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kenobiapologist · 3 years

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Star Wars Novel Rankings

In celebration of the end of this year, I made a tier list of all of the Star Wars novels I’ve read since I joined this fandom in 2017 (which you can use to rank these books too). And I named all the tiers in a dorky but appropriate fashion. I would love to hear your thoughts on my rankings, as well as how you’d rank the books yourself! I’ve had a blast reading Star Wars novels from both Disney’s canon and the Legends extended universe over these past 3 years. Here’s to many more years of reading stories from the galaxy far far away!

I put longer (but not more coherent) thoughts below the cut.

The Chosen One: Bringing Balance to the Force and My Depressed Soul

1. The first spot of top tier had to go to Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization for obvious reasons. You simply cannot beat it. It’s a masterpiece. I literally had to put the book down to scream when I read the prose associated with the opening battle over Coruscant. It gave a whole new meaning to the triumphant music and the synchronous twirling of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s starfighters as they weave through blaster-fire in the battle over Coruscant. The rest of the book is the same way. You can’t put it down. I have wAyyYyYy too many feelings about this book oh my god.

2. Thrawn was a surprising book for me. For being centered on an admiral of the Empire’s navy, it had so much heart in it! I loved reading from Eli Vanto’s perspective too. god dammit I love that freaking Wild Space hillbilly dweeb with all my heart. I think his experiences getting to know Thrawn and learning from him guides the reader to feel much the same way as Eli by the end. Thrawn is a trusted friend, not the enemy you expect him to be. I could have done without Arihnda Pryce but she’s supposed to be unlikeable so I won’t blame Timothy Zahn this time.

3. The Clone Wars Gambit duology is basically Karen Miller writing fanfic and I’m HERE FOR IT. As is tradition with Karen Miller’s Star Wars novels, the emotions are dialed up the eleven. Our favorite dumbass Jedi team is back at it again with a mission to save the galaxy and this time they end up going undercover as two lumberjacks from the boonies. Anakin holds an energy shield back from collapsing with his bare hands like a total badass. Obi-Wan is in love with another woman despite it always ending in tragedy, while also bickering like a married couple with Anakin every ten seconds. get a fucking room, you two. These two books inspired one of my fics so they’re near and dear to my heart.

Jedi Master: These Books Have A Seat On The Council Too

4. Wild Space was appropriately named, I’ll tell you that. It’s a wild ride from start to finish. *slaps the front cover* this book can fit so much of Obi-Wan’s suffering in it! @forcearama has elaborated on the many reasons why this book is a gem in Snark Wars blog posts (linked here). It’s also the beginning of the best team-up since Anakin and Obi-Wan...Bail and Obi-Wan! These two bastards get under each other’s skin but it makes for the perfect character development. This book is the reason I screech with delight whenever Bail Organa appears on screen, or is mentioned in conversation. Bail gets a mysterious tip about trouble on a planet, and Obi-Wan decides to go with him to investigate. Cue Sith-induced suffering. It’s cool to see a normal person experiencing the weirdness of Force sensitives and how the world has this extra level of sensory information in it. Plotwise this one isn’t the best, but I think the interactions between characters really shine in this novel. Karen Miller’s writing is like a cup of hot chocolate to me. Indulgent character insight, full of sweet moments, has a bunch of extra marshmallowy dialogue, you’re reading it to have a good time but not to be satisfied with plot. You get me?

5. Do I even have to explain myself here? Kenobi by John Jackson Miller is both an interesting western-style tale set on Tatooine, and a beautiful character study of a man stricken with grief he keeps suppressed. How does one continue on when their whole family was murdered and their whole culture burnt to ash? I wanted to give Obi-Wan a hug the entire time I read this. The characterization was spot-on, from the way he wrangled animals to the way he severed a man’s arm off in a bar with his lightsaber. And when he meets a woman named Annileen Calwell, or Annie for short, Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to call her by her nickname ever and if that doesn’t just break your damn heart fucking fuck.

6. Ahsoka was the first Disney canon book I ever read and it kickstarted my love for E.K. Johnston. The writing is simplistic, but that makes it easy to jump into. Overall, it’s a quick and enjoyable read. By far the best parts are the flashbacks that mull over memories Ahsoka has of the time before Order 66. That shit hits you right in the heart, man. And the part where Ahsoka equates Obi-Wan and Anakin to her adoptive family ohhhhhhh god the tears they flow like a river. There are scenes that allude to Ahsoka becoming the vital part of the Rebellion we know her to be from Rebels, balanced with her current struggles to survive and find herself. Despite having cast away her identity as a Jedi and having any remaining bits of her culture destroyed by Palpatine, Ahsoka shows us all how bright a hero can shine in the darkest of times. AND SHE WAS WRITTEN AS QUEER! finally some good fucking food.

