo. I still squealed.

The OT3 moments between Rey, Finn and Poe were real. I knew I was being pandered to, but if there’s an AU where the three of them don’t settle in the old Skywalker ranch, where Finn plays the oblivious hot homesteading dad that everyone wants to bang, Poe’s the crusty old smuggler with a paramour in every spaceport, and Rey becomes the cranky old uncle with a gaggle of Force-sensitive children, apprentices, and droids I will scream.

Okay, it’s nice that Finn gets to bond with more ex-stormtroopers. I’d have liked to see more, but this was good. Maybe Finn can start group therapy sessions with former ex-child-soldiers and stuff.

It’s also nice that we get Finn as the secondary Force-Sensitive character in the movie! He’s not going to be the Jedi, but he’s definitely taking on the role of the Leia. And it’s also nice that everyone secretly wants to bang him treats him like a respected, even natural leader!

The reason why Zorri was so willing to help Poe and his gang was so obviously because she was gay for Rey. GAY FOR REY! GAY FOR REY! GAY FOR REY! (Honestly I don’t see the point, Rey’s such a skinny white girl and there were major vibes of that in that once-every-42-years festival scene)

The actors did great despite the limitations of the script. Yes, even Adam Driver. But to call out, specifically: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Dominic Monaghan, Kelly Marie Tran, Oscar Isaac, Ian McDarmid, Billy Dee Williams, Domnhall Gleeson (Hux Spite 110% 5eva lmaooo), Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fischer, god rest her soul. All of you were amazing and did a great job despite the crap materials you were saddled with.

That’s about it honestly. It’s honestly evident that JJ Abrams made this movie to be sliced up into a series of awesome movie clips from the movie, because the movie is jam-packed with all of them. But put together the way it was in the cinema, it all blended into this bland, empty experience.

Like, honestly… my bladder was so full that I had to go to the can, got lost a bit, peed up a storm, and wash my hands, came back and I honestly can say that I didn’t miss a damn thing. You could see where things were going. Rey would keep wandering off by herself and experience Force visions. There’d be a terrible tragedy that would be a fakeout that would be undercut by subsequent scenes. Kylo Ren would look all wooby while gaslighting the shit out of Rey.

That being said… fuck the kiss, man. Fuck the kiss. I loathe Reylo so I’m biased as hell, but even if I was, can you honestly expect me to believe that someone as violent, abusive, and gaslighting like Kylo Ren just had to believe that his momma still loved him before he’d turn back to the light? The fucker, who massacres entire villages, was responsible for the genocide of billions, murders the shit out of everyone, subjects his subordinates to Force and lightsaber-based abuse, just needed to know that momma loved him? This man ran a lightsaber through his daddy’s gut, the same daddy who loved and trusted him so much that he literally risked his ass (and paid dearly for it) to try and tell him that he and his momma loved him very much despite all the shit he pulled? All he needed was the love of his Sainted Mother (RIP Carrie you will be missed) who had to die for him to get the message? And for that he gets smoochies with Rey and then gets to pass into the Force?

Fuck that. I hope he never comes back, good riddance.

That being said, Adam Driver is an excellent actor, able to portray both Kylo Ren (who is a terrible person) and Ben Solo (who is an uncertain child in a grown man’s skin) amazingly well. It’s just that… when he’s in Ben Solo mode, I can’t help but notice his giant nose. Like you don’t notice it when he’s being a gaslighting, abusive dipshit, I guess? But when he’s the lost, uncertain boy who’s forced to grow up too fast through associating with abusive persons? That nose just like, grows three sizes or some shit. I don’t understand it, but there you have it.

And it’s also nice that Lando Calrissian, the token Black dude in the original series, remains literally the last surviving member of the gang. Well, other than Chewie. WHO NEEDS A PROPER MEDAL CEREMONY WTF.

Also, Rose Tico got done dirty in this episode. MORE ROSE TICO! Ian McDarmid also was amazing, despite the fact that for most of the movie he was tethered to a massive cybernetic machine as zombie Emperor Palpatine. I have no opinions about Rey being a Palpatine. It honestly doesn’t matter. When the reveal happened I kind of shrugged and moved on. Doesn’t matter, she’s her own person. The fact that she can do the whole Force Lightning shit? Who gives crap, man! Darksiders can all do that, it’s classic Dark Side Force User power, it’s hardly signature to Palpatine though Abrams tried to make it so (remember that Count Dooku could do it). Evil!Rey was pretty good, though. I loved that feral smile. Too bad it was a Force image and there wasn’t a real personality behind it.

#Star Wars #spoilers #the rise of skywalker

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lettersfromn0where · 4 years

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Star Wars marathon semi-live-blog: Ep. V

So. Last night, I decided on a whim to rewatch every single Star Wars movie for the first time since I was seven this Christmas break. As I knew I’d have many things to say about this, I started messaging @marypoppinswasmyfatherbitches about my opinions and observations while watching Episode IV. She apparently thought they were amusing because she told me (several times, ily) that I should live blog, and i was already halfway through last time but wanted to do it, so I guess I’m doing so now. So, to everyone who questions why this entirely unnecessary liveblog of “The Empire Strikes Back” even exists...let’s just call it a Christmas gift for my ever-encouraging tumblr pal. (Is it a liveblog if you wait until the very end to post your collected thoughts? Nah? Maybe?)

Wow, I really was BABY when I saw this last. Literally, I was in second grade. I’m now just months from my high school graduation. What the heck? This is gonna seem so different than it did then...

I like the opening crawl way better sans weird capitalization.

I’m not sure why the tauntaun noises are such a mood, but they are.

17-year-old me is now remembering that 7-year-old me 100% had a baby crush on OG Trilogy Luke and I really don’t know how to feel about that. I guess I thought he was pretty...?

Peak romance: protracted gazes across a room.

“I can arrange that. You could USE a good kiss!” GOSH, THIS BICKERING IS PERFECTION. Again. Peak romance. I definitely was not able to appreciate that as a second grader but now it’s kind of the best.

HOW IS LUKE STILL CONSCIOUS IF HE’S BEEN UPSIDE DOWN FOR HOURS? Also this cave scene is lowkey incredibly tense for a few seconds.

I have no clue why but the way people fall over in these movies always cracks me up.

Snow planet makes me really freaking glad that I live in SoCal.

Chewbacca’s vocalizations sound like my Labrador’s and I’m not sure what to make of that information.

Literally everyone in this movie looks prettier in snow planet outfits.

The way that tauntaun falls over is an accurate representation of my AP chemistry grade after exams.

Is muttering the same phrases over and over a hypothermia symptom? Because I did not know that if it is, and if not, why the heck is Luke doing that?

“This is Rogue Two” *cries in Rogue One*

This tank thing is REALLY unfortunate. Leave the unconscious person half-naked in front of literally everyone, why don’t ya?

I probably missed something but I’m still not sure where the name “your worship” came from.

“Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerf-herder!” Iconic for a reason.

Ewwwww that kiss is noooooo. (If they weren’t siblings though I would be dying @ his reaction)

I wanna know who sent Chewbacca on a stealth mission. I WANNA KNOW.

Seeing Han and Leia in this makes me wish the other series either had a central romance, or that the one they had was well-written, because it’s one of the best parts of the movie. See, guys? If it’s good, romance can actually enhance the plot of a movie that focuses on something else!

It’s driving me crazy that the AT-AT walkers remind me of some sort of animal but I can’t put my finger on which one.

“Someday, you’re going to be wrong, and I just hope I’m there to see it” is a very underrated line.

The fact that Leia’s immediate reaction to Han doing a stupid and dangerous thing is “you don’t have to do this to impress me!” is my favorite thing ever.

“You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake...this could be it, sweetheart” -> great payoff of that line earlier. I love it when they circle back to old dialogue. Also adorable that Han remembered she’d said that. (Get you a guy who listens!)

I always feel so bad for droids because they have to be on the outside of the ship, exposed to such harsh conditions. I know they can’t feel things, but I still :(.

Ohp, R2 just gotta YEETED by that Loch Ness monster thing.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I haven’t got time for anything else.” -> she walked right into that one. ALSO. SMOOOOTH.

One of the few things I remembered from my initial watch as a little kid is that I was always freaked out by how you never saw anyone eat onscreen in these movies, to the extent that I wondered if people had to eat in space. (Idk, i was SEVEN.) but there’s an eating scene in this! Vindication for baby me!

I...did not remember Yoda having this much crackhead energy. At all.

The way Han looks at Leia when she calls him a scoundrel! I AM DECEASED

C3PO be out here ruining moments.

Yoda goes from crackhead to wise elder in approximately no seconds. We love.

On a scale of 1 to C3PO, how terrible are you in a crisis?

Worm thing is the stuff of nightmares.

96% sure I just saw a live iguana in the background of that scene. HI, FRIEND!

AND THERE WAS A MONITOR LIZARD! Friends! I love all of the reptile friends on Dagobah :)

This cave fight with the sonshadowing must have been absolutely insane to watch when this first came out.

Guys, i realized...Yoda’s combination of pithy sayings, crackhead energy, and anti-establishment ideals make him seem like a typical midcentury hippie. *writes essay about how Yoda is actually a metaphor for the 1960s countercultural movement*

If this ship levitating scene didn’t inspire your kid self try to use the Force to lift your parents’ car, did you even have a childhood?

R2’s little “REEEEEEE!” screams whenever he gets thrown bring me LIFE.

Okay, Han is enjoying stopping Lando from hitting on Leia WAY too much. (They both are...)

The forehead kiss! In the middle of a fight! PEAK ROMANCE(tm)

“One last kiss before i face certain death” is my absolute favorite and hi this is not okay with me :)

“I love you.” “I know.” I DIED. (@my 11th grade English teacher: I used parallel structure!)

