#and all but force you to accept that because it just proves that sentiment correct over and over again and its fucking bland

[wolfnanaki]

Interesting that you used Sage as an example in the response to my question because a comment about him was what prompted it, lmao. I saw a 4chan post that basically said like, if the anon met Sage then he'd try to turn Sage back into a girl but also tell "her" that it's still okay to do masculine things without removing "her" breasts, etc. I think that a lot of anti-trans sentiment just comes from pearl-clutching over reassignment surgery which TBH, I didn't understand myself since I didn't get how adjusting the appearance of your sexual organs can affirm your gender if your gender had nothing to do with sex organs to begin with. But your response explained a lot to me. It seems like gender is a super complex thing that isn't cut and dry and different people think of it differently so we shouldn't try to come up with blanket solutions to the "tran issue" and should instead let trans people explore whatever works for them personally. Is that correct of me to believe?

Yeah, pretty much! Sounds like you got it. The "trans issue" is a thing made up by conservatives, there's no issue within us, it's an external issue of people refusing to accept us and force us into either being cishet or... getting rid of us.

And of course they would leap onto the idea of detransitioning Sage. Right-wing people and traditional conservatives are obsessed with the fertility of young AFAB people. Here in Florida, they tried passing a bill wherein teenage female athletes would have to "prove" their womanhood to the state every month by submitting reports of their period cycles, and I can't help but ask why does DeSantis want to know how breedable teenage girls are????

The right's ideas about trans men and nonbinary AFABs is that they're all just confused young women, going through a phase, and they can be corrected, and SHOULD be corrected for their own benefit. That's where the obsession with Fang started from over three years ago, and why it's catching on with Sage now that GVH is out.

I don't know what to call this mindset. This obsession with AFAB fertility. Breeder Syndrome? Whatever.

#Nanaki's Thoughts #gender #transgender #nonbinary

[rnelodyy]

c!Dream and the rules

(/dsmp /rp, all names refer to characters, not content creators)

I think one of the most striking parts of Exile is something that I rarely see talked about, and it’s Dream’s rules. Or rather, how his rules were made to be used as justification to hurt Tommy.

The thing about exile is that, outside of the initial rule of “Don’t go back to L’Manburg”, Dream never told Tommy the rules, yet constantly operated under the assumption that Tommy already knew them, and had accepted them. The rules also changed constantly, without Tommy ever being notified until he was already in trouble.

The second time Dream told Tommy to put his armor in the hole, he didn’t tell Tommy to do that right away. Instead, the conversation went like this (slightly edited to remove stammering and unrelated dialogue).

Dream: Do you have, uh… something you wanna put on the floor here? Tommy: Yes. (drops two pieces of red concrete as Dream digs a hole) Dre-eam! You’re evil. You’re evil. Dream: Anything else, Tommy? Tommy: Nope! Dream: Oh c’mon, I know there’s something else you wanna drop down here. Tommy: (panicking slightly) No, there… (messages BBH “take this and run”, throws him the disc BBH had gifted him earlier) Um… I don’t reckon there is! (pause) Dream: Okay, are you suuuure? Tommy: YES. Dream: Alright… How ‘bout your armor, Tommy? Tommy: Well, no, this is- I actually earned this myself. Dream: I know you did! Tommy: Leave me alone. Dream: Just drop it in the hole, Tommy. Tommy: Wh- no, NO, you can’t just come and demand things from me! I’ve been exiled, I’ve done your shit, what do you mean?! Dream: (sing-song) Tommy… Tommy: What? (Dream hits Tommy with his axe, taking over half his health) Tommy: (screams, drops his armor) OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY!

The only rule Tommy was aware of at this time was that he wasn’t allowed to go back to L’Manburg. Dream had taken his armor the night before, but there was no indication that he expected Tommy to do this constantly. Taking his armor upon initially arriving at Logstedshire made some kind of sense, allowing Tommy to keep it would run the risk of him trying to fight his way back into L’Manburg. Taking his new, very shitty armor (seriously it was an iron chestplate and a pair of golden leggings he got from a ruined portal chest) made no sense at all, so the fact that Tommy was confused and refused to cooperate at first isn’t unexpected in the slightest.

And the thing is… Dream was aware of this fact. Throughout the conversation, he never really sounded annoyed, and was actively teasing Tommy at times. This isn’t a good thing btw, it’s a sign that he was fully aware that Tommy didn’t know what he wanted from him, and that that would create a situation where Dream could “put him in his place” as it were.

If you’re a parent, and your kid does something that’s not allowed, without knowing it’s not allowed, you don’t start off with a beating. You sit them down, calmly explain the rules to them and explain why those rules are there, then send them on their way with the knowledge that they shouldn't do it again.

This interaction wasn’t an instance of Tommy acting out and Dream correcting him. This interaction was a trap. Dream set Tommy up to fail by not telling him the rules beforehand, and when Tommy offered even the slightest bit of resistance and asked why he needed to drop his armor, Dream jumped straight to beating him. It’s a powerplay, plain and simple.

This is demonstrated again with the destruction of Logstedshire. Dream got pissed that Tommy disobeyed him by having hidden chests with gear under his house, and retaliated by destroying everything Tommy had built, destroying every item he’d collected, killing his pet and only foodsource, barring him from the Nether, banning everyone except himself from visiting, and telling him to start over from scratch after a whole lecture about how Tommy betrayed him.

Again, I wanna point out some specific lines from this lecture that illustrate my point very well.

Dream: You were lying to me! You were lying to me. Tommy: No- Why was I lying?! Dream: What do you mean, why were you lying?! Tommy: I wasn’t hi- I wasn’t- Dream: You hid things in a chest knowing they were things I wouldn’t want you to have! And you hid it in a way that way I would never find it!

Except Tommy didn’t know that. The contents of the stash were all items that Tommy had obtained previously without any issue (diamonds, emeralds, iron, ender pearls, some pickaxes, and some purely sentimental items like flowers, a jukebox, and pictures of Tubbo and L’Manburg). In fact, the vast majority of them came from Tommy’s aboveground storage, which Dream had full access to, and had looked through before!

Dream also never said Tommy wasn’t allowed to hide stuff, and there was nothing to suggest he didn’t want Tommy to keep secrets from him.

There’s been a theory floating around for a while that Dream knew about Tommy’s item stash beforehand, since it was a very strange place to dig a hole (like, right in front of the house in the center of Logstedshire itself, instead of out in the plains where the TNT wouldn’t damage any structures), and Tommy had previously forgotten to cover up the entrance ladder. While Dream hadn’t looked inside the house, he would’ve definitely heard Tommy place the block back.

If this theory is correct, then this was yet another trap. Dream knew Tommy had a hidden room, and instead of just saying “hey, I don’t want you to have a hidden stash, go put this back and fill in the room” (which would’ve still been bullshit btw), he went COMPLETELY ballistic, destroyed EVERYTHING Tommy had, and while doing it, kept admonishing Tommy for betraying him, said shit like “I thought we were friends”, and even accused him of preparing to attack Dream. Again, a powerplay.

Hell, even the exile conflict itself is this! Tommy was exiled for griefing the king’s property while being a high-ranking official in L’Manburg. Except Fundy, the then-president’s son, CONSTANTLY griefed Eret’s shit after the L’Manburg war, ranging from ripping down one of their towers to “shrink” it, filling another tower with water, and multiple elaborate plots to steal the throne from under their nose. But apparently, between all of that shit and the exile-conflict, the rules were silently changed, meaning Dream could exile Tommy for breaking a couple blocks and placing some rude signs in George’s house. Even the punishment itself was changed without warning, as Tommy went from being exiled from L’Manburg to exiled from “everywhere that’s ever been touched.”

...I was originally gonna make a different point here. I may put it in the reblogs, because I still think it’s very interesting. But, in the middle of writing this essay I had to stop because it was late, then I spent the entire next day packing up because I’m in the middle of a move. It's now the next evening, I'm sat in my new room, on my camping bed, I opened this doc because I pretty much forgot what I typed, I reread it, and then I realized… This isn’t an isolated series of events. This is a pattern for Dream.

Before Tommy first joined the server, there were only three set rules: no stealing, no griefing, and no killing people. Except by that point, those rules weren’t enforced at all. In fact, Dream broke all three at once at one point, by killing George and burning his diamond armor because he didn’t feel it was fair that George got to run around in full diamond when everyone else still had iron.

Tommy joined the server, and broke the rules like everyone else. He stole shit, broke shit, killed George for funsies… and he got exiled for it. Seriously, they dumped him in an empty snowfield for breaking rules that nobody had enforced for weeks. So technically, the Exile-arc isn’t even the first time something like this has happened to him!

During the events that would eventually spark the Disc War, Sapnap stole a bunch of Tommy’s items (including the only Netherite chestplate on the server at the time), and told him he’d only give the stuff back if Tommy helped him with a conflict he had with Ponk. Long story short, Dream tried to intervene and was killed by Tommy and Sapnap, and Dream stole Tommy’s discs to force him to apologize. He then kept the discs, and the Disc War followed. Sapnap, despite being the aggressor and arguably forcing Tommy to participate in the conflict, was never punished.

This proves not only that the rules can change whenever Dream feels like it, but that they’re arbitrarily enforced. Dream refuses to punish his friends for the same crimes he endlessly fucks over Tommy for.

L’Manburg was created in part because of the fact that the rules were unevenly enforced. Tommy, Wilbur, and later Tubbo were repeatedly killed, stolen from, imprisoned, and even held hostage for very minor crimes, while the people killing, imprisoning, kidnapping and stealing from them were able to do so without impunity.

This was also the point where Dream just started making up new rules; there was no rule against having governments on the server, or making a separate area where Dream’s rules wouldn’t apply, so Dream banned governments, and used this new rule as an excuse to kill them, take their items, and tear their land to shreds.

And that’s another thing: the punishments for breaking Dream’s rules are INCREDIBLY harsh.

Kill him non-canonically one time? Your most prized possessions will now be dangled over your head and used to hurt you for the next few months.

Make a country with different laws that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s territory, has no desire to expand, is explicitly pacifistic and open to trade negotiations? You’ll be forced to fight a war you’re in no way equipped to fight, you’ll be betrayed and murdered and have your land destroyed in front of your very eyes until you literally have no choice but to surrender.

Mildly vandalize the king’s house, which nobody else has ever been punished for? You’ll be dragged into court, exiled from your home, and subjected to weeks of abuse until you believe that all of your friends hate you and you actively want to kill yourself.

Hide some stuff in a secret chest? Your only shelter will be exploded, your pet/only food source will be killed, all your items will be destroyed, you’ll be banned from the Nether, and none of your friends will be allowed to come see you.

This is all such disproportionate retribution it’s ridiculous. It’s like punishing someone for speeding by blowing up their car with a ballistic missile.

So to sum up: Dream’s rules are arbitrarily enforced, and he can just straight up make them up on the spot if he feels like it. Sometimes, he won’t tell you a rule exists until you’ve already broken it, and you’re treated as if you broke it out of malice instead of genuine ignorance. And if you do break a rule, and he decides you have to be punished, it will always be a punishment so harsh it doesn’t even ATTEMPT to fit the crime.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty fucking corrupt and tyrannical to me.

When people say Tommy deserved exile, or made Dream spiral into villainy, or abused Dream somehow (seriously I’ve seen this take multiple times and every time it makes my brain melt) by breaking the rules, I would invite them to take a step back and ask themselves, why did that rule exist? Did Tommy know it existed? Was it enforced for everyone other than him as well? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Dream has a bad habit of making up rules, or enforcing old ones that were never enforced before, to punish those who threaten his power. None of the Dream Team were ever punished for anything, despite committing the same crimes as the L’Manburgians. That is, until they founded Mexican L’Manburg (i.e. went against Dream’s rule), at which point they were attacked by Dream and George was dethroned for “not being neutral enough.”

Tommy should’ve faced consequences for what he did. But those consequences should’ve come naturally, and been carried out by the people he hurt. Like, if Dream hadn’t intervened, griefing George’s house would’ve resulted in George griefing Tommy back in revenge. In fact, he DID do that, by turning Tommy’s entire house into granite and putting the Jump In The Cadillac picture on his front lawn.

These are natural, proportionate consequences. Exile was none of that. The Disc War was none of that. Everything that happened to L’Manburg was none of that.

Dream’s rules and how he enforces them are inherently corrupt and tyrannical. To pretend it’s anything but is disingenuous at best.

#dream smp #dsmp #dsmp analysis #c!dream #c!tommy #tommyinnit #dreamwastaken #i had a COMPLETELY different point that i wanted to make but then i thought about it and went w a i t #uhhh if you wanna hear my original point lemme know i guess #anyway c!dream is such an interesting character! i hate him! #little green bastard man #c!dream critical

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Alright so I've seen a lot of opinions floating around and now it's time to add my two cents: the show's Loki is both similar to and distinct from the Loki we remember, and that is, or at least can be, a good thing

We have this idea of the "Loki we know," and we're frustrated that he's not being adapted faithfully--and to a degree, this is correct. Marvel very intentionally chose 2012 Loki as the version to resurrect, because that is when Loki was at the height of his popularity. By doing this, they could get the fanbase that Loki has always had to watch the show, while also avoiding much of the character distortion that came after TDW. A great idea! But then, instead of bringing this character into the show and authentically representing him, they smashed him up with Ragnarok Loki's portrayal. This was mostly done to engage general viewers and to maintain a slightly lighter tone, but both of these are mistakes: first of all, the general viewership has never been Loki's core, active fanbase. But I get it--you want to make money. The second, more egregious mistake, is that you absolutely could have kept a lighter tone with 2012's Loki, and then easily adapted him from there. At the end of Avengers, he's making jokes, and we see even more of these in Endgame. That's humor that's authentic to the character, and doesn't feel disrespectful like Ragnarok was. When we see the Ragnarok style of humor popping up, we immediately get defensive because of how that movie treated him, and we say, "This isn't the Loki we know." But the Loki we know is, to a degree...wrong.

This might seem a bit harsh at first, but I think the fandom as a whole is unwilling to let go of a slightly distorted version of Loki, and that's coloring the fan response to the show. Because we've spent so long with a character that has had relatively few instances of development or even screen time, we've become attached to the version of the character we think we know, sometimes without realizing that collective memory has shifted our perception of him slightly. We're unwilling to let the character change at all, even if at points this growth could be done well--and even if the character was faithfully adapted, he would be met with criticism because he wouldn't be "what we know"; he couldn't be, because we as a fandom created that character, over time and without really recognizing it. To a degree, that kind of misplaced criticism is mixing with the legitimate critiques of the series. It makes us unwilling to look at the good things that are present, even among the flaws.

As an example, let's talk about Loki as a planner, and how his actions in the series compare to those in the earlier movies. A common sentiment I've heard is that throughout episode two (and to a degree, episode one) Loki is just kind of going along with everything. He doesn't seem to have a plan, and this makes people uncomfortable, since the "Loki we know" was a great planner. Wasn't he?

Most of the basis for the "Loki we know," comes from Thor and Thor: the Dark World, so I'll be using those as my "proof texts," so to speak. In those two movies, we see plenty of examples of Loki making spur-of-the-moment decisions to take advantage of a situation; he's a very flexible, adaptable character by nature (as I've discussed before), so this makes sense. The trouble is, I think the fandom memory of Loki has shifted enough that we forget exactly why and how he makes these decisions, and how they turn out. In contrast to what those films actually show us, we tend to think of Loki as a very strategic character, who is too clever to be caught off-guard. That's not the case.

Loki, in those films, has very little grasp or consideration of the consequences of his actions, because his emotions cloud his judgement; because of this, his plans (which are created responsively), and even actions he does not plan, fall apart disastrously. In Thor, when Thor is banished from Asgard, Loki sees an opportunity to step into the role his brother had filled. Then he discovers he is actually Laufey's son, and in response to this news and Odin's falling into Odinsleep, Loki plans to double-cross Laufey and kill him to prove his loyalty, taking the throne in the interim. He does have a plan, but it's one that he developed rather spontaneously based on the circumstances--he didn't plan for Odin to fall asleep so that he could assume the throne, that just...happened, and Loki forms a plan to adapt to it. But when he hears that Thor is trying to return to Asgard, all of his insecurities, compounded by having just discovered that he's actually a Jotun, come back full force; desperate to keep the small bit of identity he thinks he's managed to find, Loki sends an Automaton to kill Thor--whom he loves, and has even said so several times in the film--and then tries to destroy the Bifrost to keep Thor from coming back. These are decisions Loki hasn't truly evaluated; if he had, he wouldn't have made them, because they don't line up with his actual goal, as we see when Thor arrives. When Thor confronts him, Loki essentially has a breakdown, admitting in tears that his real motivation for all of this was just to be considered Thor's equal. He didn't hate Thor, he didn't hate Odin, he didn't even want to be king--he just wanted to be loved as much as his brother. But along the way, his real goal was clouded by his emotional state, and he stopped thinking clearly, instead just lashing out in a desperate bid to protect himself from more pain.

We see something similar occur in Thor: TDW. When Loki sends the guards "up the stairs to the left," he's not thinking about who they might find--he's just lashing out because he's been abandoned by his family, and he wants to exert whatever influence he can over the situation. He wants to do something, especially if it causes problems for Odin and Thor, and he thinks the opportunity has just landed in his lap. He hardly planned for it, but he's not going to pass it up. So he takes it unhesitatingly--and his mother dies. (Coincidentally, after both his father's rejection and his mother's death, Loki nearly dies himself, and at least one of those instances was deliberate. Hmmm...Loki doesn't want to live with the consequences of his actions? It's too painful for him to face what he's done?? Hmm??? But that's beside the point.) Once again, Loki's goals are unclear, and things go wrong because he's just acting on emotion.

All this to say, for Loki, plans are very flexible things that are basically defined as "whatever works best to get what I want," so to say that Loki is just going along with things in the series, and is thus out-of-character, is a bit of an unfair criticism; despite our misremembering, he is, as he's always done, very much acting as a reactive planner. As I've spelled out before, when Loki is thrown into the new environment of the TVA, he immediately starts gathering information, and shaping his responses based off of what he finds. He takes the chances he has to feel things out (at the Renaissance fair, for example), but mostly he bides his time and actively observes until an opportunity arises. This is standard for him, but viewers haven't really been receptive to it, because it isn't what we're expecting.

Now, Loki claims to have a larger plan (something that we think we remember being common), but that's not actually the case. When speaking to Lady Loki/(Enchantress??), he says his ultimate goal is to overthrow the TVA--but he also framed his supposed overall plan as "get an audience with the Time Keepers" when speaking to Mobius. Neither of these are true. In order to more effectively manipulate others, he pretends to have large-scale motivations: with Lady Loki/Enchantress, he knows she will likely only respect him if he claims to have an endgame, since she so clearly does herself, so he manufactures one she likely wouldn't oppose. Mobius, on the other hand, would likely be suspicious without the red-herring Loki throws him; since Mobius believes Loki's trying to get an audience with the Time Keepers, he doesn't become suspicious about how quickly Loki becomes eager to catch the other variant, which would otherwise have been an appropriately huge red flag. But these are just misdirections, further things that Loki is doing to keep himself in the best position possible. That's why his claims of a grand plan (particularly to Lady Loki/Enchantress) sound sudden or unrealistic: they are. But because we think we remember Loki being someone who would have a larger plan, we aren't able to see that he doesn't need to.

This time, unlike in Thor and TDW, Loki's immediate goals are clear: escape the TVA. Be free. Despite Mobius' attempts to get him into a hyper-emotional, and thus, less careful, state of mind, Loki keeps his wits about him. He's intentional with his decisions. He's not lashing out. For once, he's aware of and considers the consequences of his actions--we see him weighing the options as he stands in front of the portal--and he makes the right decisions because his goal is clear in his mind. And this makes all the difference. Loki plays the game expertly, and for the first time, he wins--he escapes.

And I think this is an excellent development, one that deserves more appreciation than we're giving it. It's a good thing that he's not behaving how we think we remember him, as some master planner--that would be being unfaithful to his character. Loki isn't the same as Lady Loki/Enchantress. He doesn't have a grand plan. He just, finally, knows what he really wants. That shows growth, and that is the kind of change we have to want to see, and be willing to accept; so in that regard, it's even good that this Loki is different than he actually was. The Loki we see in Thor and TDW is a highly emotional, and very broken, character, who reacts to his environment often without thinking of the potential consequences; the Loki we're being shown here is still emotional, still clearly affected by what he's gone through, but is now able--or is now being allowed!--to demonstrate his actual capabilities. He ACTUALLY GETS WHAT HE WANTS. That's the first time that's happened, the first time his attempts to protect himself or outsmart someone have actually ended in success instead of disaster. And that's exactly what you should do with a character.

Now, a valid quibble with Loki's characterization is that these things are not obvious, and that is a very legitimate criticism. It's hard to see that Loki is manipulating Mobius by pretending to be helpful, because the show seems to be framing it in a way that encourages us to take Loki at face value. Loki's behavior is an intentional obfuscation, but it can be hard to realize that if it seems like that's what the show is telling us Loki really is. Personally, I justify this by saying that the show is showing us Loki as he wants to be perceived--when Loki is bluffing in episode one, he seems cartoonish and over the top, but certainly nothing like he actually is, and this is what he intends. When he seems too jovial and trusting in episode two, that's because that's what he's presenting to Mobius. It's about whether we buy into the act as much as the other characters do--which is why Loki's most in-character scenes come when he's alone. When he has no one to perform for, he stops performing for us, too, and we see the genuine presentation. But, I could be wrong--maybe this isn't intentional at all. Maybe the writers really are just trying to revamp a character from 2012 and are doing it clumsily, and that's why he seems out of character in moments like those. It's too early to say, and honestly, we may never be sure.

