#intentional or a complete coincidence? who can tell with Star Wars

[riyo-soka]

Finally figured out why Crosshair’s disguise from episode 4 is stuck in my mind.

The scarf around the lower half of his face reminded me a bit of the structure of Tech’s helmet.

#the bad batch #tbb crosshair #tbb tech #and the stripe on the chin of his helmet-thing is also very reminiscent of the stripe down the middle of tech’s helmet #intentional or a complete coincidence? who can tell with Star Wars #tbb spoilers

[eijispumpkin]

On Allegory, Imperfection, and Inadvertent Subversion: A small essay about Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish and Salinger’s “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

In the story of Banana Fish, Yoshida references Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” (which henceforth shall be addressed as “Perfect Day” simply for ease of reading) several different ways, both in-universe and out. It is exceedingly evident that the character of Ash Lynx is heavily based on Seymour Glass, and one might surmise that Banana Fish is an allegorical retelling of “Perfect Day”, especially given that in the original story, Ash Lynx dies of what is arguably a “passive suicide” – that is, when faced with an injury that isn’t immediately fatal, he chooses to bleed out rather than seek help, which when framed as a suicide, parallels the much more violent and sudden suicide of Seymour Glass.

However, this surface-level allegorical reading ignores a very important variable in the story of Banana Fish, namely the counterpart to Ash’s Seymour: Eiji’s Sybil. While Ash and Seymour share many similarities (both are traumatized, troubled geniuses with partly-Irish roots who grew up in New York City), the similarities between Eiji and Sybil are very few. Eiji does symbolize a world of innocence to contrast with Ash’s world of horrors, but unlike Sybil, Eiji is an adult with agency of his own, and though he retains some of Sybil’s childlike innocence and is able to connect deeply with Ash as a result of it, Eiji’s agency and decisions ultimately change the narrative and its meaning.

That is to say, by introducing Eiji as an imperfect Sybil, one who has agency and can actually provide Ash with understanding and support of the kind that Seymour never got from Muriel or others around him (and which Sybil, being three years old, was in no way equipped to provide), Banana Fish directly subverts “Perfect Day”’s original message of cynicism in the face of a material world unconcerned with the horror of lost innocence and its resulting isolation.

To understand what this means, it’s important to first understand the meaning and context of “Perfect Day” and the circumstances in which it was written. “Perfect Day” is a story written first and foremost as a critique of American materialism in the wake of WWII; Salinger echoes the concerns of the Lost Generation before him, in a way, by really driving home the alienation from modern adult life felt by those who were exposed to the horrors and traumas of the battlefields in wartorn Europe, only to return home and find a culture completely removed from it all. Seymour Glass is a stand-in for Salinger himself—Kenneth Slawenski, in his 2010 biography of Salinger, notes that on returning from the European theater, Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”

If that sounds familiar, good, because it should! This is precisely the motif of “Perfect Day” (as well as some of Salinger’s other work featuring members of the Glass family, such as Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, which, as an aside, is a name that might stick out to Banana Fish fans. Whether this is an intentional reference or a coincidence, I can’t say for certain, but given the depth of other references within this allegory, I’m inclined to think it’s intentional).

As a quick summary for those who may need a refresher, “Perfect Day” is a story about a deeply traumatized man who feels isolated from the rest of society because of the weight of the horrors he has been exposed to. Muriel Glass, Seymour’s wife, is the epitome of this: she represents the materialistic culture that Seymour feels so alienated from, always talking about brand-name things and luxuries and upward mobility. Seymour rejects her company in favor of playing the piano for children and spending time on the beach, where he tells three-year-old Sybil Carpenter a story about bananafish, fish that gorge themselves on bananas in holes under the sea until they’re too fat to escape the entrances to these little banana dens, and then they die. Instead of dismissing this story as something bizarre, Sybil claims she sees a bananafish in the water, which endears her to Seymour, until she leaves, at which point he returns to his hotel room and shoots himself in the head.

In “Perfect Day”, this interaction (between Sybil and Seymour) is the center of a set of dualities. Sybil represents the state of childlike innocence that Seymour longs to return to, and because of her innocence, she can “understand” him in ways that the material adults like her mother or Muriel do not. Seymour’s isolation is a product of his society and the lack of support and understanding for traumatized veterans returning from war, and it shows in the way that adults his age cannot connect with him, and he cannot connect with them. This disconnect between worlds is what eventually results in Seymour’s suicide—he can fit neither in the world in which he wishes to be, nor in the one in which he must reside, and it ends in his death.

The question is, then, how does this relate to Banana Fish?

As mentioned previously, Ash Lynx is a very clear parallel to Seymour Glass. He’s a young man faced with immeasurable trauma from which he believes he can never recover, and there is a clear motif of duality in his entire character arc: his world (one of violence and trauma) versus the “normal” world (where innocent people who have “regular” lives may reside). Like Seymour, Ash feels trapped in a world he can’t escape, knowing “the truth” that he knows, about the horrors that people are capable of.

It follows, then, that Eiji Okumura is a parallel to Sybil Carpenter, who represents childlike innocence and a world that Ash longs to be part of but can’t reach. And to an extent, this is true: Eiji is sheltered and innocent, comparing real-life to TV shows and being completely unexposed to kidnappings, drugs, guns, and violence. However, there is a sharp contrast between Eiji and Sybil, one that fundamentally changes the relationship between Eiji and Ash and makes it radically different from that between Sybil and Seymour:

Eiji is an adult, and as such, he has agency of his own.

Unlike Sybil with Seymour, Eiji can make his own choices and face Ash as an equal. Where Sybil is a child who runs back to her mother after playing with Seymour at the beach, Eiji actively and consistently chooses to stay with Ash, over and over. He even explicitly tells Ash “you are not alone”, which is a huge and direct contrast to the message of inevitable, devastating isolation from “Perfect Day”. Whereas Sybil’s innocence serves as a reminder to Seymour of what he’s lost and cannot regain, Eiji’s innocence is a beacon of comfort and companionship to Ash. Eiji is someone with whom Ash can relax and be playful like a boy his own age, as noted by Max and Ibe watching them interact.

This communication and connection are present between Sybil and Seymour, but in a very different way. Seymour prefers to play make-believe and tell silly stories to kids, because he went from being a wide-eyed innocent to being traumatized and longing for a place to belong, and Sybil as a child represents what he wishes he had, while the adults around him (most notably Muriel, his wife) are a world he doesn’t understand that feels false.

This is not the dichotomy of worlds that Ash faces. Ash faces a world of trauma and suffering that he sees himself as trapped in, and a world of peace and security that he thinks is beyond his reach. Where Seymour yearns for a return to innocence, Ash yearns to escape his pain, and the combination of this subtle difference with the effect of Eiji’s agency and the narrative structure of Banana Fish results in a subversion of the themes in “Perfect Day”.

Banana Fish is a long-form narrative, while “Perfect Day” is a short story. Part of the inherent structure of a long-form narrative is character growth and development, which for obvious reasons is much less prominent in short stories. As a result, Eiji’s impact on Ash is clearly visible over the course of the narrative, and it becomes impossible to declare that Ash is firmly rooted in the world he sees himself as trapped in. By the end of the story, even Ash wavers on this assertion; although he ultimately succumbs to suicide, a narrative choice that been criticized ever since its publication, in the moments leading up to his stabbing, he does believe that Eiji is right, or at least right enough that he wants to see him one last time (this is ambiguous and open to interpretation, of course).

Why did this narrative choice spark so much controversy and outcry from fans? Not every story that ends in tragedy is criticized as poorly written for it; examples range from Shakespearean tragedies to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a film in which the entire cast dies in the climax. Yet just about all fans agree that it fit the narrative. Clearly, then, it is possible to craft a story that ends in death and tragedy but still feels well-written. What makes Banana Fish different?

I would argue that the answer lies in this imperfect allegory. By creating a Sybil-esque character that can interact with the Seymour-esque character as equals, can stay with him, and can listen to him and support him through his grief and pain, Akimi Yoshida inadvertently turned “Perfect Day”’s message on its head. The tragedy of “Perfect Day” is Seymour’s isolation. By giving Ash a warm, compassionate relationship in which he is assured over and over that he is not alone, Yoshida upturns this entirely.

Ash is led to believe in this dichotomy mostly by his isolation. He believes that since Eiji is in mortal danger as a result of being special to him, he needs to send Eiji to safety, i.e. somewhere far from him and far from the reach of those who would hurt them both. This isn’t a miscommunication issue or anything of the sort; this is Ash being afraid for Eiji’s life; Eiji isn’t averse to returning to Japan itself. Eiji is averse to returning to Japan without Ash, as he mentions when he talks about how Ash could be a model, and tells him about kami. In establishing this as a consistent tenet of Eiji’s character, Yoshida ensures that Ash is not isolated in the same way that Seymour was.

In addition, Eiji can move freely between both worlds set up in Ash’s perceived dichotomy, a motif made explicitly clear when Eiji leaps the wall to freedom and light at the beginning, leaving Ash (and Skipper) behind in captivity in the dark. Despite this escape from the world of violence and crime, Eiji returns of his own volition and stays with Ash, experiences his own fair share of horrific traumas, and still leaves in the end to return to his world. This makes it clear that the dichotomy is less stark than Ash is led to believe, unlike the repeated validation of his isolation that Seymour receives, and is another reason that the ending of “Perfect Day” is inconsistent with the ending of Banana Fish

A quick sidebar: Banana Fish has no real Muriel, but if pressed, I would posit that the closest parallel to Muriel that exists is Blanca, whose main purpose in the narrative seems to be to reinforce to Ash that he can’t escape the world he feels trapped in and longs to leave. But where in “Perfect Day” Muriel symbolized the materialism of American society after WWII, Blanca has no real established reason to be so invested in keeping Ash down, and in conjunction with the fact that despite his own traumas, he can retire peacefully to the Caribbean, his role in the story falls to pieces entirely. Where Muriel represented a lifestyle that Seymour fundamentally could not reach, thereby reinforcing his isolation, Blanca is supposed to parallel Ash to a degree, but his words to Ash do not match his actions whatsoever.

Therefore, if anything, Blanca’s assertions serve only to strike a contrast with Eiji’s (and Max’s, to an extent, since Max and Eiji both agree that Ash can escape this and they want him to heal). Moreover, Blanca’s relationship with Ash is that of a mentor and a student, a relationship that is shown to be fundamentally unhealthy, given that Blanca willingly worked for Ash’s abuser, a mafia don who he knew trafficked children. Some argue that Blanca was blackmailed into this service, but given that Blanca chose to betray Golzine at the end and work with Ash with seemingly no real provocation or change in his relationship with Golzine, this supposition seems flawed. Blanca’s assertions about Ash and his ability to forge bonds and leave his world the way Eiji does, and indeed the way Blanca himself does, are simply incorrect, and the narrative itself provides us all the tools we need to realize that Blanca is wrong, even without the extended context of a parallel to Muriel Glass.

Returning to the main issue at hand, i.e. that of the imperfect allegorical connections between Sybil and Eiji, and the dichotomy between worlds that Ash perceives, it’s clear that in creating a positive, nurturing relationship between Ash and Eiji rather than a one-off encounter, Yoshida inadvertently created a story about connections rather than isolation. Ash’s attempts to keep Eiji safe from harm by sending him home are countered by Eiji’s assertion that he only wants to go to Japan if Ash comes with him, which is a kind of selfless devotion that reaches through Ash’s isolation until he decides that he won’t try and separate himself from Eiji anymore, which is a massive blow to the dichotomy of his supposed two worlds. This is the narrative acknowledging that both worlds can coexist.

Not only this, but also Eiji, who has his own trauma—he’s kidnapped several times, shot at, drugged, sexually assaulted, attacked with a knife by a drugged friend, exposed to several deaths, shot at people in fights himself, and ultimately nearly killed by a gunshot wound—despite all of this, Eiji is still allowed to exist in the world of peace and regularity. Eiji’s innocence is sharply tempered by traumatic experiences, and he can still walk between worlds. If Eiji, Max, Ibe, Jessica, Sing, Cain, and Blanca can all experience traumas, why is Ash the only one who cannot escape? Is there some kind of magical bar of “too much” trauma, like an event horizon on a black hole?

Obviously, no.

So it comes to this: Essentially, the reason that the ending is so controversial, and why I personally believe that the open ending of the anime is an improvement to the original story, is that the allegory between Banana Fish and “Perfect Day” falls apart because of Eiji’s agency. Ash wants to protect Eiji, and to protect Eiji’s innocence and light, because he feels that it’s beyond his own reach, but Eiji forges a bond with him that is rooted in mutual respect and care, and in doing so, undoes the devastating, painful isolation that led to Seymour’s suicide. This is why Ash’s death can feel so hollow—it doesn’t follow the pattern of “Perfect Day”; after the entire story is about Ash’s bonds and those who love him unconditionally, it feels almost like a shock-value plot twist tacked on, rather than a tragic inevitability.

I don’t believe that Yoshida intended Banana Fish to be a subversion of “Perfect Day”. I believe she meant it as a one-to-one allegory, and this is why she kept the ending as Ash choosing death. However, due to the changes in themes because of the characters and their relationships, Ash is not isolated in the profound way Seymour was, and his death is therefore not nearly as impactful.

#this is 2600 words i am so fucking sorry but also im not sorry im just verbose #banana fish #banana fish meta #asheiji #ash lynx #eiji okumura

[linkspooky]

You Heroes Hurt Your Own Families

You can’t move in this world yet, so let us handle this. 

Chapter 286 shows once again the contrast between who Nana is for Deku, a helpful mentor, a guiding voice, and who she is not for Shigaraki. As you said Anon there is a good vs bad contrast in the way Nana is pictured for Deku, as opposed to the way AFO has his hand on Shigaraki’s neck. It’s a helping hand for Deku, a violent, controlling hand for Shigaraki. 

This is recurring imagery. Deku often receives help, whereas again and again Shigaraki is hurt. The irony being here that Nana Shimura is responsible for Shimura Tenko, and not Deku. Deku receives almost everything that Shimura Tenko was owed, from the people who were responsible for both Kotaro and later Tenko and chose to neglect that responsibility. Deku receives help when he needs it, and Shimura Tenko has never received the help he needs that’s the difference between the two. It all goes back to Shigaraki’s phrase and how that relates to Nana Shimura. 

“You heroes hurt your own families just to help complete strangers.”

1. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Horikoshi obviously takes inspiration from Spiderman. The character Koichi Haimawari is modeled after him (he climbs up walls like Spiderman and his alias is “The crawler” get it like... a bug... like a bug man... like a spider man). (Even though Spiders are technically arachnids). 

Deku’s origin story also has its parallels to Peter Parker’s origin. When Stan Lee first created the character it was unheard of to have a hero turn out to be just a normal kid. The entire concept behind Spider Man is Peter Parker is not someone chosen by destiny like Super Man, or someone propelled by tragedy like Batman. He is for all intents and purposes a normal new york teenager who you could find anywhere, who suddenly had all this power thrown on him. All Might even explicitly says this: they weren’t chosen ones. 

Peter Parker is an average kid who suddenly has all of this power thrown onto him by completely random circumstance. He didn’t do anything to earn it. A spider just bit him, and now he’s stronger, faster, and can climb walls. The same way that besides being quirkless, Deku was just kind of a normal, not-special kid who just happened to come across All Might one day. 

The point of making Peter Parker a normal person is that he also reacts normally to getting a whole bunch of power out of nowhere. Most people are not good or bad, most people are just reacting to circumstances. Peter’s first reaction is to go on a power trip. He uses his powers selfishly, only for himself. 

Once again why would Peter Parker’s first response to being given super powers be to use it for other people? He’s kind of a lonely kid, he’s bullied at school, he’s used to feeling weak. He’s not super man, and not bat man so he really has no reason to care enough about other people to fight for others. 

Then, Peter Parker lets a robber go he could have stopped. The reason he lets this robber go is because, once again, it doesn’t really affect him. The robber then runs out of the building and escapes. By pure chance he runs into Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben, unlike Peter, sees a man running away with all that money and tries to stop him. He fights, and then accidentally gets shot by the robber’s gun. Peter finds his uncle dying in the street. 

Uncle Ben tells him: With great power, comes great responsibility. 

It doesn’t actually matter that there’s no way Peter could have known the robber was going to shoot Uncle Ben. It’s a story. It’s a story where the events happen in the way they did because there’s a point to telling the story that way. The point being that, Peter Parker wanted power without responsibility. 

He wanted to have all his cool new super powers, but he only wanted to use them for himself and not other people. 

However, there will always be consequences to your actions. You are responsible for all of the consequences both intentional and unintentional. That’s the same responsibility that Peter was avoiding. 

Until that point, having super powers was just a fantasy, a power trip. Peter did not want to take responsibility, until Uncle Ben died and suddenly he realized there are real consequences to his actions. That’s why he has to choose them, carefully, responsibly. 

The story wasn’t punishing Peter for not being able to save everyone in the world, or not being perfect, it was punishing Peter for not taking any responsibility for his actions. 

Power without responsibility is dangerous. Because it quickly turns into a power trip like the one that Peter was on. 

What Kotaro, and then later Shigaraki both assert by this phrase is that heroes fail in their responsibilities. The question Shigaraki is acting is how can people who can’t even act responsible towards their own families be responsible for the lives of other people? 

As I’ve said above and plenty of times in the past. People are not good or bad. People are just people, reacting to circumstances. You aren’t responsible for circumstances but you are responsible for your reactions. This is also true for abuse. People tend to have a black and white view of abuse. That it’s a bad thing done by bad people. Perfectly good people, are capable of perpetuating abuse because it’s not an individual moral decision it’s a reaction to a cycle.

A lot of people want to demonize Kotaro in order to put Nana’s actions towareds him in a better light. However, as someone who dislikes Kotaro but at least understands him I will say this. 

What Nana did to him was an abuse. Kotaro did not ask to be born. Nana was the one who made the decision to bring him into this world. She is the one who made the decision to be a hero, and start a family at the same time. However, when it came time to make a choice she couldn’t choose Kotaro.

It was a pressured choice, it was a forced choice, and Nana never intended for Kotaro to be hurt but you are still responsible for your choice, both intended and unintended consequences. 

Neglecting the child you’re repsonsible is abuse. It’s abuse as bad and as insidious as hitting and punishing a child. In both cases, a child is not receiving what they need in order to grow up, from the people who are responsible for raising them. 