I remember thinking the fight choreography with lightsabers in the last movie was really awkward and it’s WAY better here.

Do lightsabers cauterize the wounds they cause? It would make sense, since people who get stabbed or sliced by lightsabers never seem to bleed.

This falling sequence is the weirdest-looking thing in this movie.

The fact that Lando is the only person in this movie who pronounces “Han” with a short A rather than the long A that everyone else uses bugs me to no end.

I had completely forgotten how iconic this movie was. Off to watch the next one 👀👀

In my defense, I did say this was going to make no sense...

Until next time!

#sarah rewatches star wars #by request #epV

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nein-pirate-lords · 4 years

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my thoughts on rise of skywalker

Non-spoilery version: An entertaining movie, lots of funny, good, feelsy moments and a pretty epic final showdown. I still really enjoyed it despite a couple of (kinda major) issues that I thought were really problematic and/or annoying, but I was satisfied with the ending for sure.

For the spoiler-filled version, clicky to read on!

Note that despite of what I’m about to say, I still really enjoyed the movie. It was a good movie, interesting plot, and I felt fulfilled and satisfied at the end. It’s just... there are some things that I would personally like to ignore and/or wish that they’d been rectified.

CONTINUITY: I think, at the end of the day, this is kind of what bothered me the most about Rise of Skywalker. I loved The Last Jedi, but please know that I know that there are a lot of people who hated it. And there are definitely people that disliked it for valid reasons. This final movie pretty much... disregarded and retconned and/or outright ignored 2/3 of TLJ in a way that then made the entire trilogy feel disjointed and not like a series of movies. Instead, they now all feel like 3 separate films with 3 separate interpretations of the plot and the characters. Could this be TLJ’s fault? It feels like it, because now of the 3 films, TLJ feels EXTREMELY out of place. To that end, then, they should have fucking known how this trilogy was going to end, and if they saw Rian Johnson taking TLJ veering off the path, then they should have stepped in and fucking fixed it. If they DIDN’T know how they were going to end this trilogy? THAT’S EVEN WORSE. You don’t jump into such a massive franchise with such an ambitious project and then basically give us the first draft where you just wrote out what felt right in the moment. Like. UGH. My anger over this can’t be overstated, honestly.

Which, to that end.

HALF-ASSED REDEMPTION ARC: This was the other thing that bothered me to no end, if only because this was once again an issue with continuity. I understand that in TLJ, we were emphasizing that Kylo Ben (this is what I have decided to call him) was conflicted. But. But. I also thought that the major point in TLJ was that he made his decision. He went down that dark path, and everyone around him, including Rey, had decided that he was evil. Nonredeemable. I mean, for goodness’ sake, this movie starts out with watching him slaughter hoards of people.

I see this “redemption arc” as two things. One, they went for this double identity gimmick that I didn’t buy. At all. The whole point was that Kylo Ben has been a conflicted individual this entire time, and everyone fights the light and dark inside of them at any given point. He was still Ben Solo when he murdered Han. He was still Ben Solo when he murdered countless innocent people. You don’t get to write off all the bad he’s done over the past two and a half movies by saying, “Oh, he’s just Ben Solo now!” It... doesn’t work that way. At least, it doesn’t for me.

Two, I saw this as a “Vader-like” redemption. He did one good thing at the end to make him a redeemable character. But because they threw this whole identity thing in there, it just felt like they were writing off all the evil he did and then had Rey kiss him. No. I understand the Darth Vader redemption thing, but that was also like 30 years ago in a different time and in a different society. It’s 2019, almost 2020. You can’t do the same thing in the environment we live in now, and expect everyone to jump on board.

Maybe other people don’t see it that way, and that’s okay! There were elements of the redemption arc that I greatly enjoyed, I just think it could have been done better and in a way that didn’t seem to just ignore the fact that he’s spent the past two and a half movies being an actual monster. And maybe that has to do with what happened in TLJ and the whole continuity issue. It’s all interconnected.

I also... did not understand the Leia thing. If anyone can explain that to me, it would be much appreciated. Because that’s also a continuity issue. Because in TLJ, Leia said that she knew her son was gone. And yet, she spends her last energies reaching out to him and maybe... being with him? And then they both vanished together? I understand that you’re trying to go for poetic, but I didn’t get it.

Reylo. Disgusting - you literally could have had them hug because that would have been something I would have been totally fine with. This is more of a personal critique because just. U G H. Gross.

POSITIVES: I know I just spent a novel bitching, but hey, I still really enjoyed the film and there were aspects that I loved! See the following:

1. C-3PO was the comedy the film needed. Loved him. Also D.O.! SO PRECIOUS! All the droids in this film honestly. Bless them. Never underestimate a droid. 2. This gets a separate note but I love that BB-8 is basically the child of FinnReyPoe. The goodest round boy. 3. I AM ALL THE SITH. AND I. AM. ALL. THE JEDI. 4. Rey slicing off the wing of Kylo Ben’s ship? I’m gay. 5. There are more of us. CHILLS. GOOSEBUMPS. SO MUCH HAPPY.

So, despite the Reylo BS, honestly I had way more Finn/Rey/Poe vibes throughout this movie which is what made me enjoy it so much. The way the actors played it off, it felt like there was a pre-established poly ship going on there and I was down for it. OT3′s, baby. Especially at the end, when they all hugged? Fuck. Sign me up.

There is SO MUCH MORE that I could say, but I’ve already yelled so much. There are definitely elements that should have been introduced in TLJ and/or not retconned. I genuinely didn’t mind that Rey was a Palpatine, but you needed to explain that more, and to have hinted towards it in TLJ and NOT done the whole “your parents were nothing, you’re nothing.” (On that note, I loved that she said she was Rey Skywalker in the end. That was so nice.) I also liked the concept that Rey and Ben were this... what did they call it? A diad or something like that (forgive me, I’m not sure what word was used though it sounded like diad or something of that nature) in the Force and that they were parallels of each other. But again, that was something that should have been explored more and hinted at in TLJ, not just dropped casually twice over the course of ROS.

All in all though? Enjoyed the movie. Will probably see it a third time in IMAX 3D again (I feel like there’s no other way to see it, tbh.). Happy holidays, all! And may the Force be with you always. <3

#SPOILERS #star wars spoilers #sw spoilers #ros spoilers #josie speaks

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shastelly · 5 years

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Ocean - March Klance Prompts from MonthlyKlance - Day 19

Yes, it's April, no I don't care :)

This fic brought to you by Seagram's extra dry Gin…enjoy responsibly...the typos took longer than usual to edit out, perhaps drinking and writing aren’t the best combo

Day 19 - Ocean

It didn't happen in slow motion. He didn't get a time-lapsed forever to weigh his options and make his decision. It was not like the movies at all, but even now as his air and time were running out, he would not have made a different choice. Even now he knew that split-second decision had been the right one.

Three Varga ago…

The plan was solid. They would infiltrate the Galra cruiser when it was docked at the fueling station on Alien Waterworld. Lance did not remember the name it had way too many consonants in it to pronounce properly and besides it was totally alien Waterworld, covered nearly entirely in ocean. The fueling station was a tower that soared up out of the water into the pink sky. The water was somewhat surprisingly blue, and Lance really appreciated its resemblance to Earth water.

Pidge explained that the tower was converted electrochemical energy produced in the alien ocean to fuel. It was not ecofriendly, and they were slowly killing the planets ecosystem with the three fueling stations towers. She had suggested that once they completed the mission with the cruiser data retrieval that the castle blast the other two towers as well.

The towers were manned primarily by droids according to intel and scans. The team would use Green and her cloak to get into the tower and then sneak aboard the cruiser as it was docked. Then Lance, Keith, and Hunk would place a series of detonators in key spots around the ship while Pidge and Shiro hacked the mainframe and copied the prisoner records and troop movement information they needed. When they had the information they needed, they would take a pod and drop down to the ocean where Green waited and Pidge would set off the detonators. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And Shio had rolled his eyes when Lance said it, but it was, it was supposed to be.

Another brilliant plan ruined by stupidity - Galra stupidity. One of the detonator's was discovered, one on the starboard engine. The brilliant detective decided to mess with the bomb and set it off blowing himself and the engine to bits. Lance is sure that's what happened, because Keith apparently saw the bomb go off as he was trying to stop the idiot from setting it off.

Now, Lance thinks, maybe being next to the bomb going off wasn't Keith's best plan and that they definitely need to get that boy a long-range weapon of some kind. At this point Lance thinks a sling and some rocks would be better than nothing.

"Shit!"

"Keith, are you okay?" Shiro yells in the com.

"Yeah, yeah, mostly." Keith's breathy voice almost echoes. "Blast busted my helmet. The visor is cracked. Stupid patrol set off the bomb. I think we're going down."

"No kidding, did the free fall clue you in?" Lance snarked as he clung to the wall in the hall he was in, not far from Keith.

"Everyone to the pod now, we need to get off of here before we hit the water." Shiro ordered.

Keith was the furthest away and had to make a detour around damaged sections of the ship as doors were sealed in attempt to keep the thing in the air. It wasn't working, but it was causing Keith a lot of issues. Lance wasn't having much more luck as he wasn't much ahead of Keith. About two dobashes after the ordered retreat they found themselves in the same hall.

"Pidge? Help?" Lance asked.

"I'm in the pod with Shiro. I can pull up a map." Pidge's typing could be heard over the com.

"I'm almost there. I see the pods." Hunk yelled.

"Shit, we have three dobashes to waterfall." Pidge yelled frantic.

"Go then!" Keith yelled as he and Lance moved faster, still not sure how to get to where they needed to be.

"Don't wait for us." Lance echoed.

"We can give you one more dobash." Pidge snarled.

"Won't make it. Get Hunk and go." Lance panted.

"Hunk's on board." Shiro stated.