7. Oh shit, another E.K. Johnston book? Don’t be surprised. She’s a prequel fan and so am I, hence why Queen’s Shadow is so high on the list. E.K. Johnston pays homage to our favorite queen and badass senator Padme Amidala. There’s politics, there’s solidarity between female characters, and Bail Organa is in it so you KNOW I simply must give it a high rating. All jokes aside, I thought the story added lots of little details to the world of Star Wars without it being all stereotypical sci-fi nerdy language. You know how people want to describe something beyond our technological capabilities so they throw a bunch of nonsense together like “pre-praxis crystal bio-anode circuitry”? I’m looking at you, Karen Miller, I love you but please. There is none of that in this book. It makes sense, it adds color and culture and life to the worlds of Star Wars. Most of all, it devotes time and love to developing Padme outside of her place in canon as Anakin’s wife, Queen of Naboo, and Senator. She is all of these things, but she’s human too. I do agree that the pacing is slow, but it’s something meant to be savored, I think. E.K. Johnston really shines when she’s writing dialogue because she gets these characters. That’s something to appreciate, because not all canon books agree with the way we’ve perceived the characters as an audience.

8. Rogue Planet chewed me up, spit me out, and declared me an even bigger stan for The Team. People who say Qui-Gon would have been a better master for Anakin can ~get out~ because I could read about these two hooligans getting neck deep in space shenanigans all damn day. Anakin is like twelve, which is a time in his training that we don’t get a lot of in canon. Personally, I think it was equal parts heartwarming and funny to read about their adventures. There is some angst sprinkled in there because hey, we’re reading about Anakin here, let’s not forget the emotional trainwreck that is Anakin Skywalker. The duo is sent to a planet that makes super fast ships that are ?sentient? or at least biologically active. They bond with the pilot, which makes Anakin perfect for this mission. There’s a scene where these little floof things attach all over tiny Anakin because he’s so strong in the Force and it’s god damn adorable how dare he?? I’d probably rate this one even higher if I read it again, but it’s been awhile. Characterization is spot on and reminiscent of Matthew Stover’s writing in how it highlights the strong bond between Obi-Wan and Anakin, how they’re fated to know each other. I’m a sucker for soulmates, what can I say?

9. Lost Stars reads like a movie. Not a script, but just the perfect amount of detail that you can imagine the scenes but the pacing is still quick, the dialogue smooth and natural. I couldn’t help wishing this was a film because the story was so all-encompassing. The highs and lows of the emotions of both protagonists, their relationship developing, the differences in culture. Folks, this book has it all! It’s a totally different perspective on the events of the original trilogy, seen from the side of Imperial cadets training to become pilots. Eventually, one splits off and joins the Rebellion while the other perseveres in the Empire. It’s like star-crossed lovers, but covers so much more ground than that. And the characters are fully developed. These original characters knocked my socks off, and that’s hard to do since I’m usually an Obi-Wan stan through and through. For anyone uncertain of reading Star Wars novels, this book is a great place to start. Action-packed, emotion-filled, and stands on its own despite weaving perfectly into the established universe. What more could you want?

10. Back at it again with the prequel shit, amiright? Queen’s Peril is E.K. Johnston’s most recent Padme-centric novel and it does not disappoint fans that wanted a taste of the Queen’s side of the story. Set during the events of The Phantom Menace, we get a “behind the curtain” look at how all of the handmaidens came to be more than their title suggests. There’s teenage girls getting stuff done! It makes more sense why Padme was elected ruler of her home-world, and you come to appreciate that a royal leader is not alone; there’s actually a whole team at her side to help her overcome everything from the drudgery of daily governing to Trade Federation blockades that threaten to starve her people. I think if you enjoyed Queen’s Shadow, you’ll enjoy this book a lot. For those that are unfamiliar with Johnston’s work, I wouldn’t recommend this one first because it does cover events you’ve already seen in movies and therefore is a less suspenseful companion to them. On the other hand, because it does tie in with TPM, it doesn’t suffer from the pacing issues of Queen’s Shadow to the same degree. I read this all in one sitting, so it’s definitely fun, but wasn’t compelling enough in its character development to elevate the book past some of the others I’ve listed already.