But there are real, valid, and undeniable moments of positive development, the likes of which Loki has never had the space to experience before. They are present if you are willing to look--but they are much less obvious to people who don't want to see them. I agree, they are hard to see, and if I'm being honest, I haven't loved the show anywhere near as much as I would have liked to so far. But I think the fandom as a whole is so caught up in this idea of the "Loki we know" that they don't see the Loki we have for what he is--people are too attached to a misremembering of Loki's previous actions to realize that the change in his behavior isn't a regression or a flaw in his writing but a sign of growth. We're too attached to his brokenness and weakness to let him become strong.

We are defensive about Loki's character because of how it's been mishandled in the past, but if you actually look, you'll find that there is actually a lot of good in what we're being given. I'd agree that the show has to get better about making that obvious if it wants to succeed. But I think some of the harsh criticism the show has been receiving is unwarranted. It might not be perfect, and some of these decisions on the parts of the writers might not be intentional, but Loki has always been a character we've had to think about in order to understand him. Just like this show, there is much good about him beneath the surface. And for as much trouble as it causes sometimes--I'm glad that isn't changing.

#loki #loki series #loki series spoilers #meta #marvel #my meta posts #i just want us to give it a chance ok? if we give it a chance and think about it who knows--maybe it will surprise us just like loki does #and i do think that we have grown so attached to 'our' version of loki that we haven't realized it isn't truly attainable #we've had nothing for so long that we've formed this idealized image of the character that no portrayal can ever live up to #and while this is a natural consequence of how marvel has handled things i don't believe it's fair to judge it so quickly #we should keep an open mind is how i see it. who knows? maybe things will change. #and i have a feeling that that openness to change will be a major theme of the show #loki as a character is finding himself and perhaps we can find him along with him #because some change is necessary to bring him successfully into the present mcu. and they can handle it better--but so can we #this might be a hot take? idk i just have a lot of thoughts #but please no discourse! discussion is encouraged and i know emotions run high bc loki is very important to us but let's be kind ❤️ #kay has a party in the tags #kay can i just catch my breath for a second #quality meta seal of approval #not to hype my own post up i just put that on all meta posts so that i can find them

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, Part 1

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I'm outlining stems from my own views and experiences. I am a 30-something European woman, and therefore may not view the matter from certain angles. That said, I'm always open to more input from others. If you believe that I've missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. If we can make this a team effort, I would love that.

The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. I am of the firm belief that characters are no more than a tool created to serve a narrative purpose, therefore the question I'm posing is whether or not Barok van Zieks serves this purpose. That's all I'm doing here.

I'm using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what's said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent.

It doesn't matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. He's not real anyway, so he can't suffer from it. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people. If you know you're morally in the right, there should be no need for insults to begin with. Let's keep this conversation civil and constructive! As the first post in a series, let’s first start by examining the expectations we would have for a character like this. The purpose he was meant to serve.

1: Expectations

As I said in a different Barok-related essay, the main prosecutor of any Ace Attorney game has been, and always will be, an antagonistic force. Not a villain, not even necessarily someone who exhibits immoral traits. (Hi Klavier!) Just someone who impedes the protag’s goal of getting a not-guilty verdict. In order to have an effective antagonist, they need to mirror the protag's weaknesses back at them. Ace Attorney does this quite well, as the prosecutors represent the obstacle/turmoil that the defense needs to overcome. Often times, the prosecutor is also tied to a pivotal moment in the attorney's past, making sure the strife is quite personal.

Considering the game's plot and settings, it would've been difficult for Barok to be tied to Ryunosuke's past. (He is tied to Asogi's past, funnily enough, but that's a matter I also addressed in that other Barok essay.) So instead, Barok represents Ryunosuke's struggle in more of a figurehead capacity. I've seen people dub him the 'CEO of Racism', and I'm not gonna lie, in a way that's correct. Barok was designed to be the mouthpiece of the harmful sentiments Japanese exchange students would have encountered in the 1900s. By extension, since Ryunosuke is an exchange student unfamiliar with the British courts (or even courts in general), the prosecutor would target the fact that Ryunosuke 'does not understand how things are done here'. Which he does- a lot. This makes it all the more satisfying when Ryunosuke proves him wrong by outsmarting him and using Britain's own laws (such as the closing argument) against him. So yes, you may hate Barok for uttering racist sentiments and dismissing Ryunosuke's abilities, but the ultimate goal here is that Barok's defeat is made sweeter as a result. The narrative end-game is Ryunosuke's triumph and validation in the courtroom.

Was there a different personal struggle Barok could have represented? Yes, but also no. Sure, his vendetta could have been strictly with the Asogi family and Ryunosuke could have admitted to carrying Asogi's resolve, not knowing what it meant. Though that would’ve implied very early that Asogi had a history of sorts in Britain and would’ve destroyed some of the surprise we experience in game 2. Alternatively, there was also the 'parallel' antagonist angle. The sort of villain who says the line “we're not so different, you and I.” The antagonist who shows what happens when someone with the same skills or motivations follows the wrong path, which emphasizes the right path for the protagonist. However, I can't see that working in the plot of this game.

A purposeful decision was made by the writers to have prejudice be a central theme of the plot. This is the matter that hits the hardest in an emotional sense. Therefore, having Barok be the centerpiece of this prejudice ensures he leaves the biggest narrative impact.

---

However, another long-running aspect of the AA prosecutor is the redemption arc, so let's turn our attention to that!

I'm not going to put too much effort into explaining this, I just want to talk about the requirements of a redemption arc. We all know these types of arcs, a lot of Ace Attorney prosecutors have them. We see them in fiction all over. Noteworthy examples of redemption arcs done well include Zuko from The Last Airbender, Michael from The Good Place... For argument's sake, let's toss Edgeworth in there too. I'm not saying Edgeworth's arc is done well, but at the very least it is accepted by most as something that served its intended purpose. I've never seen anyone question Edgeworth's transformation.

See, what we have here is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to what people expect to get out of these types of arcs. Redemption in itself is only 'deliverance from sin' or 'being saved from evil'. It's the thought that a horrible person can still see the error of their ways before it's 'too late'. However, when it comes to absorbing media, often a character gaining knowledge that they were in the wrong isn't enough to satisfy the audience. Would Edgeworth have had a satisfying redemption arc if he'd acknowledged his arrogance and dirty tactics, only to retire as a prosecutor? No way. We needed him to return in the following games to give us an update on his status. Standing in court as a defense attorney, at the risk of damaging his reputation, was the moment we knew he'd grown for the better.

What we require for the arc to come to a good conclusion is atonement. The character in question must not only apologize for their actions, but repent in a more active manner to show that they've changed their ways. Following that, the atonement must be acknowledged by others. So for example, Zuko joins the ATLA gang to help them in any way that he can until even the most skeptical of the group, Katara, acknowledges his transformation into a better person. Now add to this the notion that the character's atonement must be virtuous and sincere. The Good Place is a fascinating look into the debate of 'is it ever too late for a person to change?' and the moral complications of changing in the first place. If you're only doing good things because you want to be saved from damnation, are you being a good person or are you being selfish? There's such a thing as corrupt motivation; only doing good because it is expected. For example, does sponsoring a library make Magnus McGilded a good person? It does not, since he's only doing it to boost his own reputation and have people believe he's selfless.

As a final note, I want to ask: Does a redemption arc require a backstory to justify the character's immoral ways? Personally, I don't think that it does. It's good to have, since it allows an audience to empathize with the character and give them more of a reason to root for them. It turns the redemption arc into a tale about overcoming past trauma. However, it can backfire when done badly and lead to frustration. (I'm looking at you, live action Disney movies!) Some characters are evil just for the sake of being evil and even then, they can turn over a new leaf because they realize it is just so much more rewarding to be good. Just look at Michael from The Good Place.

What's more effective than a backstory, in my opinion, is smaller details to humanize a character. Humanization can also lead to empathy, perhaps even relatability, and helps us believe that they're capable of change. We need to be told that a character has their own fears, their own flaws, their own odd little habits which deviate from the norm... Again, I'll point to Michael from The Good Place for this. Another humanization tactic, which we see employed often in Ace Attorney, is to display a prosecutor's likes and hobbies outside the courtroom. Edgeworth's fanboying over the Steel Samurai, Blackquill's love for birds, Nahyuta's willingness to stand in line for hours to get his hands on a delicious burger... I've feel ya, Nahyuta. This tactic is more readily employed in Ace Attorney because it's difficult to place a prosecutor in a position of weakness before the final showdown. You can show them tending to hobbies during Investigation segments, but you can't show them waking up from a nightmare or wondering whether their father loves them. Well, not until case 5 of that game, anyway. By then, it's too late to serve as the sole humanization factor. Did Van Zieks need to be redeemed at all? The way I see it, the only correct answer is yes. What do we want to see in our world? Do we want people who hold racist prejudice to acknowledge their faults and become better, or do we want them to die clinging to their shitty moral compass? Do we want a world where everyone learns to get along, or do we want a world where people continue to be in the wrong and act like assholes until they inevitably get punished by law for something or another? Van Zieks needed to be redeemed in order to teach that valuable lesson that it’s never too late to be a good person and that it pays to be a good person.

So to summarize, what we needed from Barok van Zieks was the following:

1) Present an antagonistic (possibly immoral) force who personifies Ryunosuke's biggest personal obstacle/weakness, in this case racial prejudice. 2) Humanizing traits begin to show. OPTIONAL: A backstory to justify any immorality he has. 3) Over time, Barok has his realization and sees the error of his ways. 4) Barok atones for his immorality, not simply through apology but by taking decisive steps. 5) The cast around him acknowledges his efforts and forgives him.

This leaves us with the question: Does the game deliver on these points? Well, let's boot it up and find out! Stay tuned for The Adventure of the Runaway Room! (as a warning, it’s gonna be LONG)

#dgs #dgs spoilers #tgaa #tgaa spoilers #barok van zieks #oh god here we go #i actually already finished Runaway Room but I need to let it sink in #it was a doozy

[hyrule-kingdom-updates]

ALL of the emojis for Siv :D

What is the kindest thing your OC has ever done for someone? What is the kindest thing someone has ever done for them? On the flip side, what is the worst thing your OC has done to another person?

I don’t think I can point out a *single* ultimate kind act, but Siv raising and caring for his brother throughout their whole childhood is definitely one of the kindest periods of his life. Spoilers, but: Siv didn’t actually believe himself to be capable of being a knight, in fact Ligero was specifically trying to keep him out of Larc’s life, letting them grow to be more independent, giving Siv every reason to be jealous and spiteful. But Siv trained to be a knight anyways because he didn’t want his brother to be alone through it all. He would never admit it, but Siv is a really kind and soft person. He cared for everyone of LinkLink’s scars and scabs when they went shield surfing, he took Zavis to a surprise party when his mother didn’t bother to throw anything that special. He wrote Revali letters, he sewed little rat plushies for Aryll to add to her collection���and I think it all stems from his childhood, where the only thing that he was certain of, the only choice that he could without a doubt claim was a good and kind thing that he didn’t mess up on, was caring and loving for someone that he by all other means didn’t have to.

As for the kindest thing someone has done for him, well honestly I think Siv would consider anyone giving him a basic amount of respect and appreciation as the “kindest” thing. Although once, Zavis allowed himself to team up with Link to plan a perfect party for Siv, which is to say, a very notable feat.

As for the worst thing Siv has done to someone: that’s probably spoilers. :3

What does your OC do when they see others upset or in pain? An upset friend? A stranger?

If a stranger was upset, Siv would probably just think, “Sucks to suck!” and move on. Unless they were like, REALLY sobbing, to the point where it would be impossible to ignore. Then he might stop walking, chat them up and buy them a drink, maybe hear their woes, but that’s probably it.

If it was a friend, he’d be immediately on their case, but would still try to play it off as him being an apathetic, disgruntled guy. But you know, Siv didn’t become an official royal Branch Buddy for nothing.

What is something true about your OC that they refuse to admit about themselves? Is there any reason to this besides embarrassment?

Under absolutely no circumstances will Siv admit that he is shorter than anyone. He finds it completely unfair that BOTH of his brothers are taller than him. He would hate it if you told him so, but Siv without a doubt has inherited a bit of his father’s ego, so calling him short, or even complimenting his hot royal guard brother when Siv is right there would ruffle his feathers to say the least

Describe a regular day for your OC. What is their schedule (if they have one).

Pre-Orator days, Siv basically wakes up whenever he wants (usually past noon), feeds the pet rats in the alleyways, then heads to the underground. Everyday is scraping enough rupees for a hot meal and a drink by selling illegal tickets to the underground monster fights, maybe organize a rigged gambling ring or two, and obviously scam any ten year olds that were looking to enter the world of pocket monster fighting themselves. Then when the “work” day is done, he’ll pop by an adequate tavern (the only one that would tolerate letting someone like him around) and eat and drink, and...that’s pretty much it.

As the Royal Orator, Siv wakes up and immediately heads to the dining hall, then hauls all the food and drink over to his office by 10am, cause that’s when his official work hours kick in. He then has to just sit there, listen to people’s grievances and input that will promptly be ignored (by either his hand, or most certainly by his superiors) while also posting out the important announcements and rat doodles with the Quill of Roost(both pre and post consumption). He might grab lunch in between and do fuck all, but by 9pm he’s gone out and about, doing whatever it takes to get as little sleep as possible because he doesn’t really like the sort of dreams he’s been having.

Current Siv doesn’t have a schedule, but he does have an agenda.

How does your OC think they will die? Does death scare them? Is there any reason for this?

Siv isn’t thinking about death. In truth, he thought he would have died much, MUCH earlier. Maybe get stabbed or executed? Maybe have a poor run in with an ex or particularly angry victim of his scams? But hey, now that’s he’s living the high life with all this power, he doesn’t care about death! For all he knows, he could live forever as long as he sticks with Ganon! All he has to do is follow what he says, and he’ll be happy forever and never have to fear anything ever again.

What is your OC’s most traumatic experience? (If they don’t have just one traumatic experience either pick one or describe them all!)

The Asunder Incident.

Siv constantly questions himself after that, “Why would I do that? Was I really capable of killing someone? Surely not, I’m not...I’m not that bad...” but the facts obviously stated otherwise. This was basically the incident that cemented himself as the person he is at the start of hku, apathetic and broken. He wouldn’t admit it then, but this singular event basically solidified everyone’s prejudice and perception of him, and rightfully proved them correct. It was his own actions that left him hated, abandoned, and alone, so yeah, he can’t complain now, it’s all his fault.

How would your OC react to the death of a friend/family member/loved one? Is there anyone they can confide in?

If Ligero died he would throw a fucking party for the ages.

Other than that, yeah, if someone he knew and cared about died he would be very heart broken about it. I think the only person he would really confide in about it would be Larc, but if it WAS Larc that died...I can only assume he would at the very least be severely depressed. He’s his favourite, cherished, little brat brother, after all.

What would your OC be like if they were evil. Or if they’re already evil what would they be like as the good guy?

This is an interesting question given that...I’ve already shown both sides to this, haven’t I? Maybe I’ll just let the story speak for itself...

How would your OC react to somebody telling them that they love them? (+ bonus give another characters/OC name!)

Siv would first play it off as a joke because defense mechanism! “Haha, yeah, and you know what I love? The bathroom!” and he would be off escape the situation. But if they were persistent, he would be very flustered and very...vulnerable, and scarily sentimental in his opinion. It would take some time, but I believe eventually he would really, truly accept it, in the end. Although patience is certainly a virtue, it took an entire childhood for him to use the L word for his brother.

What does your OC hate about themself? What lies about themself do they believe? On the flip side, What does your OC love about themself?

He hates being a bad person. He does not believe himself to be good or worthy of anything, thus he internalizes it wholeheartedly in order to gain that sense of control. So now that Siv’s accepted he will never be truly happy, he’s like, “Great! I can just not care about anyone else now.”

Thankfully, that’s changed recently, and he now believes, “You know what? I’m NOT a bad person! It’s everyone else that’s been wronging me! The problem with me is that I’ve been way to much of a coward to take what I deserve, so now I’m gonna do it, no matter what! I deserve to not be hurt anymore, and if I can’t do whatever it takes to achieve that, then how can I say I deserve to be happy in the first place?” Be sure to thank Calamity Ganon for that pep talk.

Right now Siv loves his power. He’s had the most control and power in this one relationship with Ganon than he’s ever had with anyone else in his entire life. He’s finally on top! Number one! He has something to really be proud of about himself! The old Siv hated themselves, but now that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Does your OC have any scars? How and when did they get them?

He doesn’t have any notable scars, especially given that he’s got the power o’ malice, baby! Malice is a representation of many things, one of them being time and memory, so it’s pretty easy for it to heal and return skin, flesh, and bone to a prior state. Perfect for healing and repairing people and objects, alike! Of course, malice is more famous for doing the opposite, sucking your soul out from you prematurely, feeling yourself die rapidly, your last breath being snatched and forced out of your lungs, a thousand breaths meant for a lifetime suddenly sapped out in a few minutes. But I don’t know why I’m talking about that, that’s not relevant haha

What is something your OC blames themself for and is it really their fault? Does it keep them up at night and is there any lingering trauma?

The Asunder Incident, he blames his actions for leading him to basically abandon his brother for like fifteen years. But that’s all I’m gonna say as I have plans to talk about his feelings on it further in the actual story.

In what situation would your OC be pushed to commit an act of violence? Would they go as far to kill someone if they had to? How would this affect them and their relationships with others?

Why, I can’t answer this in detail! That’d be giving away the story :3

Ok, maybe I’ll say this: Siv tells himself that he would do anything to get what he wants, of course he would do anything, because if he can’t, well then that just means he’s a pathetic coward who doesn’t deserve happiness anyways. So of course he claims that he will do anything, even killing someone.

What would your OC do if they were given god-like powers or the ability to change anything about the world for a whole day?

Siv would eliminate all shitty parents, maybe also give revive some dead people, and also permanently have a giant neon green tattoo of a dick be on Ligero’s forehead. Assivus would do the first thing, but he might also make everyone who has ever wronged him suffer for a very long time on top of that.

Describe one of your OC’s worst nightmares.

- Oh no, made a ficlet.

The first night he was in the castle, he had a dream.

There was a man, sitting across from him, dressed in glittering gold, with a green sash wrapped across his chest and waist. He was tapping his long nails against a desk, HIS desk, the white and purple quill still in the cup of ink, and blank parchment in front of him.

The man looked very out of place, and that was ignoring the fact that he was a withering corpse.

You’re dashing, aren’t you? The man said, still tapping his fingers. That’s when Siv realized that he was just sitting opposite to him, in the seat where guests were supposed to be. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He tried to blink, but didn’t.

He sat there and listened to the man, attentively.

Do you know what you’re doing here, Asunder? the man asked. Asivus didn’t. Do you know why I’ve allowed you here? What you are?

Siv didn’t know, but he couldn’t exactly express as such.

That’s because you don’t need to know. At least for now. The man leaned forward like mist, disappearing as Siv felt something pass through him, he couldn’t turn to look behind him as a delicate hand was on his shoulder. You’ll know things when I want you to know. You’ll say things when I want them to be said. And you will do things when I want them to be done. Because I own you. Err...

The man suddenly stopped to think, leaning on the right arm of Siv’s chair, tapping his bony chin, as if he had made a casual slip of the tongue. Because...you owe me. Yes, that’s the word. I’ve helped you so much Assivus Asunder. Or “will?” “Have?” “Am currently?” Futures and times are a funny thing. I apologize, I’ll have my words sorted out into something more professional and proper in our future.

The man spun around, and suddenly, he was no longer a corpse, but a dashing Gerudo man, dressed brilliantly and handsomely. His eyes were no longer a hollow gold, but green, somehow familiar.

The room was no longer some dinky orator office, but the sanctum of the castle, the apex of the kingdom. The man snapped his head towards him.

Let me ask you something, Assivus Asunder: Would you rather be here?

He gestured to the grand view of the sanctum, the sunset casting striking shades of red, black, and gold across the towering walls.

Or here?

The world spun once again, and they were suddenly on a dark street. The houses of Rauru diced the stone brick pavement. Siv glanced around and saw himself, sitting on the ground. There were two knights, one of them cursing loudly, and the other laying down beside him. There was so much blood and he could feel himself floating closer and—

No. NO. Wait. STOP. PLEASE! He tried to speak, scream, anything. No sound came. He saw a sword, a dark and rich puddle that seemed to even reflect his own face and—

They were suddenly back in the office.

Which is better? What do you prefer, of the two? I’m assuming the former? The man looked at him. I will allow you to nod yes or no to the former.

Siv immediately nodded a yes.

Trick question!The man boomed. Both are fantastic places, environments that you should love and cherish. There is so much good hiding in the places you would least expect, Assivus. I’ll help you remember that.

The world was suddenly nothing. Nothing but black. Just him, in a chair, staring at this smiling, pleasant, scary, red haired man. 