"Go Shiro!" Keith yelled.

"Pidge, launch." Shiro ordered.

"No, we can give them…"

"They aren't going to make it in time. Keith, Lance - You are too far out to get to the pods. Find a secure location and brace for impact. We will give you the count." Shiro commanded, sounding sure that they would be okay.

"Fuck." Pidge cursed as she pressed the button to launch the pod. "You have 2.5 dobashes."

"On it." Keith answered, though his voice was weak.

Lance could see the blackened marks on the red paladin armor and the shattered visor and cracked helmet revealed bleeding cuts on Keith's face.

"Here?" Lance nodded to a small room to the left of the hall. It looked like a dorm room, complete with desk and bed.

"Yeah." Keith agreed.

The bed seemed to be bolted into the wall. They both crawled under it and braced themselves.

"This sucks." Keith growled. His breathing seemed shallow and Lance worried that there was more wrong with him than he had told.

"Yeah, I've heard of hiding under the bed from a monster or a tornado or maybe a fire, but not a shipwreck and the others never work out either."

"Lance, you're babbling."

"I'm not babbling, I am pretending not to be freaking out about our imminent deaths by talking about random things to distract myself. Where you aware that cows have four stomachs?" Lance knew he was babbling, he didn't care.

"No."

"They do, it's so they can digest grass and stuff, which humans can't because of just the one stomach. I had to have my stomach pumped when I was six and drank an entire bottle of tequila that I found in the kitchen cabinet."

"Really."

Lance wasn't entirely sure that Keith was paying attention, but he did seem to be humoring him, "Yeah, I got a popsicle and a night in the hospital. Hospitals aren't so bad when the nurses are nice. I went out with a nurse once when I was at the Garrison. She was like five years older than me. I'm not sure why she said yes when I asked. She was a good dancer. We went to three clubs and did shots of tequila. Then at like 3 am we went cow tipping."

"Are all your stories about cows and tequila?"

"Important hallmarks for my childhood." Lance snarked, though his voice shook slightly.

"One dobash, are you guys safe." Shiro asked over the com.

"We found a good spot. Riding this thing in." Lance came back trying to sound confident.

"Okay. Hold tight. Get to an outer area of the ship as soon as possible and we will get you out if we have to make a door." Shiro responded.

Something about their leader's voice seemed to fill him with a sense of safe. Shiro wouldn't let anything happen to them.

"Okay, Shiro, be careful yourselves." Keith responded. He was well aware that Shiro would throw himself into fire if he thought it would save his team.

Pidge's voice shaking came over the com, "Ten, nine, I love you guys, five, four, three, two, one."

At one the world shook. The sound was like a thousand trains running into a thousand cliffs and blowing up. The paladins were bounced hard against the bed and back down to the floor several times. Clutching desperately to the bed and each other they tried to minimize the impact and stay contained in their little corner. They didn't realize they were both screaming at first, the sound covered by the monstrous noise of the crash.

When Lance came to, he was pressed between the wall and Keith, clutching the former like his life depended on it. The bed had apparently come loose at some point and Keith was clutching the bed in front of them like a shield. All in all, Lance decided he wasn't doing too bad. He felt stiff, his back hurt and his arms and hands were so stiff he had trouble convincing his fingers to let go.

"Keith?" Lance jostled him a little as he tried to remove his arms from around the Red Paladin.

Keith groaned and apparently let go of the bed as it went crashing to the floor.

"LANCE!" Pidge's scream left his ears ringing.

"We're here Pidgie. I'm okay, a little stiff but no damage. Checking on Keith now." Lance answered.

"Quiznak don’t scare me like that again!" She growled.

"'m 'kay” Keith slurred.

"Yeah, not convincing, mullet." Lance carefully climbed around so that he could see Keith's face and the rest of him. He didn't see anything new, but that didn't mean he was okay. Keith blinked a couple of times and then managed to focus on Lance. "Okay, so head injury from explosion or crash?"

"Um…both? I think my helmet's damaged or maybe my headache is just getting worse." Keith answered squinting at Lance.

"Okay, well, definite helmet damage because the explosion blew out your visor. Can you sit up?" Lance reached out to steady him when Keith wobbled, but he managed to sit. He closed his eyes and then snapped them open.

"Dizzy." He muttered.

"Okay, you guys get that?" Lance asked.

"Yeah, we hear you." Shiro answered.

"Lance, we need you guys to get out of the ship, Pidge is sending you the quickest route to an exist. The blast left a pretty big hole and the ship is starting to sink heavily on that end." Hunk came over the coms nervously.

"Route sent." Pidge returned almost immediately.

"Okay, Keith, we gotta go." Lance helped him up. The fact that he didn't say a word and just did as Lance asked kind of freaked him out a little. "Moving."

"We read you. I'm monitoring your progress." Pidge offered.

"Okay." Lance was nearly carrying Keith by the time they got to the second hallway. He wasn't sure if it was the head wound or something else, but he was worried.

"Guys! You need to hurry!" Hunk's panic bled through the com. "The ship is breaking up."

"What?!" Lance leaned down and managed to lift Keith up over a shoulder. "Quiznak you are heavier than you look!"

"Lance?" Worry colored Shiro's voice.

"Keith's too slow, I'm going to try to move us faster." Lance panted managing to move to a jog. Keith growled from his back but broke off into a whimper. Lance tried to move faster.

The sounds the ship had been making were getting louder. The rocking from the waves made on impact had accompanied groans and creaks, but now there were louder metallic noises that filled Lance with a kind of dread.

"LANCE!" Hunk called out just as the floor in front of him split open with a shriek.

Lance may have joined the floor in shrieking as he scrambled backwards. The ship in front of him split and tilted forward, falling away and forward. He scrambled as the ship rocked hard sliding them back and forth across the hall. Lance clung to Keith.

"LANCE?!" Hunk cried.

"Ow! Quiznak!" Lance slammed hard into the wall and the two section of the ship separated. The far section moved farther away bobbing like a cork in the ocean. While the section they were in shifted and started tilting forward, trying to drop them into the ocean below.

"No, no, no." Lance tried to push them back away from the edge, Keith was clinging weakly to him and despite his efforts they were sliding forward.

"Lance?!" Hunk yelled again.

"Falling, falling, shit." Lance's outstretched arm managed to grab the corner of a door, but the jolting stop caused Keith to slide out of his arm and he was now clinging to his legs. "Stopped," he grunted.

"Lance, where are you?" Shiro called.

Lance couldn't focus enough to answer, his arm burned, and Keith was slipping. He saw another hand hold further down and letting his one go, he managed to get a grip on Keith again and grab the next door. This time expected the jolt he was able to brace himself and keep his grip on Keith. Keith groaned.

"Hanging on." Lance muttered. The water was rising. They were about thirty feet above it. Their part of the ship was continuing to tilt, and Lance wondered if it would go completely upright and if he could hold on if it did.

"We are coming to you." Pidge gritted out. "We've made it to Green."

The ship jolted and it was as though an entire level disappeared into the deep blue ocean. The ship shuddered and shook, and Lance found his grip loosened again and they were sliding and Keith was sliding faster. Lance gave up all pretense of trying to stop their fall and desperately grabbed for Keith.

They were almost to the edge and Lance almost had him. He saw Keith reach out his hand and Lance reached out his. They were less than an inch apart when Lance's armor hung up on debris from the hall and he was jerked to a stop and Keith slid off the edge and out of site.

"NOOOO!" Lance jerked himself free of the debris and slid to the edge. Keith was just visible sinking into the water almost thirty feet down.

"LANCE?!" This time it was Shiro that yelled.

"Lance, Keith isn't showing up on the scan!" Pidge shrieked.

"Water must block the scan, Pidge, you'll have to fix that." Lance spoke calmly and stepped off the edge. He crossed his arms over his chest and kept his legs tightly together trying to aim himself after Keith. That was the moment. No slow motion, no questions about their fate, no thoughts other than "go".

"What? Lance? Water?" Hunk sputtered.

It hurt hitting the water that fast, but he his armor protected him. He searched for Keith and spotting him began swimming for all he was worth. Keith was sinking further into darkness. His eyes closed and face slack.

"nonnonnononnonononononono…" Lance didn't even realize he was talking until another voice answered.

"Lance. What's going on? Talk to us, buddy."

"nonononononononnonononnonononononono…." Lance finally reached Keith hands grasping his armor and pulling his body to him. As he did the water around him darkened like night falling.

"Lance, the ship!" Hunk yelled. "Please!"

Lance looked up to find the ship and tilted on over and was now coming his way at an unfortunate speed. He grabbed Keith and began trying to swim away, but the water displaced from the ship was pulling them back. He had to get Keith air, he had to get him out of the water.

"nonononononono.." Lance panted breathlessly. The ship was getting closer. Soon Lance was swimming up into the ship, dodging between halls. He realized about two ticks later that the ship had stopped moving. He just needed to find some air.

"Need air." He growled.

"Air? There are pockets in the ship, try to reach one. I don't know where you are because you are in the water." Pidge fretted.

"Keith?" Shiro uttered his name like a prayer.

"Needs air." Lance gritted out. He broke the surface of the water in a hallway. Up and to the right was a doorway. Lance managed to pull Keith up with him and hauled him out of the water. Later he would wonder how he managed it, but at the time it was just what needed to happen.

He pulled Keith's helmet off and his hair spread around wet and dark behind him. His face pale and unmoving. A sound came out of Lance like a wounded animal before his lifeguard training kicked in and he began CPR.

"Breathe damnit!" Lance hissed as he felt Keith's ribs crack under the pressure. "Breathe, you stupid mullet!" Lance wailed. "BREATHE, PLEASE KEITH!"

And then he was sputtering and spitting out water, his body jerking and moving, and Lance rolled him to his side sobbing in relief.