And Abuse, cycles. It cycles because most people are just people reacting to circumstances. Late into his life, Kotaro is still reacting to his mother’s abandonment. He abuses Tenko. Tenko becomes the scapegoat of the house, he receives the blame. He gets labeled the problem child of the house, when really what’s happening is that Kotaro isn’t acting responsibly, isn’t acting properly as a parent. The reason Tenko gets blamed is because Kotaro has all the power in the house, but is not held responsible by the other people inside the house. 

See, these ideas of power and responsibility coincide with one another. When characters are given power, but not held responsible for that power we see the result is abuse. Both in the small domestic disputes, and the nature of heroes themselves. 

The question then becomes is someone who fails on their most basic level of responsibility as a parent, capable of acting responsible as a hero? 

The criticism that Dabi, Twice, Shigaraki all levvy at heroes again and again is that they want power, but they don’t want responsibility for that power. 

It’s not about saving every single person that needs saving. It’s not about holding heroes to inhuman standards. It’s that heroes fail at basic responsibilities time and time again. Heroes, are neglectful. Heroes have all of the power in society, but are almost never held responsible for their actions. 

A lot of the responses I receive is that: You don’t understand that heroes are flawed human beings. No, I understand perfectly. It’s exactly because heroes are flawed human beings that they need to be held responsible. Peter Parker is not a good person, because he always saves everyone and is always perfect. Peter Parker is held responsible for his actions. He’s continually fighting to try to be responsible and accept the consequences of his actions. Heroes choose to pretend not to see the flaws inherent in society, and then choose to sweep those things under the rug. 

Do you want evidence of this? 

How about every single time a villain points out a flaw and then the heroes just ignore it and go “Heroes never give up!” 

Consider how many characters, including Bakugo just want to become heroes in order to defeat villains, with saving people as an afterthought. There’s a reason I use the word “Power Trip” because it’s precisely what Bakugo is on. 

I’m not saying Bakugo is a bad person. I am saying Bakugo is like Peter Parker. He’s been handed all of this power, this really really cool super power, and he thinks suddenly it makes him special and he gets to do whatever he wants with it. 

Peter Parker was playing around with his super powers. Heroes in Hero Society play at being hero, without really attending to the responsibilities of a hero. 

Nana Shimura failed at her responsibilties. 

Not only that but she continues to fail at them. Now, I know Nana is sanctified by canon as a good hero. However, we have heroes who their failures of responsibility to their families also leak out into their work. Endeavor treated his family violently. Endeavor, during his job, acts violently and without impudence to the crimminals he is fighting against. The lack of responsibility shown in the way he treats his direct family, also shows up in his work as a hero. 

2. Nature vs Nurture

There’s an idea that scapegoats children for their abuse. That children who come from bad families, act bad because it was in their nature to be bad. I’m going to quote a tweet chain. It’s about star wars. Please don’t get on my case about this, I don’t care at all about the wars in the stars. [@pawel_luki]

Like I said, I really don’t care if you like or dislike Kylo Ren. I think the person who tweeted this makes a point regardless of their opinion of Rylo Ken in the way children are treated. It’s always the narrative that the “Parent did the best they can” and therefore the naughty child chose to be this way. 

It’s a recurring argument about Nature vs Nurture. We see this pop up exactly in regards for Shigaraki. It’s a bad argument because literally the only point of this argument is to take responsibility away from the parents and put it on the child instead. 

I’m not using this to say that abuse victims aren’t responsible for their actions. Both can be held responsible at the same time. Nana is repsonsible. Kotaro is responsible. With that being said we continually see this argument of nature vs. nurture come up in regards to Shigaraki. 

Rikiya Yotsubashi uses the fact that Shigaraki was born with a quirk that destroys things, to imply that he must have wanted to destroy, that he was born that way, with a destructive, awful personality. 

In literally the same chapter we see evidence that Shigaraki was nurtured to be that way by AFO. That Shigaraki was told over and over again to never let himself heal, to exist in a volatile state. 

Shigaraki is who he is as a result of nurture. He was moulded to be this way. We wouldn’t go extensive lengths into Shigaraki’s backstory if that was not the point. Not only that but Shigaraki’s foiling with Deku proves that his nature isn’t violent.

His nature is very much like Deku’s. He is sensitive to others, sympathetic, and wants to be a hero. In fact, he even has Deku’s tenacious nature of sticking to his dream of becoming a hero even in a household that forbid it. If you want to argue about who Shigaraki naturally is, then look at Tenko. This is who Shigaraki was, outside of violent abuse. When violent abuse is done to him, Shigaraki becomes violent. 

Deku also, becomes angry and violent when exposed to violent circumstances. It’s not because they are good or bad. They are people reacting to different things. 

By nature, Deku and Shigaraki are very sympathetic, sensitive kids. By nurture, seeing the violence around them, seeing violence hurt their friends and family, they can be made to become violent. 

That is the point of the foiling between Shigaraki and Deku. However, as I said there is a tendency to use the nature vs nurture argument to relieve parents of responsibility towards their children. By painting a child as bad by nature, then the parent is now a good parent who did their best. 

Nana is not a good mother who did her best. 

Nana made mistakes. However, I would express that I’m not even upset at Nana for making a bad choice in bad circumstances. Nana, Gran Torino, they continually choose this behavior that shifts responsibility away from their choice. 

Making the wrong choice is only human. However, has Nana taken responsibility for her choice? No. Gran Torino and Nana both continually choose to avoid responsibility by pinning all the blame on Shigaraki himself. 

Shimura Tenko is the unintended result of Nana’s decision to abandon Kotouarou. However, you are both responsible for the inteniontal and unintenitonal cosequences to your action. This is a story and stories have consequences. 

Shigaraki being kidnapped by AFO is the same kind of thing as Uncle Ben being shot by a random robber that Peter let go. Nana is responsible for it, because the story is HOLDING Nana repsonsible for it. 

It’s once again this idea that heroes have power without responsibility. Nana continually chooses her role as a hero over her family again and again. We see Nana express these words to Kotaro. I want my family to be happy.

However, her actions contradict those words. To Nana her heroic legacy is more important than the family she left behind. She always chooses the idea of heroism, over her real family. If the choice to abandon Kotaro was to protect him from AFO then why doesn’t Nana care about Shigaraki, who not only was kidnapped by him but suffered lifelong abuse at AFO’s hands. 

Nana, and the people around Nana continually choose Nana’s heroism, and her legacy as a hero, over her family who she was actually responsible. Over Shigaraki who is suffering right in front of them. Because once again. Heroes neglect their actual responsibilities like... all the time. Heroes not being responsible to their families is just a metaphor for the way Heroes continually act in hero society at large. People just want to play hero, people want to pretend at goodness, without actually having to take repsonsibility for the consequences of their actions. 

So, this is why we get the shared symbolism between Deku and Shigaraki. Nana is a help to Deku. Nana is a hurt to Shigaraki. 

It’s because Nana continually chooses over and over again to help the boy who inherited her heroic legacy, rather than the grandson she is actually responsible for. 

Is Nana responsinble for saving Shigaraki from All for One? 

Um... 

Why wouldn’t she want to? 

If Nana wants the best for her family. If Nana wants her family members to be happy, then why wouldn’t she want to help Tenko be free from the hands of his violent abuser who just also happens to be her arch enemy? 

All Might showed up to save Deku when he needed it. Nana showed up to save Deku when he needed it. However, Shigaraki has always gotten the opposite response. 

Deku is told he can be a hero. Shigaraki is rejected. 

Nana is so wrapped up in her idea of heroism, she sees Shigaraki literally being strangled by her arch enemy and doesn’t like... react. Like, maybe she’ll react next week. I hope she reacts next week. But, I kind of doubt it. That’s not how the story has gone so far. I hope to be proven wrong. 

The point being that Shigaraki is not a bad person by nature, but by nurture. He is who he is, in reaction to all of these circumstances. I hope what this is all leading to, all the similiarites between Deku and Shigaraki is that.

Deku can then realize how much worse Shigaraki has had it than him. 

Deku sees Shigaraki’s mentor strangling him, controlling his body, abusing him, while at the same time somebody immediately comes to give Deku the help he needs. 

Deku has in the past realized he’s lucky to be where he is, blessed to be surrounded by people who have helped him when he needed it. 

I hope what this leads to is a moment of character development for Deku. For him to realize not only that there are people who haven’t gotten help like he did. Not only that, but that he can be the help they didn’t receive until this point. That because Deku got help when he needed it, he can pay it forward, be the help to other people who need it as desperately as he once did. 

If Shigaraki is this way because he hasn’t received the help he’s needed from his family, the ones he needed it from, then perhaps Deku will be the one to help him in the end. 

#tenko shimura #nana shimura #afo #midoriya izuku #kotaro shimura #shimura household #mha meta #my hero academia meta #my hero academia theory #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki meta #deku

[mst3kproject]

The Ship of Monsters

Check me out, I’m being topical!  I had another review almost finished for today, but when I saw the news I knew I had to set that aside and find a movie about life on Venus.  This one is a ridiculous Mexican film starring Lorena Velazquez from Samson vs the Vampire Women (looking only slightly less like Cher) and one of those amazing cardboard robots you only get in the very worst of late 50’s and early 60’s sci-fi.

An atomic war on the planet Venus has killed off all the males, so an expedition is sent out in search of replacements, consisting of a native Venusian named Gamma, her Uranian navigator Beta, and their robot Tor.  After promising the Empress that they will bring back only the most manly of men, they wander the solar system a while collecting creatures with penises before an engine problem forces them to land on Earth.  The first human they meet there is Laureano Gomez, a singing cowboy with a well-earned reputation for telling tall tales.  One might assume one could predict the rest of the movie from there… but then Beta turns on Gamma and reveals that her true mission all along was to conquer a planet to feed the vampires of Uranus!

I gotta say… I did not see that coming.

The Ship of Monsters is supposed to be a comedy.  It’s seldom funny when it’s trying to be, although it mercifully avoids being the kind of desperately unfunny a lot of bad comedies are… possibly this is because it’s in Spanish, and by the time I’ve realized something is stupid there’s another subtitle to distract me. The jokes, such as they are, are pretty standard.  Tor the robot was created by an alien race, who were aware of Earth but never bothered exploring it because they thought the inhabitants weren’t very intelligent.  Laureano is in the habit of telling ridiculous stories to his drinking buddies, so of course when he claims the Earth is being invaded by space monsters they don’t believe him.  That sort of thing.  The movie is much funnier when it’s just showing us absurd situations, but to nobody’s surprise, The Ship of Monsters is at its funniest when it’s trying to be serious.

This hilarity comes in many forms, covering just about all the possible bases for a dirt-cheap 1960 sci-fi film.  We have spaceship sets made of cardboard, covered with buttons that don’t actually press and levers conveniently placed so people can bump into them during fight scenes.  We have Tor, with his tin can body that’s always a little dinged up but never in the same places, giving us clues as to what order the scenes might have been shot in.  He also has wiggly spring antennae and makes a little whirring noise every time he moves. We have space babes in silver bathing suits and glittery high heels.  Vampire-Beta, sporting plastic fangs that look like they came from the bottom of a cereal box, could be the female counterpart to the guy from Dracula vs Frankenstein, and the puppet used to represent her in flight is nearly as bad as the one from The Devil Bat.

The ‘monsters’ of the title are a bulging-brained Martian prince, a scaly cyclops, a spidery creature with venomous fangs, and the mobile skeleton of what appears to be a *damn worwelf (he tells us that his race has Evolved Beyond Flesh... apparently not Beyond Bones, though).  The costumes are all terrible, particularly the warwulf puppet, whose backbone extends into his mouth and who has to be carried around with his feet dangling in any shot that’s not a close-up.  It’s nice, though, that a little imagination went into them, and somebody gave a bit of thought to the idea that a monstrous appearance is relative.  The Martian tells Beta that he admires her ambition and might even marry her if she weren’t so ugly by his planet’s standards.

At the end, naturally, this alien invasion is defeated by Laureano, his twelve-year-old brother, and a cardboard robot, while Gamma just stands around and screams.  With a movie like this I expect nothing less.  The denouement contains my favourite intentional joke in the whole thing, in which Gamma stays on Earth with her True Love, and Tor the robot takes his, the Jukebox, back to Venus with him!  Tom Servo would have given a speech to congratulate the happy couple, and I can just see him breaking down into happy tears before he got five lines in.

(The wirwalf skeleton is not present at the climactic fight, by the way… no explanation is offered, and I strongly suspect that they broke the puppet trying.  I rather enjoy this omission, because it lets me imagine him getting lost or maybe buried by an enterprising dog, and finally finding his way back to the landing site only to learn that they’ve left without him.)

I called Laureano a cowboy but he only has one cow.  Her name is Lolobrijida and she is the very first time I have ever seen a movie spur a hero into action by killing his cow.  She gets a proper Teenagers from Outer Space death, with her skeleton left behind propped up by metal struts like a dinosaur in a museum!

I also called him a singing cowboy, which he is – there are several songs, including one in which he tries to explain to Gamma and Beta what ‘love’ means.  The songs have pleasant but forgettable Mexican pop melodies, and none of the lyrics make a whole lot of sense.  Being translated over-literally from Spanish probably didn’t do them any favours (my own Spanish tops out at yo no tengo dinero), but I still can’t imagine that the What Is Love song clarified anything.

Laureano himself comes across as kind of a fool, but he’s not actually a full-on idiot, which is quite important.  If he were the kind of one-dimensional ‘comedic nitwit’ embodied in characters like Dropo, or the janitor from Reptilicus, he’d be insufferable.  Laureano is no genius, but he’s got personality traits besides being stupid – he cares deeply for his little brother Chuy and for his animals, and he doesn’t treat Gamma and Beta’s appearance as two women for the price of one.  Very quickly he decides that Gamma is the one he loves, and he sticks to that, doing his best to let Beta down gently even when she offers to make him a king.  He’s also smart enough to trick Beta into dancing with him so he can steal the device she uses to control the rocket and Tor, and to listen to Gamma when she tells him about the various monsters’ weaknesses.

Gamma and Beta, on the other hand, don’t have a lot to them besides the basic fact that Gamma is the Nice One and Beta is Evil. Gamma starts out in the story with a strong sense of duty, and it’s a bit disappointing to see her abandon that because of Tru Luv.  I would have liked the ending better if she’d taken Laureano home with her so that the two of them could be the Adam and Eve of the new Venusian race.  Meanwhile, Beta shows no sign of any loyalty except to herself and her own ambition.  Her original mission, to secure Earth as a blood supply for the Uranians, falls by the wayside as she decides she’s going to conquer and rule the planet herself.

So The Ship of Monsters isn’t exactly a feminist manifesto, but neither is it complete misogynistic garbage like Project Moon Base.  The whole premise, after all, rests on a planet of women being able to develop space travel all on their own!  This is a fairly surprising plot point, because in many ‘planet of women’ movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Cat Women of the Moon, the ladies need the virile Earth Men to come to them.

There’s also a little bit of actual science peeking out of the cracks.  The moment for launch of the rocket from Venus is determined by when ‘the elliptical orbits coincide’.  Launch timing is, indeed, a delicate art depending very much on what’s orbiting where. There’s also the moment when, trying to land on Earth, Gamma and Beta worry that the friction, combined with our oxygen-rich atmosphere, will set their ship on fire.  This stuff is pretty impressive coming from a time when the moon landing was still nearly a decade away.  There are even a couple of scenes in zero gravity that honestly aren’t totally terrible.  I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen much, much worse.

There’s also one weirdly prescient moment when Laureano, telling one of his silly stories in the pub, describes being surrounded by dinosaurs – only to get a laugh a moment later when he mentions that they had beautiful plumage.  I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a joke in that Laureano is exaggerating an actual encounter with an angry bird into something more fearsome (I think we’re to assume that the whole story is totally made up), or whether it’s just supposed to be funny that Laureano thinks dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales.  Either way, it’s the equivalent of the moon Fornax in Menace from Outer Space being so reminiscent of Io.  There’s no way the writers could have known that, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The Ship of Monsters is very cheap and very dumb, but it’s good fun for those of us who like crummy old alien invasion movies, and I recommend it to anybody in that demographic.  As for actual life on Venus… I feel like a lot of the people getting excited are too young to remember when Bill Clinton told the world that we had totally found life on Mars.  Humans have been discovering life on other planets for about two hundred years and every single one of those ‘discoveries’ has turned out to be either a mistake or an outright lie.  We have plenty enough to panic about this year without a Venusian invasion.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the ship of monsters #cows in fridges #60s #tobor is robot spelled backwards

[arknights-imagines]

Decided to combine both of these into one imagine since I think they go really well together! 💕 Anons, I hope you don't mind~~ 💖 Also, thank you both for the requests and nice messages! 🌸🌸 I really hope I did SilverAsh justice!!

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“ you are & always will be precious to me . ” + “ shh , it was just a nightmare . you’re safe . ”

Imagine format; lots of it is from SilverAsh's perspective

Contains: SilverAsh, gender neutral Doctor, Doctor being upset after a nightmare, implied established relationship I guess loll??

Word count: about 1.7k

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There was no room for compassion in war.

But despite the fact that SilverAsh believed and stood by that, he couldn't deny what he felt for the Doctor. With his position and what he faced daily, warm emotions weren't something he experienced often. His front was shrewd; a man who would do anything to get what he wanted.

But even then, he was always gentler to the Doctor. They were an old friend, someone he held dear - very dear, in fact. With them, his intentions never held ulterior motives; with the Doctor, SilverAsh was always in his most sincere form.

Night was calm at Rhodes Island, even if it wasn't completely quiet. People were up late, unsurprisingly, filling the facility with a light buzz of chatter or footsteps. While he knew it was important to get proper rest, it was easy to feel restless while staying in his room for hours on end, and some fresh air never did anyone any harm.

Standing on the Rhodes Island deck, the Feline stared up at the night sky, leaning on the railing. While it was just a blanket of dark spotted with stars, he always found the dark sky calming to admire.

Yawning just slightly, the Feline blinked as he heard footsteps approaching. Making sure he looked decent, he turned around with a formal facial expression, ready to greet whoever was coming closer, only for it to leave his face in an instant at who his eyes fell upon.

It was the Doctor. By the looks of it, they were planning to go to bed as well, but for some reason, they were here, running into him. Walking a little idly, they stood beside him, face turned away.

He waited for them to speak, but they didn't move or even make any gesture toward him. Lifting a brow just slightly, SilverAsh placed a hand on their shoulder, speaking in a quiet tone, "...it's late. What are you doing awake at this hour?"