Don’t you want help, Assivus? I think there’s something you want, that you need help attaining? Isn’t there something? There’s no shame in admitting.

Siv thought for a moment, then slowly nodded a yes.

Do you want MY help?

Uhh...Siv wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Perhaps you can do a favor for me?

Fuck no! was Siv’s immediate thought. Who the fuck—First off, I don’t think I really like you, actually, so— 

Oh that’s alright! The man was suddenly very close to his face. Oh shit, could he hear my thoughts? Assivus, you can do whatever you want to do to be happy. I don’t want to force anything from you. He patted his cheek with a very cold hand.

In fact, I’ve now decided you don’t have to do anything for me. I am going to help you, and you don’t need to do anything in return. The man stood back, clasping his hands together. How does that sound?

I... He tried to speak, but remembered he couldn’t even move his lips.

I’m sorry again, Asunder. Here, I’ll allow you to speak now. The man didn’t even wave a hand, but Siv could suddenly feel how hoarse and dry his throat was.

So how about it, Assivus Asunder? I want you to be in charge of your destiny, I want you to be in total control. I would never force anything from you, I will simply be here, by your side, helping here and there, as you...figure it all out. How is that? Does that sound alright?

Siv opened his mouth, but couldn’t decide the words. If I say yes can I go back to sleep? Hella tired...

The man didn’t move, but Siv someone sensed a whisper beckoning somewhere with a “Yes. We’re all tired of many things, aren’t we?”

“O-Ok...” Siv finally said. “Alright, sure. I don’t see why n—”

Before the words were fully out of his mouth, the world suddenly stopped dead, as quick as a snap. He awoke from his bed with a jolt, his heart racing like he had just run a marathon, even though he didn’t find those last moments to be that thrilling or terrifying.

Siv sat for a moment longer, trying to contemplate the dream. But as most dreams are, the memory of it fell out of his grasp like loose sand between his fingers, and soon enough, it was already gone.

He flopped back into bed with a sigh.

Whatever it was, it was probably nothing.

What advice would your OC give to their younger self? What advice does your OC need now?

Already answered in a previous ask c:

#oc ask game #out of character #Asivus Hartell #hku spoilers #Yes the ficlet at the end I'd consider canon

[fandom-necromancer]

The daring date

This was prompted by an awesome anon! Enjoy some long overdue Allen60!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Allen60

Allen sat in his office, absent-mindedly staring through the blinds. It has been a week now and still he hadn’t gotten used to the new face in the force. The new familiar face. A RK800 unit, dubbed Sixty not to confuse him with his exact twin in the building next door. To be honest, the SWAT Captain had no idea what to think of the android. Normally he would at least try to keep his prejudices against them at bay. They were people now and Allen had no problems accepting the fact once he had spoken to a few of them. But this specific one… He simply didn’t trust him and still searched for reasons to get him out of his team.

The official file for the bot was spotless. But of course, rumours had spread still and being part of the raid on Cyberlife tower, the SWAT team could confirm them. Sixty had threatened Lieutenant Anderson and would have without doubt killed him, had the android not been shot himself. Right in the middle of his forehead. He was supposed to be dead - every human would be. But no, he was repaired and deviated and thrown into society. Deviancy was supposed to be the wondrous medicine to every wrong an android could possibly commit. But Allen wasn’t so sure when androids had had a certain programmed freedom even before deviation and this specific android had still decided to shoot Hank when there must have been other possibilities to fulfil his mission. And who said androids weren’t capable of committing crimes, just like humans? Who said that Sixty, just because he deviated, wasn’t still loyal to Amanda or a certain belief? And now he was infiltrating SWAT, possibly trying to gain their trust just to betray them later. He knew he had no evidence for his theory, but his gut had proven themselves to be correct almost every time, so Allen would keep an eye on the new android. Who knew, maybe-

‘Captain?’ He looked up to the door, where Frank had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Without knocking, as always. ‘Err… Yes?’ ‘You joining game night this evening?’ ‘Whose turn is it?’, he asked caught off guard. ‘Jensen’s! I think he decided on starting with poker, but I haven’t asked.’ ‘Yeah, I’m in. I think I can manage 7pm.’ ‘Great! I’ll let him know.’

Allen sighed, as soon as he was alone in his office again and decided to try and do some actual work today. In all his paranoia about the new android, he had almost forgotten it was the last Friday of the month – game night. He usually enjoyed them. It was one of these team-building exercises that actually worked as it wasn’t obligatory. Although normally most attended them. The SWAT team really was a team, working atmosphere good enough pulling rank wasn’t necessary most of the time. Allen really hoped the android wasn’t invited. But he guessed not. As in many other points, his team was pretty uniformly suspicious of the RK800 too.

-

It was raining as he parked his car in front of Jensen’s house later that evening. He was a bit late as it seemed, but he was greeted with enthusiasm nonetheless and a coke was pushed into his hand. Most others were already sitting at the table with beer and other beverages and someone hastily gave Allen his seat and poker chips as he was clearly loosing already. A few pleasant hours and rounds later that was a thing of the past as most of the other players were too drunk to remember the rules or keep up a pokerface. Allen had already driven quite a few into surrender and at some point, as if on a hidden signal, they decided to stop playing. What unfortunately meant they settled on the incredibly uncreative idea to play truth or dare.

Allen sighed, regretting his decision to stay sober tonight, but played along. It could still be fun after all. It started quite simple with everyday questions and mostly silly chores to do on dare. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. ‘Are you single?’, was the first question in the truth-category, Allen sighed deeply over. ‘Why? Are you searching for someone?’, he returned hoping to embarrass the man and be able to skip answering. The other’s laughed, but the one that had asked him just shrugged. ‘Yes, actually, but you’re not my type, no offense there.’ It continued on and Allen felt relatively save, having passed the first awkward question. When it was his turn again, he groaned and demanded “truth” again. He could live with his team knowing intimate details about him. He didn’t like giving them blackmailing material in the form of videos or pictures of him doing something ridiculous though.

Unfortunately, his team had other plans: ‘Come on, you picked that so often already. Choose dare, come on. Would be unfair!’ He rolled his eyes, but caved in quickly as others joined the chorus. ‘Fine. Dare.’ ‘Oh, I actually didn’t think you would allow us’, the other chuckled. ‘I have nothing. You got something guys?’ Oh no. Everyone talked over each other, but it was one, Allen would have guessed Jensen himself, who screamed louder than everyone else: ‘Go on a date with the new android!’ It went dead quiet immediately, but soon they were laughing at Allen’s shocked expression. ‘No. No way!’, he protested, but the rest of his team instantly shook their heads. ‘You have to now! No going back on that!’ ‘I… Fuck, fine, I will ask him on a date, you lunatics. But that’s it, if he says no, that’s out of my hands.’ ‘Deal.’

-

Monday came far too soon, and Allen sat in his office once again, watching the android. He swore then and there to never attend another game night ever again. But well, better to get this over soon else they would bug him for weeks. He guessed the chance of the android agreeing was close to zero anyways. The whole week he had never seen him near any other member of SWAT if it wasn’t needed for work and seldomly speaking more than strictly necessary with his colleagues. He would just go there, ask him and then the android would decline and go on with his business. Simple as that.

He approached Sixty’s desk and the android immediately looked up, seemingly preparing to stand up. Allen gestured to remain seated and he relaxed but nodded at him in greeting. ‘Captain. Anything I can do for you?’ His voice eerily sounded like Connor’s, maybe with a little less intonation. ‘Err… yeah, weird question maybe, but are you free tonight?’ God, this was embarrassing. ‘Oh. Sure. Planning a mission?’ ‘Uhm… No, actually it’s rather personal.’ ‘Personal?’ ‘Dinner?’ ‘Oh’, the android blinked, face unmoving. ‘Sure, what time?’ Fuck. Allen had not expected the android to actually agree. Shit. That was bad. ‘At seven?’ ‘Fine with me. Where?’ ‘Err… I’ll send you the address.’ ‘Okay. Looking forward to it.’

Allen turned around and grimaced as soon as he was out of sight of the android. He glared at Jensen who was barely containing his laughter and entered his office to remain there for the rest of the day. Fuck, now he had to come up with a place to go on a date with the murder bot.

-

He drove up to the sole restaurant in all of Detroit that served both android and human food. He had been lucky to get a table for today. He still didn’t know what the hell he was doing here, but well, worst case he would have to be here for a few hours and call it done. He saw the android already waiting at the entrance and tried to at least fake the polite smile. ‘Hello, Sixty.’ ‘Hello, Captain.’ ‘Err… Allen’s fine’, he commented. Shit, even his team didn’t call him Captain unless outsiders were around, or it was a work issue. ‘We’re not at work after all.’ ‘Okay, then hello Mr. Allen.’ ‘Uh, yeah, okay, let’s go in.’ Awkward.

They entered and were shown their table. The waiter spared them any more small talk, taking their orders for drinks and handing them the menus. A few minutes passed as they both chose their food, but after that they had to wait again until the waiter would come back. And the silence that caused was as uncomfortable as it could get. ‘So…’, Sixty spoke up in the end. ‘What exactly is this?’ Allen’s shoulders sagged a little. ‘Do you want the honest truth?’, he sighed in defeat. The android nodded, and Allen answered: ‘We played truth or dare. They dared me to ask you on a “date”.’ The android huffed with a humorless smile. ‘Well, it’s nice being a part of something I guess, even if it means being part of a joke.’ Allen frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Okay, here are your drinks, what can I get you?’ Allen flinched, he hadn’t even noticed the waiter appearing. Sixty wasn’t as bothered, ordering for himself and Allen caught himself to follow short. Once the man was gone again, the android sat up. ‘I mean that I know you and your team could do well without me.’ ‘That obvious, huh?’, Allen asked, embarrassed about their sentiment being this obvious. ‘I mean, In the last week I barely spoke to anyone and no one even approached me.’ Sixty shrugged. ‘But that’s fine, I get you are close with each other, going on dangerous missions. I guessed as much as I got assigned the job. I hope I can prove my worth to you in action.’

‘I’m sorry’, Allen mumbled in all honesty. ‘It’s just…’ Sixty waited for him to continue, but nothing came. ‘Just what?’ ‘It’s hard to trust you when all we know about you is that you held our colleague at gunpoint and the only thing keeping you from pulling the trigger was getting shot.’ The android smirked. ‘Yeah, I get that. I could explain to you how I was under Amanda’s full control that time, being ordered to stop Connor by any means necessary, or be permanently deactivated myself. But I guess it wouldn’t change a thing, am I right?’

He smiled sadly at Allen, who couldn’t help but feel like a total asshole.  ‘Sorry.’ ‘It’s fine, really’, Sixty reassured him. ‘I guess it just needs time of us working together for you and your team to realise I won’t suddenly go full terminator on you.’ ‘So you were forced to nearly shoot Hank?’ ‘I mean, I was forced to end the revolution or die. I had to stop Connor for that. And Lieutenant Anderson was his weakness. His partner and only emotional support in this world. I guess if you ask if I was forced to kill him, then no, I wasn’t. But it really is a question of how far you are willing to go to protect your own life when you have only lived for a few hours at that point and don’t know what that even means yet.’ Allen stared at the tablecloth, trying to process what he’d just heard. ‘I don’t plan on holding the Lieutenant at gunpoint ever again, if that means anything’, Sixty carefully stated then. ‘Or put my own life about anyone else’s for that matter. I’ve learned my lesson staying with New Jericho, listening to all these android’s life stories and learning what life could eventually be.’

Allen looked up into the android’s eyes, realising to what extend he had misjudged him. ‘What made you chose police work then?’, he asked with honest interest. ‘Honestly? It was a heat of the moment decision. The DPD was hiring and I knew Connor worked with them. I thought maybe that would make it easier for me. Following my initial purpose and living with people that accepted him despite his crimes.’ ‘Crimes?’ ‘Well, he was a spy for Cyberlife initially before he switched sides. And he did kill at least two humans at Cyberlife tower. If you think about it, he actually did worse things than I have. But maybe I misjudged that.’

The waiter reappeared with their food, giving Allen time to make a decision. ‘I will talk with my team’, he stated as he had disappeared again. ‘I believe we all fell for prejudice here. I’ll tell them to give you a chance.’ Sixty eyed him lifting a brow. ‘Captain, do you really think this is necessary?’ ‘Yes, I think so. I don’t think you should be held accountable for something you couldn’t control.’ ‘I…’ The android looked at what looked like blue pudding in front of him. ‘Thank you, Captain. That really means a lot to me.’

They began eating mostly to play down the serious talk, but the silence really didn’t help making the whole thing feel less awkward and unnatural. Allen thought about what to talk about with someone he basically knew nothing about, but only one thing came to his mind. He tried to find something more fitting, but ultimately, everything was better than the silence. So, he spoke up again: ‘Okay, let’s stop talking about work for a while. Let’s talk about you, if you want, of course. What do you like? Any hobbies?’ That seemed to catch the android off guard. ‘I like… music?’ ‘Really? What kind of music? Favourite genre?’ ‘Err… No. I haven’t listened to a lot yet. Any recommendations?’ Allen chuckled, knowing this was a dangerous question as he liked to ramble. ‘Oh, were to start? I have a whole list…’ ‘Just give me a song, I will listen to it.’ ‘Right now?’

Sixty tapped his temple. ‘Android, remember? Can listen to it in my head.’ ‘Okay, not how you are supposed to hear music, but fine.’ He continued to list off a few of his favourite songs and stopped after he thought to have supplied the android with the essentials for now. Then he continued to eat, coughing when Sixty spoke up again: ‘Okay, I listened to them.’ ‘What?’ ‘I can listen to them simultaneously. I liked them.’ Allen stared at him. ‘Okay, that really isn’t how you listen to music.’ ‘Then teach me: How do humans listen to music?’ ‘One song at a time?’, Allen begun, not having imagined to ever need to explain that. ‘And normally coming from a speaker.’ ‘Inefficient’, Sixty commented. ‘But-‘ ‘If you hear one song at a time, you will never have listened to all of them in your whole lifetime.’ ‘I mean, it’s true, but-‘ ‘And you never get to see the similarities in between them. Analysing all the small changes in frequencies and subtle differences in between genres.’ Allen sat there staring. ‘Okay, I think we enjoy music on a very different level then.’ Sixty laughed. ‘I guess so, yes. But humans are inefficient at most tasks, so I don’t blame you.’ ‘Thank you?’, the SWAT Captain tried, but couldn’t help but smile too. ‘Okay then, what else are androids so much better at?’ Sixty smirked. ‘I have a list. It’s alphabetised.’

The evening was actually quite fun after its initial difficulties. Sixty just seemed to need a jump start to get over his hesitant demeaner. Once they had initiated their personal talk, he ended up unveiling he was actually a quite cocky person, sure of himself and almost stubbornly ambitious. But despite that, he really seemed to care for others, wanting to use his strong suits to help those that needed it. Somehow, despite Allen’s previous impression of the android, he ended up liking him and wanting to get to know him better than possible in one evening.

Unfortunately, that very evening was about to end as it got late and already was dark outside. They paid for their respective meal, although Allen jokingly stated his co-workers had specifically asked him to take him on a date. Sixty just laughed and told him they wouldn’t have to know every detail. As they exited the restaurant, the android turned to him before entering the automated taxi he had called. ‘And? Enjoyed your dare?’ Allen huffed. ‘Actually, I did. Obviously, this wasn’t a date, but it was nice getting to know you. I’m looking forward to work with you and… Well, if you want to do something like this again, I would be up for it.’ ‘Really?’, the android asked. ‘I made it to the second date?’ Allen closed his eyes and sighed somehow not knowing what he had expected. ‘Be careful what you wish for, I don’t want to know what they decide to task me with next games night.’ Sixty smirked and opened the door of the taxi. ‘Maybe next time I will be there to decide myself.’ He winked at the Captain and entered the car, leaving Allen standing in front of the restaurant confused. But somehow intrigued, too.

#detroit become human #dbh #Allen60 #Captain Allen #RK800-60 #Sixty #Sixty walking up to the dude who dared Allen: Am I a joke to you? #The anon said Allen has fun I said Allen has to listen to traumatised android backstory #I can't write fluff without angst I guess #but they have fun too I think #Sixty listening to like 40 songs at the same time #Ahhh human music - I like it

[thesearchforbluejello]

Imagine a "Star Trek: Lower Decks" style sitcom in the Stargate universe. Stargate: SG-47... the crew that follows up on all the really boring planets SG-1 goes to once and never again. They always debrief with Walter instead of the General. They annoyed the Nox once and now they show up to pull pranks on SG-47 in revenge. Minor Goa'ulds catch them and are depressed they're not SG-1 or someone more important so they just release them.

My notifications ate this ask; I don't know when it's from, but I'm just seeing it now. Please accept this totally unedited bullshit fic as my apology and thanks for how hard this ask made me laugh. I'm definitely not supposed to be writing a final right now. And I know you said minor Goa'uld but like I couldn't resist this opportunity. Also, me, using a minific to talk about my obsession with what the hieroglyphs in a Goa'uld ship could be? More likely than you think.

​A Soldier, a Linguist, a Botanist, and a Biologist Walk into a Ha'tak

Major Lissa Cannon emerges from the event horizon into the bright, clear sunlight of P4X-737. She takes a deep breath and immediately sneezes. "Great," she says.

Dr. Jess Abubakar passes her on the right, heading down the stone stairs of the gate platform without hesitation. "Better get used to it," he says with a cheerfulness that she doesn't-- and any reasonable person wouldn't-- share.

"Jess, I swear to God," Dr. Beth Rosenberg says as she follows him down the steps.

"You're just salty you have to help us collect samples," Jess counters, more affable than Cannon would have expected anyone to be before she actually started working with him.

Beside her, Dr. Chris Richardson just gives a wry smile before heading down the stairs after their teammates. Cannon sneezes again.

"It's the pollen!" Jess says as she joins the group. "Initial samples brought back by SG-1 indicate that it's at least twice as potent as anything we have on Earth."

"How is that a good thing," Cannon gripes even though she'd sat through the briefing and already listened to Jess and Bill Lee go on about how important it could prove to be.

"I mean, just think of the possibilities!" Jess says, more than happy to repeat himself. "We could synthesize new antihistamines, or even make existing ones more effective. We could develop new crops that are potentially more resistant to blights or unfavorable growing conditions."

"Yay," Beth says, drier than the climate on this planet has likely ever been.

"You're just mad because there are no indigenous people here to talk to," Cannon points out.

"You could talk to the plants," Jess says.

"Studies have proven that talking to plants encourages growth," Chris adds, soft-spoken as always.

"I'm not talking to the plants," Beth says.

"Why not?" Cannon asks. "With this much pollen in the air, after a few hours they might start talking back."

"Oof, like when SG-7 was on P8Q-984," Jess laughs. "That's not an experience I want to have for myself."

"Those were spores, not pollen," Chris corrects amiably as the team starts into the forested area beyond the field in which the gate sits.

"Sentiment's the same," Jess says.

Cannon hears a rustle in the undergrowth and raises her P-90, her team stopping immediately in defensive positions behind her. After a moment of nothing but birdsong and her own breathing, she relaxes. "Must've been an animal," she says.

"SG-1's initial exploration didn't indicate any indigenous animals on the ground," Beth says.

"Well, that's why we get their leftovers, because everything is just 'initial,'" Cannon points out. She takes the lead as they continue between the trees, rifle still ready in her hands just in case.

"Bloodthirsty squirrels is not on my extraterrestrial exploratory bucket list," Jess says.

"Yeah, mine neither," Cannon agrees. She's barely got the sentence out of her mouth when she hits a force field, face-first. "Motherfucker," she tries to say, a natural reaction, but the syllables come out muddled because her face is suddenly very numb. She drops to a knee and raises her rifle, looking for whatever danger has to be in the forest with them. Around her, her team drops the specimen cases they'd been carrying and raise their own weapons. They're not armed for this; SG-1's previous mission and the UAV surveys hadn't revealed anything dangerous enough to warrant coming through armed with anything more than Cannon's P-90, a couple of flash-bangs, and an assortment of 9mils and zats carried by her and her teammates. Except for Cannon, they're scientists, not soldiers.

"Lower your weapons," a voice commands from the trees.

"You lower your force field," Cannon calls back.

"I think not." Around them, Jaffa begin to materialize from the forest.

"Fuck," Cannon says.

*

The Jaffa strip them of their gear, tossing their vests, holsters, and packs in a careless pile on top of the specimen cases they'd dropped when the force field had initially gone up. They're surprisingly respectful about it, which Cannon almost laments because she's pissed off and ready to fight, even if she knows it's a fight she won't win. She watches their gear disappear from view in a flash of light as they're beamed up to a ship she knows must be waiting above.

Gold walls and a polished floor illuminated by dim lights materialize around them. Another group of Jaffa is waiting. One of their captors reports to a man Cannon assumes is his superior. She tries to pick of bits and pieces she recognizes from the language but doesn't get much.

"Wait," Beth says, "can you say that again? That's word isn't in the lexicon we've been developing."

The Jaffa looks at her sidelong in confusion before his superior barks an order.

"This way," he says. The Jaffa behind them push the team roughly forward.

"Yeah, I heard him," Cannon says, her face still numb and her words muddled, "relax."