11. Thrawn: Treason was a refreshing return to the Grand Admiral we all know and love after the second installment in this series slowed things down a bit. Although it wasn’t as character-driven as the first book (which I love with all of my heart), there were still many moments that had me cackling at the disparity between Thrawn’s immense intellect and the other Imperials’ sheer stupidity, and that’s what we’re here for in a book about the Empire, right? There’s a lot of pressure on Thrawn, as his TIE Defender project has been pitted against Director Krennic’s Project Stardust. Who will get the funds? We just don’t know?? Tarkin sits in between the two and as usual, manipulates everything to his advantage. Palpatine questions Thrawn’s allegiance to the Empire after some of the choices he has made, leaving him in even more of a pickle. Thrawn is sent on a wild goose chase task that should definitely end in failure (on purpose because Imperials all want to watch each other burn as much as they want to watch the Rebellion burn), but you know Thrawn will find a way. My main squeeze Eli Vanto makes his return after being absent from book 2. Missed you, my sweet sweet country boy. He doesn’t have a leading role in this novel, but every scene he’s in makes the story better. Thrawn says “perhaps” way too often for my taste, but if you can ignore that, this book is a solid read. Equal parts action and deductive reasoning, as any Thrawn book should be.

12. Most of Dark Disciple had me thinking this was going to be a top tier book, and damn do I wish we could have gotten this animated. We follow Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress on a mission to assassinate Count Dooku. Why the Jedi thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. But I’m here for it all the same. 3/4 of the adventure were intriguing, but the ending didn’t do it for me. I won’t spoil things for anyone who hasn’t read this yet, but after all of the character development, to have it squandered so quickly just left me disappointed? I got really attached to everyone in this novel, and I’m sure you will to. I’ve read this and listened to it as an audiobook, and actually I think it’s more memorable as an audiobook. Would recommend, except for Mace Windu’s voice being exceptionally southern for no reason. Weird. I think this novel captures all of the great things about The Clone Wars show; time to really get to know each character and their motivations, action and adventure with the darkness of impending doom tinting everything, and lightsaber fights! Plus, Obi-Wan and Anakin make appearances in this book and it just adds that extra bit of spice. Worth the read, even if you know they aren’t going to get Dooku in the end (which I am still mad about, screw that guy).

Jedi Knight: Passed the Trials but There’s Room for Improvement

13. Few books in the Star Wars universe are centered around characters with no use of the Force, but in Most Wanted, we see a young Han Solo and Qi’ra struggling to survive on Corellia and it provides a humorous but compelling backstory to both characters in the Disney canon. Han is his usual lucky goofball self, and Qi’ra is smart and cunning. You can see how they grew into the versions of themselves in Solo. While the book stays on the lighter side of things (typical of stories written for a younger audience), there are still moments of depth on droid rights, viewing the Force as a religion, and what life is like in a crime syndicate. Addressing these heavier topics without it killing the pace of the story is hard to do, but Rae Carson pulls it off flawlessly. I went into this book with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had. Han and Qi’ra start off as competitors, but eventually have to learn to work together to survive as more and more people start hunting them down. They’re honestly so cute together, I loved their dynamic. It makes Solo a better movie, and although I liked it on its own, characters like Qi’ra needed a little more time to get to know, which you can get here!

14. Thrawn Alliances was not what I expected at all, and it took me a lot longer to get through. Hell, it has Thrawn, Anakin/Vader, and Padme in it! What’s not to love? Apparently, a lot. The different timepoints and perspectives in this were more jarring than anything else. Although the interactions between Thrawn and Anakin/Vader were enjoyable, it was not enough to elevate this book into the Jedi Master tier. Things felt dry, the characters didn’t grip me like in the first Thrawn, and it all felt like a ploy to introduce Batuu into canon before the launch of Galaxy’s Edge.

15. Leia: Princess of Alderaan was a dive into young Leia’s life before we see her in A New Hope even though this was marketed as a journey to The Last Jedi book, which I disagree with. We really haven’t seen any content about Leia in this time period before, and although I can’t say I was looking for this, I did enjoy it. The book was a little long, but there was adventure and the seeds are planted for Leia to be a bigger part of the Rebellion. The romance wasn’t too memorable, but Holdo wasn’t pointless in this (a stark contrast to her brief appearance in TLJ just to sacrifice herself). There’s a hint about Leia being Force-sensitive but it’s not in-your-face. It’s a typical coming-of-age story but in the gffa. The best part about this is seeing Bail and Breha as parents. I’m forever in pain that we didn’t get to see more of this in movies because it’s so so sweet. Leia must choose what kind of person she is going to be--and what kind of princess she will become. It won’t be for everyone, but I liked it.