A breeze passed by, and they hugged themselves just slightly. The Doctor came looking for him often, to ask about battle formations or just to see him. He didn't mind their company, not in the slightest, but they didn't seem to be acting as usual; they seemed a bit more urgent than usual - almost distressed.

Their reply came delayed, "I didn't mean to bother you. Could I…stay here for a bit?" They avoided his eyes, shifting their weight from foot to foot.

The Feline blinked, his brow lifting again. Something felt wrong - but it was late at night, they could've just been tired; perhaps they had walked to the deck just to get some fresh air. Still, the Feline felt like that wasn't at all the case; he came to the deck quite often, and they knew this. He didn't believe this was coincidence.

Nevertheless, he nodded a bit, "You can certainly stay. Though, you should know, it's improper for us to meet so late at night like this." He said this lightheartedly - he and the Doctor were far from being strict colleagues, and he wasn't bothered by them wishing to stick around him, no matter the reason. Still, at his words, they didn't give much of a reaction.

Quietly, they thanked him, folding their arms over the railing, tilting their face to look up at the sky, "I didn't mean to bother you so late. I just…needed to come see you. I looked in your room but you weren't there." They looked to the floor as SilverAsh , his gaze trained on them in concern.

"What could've urged you to do so at this hour?" He asked, squinting as he noticed how their facial expression seemed contoured in discomfort, "Do you feel ill?"

They shook their head, "No, I'm fine." The Doctor seemed to be biting their tongue, but SilverAsh didn't want to force them to speak if they didn't want to. "Just…a bit worried I guess."

His brows furrowed in concern, the Feline placed a careful hand on their shoulder, taking note of how they tensed under his touch for but a second, "Care to elaborate?" The stars nor the moon provided much light, he couldn't see their facial expression in much detail.

A meek shrug left them, the air around them uncertain and hesitant. Finally, the Doctor looked toward him, and it was only then that he realized how pallid they looked. Trying to hide his concern, his grip on their shoulder tightened by just a hair.

The Doctor spoke, words leaving them slowly, "I guess I'm just wondering…my role in all of this."

SilverAsh blinked for a moment, "Your role? We all have our roles to play, my dear." His voice was soft, as was his touch as his hand fell from their shoulder to place itself over their own hand. The Doctor seemed to relax at his tone, but whatever was bothering them didn't leave.

A small shake of their head came in reply, "Your role relies on my orders, that much I think I get at this point. But…how am I supposed to do that role when my memory is completely gone?"

SilverAsh's eyes snapped to theirs. So that was it; "You're concerned your memory loss will hinder your abilities?" Gently, the Feline squeezed their hand, catching their attention. "My dear, you may not remember, but you have never disappointed anyone I can recall, and you have never disappointed me. You've always done your job to the best of your ability, and that is enough in trying times like these." The smallest smile graced his lips, "It's always intrigued me, how you're able to show compassion even in war. I used to think that was naive, that it was useless. But you proved me wrong."

The Doctor gaped at him, eyes widened and lips open. They opened their mouth to say something, but the Feline placed a finger to their lips - there was more he wanted to say. If he was honest, SilverAsh had wanted to tell them these things as long as he could remember, but there was never a good time. Now, with them alone and the Doctor giving him their rapt attention, he didn't think there would ever be a more suitable time.

"Many here are counting on you, but the same people are prepared to support you - including myself. You may not each of remember them, and your memory…it may not return to you, that is true." He shifted, his body turning toward them as he gingerly took both of their hands, "But you should know, even at your most vulnerable moments, you will always have somebody to support you here at Rhodes Island. And even when you're unsure about that, you should always remember,"

SilverAsh looked at them with a tenderness they didn't think was possible in their world of ruin. His next words were quiet, meant for them and only them; "No matter what may happen…you are and always will be precious to me."

The Doctor stared at him, their face slowly being overtaken by shock. Even at the pallid look they were giving them, the Feline kept his eyes on theirs, hands still holding their own. He wasn't expecting himself to say such reckless words, but he didn't regret them - he wouldn't regret them, even if the Doctor reacted poorly.

However, when their reaction finally came, it was so sudden SilverAsh barely even processed what was happening.

"I…" Their words were fragile, almost being taken with the night breeze, and when they looked up at him, their eyes were brimmed with tears. He almost didn't notice under the dim lighting they were in, but in a moment, they were crying, as if they couldn't hold back their emotion any longer. The Doctor blinked, recoiling as if they had been slapped across the face, "Enciodas…I'm sorry-"

Lifting a hand to their face, careful not to stare them, SilverAsh spoke, snapping from his shock, "My dear…" A frown came to his face, his stomach sinking at how distressed they really were, "Will you tell me what truly happened now?"

They seemed embarrassed, but were in no condition to brush him off anymore. "I had a bad nightmare. That's why I came by…I couldn't go back to sleep." The Doctor confessed; their words were interspersed with small sobs and sniffles, but they continued regardless, "Everyone got hurt, and I couldn't remember what to do, I-"

The Feline hushed them softly, "Shh." He didn't let them finish; he didn't need to hear any details. Without hesitance, he wrapped his arms around their form, holding them close to his chest as they sniffed in frustration.

They gripped hard at the fabric of his shirt, biting down on their tongue to try and stop their crying, "Sorry--"

"Stop that, don't apologize." Hoping to help them calm down, he ran a hand up and down their back, "It was just your imagination, my dear." Rocking them back and forth, he finally began to coax them to calm down, "Shh, it was just a nightmare. You’re safe."

That's all it had been - a dream. There was the possibility that it could someday become a reality, but SilverAsh didn't believe so. As long as he was there, they would be safe. There were no contracts or conditions behind such a vow.

Slowly, the Doctor relaxed, their breath slowing and their crying going quiet. Nuzzled against his chest, they nodded, wrapping their own arms around his waist.

"Enciodas…thank you." Their tone was muffled and shaky, but he didn't miss the sincerity it held.

Smiling just slightly, the man nodded. "Anytime, my dear." Neither of them moved - they stayed there, the air around them light and comfortable. The night was a little chilly, but when he focused on their breathing, SilverAsh couldn't be bothered with much else.

The Doctor was very dear to him, and he wanted them to know that more than anything else. With his sisters, the Feline hadn't accomplished that. SilverAsh wasn't a perfect man, he had made mistakes and like anyone else, he had regrets. He regretted not being there for his sisters like he knew he should've before it was too late. He regretted not caring for those close to him until it was too late. He regretted his mindset that there was no room for care on the battlefield.

But if nothing else, even without doing anything else but standing pressed to his chest, the Doctor had taught him that such a mindset was wrong. Maybe he was being impulsive, maybe his own drowsiness was causing his thoughts to be scrambled; In war, there wasn't a place for a fairy-tale like relationship, but the Doctor meant more to him than they could imagine, and he would make sure they knew that, no matter what nightmare life put them through. And that, he knew he would never regret.

#I didn't really know how to end this sbjsnd #arknights #arknights imagines #arknights fanfics #arknights writing #arknights silverash #arknights doctor #arknights imagine #imagines #writing

[hargreeveslftv]

The Occult: DOOMSDAY | an umbrella academy series

chapter eight | word count: 2,851

CHAPTER EIGHT | …or for worse ( song | exit music - radiohead ) 

“Nuclear war, asteroids. But I’m thinking this is about the moon, right?” Luther says, instantly losing everyone in the room. 

Melanie almost wants to laugh as she sees the look of desperation Diego sends Klaus the moment the word “moon” leaves Luther’s mouth, but stops suddenly, feeling a strange wave of deja vu wash over her. 

“Dad must have sent me up there for a reason. And I was giving him daily updates on the conditions, I sent field samples. So the first thing we need to do, is find his research." 

"Hold on, hold the phone,” Klaus interrupts, we all died fighting this thing first time around, remember?“

"Klaus, shockingly, has a point. What gives us a win this time?” Diego asks, adding onto Klaus’s point. 

Suddenly, a bright blue portal opens above the bar, making Melanie throw herself backwards into the cabinets behind the bar to avoid it. 

“Jesus!” Allison yells, all of the siblings watching as Five fell on top of the bar in front of them. 

“You guys, am I still high, or do you see him too?” Klaus asks worriedly. 

Luther immediately starts to question him as he rolls off the bar, his feet barely landing under him as Luther and Allison help him stand up. 

“Irrelevant.” He replies to his questions, snatching the coffee cup from Allison’s hand instead of answering. 

The five watch him as he walks away from their little pack, slurping back every drop of coffee he could before turning to face them.

“So, the apocalypse is in three days. The only chance we have to save our world is, well, us.”

“The umbrella academy.” Luther says quietly. 

“Yeah, but with me, obviously.” Five adds, looking at everyone, “so if yall don’t get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves we’re screwed." 

Five is met with silence as everyone stares at him in shock, Melanie wordlessly exchanging glances with Diego as he continues. 

"Who cares if Dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us?” He asks them sternly. 

“No.” Klaus replies, breaking the silence of the group and speaking for everyone. 

“To give us a fighting chance to see next week, I’ve come back with a lead.” Five announces, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, “I know who’s responsible for the apocalypse." 

Allison immediately reaches out for the paper, her, Klaus and Luther crowding around it before Diego and Melanie join them.

"This is who we have to stop.” Five says as she opens the folded paper. 

Reassignment: protect Harold Jenkins. 

“Harold Jenkins?” Allison reads aloud. 

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?” Diego asks, looking between Klaus and Allison to see Five. 

But instead of a answer, all they get is the sound of Five slurping on Allison’s coffee cup. 

“I don’t know… yet.” He says, throwing the empty cup into the room behind him. “But I know he’s responsible for the apocalypse. So we have to find him, and we have to do it now." 

"How is he connected to what’s gonna happen?” Luther asks. 

“I don’t know." 

"Wait, so you just know his name?” Diego asks, everyone taking turns at firing their questions to Five. 

“There’s probably dozens of Harold Jenkinses in the city.” Diego says hopelessly. 

“That is if he’s even in the city.” Melanie points out, Five getting more frustrated by the second. 

“Well we better start looking, then." 

"I’m sorry,” Allison interrupts, “am I the only one skeptical here? I mean how exactly do you know all of this about what’s his name?" 

"Harold Jenkins.” Five reminds her. “You know those lunatics in masks who attacked the house?" 

"Oh yeah, I think I remember those guys.” Klaus comments, Diego immediately snapping at him. 

“Yeah the ones that attacked us while you were getting drunk." 

"They were sent by the Temps Commission to stop me from coming back and preventing the end of life on earth.” Five explains. 

“The Temps what?” Allison questions, folding her arms in front of her as she stood between Diego and Luther, Klaus falling onto the couch beside him and Melanie sitting down on the one opposite. 

“My former employer, they monitor all of time and space to make sure whatever is supposed to happen, happens. They believe the apocalypse is coming in three days.” Five explain further, patience obviously thinning, “So I went to the Commission headquarters and intercepted a message that was meant for said lunatics."Protect Harold Jenkins.” So he must be responsible for the apocalypse.“ 

The three siblings still standing let silence hang for a moment, before all three of them start talking at once, Melanie reaching up to cover her ears with a groan. 

"Do you have any idea how insane this sounds?” Someone asks, Melanie taking one hand away as Five speaks again. 

“You know what else is insane? I look like a thirteen year old boy. Klaus talks to the dead, Diego controls butter knives with his mind, Allison can completely bend minds with a stupid catchphrase, Melanie could kill all of us if she wasn’t always sleep deprived, and Luther thinks he’s fooling everybody with that overcoat. Everything about us is insane. It always has been." 

"He’s got a point there.” Klaus agrees. 

“We didn’t choose this life, we’re just living it. For the next three days anyway." 

"Amen to that.” Melanie mutters.

“But last time we tried to stop it, we all died. Why is this time any different? Why shouldn’t I go home to my daughter?” Allison fights back. 

“Because this time I’m here. We have the name of the man responsible. Guys we actually have the chance of saving the lives of billions of people.” Five says confidently, before looking directly at Allison. “Including Claire." 

"You know her name?” She asks confused, Five nodding in response. 

“I do. And I’d like to live long enough to meet her." 

"All right.” Allison says, convinced enough that some of her confidence returns. “Let’s get this bastard." 

"You had me at Gerald Jenkins.” Diego shrugs, Five rolling his eyes and correcting him. 

“Harold Jenkins." 

"Whatever, I’ve already lost two people this week, I’m not losing anyone else.” He says, glancing from Luther to Melanie as he speaks. 

“Luther?” Five asks, catching his attention. 

“Yeah, you go. I’m gonna stay and go through Dad’s files.” He nods, “I still think this has something to do with why he sent me to the moon." 

"Oh my god Luther no one cares about the fucking moon.” Melanie complains, getting up from the couch and following Diego. 

“Seriously? Now you wanna make the end of the world about you and Dad?” Diego asks in disbelief. 

“No, watch for threats, that’s what he told me. You think that’s a coincidence? This all has to be connected somehow.” Luther argues, Melanie one eye roll away from her eyes falling out of her head at his words. 

“No we should stick together.” Allison says, quickly being cut off by Five. 

“We don’t have time for this.” Five yells at them. 

“Let’s roll, I know where we can find this asshole.” Diego nods, glancing at Melanie before looking to Klaus. “Klaus, Melanie, you’re with me." 

Melanie nods, but frowns at Klaus’s reaction. 

"Yeah, no, I’m good. I think I’ll uh, I think I’ll pass. I'm… feeling a little under the weather, so uh…” He rambles, walking past everyone towards the stairs. 

Melanie, Diego and Five all eye roll in unison, walking out of the living room one after the other. 

Not long later, Melanie sat in the back seat of the car, Allison beside her while Diego and Five sat up front. 

“He’s gotta have a record. We gotta get our hands on that file.” Diego mutters, parking the car. 

“And your plan is to what, waltz in there and just ask for it?” Allison asks. 

“I know the station like the back of my hand, sis. I’ve spent a lot of time inside.” He shoots her down, though not as brutally as normal. 

“Handcuffed." 

"Whatever. Here’s the plan-" 

"Plan?” Five asks with a raised eyebrow. “I’m just gonna blink in and get the file." 

"No that’s not… you don’t know the ins and outs of this place, okay?" 

"Yeah none of us do because we don’t get caught with our hands in the cookie jar all the time like you do.” Melanie comments, going completely ignored by everyone. 

“I literally just did this yesterday. My yesterday, not your yesterday.” Five clarifies. 

The two bicker for a small while longer, Melanie and Allison exchanging looks of exhaustion at their antics. 

“I made a call. That’s what a leader does. He leads.” Diego says, watching his side mirror intently, before jumping out and running down the alley. 

“So,” Melanie sighs, “you guys catch dancing with the stars?" 

Five and Allison just look at her for a moment, before Allison climbs out of the car. 

"I’m gonna try to call Vanya.” She announces, Five sighing and following her out. 

Left alone, Melanie yells out her window. 

“Guess I’ll stay here then!” She yells, annoyance obvious in her tone. 

Melanie tapped her foot for a moment, watching some people move around on the sidewalk before jumping out of the car herself, following her siblings paths down the street just in time to see Diego, Allison and Five gathered on the corner. 

“Leonard Peabody is Harold Jenkins!” Allison announces, expecting her to know who he is while showing Melanie the picture in the police file in her hands. 

“Card guy?” She frowns, finally recognising the man from the store. 

“We have to get to Vanya.” Five says, looking between them with a determined look on his face. 

“I know where she might be." 

-

"How did you even know about this place?” Melanie asks. 

“Okay so,” Allison explains as Diego pulls the car up to the curb outside the house she directed him to, “I maybe have already broken into his house before I knew he was a murderer." 

Diego scoffs, rolling his eyes while Melanie let’s out a full belly laugh next to her sister in the backseat. 

"I can’t believe you actually broke into somewhere! Tell me, was it exciting? Thrilling? To finally do something you’re not meant to for once?” She asks, her tone mocking after recalling the time Allison told on her to Reginald for breaking and entering, herself. 

“It was terrifying and it shouldn’t be done.” Allison replies, making Melanie roll her eyes as they all climbed out of the car. 

“Be careful, okay? We don’t know what Peabody’s capable of.” Allison warns. 

“Yeah he didn’t seem dangerous when I first saw him. Looked kinda scrawny.” Diego says, shrugging it off as he walked across the lawn of the house. 

“Yeah, well, so are most serial killers and mass murderers.” She replies, pointing in Five’s direction, “Look at him." 

"Thanks.” Five says with a roll of his eyes. 

“It’s funny cause it’s true.” Melanie smiles, bumping Five with her shoulder as they approach the house. 

“Good point. So what’s this guy want with Vanya?” Diego asks. 

“I don’t know,” Five answers, “how about we ask him after we kill him?" 

"Hey, look. I’m gonna burst through-” Diego starts, but is interrupted as Five blips away. 

“Kids these days.” Melanie sighs, leaning against the brick wall beside the door. 

“Hey, no, you’re just as bad as him.” Diego replies, eyebrow raised as she blows a raspberry at him. 

Without warning, Diego takes a couple steps back, before jumping up and launching himself through the window in the door. 

“Oh my fucking god, Diego.” Melanie groans, rubbing her temples for a moment before reaching out and twisting the doorknob, it opening freely. 

“The door wasn’t locked, just so you know.” She comments, offering Diego a hand to help him up after she walks inside. 

“Subtle.” Allison adds, Five actually cracking a smile for once as he looked down at Diego covered in glass. 

“Yeah, well, my way works just fine.” He defends, his voice strained with pain, unsurprisingly. 

“Spread out.” He instructs, walking towards one of the rooms. “Yell if you, uh… you know, you’re in trouble." 

"Inspiring leadership.” Five jokes, as the three of them watch Diego walk off. 

“One of the greats.” Allison agrees sarcastically. 

“Come on.” Melanie nods towards the stairs, looking at Allison to accompany her. 

Leading the way up the stairs, Melanie looks back to Allison for a moment, signalling to take the right, while she herself would go left. Allison nods in agreement, and the two split up as they reach the landing. 

Melanie checks the rooms to the left of the stairs for anyone, but her head quickly spins around as she hears Allison call for everyone. 

With Diego, Five, and Melanie responding instantly, they follow Allison’s voice up the attic stairs, Melanie pulling a face of disgust as she sees what Allison is looking at. 