They spend the next several hours sitting in a cell. Beth whips a notebook out of one of the pockets of her pants and starts making notes on the glyphs in their cell.

"Does that actually say anything?" Jess asks. "I've never been on a Goa'uld ship before."

A chorus of variants on "yeah, me neither" precede Beth's answer.

"It does, actually, though most of it just repeats. A lot of it is just vague, seemingly formulaic stories of someone's victories and conquering and blah blah blah, but the name has been chiseled out," she says, tapping a glyph that's clearly been destroyed deliberately.

Cannon turns her head against the wall from where she's sulking with her arms wrapped loosely around her knees. "Why?"

"My best guess? Whoever owns this ship now stole it from another Goa'uld and had their name erased. Think damnatio memoriae."

"Huh," Jess says, setting his hand of cards down to Chris's obvious annoyance. "But they kept the part about the victories?"

"Why not? Obviously they had someone spend all the time necessary to do this to the whole ship, so keeping the rest saved a hell of a lot of work. Plus, if they bested the guy this ship used to belong to, that's quite a flex." Beth shrugs and goes back to writing in her notebook. Jess picks up his cards again and Cannon can tell by the barest quirk of Chris's lips that they have the winning hand.

"You know what I'm thinking about right now?" Cannon says. "Mashed potatoes."

"Ugh, the mashed potatoes in the mess taste like plastic," Beth says without looking away from the wall.

"I know; once I start eating them, they're so disgusting I just can't stop myself. It's like the flavor gets grosser with every bite."

"They're not bad with the roast beef," Chris says.

"That's because the roast beef is the only palatable thing the mess serves besides jello," Jess points out.

"It was lemon chicken today," Cannon sighs. She rests her head against the wall again. "My vest had all my granola bars. What could these guys possibly want with us," she complains.

"Do you think they've realized that we're only number 47 because they want any potential enemies to think there are more SG teams than there really are?" Jess asks.

"I don't know," Cannon says stiffly, "but say that again a little louder and I'm sure they will."

Jess holds his hands up in placation, tipping his cards towards Cannon. Chris is about to destroy him with that hand.

"Well," Cannon sighs, "the good news is that I can feel my face again."

Heavy footfalls sound in the hallway and Cannon stands, shifting her weight to ease the stiffness in her legs. Beth hurriedly stuffs her notebook back in her pocket and Chris and Jess shove the cards into the pocket of Jess's pants.

"You will come with us," the Jaffa says.

"Sure," Cannon says as she leads her team after him. "I don't suppose you guys have any snacks on board this thing? You've got to eat, right?" He doesn't answer. "Didn't your mom ever teach you to share?"

The Jaffa ignores her and leads them into an open room with a throne at the fall wall. Ba'al surges to his feet as they enter. "Fool," he spits at the Jaffa beside him, who Cannon recognizes as the leader of the group that had captured them. "This isn't SG-1."

"My lord--"

"Who are you?" Ba'al interrupts.

"Major Lissa Cannon, leader of SG-47," she says, raising her chin.

"Forty-seven," Ba'al says in disbelief.

"We're a science team; we were studying the flora of P4X-737 when you so rudely interrupted."

Ba'al just looks at her. "You're scientists."

Jess raises his hand. "Doctor."

"Doctor," Chris agrees.

"Major," Cannon says with a shrug.

"Doctor," Beth says.

"I've seen this episode of M*A*S*H," Chris says.

"I did also once make a baking soda volcano for a sixth-grade science fair," Cannon adds.

Ba'al sits back on his throne, crossing one leg over the other and resting his elbows on the arms, looking the picture of a carefree megalomaniac.

"Bring them back to the surface," he orders the Jaffa with a lazy wave of his hand, without so much as raising his arm from the throne. "Finish studying your plants," Ba'al says, "I have no use for you."

"That's kind of rude," Cannon says.

*

The Jaffa drop them on the planet's surface and beam back up to the ship. Cannon pulls her vest off the pile, slings it over her shoulders, and pulls a granola bar out of the pocket. She rips it open and stuff it into her mouth, chewing as she zips her vest and secures her holsters around her legs.

"That was easier than I expected," Beth admits.

"Sometimes I think the only reason the Goa'uld try to capture SG teams is just because SG-1 pisses them off so much," Jess adds.

Cannon snorts at that. "Let's get our samples and haul it back to the gate before the mess runs out of mashed potatoes."

"You realize that's extremely unlikely, right?" Chris deadpans.

Cannon shrugs and stuffs the wrapper of her granola bar into her pocket. "Even so, let's get a move on."

#I wrote this in the drafts of my uni email so I could type it and MAN did tumblr botch the formatting when I pasted it #anyway I'm now extremely obsessed with this concept and with these random characters #I couldn't make it through this without making a jello joke #and also apparently a joke about Cam's obsession with the mess roast beef even though this is for some reason set pre Cam idk #reasonably it should be s9 or s10 but #also catch me handwaving how ba'al has braming technology pre s9 idk man look #he's crafty and he's smart just let him think he's the shit instead of just a little shit #minific #asked and answered #my fic #I have so many ideas for these characters rip #stargate sg 1 #unabletocomply #ETA I wrote this with the singular thought of 'let SG 47 say fuck'

[i-shall-never-repent]

If you love a femme fatale in MDZS, here is a canon one for you.

This going to be long post with pictures, please remind yourself that skim reading or read just half of a post and then kick a fuss is unbecoming of an intellectual being humans suppose to be. Any discussion after finished reading the whole post is welcome. Also I’m not an expert on Chinese culture, just amateur with passion, and English is not my first language, if any grammar, spelling, or context error have been detected, please let me know, politely. I’m always willing to learn and improve.

From my observation, there is not a small part of this fandom salivating for a gorgeous seductive manipulative duplicitous bitch. Please believe me that we already have one in the canon, even with a fan. Though the correct term would be a Homme Fatal, a male equivalent of Femme Fatale.

Some of you may think of this man [Pic Source: Manhua]

No, not him. Not Nie Huaisang. This is a plot device for shock value.

You may have ask, then it must be this man right, but he doesn’t hold a fan? [Pic source: audio drama]

Also sadly no, not Jin Guangyao either. This man need to a kick and ‘son of a whore’ commentary from Nie Mingjue to motivate himself enough to kill him, too masochistic sentimental and not enough of ‘seducing’ evidence.

Homme Fatal, by the definition from Wikitionary, is “An ultimately seductive and dangerous man; a womanizer.” 

Who fit this description most in MDZS? It’s this man, Jin Guangshan. 

Let me introduce you to the real sexy manipulative scheming duplicitous mastermind of MDZS. With a fan. [Pic source: Donghua]

Now you might want to scream, this piece of trash, a man whore, slimy power hungry scumbag of the cultivation society Jin Guangshan? Are we talking about the same man? Yes, we are. And now I will elaborate.

First, look at his face, even though it might be universal agreement that he is not a good man, his appearance and his mannerism are indeed a seductive handsome man. Let me remind you again that these are his children.

From left to right: Jin Zixuan, Jin Guangyao, Qin Su, Mo Xuanyu [All pics are from Manhua]

They are undeniably, gorgeous. Jin Zixuan was rank 3rd in the young master list, that’s enough evidence of his good look. Jin guangyao may get most of his look from his mother - according to Guanyin statue that model after his mother’s face but people still thought it was his - but he still has his father’s charm. Qin Su is a beauty, even though we know nearly nothing about her, and Mo xuanyu’s face is definitely not shabby. Jin Guangshan’s gene is indeed worthy of a Jin’s name.

Second, Jin Guanshan is a dangerous man, might have been the most dangerous one on par with Wen Ruohan, even he was the weaker one in term of cultivation, at least you will have a gist if Wen Ruohan want you dead, you mostly still in the dark and not even wondering on your dead bed that did Jin Guangshan had a hand in your downfall. 

People like to forget that this man was Lanling Jin sect leader, sit on the throne in the viper pit call Jinlin Tower. That sect full of backstabbing people, gossips, and a lot of maneuvering in the dark. I’m still curious how in the heavens Jin Zixuan grow up to be the man he was in that kind of environment to be honest.

I can’t remember that Jin Guangshan was the oldest one in his generation or not, but we could assume that he surely at least had a sibling of main family line, because we have Jin Zixun, a man in ‘Zi’ generation who close enough to main family to share the ‘Zi’ character in his courtesy name, raise next to the clan heir as a spare one, and he call Jin Guangshan “uncle” (Can’t remember which one between Bó Fù/older paternal uncle or Shū Fù/younger paternal uncle).

Which mean he already a winner of his generation, when the story start, Lanling Jin was his domain, he was the highest authority over there with no contest, we never see anyone from Jin sect disobey him. Madam Jin can only voice out her displeasure, but can’t do anything regarding of her husband conduct. Their marriage, arranged as they were, is what tied Jin clan and her family together, which mean her maternal clan also on a good term with Jin, she cannot kick a fuss, as a marriage in ancient time never a matter of two people, it’s a matter of two families. 

And he was in process of securing his legitimated son place too. He raise his nephew as a ‘second best’, making sure that Jin Zixun will not have any ambition to ‘go above his station’ as we can see in the novel that Jin Zixun is Jin Zixuan’s fanboy or his lackey, he always praising or cheering Jin Zixuan, behave obediently toward his uncle, like that was his job. Jin Guangshan definitely win this one over already.

Now, one did not become a sect leader of a Great Sect and stay in power by being an incompetent moron. His habits of sleeping around may disgust people, but here me out, this is not unusual for a man of his status. His affairs with prostitutes [i.e Meng Shi] are easiest to take care, by the contract of transection, therefore he is blameless in the eyes of gentry class, they could only scold him for being ‘overindulgent’ or ‘lustful’, and he always go for the best one around, so some people might even praise him for his taste. Commoners and gentry class ladies [i.e. Second Lady Mo] are different, sleeping with those gentry class young miss not only a pleasure for him, it also could be a great way of getting information and blackmailing people too. Because if he let the public know which young lady he had already ‘conquered’, his reputation suffer nothing, but the lady in question will be ruined beyond saving, that’s one of the reason madam Qin decide to keep her raped quiet. And the lady’s reputation is link to her family, they will do many things just to keep Jin Guangshan happy and not to be shamed in public. Or if anyone want to have a problem with him, they still need to look at the social standing he had, both from his position as Sect Leader Jin and his extensive connections from all parties he threw. And if you think he would care about non-cultivators’ opinions, you have mistaken, to quote Tywin Lannister, "A Lion Doesn't Concern Himself With The Opinions Of The Sheep". Unlink Jin Guagyao who need his reputation to be spotless or else he’ll get a canon ending, the only ones he need to at least pretend to care are his cultivator peers of the same gentry class.

Sadly, him kicking Meng Yao down the stairs also ‘acceptable’ by the society standard of that era, because it’s Meng Yao who ‘trying to reach where he didn’t belong’ in the eyes of gentry, illegitimate children, if not acknowledged, have nothing to do with their father’s family. Cruel? Yes. But nobody care, this even become a famous joke, enough that people like Nie Mingjue know.

This prove that even he was a handsome man with a bad bitch vibes, many ladies still want to sleep with him, society still on his side, what a skill to have in one arsenal.

He was the only sect leader - in the Great sects categories - to get along with Wen Ruohan or play his card right, compare to Nie sect that lost the previous sect leader to a blatant assassination plot, but could only endure, the Lan’s Gusu was burned, Qingheng-Jun’s death, Lan Xichen need to flee for his life and his clan’s legacy, the Jiang’s Lotus pier suffer a massacre, and then you have Lanling Jin who sit on the fence with no damage. 

Then Sunshot campaign happen, he let his heir lead the Jin force while stay at Jinlin Tower, he feigned ignorance over Nie Mingjue’s letter concerning Meng Yao, if Meng Yao die, he would have one less problem in his life, if he survive then Jin clan still get a soldier to be used, no big deal. And when Meng Yao become a spy, this also benefit him greatly, if the Wen wins, he could say that he sent Wen Ruohan a good tool and was force to join the Sunshot side, pulling “Look at how unwilling I was, the Jin not even try that hard you see”.

We already witness he jump in full force to reap the benefit after the Wen lost, Jin Guangshan is smart and skill enough to wait for the clear victory, legitimize Jin Guangyao to take the war credits, with a ‘Guang’ name to exclude him from succession line, with a connection to Lan and Nie clans via Sworn Brotherhood. The best of all is no one can publicly complain anything, Jin clan is the most intact great clan after war, Lan need money for their rebuild their home, Jiang need to be rebuild from scratch, Nie Mingjue lack seniority to scold a man of his father generation, Lan Qiren who is in the same generation lack a position to do so, smaller sects also need his backing to rebuild, want to be on his good side or risking annihilation when no one can help them. He rope in the Jiang clan by Jiang Yanli’s marriage, for the society, he is the benevolent man who honors the promise of two clans even when the Jiang is still in ruin, he is a kind man who help the younger generation, what a good father-in-law to be. Now do you feel that this man is scary? He come out of war, lying in his own house but still emerge with enough political power to maneuvering society, that’s an achievement on its own.

Then he look at Yiling Patriarch, his next goal. If he cannot control this dangerous man then let him be destroy and let him create the one that will belong to Jin clan. Not dissimilar to the opinion in Cold War related to nuclear weapon. First he sow a discord between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, play the insecurities of young sect leader who has no family backing, pressure him with society, even though losing his heir was out of the plan. He used his ‘spare son’, who has a great work resume for shady business, to do all his dirty work and supervise demonic cultivation experiment that if society found out he could have a perfect scapegoat, after all, it’s not surprise for ‘a son of a whore’ with ‘dirty blood and upbringing’ to be like that. Daggling his ‘love and legitimize’ over Jin guangyao’s head to ensure loyalty and obedience. Getting Mo Xuanyu into the clan also sent a message that ‘I can always replace you with any of my spare’. He let Xue Yang have fun with the Chang clan, a revenge massacre while tasting demonic cultivation experiment, win-win for then both, Nie Mingjue went to talk with Jin Guangshan on this matter but Jin Guangyao end up taking all the blame of his father’s conduct, wow. Correct me if I’m wrong here, Jin Guangshan was the one who order Nie Mingjue’s death wasn’t he. If yes, then his plan to establish Jin sect as the main power after the war is really clean cut, ‘get rid of the one I can’t control’.

Let’s be real, Jin Guangshan must be the best politician of his own generation, Wen Ruohan is too strong for this skill to be essential, but doesn’t mean he isn’t good (may be next essay then), Jiang Fengmian wasn’t a bad sect leader, but he just too mild for that political climate, late Nie sect leader was too careless in whatever spat he had with Wen Ruohan, and Qingheng-jun was a fail sect leader. Yes, marry for love must be so romantic, but then he just throw all his responsibility onto Lan Qiren’s shoulder, poor man, what a disaster older brother to have, madam Lan debacle must be a political nightmare. 

Jin Guangshan’s mistake was he overvalue himself in Jin Guangyao’s eyes, and underestimated how low his bastard son willing to sink to before rise up, but need to give it up to him though, poetic justice of his death is so iconic. Not many people can claim they die while doing what they love aren’t they.  

#mdzs #femme fatale #With a fan #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #jin zixuan #mo xuanyu #qin su #jin guangshan #nie mingjue #my analysis #Real bad bitch of MDZS

[morwensteelsheen]

History as an academic discipline is quite a bit more scientific than I think people on tumblr are really interested in giving it credit for. I don’t want to diagnose the root cause of the problem too much, but I do think it’s quite intimately related to the way in which lots of folk on here are driving by emotional politics rather than ideological politics — which is to say, people feel that something should be the case, and therefore believe X, Y, or Z, rather than people have a structural analysis of something, and therefore believe X, Y, or Z. This goes hand in hand with the rise of popular individualism in the anglo west in the late 70s, early 80s (see Emily Robinson et al.) and the various associates political/cultural elements therein. I won’t say more here, but this is a lot of what my research is on, So I do have thoughts.

Anyways — history is a far more scientific discipline than people are really ready to accept on here. When you go through training as a historian, you’re trained in a variety of methodologies and historiographical philosophies, and a lot of them sit in tension or contradiction with one another. However, even the most hardline subjectivists (like EH Carr, for example) would agree with this premise: historiographical narratives cannot be disproved on sentiment alone. They can only be disproved with sufficient research or reinterpretation of extant evidence. They cannot be disproved simply because they don’t feel right.

What that means — and this is an emotionally and politically complex reality of the field, please don’t assume that I’m endorsing it — is that as historians, we have to accept certain things as historical fact, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them morally or politically. For an example from my field, I think it’s incredibly gender essentialist and degrading to assert that ‘women tend to tell more emotive life histories and men tend to tell more event-oriented life histories.’ But the existing research says that this is true. In my research, I’ve worked to overturn this orthodoxy by uncovering new evidence of women who don’t tell emotive life histories and instead choose event-oriented narrative structures. I have also reinterpreted existing evidence to argue that the initial conclusions are wrong. However, given that my research has not yet stood up to peer review, nor has it been published, I have to accept that the state of historiographical play says that the above statement is true. I feel as if that’s wrong, but insofar as proving that it’s wrong goes, I haven’t met the criteria yet. I intend to, but I’m not there yet.

This is fine, this process doesn’t cause problems for trained historians, for archivists, museologists, etc. The problems arise when laypeople — particularly laypeople on social media — misinterpret how and why this process of knowledge production exists the way it does, and through that misinterpretation extrapolate information that they should not reasonably be extrapolating to draw illogical conclusions. To continue the example of my research, it would not be unsurprising to see people on tumblr call me a gender essentialist for accepting that historiographical premise in my work. It would not matter that politically I am not a gender essentialist, nor would it matter that my work seeks to problematise that gender essentialism, the very fact of my beginning with a widely-accepted (if politically and historically incorrect!) premise for my research would be enough to earn the GE label. You see this frequently with the generalisations that history as a discipline is homophobic, that historians are all colonisers, or that historical work is inherently misogynistic. The problem here is that it erases and complicates the work of historians who are trying to unsettle those norms — and the historians who are not homophobic, imperialist, or misogynistic and who are not working to unsettle those norms, but whose work nonetheless remains valid and important.

We, as historians, cannot problematise every bit of knowledge at all moments. The orthodoxy has to be chipped away bit by bit. I’m not going to say that it isn’t frustrating, tiring, or even (tbh) dehumanising, but it’s the state of the state in academia. But that we are forced to work within these incredibly tight parameters does not make us morally or politically illegitimate; if there is a way to secure a revolution in the academy that has not yet been tried, I would welcome advice on it. Such as it is, reform is the only plausible path forward (in the academy!!! Not generally!!!).

When people on tumblr, typically people who are not aware of how the historiographical process works, pontificate about historians writ large being homophobic/misogynistic/racist/whatever, they are actively damaging the historians who most need to be heard. The pale, male, and stale bourgeois academics aren’t hurt by those accusations, because they simply don’t give a fuck. Historians like me, however, queer, disabled, nb historians (for just one case), are hurt by those accusations. It functions as a delegitimisation of the research that I do, of the serious and credible political work I am undertaking both as a researcher and as an activist, and it encourages me to give up on this small corner of a wider struggle. If historians like me — or indeed historians not like me, but who do not fit the bourgeois academic mould — are chased out of the academy, you will not have succeeded in making history more accurate, more diverse, or more politically correct in its analyses. You will have, essentially, ceded the ground to the regressive orthodoxy. And for whatever criticisms I have of tumblr’s liberalism and general detachment from practical politics (go touch some fuckin’ grass guys!), I do not actually believe that you’re trying to undermine the effort to decolonise and democratise knowledge. I think a lot of you are being incredibly unhelpful and even very damaging, but I think it stems from ignorance, not malice.

Anyways, it’s really late, I’m very tired, I’ve had an incredibly difficult day dealing with people (historians! yes! bad women historians!) who promote rank misogyny in their obsession with emotive politics above serious politics, so I’ll do everyone a favour and stop talking and go to bed. But I do really wish people would approach this stuff with more sensitivity and respect than they do right now. Ugh. Okay. Night.

#me #I’m just so bored of this shit honestly

[elsanna-shenanigans]

December Contest Submission #21: Even if it kills me...

words: ca. 2200 setting: canonverse/canon AU lemon: yes cw: death acceptance I guess

Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Arendelle, there lived two princesses. The two, despite living in the same castle all their lives, barely saw each other. They ate their meals separately and if either of them ever accidentally entered a room with the other, it was quickly corrected.

You see, the princesses had a secret. One that only they and a very select crew of castle staff knew. The truth was, the young princesses were cursed.

The elder sister, Elsa, with the gift to command the elements of winter, was cursed with skin of ice. Any room she would enter would noticeably chill and her touch would leave a frosty print. Then there was Anna, bright and cheerful and quite literally kissed by the sun. She was cloaked in a blanket of heat and was known to accidentally scorch things just by holding it for too long. To make matters worse, their conditions only seemed to worsen with their emotions. Young Anna, in her excitement, once set a curtain on fire, and Elsa had completely frozen over more than a few rooms in her time.

Ice and fire.

And yet, there was one more secret the two shared; one that even their staff was none the wiser, ‘less they gained the ability to interpret the sidelong glances and longing eyes shared by two sisters too far apart.

It started off innocently enough. Elsa retired to her room one evening to find a letter on her desk. That itself was not unusual, as the girls would often communicate like this, leaving letters for the other to find to discuss the happenings of the day. It wasn’t unusual. Except in this case it was. There was just one sentence from the usually chatty younger sister.