16. Master and Apprentice was a typical Star Wars novel, which means it’s full of original characters that are strange and outlandish to serve the plot, a new world full of beautiful landscapes, and Obi-Wan suffering. I want to make it clear that this book is 80% Qui-Gon, 10% Rael Averross, and 10% Obi-Wan. I was expecting it to be 50% Qui-Gon, 50% Obi-Wan, as the cover suggested. Although I was disappointed by that, the story overall was okay. Qui-Gon is kind of an asshole in this? When is he not, though. We really get to sink our teeth into the way he and Obi-Wan fundamentally disagree with each other, so much so that their teacher-student relationship is falling apart. Tragic! They go on one last mission before calling it quits. Qui-Gon is in over his head with prophecies, Obi-Wan just wants to follow the rules, and Rael Averross is Dooku’s previous apprentice that is living his best life as a regent until Pijal’s princess comes of age. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid book. I just don’t vibe with Qui-Gon and want to whack him upside the head every time he avoids confrontation with his own student. My protectiveness for Obi-Wan is showing again, isn’t it? Yikes.

17. James Luceno is one of the most analytical authors I’ve ever read anything from, but it seems to always work? Tarkin is all about...well, Moff Tarkin. He’s ruthless, intelligent, and just downright evil. His backstory was compelling and I found myself drawn into the story by the details, although it is dense and took awhile to finish. I’m not interested in him as a character, but despite that, I enjoyed this story. The plot wasn’t memorable enough for me to recall after 3 years, but it’s similar to how Thrawn rose through the ranks of the Navy, just in a different part of the Empire’s governing body. We don’t get many books completely focused on a villain (I don’t count Vader ones because we know who he was before and the whole damn saga is about him), but this one is good! Don’t be fooled by it only being in the Knight tier. I think people who read a lot of sci-fi will like this book a lot. This is like the opposite of Queen’s Shadow, basically. If you had gripes about that book, you might like this one instead.

18. Battlefront II: Inferno Squad was a worthwhile read for anyone who played Battlefront II. Iden Versio is a great protagonist in the game, and I think Christie Golden totally gets her character. She’s nuanced and relatable. The whole team is interesting and getting introduced to each member before the events of the game makes everything mean more. That’s the real goal of any prequel story, I think. Accomplished! The action scenes are on point, the plot served to highlight what makes Inferno Squad special, and you get a sense for the morally grey area anyone must function in as an operative for the Empire. Although not necessary for the greater canon, it’s a great adventure. Iden and her squad members infiltrate the remains of Saw Gerrara’s group (they’ve become a bit of extremist) and destroy them from the inside. It’s got the suspense of a spy thriller and all of the nerdy space opera elements you expect from Star Wars. Although it’s weird to jump into a story not knowing any of the characters, you’ll get attached to Inferno Squad fast. Well, except for Gideon Hask maybe. He’s kind of a dick.

19. If you’re craving some Dark Side action, Lords of the Sith will give you what you’re looking for. Sidious and Vader crash-land on Ryloth and have to work together to survive, and also defeat the Free Ryloth Movement led by Cham Syndulla. It’s all fucking connected, guys. I love when people weave together stories that fit into the canon timeline like this, bringing in side characters and allowing them to develop some depth. And a chance to sink into the mind of a Sith Lord is always fun, if you’re in the mood to read about destruction and anger. It’s cathartic sometimes. If you’re always wondering, why didn’t Vader just stab Palps when he had the chance, this book explains their dynamic more. It didn’t really change my opinion of any of the characters, which is why it’s not higher on the list.

20. Catalyst suffered from being in a really boring part of galactic history. Despite that, Galen Erso and Orson Krennic have a hilarious relationship that I would have loved to see on-screen. This book really develops Krennic to become more than just the whiny entitled evil man we saw in Rogue One. He’s ten times worse now! But I mean that in the best way, I laugh whenever he’s in a scene, that sassy man just brings me joy. James Luceno is at it again, making things as detailed and dry as possible. I read so many of his stories right at the beginning of my journey through Star Wars canon and it’s a wonder I didn’t quit. Some of them are dark as fuck. And also slow as hell. With this one, I think it all comes down to what you want out of a Star Wars novel. Some people will really enjoy the plot. I think seeing how Galen became a part of Project Stardust was interesting and every time something about the Death Star became more clear, I screeched because I knew what it would eventually become. This book may not hold your interest though, which is why I put it lower on this list.