A shrine of sorts sits pride of place in the middle of the attic, Melanie instantly recognising the posters and dolls taped up and disfigured as those of herself and her siblings, a cold chill running through her as Diego and Five file in behind her. 

“All our faces are burnt off.” Allison notices, pointing to where each figure sat lined up by number. 

“Well,” Diego frowns, “that’s not creepy. This guy’s got some serious issues." 

"This was never about Vanya. This was about us.” Allison realises, turning and looking at them with concern on her face. 

Though any thought of Harold Jenkins is wiped away as Five collapses to the floor, Melanie’s eyes going wide before she drops to her knees beside him as he lays writhing around in pain. 

Melanie holds his head up while Allison pulls back his blazer, showing a bloodstain blooming over his stomach, his shirt and vest getting pushed out of the way to reveal a seeping hole. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Diego asks, protective brotherly instincts instantly kicking in. 

“You have to keep going. So… close.” Five says, his voice fading as his body stills. 

“Five?” Allison asks, shaking him as Diego taps his cheek, Melanie pressing her fingers to his neck and checking for a pulse as the other two try to bring him around. 

“He’s still alive. We need to get him help.” She says worriedly, glancing between the two of them. 

Diego breaks about every speed limit there is driving back to the academy, Allison holding under Five’s arms while Melanie carries his legs, Diego pushing the door open in front of them. 

“We should have taken him to the hospital.” Allison insists as they carry him through the foyer. 

“A kid with shrapnel wounds might raise some questions.” Five comments weakly, his voice nowhere near as strong as it should have been. 

“Yeah, well so does the murder shrine in Harold Jenkins’ attic." 

"Let’s just put that one on the back burner for a minute.” Melanie instructs, as they set Five down on a couch in the living room.

“He’s still losing blood, what do we do?” Allison asks Diego as she throws her jacket off somewhere into the room. 

“We gotta get the shrapnel out." 

But, instead of moving to help Five, Diego freezes, looking out the door like he’s seen a ghost before jogging out. 

"Diego? Where are you going?” Allison calls after him. 

Melanie busied herself propping Five’s head up on a couple pillows, and getting him to tap her hand twice, a indicator they figured out in the car for him to show he was still conscious. 

“Did he just say mom?” Allison asks her, to which she just shrugs. 

But as Grace walks into the room, Melanie can’t help the smile that spreads across her face, jumping up from Five’s side and launching herself into her arms. 

“Mom!” She yells happily, Grace returning her hug after stumbling for a second. 

“Oh! Melanie dear! You nearly knocked me off my feet.” She says cheerily, smiling at her before walking to Five after Melanie lets her go. 

It doesn’t take long for Grace to patch Five up, and before they know it, he’s laying on his bed with her by his side, finally resting for what Melanie guessed was the first time since he got back. 

Melanie sat on the floor of his room, in front of the seat where Delores sat, Diego hovering in the doorway behind her who’s soon joined by Allison. 

“Is he gonna be okay?” Melanie asks Grace, who smiles at her, nodding gently. 

“He should be. He needs to rest." 

Melanie sighs, but her expression quickly turns into a frown as she hears police sirens on the street out front. 

Pushing herself up off the ground, she walks to the window, pushing the curtains aside just enough to see Diego walking towards a lineup of cop cars and officers with guns. 

Her eyes go wide as she watches Diego not put up a fight, an officer handcuffing him peacefully. 

"Five,” Melanie says tensely, “Diego’s getting arrested. 

The barely conscious boy sighs, brows furrowing in stress. 

"Shit." 

chapter nine coming sat, oct 10th

#Umbrella academy #the umbrella academy #tua #umbrella academy fanfic #umbrella academy imagine #tua fanfic #tua imagine #ben hargreeves fanfic #ben hargreeves imagine #Ben hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #Diego hargreeves #five hargreeves

[raidbossmadi]

PLU:Siren origins, a history

What are the Progenitors? 

As long as there has been a universe, there have been progenitors. They are the seeders of life, creators of planets, they are gods by every definition of the word. Though they are sentient they do not consider themselves gods nor could they tell you what compels them to create only that they do. 

The progenitors themselves are all varied in appearance; you would not think they were all one race. One thing that is consistent among them is their ability to survive in the void of space, they are so massive in their natural form that space is the only place which could truly contain them. They also inhabit the space between space, a dimension beyond that of our own. Whether their dimension and ours was created at the same time or if ours is merely a creation of theres is unknown. 

The Progenitors along with using their gift of creation to seed life are also capable of a more natural method of reproduction though, their offspring that were born into this dimension are considerably smaller than their parents, they are much more involved with the creation life than planets like their parents. For this they are often dubbed Demigods. Most races in the known universe can trace their origin back to a Progenitor Demigod. 

The Progenitors and The Eridians 

The Eridians are one of the universe's oldest races, created by a demigod known as The Weaver.  For millennia the Eridians have sought to understand the gods of this reality, but the Progenitors and their offspring remain a constant mystery.

Despite their ability to communicate the Progenitors do not wish to divulge their history nor the true nature of where they come from. The Eridians would not take that as an answer, what they could not understand, they sought to control.

They started with the substance now known as Eridium, they found it in large quantities on planets which the Progenitors had freshly made. They studied it and properties, they used it to create the magic their civilization would run on.

Then they used it in an act of betrayal.  

The Eridians had lost their first world to war, warring broods who disagreed on which Demigod they wanted to worship, there were many Eridian cults and while the Weaver was always the true creator some Broodmothers worshipped other demigods in the hopes their brood would take on an aspect. Always a demigod never a Progenitors, the Progenitors did not bless the Eridians the way their children did.

The more dominant brood used Eridium to open a pocket dimension of their own creation and sealed inside was their contesting hives Demigod. The first vault. This prison was created in such a way that Eridians could enter it, see the bound and restrained demigod, interact with it yet it could do nothing but watch.

Nekrotafeyo, first landing in their tongue, for it was not their first home. That had been destroyed in the Brood war but the winning brood mother, now the Hive Queen had crushed all opposition. Her first order was construction of the great machine, that which would be the gateway to all vaults, future and current.  

They would continue to build vaults to imprison the children of the gods and eventually the gods themselves. But they only moved for Progenitors when they realized the reason they would not answer the Eridians call was due to their devotion to a different race entirely.

The Progenitors and Humanity

The Progenitors have always regarded humanity with a fondness, though unlike their offspring they decided to take a decidedly more hands off approach to their observations. Especially since the creation of humanity coincided right with the start of the Eridian era of vaults and the Progenitors were less willing to come out of hiding.  They saw a spark in humanity though, the same spark that would eventually drive humanity to the stars and they admired it.

Throughout human history the Progenitors would lend small bits of their power to humanity,the people who received these powers would become the stuff of legends The Oracle of Delphi, Sorcerers, Witches, all the result of Progenitors reaching out to humanity or humanity unknowingly reaching out to them. These powers did not carry lineages though, because they were but the smallest part of a Progenitors power, a loan that would be repaid through death.

Humanity sought to answer where these powers came from but they did not have the means to understand nor grasp the true nature of the Progenitors, so instead they named them, interpreted them  in a way that made sense to a human mind.

Some of these names would stick, becoming the Progenitors preferred name to mortals as most of them were merely bastardizations of the true language they spoke.

 When humanity made it to the stars, the Eridians came to meet them. They picked up a broadcast from a human satellite and upon meeting humanity they were intrigued to find the touch of the Progenitors among them. This became the main reason the Eridians were so willing to ally with humanity in the hopes that they might understand the beings that stayed beyond their reach.

The Imprisonment of the Gods

Through their close relationship with humanity the Eridians were able to learn more about the true nature of the Progenitors and just how like their offspring they were. They had caged many Demigods in vaults in the ensuing years, leaving only one free, The Weaver. They kept it in a vault yes, but that vault was never sealed; it was free to leave if it so chose it.

They were able to lure the Progenitors out of the space between, they used humans as bait. Once they had them vulnerable they too were imprisoned inside the vaults. The cost of which being large deposits of Eridium and a human soul.

With most  of the Progenitors now imprisoned it was time to begin the Hive Queen’s great experiment.

Sirens : The Great Experiment

Eridians could not use the power of the Progenitors, even captured the Gods refused to give themselves to the Hive. This did not dissuade Eridian scientists though they had planned for this.

They reached out to their human allies and requested a group of female babies. Why female? There are no male eridians, they are all female drones, there comes a point in the life cycle of an Eridian that they become male to offer their genes to their Brood Mother but this is near the end of their lives. They have always assumed that the human male was the weaker of the two because of their societal concept of gender.

They took the babies, seven total was all humanity was willing to give under the vague instructions of their alien allies.  Seven was enough though for the Eridians only had seven captive progenitors.  They used eridium powered devices to steal the power from the captive gods and transfer it to the seven human children. This sent the Gods into a long sleep and to ensure they would not be able to retaliate if they did awaken, the eridians sealed their vaults shut and scattered the keys to far reaches of the universe.

The human children who now were conduits for the powers of these gods displayed an unmistakable tell, a blue swirling pattern  on one side of their body now known as the Siren marking.

The Eridians used Eridium again to tweak the inherited powers to work better with each other with the intent that the Sirens always would be a unit. Their powers meant to complement each other. They had chosen these seven Progenitors to be captured for a reason.

These Sirens were;

Hecate, Inheritor of the power of Hel. aspect of death, the great balance. (Phaseleech)  She was tasked with  the greatest burden keeping the sisterhood from turning on itself. 

Demeter, Inheritor of the power of Ithunn. Aspect of Life (Phasegrow) She was tasked with seeding planets with life, wherever she went life would follow. 

Artemis, Inheritor of the power of Syn. The aspect of order. (Phaselock) She was tasked with settling disputes of ideas, intended to be a neutral third party in conflicts that threatened life. 

Pyrrha, Inheritor of the power of Angerboda. The aspect of change. (Phasewalk). She was tasked with applying pressure to those who would not listen to reason as presented by Artemis. 

Bellona, Inheritor of the power Freya. The aspect of adaptation. (Phasegrasp). Tasked with rebuilding civilization after extreme conflict or disaster.

Eris, Inheritor of the power of Skadi. The aspect of Chaos (Phaseshift). Tasked with seeding conflict in those who would threaten the safety of inhabited space.

Nemesis, Inheritor of the power of Var. The aspect of Diplomacy (Phasetempt). Tasked with speaking for the sisterhood and making people accept the Sirens.

The Siren War  

In adulthood once Eridian caretakers left Vanagard in their rule the Sirens went on to fulfil their roles. However eventually a problem rose up. Nemesis was not happy with being the galactic police , if they were going to rule they should rule the way the Hive Queen rules the Eridians. She wanted absolute control and given her power to completely change the minds and memories of non-Sirens she set to work.

The sisterhood did not realize what was happening under their nose until it was too late. Several planets were entirely under Nemesis’ control.

Hecate had a plan however, after consulting with Artemis they decided there was only one thing that could be done. Hecate lured Nemesis to an empty vault and used her life force to seal it shut from the outside.

The sisterhood was frightened they had just lost two sisters in one fell swoop. However, it was not long before something began calling to them, singing the song they had crafted together. It called from beyond the planet and they followed it. Discovering a teenage girl, Nyriad, who now bore the markings of their sister and carried her memories. They understood now that they were linked to power inside them, that because the Progenitors were sealed away the power could not go back to them so instead it would go to new hosts, ones who embodied the virtue of the original bearer best.

#Borderlands 3 #Sirens #People Like Us #my writing #My Hcs #this is a along post but it contains important AU worldbuilding

[angrydragonpuppy]

META about Cal and Second Sister and how they parallel a certain Sequel Trilogy Couple.

I finished the game Star Wars Fallen Order and I really enjoyed it. There will be HUGE SPOILERS about the game, so you are warned.

They are so much like Reylo. Although there are couple of differences they are basically very much alike. Here is why.

.) The unmasking scene

Do I really need to say more. Just for meta reason. In both unmasking scenes, they show their vulnerable side. Their humanity.

.) She described him as a scavenger and he called her a monster.

Wonder where I heard that before? 😏

.) They have a scene where he asked her why she didn't kill him back on Bracca and she responded bc she had compassion for him. 

Well, Kylo/Ben also had compassion for Rey and according to Anakin compassion is unconditional love.

I know it is different in English but oh well. 😅

.) Ben & Trilla had masters who betrayed them and that's why they turned to the Dark Side completely. And Cal & Rey confronted these masters about that.

Interestingly though, Cal was very calm while Rey was very aggressive. Cal always resisted the dark side while Rey didn't.

.) There even was a "Han Solo" scenario where Cere tried to convince Trilla to come back. Trilla felt conflicted and said

"It is too late."

(They can't tell me it is just a coincidence 😂) Though this two scenes had a different outcome which I will address later.

.) Cal had a vision of Trilla’s past much like Rey had one of Ben.

Both touches the lightsabers of their counterparts and experience some Force visions.

.) The mirror parrallel

While Cal dealed with his dark shadow, Rey searched for her belonging. Both mirror scenes happend on a dark side place.

Again, Cal destroyed the mirror aka the dark side. Rey didn't.

.) Dark & Light Side

I mentioned that Cal and Rey face the dark side. What I didn't point out is that Cal even has a vision of himself as a Inquisitor and we have Dark Rey.

Trilla and Ben face the light side. Check the blue background behind them. Parallels everywhere.

.) The other antagonist

The Ninth Sister faces off Cal and tells him she doesn't understand why Cal is so important to Second Sister (Trilla). Yeah I don't either. 😏

I can totally see a similar scenario with Hux where he will question Kylo Ren's intentions about Rey.

.) Cal & Merrin's relationship.

She is a Night Sister but with a good side. I really like her but for me they are not the main couple. They are not counterparts.

But I have to say, Cal has his way with the dark side ladies and I love it.

.) I don't want to write about Trilla's fate right now. Bc that would be such a huge spoiler, I don't want to ruin even that.

All I can say is that Ben's fate will be different for sure but Cal showed us again that you will win with compassion and not hate.

That’s all I have to say for now. This game is really good and I enjoyed it. 

Maybe you find more parallels that I didn’t notice.

#star wars fallen order #reylo #parallels #second sister x cal #spoilers #meta

[goingoverthegardenwall]

Chapter 6: Lullaby in Frogland

Let’s look back. Way back. Back before the dawn of animation, before the dawn of film, well before Ruby or Spears or Disney or Iwerks or either Fleischer Brother. Back to 1835, in a town named Florida in a state named Missouri when a boy named Samuel was born.

Like Ub Iwerks, Sam was raised in Missouri. And like Max Fleischer, Sam’s family took a financial hit when his father’s work stopped (this time due to a premature death rather than the decline of tailory), giving Sam a practical approach to employment. He left school at age eleven to become a printer’s apprentice, then moved to his older brother’s newspaper as a typesetter and occasional columnist, writing humorous articles and drawing cartoons. But unlike Beatrix Potter or the animators we’ve covered, visual art wasn’t in the cards for Sam.

He moved to the East Coast to work for other papers, bouncing between cities before returning to the midwest to embark on a career he’d dreamed of since he was old enough to dream: piloting a steamboat. He thrived on the water, and kept writing about his work along the river, but everything stopped when the Civil War closed off the Mississippi. So Sam headed west to work for the same brother who once ran the newspaper, now a politician in Nevada (I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this brother was for some reason named Orion). Sam tried mining, and it didn’t take, but he’d gotten pretty good at writing and set off for San Francisco to get back into his jocular brand of journalism. 

It was here that he had his first success, a short story published in his paper called Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog. But, like a certain frog we’ve covered in this series, Sam wasn’t huge on permanent names. Within a month, the story was reprinted as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Jim Smiley’s name was changed to Jim Greeley. Until the book version came out, when it was changed back to Jim Smiley. And this whole time, within the story, it’s a mystery whether Jim’s real name is actually Leonidas (it turns out that it isn’t, but it might be). None of this should come as a surprise for Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the names of Josh, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, and most famously, Mark Twain.

“I knew you were special.”

Over the Garden Wall is, among other things, a story about the importance of solid communication. After five episodes spent building up our heroes as a group of friends, all it takes is one episode of terrible communication to throw it all away. The specific issues vary, despite leading to a similar result of not verbalizing their thoughts very well: Greg’s youth stops him from articulating his rapidly changing ideas, Wirt’s anxiety leaves him too timid to speak up or too rambling to be clear, Beatrice’s true intentions make her obfuscate the truth, and Jason Funderburker straight-up can’t talk. Or so we think.

This time he’s named for American statesmen George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, which fits the continuing vintage Americana vibe of the series—while I figure it’s a coincidence, it should be noted that Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog was named after American statesman Daniel Webster. Surrounded by other frogs that walk around and wear fancy garb, our frog is more anthropomorphic than ever, standing on his hind legs and dancing along with Greg. But it’s still a shock to hear him open his mouth and sing, a shock that soon cedes to the realization that the frog playing the piano at the beginning of the series is singing the Jack Jones song in the montage that follows.

Lullaby in Frogland is Jason Funderburker’s episode through and through, so much so that it’s the first time we hear of his namesake, Jason Funderberker. This is an episode where Wirt rejects Greg’s assertion that their frog is “our frog,” a plot point that’s paid off in their last conversation in the series. This is an episode where Greg wonders aloud if he can be a hero, sees the frog set off on a diverging path immediately afterwards, and accepts it, because he’s willing to sacrifice his happiness for the good of others. And it’s an episode where the frog returns after a harrowing betrayal, showing that even when all seems lost, there’s still room for hope. Over the Garden Wall (the song) might not sound like a traditional lullaby, but it soothes us into a cold night as the sun sets on the first half of Over the Garden Wall (the show).

Adelaide’s true nature is foreshadowed by Beatrice’s sudden hesitance to bring the brothers to the pasture after several episodes of nagging, but the twist is made tragic by Wirt finally letting his guard down enough to be happy. He sings a completed Adelaide Parade with Greg and joins the dance before collapsing into the most earnest laughter I’ve ever heard in a cartoon. He’s a good enough friend to notice when Beatrice is “uncharacteristically wistful,” and takes a risk by playing the bassoon instead of just giving up. He’s still got growing to do—it’s one thing to blame Greg for getting them in trouble by throwing away the ferry fare and forcing them to sneak aboard, but another thing to literally shout “Take him, not me!” when confronted by the frog fuzz—so it’s clear that his journey isn’t over yet, but he doesn’t even get a full episode of peace before everything blows up.