‘Is it wrong that I really want to hold you?’ This was but a few days after the death of their parents, lost too soon while at sea while Elsa and Anna were 18 and 15 respectively. Elsa mulled over her response, imagining bittersweetly what fate that would wrought.

‘Is it wrong that I want you to?’

Distance never amounted to love loss for the two. As fate would have it, the girls were not always afflicted and in the before time, the two were utterly inseparable. They did everything together, and they loved to be around each other more than anything in the world. Then one day, without rhyme or reason, holding hands became agonizing. As time went on, even the slightest brush of skin on skin would result in immense pain for both of them. Elsa’s skin would be dented, as if a part of it simply melted away. And as for Anna, her skin would lose its healthy glow with blisters being quick to follow. There was usually even a hiss of steam to boot. As they grew, so did the distance between them, but never did that affect the fact that they were never far from the other’s mind. If anything, the further they were forced apart, the closer they longed to be.

It was still a long time, two years in fact, until Elsa came across another single-sentenced note. ‘Is it wrong that I really want to hold you?’

Elsa thought it strange how the same words suddenly felt so different. As if she could feel the change of intention behind the words themselves. Or, she considered, maybe it was she who changed, projecting her own desires into the words in front of her.

‘Is it wrong that I want you to..?’

Elsa prayed Anna would ignore the smudged out letter at the end. But also, deep in her heart, she hoped more that Anna would notice and respond in kind. It wasn’t long before the latter proved to be true.

The letters between the two grew more intimate with each passing day. Mundane recounts of mishaps in the court were spiced with tidbits of sweet nothings. Within months, they had blossomed into something else entirely. Filthy burning wants and illicit desires were penned irreverently and sworn to secrecy between their sheets. Distant as they were, the sisters kept each other heated through the lonely nights, naughty digits acting out the latest scripts.

And though that fed the girls’ desires, it could never satisfy them. Instead they only grew more ravenous, more longing, wishing dearly to prove to each other how true each word rang for them.

But ice and fire, it could never be.

On Elsa’s 21st birthday, another wedge found its way into their lives. Another curse. A haughty, foolish prince willing to take a gamble on Elsa’s childrearing abilities despite her “condition” decided to propose. And Elsa’s advisor’s accepted on her behalf. “It would give the people hope,” they told her. Clearly she was not considered in those numbers. And surely, nor was Anna.

Typically, gossip such as this travelled quickly through the castle but in this case, news moved slowly and quietly like a funeral procession. It didn’t reach Anna until she opened that evening’s letter.

That night, the two broke an unspoken rule. Elsa felt her sister approaching far before she heard her footsteps. Anna was… not pleased. And though they both knew intimately the price of simply sharing a room, Anna did not divert her path nor did Elsa attempt to escape. They needed to see each other more than ever in that moment.

Elsa didn’t flinch when her bedroom door was roughly pushed open. She was already standing to greet her guest, a person she hadn’t seen up close in far too long.

“Is it true?” Anna’s eyes had already become heavy. “That’s not a funny joke to tell Elsa.” Her hands were held tightly against her chest, as if that would somehow stem the pain she felt.

Elsa avoided her sister’s gaze and tried not to focus on the way Anna’s breath materialized as she spoke. She definitely ignored the droplets that had already begun rolling down her face. Elsa, always the articulate one, stumbled on the words she was trying to get out. She couldn’t find a proper excuse. Not one that she dared whisper that night. Not to Anna. “I’m sorry, Anna. I really do love you bu-”

“Then why are you going through with this?” Anna interrupted.

“Because we can’t keep doing this. We can’t just keep teasing each other forever. We can’t be together like that. We can’t be together at all!”

A heavy silence hung between them after that. Those harsh nagging thoughts that never made it past the very edges Elsa’s mind had suddenly burst forward and there was no way to take them back. She was disgusted with herself. To say something like that to Anna… even if it was the truth. Elsa held back the tears as best she could.

“We can.” Anna spoke between gritted teeth, but Elsa only shook her head. “We didn’t ask for this and we didn’t do anything to deserve it. But we sucked it up and lived with it for so long. I miss your warmth Els.”

Elsa chuckled darkly, as if mocking herself, as she analyzed her glistening hands. “I haven’t been warm in a long time.”

“Then let me share mine with you.” Anna had grown desperate. “I have more than enough, I can do it. I’ll keep you warm Els, I promise.”

Anna stepped closer to her older sister but Elsa only matched her with a step back. For the first time in a long time, Elsa looked uncertain. Anna couldn’t tell if there were tears gathering in her sister’s eyes or…

“You know what would happen.”

“I’m okay with it if you are.” Anna took an experimental step forward. And then another one. And then another. Elsa stayed put, even as the steam rose between them.

For the first time in about ten years, the sisters stood face-to-face, barely inches apart. They smiled, despite the pain the proximity brought for both of them. They looked each other up and down, becoming acquainted with the finer details of the other, their smiles growing with every little discovery.

“I never noticed you had freckles too.” Elsa brought her hand up to her own face as if to cover them and Anna knew her sister would be a blushing mess if she could. Anna’s eyes dropped lower and she winced slightly as she noticed the puddle that was gathering around her sister’s sopping shoes. “I didn’t know I could get you so wet.”

An uncharacteristic snort came out of Elsa and she was far too late to stop it. Instead she decided to bop her impudent little sister on the shoulder. A mistake. They both reeled from the contact, as light as it was, an angry blast of steam rattling them both. It wasn’t as painful as if it had been skin-to-skin but it was still enough to have both girls groaning.

Still, the moment their eyes met, they gravitated toward each other again. It was Elsa who closed the distance between them this time. Her hand moved up to her little sister’s cheek, hovering just an inch or two away. They were both gritting their teeth from the pain, but neither pulled away. When Elsa’s hand finally made contact, they both closed their eyes. Anna let out a soft whimper as her brows pressed together and she bit her lip. Every centimeter of skin Elsa touched felt like hornet stings, but Anna could only imagine that her sister was feeling the same thing.

Elsa’s next movement was so quick, neither girl had much time to prepare. Her free hand met Anna’s other cheek and they both swallowed a scream. Still neither of them pulled away. Instead, Anna brought her own hands up to cover Elsa’s.

They opened their reddened eyes, and still couldn’t help but smile at each other despite everything. Water was falling from Elsa in streams by then, and Anna’s chest heaved as she tried to ignore the pinpricks and burning in her face and fingers.

“I promise, even if it kills me,” Anna managed between pants. “I’ll keep you warm.”

“Even if it kills us,” Elsa corrected barely above a whisper. “I love you. So so much.”

Anna didn’t have to repeat the sentiment for Elsa to know it she felt the same. Their letters left no uncertain terms between them. And now they were finally getting to experience at least an ounce of the dreams they only entertained on paper. They let their eyes flutter shut again as their faces moved closer. They felt they were reaching their limits and there was no turning back now. If this were to be their final moments, they silently decided they would allow themselves at least one pleasure. And so, lips that had longed for each other for so long finally met. And as if the pain were but an illusion, the lips danced and played together, as if it was their one and only chance.

The room had been engulfed in steam thick enough to cloak their intimacy. It rolled away in wisps beneath Elsa’s door. Nearly half an hour passed before a servant’s rounds landed them in the hall to see the white clouds escaping their crown princess’s chambers.

The portly old maid pushed the doors open cautiously. Her heart nearly shot up her throat when her foot landed in a puddle of water and she saw the dress she had prepared for Her Majesty earlier that day now reduced to a crumpled, drenched mess. She screamed.

“Gerda!” The woman nearly tripped over her own feet as she caught a quick movement in the corner of her eyes. It took a few seconds for her heart to stopped pounding so quickly and for the shrouds to clear enough or her to see Elsa sitting up in her bed with a sheet pulled up to her bare chest.

“Oh m-milady! Your majesty! I thou-” Gerda did a quick curtsy, only noticing the body nestled up in the sheets beside Elsa as she came up from the dip. “A-and.. Princess Anna? Your highness,” she dipped again, obviously still flustered and confused. “The steam… a-and the water. The dre- I thought…”

“Can you get a team together to clean this up as quickly as possible?” Elsa interrupted smoothly. “I’ll spend the rest of the night in Princess Anna’s chambers as to not get in your way. Oh and can you have a message passed to my advisors,” the maid nodded. “Tell them I’m not to be disturbed tomorrow. And there will be no wedding.”

Gerda scurried off fast enough to only catch a glance at the way Anna’s arm went around Elsa’s waist, a knowing grin playing at her lips. You see the maid, as did most her age, knew that there was only one way to break a curse. She had happened across a few letters in her cleanups, so what she saw only surprised her in the moment. But even she never would have guessed… but again, there was only one way, and there is no fooling magic. She smiled as she slowed her steps, deciding that she would give them a bit more time.

#elsanna #submission #december 2020 contest #prompt: warmth

[elmidol]

Where the Body Burns - Chapter 4

Read on AO3

Read Ch.3

(Banner includes art for fic by @clumsycopy )

[Inspired by Fix Your Attitude by @kylorengarbagedump and Keeping Your Promise by @strongtwiheart ]

Chapter Summary:   Kylo Ren reflects on your reaction to his proposal while on a mission with his Knights.

Words: 4,200

Chapter Warnings: Kylo's POV; spoilers for Rise of Kylo Ren comic; violence; minor gore; brief mentions of sex

Fealty

 Preoccupations with fear and envy had dissuaded Skywalker from offering proper training; such sentiments had been a burden on his parents wherein both Leia and Han feared his power and rage, while Han Solo was jealous of the Force connection that existed between mother and son. Kylo Ren had learned to embrace the effect he had on others. Using it to his advantage, the majority of First Order personnel refrained from pestering him with idle chatter or mundane news. They were terrified—rightly so, he mused—to deliver reports even when they possessed nothing negative. TIE Pilots, though braver, were rarely foolish enough to challenge him. He had thus been admittedly caught by surprise the moment Spacedust had stood her ground while openly challenging him. Through the Force he had felt that there had been nothing malicious in those actions. It had aroused his interest, luring him to play with her. She had stared unflinchingly into the visor of his helmet as her badge burned, as it cut into her lips and as the plasma blade of his lightsaber crackled. Still all he had sensed from her was curiosity coupled with the desire to prove her worth.

 A recent vacancy in his squadron allowed him to issue an immediate transfer. To test if he had made the correct choice, Kylo had permitted her a chance to prove herself. The joy that had rolled off of her when he reached through the Force had been contagious. Hedonistic bordering on suicidal. His intention had been to ensure that she would obey his command without question; had she disobeyed, he would have been again short one squad member. A new toy obliterated, which was preferable to losing his entire squad because of an arrogant pilot in their midst. Or, worse still, to lose to Snoke if his true goal were prematurely revealed. As he had tethered her with the Force, Kylo had discovered in himself a growing desire to play with her. Someone he could chase, someone with whom he did not have to hide the extent of his powers. It was invigorating, momentarily lapsing into a possible pipe dream when he felt from her a new wave of fear. How quickly that was again replaced with her anger.

 In the present, he felt a scowl forming on his features as his mind raced through the handful of interactions shared with Spacedust. She reacted well to competition and this should have been sufficient in ensuring that she was not dissuaded from accepting the mission that he had for her. It was perplexing that of all things for her to shy away from, it was the one that should have provided her the greatest thrill and offered her a sense of honor.

 Her helmet disappeared from his mind’s eye as Vicrul’s knee hit into his thigh. Kylo shifted his head with an acknowledging grunt of the fact that the Night Buzzard had arrived at its intended destination. Kuruk set the starship down on the planet’s surface without incident though the Night Buzzard remained vocal as it was wont to do. The ship did not rely on stealth; its occupants preferred to drive fear into others in place of remaining incognito. Null Seasta was not impervious to fear, however she less easily dissuaded from opposing others due to the vast influence she had accumulated over the years. Her death had not yet been sanctioned by the Supreme leader, otherwise Kylo would have been more than pleased to deliver it.

 Kylo rose in perfect unison with Vicrul the moment the Night Buzzard touched the earth below and before the ramp had a chance to descend. The phrik scythe was clasped firmly in the Knight’s hand much identically to how Kylo had also retrieved his lightsaber hilt from its normal position on his belt. They could sense the ripples in the Force that revealed the Night Buzzard had served its purpose of arousing attention. Kuruk and Ushar had already been assigned the task of remaining behind to prevent any tampering with their ship. Cardo, Trudgen, and Ap’lek filed out of the Night Buzzard in single file then fanned out behind Vicrul and him. Kylo felt a smirk threatening to form behind his mask. He could feel the bloodlust rolling off of his Knights as they found the various life forms within the Force. The malintent that pooled from their observers merely stoked the flames of their own hunger for a confrontation.

 The crackle of his lightsaber igniting sent a flicker of memory running through his mind. 

 “Of all the pilots the First Order has to offer, do you know why I selected you, Spacedust?” Her helmet dipped slowly, nearly hesitantly though it was apprehension she was exuding. A part of her understood him, accepted the reality of her presence in his quarters. It was not for the more carnal game that they had just shared mere moments before. He examined his lightsaber, raising it before his face and turning it on. Spacedust trembled as she beheld the way it tinted his face red. “You aren’t afraid of being burnt.

 Kylo split away from Vicrul, the pair moving in opposite directions to dissuade the use of heavier artillery that might have succeeded in injuring the group. This dissection of their numbers allowed Kylo and his Knights to more easily call upon the Force as the line of rudimentary projectiles began their descent. He swiped through the air with his lightsaber, slicing through those he had allowed to come nearer. Null Seasta had never been one to care if she needlessly sacrificed others. It was all for her own amusement. Kylo wondered at the fact that she was, surprisingly, not descended from a Hutt. The first to die was impaled on the end of Vicrul’s blade as the masked warrior foolishly launched themselves out from a hiding spot. Vicrul twisted the shaft of his weapon with his wrist, cutting through sinew and bone to free his weapon of the mangled corpse that sputtered blood.

 Red stained the dusty earth, leaking towards the patches of green that were sprinkled with tiny blue flowers. The first death summoned the recklessness of the others, who surged in waves. Kylo ducked easily under the first weapon—a club—aimed at his head. As he did so, he drove the tip of his lightsaber into the abdomen of the unfortunate soul. A single booted kick sent the injured humanoid to the ground like a limp ragdoll. Kylo stopped down on the mouth that had been unleashing a scream, forever silencing the cries of pain. Simultaneously, he gripped the next combatant by the throat with the Force, tugging them and impaling them. This one he cut in two, spinning his blade so that his swing sliced through the neck of the third. There had been fifty fighters from his estimation of concentrated energy in the Force. Vicrul had dispatched two. Cardo, Ap’lek, and Trudgen had each killed one while injuring others. A third for Vicrul.

 Again did Kylo find himself basking in the thrill of the moment; a competition. He sensed the nudge in the Force from Vicrul as the Knight looked his way. Kylo caught that masked gaze with his own visor, nodded, and turned away to meet the challenge, to win it. Another flash.

 “So many have already failed.” Her hands curled into fists and her apprehension morphed into frustration that he was being so cryptic rather than spelling out his desire. “Your ashes will join theirs if you do.” Her leg muscles tensed in that moment, as though she were ready to spring. Was this a desire to run away from the challenge, or towards it? He focused harder, immersing himself in the Force to unveil this mystery. Her curiosity was potent. “Snoke will order your death if he discovers what you are doing.”

 He could not commit to this task himself, nor the ones that would follow. Should the Supreme Leader sense his apprentice’s intentions, he would begin a counterstrike. In order to eventually defeat the manipulative creature that had been serving as his Master, Kylo Ren had to learn more, had to unveil the secrets that were being kept from him. Secrets known by the late Emperor. Secrets that Snoke and the First Order had inherited. They kept them locked away in places that his Knights could not reach. Only a First Order officer or pilot would be capable.

 A concussive blast sent rock and dust flying through the air in a congestion of debris. This was another benefit of wearing a helmet, the protection that it offered. Undeterred, Kylo utilized the distraction it had been for one unmasked enemy. He killed the man with ease prior to aiming for a pair that would perish together in a single blow. Null Seasta had to be exceedingly bored to have sent out such young pawns for disposal. Trudgen was not far behind in the challenge. Cardo and Ap’lek had the least amount of kills to their name thus far for this battle, however they had caused the most damage to their surroundings. Vicrul was one death behind, though if parties mortally injured were taken into the tally, he would soon be tied. Baring his teeth behind his mouthpiece, Kylo turned to the grounded enemy and snapped his neck. Vicrul swung around, flipping him off before calling on the Force to kill the next nearest enemy.

 “It is said that Skywalker took Darth Vader’s body to the Forest Moon of Endor and burned it there. Both he and his sister have claimed to have felt Anakin in the Force—a contradiction to other tales of Jedi becoming one with the Force.” Spacedust, unsurprisingly, did not grasp the entirety of his meaning. It was a mouthful, explaining this to one without the Force. Exasperating, and yet a necessity due to the threat of discovery. “There may have been a fissure in the soul of Anakin Skywalker, of Darth Vader. To master both the dark and the light sides of the Force… I need you to investigate this.” Only with the answer could he hope to successfully surpass Snoke when the Supreme Leader had silently made it known that he was not ready to complete Kylo’s training. He never would be either.

 “Why not—”  He once more applied pressure to her tongue, stilling it. She required only a moment of reflection before it dawned on her. Spacedust’s understanding hit him with a palpable shriek. Fear, one that he had only briefly felt from her when she had been floating in space after ejecting from her TIE, assaulted her.

 Kylo knew that she had viewed him as a sort of god, a kind of devil. It had instilled in her a devotion that vanished in that moment. He had been rejected before. By Skywalker and all others. By his own parents. He swallowed the anger that threatened to seep through his entire being. Instead he held out a hand to her. “Will you join me, Spacedust?” Placing her on a level closer to his own. Instead of an answer, she had gathered up her clothing. He had allowed her to do so, observing her every move as she left, afraid. A disappointment.

 The anger that he had swallowed down in that moment bubbled forth. It sent ripples through the Force. Kylo sensed his Knights reacting, each of them giving him more breadth to include Vicrul, who as a result was sacrificing his chance at victory in the challenge. He laid open his enemies with his blade and crushed more with the Force or else his fist. Breathing heavily, more from rage than exertion, Kylo walked through the gore of the battlefield in the direction he knew Null Seasta was waiting. She would be observing them through surveillance droids and other strategically placed cameras. Snoke had on a previous occasion encouraged Kylo—admonished him for thinking otherwise—to view these encounters as a part of his training.

 When at last he conquered the obstacles that stood in his way, that positioned Snoke as being temporarily essential, Null Seasta would perish as well. This thought assisted in calming him. As his mood grew less hostile, Kylo sensed his Knights converging to rejoin him. Ap’lek was now in lead. Vicrul had claimed second in the competition of kills with Trudgen as a close third. They murmured the strategies they had employed and muttered their grievances over having lost the chance to eliminate more of their enemies. Cardo, less involved in the conversation, lingered two feet behind the others.

 The overcast sky refused to yield rain as the planet on which he had found Spacedust had been in the habit of doing. The collected moisture instead grew into a dense fog the nearer to the fortress that they drew. Silence encased the Knights of Ren. The ripples in the Force had lessened in animosity. In its stead was an alternative darkness, the malevolence which Kylo was no stranger to. Weaponry failed to power on or target any one of them. Another sign that Null Seasta was watching, had chosen to use Kylo and his Knights of Ren as toys.

 Droid and human guards alike maintained their position in silent observation of his men crossing the threshold. They required no guide and one had not been provided in any case. Humans became less distinct, morphing into cyborgs or poor excuses for some the deeper Kylo journeyed. He felt the woman’s glee. Understanding dawned upon him, his suspicions that the cyborgs had surveillance units in their optics. Null Seasta was known to punish those who failed her by removing limbs that were later replaced, never with synth skin.

 The level of opulence in Null Seasta’s fortress became gaudy and exaggerated as one left the atrium and entered the great hall. She was not a subtle braggart. Purposefully placed trophies of art—statues and paintings alike, relics of the old Empire and times before even that—were strewn in a manner that for Kylo was reminiscent of vomit. A regurgitation of collections thrust into a single that could barely contain the plethora of works. At the center was a throne embedded with gems and upon which sat the woman herself.

 Hair twisted into an intricate style and framing her face in a manner that others might have found attractive, Null Seasta refused to hide the appraising look she graced each of his Knights with. Her gaze landed on one Knight in particular, her painted lips twisting upwards into a wry grin. “Cardigan,” she purred. Kylo remembered well in those subsequent seconds that he was not the only one who wanted to ignore Supreme Leader Snoke’s orders to leave the woman alive. Trudgen considered Cardo, whose frustration had struck each of them in turn; his bloodlust had spiked worse than when they had first arrived on the planet. It rivaled that of his own, Kylo mused, the one that had prematurely ended the challenge. Null Seasta extended a hand in Cardo’s direction as though she expected him to come forth and worship the limb.