21. Star Wars: Clone Wars was a decent retelling of the Clone Wars movie. I liked it because I liked the movie, but you have to be able to sit back and enjoy the ride, not thinking too much about the silly parts. For that reason, it’s pretty far down in the rankings. Ahsoka is young and liable to get on your nerves. I certainly wasn’t her biggest fan at this point in the series. The biggest problem is that Karen Traviss is very anti-Jedi. Some authors for Star Wars tend to do this? To me, it’s weird. I didn’t notice it too much because it was one of the first Star Wars books I read, but it contrasts starkly with the truth of the prequel trilogy and some of the other entries in the Clone Wars Novel timeline, like Karen Miller’s books. Needless to say, although this book wasn’t super memorable aside from the familiar plot, it kept me reading Star Wars books, and so it is at least an average book. Plus, any content with Anakin and the clones is worth it for me. I love them.

22. A New Hope was good, for Alan Dean Foster. I’m not a fan, I’ll be honest. But this novelization stands on it’s own. I’m going to have to do a re-read to really go in depth on why this isn’t farther up on the tier list, but the movie is always going to be better to me. If you want to re-live the great beginning of the Original Trilogy, it’s worth your time. I mean, the story is full of adventure and mystery and lovable characters. What’s not to love? I just feel like the movie really elevates the narrative with a great score and fun character design/costumes/sets.

Padawan: These Books Have Much to Learn

23. Attack of the Clones was more entertaining than The Phantom Menace because the characters are in funnier situations. Obi-Wan and Anakin chasing Zam Wesell through the levels of Coruscant? Hilarious, just like the movie. Anakin and Padme falling in love as they spend time together? Holy fuck it’s so much better than the movie. Please read it for that alone. Outside of that, the writing style didn’t really impress me. And my experience with it wasn’t super memorable. There was potential to really make the inner dialogue of these characters impactful, to really develop the story of Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme beyond what we could get from the movie scenes alone. I didn’t think it went above and beyond there. Not a bad story at all, but you don’t get to look at Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, or Ewan McGregor the whole time either, so therefore I must rank it lower. So many beautiful people in that movie, holy shit. You can understand my, dilemma, yes?

24. I enjoyed parts of The Phantom Menace book, like deleted scenes with Anakin living on Tatooine before Qui-Gon and Padme meet him. The additional depth is lovely, but I think a story like Queen’s Peril adds more to TPM than this book does. The story overall is still fun. I love this movie so much, it’s hard for me to be critical. I did put a lot of post-it flags in my copy, so it does develop the characters and get you thinking beyond your expectations from the movie. What more could you ask for from a movie novelization? I’d say not much, if I hadn’t read Revenge of the Sith and had my fucking mind blown. In comparison to that, this one is just okay.

25. The Last Jedi novelization wasn’t bad, necessarily. It tried its best to bring this story up to par with some of the interesting novels that don’t have movie counterparts. But still, the plot suffers because of how this movie was made. It’s very focused on Rey and Kylo, and Finn’s little adventure with Rose seems pointless in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather read this again versus watching the film, but that’s all I’ll say on this because I’m trying to keep my opinions on this movie to myself to avoid digging up old arguments. Jason Fry did well, and of the two Sequel Trilogy books I’ve read, I would recommend this one over Ep. 7.

26. The Force Awakens falls short and I think it’s because of Alan Dean Foster’s writing style on this one? It didn’t really expand on anything from the movie, while taking away the beautiful music and visuals. This novel is the antithesis of Revenge of the Sith’s novelization, and for that reason I ranked it fairly low. I wouldn’t read this one unless you really really love the Sequel Trilogy.

27. To be fair, I read the new Thrawn book before I went back and read this one. Even so, Heir to the Empire didn’t impress me at all. Thrawn didn’t seem like a thrilling villain with lots of depth like he did in Timothy Zahn’s reimagined Thrawn novel. We barely saw him. A lot of time was spent on the Original Triology’s trio, which waasn’t bad. I thought Luke, Leia, and Han were all written fairly well. The latter part of the story was redeemed by the interactions between Mara Jade and Luke, for sure. Enemies to lovers, anyone?? Without Thrawn, this book would have been an entertaining story, but for all of the praise it has received from long-time Star Wars fans, I was expecting to be blown away and I wasn’t. Maybe I have to continue the triology to figure out what all of the fuss is about, but after this one, I’m not super motivated to read more. Change my mind?