The whole steamboat sequence flows between simple delights, like saluting the captain mid-chase, the revelation that the frogs love music more than they hate trespassers, and the repeated gags of three gentlemen frogs snatching up flying flies and a frog mother dropping her tadpoles. Everything just feels calm, even when antics are afoot. Wirt gets to save the day with his bassooning, Greg gets to feel rewarded in his knowledge that his frog is special, Jason gets to sing a song after being silent throughout the series, and Beatrice seems, for now, to come to a sort of peace about things after several clear attempts to sidetrack the boys. This is the only episode to feature two major stories instead of one, but the steamer segment is rich enough to feel like a full episode. If only we could’ve stopped here.

All roads lead to Twain when it comes to depictions of steamboats as a go-to American icon, which is why he preceded this discussion of Lullaby in Frogland: I’m not claiming Mickey Mouse wouldn’t have been successful if his first cartoon was about something else, but I’m certainly claiming that we wouldn’t have gotten Steamboat Willie as it was if Ub Iwerks hadn’t grown up in a Missouri whose lore was shaped by Twain’s tales of the river. But while the author is the root of the episode’s many influences, I think the most fascinating branch that we borrow from is The Princess and the Frog. 

2009 was a great year for animation, seeing the release of Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Secret of Kells, the surprisingly great Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and the first ten minutes of Up (also the rest of Up, if I’m feeling generous). The first two on that list are my favorite of the year, twin stop-motion masterpieces that I’m always in the mood to watch, but The Princess and the Frog is a brilliant last gasp from Disney’s 2D animation studio. It isn’t the final traditionally animated film they made (that would be 2011′s Winnie the Pooh), nor the final fully sincere princess movie they made (that would be 2010′s Tangled), but it marks the beginning of the end for both trends: for better and worse, modern Disney animation feels the need to loudly subvert old tropes and wouldn’t be caught dead in two dimensions.

Lullaby in Frogland’s connection to The Princess and the Frog is certainly visible on the surface level: both feature a long sequence starring frogs on a steamboat where a lead character must pretend to be another animal and play a woodwind instrument to get out of a jam, and both involve our heroes seeking help from a wise woman far from civilization (even if only one of these women is actually helpful). But it’s the somber nostalgia factor that binds these stories closer than anything, the knowledge that this is the end of the road for this type of tale. The ferry’s gotta land somewhere, and the cold is setting in as the frogs begin hibernating for the winter, but there’s still more story to tell.

The second story of Lullaby in Frogland is scored throughout by a haunting string and piano rendition of Adelaide Parade, and Adelaide herself is immediately captivating. John Cleese returns for the second episode in a row, but as both of these episodes aired the same night, it feels like a consistent through-line: in the first half, he’s an eccentric who might be a deranged maniac but is actually harmless, and now he’s a witch who might be harmless but is actually a deranged maniac.

Adelaide gets a compelling amount of detail for someone who’s barely in the show. We don’t get any explanation about her fatal weakness to...fresh air? Coldness in general? Either way, like the Wicked Witch of the West’s lethal reaction to water, it’s absurd that someone like her has managed to live this long. She never says what she needs a child servant for, why she has scissors that seem custom-made for Beatrice’s specific curse, or what her spider-like deal with yarn and wool is (she has a black widow hourglass on her back, but also reminds me of the Greek Fates with her emphasis on thread). We never find out how she’s connected to the Beast, whose theme bleeds into her music as she proclaims, without much prompting, that she follows his commands; her goal of using children as zombie slaves seems counter to his goal of turning them into trees to fuel his soul lantern. But this blend of unexplained characteristics and seemingly inconsistent motives only makes her more enthralling to me, because she feels like the major villain of another story who just happens to intersect with ours. 

What makes Adelaide even more compelling on rewatch is that her scissors, despite their gruesome method for curing the curse, do end up working. Which means she did mean to help Beatrice out as part of the deal. At no point does Adelaide lie, and given Beatrice knows she’s bad news as she lures the brothers in, it becomes clear that for all her villainy, Adelaide is an honest witch. I’m always down for baddies that tell the truth, but it’s of particular interest when we compare her to the Beast, whose whole deal is lying. 

The only liar in this episode is Beatrice, even if she wanted to set things straight without hurting anyone; she values her friendship with the boys so much now that she’d rather make herself a servant to Adelaide than just tell them she’s dangerous and reveal that she lied. By the time she’s willing to tell the truth, it’s too late, and not even saving Greg and Wirt by killing Adelaide is enough for Wirt to forgive her. Considering he knows in The Unknown that the scissors he uses to escape the yarn can save her family, he was also listening in on the end of the conversation before entering the house, which means he must have heard that she was willing to sacrifice herself, but that doesn’t matter either. Beatrice gave the boys hope, and no matter how badly she tried to stop it, the encounter with Adelaide transforms Wirt. Where he was once nervous and unsure, and was then briefly optimistic, he’s now sullen and untrusting.

But again, in comes Jason Funderburker, croaking and hopping on all fours once more to bring some light to the darkening series. He doesn’t do much for Wirt, but allows Greg to quickly get over whatever trauma he had about getting webbed up in yarn; he’s remarkably quiet about it, but it’s important to remember that he was betrayed, too. Whether he doesn’t understand exactly what happened or is just quicker to forgive, Greg is fine with Beatrice, allowing us to focus harder on Wirt’s reaction from now on.

It’s all rain and winter for Wirt until the end of his adventure. But the show isn’t content to leave him even slightly forlorn: when it gets too dark, he has a frog to swallow a lantern to light the way, and when it gets too cold, he has a brother to cover him in leaves, and when he falls, he has Beatrice to help pull him back up. Even the Woodsman tries to save him in his own way (talk about folks who are bad at communication). Bad things happen, and people make mistakes, but the bigger mistake is allowing that to close you off to others, or to never forgive friends that are genuinely sorry. Our heroes have taken the ferry to the other side, and now the story can shift to one about the folly of abandoning all hope.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

On top of Jason Funderberker, who’s set up as a major rival to make his eventual reveal one of the show’s best jokes, Wirt gives Beatrice a general summary of Into the Unknown three episodes before we see it play out.

#lullaby in frogland #over the garden wall #otgw #steven universally #mark twain #the princess and the frog

[raymondshields]

1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 15, 21, 22, 23 for the writers ask?

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Currently, I’m working on a fic titled A Monstrous Manifesto, which is a fic entirely inspired by Cat Valente’s poem of the same name. Every line is a chapter, every noun is a part of that chapter, and every single beast named corresponds to a Spectre, allowing me to dig directly into their heads and demonstrate their full psychology. 

Progress stopped unfortunately back in July on part four - a fiend, which I picked Deadly Beetle Stand for, because I just couldn’t get into his head. Kiril played soundboard for it and I’ve been humming and hawing over him trying to figure it out, but let’s be real it’s gonna come to me in a dream.

Because see here, most folks who’ve read my works, if told to point to my best, it’ll either be a) my breakthrough with Armour Adventures (which tbh if I redid I’d do better on), b) In Kismet Marcescence (which I need to sit down and plot out properly before I continue), or c) rather unexpectedly to me, Green Grows The Asphodel. Guess everyone likes that soft MiAlba where Alba gets his bastardization arc, but also I let him speedrun it in Broken Shine The Stars and people seem to like that one too, so.

The thing is with AMM is that this would be my greatest work. Like AA, it’s gen, but here’s the one advantage I’ve realized I actually have over pretty much everyone else in this fandom: I am myself a monster, fictionkind and all. I’m a Devil and a feral little beast, which means when you offer me Spectres - warriors of the dark and death who are all based around animal motifs - I take one look and go “oh! You’re like me!” and proceed to write them as actual monsters while having some unspoken and long-winded conversation about what it means to be human, what it means to be shunned, and what it means to belong among the broken.

It means that I write Spectres wildly different than anyone who isn’t Kiril (who is on the same wavelength as me and we argue back and forth about the inner details of everyone’s monstrosity), which means when I do it, nobody’s seen this shit before and apparently people seem to think it’s cool. So AMM is the very epitome of that style, of that psychological and philosophical discussion. I don’t really have a background of research in either of those things, so any similarities to works or theories already out there is entirely coincidence. Cat Valente’s poem was the first stepping stone I ever took to accepting myself for who - and what - I am. I owe as much of my identity and confidence to her as I do Zamorakian philosophy, which built my personality and is a major part of how I survived the middle school era of my life. The least I can do in return is offer the best of me out into the world.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

“Somewhere deep below conscious thought, below his training and the life and this Lemurian body, buried under lifetimes of war, buried under the idea that a Spectre was a fighter, his blood remembered how to love the memory of the fallen.” - Beneath Blood Ties

BBT is one of my most unappreciated fics, which makes sense as it’s set almost two thousand years prior to Classic, starring a fourteen-year-old Lemurian Minos and the Saint who raised him, Aries Kirien, whose name is probably still spelled Kiriel at least once in the fic because no beta we die like Gold Saints.

The original inspiration comes from Seanan McGuire’s Once Broken Faith, and the line in question is Toby reading the Luidaeg’s blood memories after the latter told a young Karen that she couldn’t speak Faerie even in her dreams - she speaks it in her blood memories, and Toby notes that her blood remembers.

It stuck with me, though I’ve read OBF approximately a million times. It, along with A Killing Frost and An Artificial Night, are my three top Toby books. And it responded to me as someone who’s fictionkind: I couldn’t speak the language I spoke as a Devil in my dreams, or in the waking world, but I know some part of me remembers it. Would know how. The Chaorruption filters all of that into English because it thinks it’s helping, but if I were a magical creature right now, in this world, I’m pretty sure my blood would remember.

So I wrote about Minos, and the sorrow he carried. The premise of BBT is that a Pope realized some Spectres come back, went around before they became Spectres, and kidnapped the lot of them to train as Saints, leaving them all traumatized as fuck, unsure of who they were or who they followed, and messed up for lifetimes. I also wanted to show more that Spectres were more than what the Holy Wars made of them, and about digging through that exotrauma to remember that they could be kind.

Spectres, originally, would make sense as really just Hades’ servants and the ones who keep the Meikai running. Pretty sure that means they know every single death rite that’s existed in the past three millennia. Pretty sure they know how to be respectful of the dead. Pretty damn sure that below all that soldiering and war, they’re all really exhausted librarians who want to do their job and also dig graves.

But I like this sentence here best, because that’s pretty much the climax of the plot here: that there is, in fact, something underneath all his exotrauma, all the current trauma he’s been dealing with. That below all of that bitterness and war, he’s a better person than what Athena made of him.

Idk, I just think it’s neat and no I’m not projecting being ‘kin on him again. /j

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Albafica, to nobody’s surprise. I mean, come on. A guy with a fuckton of traditionally-feminine beauty whose looks keep getting brought up, is very introverted, has seen some shit, just wants to kill people who hurt what he cares about while also not hurting the people he does care about, really wants you to keep your damn distance, is super touchstarved, and holding onto his humanity with his fingertips? Come on the only things he’s got that I don’t is an actual male reproductive system and naturally blue hair.

Once you realize that especially in TLC Athena’s actions are pretty damn horrific, especially to her Saints, Albafica has the perfect setup to become a Spectre. Seriously, if he’d been offered Luco’s deal but while holding a dying Lugonis, do you really think he wouldn’t have taken it? I explore that more in Broken Shine The Stars, but like. Albafica is the perfect fallen angel of a character. He has genuinely good intentions. He’s hurting so damn bad and only fucking once in his entire onscreen performance is that acknowledged (shoutout to Luco for that one), and if you take his sorrow and let him turn it into anger, he’s a glorious monster indeed. Albafica’s descend into monstrosity and Spectrehood is exactly what would happen if I got angry and also hadn’t been fucking nerfed physically.

I love him way too much.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Surprisingly, Aiacos. Alba’s hard as fuck to write. Aiacos, though. You’ve heard me go off about Aiacos at length, but like. He’s the very embodiment of the worst person you can become while still loving, still surviving. Aiacos is the type of person we’re all capable of becoming, and we all should be terrified of becoming, because every single choice he’s ever made is completely understandable and that much more horrific for it.

It’s somewhat unsurprisingly easy to get into his head. He’s fun to write because he scares me. Because if I let him do all the dumb, selfish, sadistic-looking, survival-focused things, then I don’t have to worry about doing it myself. I let him look out for only himself when the pieces are down, so I can do better.

Also I haven’t seen anyone else write him that way (Kiril being the obvious exception here), so it’s double the fun because new territory.

11. What do you envy in other writers?

Hey. Hey you fuckers who can plot shit. Give me the number of the demon you sold your soul to. Let me PLOT SHIT.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries! Titles are easy, I steal them from songs and Toby books. They’re just fancy wordplay and I have literally a list on my fic spreadsheet of titles I want to use. Summaries, though, are very important. People don’t pick fics based on title and tags, they pick based on summary. They’re your hook into the work, so you’ve got to give the audience your premise short and sweet and actually sounding appealing.

Sometimes I can write them no problemo. Other times, they’re a fucking nightmare. I try to imply the tone of the ending in my summary, because I have absolutely been blindsided by the ending in a way I really didn’t like because I thought the summary was hiding the ending. (Example - there was this one fic that made it sound like my OTP was going enemies to lovers, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it needed the fucking dead dove do not eat tag, stopped just short of serious nonsexual noncon (which wasn’t tagged at all), and ended very unhappily and it messed me up for days, I did not like it.)

So for my summaries I set the scene, set the tone, and imply the tone of the ending so you have a vague idea of where it’s going. Easier said than done.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Anime, probably! Manga wouldn’t lend itself too well to my style, but I’d enjoy short anime episodes, I think. I honestly don’t know. Someone tell me what my stuff would work good as. I dunno.

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

For fic, all the time! I write what I want to read, and since six out of seven of the Dohko/Kagaho works on AO3 were my fault, I’d better get used to reading my own writing for pleasure. Fortunately, I like most of my writing recently, so that’s pretty all right!

Don’t ask about what I had up on ff.net. Don’t. It’s old and bad and I didn’t know how to write.

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Hmmm... I want to rephrase this better as ‘what fic exists only as a concept and has done so for the longest out of all the concepts of fics currently in my head’, and hmmmm. Honestly, it’s either Shion and Aiacos’ romance fic where they also get a daughter (which has a title actually, The Lost Sea Fantasia, but still hasn’t been written); or it’s Wyvern Rose and the Trials of Lightning, which is about 15th century Rhada’s two daughters, the elder of which is surprise-given his surplice and his job when he dies right before Hades does, and the younger of which is kidnapped by a spiteful goddess who doesn’t like the elder of the two.

ToL is a fic that I have somewhat plotted out, but really needs a lot of work. I’m not really sure how to go about writing it, because whenever I sit down to sketch it out, it never comes to me. It does, however, lend itself well as a bedtime / campfire story that Albafica tells Regulus while they’re out on a mission together, as part of Alba sneakily teaching Regu how to be a Spectre without anyone knowing. It’ll stay a concept for a long while until Rose crashes into my headspace and actually fucking tells me more about herself other than “oh yeah btw I’m fucking Julia” like thanks, already knew that from Julia herself, tell me more about you you awful little Judge of a dragon princess.

[ask game here!]

#asks #saint seiya #dorksmithery #thank you!! #i'm gonna go answer the other one now #but ofc send me more if yall want!

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator is essential viewing. It’s a sci-fi horror film whose impact upon cinema cannot be denied - and it happens to be pretty good too. With memorable dialogue, great action, iconic characters and a pace that hits the ground running and never stops, it’s just about perfect.

In 2029, mankind is at war with Skynet, an artificial intelligence that’s become self-aware. Sensing an imminent defeat, the machine sends an assassin back in time to 1984. This Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) targets Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). It aims to kill her before she can give birth to John Connor, who will eventually lead the humans to victory. To prevent the past from being altered, soldier Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) arrives to protect the mother of humanity’s only hope.

Before we dig in, let’s deal with the picture’s one flaw: the special effects. They’re great but they’re still, ultimately, the best 1984 could produce under a low-budget. You can tell when it’s the real Arnold and when it’s a rubber head. It’s only in a few scenes and every other pyrotechnic, crash, stunt and prop is completely convincing so I’m not docking points. You shouldn’t either.

From the opening scene’s nightmarish machine apocalypse, you’re hooked. Gargantuan treads crush bleached skulls en-masse. It's something straight outta hell, as is the Terminator himself. Whether intentional or not, the film becomes about so much more than just its premise. The Terminator is this hulking monstrosity that kills without emotion and delivers stock dialogue to get itself out of any interaction as quickly possible. It’s a man, as conceived by an unfeeling demon-lord of circuits and cables and wait until you see what hides beneath its flesh. It’s the killer getting up after the heroes thought they’d managed to land the finishing blow, the final reveal of the monster’s true form after being teased throughout. Once that image enters your mind, there’s no forgetting it.

The human characters are a major part of this film’s success. In Sarah Connor, we find the archetypical underdog and the slasher film’s “final girl” blended into one. In Kyle Reese, we get a tough action star - though perhaps not as tough as he seems initially - a soldier suffering from PTSD, and a romantic. People don’t often talk about the love story inside The Terminator but it adds another layer of tragedy knowing that even if the two manage to survive the ordeal, the world is still going to end.

The immediate impact is what makes The Terminator special. The little details you only grasp after it’s over - or upon repeat viewings - is what makes it great. Is the Jetsons t-shirt we see Sarah’s roommate wearing a dark jab at the contrast between Hannah Barbera’s idyllic vision of the future and the scenario this film proposes? I’m not sure but I’ll happily wonder. This is too well-made a movie for everything good in it to be mere coincidence. (On DVD, May 17, 2019)

#terminator #theTerminator #movies #films #reviews #movie reviews #film reviews #film criticism #james cameron #gale anne hurd #arnold schwarzenegger #michael biehn #linda hamilton #paul winfield #1984 movies #1984 films #sci-fi

[jackiestarsister]

My thoughts on “The Rise of Skywalker”

I just saw The Rise of Skywalker with my friend @ewoking-on-sunshine. I’m still processing it, but I have many thoughts. Spoilers below the cut.

It’s not a perfect movie. But I enjoyed it and am, for the most part, satisfied. All I wanted was for it to be enjoyable and make sense and bring some resolution to the story. I think it succeeded overall.

I feel like I can’t complain too much, because the biggest things I wanted to happen did happen: we got Ben’s redemption, a freaking Reylo kiss, and Ben smiling. We even got beautiful things I wasn’t expecting, like Han’s scene, and the revelation that Leia trained as a Jedi for a time. I think it can stand on its own as a story in itself, though The Last Jedi may remain my favorite installment as far as story craft.