 Instead Kylo sensed Cardo turn his attention to him. Ushar had declined to be the orator at this meeting, leaving Cardo to draw the short straw. Null Seasta reveled in the chances she had to toy with the humanoid; though she was unaware of his species, she had easily deduced from his breathing tubes that he was not human during their first meeting. Of all his Knights, only Vicrul considered Null Seasta with something beyond a passing interest or pure loathing. The collection of souls that he harvested to augment his own power translated into curiosity regarding the woman’s work with her cyborgs. It was Vicrul’s actions that had sparked the dawning of realization in Kylo that Darth Vader’s funeral had been, in many respects, contradictory with Skywalker’s teachings of Jedi becoming one with the Force. If a soul could be ripped from its body with the Force, surely severing it in half was a possibility.

 Vicrul spared Cardo the indignity of subjugation by slipping Null Seasta’s hand into his own and brushing the pad of his thumb along the backs of her fingers. He dropped the limb whilst stepping backwards. Null Seasta ran her tongue across her lips. A muscle in her face twitched, something she was incapable of concealing. Kylo inwardly thrilled at the sight. “Snoke has accepted your bargain. In exchange for artifact, the Knights of Ren will eliminate your foe.”

 That was a greater insult; that he was forced into a position of protecting this woman. Kylo felt his mind wandering once more to Spacedust. She was bold without being impertinent; she was in awe of him and his power. Null Seasta, on the other hand, wanted to be worshipped by him. Cardo curled his hands into fists at his side, the leather of his gloves creaking audibly. It drew a renewed grin from Null Seasta.

 “Excellent,” she said, steepling her fingers in front of herself. She had grown her nails since last they had seen her in person. A reminder that she had at one point proposed raking them down his back while he fucked her; not that he had touched her or ever would. His silence at her suggestion had at the time been the catalyst for her seeking affection from his Knights as a means of making him jealous. “Master Ren?”

 She wanted him to speak. Kylo tilted his head instead, enough to where his cowl and helmet would not obscure the action from her view. A second facial twitch. Cardosurreptitiously  reached out with the Force, brushing along the periphery of his attention to acknowledge the satisfaction he was receiving from Kylo’s resolve. He considered, when the time came, allowing Cardo to kill this woman instead while he sat back and observed. Perhaps he would sit upon her throne while she screamed and wept—Cardo would not show mercy with a quick death.

 Oblivious to these considerations, Null Seasta touched two fingers to strands of hair that outlined the side of her face. She twirled the captive pieces while meeting the gaze of his visor. “I forgot that you are limited on words.” She was not wrong, and yet the conflagration of hatred in him was more hungry than ever for her tongue. Kylo had spent what limited patience he had in speaking on Spacedust then his Knights. This woman deserved nothing. Her brow furrowed in faux consternation. Null Seasta waved one of her cyborg creations forward.

 The summons brought forth a being that might once have been beautiful by holodrama standards. One eye, the remaining eye, was a deep brown. It landed on his face alongside the dimly lit yellow optic. Her mandible, too, was replaced with durasteel. Cardo was enthralled by the cyborg; it was only natural given his affinity for repairing and designing gear worn by his fellow Knights. As the cyborg warbled out a madame, it coughed; organs, too, were frequent casualties to Null Seasta’s desire to punish others. Vicrul fingered his weapon. The muscles in his shoulders had tensed at the cyborg’s approach. They had each of them sensed it, the flickerings of Force sensitivity that existed in this creature.

 “Show them the recording.” Null Seasta clapped her hands together in unison with giving the command. There was no need for this display; Supreme Leader Snoke had been thorough in providing Kylo Ren and his Knights the details of their mission alongside showing the portion of the recording that had been sent to him. It was but another means of attempting to manipulate him into speaking.

 The dim light of the yellow optic brightened and turned blue, projecting a hologram that was displayed on the floor between Trudgen and Ap’lek where they could all watch. Instead of paying the recording heed—it was nothing more than the promise of death should Null Seasta refuse to yield a portion of her power to another of the planet’s powers that be—Kylo explored his memory of Spacedust. Her refusal to answer him, to accept his hand, was a fresh wound. It clashed with the desire he had sensed within her to please him. She had been bold in calling him an ass while tucking away his cock.

 He shoved that thought quickly aside, the phantom sensation of her touch sending a pulse through his veins. She had made him feel more powerful than he knew himself to be. Through her brashness and hero worship, Spacedust had given him a glimpse of life beyond Snoke. The knowledge that she would have died had she not obeyed him, the very fact that she had to trust him, all of it had been invigorating.

 In place of arousal, his hunger was one for blood as he strategically replaced Spacedust’s visage with Null Seasta’s. There would be no mercy for her nor her enemy, who was a thorn in Kylo’s side at present. It was admirable that someone had been bold enough to declare war on her. Yet foolish. He should have taken her by surprise.

 Tai’s neck snapped, causing Kylo’s heart to stutter in surprise. He had known that the young man he had trained with would perish, and yet…

 Ap’lek took a single step in retreat from the hologram, which was in the process of coming to an end. The nearer proximity brushed along Kylo’s consciousness in a way that informed him the other Knights were aware of the shift in focus. Killing Ren had been the precursor to his ascension as Master of the Knights of Ren. Besting Snoke was the next logical step. He wondered how the Knights of Ren would fare against the Praetorian guards that the Supreme Leader kept at his side. Ap’lek set the upper portion of his weapon’s shaft against his shoulder. Its metal tip hit with a resounding tink on the floor.

 “He’s not unfamiliar with the Force,” Null Seasta said in the subsequent quietude. A puff of air escaped through his lips. It crackled along his vocoder and offered Null Seasta a small victory. She greedily lapped at it, straightening her posture and pushing her chest forward. Vicrul’s helmet dipped towards her lap instead. Kylo knew that his Knight was imagining slicing up the length of her body. This was a common game for them, to determine how many openings she gave to kill her. This arrogance did offer more than passing entertainment. He and his Knights studied such behavior to later implement the strategies on other foes. Snoke, too, had a habit of giving openings, or pretending to. None were so obvious as what Null Seasta did next by reclining in her throne and tilting back her head to expose her throat. “He knows how to counter it.”

 Trudgen set his vibrocleaver at a different angle. “There are other ways to kill a person.” The Knights were growing just as frustrated as he was that Null Seasta was needlessly dragging things out rather than divulging the location of their target. She pinched her lips together. Her desire to be worshipped was mounting.

 She wants us to praise her for discovering the artifact, he noted. It was not going to happen.

 “It is not only killing him that concerns me,” she began, irritation dripping into her tone. Too bold, viewing herself as superior to the Knights of Ren. “A counterstrike may include going around your enemy. Splitting your forces and killing your target as well as those she sends to protect her.” A scenario he, too, had considered. Kylo had entertained the notion on the way to the planet. Returning for the artifact to find Null Seasta dead. It was one mission failure he would not have been entirely opposed to if not for having to put up with Snoke’s reprimands that would be sure to come. Null Seasta smiled widely. “Perhaps Cardigan can remain here with me.”

 Kylo turned his head in perfect timing with Cardo, the pair meeting one another’s stare. If given the command, Cardo would obey. You’re an ass, Spacedust’s voice said. “We’ll take our chances.” A minor victory for the woman, whose face contorted in unadulterated rage at his response. The Knights of Ren did not question his orders while on missions; they were among the few who were not replaceable pawns, and he would give them no reason to change their allegiances.

 “You’re an ass.” The words echoed through the chamber as Kylo and his Knights turned to leave in pursuit of their target. 

 He paused in his steps. The words sounded better spilling from the lips of his new TIE pilot. Kylo fingered the hilt of his lightsaber as he imagined the delectable sounds Null Seasta would make if he seared her tongue with its blade. That mental image, too, paled in comparison to the sights provided by Spacedust. Her staring defiantly at him as the ID badge burned away, taking her name with it. His lightsaber inside of her as she squirmed on his lap. In that moment he knew he would convince her to join him, even if only to fuck her after he killed Snoke and Null Seasta with the weapon that had been inside of her.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x you #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren smut #kylo ren fanfic #wherethebodyburns

[thewayofthetrashcompactor]

November 2019 Empire Magazine The Rise of Skywalker Article Transcription

IT ALL STARTED with a Jane Campion retrospective. The Lincoln Center in New York was entering night two of an in-depth celebration of the Kiwi filmmaker’s work when, during a sold-out screening of The Piano, one member of the audience received a text message. He then received another. And another. Hunched down in his seat towards the middle of the auditorium, screenwriter Chris Terrio glanced furtively at his mobile as yet another text pinged to life on his screen. It was from J.J. Abrams. Just like the last. And the dozen or so before that.

It was 10 September 2017, and several hours earlier Terrio had received the first in what would become a torrent of communication. “I’ve just signed on to Episode IX,” it read. “We’re gonna write a new script. Would you consider writing it with me?”

“He didn’t even say the words ‘Star’ and ‘Wars’,” recalls Terrio, with a laugh. “He didn’t have to. I’d been about to go off and direct a small movie, but when you hear Star Wars, everything else goes away.”

Terrio agreed on the spot, planning to join Abrams in California as soon as his schedule would allow. But the texts kept coming. Throughout the afternoon, thoughts, ideas and questions popped up one after the other; Abrams’ frantic thumbs tapping out the first seeds of story and flinging them across the country to his newfound partner. And so, with Michael Nyman’s haunting score swelling around him and a still-buzzing handset in his grasp, Terrio stood up, shuffled apologetically along a row of seats, and walked out of the cinema, leaving Campion’s Oscar darling behind.

[Above image caption: “Director J.J. Abrams, cast and crew confront Klaud, the Resistance’s newest addition, at Pinewood studios”]

“J.J. is constantly brimming with ideas and, in the very best way, he’s very impatient about them! So we just started getting into it then and there. I got on a plane to LA the next day.”

Less than a week earlier, however, Episode IX’s future hadn’t looked nearly as certain. In development for the past two years under the auspices of Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, the film had abruptly flown off the rails on 5 September, when it was announced that Trevorrow was off the project. Rumours of script disagreements circled, but regardless of the reason, Lucasfilm had a serious problem: arguably the most important film in Star Wars’ history suddenly had no director, no story and a release date drawing nearer by the day. So Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy sent up a flare to the one man she knew without any doubt could safely take Star Wars over the finish line. 

“Getting involved in IX came as a bit of a shock,” recalls J.J. Abrams. “I had completed VII, Rian [Johnson] was doing VIII, and I was not meant to do IX at all. But the opportunity to not just finish the trilogy, but to finish the story that George began -- this trilogy of trilogies -- was too compelling and too tempting to reject.”

After delivering The Force Awakens, then the third-biggest movie in history, Abrams had taken a bow and walked away, returning to Bad Robot and a pair of TV pilots he’d been meaning to write. It was here, in his self-imposed exile, that Kennedy sought him out. Sure, it was an office just over a mile from Santa Monica pier rather than the grassy bluffs of Ahch-To, and Kennedy hadn’t so much climbed 500 hand-carved steps as punched ten digits into her phone but, like a vision of Episode VII’s final moments, there she was. Unexpected. Holding out something Abrams had thought lost and daring him to take it back. 

“It’s exponentially the most daunting thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Abrams admits, eyebrows raised as if he still can’t quite believe the magnitude of the task. “But it was more exciting than it was anything.”

The director sits across from us in his suite at Beverly Hills’ Montage hotel, not far from where we last met, six years previously, when he’d just started work on a treatment for what would eventually become The Force Awakens. Abrams’ return as Star Wars’ Supreme Commander was announced just one day after Trevorrow’s departure, allaying the fears of both fans and shareholders alike: voices just a day before crying out in terror, now suddenly silenced. But with only two years to end a saga that had been four decades in the telling it was clear from the outset he was going to need some help. And so he composed a text (then several more) and sent them flying towards a movie theatre 3,000 miles away, where the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Argo was attempting to watch a film.

“I’ve admired Chris Terrio’s writing for a long time. I called on him because I knew it would be a challenge. But I didn’t know it would be quite as challenging as it was.”

[Above image caption: “Top: Martial art experts put Daisy Ridley through her paces. Above: Abrams with Oscar Isaac in Jordan”]

In a time when vast, interconnected stories have become commonplace, and breadcrumbs to the payoffs in Avengers: Endgame can be traced back ten or even 20 films, it’s hard to believe that the Star Wars sequel trilogy didn’t have its course firmly locked in before Episode VII ever left the spaceport. But, just as Abrams himself left neither chart nor compass for Rian Johnson to navigate with, so he began work on The Rise of Skywalker with nothing to guide him but his wits. It is, by Abrams’ own admission, his preferred method of working. An instinctive storyteller by nature, his impulse is to do what feels right in the moment, rather than slavishly adhere to some pre-ordained master plan. Very appropriately for a franchise so rooted in this exact philosophy, Abrams’ inclination has always been, as Alec Guinness once safely advised, to stretch out with his feelings.

“You can’t plan everything in advance -- which my ‘Revenge Of The Jedi’ poster proves,” he says. “You have a better idea and then you implement it. When I was working on VII, I’d be lying if I said I knew everything that was gonna happen in VIII and IX. I had some ideas, but we had a release date the required us to work on  VII!”

So Abrams and Terrio started from scratch. They spitballed ideas during the day, swapped rapid-fire texts at night and, piece-by-piece, set about exploring the fundamental questions this movie had to address. Not least of all the aftermath of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson, continuing Abrams’ story, had made some rather significant changes.

[Death Star section break]

[Above image caption: “Really big space dog just out of shot”]

THERE’S A WELL-WORN dramatic principle most commonly ascribed to Anton Chekhov that insists if you see a gun in the first act of a play, it must go off by act three or you’re simply wasting the audience’s time. The same, it appears, is true of dark side degenerates as, despite being sidelined in The Last Jedi, Chekhov’s Knights Of Ren will finally go off in The Rise Of Skywalker.

The Knights -- from which Kylo draws the latter part of his name -- are a nightmarish squad of enforcers who do the bidding of the former Ben Solo. A rag-tag band of thugs and killers decked in black just like their leader, though far more battleworn. Armoured in disparate styles -- one sports a cowl, one an angry welders mask, another a checkered draughtboard faceplate -- they pack a similarly eclectic arsenal, from multi-barrelled assault cannon to oversized, anime-style sword, poleaxe and a wicked-looking mace. 

Referenced so portentously in The Force Awakens and glimpsed so very briefly during Rey’s vision on Takodana, the Knights and their role in Kylo’s fall from grace were set up as a major piece of the Star Wars puzzle. That is until Johnson, who clearly didn’t share Abrams’ interest, dropped the idea, sweeping them briskly under the rug next to the mystery of Rey’s parentage and the bisected corpse of Supreme Leader Snoke. “Let the past die,” instructed Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to.” A sentiment, one could argue, that cut to the very heart of Johnson’s film.

“We thought about that line a lot,” says Terrio. “Rian did something that any good second act will do, which is create the antithesis. In The Force Awakens Luke Skywalker is a myth Rey’s obsessed with and there’s a warm embrace of the past. What Rian suggested is the past is a mixed bag and you can’t rely upon it to tell you where to go in the future. What we’re doing with Episode IX is trying to create a synthesis between those two points of view.”

And so, just as the investigation into Rey’s lineage looks set to be reopened, so too are the Knights back with a vengeance (not to mention Abrams talisman Greg Grunberg as pilot Snap Wexley). With Johnson’s tenure over, we’re playing in Abrams’ yard once more, although our suggestion that he might somehow be trying to course-correct is given short shrift.

“I never found myself trying to repair anything,” Abrams interjects. “If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII. But having worked on television series, I was accustomed to creating stories and characters that then were run by other people. If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created an you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honour what’s been done.”

And what has been done is significant. Luke Skywalker is dead, passing on his knowledge and the mantle of last Jedi to Rey; The Resistance has been all but wiped out; Snoke is gone; and Kylo Ren -- now Supreme Leader Ren -- is more broken than ever, riven by conflict through the unlikely bond he forged with Rey. Bold and decisive, Johnson’s directions changed the board entirely, his sharp turns and gear shifts delighting some while earning the ire of others.

“Any time you are telling a story that people deeply care about, there is bound to be discussion and debate,” says Kathleen Kennedy. “That is something that has always been fundamental to the fabric of Star Wars.”

For Abrams and Terrio, meanwhile, the new landscape also brought with it new possibilities. 

“Some of the most interesting scenes in The Last Jedi are the conversations between Rey and Ren,” says Terrio. “We’ve tried to pick up that complicated relationship that really has been present ever since the interrogation in Episode VII. When Ren takes off his mask, there’s a nakedness about him with Rey that he doesn’t express to anyone else. Rian developed that in fascinating ways and we’ve been able to develop it even further.”

Ren, left pointedly bare-faced by Johnson throughout VIII, now hides his face once more. It’s a development that, while not a rebuke to The Last Jedi, demonstrates the different touchstones that resonate with each director. Although, Abrams expands, reuniting Kylo with his mask is about more than just sinister aesthetics. 

“Having him be masked, but also fractured, is a very intentional thing. Like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them, and how the breaks in a way define the beauty of the piece as much as the original itself. As fractured as Ren is, the mask becomes a visual representation of that. There’s something about this that tells his history. His mask doesn’t ultimately hide him, and his behaviour is revealed.”

Ren’s temptation by the light, like Rey’s temptation by the dark, forms the spine of a moral ambiguity that Johnson build on in VIII and very much carries over to IX, bringing with is a sense that George Lucas’ more clearly defined duality might be a relic of a simpler time. Neither light nor dark, The Rise of Skywalker and its characters exist more within what could be considered the grey side of the Force -- something underscored by the tantalising footage of ‘Darth Rey’ (complete with cowl, hangover pallor and double-bladed red lightsaber) that closed Abrams’ D23 Expo footage presentation in Anaheim in August. 

“I’d rather let that one lie,” he deflects, when pressed on the subject. “But I will say that the movie has a number of things that you wouldn’t expect to have happen and you wouldn’t expect certain characters to do. There are surprises along the way.” He smiles, mischievously. “And that’s one of them.”

[Death Star section break]

[Image captions: “Top to bottom: Rey (Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and BB-8 listen intently to C-3PO (Anthony Daniels); Billy Dee Williams returns as Lando Calrissian; Joonas Suotamo, in Chewbacca’s threads, plays with his son on set.”]

THE VALLEY OF The Moon in Southern Jordan has seen its share of action. Cut into the red sandstone cliffs near Aqaba, the striking lowlands known in Arabic as Wadi Rum have been visited by both real and fictional Lawrences of Arabia, stood in for the face of Mars, been the birth place of the Alien in Prometheus, and will next year double as the eponymous desert planet in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. It’s no stranger to stormtroopers, either, having played host to the ill-fated Jedha outpost in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One. Today, though, Wadi Rum is a different part of the galaxy entirely, standing in for Pasaana: a new locale in the canon, and home to the bedouin-like Aki-Aki: a nomadic race of walrus-lie aliens with twin tentacles dangling from their maws in place of tusks. 

Pasaana, along with the nippier climes of snow planet Kijimi, is one of several new worlds visited by The Rise of Skywalker. But most importantly, it’s a place where the heroes we’ve become acquainted with over the past two films will come together at last. 

“The heart of Star Wars for me is the group of unlikely bedfellows on a breakneck adventure,” says Abrams. “And in Rise Of Skywalker it’s the biggest and most dastardly threat the galaxy has seen. The opportunity here was to have this group that has now become a surrogate family have to deal with this massive horror: the war to end all wars. Not just on the outside, but one the inside, which is to say it’s meant to be as much of a challenge personally as it is physically.”

Abrams’ war of wars has been well equipped: The First Order is stacked with new brass in the form of Richard E. Grant’s Allegiant General Pryde, neo-fascist ranks swollen by triangular-winged TIE Daggers and blood-red garrisons of newly commissioned Sith troopers, their angular crimson armour giving a fresh twist on the faceless squaddies -- much to Hasbro’s delight. The Resistance, too, will see its share of reinforcements, including Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian -- reprising the role after 36 years. Even General Leia Organa will return: the late Carrie Fisher making an appearance thanks to the discovery of unused footage that somehow fit the narrative perfectly. 

The action itself has been teased in the barest glimpses: Rey and Kylo duelling on the wreckage of a Death Star; Rebel X-Wings and blockade runners fleeing destruction; a sky bristling with Imperial Star Destroyers, their numbers great enough to block out the star.

The presence of Old Empire firepower, easily overlooked, points to The Rise Of Skywalker’s biggest curveball to date. Back in April, when Abrams showed the first trailer at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago, the reveal of the film’s title was almost eclipsed by the familiar cackle of the original Emperor echoing over those final frames. When Ian McDiarmid himself walked out to demand, in full Palpatine rasp, that the projector “roll it again”, all present lost their shit in unison. How could this be? Is he a clone? A Force projection? Did he survive that fateful plummet down the Death Star shaft” Could Palpatine have been telling Anakin the truth when he spoke of Darth Plagueis The Wise’s cure for death? Irrespective of the fine print, Star Wars’ biggest of bads is officially back in business.

“Some people feel like we shouldn’t revisit the idea of Palpatine, and I completely understand that,” Abrams concedes. “But if you’re looking at these nine films as one story, I don’t know many books where the last few chapters have nothing to do with those that have come before. If you look at the first eight films, all the set-ups of what we’re doing in IX are there in plain view.”

The sheet scale of the task he’s undertaken cannot be overstated. Star Wars has been, by far, the most enduring and influential story of the modern era. Having to put the capstone on a saga that has shaped both childhoods and adult lives for several generations is something neither Abrams, nor producer Kathleen Kennedy, looking ahead to what the future holds for Star Wars, take at all lightly. 