"Lance?" Shiro begged.

"Breathing, he's breathing." Lance choked out.

"Thank you." Shiro whispered, Lance wasn't sure if he was talking to him or Keith, but it didn't matter at least the idiot was breathing.

To be continued in Day 23 Hands

#monthlyklance #monthlyklance march 2019 #klance #voltron fanfic

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genderonthescreen-blog · 5 years

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Queer Representation: How Can We Get The Gays to Watch Our Movie?

The Vito Russo Test is the queer equivalent to the Bechdel Test (which tests the representation of women in films). It was created by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and is used to test the representation of LGBTQ+ people in film. The way a film passes the test is if there is an “identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender” character who isn’t defined by their sexuality and/or gender identity, and who is significant to the plot. Despite the fact this test is quite easy to pass, most films do not. Out of the 109 films released by major studios in 2017 only 14 had LGBTQ+ characters in them (that’s 12.8%). Gay men are the most represented out of those 14 films (64% or 9 out of the 14 films feature a gay man that pass the test) while trans people are the least represented in 2017 (zero out of the 14 films featured transgender characters). These numbers are insanely low, and shows that there is a clear problem with the representation of LGBTQ+ people in films.

But, even in the movies that feature LGBTQ+ characters, how well are they being represented, really? Films like Call Me By Your Name (2017), Carol (2015), Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013), and Brokeback Mountain (2005) have all been praised as iconic queer movies with great representation, but how great is this representation? Right off the bat you can see that all of these characters are white. Not a huge surprise when it comes to Hollywood, considering how bad they are at representing people of color, but, still, not all queer people are white, obviously—Marsha P. Johnson, anybody? How about happy endings? Shouldn’t queer people be allowed to see a relationship like their own end happily? Well, it seems not. In Call Me By Your Name, they break up; in Blue Is The Warmest Color, they break up; in Brokeback Mountain, they break up and one of them dies (the good-olde “bury your gays” trope https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/30/queerbaiting-bury-your-gays-tv_a_23005000/ )! Carol seems to be the only one that has a semi-happy ending. Although, Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) do breakup at one point, at the end of the film it is implied that they get back together. An implication is a we can get apparently. Oversexualization is also an issue. All of these movies have semi-graphic sex scenes in them, with Blue Is The Warmest Color’s sex scenes are borderline pornography—and definitely from the male gaze. Now, sex isn’t the problem here, if a director wants to show two characters getting it on, they very well should be allowed to do so! The problem is that the only kind of movies that are popular and feature queer people at the forefront are romantic dramas (usually tragic) that are very heavy on the sexual discovery. This would be fine if there were just as many goofy LGBTQ+ romantic comedies or action movies with queer leads as there are LGBTQ+ romantic tragedies.

Now, that’s not to say things aren’t getting better! With the release and success of Love, Simon in 2018, a romantic comedy about a teenage boy coming out as gay, things are, hopefully, starting to look up. However, there has recently been a new disturbing trend when it come to LGBTQ+ representation in films. A film will announce that there is an “openly gay” character in their movie before the film is released. Thus, attracting a large queer audience that is sorely disappointed when they realize “openly gay” actually means “not openly gay at all.” Take Beauty and the Beast (2017) for example. Before the release of Beauty and the Beast, Dir. Bill Condon announced that there was going to be an “exclusively gay moment” (WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?) in the film involving LeFou (Josh Gad), Gaston’s groveling sidekick. Fans were obviously excited! But, when the movie came out, what we got was very a stereotypical depiction of a gay man (who is supposed to be crushing on Gaston?), and one moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sadujj45Y90 blink and you’ll miss it) where LeFou accidentally starts dancing with another man and… that’s it—wow, how groundbreaking.

While there is at least a small moment in Beauty and the Beast, other films that use this tactic to get a more diverse audience don’t even bother following through. Before the release of the much anticipated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan announced that Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) is pansexual. This revelation prompted fans to go crazy, but when the movie came out there was nothing, besides some semi-flirty lines and an “implied” romantic relationship with a droid (okay…), explicit in the film that showed Lando’s pansexuality. Some people (https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/ ) are calling this trend, a new from of queerbaiting, and going by the definition (“the practice of hinting at, but then not actually depicting, a same-sex romantic relationship between characters in a work of fiction, mainly in film or television” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting ) I’m have to agree. Except, this kind of queerbaiting is almost worse because the “hinting” starts before the film comes out. Therefore filmmakers are literally using a the possibility of a potentially queer character as bait to get more LGBTQ+ moviegoers into their theaters.

There are other, less nefarious, examples of this kind of queerbaiting. Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok (2017), made a post on twitter before the film came out about how her character is bisexual and how she wanted that to come through on the big screen. However, she was quick to add that Valkyrie’s sexuality is never explicitly shown in Thor Ragnarok (https://www.avclub.com/thor-ragnarok-ultimately-cut-the-one-scene-that-confir-1820047758 check out this article). It’s clear that Thompson wan’t trying to get more LGBTQ+ people to see Thor Ragnarok, she was just trying to spread the word about her character’s sexuality—Valkyrie is canonically bisexual in the comic books.The character of Albus Dumbledore, the grandfatherly headmaster of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter film and book series, could also be another example of this kind of queerbaiting. However, unlike all of the other examples, Dumbledore’s sexuality was revealed by author JK Rowling after the release of the last Harry Potter book in 2007 (https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3755544&page=1 check out this article from that year talking about it). Dumbledore’s sexuality was never explicit in the Harry Potter books or movies, but recently Rowling has started another film series that takes place in the Potter universe (but during the 1920s) called Fantastic Beasts. Before the release of the second installment, it was announced that Jude Law would be playing a young Dumbledore in that next film (Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald), and people began to ask if Dumbledore’s sexuality is going to be addressed in these films. Not much was said by Rowling, but before the movie was released Dir. David Yates said Dumbledore’s sexuality is not “explicitly” shown in the film. Fans were obviously upset be this—myself included. However, after seeing the movie, I feel like it’s safe to say only a person in serious denial would claim that Dumbledore is straight after watching The Crimes of Grindelwald. There isn’t anything “explicit” in the movie (Dumbledore doesn’t say “I’m gay” or kisses a man) but the relationship between Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, the antagonist of the series and Dumbledore’s ex-lover, is shown or alluded to in in more ways than one—not explicitly telling the audience about his sexuality is in character for Dumbledore, who has always been secretive. As a fan of Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts films, I hope in future installments Dumbledore’s sexuality will be more explored—and it should, especially since the main antagonist is his ex-boyfriend!

Queer representation is important. The constant censoring of LGBTQ+ people and relationships in media needs to end. It’s often said that this kind of censorship is to protects kids from exposure to “inappropriate” content. News flash, there are kids out there who are queer! (Because queer people have always been queer.) I remember when I was a kid how big of an impact seeing queer characters and couples in film and TV were for me. Seeing characters like Tara (Amber Benson) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me feel like I wasn’t alone and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Even though queer representation in film is still lacking it’s getting better, and it’s getting even better on TV shows! The Legend of Korra, and Steven Universe are two kids shows that feature LGBTQ+ couples. Sense 8, Orange is the New Black, Queer Eye and Black Mirror (specifically season 3’s episode San Junipero) are all Netflix original series that have great LGBTQ+ representation and/or are LGBTQ+ centric—trans characters played by actual trans actors? YES! Things are looking up and I have high hopes for the future when it comes to queer representation.

Check out these cool sources!

https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/01/disney-launches-first-exclusively-gay-moment-beauty-beast/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/05/17/lando-calrissian-pansexual-solo-star-wars-reaction/620566002/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/movies/jude-law-dumbledore-gay.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/glaad-report-hollywood-is-failing-lgbt-characters-in-its-movies

https://books.google.com/books?id=AoQrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT143&dq=the+vito+russo+test&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj25Yj_oaDfAhXwx1kKHZODBU0Q6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=the%20vito%20russo%20test&f=false

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/vitorusso

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/overview

How about this cooler bibliography!

https://books.google.com/books?id=UWtECwAAQBAJ&pg=PT203&dq=queerbaiting&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ6M3zzprfAhWu11kKHT6ZAcwQuwUIMTAB#v=onepage&q=queerbaiting&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=f6YwSZlsyJMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUILTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=jI_IHFUidlwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUIUTAH#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=ROhSbOQIzmYC&pg=PA31&dq=the+hays+code&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6tc3zzJrfAhXIqFkKHaOoAUQQuwUITDAG#v=onepage&q=the%20hays%20code&f=false

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-need-to-talk-about-lgbt-representation-apparently_us_5a3d4dede4b06cd2bd03da68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0HsPIquRmc

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/05/22/lgbt-representation-in-hollywood-has-somehow-got-even-worse/

Photo credits go to Netflix.

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sithlordintraining · 6 years

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She’s No Angel (Part 27)

A/N: No one asked, but me and my crazy mouth are doing fine. I just started eating solid foods and I’m pretty sure I weigh 30 pounds soaking wet now. Anyways, we are almost done with this crazy series.

tagged: @hoe-for-kylo @rebeccamaximoff @this-one-you-see

She’s No Angel Masterlist

News that Kylo Ren had been hit spread like wildfire. Hux thought it was too premature to celebrate and of course he was right, as he was just informed that the Knights of Ren had rescued their master. Lucky sped down the hall eyes moving frantically behind the helmet as he searched for you. He knew that you were there when Kylo’s ship had been blown up, but of course he was stationed with the General on the other side of the base. He needed to find you to tell you that the Knights had rescued him and they were returning to the base right this moment. He grunted from the obstructed view that the helmet provided. He ripped the helmet off and continued his search down the hallway. Turning down various corridors, he picked up a scent that had become apart of his life. He did his best to follow your scent; he ignored the crazy looks from the officers and they ceased as the crowds became sparse the more he walked. The scent got stronger and he picked up his pace, breaking into a jog. “ANGEL!” He yelled as he turned down the hallway but to his surprise he saw Serena. She turned with large orange eyes staring at the stormtrooper who was confused as to why you had Angel’s scent. For sure Serena knew she was caught, but when he quickly walked away, she knew she was in the clear. For now.