Here are my miscellaneous thoughts and opinions:

~ Much of it feels like fan fiction. Whether that is good or bad, I’m not sure. It could just be that the fans were particularly good at predicting possible developments and the general direction of the story.

~ Nothing was revealed about Kylo’s style/method of governing, or whether he did anything to expand the First Order’s power as Rey predicted they would do in TLJ

~ Palpatine’s return could have been set up better

~ The symbolism and significance of Kylo killing his abuser is changed, if not completely ruined, since Snoke was Palpatine’s puppet, and Kylo seems to enter Palpatine’s service after learning that he was the one who manipulated him throughout his life. Maybe Kylo thought if he refused he wouldn’t be able to get away alive?

~ Palpatine’s plans are as confusing as ever. Just how much he controlled, what he was aware of, and what his true intentions were is unclear. In particular,  I’m confused about the fact that Palpatine made Snoke, who seemed ignorant of Rey’s origins and told Kylo to kill her, and the fact that Palpatine told Kylo to kill Rey when it turned out he wanted her to come and kill him. Were Snoke and/or Palpatine using reverse psychology in giving Kylo those orders?

~ Palpatine probably had the means to prolong and/or restore Padme’s life the whole time Vader was trying to find a way to do so

~  It is unclear whether Rey ever told anyone about her bond with Kylo or how he killed Snoke (which is pretty relevant information for the Resistance).

~  It’s unclear whether Rey and Kyko have seen or felt each other through the Force at all in the past year. Each movie shows several Force bond connections in a short period of time (one or two days each), and that would add up to a lot in a year, so I’m guessing they didn’t have any for that interim. It seems that although Rey closed the door, Kylo opens it. I don’t really like what that implies.

~ The beginning revealed so much and moved from one set of characters to another so quickly that I wondered whether the story was going to continue following the hero/heroine’s journey(s). Eventually it did, but it felt like the strangest beginning for a Star Wars movie, especially compared to the brilliant opening sequence of The Force Awakens.

~ Rey and Poe’s bickering was fun to watch

~ They did pretty well using those bits of Carrie Fisher footage and making Leia’s death play a role in the story. I’m sure if Fisher were still alive they would have had more justice for Leia.

~ I wish Rose had played a bigger part in the story, and that her relationships with other characters had been clarified and explored more.

~ I wish Ben had interacted with other members of the Resistance. He and Finn had so many parallels in their arcs, and the two of them actually had a couple scenes together, but they were always distant, with Finn watching as Rey interacted with Ben.

~ What was Finn going to tell Rey? What was their relationship about when it came down to it? They had such a wonderful dynamic and intertwined arcs in The Force Awakens, but in this installment it felt like they were running parallel to each other.

~ Giving Poe a shady past as a spice smuggler contradicts his canon backstory revealed in Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka.

~ Hux’s death was disappointingly anticlimactic. Seemed like a waste of his character. I’m not sure how I feel about the twist of him being the spy. He seemed so much less the crazed man who fired Starkiller or the calculating menace who considered killing an unconscious Kylo. Before TROS, Hux’s motivations seemed more political and ideological, a contrast to Kylo’s motives which seemed personal.

~ In what capacity did Pryce serve Palpatine in the previous war?

~ The fact that Rey is a Palpatine raises all kinds of questions about her family. There could be a whole trilogy about what kind of relationship Sheev and his child had. I wonder if the mother of his child was Mara Jade or someone like her who worked closely with him. But the mention of cloning and other strange techniques for making or passing on life makes me wonder if his child was even “natural” or somehow made.

~ Rey’s Dark Side heritage makes her affinity with the light side even more ironic and miraculous. Or maybe the irony is that someone as dark as Palpatine could come from such an idyllic utopia as Naboo. Maybe they are trying to show that it is our choices, not our origins, that define us.

~ The fact that Rey is descended from a powerful established character takes away from the idea that Rey represented for me and many others, that a great person can come from humble, unimportant origins.

~ Finn’s arc was opposite of predicted stormtrooper rebellion. The stormtrooper paradox still holds.

~ The hunt for Sith clues doesn’t make sense. It makes even less sense than the search for Luke in TFA, which was full of holes and unexplained coincidences.

~ The way Ben stands on the Death Star looking out at the horizon was 100% Byronic hero, but also similar to Luke’s posture when looking at the Tatooine suns.

~ Seeing Kylo talking to Han and Rey talking to Luke underscored how Kylo and Rey are co-protagonists.

~ How long did Ben stay at the Death Star ruins contemplating his and Rey’s situation? Apparently long enough for Rey to go to Ahch-To, talk to Luke, and go to Exegol, because he arrives there later than her. Time and distance in these movies have never made much sense, but I wonder if there might be some deleted scenes involving Kylo at this point. Did he realize he had lost control of the First Order? Did he ever think about ordering them not to follow Palpatine?

~ Regarding minor pilot characters: Happy to see Wedge Antilles back, sad to see Snap Wexley die.

~ Poe could have had better resolution for his arc as an emerging leader

~ Finn tries once again to sacrifice himself despite what Rose said to him after he tried to do that in TLJ. (While I don’t think it was necessary, Ben’s death was in keeping with her words because he died to save what he loved.)

~ We finally got a Reylo music theme! If I’m not mistaken, it had the Force theme sort of underlying it but there were other things going on too. I look forward to hearing the What the Force podcast’s discussion on this.

~ Rose was right that they would win by “Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Rey refused to even hate Palpatine. Ben came to save Rey and that enabled her to save everyone else.

~ My favorite moments of each sequel involve Rey, Ben, and a light saber passing between them.

~ Everything that was said to Rey and Ben about home, family, coming home, coming back ... it was all leading up to their teaming up. Palpatine was wrong when he said he was Rey’s only family. Ben became her family, and that was part of the reason why she took his family name. Whoever wrote the caption “The belonging you seek is in Ben Solo’s arms” was right.

~ We still don’t know what, if any, ideology Ben held, how he felt about political power and different forms of government. That pretty much reinforces my belief that for him this has never been about politics, it’s all been personal for him.

~  Ben’s death is problematic if he is supposed to represent people who have been abused and made poor life choices. It’s a beautiful sacrifice, but did Rey really have to die and necessitate it? She could have been mortally wounded, and he could have healed her without dying himself.

~ If passing his life force to Rey cost his life, Ben should have died before Rey kissed him.

~ Ben’s death is tragic, but not technically a tragedy in the literary sense, because it’s not about learning how to avoid making mistakes like his. For all his faults (narcissism, anger that manifests in violence), Ben didn’t have a particular fatal flaw. He fell because he was a victim of circumstances and forces beyond his control. He died saving the woman he loved, which sounds like a good thing.

~ I’m surprised the Lars homestead was still standing after it seemed to have burned to ash in A New Hope, and I find it difficult to believe that on a planet like Tatooine someone else would not have claimed it.

~ The title refers to both Ben and Rey, since Rey becomes a Skywalker

~ From a certain point of view, Reylos and Rey Skywalkers were both right, and both wrong.

~ Why didn’t Ben become a Force ghost like Luke and Leia? Can he become one in the future? I find the matter of whether a Jedi/Force-user leaves behind their physical body or fades away to become one with the Force, and whether they become capable of manifesting as a ghost, sketchy and inconsistent.

~ What is Rey going to do now? Was she moving into the Lars homestead? Will she raise a family of her own? I think it unlikely that she would fall in love with anyone as deeply as she did with Kylo, and I think she might be hesitant to have biological children who would inherit her (Palpatine) Force abilities, but I can picture her adopting and/or mentoring children.

~ The theme of IX seems to be “You’re not alone,” the way 8’s was “Failure is the greatest teacher.” It is the lesson Rey, Finn, Poe, and Ben each learn. But in the end Rey does seem alone.

~ Rey’s greatest fears were being alone and being insignificant. Is the takeaway supposed to be that she is okay with being alone? That would go against the movie’s overarching theme. Similarly, Star Wars is about family, and while that theme definitely comes through, it would have been so well punctuated if the story ended with the main characters starting families.

~ Nothing was resolved regarding the government(s) of the galaxy. Is it in a state of anarchy now? Were they able to learn from the mistakes of the past two republics?

~ Did Rey, Ben, the Jedi, and/or the Resistance bring balance to the Force? Is the corresponding rise and fall of the light and dark finally over? Will this peace last? Will Rey be the last Jedi or will she pass on their legacy?

~ What was the point of this trilogy as a whole? What message are we supposed to take away from it? Is it still a Prodigal Son type of story?

Now I’m going to spend time thinking about how this will impact my fan fiction and my essays on the Christian themes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I will look forward to reading the (apparently expanded edition) novelization and having good quality screenshots and one more Shakespearean parody by Ian Doescher.

#The Rise of Skywalker spoilers

[valhallamercury]

bassist | boh rhap!john deacon x female!reader

Summary: Ever since you’ve met John, you’ve happily thrown yourself down the rabbit hole of falling in love with him. And honestly, how could you resist? He was kind, sweet, and not to mention handsome. Now the only problem: getting to go on a date with  A/N: The requested part two of secretary, so make sure you read that before reading this! This was so much fun to write, tell me if you’d guys would like a part three! :) Warnings: none, except that this is unedited.  Tag list: @lizgarxo @josephhmazzello @tv-saved-the-teenage-girl Word count: 1,994

After your first encounter with the dark-haired man, you had practically thrown yourself into a pit labeled “in love with John Richard Deacon.” Could anyone blame you though? Every time John came in with his friends to record their album, he always made sure to stop by and talk to you. He would tell you about the album and the boys, and you would tell him about how work was going and your pride and joy, which was your cat named Fleur. On bad days, he would make you smile. On some days, he brought you flowers, on others he brought you tea with compliments written on the cup. You dreamed of the day John would ask you out, and each day you would be let down when he didn’t. But you wouldn’t give up.

You sat at the front desk, organizing papers for Mr. Foster that needed to be done before noon. You checked the clock again. 10:34. You’ve got this, Y/N, why are you even worrying about it? You know you’ll have these done in 10 minutes, You thought to yourself. You knew the real reason behind your stress, though you wouldn’t admit it. You hadn’t seen John’s sunshine face in three days, making you worry that you had said something to upset him. A tap tap tap against your desk made your thoughts end. 

You looked up, seeing a familiar smiling face. You’re little sunshine was back. 

“John!” You exclaimed happily, his fond smile becoming contagious against your lips. “I haven’t seen you in a while, I was starting to worry something had happened.” You admitted, resting your head against the palm of your hand. Y/N, your papers, a voice in the back of your head nagged. You decided to ignore it. 

“No, no, I’m perfectly fine. Really. We’ve just been so busy with the album, haven’t had much time to chat.” He explained shyly, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. 

“Well, I’m glad to see your pretty face again. I’ve missed our little talks.” You smiled fondly at John, seeing his face light up to a bright pink color. It was a fun little game you liked to play: see how many times you could get John to blush. It definitely wasn’t one-sided though, for there were many occasions where Mr. Deacon had made your face go hot. 

“I’ve missed them too.” John returned your smile, leaning his elbows against your desk as he conversed with you. You could tell something was off though; he looked as though he was trying to tell you something, but just couldn’t find the words. Finally, he spoke again. 

“Hey, Y/N, I was wondering, what time do you get off?”

Your heart skipped a beat. Was this finally your moment?

“I’m actually off tomorrow.” You replied, trying to remain ‘nonchalant sounding’ but you could tell that it hadn’t been too convincing. 

“Well, what a coincidence! The boys and I have a day off tomorrow as well from pumping out songs for the album,” His signature dorky smile and pink cheeks returned, “I was wondering... well, I was wondering since we’re both conveniently off, if maybe you’d like to hang out tomorrow. Like, well, a date.” 

It took all the strength in you not to jump up and down in excitement in that very moment. But, you controlled yourself. That didn’t stop the big smile stretching across your face though.

“I would love to go on a date with you tomorrow, Deaky.” You cooed. He grinned, a soft chuckle escaping through his lips. 

“Great! Great.” He coughed, trying to calm his enthusiasm. “There’s this great tea shop I know that we can meet at,” He began, pulling a sticky note from your desk and writing down the address of the shop. He handed it to you, a bright smile across his features. You happily took the sticky note, folding it up and putting it in your jacket pocket. 

“I’ll meet you there around 10-ish?” You asked, practically bubbling over with excitement. He nodded quickly, checking the time on his watch.

“I must be going, but I guess, I guess I’ll see you around?” He guessed giddily, slowly backing up as he walked backwards down the hall. You nodded, giving him a small wave. 

“See you tomorrow, Deaks.” 

He grinned, turning around completely as he ran down the hall. You watched him run, seeing him pump his fist up in delight. You saw his three friends come out from behind some furniture of the main lobby, congratulating him. You giggled behind your hand before looking back down at your paperwork once more. 

☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆

Tap, tap, tap, tap

You blended your base in with your fingers, making sure everything was smooth and even across your face. Even in the most stressful of times, doing makeup had always calmed your nerves. However, you couldn’t stop the butterflies fluttering across your stomach or the way your face would heat up at the thought of John and the date that was in less than an hour.

You tapped a soft powder across your face, setting the base. You smudged a shimmery eyeshadow across the lids of your eyes, brushed mascara through your top and bottom lashes, and ran a clear mascara through your brows to hold them down. You applied a thick clear gloss across your lips, swiping some off your skin when you went a bit over the lines. 

Now the only problem you were faced with: what to wear. Everything you tried on just seemed to either be too much or not enough. You finally decided on denim overalls that were embroidered with elegant pink flowers, a long-sleeved pink and red striped shirt, and red Chuck Taylor All Stars.

“How do I look?” You turned, looking at your cat Fleur, who laid sprawled out across the bed. She lifted her head up, letting out a soft meow, before laying back down. You took that as a sign of approval. 

You only had fifteen minutes or so to get to the tea shop, so you decided to head out early. 

You made your way through the bustling streets of Britain, before finally stopping in front of the quaint little shop. With five minutes to spare, might you add. 

You looked around before spotting John’s familiar long locks. The man had his head in a book, tapping his finger along to the beat of some song as he read. You smiled a bit to yourself, shaking his head. You walked over, standing in front of his booth. 

“Is this seat taken?” You asked playfully. John looked up at you, a fond look appearing across his face. 

“It’s all yours.” He joked back, making you giggle. You sat down across from him, crossing your ankles out of habit. Your Gran had made sure that you always remembered to cross your ankles, not your legs. That was the proper way to do it, you could practically hear her remark. 

“This place is lovely, the scenery is so quaint and cute.” You remarked, smiling as you looked around. The shop was decorated like some sort of Woodstock-esque design. There were posters of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and many more artists. It had flowers of all sorts of varieties hanging from pots and vases across the store, giving it a lovely dash of color in all the right places. The room smelled of different variations of tea, all of which smelled exceptional. 

“Well, I remembered you telling me so much about how much you loved tea and flowers, so I thought this might be a good place to go.” He said softly, looking back at you shyly through his lashes. You felt your face heat up. No one you had ever been with had been this considerate. 

“You’re sweet, Johnny.” You smiled, resting your hand on your chin as you looked at the flower vase in front of you. “They really should switch the dandelions with those pink asters. The pink would compliment the goldenrods better.” You said, looking at the flowers in front of you. John raised his brows, but his smile never leaving.

“You really know your stuff, huh?”

You looked down at your feet for a moment, letting out a chuckle. “I guess you could say that. I’ve been wanting to be a florist since I was young because my Gran was a florist. She taught me all about different flowers and the way things would compliment each other and all sorts of things. My parents didn’t really think I should become a florist, they said there was no money in it and that people don’t buy flowers anymore.” You shrugged, looking back up at the dark-haired man who had been listening intently. “Besides, if I had been a florist, I would’ve never met you.” 

He smiled at you warmly, glancing at the vase. “Well, I think you should go for it. There’s no shame in trying.” He appealed, looking at you with his soft brown eyes that made you melt. “You’d be perfect at it. You have a cat named Fleur, for God’s sake.” He teased, a playful grin tugging at his lips. You giggled, rolling your eyes playfully and gently tapping his foot with your own. 

“Do not make fun of my cat, Deacon.” You scolded jokingly, a laugh escaping from the two of you. Once the laughter settled down, it was your turn to listen intently. “Well, since you know everything about me, why don’t you tell me things about you?” You asked, arching one of your brows. 

He raised a brow in return, his chin resting on the palm of his hand. “Well, what would you like to know?” 

You tapped your chin, thinking for a moment. “Favorite color? Favorite music artist? Hell, you haven’t even told me what instrument you play in your band.” 

“Well, my favorite color is black. Favorite musical artist? Probably Hendrix or the Beatles. And I play bass.” He spoke softly, looking into your eyes as he spoke. 

“That’s all?” You said as you looked at him, gently tapping his foot with your own. “C’mon, Deaks, there’s gotta be more to you than long hair and a pretty face.” 

His cheeks turned pink, tapping your foot with his in return. “Pretty face, huh?” He blushed, your feet now in an all right war with each other. “I was born August 19th,  1951. I have a band with my best mates, Freddie, Brian, and Roger. I like electronics. I love soul and funk music. I love to tinker. Doesn’t really matter with what, but I’m always fiddling with something around the studio. I also know that I’m on a date with the girl of my dreams and talking to her makes me nervous and giddy at the same time.” 

You felt your face heat up, you knew immediately you were giving the man heart-eyes. “You truly are wonderful, Deaky.” You smiled, reaching over and timidly placing your hand over his. He smiled, interlocking your fingers as he returned your fond gaze. 

You turned to face the window, seeing the rain pour down against the window. You took a deep breath, turning back to John with a sad gaze. “I should be going soon, before the rain gets any worse.” 

John frowned, glancing outside. “I’m not letting you walk home in the storm. It’s too awful.” He began, glancing down at your interlocked hands, before looking at you once more. His cheeks had turned an even deeper shade of pink. “My place isn’t far, if you’d like to stay there for the night. Only if you’d like though. Otherwise I could surely walk you home.” He added quickly, looking down at your hands. 

You smiled a bit at him, reaching over with your free hand and grabbing his other. He looked up at you, and you gave him a loving look. “What are we waiting for, Deaks? Let’s go.” 