[Above image description: “Is it time for now Supreme Leader Ren (Adam Driver) to fulfill his destiny?”]

“We don’t have a crystal ball,” says Kennedy. “We tried to look at Solo and see if we could do two movies a year, and we found, ‘Hmm, that’s not going to work.’ So we backed off of that a little. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think about lots of different stories. That's the exciting thing about this universe.

“It’s been an honor to inherit and continue this iconic saga that has touched audiences for so many years, and we feel the weight of that every time we set out to tell these stories.”

The wider universe will, of course, live on. Whether through The Mandalorian on TV, or all-new movie sagas currently in development by Johnson and Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. But for the core story, what for so many people is Star Wars, the final destination is now in sight. 

“I’ve always loved the start of something,” says Abrams, “because of what it promises. Endings are hard. A great ending not only needs to honour everything that’s come before but, whether it’s a novel, a series or a film, you want to have it feel like it could end no other way.”

And so it comes back to feeling. In a world of meticulously planned franchises and strategic, multi-phased rollouts, Star Wars, as its core, has always trusted in The Force. Abrams had not expected to be here, had not expected to finish this tale. But now, as he places the final pieces of the puzzle, he feels like it was always meant to be. There’s a symmetry to him being the one to deliver The Rise Of Skywalker, just as there is in the fact that, faced with this near insurmountable challenge, his impulse was not to assemble story groups or worry about the top-down view, but to switch off his targeting computer, let go his conscious self and act on instinct. 

“This story is alive, and you have to listen to it,” he says. “When you land on something that gives you the chills, that’s the only way you know if it feels right. You can deconstruct it all you want and try and make sense of how you found it, but somehow it finds you.”

He pauses, reflecting for a moment. “I don’t know how to explain it. Just the way I can’t quite explain how we had this footage of Carrie that we’re using. You can say, ‘Oh well, it’s just luck, it just happened to be,’ but it feels like something else. And I neither can nor want to explain any of it.”

Just as every saga has a beginning, so too will this one find its end. Abrams and Terrio have taken Lucas’ vision to its conclusion, and the story that began on 25 May 1977 will end on 19 December 2019.

“It’s been a pretty crazy ride,” reflect Terrio. “When I was a kid watching Return Of The Jedi on loop, I felt like I was the only person Yoda was speaking to. And then there I was all these years later, sitting in a tent in Jordan doing this film. You have this highly personal relationship to Star Wars, and then, suddenly, you find yourself right in the middle of it. That feeling is sort of indescribable.”

It’s one that, at the very least, is almost certainly worth having a movie interrupted for.

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER IS IN CINEMAS FROM 19 DECEMBER

((Thank you to users @arlath_ma and @chinchingin on twitter for their photos of the article))

Article images can be found here: https://twitter.com/arlath_ma/status/1178648719325093888?s=19

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #episode ix #star wars spoilers #kylo ren #jj abrams #chris terrio #kathleen kennedy

[love-takes-work]

The Tale of Steven - Outline & Review

The Tale of Steven is a wonderful, timeless-feeling storybook about identity, authority, and finding your own way. It's got an innovative design that requires the reader to turn the book upside-down, sideways, and right-side-up to get the whole story, sometimes all on the same spread of art and text, and as we come to find out ultimately, this "tale of Steven" really is STEVEN'S story.

We begin with White Diamond, matriarch of the Gem homeworld, setting the stage--and not only does she frame the other Diamonds uncharitably (especially the littlest Diamond, Pink), she even sets the tone by admonishing THE READER straight away, scolding us to turn the book her way to read her words. (We must turn the book upside-down to read her perspective. Very nice.)

As we listen to White Diamond tell us how ridiculous Pink Diamond is and frame her as "impossible to understand," we also see exactly why Pink felt driven to leave her home. White apparently appointed herself the authority on keeping Pink in her place, and we're treated to White's huge pale hands holding little Pink Diamond in her tiny pink throne, “right”-side-up. White's perspective is proper, and she is to be praised, you see, for understanding that Pink's desires and attributes are not worthwhile and need to be forced out of her. Pink is shown as having run away to Earth and reinventing herself as a new Gem: Rose Quartz. Suddenly, we are able to turn the book sideways and see what she's thinking too. (White does NOT approve.)

The Earth, where Rose Quartz is allowed to love herself and love her surroundings, is simultaneously called "grotesque" by White, and we're seeing the same planet through two sets of eyes. White sees Rose as "stubborn" and "absurd," while Rose just gives us an aside about not listening to White if we don't want to and giving us a choice to read the book her way. As Rose continues to depict rainbows and falling in love with a human--Greg Universe--White is getting angrier. She shrieks, "You're ruining my story!" Rose, rightly, replies, "This isn't your story."

Soon, Rose has bequeathed her Gem--the center of her being--to her half-human son, Steven, with the consequence of ceasing to be herself. Baby Steven appears with his father and Rose Quartz's three companions--Amethyst, Garnet, and Pearl. White Diamond finally abandons trying to narrate this story, escaping with a vindictive comment and an attempt to frame Rose as simply Pink Diamond hiding "inside an unwitting creature." Rose's perspective expresses that she wanted her son to experience the love and acceptance she never received. And then, Steven's perspective pops onto the scene. We can now turn the book fully right-side-up to read his tale.

As the story slides fully into Steven's perspective, Rose's hopes for him still line up on the sides of the pages, longing for him to experience kindness, to never know the awfulness she went through on Homeworld, to never have to feel the criticism issued by the other Diamonds, and to be able to tell his own story one day. Steven reflects on Rose's influence on his life, how he's heard about her and the more truth he's discovered the more everything frightens him. There are many perspectives, he recognizes. Perhaps there is more than one way to read the story.

White's perspective, upside-down now, returns alongside all this. She suggests "Pink" has come crawling back to turn the world the "right" way again, and she's puzzled by Steven's appearance, but she's determined to rescue Pink from herself by separating Steven from his Gem. Meanwhile, Steven's been wondering what his relationship is to Pink and Rose--is she inside him? Is he actually her? What's real?

But they all learn the truth when Steven's Gem reveals that he was also Steven inside there. All along, he was himself and no one else. This is, and has always been, his story, and he has been right about who he is.

Several wordless frames depict Steven's two aspects finding each other, reconnecting, and becoming one again. Newly confident in who he is and having asserted as much in the face of crushing authority, Steven declares, "This way feels right to me." The orientation of the book AND the definition of himself are the focus here, and for the first time, White begins to consider that her perspective was the wrong side up in someone else's story.

Steven closes by claiming the book as his own (writing his own name in the "This Book Belongs To" space, which is superimposed over a Diamond Authority symbol with the Pink Diamond on top instead of on the bottom). The end dedication is made out "To Trans & Gender-Expansive Kids."

To reflect on this sentiment and the rest of the book, I will say that a large portion of the Steven Universe fandom already recognized some threads of a trans allegory in the animation this is based on. Steven, though he is not specifically depicted as a confirmed trans character in the show, does not demonstrate or seem to experience toxic masculinity in association with his quest to be powerful, and has no qualms about using symbolism, iconography, and apparel that is more commonly associated in today's Western society with women and girls (e.g., the color pink, flower symbolism, protective and defensive rather than aggressive and offensive behaviors, wearing jewelry and dresses occasionally without it being a gag). His assertion that he is Steven and not Pink Diamond or Rose Quartz has many parallels with a common trans narrative--including pronouns that the Diamonds refused to respect--even though it is also its own thing since human beings do not have to defend that they are not literally their mother. 

They do, however, frequently struggle with authorities in their lives "correcting" them on who and what they are "for their own good," brushing off the seriousness of the misery it causes, and these children do find themselves forced to wear clothes, use names, and adhere to roles that do not match who they are. They even sometimes hear authorities mourn the "loss" of a different-gender version of them and accuse the child of being selfish for wanting to manifest their truth instead of being the son or daughter the parent thought they had.

It is my deepest hope that authorities like this can learn to turn the book around.

It is so important for children to learn that they ARE the authority on their identity, and while some well-meaning authorities in their lives may frame their identity as a phase or a fake, they do not have to accept this view of the world, or even that it comes from a loving place. White Diamond did not sound like a stern but caring figure to me. She sounded like a tyrant who is convinced of her own correctness, determined to gaslight and shame Pink Diamond into becoming the person SHE wanted. Love is listening. Love is nurturing. Love is seeing pleasure and pain and letting those things guide you in supporting a happy existence. Kids whose gender is complicated and young people who develop misunderstood identities need books like this to center them in their own stories and empower them to show others how to read their book.

Except for the section of the book where Steven's organic self and Gem self are separated and re-combine, the message is solid for readers who have not watched the show. But because of how important that wordless series of panels is and how much background you actually have to have to understand what's happening there, I recommend this book primarily for fans of the show who have seen "Change Your Mind" and the episodes that support it. The other depictions are more powerful and illuminating for those who have context from the show also, but the main purpose of the book can be readily understood without that background. 

If you haven't seen the show, all you need to know is that Steven is a hybrid Gem/human who has a gemstone in his human body, and it gives him superhuman powers. Gem characters generate a body from their Gem, while Steven's body is organic and presumably NOT generated from the Gem. White Diamond removed Steven's Gem from his belly, expecting Pink Diamond to take form out of the Gem. She thought his organic half was just a human that the Gem was stuck in. But instead, a Pink Steven emerged and went back to his organic self to merge again, proving that he is Steven, not someone else, through and through. And he truly loves and knows himself.

A couple other notes fans of the show might enjoy: White Diamond's hypothesis that Pink Diamond was "hiding in an unwitting creature" is really interesting--she knew what Steven was but believed he was just a normal human hosting a Gem. Interesting. White's disdain toward Yellow and Blue for "spoiling" Pink is an interesting addition to what we know about her, too. Pink is pictured standing on her hands on her throne, upside-down, which is interesting since it's both "silly" and an expression of her right-side-up perspective (since, when we obey White, we're reading the book upside-down!). White's commentary that she kept Pink in line is also interesting, considering we've seen way more of how Yellow and Blue treated her and none of that was very nice either (yet they're the "nice" ones in this story, indulging her even though we know they abused her). There's a really cute image of Rose lounging on the beach with Greg in what looks like a swimsuit. Connie is in a frame with the Gems looking through a telescope. And there's a frame with Garnet holding pink and blue butterflies.

Inventive, beautiful, moving, and so necessary. Buy a copy. Let kids turn the book around.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

#steven universe #the tale of steven #long post #trans stories #su analysis #myblog

[msbluebell]

what about a "you start war, you face consequences AU"? At the end of BE Route, Edelgard thinks have achieved her goal. But everything go wrong! First, Claude, who has survived, becomes the king of Almyra and declare war to her to the Empire . And he's VERY powerful. Also some former nobles of Alliance and Kingdom don't accept the reunification and start a rebellion with the former knights of Seiros . The peace wil not happen any soon and a lot of people die or suffer or join the rebellion 1-2

2-2. Finally, Felix has survived and becomes the feral guy and decides to avenge Dimitri (his best friend), Rodrigue (his dad) and Sylvain (his lover) by killing the black eagles one by one and nobody (even Byleth) can stop him, no matter what they do. And Byleth has not the power of Sothis anymore. They can only watch everything falling apart, while being powerless. They can only watch their friends die by Felix's hands, Claude taking back the Alliance AND the Kingdom, ect...

This is actually what would have most likely happened if the Black Eagle Route didn’t have an Deus Ex Machina ending and the Crests and God powers didn’t disappear for no reason. I have made no secret of the fact that Black Eagles is my least favorite Route (yes, I’m including Church Route in this), and the lack of actually having to reform and change the system thanks to magical convenience is one of the reasons. 

Nobles will not give up their crest fixation just because Edelgard hates crests. And without crest disappearing, it is unlikely they will take to Edelgard’s reforms. She may end up turning her own allies against her. Especially ones that don’t believe in her cause and just gave up because they didn’t want to be killed.

Also, it is a very, very, very dumb move to spare Claude in the Black Eagles Route. No matter what, he is a political opponent that proved he’s 1) very manipulative 2) very good at thinking on his feet and gathering resources. He should have died just to eliminate the potential for later rebellious uprisings, even if Byleth and Edelgard didn’t know anything about his ties to Almyra. Looking objectively at Claude’s goals and the ending of Black Eagles Route, yeah, he still has a dream of uniting Fodlan and Almyra. And unlike Fodlan, Almyra isn’t suffering from being war torn for five years. There IS a chance he’d come in take over, especially if any of his friends died in the battle. 

Point is, Black Eagles Route has a lot of potential for mess if the crests don’t vanish (which I am so fixated on. The CHURCH didn’t make the crests, so why did they disappear? I interpret Byleth’s powers disappearing because they choose to relinquish them, which is a slap in the face to Sothis btw Byleth, but why did the CRESTS disappear when the Church fell? They had nothing to do with their creation! Ugh.)

(Black Eagles, much as I dislike their Route based on their actions and lack of self-awareness, still deserved a better written ending.)

But I’m ranting. Let’s get on to the prompt with Consequences AU:

I’ve spoken in another post about how Byleth, as I interpret them, more accidentally sided with the Black Eagles than anything. It would be the same in this AU, accidentally burning their bridges when they saved Edelgard in the tomb. Then they were forced to see the path through to the end because they couldn’t go back to anyone else, and they DID disagree with Rhea and distrust the Church, so maybe Edelgard is right...?

It was foolish to hope, in hindsight.

Rhea going mad was something that they expected, but they didn’t think their own actions would be the breaking point that drove her to such insanity. And they can’t erase the image of Dimitri kneeling in the rain as an axe meets his flesh. So many of their students died...but that was just...pitiful.

Edelgard assures him that it was for a better future, that all the death and sacrifice now will mean less suffering later.

But it’s hard to look at the people suffering in the NOW and think it’s better for the future. It’s like Edelgard is so fixated on the world that will be she forgot to take care of the world they’re in, or maybe she didn’t, and the people around her just don’t seem as real to her as the people in the future she’s envisioned.

Byleth’s first clue that everything was going wrong should have been their hair and eye color returning to it’s original state.

Sothis and they...the both of them have always been one, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. They are a single entity that was separated and then made whole again. But now there is an emptiness inside of them, and the emotions they’ve developed are fast fading again. They’re becoming numb once again as they lose the part of themselves that was her, and they don’t understand why.

Soon, they even stop caring.

Edelgard insisted that it was a wonderful sign. That they pointed their blades towards the heavens and won, so her path must be the righteous path.

Byleth no longer cares enough to correct her.

Their students, the Black Eagles, frown more when they speak now. Byleth has lost their emotions, so the fondness is ebbing away again. They’re distressed as they lose their teacher, and Byleth tries to pretend they care until even that seems pointless.

They follow Edelgard because they know that’s what they decided to do, not because they care. They’re too muted now, and even guilt is slipping away as time erodes more and more of Sothis from their very being.

Then the murders start to happen.

It starts when Dorathea was found outside of the Opera House. Her body had been cut down by the singular strike of a sword, left to rot in the street by an unknown assassin. The Black Eagles mourn, and Edelgard swears justice will be paid. The guards are doubled in the city and the hunt is on.

It doesn’t keep Fernidand from dying later. His entire platoon was killed, a mix of sword wounds and Reason magic leaving behind a field of corpses. Witnesses say it was a pale, dark haired, man. Just one. With an unused lance tied to his back. Something about revenge, the witnesses say. For a father, a best friend, a brother, a sister, and a lover.

A year goes by and the guards get lazy again. It seems the assassin had reached their goal or died in the process.

Until Almyra declares war.

Byleth gives their advice as it is sought, but no longer cares enough to see to the personal welfare of the troops themselves. It’s...demoralizing, to say the least.

Then Berneddeta dies in her room, a knife left behind, the signal of House Gautier’s crest carved into the hilt of the blade. A warning.

There are no Gautiers left, though, they were all killed, so it can only be Felix, Byleth explains to Edelgard, because there is no one else left to avenge House Gautier, and Felix was a childhood friend of both Dimitri, who is dead, Ingrid, who died defending Dimitri, and Sylvain, who also died in that battle.

Edelgard puts a bounty on his head.

But her troops are too spread thin with Almyra’s sudden and unrelenting assault. With another war on the horizon, many nobles that don’t care for Edelgard or were taken over surrender to Almyra without hesitation. Fodlan is once again halved, and with it Edelgard’s forces.

Then Lindhardt is killed by Felix, this time with a note: “I’m coming for you Edelgard.”

Claude, it seems, is the leader of the Almyran forces, and declares quite happily that he’s going to make Fodlan a part of his country. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes when he says it though, and he’s barely holding back heavy disgust.

Byleth can’t help but think of how foolish they are when they have sentiment.

Byleth also advises Edelgard to surrender.

“Not you.” Edelgard begs, knuckles gripped against the table, “Of all people, you cannot abandon me.”

But the Byleth she wants is long gone. Or, actually, they never existed. But if if they had her dream killed them until nothing but a numb shell was left behind. Byleth, as the are, is under no illusions of what they are now. A walking corpse, with all that made them human faded into the back with a sleeping Goddess that was once themselves. 

Casper, who swore he wouldn’t let another one of his friends die, falls next. Felix, it seemed, has sided with Claude and is now leading the lands that was formally Faerghus. The people of the Alliance and Fearghus help rebel, throwing riots so large that they cannot be suppressed.

Petra is gone shortly after, taken by riots.

“FOR GOOD KING DIMITRI!” Cry out the people of Faerghus as they flood the streets of Fhiridad. Imperial soldiers are pushed back by people not even wearing armor, such is their numbers, and when actual soldiers come Faerghus is no longer a Dukedom of the Empire.

“FOR THE NOBLE CAUSE!” Cry the people of the Alliance as they’re lead by those still left of the Golden Deer. Hilda’s older brother has taken the helm and lead them to victory.

When they finally take Enbarr Byleth isn’t fighting. They don’t care, and watch from Edelgard’s side as they march her palace. They warn her to surrender, but she claims she’ll die first.

Felix walks in, and cuts down Hubert. Claude walks in behind him, hands on his hips, looking up at Edelgard and Byleth with a cold smile, “Did you get what you wanted?”

“I don’t want things.” Byleth answers, emotionless, “I haven’t since the power Sothis gave faded away, and I was left incomplete again.”

“Sounds awful, hope all this was worth that.” Claude answers as Edelgard’s eyes widen in horror.

“Perhaps if I could still feel, that would hurt.” Byleth answers him, “But I can only remember what emotions felt like, the experience is lost to me now.”

“...wow, that almost makes killing you feel like I’m being merciful.” Claude remarks as Felix glares from beside him, “Teach, why did you DO this to yourself?”

“I had meant to take Edelgard prisoner.” Byleth confesses, “I was simply run out and had nowhere else to go. Helping her seemed like the logical choice at the time, but it’s strange, I can’t see the logic in it now.”

Claude originally meant to take Byleth prisoner, if they could somehow be captured. Interrogate them and whatnot, allow their former students to air their grievances before they were executed for treachery. 

Not that just feels too cruel when Byleth was apparently already killed long ago.

So, when the final battle ends, Claude tells Felix to end Byleth.

Byleth never even lifts their sword.

#fe3h #fe16 #byleth eisner #sothis #edelgard von fresberg #felix hugo fraldarius #claude von reigen #Black Eagles #Black Eagles Route #Consequences AU #asks

[uomo-accattivante]

The upcoming (November) online issue is still sold out, so below is a transcription of the Empire Star Wars article:

(NOVEMBER 2019)

IT ALL STARTED with a Jane Campion retrospective. The Lincoln Center in New York was entering night two of an in-depth celebration of the Kiwi filmmaker’s work when, during a sold-out screening of The Piano, one member of the audience received a text message. He then received another. And another. Hunched down in his seat towards the middle of the auditorium, screenwriter Chris Terri glanced furtively at his mobile as yet another text pinged to life on his screen. It was from J.J. Abrams. Just like the last. And the dozen or so before that.

It was 10 September 2017, and several hours earlier Terrio had received the first in what would become a torrent of communication: “I’ve just signed on to Episode IX,” it read. “We’re gonna write a new script. Would you consider writing it with me?”

“He didn’t even say the words ‘Star’ and ‘Wars,’” recalls Terrio with a laugh. “He didn’t have to. I’d been about to go off and direct a small movie, but when you hear Star Wars, everything else goes away.

Terrio agreed on the spot, planning to join Abrams in California as soon his schedule would allow. But the texts kept coming. Throughout the afternoon, thoughts, ideas and questions popped up one after the other; Abrams’ frantic thumbs tapping out the first seeds of story and flinging them across the country to his newfound partner. As so, with Michael Nyman’s haunting score swelling around him and a still-buzzing handset in his grasp, Terrio stood up, shuffled apologetically along a row of seats, and walked out of the cinema, leaving Campion’s Oscar darling behind.

“J.J. is constantly brimming with ideas and, in the very best way, he’s very impatient about them! So we just started getting into it then and there. I got on a plane to LA the next day.”