There were only two places left for you to go and since he was on the lower level, he might as well check your hideout first. He saw Kylo’s stalker droid outside of the room and knew you were inside. Punching in the code, he quickly entered and pushed the droid with his boot so he wouldn't get it. “Angel,” He sighed, turning to take in your tear-stricken face. Her hair had been pulled from the regulated ponytail; boots, gloves, and greatcoat discarded on the floor, as her bloodshot eyes stared widely at her best friend. “Angel?” His brows furrowed as he watched her knees press further into her chest as she gripped her datapad tightly. “I killed him.” She whispered. “No,” he said softly. She just shook her head as more tears fell down her cheeks. “Angel he was rescued by his knights. He’s going to be fine.” Lucky reassured you, but you didn’t listen as your eyes fell to your datapad. “Okay Angel stop looking at-“ He snatched the datapad from your hand and looked at it. “Somber Skies? Really Angel? And chapter 12?!” Lucky sighed. “I killed him! What if he ret-“ You broke down, putting your head between your knees. Lucky's comm went off. “The ship just landed, he’s going to be transported to the north medbay, come on we can make it.” He squeezed her calf.

It took sometime before Lucky, Angel, and BB-9 made it to the north medbay. Lucky took you the long way, avoiding heavy populated areas. Your sobs were quieter, but every once and awhile you would break down a little. Lucky, couldn’t let others see you like this; not just because you were a Lieutenant General, but because you were his friend. Noise could be heard as soon as the elevator doors opened. The pair and the droid walked their way to the main medical center where doctors and nurses were rushing back and forth. “HALT! THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA! HALT! THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA!” A large droid crossed in front of them. The little BB rolled up in front of it to tell it off. “Dr. Zar!” Lucky called out. The older man turned to see Lucky quickly approaching. “Dr. Zar, is he here?” Lucky asked as you stood in a daze with the two droids still arguing. “Yes, but,” He gulped. “He is in critical condition.” Lucky looked back at you with sad eyes. “But h-he’ll make it through right?” Lucky pushed. “We will do our best, but he was floating in space for quite some time. We are pretty sure the only way he survived was through the force. He’s drained.” The doctor shook his head and then looked sadly at you. Dr. Zar sighed before speaking. “I’ll tell Ava to contact you if something changes, but for now I must go.” The call of his name had him rushing into the room. Lucky rushed back and bent to the droids level. “You stay here and keep an eye out for Kylo Ren. If anything changes, find us.” Lucky synced his comm with the droid so he could know where he was at all time. Lucky scooped you up and carried you back to the hideout.

The soothing sound of a heartbeat caused your eyes to flutter open. The room was dark and took you a few moments for your eyes to adjust. Looking around, you noticed that you weren’t in your actual quarters. You noticed how your fingers were tightly gripping the black fabric that moved with every breath. Looking up, you could make out the freckles that were dusted across Lucky’s cheek. His left hand gently held your body close to him and the fingers of his right hand lazily in your hair for combing, as his slightly parted lips laid gently on your forehead. Cautiously, you remove yourself from his hold; with a deep breath, you prop your head on the wall to look at him. A finger connected the dots on his cheek, careful not to stir him. You thought back to your meeting with Snoke and his underlying mocking tone. ‘Fairytale’ you scoffed in your mind. There was nothing fairytale about your life. If it was, you and Lucky would be somewhere nice; he would have a family and you would have your mom, Hux would still be running something of course, and Phasma would be there, too! A smile graced your lips as you continued running your fingers across his cheek. It didn’t even cross your mind once that Kylo was nowhere included in this. A grumble from your stomach had you leaving your comfortable spot and venturing into the hall.

It must’ve been extremely late because there was no one in the hallway. You walked towards the nearest mess hall. You felt like a zombie and didn’t care how you looked. Sluggishly, you rolled your eyes as you yawned. With your ears popping, you missed the sounds of the beeping growing louder behind you. “Oomph!” You fell forward stumbling. Looking to see what hit you, you saw your droid speeding by you. You broke out into a light jog calling for the droid to stop, but it ignored as it continued to beep. “I have to tell mother!” It repeated. “I’m right here!” You yelled out but it kept moving. It made a sharp turn to the left and excitedly started beeping. You were just about to turn the corner when you heard a female voice. “Woah, hey Bubby! Wha-” Serena started, but the beeping continued. “Kylo was in critical-” The beeps cut her off once more. “He’s okay, well that’s good, Bubby!” Serena rubbed the droid. You twitched as the droid called her mother. It had to be coincidence, right? You stayed back and watched as the droid dragged the technician away from her section. You waited a few seconds before following them; low and behold you ended up at the medbay and heart rate began to increase. Kylo was here and he was alive. All you could think about was getting to him as you made your way to his private room. You had finally made it after peeking into every window of each room. As you made it to him, you saw BB-9 and Serena by Kylo’s bedside. The tears slowly slid down your face as you watched Serena reach out and grab his hand. This was strike two.

It had been a week and you hadn’t set foot in that room. And yet, you followed Serena every night and watched her with Kylo’s unconscious self. The BB droid refused to leave his side and you weren’t complaining. The feelings were mutual, you didn’t like it either. You would stare through the window as the tears rolled down when you watched them. But after a while, they ceased. You’d become numb to the sight in front of you, numb to the whole situation. You weren’t even upset at the fact you almost killed him, he didn’t listen in the first place. Then you stopped showing. You didn’t even ask to be notified when he was awake, you were so over it. While he was unconscious, you fell into a pattern of being by yourself and you genuinely missed it. Not to mention, all the time Lucky was spending with you. It felt like old times as you laughed at the old holo-movie you two were now watching squished up on the single bed in your hideout. Lucky’s eyes were locked at the projection in front of him when he heard you speak. “I miss this.” It was so soft, he could’ve missed it. “I miss this too, Angel.” He smiled brightly, only for it to fade at the sight of you. “No, I mean before everything; when everything was simple and routined. Before the promotion and Snoke and Kylo, before Matt.” You finally turned to look at him. Lucky sighed because he understands.

“You know I have a bounty on my head? I didn’t know that becoming a Lieutenant would mean an automatic assassin on your tail.” She told him. He just nodded, because he knew. “I miss exploring planets and keeping everyone happy, I miss going to the mess hall, I miss having friends. I miss Seventies and Bear and Zero and Smith,” Tears began to gloss over (y/e/c) eyes as you thought of your deceased friends. “I miss you! I miss being with you, hanging with you, just doing anything and everything and not have to worry about Kylo or Ava, don’t you miss that?!” You snapped as the tears fell. Lucky’s eyes cast down letting his lashes brush against his cheek as he found the strength to speak. “Ava is cheating on me.” You gasped, you couldn’t believe what he had said. Ava had been obsessed with the dashing trooper YEARS before Angel came onto the scene and she finally got him, and this is how she treated him? “Lucky, I-I’m sorry, ar-are you sure?” You placed a hand gently on his back. “She thinks I’m cheating on you, so she told me ‘she could do the same’.” He looked up at you. “L-Lucky, I-I’m sorry. Y-you should go.” As much as you hated her, you loved him more. And if he really did like Ava, you would help his relationship survive because that’s what friends are for. Also, you did now how it feels; it wasn’t certain that Kylo and Serena were having an affair, but there were signs. But you decided not to bring that up, this was Lucky’s time to vent. He always listened to you and now it was your time to listen. “No,” His hand gripped you as he held a steady gaze. “I’m not going anywhere. You need me and this is my job; not just as your head guard but as your best friend. She knows this and if she wants to be petty, then let her. I love you, Angel. I’m never going to leave you.” A sob wracked through your body as you engulfed him in a hug. “I-I’m sorry Lucky, I’m sorry. You deserve more than this. I wish I c-could take you away and give you a real life and a family an-and” You cried as he began to wipe your tears. “Hey, hey, I love my life and I have a family I wouldn’t trade for the universe.” He pressed a kiss near the corner of your lips and you could feel a tingling sensation throughout your whole body. More tears rolled down your cheeks as you silently cried.

It took all his strength just to open his eyes, to a blurred version of you. The light surrounded your head like a halo as his vision started to clear. His lips parted in awe at the sight in front of him. “Angel,” His voice was huskier after being in an induced coma. “Kylo,” Your hand laid gently on his and the beeps from the machine started to increase. You went to remove your hand but he held a light grip. “Stay,” You just shook your head. Your heart felt as if it was going to explode. Seeing him like this was weird, he was so helpless; and no matter how you were feeling about everything going on, you knew your heart was hurting for almost killing him. “I’m sorry Kylo.” You said lowly. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him as you played with your fingers. Kylo said nothing as he just watched you. There was something off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. As Kylo’s health began to restore itself, you became a frequent visitor. You would spend most of your meals with him, talk to him, and just keep him company since he wasn’t ready to be released. Everyone was so shocked that the Commander was so compliant with these rules. But you also noticed there was something different about him. Sometimes, when you would come visit he would look like he was caught. Dr. Zar had told you that late night, Kylo would begin having conversations, but fully aware of the situations. This made you nervous because Kylo already had a hard time sleeping. It was during one of your lunch visits to Kylo when one of his Knights entered the room. “Snoke is aboard the ship and he requests his apprentice.” You turned to see Kylo who for the first time looked scared to see Snoke.