#john deacon x reader #John Deacon #john deacon imagine #boh rhap!john deacon #joe mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #Queen #queen band #queen imagines #queen band imagine #bohemian rhapsody #boh rhap #roger taylor x reader #brian may x reader #freddie mercury x reader

[ariainstars]

Rogue One or Why I (Probably) Won’t Watch This Movie Ever Again

It’s not as if I disliked “Rogue One”. I found it excellently made, from the political, philosophic, psychological point of view as well as with regard to settings, action scenes, acting, music, effects etc.

But why didn’t anyone tell me how deeply sad this story is?

“Rogue One” tells the story of a group of persons who all, for different reasons, have nothing left to lose and thus sacrifice their lives to help the Rebellion against Palpatine’s Empire. There is no reason for us viewers to get attached to the members of this crazy suicide mission: it is their destiny to die and we can sense that right from the beginning. Personally, I never felt compelled to root for them, I only felt terribly sorry for them.

It sure is interesting to be confronted with the reality that so many heroes gave an important contribution to the end of the war but never got anything good from it; also, how bleak and dangerous their lives in this totalitarian Empire were, constantly on the run, always oppressed, losing another piece of themselves over and over - family, health, mental sanity, safety, integrity, in the end life.

The only character I could feel with a little was Cassian, who stayed by Jyn’s side to the bitter end so she wouldn’t have to die alone. Jyn on the other hand never requited his feelings; her entire being was set on doing her father’s will, and Cassian, like everybody or everything else, was just a meaning to this end for her. (Though, in all honesty, she never compelled or manipulated anyone.) She may have been meant as a strong female character, but I didn’t find her in the least compelling or admirable. Jyn did what she had to do because she did not know what else to do with her life.

Jyn’s fate is a somewhat sarcastic take on the bond between child and father emphasizing that a father may give his child’s life direction and purpose but that this must not necessarily make him (or her, in this case) happy.

What baffled me most, in retrospect, was the reaction coming from most Star Wars fans. Long before I had watched the film, I had heard respectively only read of enthusiastic responses, usually culminating in “A real Star Wars film again, at last!”

Of course setting and design remind very much of “A New Hope”, because the story is set shortly before; and for brief periods we see the Death Star, Governor Tarkin, Leia and Darth Vader.

So then, this is what fans want, this is allegedly “real Star Wars”? Excuse me, depressing? Not the aesthetics and the message of the Prequels, the energy and drive of the classics or the new impulses and hopeful glimpses of the Sequels? Does it only depend on cosmetics whether a film is defined “real Star Wars” or not?

This whole story is a tragedy. It’s not a call to adventure with a happy ending like “A New Hope” or “The Phantom Menace”, a Greek-style drama like “Return of the Sith” or anything of the sort. It’s supposed to bring home that there is nothing wonderful about war and that everyone involved will lose much more than they win. This also fits to one of the Sequels’ themes, when we meet the old heroes again; they had won a war and founded a family - but before that, Luke and Leia had lost their old families, Luke had to give up his dream of becoming a pilot, and all of them suffered through tremendous physical and psychical horrors. And, as we learn, after a period of peace they had to watch their victory go up in smoke again as the embodiment of their hopes, their son and heir, nephew and pupil, turned his back on them and devoted himself to becoming evil like his grandfather, the very person they had fought against respectively tried to rescue and redeem all of these years before.

Yes, in a way “Rogue One” is “real Star Wars”. There is a person with father issues at the center, it’s an authentic, honest story, the characters are well-developed and the narrative is well thought out. But I was left almost in tears thinking how the hope Leia expressed in the last scene was founded on the absolute lack of hope of the protagonists of the crazy Death Star mission. I felt depressed for two days after.

Even “Revenge of the Sith” doesn’t make me feel that bad when I watch it, though the outcome is so terrible. There is Padmés funeral scene that leaves the viewer space to mourn, and the scenes with the twins and their surrogate families announcing that not all is lost. “Rogue One” just makes a quick cut when all is said and done and that’s it.

No one will ever think about these persons ever again, no one will mourn them, no one will be grateful to them or call them heroes. A brutally honest take on war and rebellion, opposite to the end of “A New Hope” where the heroes are celebrated and seen as such, though they are responsible for the death of everybody who lived on the Death Star. (Not that I’m blaming them, in that situation it was either destroy them or be destroyed.)

Luke Skywalker, hero of the first classic film which directly follows after this one, never knew his parents, lost his foster parents and his mentor during the course of a few days, but he joined the Rebellion and thrived on it. For Jyn, the loss of her family is a dead weight which hangs on her shoulders until it leads to her death. Jyn merely survives, making one heavy step after the other; she never rebels and goes her own way like Luke did.

I was also surprised since I had heard that Jyn was supposed to be a strong-willed woman, designed to be a role model to female spectators. I wouldn’t want any girl to choose Jyn as a personal example to go by: she is a cold, cynical person whose life never knows fulfilment, not a symbol of hope but of relinquishing of life, hope, happiness.

Her characterization is particularly bitter when we compare her to Han Solo, to whom Star War’s second spin-off was dedicated two years later. Though Han has a sarcastic streak, he remains generous and humorous, and he always cares and is cared about by someone. Despite his name, he is never really alone: he bonds with Qi’Ra, Chewbacca, Lando and Enfys Nest, while Jyn never is close to anyone. (Is it a coincidence that the names “Han” and “Jyn” are so alike, I wonder?)

Also contrarily to Jyn, Han turns his back on his father figure Beckett, deciding to go his own way. And in both cases, this attitude is not heroic in the conventional sense, but personal; Jyn does her father’s will because she feels committed to him, not to some greater cause. Han, too, rejects Beckett when he feels personally betrayed and let down by him. No wonder Han, as we get to know him in the classic films, is the most independent and worldly-wise of the characters. He initially had no father figure, then he found one but in the end, he chose to do without him. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence, when Han kills Beckett in self-defense, that his last words are “You made a wise choice”.

The difference between Han and Jyn, or also Luke, Anakin and Rey, to name other Star Wars heroes, is that he doesn’t have a father figure but he also doesn’t look out for one. He gladly befriends Beckett who is more experienced than he, but when he finds he can’t trust him he turns his back on him, with regret but not mourning him for long.

Han never knew where he came from, but with that also came the freedom to make his own choices; and as we know, contrarily to Jyn he still had a long and fulfilling life and found real friends, a home and a purpose. Very fittingly, “Solo - a Star Wars Story” is a feelgood film and not in the least depressing.

In both cases, we have a very realistic and not at all starry-eyed outlook on what “heroism” and “fighting for a just cause” means. Star Wars remains true to itself by hammering home all over again that it is not at all gratifying to be a lonely hero, and that on the other hand having a family may be a good thing, but being defined by them is a crushing burden. Picking up that burden and doing what you believe you have to do in order to feel connected to them may lead to the desired end, but then the question arises whether that end is really so desirable if the cost is so high. Again, Star Wars is not about the good guys blowing up the bad guys, but about growing up.

Luke Skywalker never knew about his family for a very long time, and after he had learned about it his father died, leaving it to him to repair the damage Vader had caused together with Palpatine; and as we see him again in “The Last Jedi” his character shows a bitter parallel to Jyn - lonely and disillusioned. This also follows the line of the Prequels: even if you have the best intentions you may still err, and deciding to give your life to what you perceive as a higher cause may literally become your, not exactly happy, fate. Becoming a Jedi master Luke became emotionally detached, which brought to the downfall of his temple; only when he communicated with someone again - Rey, Yoda, Leia, and also with his nephew a little - his existence gained new purpose.

In his last moments, Luke announces that he will still be there as a Force spirit; and after death he is remembered by many people in the galaxy, whether they knew him personally or not.

Jyn and Cassian die in the blaze of the Death Star fire, giving up what little they still had or were; Luke’s death is illuminated by the light of the twin suns which this time rise instead of setting. He loved and was loved, that is why he will never be truly gone. Jyn, Cassian and the other members of the Rogue One mission are forgotten, despite the invaluable service they did to the galaxy at large. This is what “Rogue One” ultimately is about: complete, utter and inescapable loneliness.

So, thank you for the food for thought, “Rogue One”. But I don’t think I will watch you ever again.

#star wars #rogue one #jyn erso #cassian andor #han solo #death star #film analysis

[igottheissue]

This Time Around 6

A strange woman Bucky is sure he knows but can’t fully recognize, picks him up after the fall of SHIELD. She claims to be friends with Steve and that she is here to help him. He can’t help but keep wondering where he knows her from; it’s definitely not through Steve Rogers. Can she help him be the man he wants to be or will the all too familiar struggles of being a super human overcome him?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X OC Rowan O’Connor Word Count: 3,619 Rating: M Masterlist Chapter 5 Chapter 7 Taglist: @xmarveled @spidey-the-killer-queen

Rowan woke up sweating; normal for nights she stayed at Stark Tower. She really didn’t know why she stayed here. Especially tonight. She could have stayed at the Compound upstate, but Natasha and Steve were there. She was aching to get back to Japan and she knew if Nat was in the vicinity she wouldn’t be able to keep her anxiousness hidden well enough. 

She couldn’t imagine how Bucky was dealing with her just up and leaving, even though she had left Warren’s contact info with him. But Natasha was already on her case and she didn’t need the red-head and Steve annoying the piss out of her anymore. She had to keep a semi-normal point of contact with them. That meant checking in every few weeks, like she had been for the past five years.

She couldn’t say with absolute truth that she hated it. She really did consider Natasha her closest friend, and she enjoyed the company of everyone else at the Tower; Tony the most. He understood her in ways most of the others couldn’t. 

Natasha had demons about her past, but she dealt with them alone. Rowan could go to her about trivial things, and knew about all her other deep, dark secrets, but in the end Nat never had the grace of dealing with the things Rowan really needed to talk about. The ex-assassin tried too hard to be heartfelt; the exact opposite of what Rowan needed it seemed.

A couple years ago when Steve first started working for SHIELD, Rowan was consulting with them pretty consistently. Tony concocted a “Stark Super-Lit Serum” for Steve and herself to allow them to get drunk. Naturally, Rowan goaded Steve into trying it one night when they found themselves in the empty common room at three in the morning. 

Lots of secrets and insecurities were spoken of that night; only half of which were remembered. Other than that, Rowan didn’t consider herself a gossipy, teenage girl type woman. There was one person she trusted with her darkest secrets and insecurities. For a while it was Warren, but after she ran away from her feelings, their current relationship at best was friends-with-benefits. As much as she cringed to say it out loud, that one person she so deeply trusted was Anthony Stark.

Why? She wasn’t exactly sure. She was guessing it was from all the trauma. Yes, she shared similar spy-training trauma with Natasha. As well as similar war-time trauma with Steve. She had even started sharing some memories with Bucky. But there was something about sharing semi-similar trauma with people who will just listen and give sometimes-shitty, honest-with-heartfelt-intention advice.

Rowan walked out onto the helipad of Stark Tower, where Tony liked to show off his giant, neon, energy-efficient logo for Stark Industries. It was foggy and a little too nippy for Rowan’s attire, with a slight spring drizzle frizzing up her curls. But she didn’t need perfect night vision to see who she was headed towards. She had been sure he’d be out here. Knew he’d be alone. Pepper was probably still working on something. Rowan really admired that woman for her work ethic.

“Ant.” The assassin sat down softly, letting her lower legs fall over the edge of the hundred story building.

“You know I hate that name, and if you didn’t look the way you do I’d definitely fire you for calling me that.” Tony could feel the warmth of Rowan’s body, her legging-clad knee touching his own, shoulder resting at the same angle. 

He briefly wondered what her bare skin would feel like, scientifically speaking of course; with the super soldier serum coursing through her veins. Was it as hot as it felt through her clothes? It was different than Steve’s - technically speaking. He’d have to ask her about running some tests.

“You wish I worked for you,” Rowan said with a light chuckle. Tony smirked as he looked up at the dark sky, trying to spot a star.

“You know Romania is the best spot for star-gazing. Late spring, early summer they get the best meteor showers. Scientists say its coincidence from the Big Bang or some hog-wash, but all of us intellectuals know it’s from the space aliens celebrating the moon landing.”

“Yeah, the moon landing was late June.”

“I know, Tony.” The brunette let his chin rest against his chest, accepting that he should probably retain this little snippet of conversation he and the super-powered woman just had.

Rowan had her eyes set on the World Trade Center Memorial building, brightly lit even in the middle of the city that never slept. She wanted to tell Tony of her plans that involved Bucky, but knew now wasn’t the time. She figured the one clue was enough for now. Tony was an intelligent man. 

She needed to talk though. If she didn’t talk about something, she’d end up talking about Bucky, and she knew Tony didn’t want to know about the one thing Steve and her kept from him about The Winter Soldier. That wasn’t her place she felt. So she talked about the other thing on her mind that no one else knew.

“Nine eleven was an inside job.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Tony spoke immediately, but the statement was half-hearted. Rowan didn’t speak. Tony let his russet eyes find her own jade-shaded. Rowan’s gaze fell to her lap. Tony knew from the silence this was going to be another therapy session and that the questions about testing her furnace-like warmth would have to wait. 

He was totally here for it; even if he didn’t get to vent about anything, knowing that someone like Rowan felt comfortable enough to speak about her own highly-confidential past gave him a special sense of self-worth. As dumb as that sounded. He had no real rebuttal for her silence, so he said the first thing that came to mind.

“Shit, kid.”

“I’m older than you.” The two shared a strained smile. Tony kept quiet, waiting for Rowan to find her words. He knew there was a lot about the Sector that SHIELD didn’t know about. He doubted SHIELD would ever know every little thing about The Sector. He didn’t blame Rowan for burning every paper copy referring to her captors. 

Tony steered his mind clear of the jump drive containing anything that was left concerning The Sector. Rowan trusted him and only him to keep that information safe. Even though he knew no one could read his mind, he still tried to refrain from thinking of the lone drive sitting in a lock box in his bedside table drawer. He kept quiet, handing the half empty whiskey bottle to Rowan. She only smiled ruefully and rested her head on his shoulder.

“I wish that could get me drunk.”

“I got some Super-Lit Serum in the cabinet if you want some.” Tony started to get up, pausing when Rowan put a hand on his thigh.

“No need Stark. I just need to talk a bit. Nothing too sinister.”

“Nine eleven sounds pretty sinister to me kid.” He was slurring his words a tad, but if Rowan noticed, she didn’t let on… He was thankful.

“I’m literally thirty five years older than you Tony.” The man ignored the age comment. He cleared his throat and rested his own head against Rowans.

“How’d you do it?” Rowan could honestly say, at least in her own mind, that at that moment, she loved Anthony Edward Stark. No bullshit trying to reassure her that she didn’t know what she was doing at the time. No chick-flick moments.

“It was all remote controlled. The men who seemed to be taking over the planes were all AI machines. The plans for the AI systems were stolen from a young recruit within SHIELD. They weren’t quite complete at the time I found them but the lad was on the right track. Just a few refined algorithms and some newer tech from The Sector and we had self-sacrificing dummies that were all controlled from a little flat in Galway.”

“Why?”

“Cause Garrett told me to.” Rowan really wasn’t sure of the political motivation that The Sector would gain from devastating one of the United States’ most populated cities. All she could guess was that The Sector just wanted to see the US grow stronger and closer while the rest of the world was blamed for things they never knew were happening until it was too late. She was put back in the cryo chamber at eleven a.m. on September eleventh two thousand and one. She had been congratulated for her success. “Success” she still got nauseous over even thirteen years later.

Tony raised his head and turned towards Rowan, resting his left hand on her shoulder. Rowan appreciated the gesture. It kept her dominant left hand free to grab her glock that was strapped to her thigh above her leggings if needed.

“That sucks Rowan. A lot of people died that day. A lot of lives changed.” Tony paused, not sure what to say next. He thought about what business his own company had been in at the time of nine eleven. They made a lot of money off that war… Money he wasn’t proud of.

“You can’t change any of that now though. You know it was wrong and there’s nothing to do that’ll change anything, so you gotta just… Let it go.”

“How am I supposed to let it go Tony? Just like that? I killed almost three thousand people. Innocent people. You know… I try to make up stories in my head. About how somehow, none of them were innocent. But you know it’s impossible. I still have nightmares about it.” Rowan lifted her head from Tony’s shoulder only to place it in her hands, resting her elbows on her knees. 

She looked down the hundred story drop, wondering if she jumped now, how long the fall would be and how long her body would try to fight to survive the landing before she died. Tony shook his head and pulled her back by her shoulder. He dragged her a few feet back from the ledge and faced them away from the Memorial Tower. He embraced her almost awkwardly, not sure if a hug was what the assassin needed at the moment. Her skin was hot to the touch, burning almost fever-like.

“Because that’s the only thing you can do besides what you’re already doing, kid.” Rowan let the nickname slide this time. She was past jokes now. This conversation got real too quickly for her liking.

“Trying to erase my red ledger by helping the World’s Mightiest Heroes? Right.” Rowan’s features stayed dark. That might help Natasha feel better but Rowan knew she could never make up for what she had done.

“Well yes, you being my sidekick is definitely helping you out. But I’m talking more specifically about the ex-HYDRA Asset you’re harboring in Romania.” Rowan relaxed a bit.

“He’s actually in Nagano right now. I plan to be in Romania at the end of June.” Tony leaned back and threw a smile towards Rowan. She returned the smile, visibly relaxing into Tony. She was relieved the man picked up her breadcrumb.

“Did you think it’d take me that long to figure out where you guys would be?”

“I’d never underestimate you Stark.” The sky was starting to lighten off to the east. Rowan welcomed the pre-dawn tint of the horizon. One more day down, one more day closer to returning to Bucky. It’d only been a month but she had started to enjoy her routine with the super soldier.

“I’ll send a jump drive with you when you head out. It’ll have all the info you need for my condo there. You’re welcome to it while you need it.” Rowan didn’t smile right away. 

She didn’t want to take Tony’s hand-outs, but she also didn’t want to go to many of her safe houses in Europe. Natasha knew where a lot of them were and the ones she didn’t know about, she’d find eventually. They could utilize Tony’s condo indefinitely in theory. Steve wouldn’t think to look at any of Tony’s hundreds of properties all over the world.

Rowan was torn. At that moment she wanted to tell Tony about Bucky killing his parents. He deserved to know. But she wasn’t sure if she were the right person to tell him. That file was one that was not in with a lot of the online documents. A few people knew about that date and what really happened.