Less than a week earlier, however, Episode IX’s future hadn’t looked nearly as certain. In development fo the past two years under the auspices of Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, the film had abruptly flown off the rails on 5 September, when it was announced that Trevorrow was off the project. Rumours of script disagreements circled, but regardless of the reason, Lucasfilm had a serious problem: arguably the most important film in Star Wars’ history suddenly had no director, no story and a release date drawing nearer by the day. So Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy sent up a flare to the one man she knew without any doubt could safely take Star Wars over the finish line.

“Getting involved in IX came as a bit of a shock,” recalls J.J. Abrams. “I had completed VII, Rian [Johnson] was doing VIII, and I was not meant to do IX at all. But the opportunity to not just finish the trilogy, but to finish the story that George began -  this trilogy of trilogies - was too compelling and too tempting to reject.”

After delivering The Force Awakens, then the third-biggest movie in history, Abrams had taken a bow and walked away, returning to Bad Robot and a pair of TV pilots he’d been meaning to write. It was here, in his self-imposed exile, that Kennedy sought him out. Sure, it was an office just over a mile from Santa Monica pier rather than the grassy bluffs of Ahch-To, and Kennedy hadn’t so much climbed 500 hand-carved steps as punched ten digits into her phone, but like a vision of Episode VII’s final moments, there she was. Unexpected. Holding out something Abrams had thought lost and daring him to take it back.

“It’s exponentially the most daunting thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Abrams admits, eyebrows raised as if he still can’t quite believer the magnitude of the task. “But it was more exciting than it was anything.”

The director sits across from us in his suite at Beverly Hills’ Montage hotel, not far from where we last met, six years previously, when he’d just started work on a treatment for what would eventually become The Force Awakens. Abrams’ return as Star Wars’ Supreme Commander was announced just one day after Trevorrow’s departure, allaying the fears of both fans and shareholders alike: voices just a day before crying out in terror, now suddenly silenced. But with only two years to end a saga that had been four decades in the telling, it was clear from the outset he was going to need some help. And so he composed a text (then several more) and sent them flying towards a movie theatre 3,000 miles away, where the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Argo was attempting to watch a film.

“I’ve admired Chris Terrio’s writing for a long time. I called on him because I knew it would be a challenge. But I didn’t know it would be quite as challenging as it was.”

In a time when vast, interconnected stories have become commonplace, and breadcrumbs to the payoffs in Avenger’s Endgame can be traced back ten or even 20 films, it’s hard to believe that the Star Wars sequel trilogy didn’t have its course firmly locked in before Episode VII ever left the spaceport. But, just as Abrams himself left neither chart nor compass for Rian Johnson to navigate with, so he began work on The Rise Of Skywalker with nothing to guide him but his wits. It is, by Abrams’ own admission, his preferred method of working. An instinctive storyteller by nature, his impulse is to do what feels right in the moment, rather than slavishly adhere to some pre-ordained master plan. Very appropriately for a franchise so rooted in this exact philosophy, Abrams’ inclination has always been, as Alec Guinness once sagely advised, to stretch out with his feelings.

“You can’t plan everything in advance - which my ‘Revenge of the Jedi’ poster proves,” he says. “You have a better idea and then you implement it. When I was working on VII, I’d be lying if I said I knew everything that was gonna happen in VIII and IX. I had some ideas, but we had a release date that required us to work on VII!”

So Abrams and Terrio started from scratch. They spitballed ideas during the day, swapped rapid-fire-texts at night and, piece-by-piece set about exploring the fundamental questions this final movie had to address. Not least of all the aftermath of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson, continuing Abrams’ story, had made some rather significant changes.

THERE’S A WELL-WORN dramatic principle most commonly ascribed to Anton Chekhov that insists if you see a gun in the first act of the play, it must go off by act three or you’re simply wasting the audience’s time. The same, it appears, is true of dark side degenerates as, despite being sidelined in The Last Jedi, Chekhov’s Knights Of Ren will finally go off in The Rise Of Skywalker.

The Knights - from which Kylo draws the latter part of his name - are a nightmarish squad of enforcers who do the bidding of the former Ben Solo. A rag-tag band of thugs and killers decked in black just like their leader, though far more battleworn. Armoured in disparate styles - one sports a cowl, one an angry welder’s mask, another a checkered draughtboard faceplate - they pack a similarly eclectic arsenal, from multi-barrelled assault cannon to oversized, anime-style sword poleaxe and a wicked-looking mace.

Referenced portentously in The Force Awakens and glimpsed so very briefly during Rey’s vision on Takodana, the Knights and their role in Kylo’s fall from grace were set up as a major piece of the Star Wars puzzle. That is until Johnson, who clearly didn’t share Abrams’ interest, dropped the idea, sweeping them briskly under the rug next to the mystery of Rey’s parentage and the bisected corpse of Supreme Leader Snoke. “Let the past die,” instructed Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to.” A sentiment, one could argue, that cut to the very heart of Johnson’s film.

“We thought about that line a lot,” says Terrio. “Rian did something that any good second act would do, which is create the antithesis. In The Force Awakens Luke Skywalker is a myth Rey’s obsessed with and there’s a warm embrace of the past. What Rian suggested is the past is a mixed bag and you can’t rely upon it to tell you where to go in the future. What we’re doing with Episode IX is trying to create a synthesis between those two points of view.”

And so, just as the investigation into Rey’s lineage looks set to be reopened, so too are the Knights back with a vengeance (not to mention Abrams talisman Greg Grunberg as pilot Snap Wexley). With Johnson’s tenure over, we’re playing in Abrams’ yard once more, although our suggestion that he might somehow be trying to course-correct is given short shrift.

“I never found myself trying to repair anything,” Abrams interjects. “If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII. But having worked on television series, I was accustomed to creating stories and characters that then were run by other people. If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created and you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honour what’s been done.”

And what has been done is significant. Luke Skywalker is dead, passing on his knowledge and the mantle of last Jedi to Rey; The Resistance has been all but wiped out; Snoke is gone; and Kylo Ren - now Supreme Leader Ren - is more broken than ever, riven by conflict through the unlikely bond he forged with Rey. Bold and decisive, Johnson’s decisions changed the board entirely, his sharp turns and gear shifts delighting some while earning the ire of others.

“Any time you are telling a story that people deeply care about, there is bound to be discussion and debate,” says Kathleen Kennedy. “That is something that has always been fundamental to the fabric of Star Wars.”

For Abrams and Terrio, meanwhile, the new landscape also brought with it new possibilities.

“Some of the most interesting scenes in The Last Jedi are the conversations between Rey and Ren,” says Terrio. “We’ve tried to pick up that complicated relationship that really has been present ever since the interrogation in Episode VII. When Ren takes off his mask, there’s a nakedness about him with Rey that he doesn’t express to anyone else. Rian developed that in fascinating ways and we’ve been able to develop it even further.”

Ren, left pointedly bare-faced by Johnson throughout VIII, now hides his face once more. It’s a development that, while not a rebuke to The Last Jedi, demonstrates the difference touchstones that resonate with each director. Although, Abrams expands, reuniting Kylo with his mask is about more than just sinister aesthetics.

“Having him be masked, but also fractured, is a very intentional thing. Like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them, and how the breaks in a way define the beauty of the piece as much as the original itself. As fractured as Ren is, the mask becomes a visual representation of that. There’s something about this that tells his history. His mask doesn’t ultimately hide him and his behaviour is revealed.”

Ren’s temptation by the light, like Rey’s temptation by the dark, forms the spine of a moral ambiguity that Johnson built on in VIII and very much carries over to IX, bringing with it a sense that George Lucas’ more clearly defined duality might be a relic of a simpler time. Neither light nor dark, The Rise Of Skywalker and its characters exist more within what could be considered the grey side of the Force - something underscored by the tantalizing footage of ‘Darth Rey’ (complete with cowl, hangover pallor and double-bladed red lightsaber) that closed Abrams’ D23 Expo footage presentation in Anaheim in August.

“I’d rather let that one lie,” he deflects, when pressed on the subject. “But I will say that the movie has a number of things that you wouldn’t expect to have happen and that you wouldn’t expect certain characters to do. There are surprises along the way.” He smiles, mischievously. “And that’s one of them.”

THE VALLEY OF The Moon in Southern Jordan has seen its share of action. Cut into the red sandstone cliffs near Aqaba, the striking lowlands known in Arabic as Wadi Rum have been visited by both real and fictional Lawrences of Arabia, stood in for the face of Mars, been the birth place of the Alien in Prometheus, and will next year double as the eponymous desert planet in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. It’s no stranger to stormtroopers, either, having played host to the ill-fated Jedha outpost in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One. Today, though, Wadi Rum is a different part of the galaxy entirely, standing in for Pasaana: a new locale in the canon, and home to the bedouin-like Aki-Aki: a nomadic race of walrus-like aliens with twin tentacles dangling from their maws in place of tusks.

Pasaana, along with the nippier climes of snow planet Kijimi, is one of several new worlds visited by The Rise Of Skywalker. But most importantly, it’s a place where the heroes we’ve become acquainted with over the past two films will come together at last.

“The heart of Star Wars for me is the group of unlikely bedfellows on a breakneck adventure,” says Abrams. “And in Rise Of Skywalker it’s the biggest and most dastardly threat the galaxy has seen. The opportunity here was to have this group that has now become a surrogate family have to deal with this massive horror: the war to end all wars. Not just on the outside, but on the inside, which is to say it’s meant to be as much of a challenge personally as it is physically.”

Abrams’ war of wars has been well equipped: “The First Order is stacked with new brass in the form of Richard E. Grant’s Allegiant General Pryde, neo-fascist ranks swollen by triangular-winged TIE Daggers and blood-red garrisons of newly commissioned Sith troopers, their angular crimson armor giving a fresh twist on the faceless squaddies - much to Hasbro’s delight. The Resistance, too, will see its share of reinforcements, including Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian - reprising the role after 36 years. Even General Leia Organa will return: the late Carrie Fisher making an appearance thanks to the discovery of unused footage that somehow fit the narrative perfectly.

The action itself has been teased in the barest of glimpses: Rey and Kylo duelling on the wreckage of a Death Star; Rebel X-Wings and blockade runners fleeing destruction; a sky bristling with Imperial Star Destroyers, their numbers great enough to block out the stars.

The presence of Old Empire firepower, easily overlooked, points to The Rise Of Skywalker’s biggest curveball to date. Back in April, when Abrams showed the first trailer at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago the real of the film’s title was almost eclipsed by the familiar cackle of the original Emperor echoing over those final frames. The Ian McDiarmid himself walked out to demand, in full Palpatine rasp, that the projector “roll it again”, all present lost their shit in unison. How could this be? Is he a clone? A Force projection? Did he survive that fateful plummet down the Death Star shaft? Could Palpatine have been telling Anakin the truth when he spoke of Darth Plagueis The Wise’s cure for death? Irrespective of the fine print, Star Wars’ biggest of bad is officially back in business.

“Some people feel like we shouldn’t revisit the idea of Palpatine, and I completely understand that,” Abrams concedes. “But if you’re looking at these nine films as one story, I don’t know many books where the last few chapters have nothing to do with those that have come before. If you look at the first eight films, all the set-ups of what we’re doing in IX are there in plain view.”

The sheer scale of the task he’s undertaken cannot be overstated. Star Wars has been, by far, the most enduring and influential story of the modern era. Having to put the capstone on a saga that has shaped both childhoods and adult lives for several generations is something neither Abrams, nor producer Kathleen Kennedy, looking ahead to what the future holds for Star Wars, take at all lightly.

“We don’t have a crystal ball” says Kennedy. “We tried to look at Solo and see if we could do two movies a year, and we found, ‘Hmm, that’s not going to work.’ So we backed off of that a little. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think about lots of different stories. That’s the exciting thing about this universe.

“It’s been an honour to inherit and continue this iconic saga that has touched audiences for so many years, and we feel the weight of that every time we set out to tell these stories.”

The wider universe will, of course, live on. Whether through The Mandalorian on TV, or all-new movie sagas currently in development by Johnson and Game Of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. But for the core story, what for so many people is Star Wars, the final destination is now in sight.

“I’ve always loved the start of something,” says Abrams, “because of what it promises. Endings are hard. A great ending not only needs to honour everything that’s come before but, whether it’s a novel, a series or a film, you want to have it feel like it could end no other way.”

And so it comes back to feeling. In a world of meticulously planned franchises and strategic, multi-phased rollouts, Star Wars, at its core, has always trusted in The Force. Abrams had not expected to be here, had not expected to finish this tale. But now, as he places the final pieces of the puzzle, he feels like it was always meant to be. There’s a symmetry to him being the one to deliver The Rise Of Skywalker, just as there is in the fact that, faced with this near insurmountable challenge, his impulse was not to assemble story groups or worry about the top-down view, but to switch off his targeting computer, let go his conscious self and act on instinct.

“This story is alive, and you have to listen to it,” he says. “When you land on something that give you the chills, that’s the only way you know if it feels right. You can deconstruct it all you want and try and make sense of how you found it, but somehow it finds you.”

He pauses, reflecting for a moment. “I don’t know how to explain it. Just the way I can’t quite explain how we had this footage of Carrie that we’re using. You can say, ‘Oh well, it’s just luck, it just happened to be,’ but i feels like something else. And I neither can nor want to explain any of it.”

Just as every saga has a beginning, so too will this one find its end. Abrams and Terrio have taken Lucas’ vision to its conclusion, and the story that began on 25 May 1977 will end on 19 December 2019.

“It’s been a pretty crazy ride,” reflects Terrio. “When I was a kid watching Return  Of The Jedi on loop, I felt like I was the only person Yoda was speaking to. And then there I was all these years later, sitting in a tent in Jordan doing this film. You have this highly personal relationship to Star Wars, and then, suddenly, you find yourself right in the middle of it. That feeling is sort of indescribable.”

It’s one that, at the very least, is almost certainly worth having a movie interrupted for. 

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER IS IN CINEMAS FROM DECEMBER

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Il materiale di origine: Empire Magazine via Imgur

#oscar isaac #poe dameron #star wars #the rise of skywalker #daisy ridley #rey #adam driver #kylo ren #jj abrams #chris terrio #kathleen kennedy #john boyega #finn #luke skywalker #carrie fisher #rian johnson #george lucas #tros #episode ix #empire magazine

[fawsldaily]

'Same sport, different game' has long been the unofficial tagline of women's football. But as it continues to grow and in doing so moves closer in proximity to men's football it is inevitable that some distinctions between the two sides of the sport will begin to blur. 

The question of how the women's game can ensure the preservation of its elements worth holding on to, whilst simultaneously needing to attract fans outside of its bubble, is one which it has been asking itself for some time now. There is no simple answer, as demonstrated when those with the task of balancing the scales openly admit they are not sure of the best approach to take.  

For the sake of its prosperity the women's game must tap into an audience which is more accustomed to the starkly contrasting culture of men's football; something so established and ingrained it permeates through to the very society we live in as society itself filters the other way. The nearer the women's game is positioned to something so influential the more likely its norms will change as a result, but there is still opportunity to control to what degree its customs are altered. If managed correctly it should one day be possible to look back and see a positive evolution as opposed to the loss of better days. There is, however, little time to decide how the game intends to achieve the former if events of Manchester United vs Liverpool on Saturday afternoon are anything to go by. 

Many things were said about Manchester United's vocal fan base in the days before they hosted Liverpool in Leigh. Many more things have been said in the aftermath. 

The commentary during the opening minutes of the match was dominated with talk of the club's ‘Barmy Army’ fan group. It echoed the positive sentiments of a BBC article published the day before detailing the group's origin, their song book and growing attendances. A particularly audible chant during the eighth minute prompted the commentator to again commend the group and their efforts creating an atmosphere. He was seemingly completely unaware that they had in fact just finishing singing about the visiting fans being so poor they resort to eating rats.

The chant in question was that of Park Ji-sung; once a player for Manchester United's men's team. Seven years after departing the club his chant was sung at a women's team match, all due to its punchline about Scousers and poverty. It is, therefore, the perfect example of the two most likely things to be brought into the stands on the back of importing too much of a fan base from the men's game and too soon - those two being, things which are unrelated to the women's game and things which should not be present in either. Park Ji-sung's irrelevancy to a Women's Super League match is not negated just because the final line of the chant referenced the opposition, and the nature of that reference ought to mean the chant be considered unwelcome at any match at all. It is hard for Barmy Army members to justify singing this particular chant on them not yet having material more suited to the women's team when they pride themselves so much on the existence of their women's team centred song book.

The point that new fans won't initially know the inner workings of a women's football crowd is a valid one, however. It has to be expected that their contribution will likely be what they do know, which is men's football. Often perceived to be the default in any case. A common argument being made in reaction to events at Leigh this weekend by those on the outside looking in has been that if women's football wishes to be treated equally it must be prepared to have the same elements as the men's game - warts and all. Many comments read like they had been left by people resigned to accepting that abuse is part and parcel now and you can't have football without it. It is easy to understand why somebody would resign themselves to that when also in amongst the reaction were comments from others carrying the disturbing notion that the sort of chants from the Manchester United fans are not even warts but are in fact enhancing a match day experience. Mocking destitution and death (as referenced in their chant related to the Hillsborough Disaster) is not an enhancer of anything. 

It is difficult to find fault in the principle behind the argument that women's football must adopt things from men's football, when it is an argument being made in the general sense. But when made in the context of fan base attitudes and behaviours, it does not in fact need to adopt what are warts. It is impossible to convince fans not to cross a line or to come back on the correct side of a line when they do not acknowledge the existence of one. It is critical therefore that the women’s game establish exactly where the line is as early as possible.

Preventing the adoption of the worst elements of men’s football will require a robust, zero tolerance approach with input from all sides. Including the existing fan base who must play a role and be prepared to police both themselves and new arrivals. It is likely not a coincidence that the one set of fans failing to read the room, or outright ignoring it, happen to also be the set with no grounding in women's football culture because their team is only just over a year old. Whilst it is not possible to force new match goers to adapt to the differences of a women's match, a club stands a much greater chance of their fan base growing into a positive asset if new match goers can at least enter a ground and see women's football culture on display. Recognising and then taking on board the differences will largely be an education achieved through good example. 

It is a shame then that the FA spent so many years catering to children and families rather than to the young adult and adult demographic who have been responsible for setting the crowd tone to date, and so are therefore the subsection who would be most likely to successfully set that necessary example moving forward. Had more of this type of fan been targetted earlier and more assistance been given for the establishment of fan groups then perhaps there would be enough of a vocal presence at matches to offset the introduction of anybody wired to make distasteful contributions.

It would be a continued shame if that demographic were now overlooked for a second time in favour of bussing in 'ready made' fans from men's matches, when it is the case that had this demographic instead been the target audience they could by now have developed into exactly what those bussed in fans will be, but crucially minus the problematic tendencies. The ‘source from elsewhere’ approach may shortcut to higher attendances, but, just as targetting children now so there is a fan for tomorrow came at the expense of building up the fan of today, an influx of fans too contrasting with the present will come at the expense of having a desirable culture in the future.

The young adult and adult demographic who have been part of the league are also key to establishing rivalry. The more seasoned the fan and the older they are the more able they are to recount previous meetings between their team and another. One argument made for bringing in fans from outside of the bubble is that it is a step towards lively atmospheres with needle, but the fact that we so often highlight the times such an atmosphere is present proves the women's game does in fact already have the ability to create such thing - the issue is that it isn't created often enough. This is not because there is something wrong with the current fans and their methods, it is because there isn't yet enough narrative and history which are two things vital to cultivating a partisan crowd. 

The Women's Super League is only nine years old. It has also been through multiple restructures and re-licencings at the same time clubs and squads have been becoming unrecognisable from one season to the next, meaning you can divide those nine years into three or four completely different and practically unrelated eras. Going back further than a season or two takes you into a time of little relevancy to what is happening on the pitch nowadays. It is an unfair and unrealistic expectation that fans regularly create an atmosphere to rival those seen in men's football when those men's football fans are often doing so with a lifetime of meaningful past meetings to reflect on. 

Of the eight founding Women's Super League clubs, only one fixture between them could really be considered a local derby but for the first two years it did not feel like one. Only in 2013, once some of Everton's better players had 'crossed the park' to join Liverpool who had finally become competitive and the power started to swing to the red half of the city, did the Merseyside Derby have the fitting significance. Almost 1500 fans travelled to Widnes on a freezing cold March night despite inches of snow on the ground to watch a Continental Cup match. The atmosphere whenever they faced each other during that period was exactly what is required and requested. Two seasons after the derby found its feet Everton were then playing in the second division and little of the Liverpool team which leapfrogged them into being best in the city remained, causing the few meetings between the sides in the years since to not manage to spark anywhere near the same level of passion in a crowd.

If we are affording ourselves time to grow the size crowds then we must also afford the crowd time to develop an identity, practices, stories and traditions. Such things can not be manufactured or come as a byproduct of transferring fans from men's stadiums because context is what makes the occasion.

Much is said about women's football being reluctant to the culture of the game changing with the introduction of new approaches but the fans being accused of having this attitude are the same fans wishing others would join in with their singing and bemoaning when an attendance is down from the week before. They are ones doing the utmost to create an atmosphere. The are the ones most open to changes which would benefit that goal. Their perfectly reasonable hope that change come with the respected condition that lines not yet crossed remain uncrossed should not be confused with a reluctance to welcome new people. Because to confuse the two will leave the door open for new people to cross the line and justify doing so on it being unreasonable to ask that they don't.

#fawsl #fa wsl #fawsldaily original post