In silence, you held Kylo’s hand as the Knight showed you to the impromptu room. You’ve never been to this part of the base, but you tried to keep your eyes from wandering because Kylo appeared so bothered. And not his irritably bothered position but nervous. Large blast doors opened to reveal the Supreme Leader and his guards; before you can even bow, he shouted: “Leave us!” The Knight nodded and turned. You were about to do the same until you were being held in your place. Your eyes trailed from the large pale hand that was wrapped around yours up to the face it belonged to. Soft brown eyes broken by his scar pleaded with you. “Let her go, she’s needed on a mission.” Snoke scolded his apprentice. Kylo flinched his hand back, you gave him a sad look before following his Knight. Walking to the hangar, you couldn’t get the strange feeling out of your chest, something was wrong with Kylo. You walked up the ramp of the command shuttle, you were to support the Knights of Ren on a mission since Kylo was recovering. Thankfully, they listened to you and not just because you were their Master’s girlfriend, but the respect they had for you.

Your chin rested on your fist as you stared aimlessly in front of you. “He’s going to be okay, he’s just a little shaken up.” Vibar, one of his Knights, sat in front of you. You just nodded and relaxed a little. “It’s not your fault, you were thinking about the Order, doing your job.” He told you. Right, they were all force sensitive here. “Snoke just wants to see him because he believes that Kylo is closer to the force because of his revival.” He reassured him. (Y/e/c) eyes widened under the dim light of the cabin. “How? How’d you revive him?” You asked. “We didn’t,” Vibar said and your heart stopped. “We all felt his signature disappear, we just went to retrieve the body out of respect. But when we did we felt something, a new one, but bright.” You leaned forward. “Like someone else’s? Somebody else saved him? Did you see anyone?” Vibar shook his head. “Yes, but through the force. I’ve never seen or heard or read about this, but I believe that is what happened. It is possible from a force bond.” You didn’t know much about the force, though it did intrigue you, you just never ventured to learn about it. You wanted to ask Kylo, but he just seemed too dismissive of the subject. “What’s a force bond?” You asked. “It’s a powerful connection that existed between two force users; they can communicate and share visions. It’s rare but it happens.” Vibar told you. “It could’ve been Luke Skywalker or-or his mother?” You asked. “Possibly, yes. I believe that’s why Snoke requested him; his force is stronger than ever but he can’t sway to the light.”

After dealing with Snoke, Kylo was released and found himself wandering to your quarters. He was surprised at how well the meeting went. Snoke was genuinely concerned about his apprentice. He stepped past the blast doors and the scent of you hit him. An ache in his chest formed remembering how sad you looked to leave him. BB-9 rolled around him welcoming him back. A small smile was placed on his full lips. He was tired. Kylo took a shower and slid under your soft covers. Dark hair spilled over the pillow as he felt the cold air flow against the droplets of his bare chest. With parted lips, he stared up at the ceiling holding his breath. “Stop that!” The accented voice clipped. His stare remained on the ceiling. “It took you long enough.” He said. “What do you want Ben?” Rey moved to his peripheral. “Something’s off.” He shook his head. “It’s the bond.” “No, it’s...her signature, it’s not right,” Kylo said. “The girl that visited you?” Rey inquired. He nodded, now turning his head to look at her. “Ever since I’ve awakened, Y/N’s signature has been different, from when she visited me before.” Rey extended her hand. “Show me,” Was all she said before his fingertips touched hers. Memories of the past cycles with you flowed between. Rey shut her eyes, furrowing her brows when everything stopped. “It wasn’t her.” She said. Kylo looked at her with confusion. “The woman that was with you at Snoke, wasn’t the same one who visited you every night.”

P.S.: One- Scandal is straight wild and it’ I didn’t want to put a death warning s only been SIX FUCKING MINUTES! Two- any ideas for part 28?Also, I know it seems like I’m just throwing in a random character, but in the long run it will make sense. I promise. Hit me up with comments, concerns, jokes, reminding me that Kylo Ren passed out when he got a blowjob, anything. I miss talking to you guys. I JUST WANT TO STATE: Right now, from this point on, no matter what happens in the sequel trilogy, this series will end the way I want it to end. Events that I want to happen. People I choose to die. So if it is somewhat similar to the movie: I did it first. AND SUPER THANKFUL FOR ALL THE SNA FANS THOSE FROM THE BEGINNING AND THOSE TUNING IN NOW!!! I just want to say thank you for everything <3 (if anyone is still here)

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fuzz1912 · 6 years

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I’ve got an okay feeling about this

A fan’s review of SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.

(Spoilers ahoy, matey. Proceed with extreme caution. Running on extreme low sleep, so this will probably be updated over the next day or so.)

I’ve been pretty clear about the parameters for what I consider to be a good Star Wars film. My initial concern has been that they should at least be internally consistent, and consistent within (let alone respectful of) the established lore of the Star Wars universe. Beyond that, my mind also turns to whether or not it merely repeats what has come before or extends the universe in logical and interesting ways. Is there a need for this story to be told, or does it excessively rely on (or trivially extrapolate from) a known backstory? And finally, does it strike the right balance of humour and fan service while telling a decent story that stands on its own?

So, having been quite critical of Disney’s previous Star Wars releases on that basis, how does this latest instalment fare?

May the month of May be with you

There’s something right about Star Wars in May. Despite the attempts by all and sundry to turn a stupid dad joke into ‘Star Wars Day’ (May the Fourth - get it? No, Cinco de Quatro is much better), in fact the month of May has its own enduring significance for the franchise. Each of the original and prequel trilogy movies were released around the mid-May Memorial Day holiday. In the US, this means summer, when kids are on break and sitting in an air-conditioned cinema is preferable compared to just about anything else. For us on the other side of the world, it is on the cusp of winter, just as the weather really starts turning for the worse - the wind picks up, the chill sets in, and darkness falls before you know it.

It’s those memories of fighting to stay warm while making it to midnight on a dark, crisp winter’s night that have always accompanied first watching a new Star Wars film for me. For some entirely silly commercial reason, Disney has thus far eschewed the traditional May release window instead choosing December for its premieres, which has never felt right to me - December is for Christmas movies and Lords of the Ring, not Star Wars. So if nothing else, there’s some small satisfaction for me in being able to enjoy a new Star Wars movie for the first time again in the cold of May - perhaps its karma, but it feels like that’s translated to my reaction to this second anthology film.

Why make a movie about Han Solo?

Here is a character who is infamous for his intrigue. Many so-called fans criticise George Lucas for adding context to Star Wars where they believed none was necessary - see the “Han shot first” controversy (the real objection being that Greedo shot at all - which changes nothing about Han himself)(1) - in which case, why sacrifice the ultimate lamb and give him an origin story? That being said, I am loath to be too critical of the raison d’être for the ‘Star Wars Story anthology’ films (this and ROGUE ONE) - they have to date been somewhat respectful of Canon, made some generous nods to what is now ‘Legends’, and taken some interesting new directions in filling the gaps in the existing story. We don’t necessarily need them (much like we don’t need the Saga to continue an already concluded story), but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything interesting to add to the stories we already love.

Back in the very early days of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (what would now be called ‘Legends’) there was a series of novellas by Brian Daley about a pre-Yavin Han Solo and his adventures with Chewbacca and (you guessed it) a couple of droids on the Millennium Falcon, as he tried to eke out a living as a white hat smuggler in the Empire-lite Corporate Sector.(2) They were some of the first EU books that I read, and simple though they were, I enjoyed them because they were episodic tales set in a different part of the world of Star Wars established by the films. They weren’t high stakes, and didn’t give Han Solo an origin or back story - they just gave a glimpse into some of the sort of swashbuckling adventures that we assumed the character we met in the Cantina Bar would have had.

This movie is nowhere near as light or insignificant as that - much like ROGUE ONE before it, it takes a throwaway line mentioned in the original film and turns it into a definitive origin story about how Han Solo became that guy who shot first.(3)

Now the story of a film that lost everything and the one director who had no choice but to bring it all together

From what little has been made public, this film has not had an easy gestation - even more so than ROGUE ONE, whose ending was completely changed (undoubtedly for the better). THE LEGO MOVIE directors were fired during the shoot due to “creative differences” with writer Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the brilliant EMPIRE (but also the lackluster AWAKENS). Apparently their take was too humorous and not the sarcastic selfishness that characterises Han Solo - which I guess is a good thing considering how ridiculous the obvious jokes in the Disney ‘Saga’ films have been. Their replacement is none other than early Lucas protege and all-round pretty damn talented Ron Howard of Imagine Entertainment (not Orange County Imagine), whose voice is embedded in many of our heads thanks to his shoddy narration of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.(4)

Ron Howard reliably makes good movies. He might not have the most stylistic flair, he may not be the most innovative or creative, he may not use the most challenging source material, but it would be difficult to suggest that any of the movies he’s made are anything less than solidly watchable - and most of them have been, in their own way, pretty great. He now runs a director’s masterclass, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better teacher from whom to learn the craft.

George Lucas had offered Howard the opportunity to direct previoud Star Wars films over the years, but as with Lucas’s other bestie Steven Spielberg, Howard didn’t want to take the reigns from his longtime friend. Now that Lucas has rather foolishly handed the keys over to the Walt Disney Company, that reluctance seems to have diminished. I’ve been disappointed with the direction Disney has been leading the franchise enough times to have serious doubts about this film, but the one thing that kept me optimistic about it was that it was ultimately left to Howard to deliver the final product.

That faith was well placed - this was the first Star Wars film in some time that I really enjoyed.

“You’re the good guy”

The fundamental premise of the film appears to manifest itself in this line of dialogue that Qi’ra casually throws away towards the climax. This information will spoil the payoff of A NEW HOPE, just like knowing who Darth Vader is spoils the reveal in EMPIRE. But it’s nevertheless true to the core of the character of the Han Solo that we know and love - despite being a selfish cad and a scoundrel, he is a softy underneath.