 But if it wasn’t her place to tell him, whose was it? Fury’s? Steve’s? Natasha’s? Should she tell Pepper and have her disclose the information? No; she didn’t need to drag Pepper into this mess. But if Rowan told Tony, she wasn’t sure what would happen with them. She considered Tony a good friend, and she was helping the man who murdered his parents; whether said man remembered or not. 

Best case scenario he wouldn’t help her out anymore. Worst case scenario… She thought at first it’d be him telling Steve what her plans were before realizing Tony would probably just seek revenge on Bucky and kill him, if he could.

Fuck it. She’d hidden from Tony’s prying eyes before, she could do it again.

“Tony, there’s something else you should know…” Rowan paused, trying to gather her strength for what she was about to say. She hadn’t been this nervous in a long time. Tony looked her way. Rowan noticed his relaxed posture, ready to continue the weird conversation they’d been having as if talking about the weather. His dark brown eyes were inviting her to finish.

“There you two are! What are you talking about out here?” Pepper stepped out of the sliding glass door and walked over to where Tony and Rowan were sat on the small helipad. The clicking of her heels stopped just short of the two figures facing each other sitting Indian style on the concrete.

“Rowan was just telling me some of her deepest, darkest secrets from her evil days.” Both Pepper and Rowan rolled their eyes. Pepper wasn’t sure how else to respond; she knew Tony was telling the truth.

“Well, on a possibly lighter note, the video conference is dialed up for Natasha, Steve, and Sam from the Compound.” Rowan hesitated while Tony stood up and stretched. He kissed Pepper on the cheek and wrapped an arm around her waist as the couple looked down towards Rowan. 

She had closed her eyes and was breathing in deeply. She was so not ready to talk to anyone anymore. She looked toward the edge of the helipad one more time before exhaling dramatically and heaving herself up. The conversation with Tony about his parents would have to wait until after the video conference.

-TTA-

“Happy birthday, by the way. Since you didn’t come to your own birthday party. Tony threw it just for you.” Rowan rolled her eyes towards the big screen projector showing Natasha, Steve, and Sam’s faces.

“Thanks.” Rowan rolled her eyes playfully towards the trio in front of her as she slapped Tony on the shoulder.

“I didn’t know it was your birthday, gorgeous. When was it? How old are you now, twenty-three?” Sam’s deep voice slid easily through the speakers, making Rowan smile despite herself.

“It was April second, and I’m eighty-four.” Sam’s eyes widened for a moment before he composed himself. Natasha rolled her eyes and Steve looked between the two with raised eyebrows.

“Damn girl, you lookin’ fine for eighty-four. You’ll have to show me where the fountain of youth is.”

“I’d love to darling, but I can’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“I blew it up.” Rowan’s smile faded from her lips and her demeanor darkened. Sam cleared his throat and Steve took over the conversation.

“Right, so. Have you got any news on Bucky’s whereabouts?” Rowan kept her eyes on Steve’s troubled blue ones.

“No, though I’ve got a couple people caught up on the situation regarding Sergeant Barnes. They’ll update me if he slips up somewhere. I’ll send you their files and contact info.” Steve stared at her hard, waiting for her to show any sign of a lie. She just had to know where he was. Rowan kept Steve’s gaze until he blinked. 

She was a master liar and manipulator, but she could honestly say she didn’t technically know Bucky’s exact location at that moment. She also did have a couple people caught up on the situation… and they would inform her if he popped up on any type of surveillance system anywhere in the world. Tony and a friend over at MI6, who she was scheduled to meet up with after she rendezvoused with Bucky back in Japan. See, she didn’t always lie.

“Right. Well… Thanks Rowan, I really appreciate it.”

“No problem Rogers. So…” Rowan let a smile form on her lips.

“Tony said I get to kill some people?” Natasha rolled her eyes. Sam covered a laugh and Steve just looked downright uncomfortable. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to how Rowan acted sometimes. Tony stepped in front of Rowan to bring up some photocopied papers on the screens. 

The two-way cameras closed out just as Rowan caught Natasha’s gaze. Rowan tried to keep her composure but she could tell by Nat’s bright green eyes the red head knew she was withholding information from the group.

“We think Rumlow was spotted at Hotel Mahayid.” Rowan whipped her head in Tony’s direction.

“What do you mean you ‘think’ you spotted him? I thought he was dead.” Rowan moved closer to the touch screen and enlarged a picture of a man being carried into a decrepit building on the outskirts of what looked to be a desert city. It was dated two weeks after the fall of SHIELD. Tony stepped back and let Natasha take over.

“We say ‘think’ because, as you can tell from what pictures we do have, the guys face is so disfigured we can’t really be sure.” Natasha’s thick voice came through the ongoing conference call. Rowan could barely hear anything over the blood rushing to her ears as Natasha clicked a few buttons on her end of the computer.

“So wait. That guy who was a double agent for HYDRA and SHIELD is still alive? Don’t these mother fuckers know how to just stay dead? And what is Hotel Mahayid? Sounds Arabic.” Sam’s distinct voice filled the room. Rowan smirked at his question about people staying dead. She liked him despite the obnoxious flirting.

“Hotel Mahayid is a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It’s more or less a hotel for anyone who knows it’s there. But it’s not advertised to the public. Spies and assassins are the most frequent visitors, but you’ll see drug lords and the like there as well. 

“It’s a completely neutral ground for anyone. No weapons, no grudges, no maiming, no killing. Even threats aren’t taken kindly. You need a membership to even enter the property.” Rowan recalled what she knew about Hotel Mahayid to the others. 

Recalling fondly of some good times she’d had there. She wished desperately that her and Bucky could hole up there for a bit but knew that too many enemies would spill about them being there once they left the property. It wasn’t worth it.

“Okaaaay. Why don’t we just set up shop outside the front doors, he really can’t hide in there forever can he?”

“Good thinking Sam, but unfortunately that’s also against one of their many rules. You can’t wait at the doors, or even within two miles of the Hotel. They operate completely under a neutral treaty with everyone.” Natasha furrowed her brows as she explained to Sam the difficulties of dealing with the Hotel. 

It was nice for a spy or someone of the like when in a pinch. But she wasn’t sure if they could use any of the rules to the team’s advantage in this situation. Rowan cut in, trying to let Steve and Sam know the difficulty they would have if they tried to break the treaty.

“The Hotel has the best security system besides Stark Technology. While I’ve no doubt Tony’ll be able to hack it and follow what goes on in there remotely, I know that once Rumlow leaves we won’t be able to do a damn thing until he is out of that two mile mark. The Hotel has snipers at the ready above and below ground keeping a watchful eye on their property within the treaty.”

“You keep saying treaty. I personally don’t remember signing anything.” Steve’s sarcastic quip would have earned pinch to his bicep if Rowan had been in his presence. She briefly wondered if she and Steve would have gotten along well back when he wasn’t Captain America as well. She liked the sarcastic, cocky side of Steve. He didn’t show it too often around her.

“It’s an unspoken treaty. Everyone knows the rules. If you break them, you die. That’s it. No government agency publicly acknowledges that the Hotel even exists, but a lot of agents and officers use it. It has a state-of-the-art hospital in it. It’s been around since the twenties. It’s pretty much impenetrable. If we’re gonna pull this off, we need to do it right. I can’t go in there, I’d be recognized by Rumlow. I think we all would, except for Sammy boy.” Rowan finished her sentence with a smirk towards the ex pilot. He clapped his hands together and nodded his head.

“Alright, alright, alright let’s do this then.”

#marvel #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x oc #bucky x oc #bucky oc #bucky barnes fanfiction #the winter soldier #james barnes #ihavetheissue #9/11 and meteor showers #marvel fanfiction #shield #hydra #steve rogers #captain america #natasha romanoff #black widow #sebastian stan #katheryn winnick #tony stark #iron man #civil war #avengers

[kiss-my-freckle]

Timeline notes

1x1 -

Ressler: Raymond “Red” Reddington attended the Naval Academy. Top of his class. Graduated by the time he was 24. He was being groomed for admiral. Then in 1990, Reddington’s coming home to see his wife and his daughter for Christmas. He never arrives. This highly respected officer up and disappears from the face of the earth until four years later when classified NOFORN documents start showing up in Maghreb, Islamabad, Beijing. These leaks were traced to Reddington. This guy’s an equal opportunity offender, a facilitator of sorts, who’s built an enterprise brokering deals for fellow criminals. He has no country. He has no political agenda. Reddington’s only allegiance is to the highest bidder. Tech: They call him something in the papers. Cooper: “The Concierge of Crime.”

2x1 -

Aram: So he’s looking for someone who lived in D.C. before 1990, has a prescription for Lipitor through Medco, downloads World War II documentaries on Netflix not Amazon and has a digital subscription to both the Wall Street Journal and CatFanatic.

Naomi: I had a life, you know? My daughter had a life with a house and a dog. And then I woke up one day. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a man like Raymond Reddington turn your life upside down. They accused me of being a part of it? Somehow, I was a suspect. Put my life under a - a microscope every call, every charge. My assets were - I finally convinced them I was innocent. They said I had to go, give up everything. I remember it was a Wednesday afternoon. My daughter wasn’t even out of school yet. And by Thursday, we were in Philadelphia, fending for ourselves.

2x2 -

Liz: I confirmed your daughter was placed in protective custody with her mother in 1990. The Marshal service lost contact seven years ago. She is unaccounted for.

2x8 -

Berlin/Kirchhoff: It was in ’91. The Soviet union was falling apart. A small group of us. Members of the Politburo, the military, KGB, Stasi. Had a plan to push back the progressives, to stem the tide. We were meeting and discussing strategy when a bomb. Red: The Kursk Bombing. Berlin/Kirchhoff: Fifteen died. And with them, our resistance. Rumors began that the Americans were involved. One name emerged. Yours. You came after my daughter. You exposed her as a dissident. She went to jail. After that, my loyalty was questioned. I was exiled to the Gulag, where, one by one, her bones were sent to me.

Liz: You’re working with Berlin? Red: I need to talk to you about a bombing in the Soviet union Kursk, 1991.

2x10 -

Several TV news people: We are just now getting word of a story developing out of Hong Kong. Sources say authorities there have apprehended legendary criminal Raymond Reddington. He’s been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list longer than any other fugitive, but tonight, sources are confirming Reddington was arrested in Hong Kong just hours ago. Reddington was once a rising star at the Pentagon. Sources say he was being groomed for admiral when, on Christmas Eve, 1990, while on his way home to visit his wife and daughter, Reddington vanished. Reporter: Four years later, Reddington resurfaced and was charged with treason in absentia for selling top-secret American intelligence to foreign states.

3x4 -

Red: I was completely swept up in the idealism of the theatre owner - a pipe-smoking cream puff of a German named Gerta. She read “Mother Courage” to me aloud - the whole play in one sitting. A brilliant exploration of the politics of war and those who profit from it. Sadly, it was 1991, and audiences were going in droves to see “Cats.”

3x11 -

Liz. Who is this guy? He claims he’s Reddington? Samar: Yes, and we can’t disprove it with DNA because there’s nothing on file from 1990 when Reddington disappeared.

Devry: March 8, 1985, I ran point on an attack on the Beirut home of Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. June 1989, I coordinated Operation Minesweep, which provided back office support and oversight for Naval Intelligence operations in Kuwait carried out by the 160th SOAR.

3x16 -

Red: Velov is the one who lied to you, Lizzy, not me. Katarina Rostova committed suicide in 1990.

4x13 -

Red: I first met Stratos Sarantos when he was running guns to Cypriot resistance fighters in 1987. For more than 20 years, he’s overseen my shipping concerns from the Bosphorus to the Suez Canal.

4x16 -

Cooper: Kathryn Nemec is missing? Aram: Yeah, she disappeared in 1991, just dropped off the grid.

Aram: Kathryn Nemec. But she’s been missing since 1991.

5x19 -

Red: In 1990, the KGB and the CIA had almost nothing in common except the mutual determination to hunt down one individual. Jennifer: You. Red: Being a fugitive from American law enforcement is a lot easier than being a fugitive from the two most powerful nations on Earth. And anyone close to a target of theirs becomes a target themselves. Jennifer: Family. Red: Especially family. Unless they’re abandoned on the side of a road on Christmas Eve. Jennifer: After you left, we went into Witness Protection. Red: Put where the Cabal wouldn’t find you.

6x1 -

Liz: Raymond Reddington is a fraud. An imposter who took our father’s place over 30 years ago. The FBI can trace this Reddington forward from ’95. And I know for a fact that our father died five years before that.

6x5 -

Jennifer: It’s not the data, but it turns out the file names were coded using patient-intake dates. October 3, 1991. Liz: The date Reddington was admitted?

6x9 -

Sima: As the ranking officer on that Reddington Task Force, were you familiar with an incident that occurred involving the U.S.S. Gideon in March of 1990? Ressler: I was. Yes. The U.S.S. Gideon was an Ohio-class submarine sunk by the Soviet Navy while on a secret mission in the Barents Sea. 134 men were on board. They all died.

Red: If you found his archives, I need the tape of a phone call he recorded on December 7, 1990.

Cooper: Reddington told us to look for a very specific needle in this haystack. A recording taken on December 7, 1990.

Cooper: We’ll start over. Samar: Uh, I don’t think we have to. December 7, 1990.

Samar: It can’t be a coincidence that Reddington is looking for a recording made on December 7th, and, on December 11th, an assassin injures Bailey and murders a man who appears to have been his lover. Liz: Maybe he used the tape to try and blackmail someone who didn’t take kindly to being blackmailed.

Nuss: A month before the incident, a corporate account was opened in a Cypriot bank known to work with Soviet intelligence. The only person with the power to withdraw funds was the company president. Sima: And who was that? Nuss: Raymond Reddington. Sima: I’m sure many accounts were opened in the weeks prior to the tragedy of the Gideon. What makes you think the activity in this account was connected to it? Nuss: Because a front company for the KGB wired $3 million into the account a day before the incident, and another $3 million the day after it. One week later, the entire amount was withdrawn. Sima: By Reddington? Nuss: Yes. Using fingerprints and a password.

Red: You said the withdrawal required fingerprints and a password. Nuss: It was done remotely. Red: So if someone had a copy of my fingerprints and knew the password, they could have made the withdrawal, and no one at the bank, nor yourself, would have known the difference? Nuss: I, uh - suppose that’s possible. Red: Yes. You know what else is possible? That I was framed by Katarina Rostova, which I could prove if Your Honor would grant me even the shortest - Judge Wilkins: All right, the court will stand in recess.

20, 25, 30 years

Cooper: Remember, he’s been off the grid for over 20 years. (1x2) Cooper: Reddington has brokered some of the most comprehensive international criminal activity in the past 20 years. (1x2) Red: I’ve been moving comfortably through the world for the past 20 years without a trace, and now some two-bit spy killer is gonna put my life and business in jeopardy? (1x3) Fitch: Ray. It’s been, what - 20 years? (1x10) Red: No traffic. No cars to come help. Just me and a car full of gifts. It was more than 20 years ago. (Christmas Eve, 1x14) Tom: Best I can tell, their paths have crossed at key moments in the past 20 years. Quantico, Baltimore. (1x16) Naomi: If you’re looking for him, I can’t help you. You have to listen to me. Reddington - I haven’t I haven’t seen him in 20 years. (2x1) Samar: He’s been on the run for 25 years. His arrest was bound to happen. (2x10) Liz: They put a bullet in your chest, and you have no idea how. You’re the most cautious person I know. The FBI couldn’t find you for 20 years, but they did. (2x21) Aram: Because it was listed in the Fulcrum. 25 years ago, Hanover was a low-level staffer on the Hill. (3x3) Hitchin: I know about the Fulcrum. I’ve seen the list. It’s 25 years old. (3x5) Red: Your past three months have been what my life has been like for the past 25 years. I’m often exhausted. (3x11) Cooper: He disappeared 25 years ago. Could’ve had surgery. (3x11) Dom: I could’ve spent the last 30 years just being her grandfather - you selfish prick. (3x20) Kirk: I’ve been imagining this moment for the last 25 years. (3x23) Red: I know what it’s like to be hunted. I’ve protected myself for 30 years. (4x1) Red: I’ve been disappearing for over 25 years. I don’t need your help to disappear. (4x7) Tom: From 30 years ago. Clearly, it was flawed. (Kirk's DNA test, 4x7) Cooper: But she’s been missing for 25 years. (Kate, 4x16) Liz: He stole it from me 25 years ago. That’s why we needed you to get it back. (Fire memory, 4x19) Red: Understand this was 25 years ago now. I was younger, myself. Intent on building an empire, intent on becoming the powerful criminal the world had been told I already was. (4x19) Red: Nikolaus has been on my payroll since I introduced him to you 25 years ago. (4x19) Liz: From 25 years ago? No. But then, you wouldn’t be very good at your job if I did. (4x19) Red: I’ve spent 30 years building an intelligence network of spies, informants, patriots, traitors. (4x20) Liz: Kaplan spent 30 years tending to his messes while Reddington built his criminal empire, and it took her five months to surgically dismantle it. (4x21) Kate: I’ve been his cleaner, keeper, and confessor for 30 years, and I’m prepared to tell you everything you need to know in open court. (4x21) Dom: My own granddaughter three feet away after almost 30 years, I couldn’t say a damn thing to her. (5x13) Jennifer: Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His name’s Raymond Reddington. He’s been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for 20 years. (5x18) Garvey: Everything you believed for the last 30 years has been a lie. You’ve spent a lifetime hiding for no reason. (5x19) Sutton Ross: For 30 years, I’ve wanted to be in the same room as Raymond Reddington, the bastard who tricked me into selling the Chinese a dodo bird when they were looking for an eagle. (5x22) Liz: Why he came into my life, why he took your life, why he spent the last 30 years pretending to be Raymond Reddington. I’m gonna figure all that out, and then I’m going to destroy him. (5x22) Liz: Raymond Reddington is a fraud. An imposter who took our father’s place over 30 years ago. (6x1) Liz: We haven’t seen him in over 30 years. He became a fugitive when we were kids. (6x1) Liz: Raymond Reddington. Not the real one, the reinvented one. The one who’s been Raymond Reddington for 30 years, longer than anyone else. (6x2) Aram: 30 years on the run, and a beat cop picks him up at a pretzel cart. (6x2) Sima: You’re aware that, for almost 30 years, he’s maintained a vast criminal empire - (6x3) Red: Getting caught after 30 years? The odds were, I’d be caught after three. (6x4) Red: Officer Baldwin, I’ve been evading the police and law enforcement for almost 30 years. (6x5)

#dialogues