Given the context above about the importance of the tone of the film, it would appear that the decision made by Lucasfilm to bring in Howard was on the money (though really, the question is why he wasn’t there from the start). Moments of over the top humour have been toned down (at least from what I can recall of one of the early trailers showing Han being interviewed to join the Imperial Academy). That’s not to say there aren’t any funny moments, but for the most part they feel earned and not simply played for easy laughs (like *ahem* Poe/Hux).

There are some call-backs in the dialogue to the original films that might go a little too far (L3: “They don’t even serve our kind here”), but they are mostly effective when they subvert our expectations (“I hate you”/“I know” and “I’ve got a GOOD feeling about this”) which is nice when the film itself is a giant call-back. On the other hand, there were a couple of lines of dialogue that strayed towards uncharacteristically real-world expletives - especially Han’s use of the phrase “Bantha crap”, when we all know the correct terminology is “poodoo”.

Visually the film was just as much of a treat as any Star Wars movie, exploring some new frontiers with the Maelstrom / Maw surrounding Kessel, as well as the WWI-style trench warfare and snow train hijacking scenes. What I loved about each of these was that they created new unfamiliar environments with their own mechanics that drove the plot and the plight of the characters, as Star Wars does at its best. The Kessel Run - in particular the climax with the Millennium Falcon trying to escape both a hideous space monster and a black hole / gravity well at the same time - was both spectacular and incredibly intense to watch, despite the fact that you know that the chracters you’re invested in are going to survive (and that the Falcom reliably has trouble making the jump to lightspeed). From that perspective, it far exceeded anything in the last couple of ‘Saga’ films (two hour long chases of fuel attrition, anyone?).

The music was serviceable and on par with, if not a little better than, Michael Giacchino’s score for ROGUE ONE. It was used effectively and enjoyable, with impactful use of the well-known themes and leitmotifs. While I wouldn’t have called it as memorable as John Williams at his best (he was only partially involved), it was adequate if not decent - and unlike the ‘Saga’ films, it didn’t have to be any more than that.

Finally, the performances were for the most part quite good. Alden Ehrenreich faced the near impossible task of stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes to recreate one of cinema’s most iconic characters, and he did it pretty well. Rather than attempt to mimick or channel Ford’s trademark smirk or swagger (let alone be forced to undergo make up or CGI as was done rather poorly in ROGUE ONE), he simply stayed true to the character and made it his own. Within a few minutes, I was on board and completely accepted him in the role, made all the easier by not constantly being reminded of how Harrison Ford would have played it. To each of their credit, Howard and Ehrenreich have created a perfectly believable young Han Solo that stands on his own two feet, not in the shadow of a legend.

Similarly, Don Glover (aka Childish Gambino) perfectly captured Lando Calrissian and at no point did I feel like I missed another legend in Billy Dee Williams (though I feel like Glover may have had some prosthetic teeth put in). Having to portray the dashing Lando in his prime provided Glover with the opportunity to bring greater depth to the character than Williams, who pretty much just played himself. Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton were both solid as far as their roles allowed them to be - as was Joonas Suotamo, for the first time reprising his role as Chewbacca (despite the subtleties of the Wookiee costume, not for a moment did I doubt it was the same character created by Peter Mayhew). Paul Bettany chewed the scenery as the slimy crime boss Dryden Vos. Wherever there is Bettany, Jon Favreau can’t be far behind, giving a short but charming life to the personable alien pilot Rio (bonus point for giving the universe a little more needed diversity). Also bringing her vocal talents to the fore was Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created one of the more sympathetic droid personalities in L3. Perhaps the only slightly disappointing performance came from the otherwise brilliant Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra, through no real fault of her own - despite playing a duplicitous badass, she wasn’t given much meaningful to do.

“Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”

The film is at its essence a heist movie, and a good one at that - it effectively uses the tropes of the genre, and though largely predictable it subverted them enough to keep me engaged the whole way through. The number of double crosses was just right enough to reflect that none of these characters were naive, but they all had their fundamental weaknesses.

I feel like Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan did a pretty decent job with the script. Having said that, while the plot overall was thrilling, the story itself was a little disjointed. Other than Han’s relationship with Qi’ra, there was no real thread that wove all the way through and connected the somewhat disparate few escalating heists that resulted in Han’s independence and acquisition of the Falcon. Perhaps that’s enough, given most of the second and third acts focused largely on the famous Kessel Run and its consequences - most amusingly, how the Falcon goes from Lando’s souped up, sleek hot rod, into the bucket of bolts we’re introduced to in A NEW HOPE.

The side plots involving the competing crime syndicates and the mysterious motivations of the marauders weren’t particularly compelling until they each revealed their secrets towards the conclusion - but they did an effective job of believable world building, and setting up things that we already know will follow (like the Rebellion). However, the ‘droid rights’ concept inspired by the new character of L3 seemed a little underdeveloped and out of place.(5) It actually reminded me more of Hermione Granger’s Elf welfare from Harry Potter mixed with Korg’s ‘revolution’ from Thor Ragnarok, though I’d love to see the idea more fully explored within the Star Wars universe.

The film introduced the concept of ‘hyperfuel’ (also known as coaxium) as the primary MacGuffin for driving the plotting of the heists. This acted as a deus ex machina at several points with some interesting results in the execution of the Kessel Run itself (Where were the spice mines by the way? Was Disney afraid of being sued by the estate of Frank Herbert?). While fine in isolation to this movie, this did also feel a little bit on the nose given the central role fuel bizarrely played in the plot of the last ‘Saga’ film (not to mention the ongoing focus on Han’s lucky gold dice, which was overplayed in that film and introduced here as if they were far more significant to Han’s established identity than they actually are).

But there was one final touch to the plot that got the kind of ecstatic reaction out of me that I haven’t felt in years - it genuinely shocked and thrilled me, but more on that later.

“I’m putting together a crew? Are you in?”

A good heist requires the building of a good crew that brings a variety of talents to the table. To be frank, the actual Kessel Run heist in this film itself was somewhat anticlimactic. Other than the diversion created by L3 and the subsequent fire fight, the stakes involved in boosting the coaxium from Kessel were not particularly high. On the other hand, the escape and ensuing ‘Run’,(6) as well as the inevitable series of double-crosses and competing moral and selfish imperatives after pulling it off, were full of thrills and gave the characters an opportunity to really shine through - and this was nothing if not a character piece.

The Anti-Hero: The eponymous Han Solo. Well, this is his movie, you can hardly expect us not to start with Han - who is for the first time the sole protagonist of a film. As this is an origin story, he’s not going to be leader of this pack, but he’s hopefully going to show us why he will be when he meets the Skywalker family. Despite a stray reference to his father being a shipbuilder on Corellia, we never get Han’s true family name or any other indication of his lineage; he was dubbed ‘Solo’ by the Imperial recruiter quite literally for being on his own.(7) We meet him as a street kid with a conscience and a mouth - who’ll happily point out to a superior officer in his company that they are themselves the hostiles, not the natives of the planet they’re invading for the glory of the Empire. Much like his father-in-law before him, he starts off idealistic and a little bit twee in his oft-repeated desire to become the best pilot in the galaxy (the title actually held by said future father-in-law). Also like Anakin Skywalker in PHANTOM MENACE, we don’t actually get to see a lot of those skills before he slips into the role; Anakin at least was a Force-sensitive pod racing child (let alone the Chosen One), but other than the pretty nice speeder chase opening the movie its’s not until the Kessel Run itself that we actually see Solo’s exceptional skills. Han in this film is very much driven by the loss of Qi’ra right at the start, and his quest throughout is to first find her and then win her back. Having seen his cynicism while Luke is under Obi-Wan’s tutelage, it’s a nice change to see him as the earnest student trying to learn the game from his own mentor, the master con-thief Tobias Beckett. He slots easily into the role of rogue, deserter and mercenary, and through Beckett and his crew he also learns never to trust anyone but himself - with one notable exception. And the fact that exception exists, is also why underneath all that bravado, Han truly is still the good guy - when given a choice between a quick score or the greater good, he chooses the latter. Han may start off street smart but somewhat naive, but by the end he demonstrates empathy and a canny insight that lays the foundation for the scruffy looking nerf herder with a heart of gold that Luke meets in the Mos Eisley Cantina. At the very end of the film, we can see conclusively why Han had to shoot first.(8)

The Brawn: Chewbacca. The one notable exception to Han’s rule is his future trusty co-pilot, who we’ve never yet seen not by his side. Here we get to see how they meet for the first time and forge their lifelong partnership. While I was fully expecting Chewie to show up at some point, I must admit to being misdirected by the set up leading to his meet-fight with Han. Howard’s staging suggested that the ‘beast’ the stormtroopers were feeding Han to would be something like RETURN’s Rancor and the muddy fur that was our first glimpse of him also echoed EMPIRE’s Wampa. Hearing that familiar growl was both thrill and relief, as Chewie engaged Han in ferocious combat until we hear Han speak Wookiee for the first time in order to persuade Chewie that he can devise a way for them both to escape.(9) The two are literally bound together until Han tracks down Beckett - who immediately recognises that Chewie, not Han, is the prized recruit. Han learns of Chewie’s desire to reunite with and free his tribe / family, something he can and can’t relate to at the same time. Chewie appears initially skeptical of Han, but circumstance conspires to keep them together from one job to the next and along the way they continually pull each other out of the kind of pickles that would well establish the life debt he later owes to Han (but nothing specific is singled out here as the sole cause for it). At a critical moment, we see Chewie choose to stay with Han rather than return to join others of his own kind. This cements the fact that Chewie isn’t simply sidekick, but that Han and Chewie are in fact partners in crime. It’s also probably the most agency we’ve seen Chewie use throughout the saga - except perhaps for the moment that we’d all been waiting for (and had been teased at least once with Beckett), when he finally pulls someone’s arms out of their sockets. He’s also the first to throw cold water on Han when he starts bragging about making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - as Chewie points out, he was already rounding it down.

The Money: Lando Calrissian. When we first met him on Cloud City, Lando presented as a smooth-talking, responsible administrator with shades of a dark past. Lando is just as charming as he ever was, but in his younger days we can see more of the conniving, selfish operator he needed to be to survive as a renowned smuggler in the galactic underworld. However, as with Han, a glimmer of his true nature shines through his relationship with L3, his partner in crime (and possibly life). While Lando’s side of that relationship wasn’t that well explored at first (other than L3 suggesting that he may be what Futurama would call “robosexual”), and it’s not clear how sympathetic he was to her robot rights crusade, it is clear following L3’s death just how much she meant to him.(10) In return for an ever-diminishing cut,(11) Lando provides the getaway vehicle for the heist - his highly-polished and specially-modified freighter, the Millennium Falcon. The Falcon we see for the first time(12) is pristine and complete, including the escape pod completing its front that we’ve as yet not seen. Having cheated Han out of his first opportunity to take possession of the Falcon, we see the foundations of the mistrust underlying their chummy rivalry, and the guile that Han brings back to the table to finally win it fair and square. Given the considerable damage Han does to the ship through the maelstrom to turn it into our beloved hunk of junk, it’s somewhat ironic that in RETURN Lando promises Han to bring the Falcon back from the Battle of Endor “without a scratch”.

The Beauty and the Brains: L3-37 and Qi’ra. I feel terrible conflating these two, particularly between the two female members of the crew, but unfortunately that’s the sort of movie this was. Qi’ra may have conceived of part of the scheme, and been the mastermind who ultimately ended up on top, but she didn’t actually have a whole lot do other than drive the plot. It’s arguable that she may have used her emotional leverage over Han to ensure that she always had the upper hand throughout most of the film. Perhaps hers is a character that has scope to grow over the course of a greater story, but in this chapter alone she felt a little underdeveloped; you never got a sense of why Han was so besotted with her, to the extent that he would spend years trying to get her back - and her convenient reappearance at just the right time was a little contrived. But I find it more interesting to look at L3 as the one who used her appearance and/or emotions most effectively to create a robot rebellion diversion to allow the heist to proceed, despite the fact that it was literally her brains that ultimately enabled the getaway. Unlike the prissy C3PO and the sardonic K2SO from ROGUE ONE, L3 is the first protocol droid we’ve encountered that is idealistic and empathetic, and she tolerates no nonsense from her beloved Lando or the rest of the crew. While her demise was somewhat inevitable, she’s probably the most ‘human’ droid to date across all of the Star Wars movies. The other resonant feature of L3 is that she literally becomes part of the Falcon, and is as such retconned into the Saga itself as the ‘peculiar dialect’ that always seems to bring bad news to C3PO.

The Leader: Tobias Beckett (and his partner Val). Beckett also doesn’t have much to do beyond driving the plot and be a representation of the mercenary that Solo would become - his Fedora Man - without the redeeming qualities. When Val vainly sacrifices herself to try to help Beckett settle the score to end his indebtedness to the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, he loses what little remaining connection and trust he had with others (at least, that’s what Beckett would have us believe). The challenge for Han will be not to do the same when Qi’ra walks away from him (or at least, not until he rescues a princess from a hidden fortress). Beckett is a ruthless mentor for the hungry young Han, but his commitment to making sure Han learns his lessons ends up being own weakness, resulting in his ultimate demise as Han catches him monologuing. Truly the student does become the master, with some regret but no hard feelings.(13)

The Competitor: Emphys Nest. Now this is an interesting character. Initially set up as a brutal marauder captain with a proto-Ren mask, it turns out that in fact she is the leader of a group of outcasts dispossessed by the Empire, who are not in the game for the money but for survival - and ultimately, rebellion. I found the the portrayal of the marauders and their motivation a little hard to follow at first, but ultimately far more believable and earned than the ‘resistance kids’ in the ‘Saga’. Also, I love the realism of the idea (reflected in the REBELS series) that there are disparate cells of resistance across the galaxy fighting their own wars against the Empire, who eventually coalesce into the organised Rebel Alliance. The fact that Warwick Davis’s PHANTOM MENACE cameo character Weazel returns as one of Nest’s lieutenants is icing on the cake.

The Heavy: Dryden Vos. I was fully expecting the boss of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate to be a Hutt, so it was a surprise to see an apparently humanoid villain instead.(14) Vos appears recklessly tyrannical and limitless in his arrogance. It’s hard to believe that he’s effectively just a middle manager, though he alludes to that fact along the way, setting us up for…

The Big Bad: Holy poodoo. Darth F’ing Maul (sorry, simply ‘Maul’ now that he’s ceded the mantle of Sith to the little brat watching him from the fighter cockpit). I could not contain my glee when I saw his horned face reappear. Now this is probably going to be confusing for the casual viewer, because most would have assumed that Maul was dead after Obi-Wan bisected him in PHANTOM MENACE. But those who have had the benefit of watching CLONE WARS and REBELS know that Maul survived and has tangled with our heroes (and even his former master) a number of times, all the while plotting his comeback and revenge against his almost-murderer Kenobi. Along the way, Maul and his brother Savage Oppress took over the alliance of criminal syndicates known as the Shadow Collective (of which Crimson Dawn is one part) and took control of the planet Mandalore (in the process killing Kenobi’s beloved Satine - yes, just like in MOULIN ROUGE). We also have had the benefit of seeing his final rematch with Obi-Wan on Tatooine, possibly one of the most meaningful duels of the saga. So with context, given CLONE WARS and REBELS are technically Canon, it’s unsurprising in a way that Maul would be revealed as the ultimate villain of the piece. Nevertheless, the reveal of seeing this iconic and criminally-underutilised antagonist once again in live action was simply breathtaking. Maul was portrayed by original PHANTOM MENACE actor Ray Park, and voiced by Sam Witwer. I was somewhat disappointment that the amazing Peter Serafinowicz didn’t return to reprise Maul’s voice, but given the substantially greater amount of work Witwer has done for the character since in CLONE WARS and REBELS, it’s fair to say that Witwer is now to Maul as Hamill is to the Joker.

“You look good. A little rough around the edges, but good.”

The rather unsurprising conclusion to all that is that this film has managed to meet and perhaps surpass, the bar I’ve set for what makes a good and enjoyable Star Wars movie.

Simply by virtue of the fact that they aren’t recreating the figurative wheel, Disney seems to do a much better job with these Star Wars anthology movies than the ‘Saga’ they are unnecessarily trying to continue (but in fact are simply rebooting). I really hope they take advantage of the favorable ages of Ewan McGregor and Daniel Logan to tell the Obi Wan and Boba Fett stories that are dying to be told, let alone find a way to bottle a tiny bit of Don Glover brilliance before he becomes bigger than Yeezus and stops acting altogether.(15)

At this stage we know that there will be at least two ‘spin-off’ trilogies, by Rian Johnson (ugh) and the Game of Thrones showrunners (Qi’ra returns?). If each of those manage to continue to follow the trend set by SOLO, and to a lesser extent ROGUE ONE, rather than the tired tropes of the ‘Saga’, then my outlook is optimistic on the future of Star Wars on the silver screen for years to come.

So for now: I’ll happily go see another Star War.

Notes:

(1) I’d add that despite sketching out a potential back story and cameo for an orphaned young Han Solo adopted by Chewbacca and present at the Battle of Kashyyyk in SITH, Lucas exercised restraint and omitted it from the shooting script. While not begrudging the creator his licence, it appears in hindsight that this was probably a wise move and certainly created an opportunity for this film.

(2) Actually, now that I read that back with decades of hindsight, I can totally relate!

(3) In this case, that line was Solo’s reference to the Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - long maligned as an incorrect reference given that parsecs are units of distance not time, though there have been some novel explanations of how that might still work that were Canon-ised by this film.

(4) Actual narration may be brilliant, please see a theralyst if doubt persists. Speaking of which, I wonder (did someone say WONDER?) which still life image he used as inspiration for this movie?

(5) I feel like the galactic resentment towards droids was signposted a little more effectively indirectly by the prequels, given the years of destruction caused by the Separatists’ droid armies.

(6) Lando set the bar at 20 parsecs, which is way higher than what Han eventually claims he achieved. It makes you wonder about the significance of the “less than” part of the claim.

(7) It may as well have been “Corellian” or “Corleone”, for that matter.

(8) But let’s not blind ourselves to the fact that that says nothing about whether or not Greedo would have taken a shot too - Greedo already delivered his verbal coup de grace and allowed Han to get a response in before Han shot (back). Han’s mid-monologue blow to Beckett was more along the lines on Indiana Jones’s similar shot against the swordsman in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. As I said before, whether Greedo shot or not changes nothing about Han, who had already been preparing for the shot himself.

(9) It’s a shame we didn't get an allusion to how Han picked up his stuttering Wookiee language skills or knowledge of their Imperial enslavement - particularly given the fact that the reason probably would have further demonstrated his empathy - hat tip to my friend Justin Scott for that one.

(10) I’ll be honest - as a COMMUNITY fan, it’s always a joy to watch Don Glover cry hysterically.

(11) He can’t seem to avoid deals that get worse all the time!

(12) Technically we did see the Falcon briefly in SITH, but let’s say that Lando has done a bit of a refurbishment since then.

(13) There hasn’t been such an effectively executed succession plan since the soon-to-be Darth Vader got ‘ahead’ of Darth Tyranus.

(14) It appears that the Hutts are being set up as the antagonists for a future Solo movie.

(15) I still vainly hold out hope for #SixSeasonsAndAMovie.

#han solo #solo #star wars

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