28. Cloak of Deception really shines when you’re following Palpatine’s perspective because you can feel the undercurrents of his master plan to destroy the Republic underneath his calm persona as a Senator. Other than that, it’s a forgettable plot. This is all about galactic politics and some terrorist group trying to blow up some government officials. Basically the most boring parts of the prequel trilogy. I listened to the audiobook of this at the beginning of this year and I already forget what it’s about. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan should have been able to bring some humor and energy to get you rooting for the good guys, but there was barely any of that. I was disappointed in all of the characters. Everything felt distant, removed from the heart of the characters. Some people in reviews have argued that the events of The Phantom Menace really pinned this novel in a corner because you already know what happens, but I disagree, because we know how Revenge of the Sith goes and The Clone Wars show is that much more tragic and heartbreakingly beautiful because of it. Prequels can be done right. This ain’t it, Luceno. Sorry.

29. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Fatal Alliance needs to go home and rethink it’s life. I’m a huge fan of the Old Republic and I’ve put like 200 hours of my life into playing that game, so I was hoping for some fun content in this part of the timeline. Sadly, this book captured the worst parts of the game, like the fact that there’s way too many factions at war with each other. Jedi, Sith, Empire, Republic, Mandalorians. They’re all here. They’re all ready to throw down. And I’m tired. As with many of the books in this lower tier, I felt there wasn’t enough description of the world or the people in the story. We’re in the gffa, be a little weird and wacky. Be big and bold! Make things terrifying, or beautiful, or both. But give my mind something to work with. The number of characters made the plot messier than it could have been, and it definitely isn’t worth the read. I can’t speak for all Old Republic books, but this one didn’t impress me.

A Sith Lord?! On My Bookshelf? It’s More Likely Than You’d Think

30. So underwhelming, you might as well just read the first half and then stop. Last Shot is absolutely terrible, except for Lando Calrissian’s characterization, which was spot-on. If the whole story had been from his perspective, I probably would have a much difference opinion on the novel as a whole. Sadly, this is not the case. Han was boring, he bottled up his emotions, and seemed drastically different from the badass he was in the original trilogy. There are different timepoints in this novel, and in all of them, Han is unrecognizable. Don’t nerf one of your main characters like that. Daniel Jose Older and I might just not get along. I thought his writing style didn’t fit Star Wars at all. It was like breaking the fourth wall, totally pulling me out of the story constantly. Also, there were little to no descriptions of body language, locations, or movement. It left me feeling disoriented the whole time I was reading. I thought one of the most interesting things would have been seeing Han, Leia, and baby Ben being a family at this point in time, but Han’s family was there as a prop, nothing more. There was a big bad item that was going to cause galactic destruction and our heroes had to go save the day. There was barely any tension and no one lost an arm so I’m pretty pissed off. Is it Star Wars if no one gets their appendage removed? I can’t tell you how much I disliked this book. Which is sad because I was hoping to enjoy it. I like Han. I like Lando. I like space adventures. I’m not that hard to please, or at least I don’t think so.

#Star Wars Novels #tier ranking #long post #i worked hard to put my thoughts into words for you guys #i read these books over a long period of time but I thought I'd encompass all of it in one post #sw lit #i've had so much fun becoming a part of this fandom #and I love the conversations about the books and the gffa in general #hopefully this will inspire some discussion!#i would love you guys to make tier rankings as well #they're always my favorite youtube videos to watch

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shanie-the-toyaddict · 3 years

Note

1, 9, 15, 17, 21, 25, 26, 29, 33, 41, 46, 48, 54, 59, 68, 73, 81, 96, 98

😊

Oh my word! That's a lot!

Ok, here goes.

Behind cut for length

1. Name - I prefer Shanie but my parents call me “Mis”. Well, my mom calls me “Mis” my father calls me “Pooch” which I despise. Just stick with Shanie.

9. What did you study - I changed majors midway through college. I started out as an art major focusing on computer animation. That didn’t work out at ALL. Turns out I sucked ass at computer animation. Too much math involved. So I switched to a major in teaching with minors in history and popular culture. Unfortunately I failed at that too and, while I did graduate, it was with a degree in “Planned Program” which is a polite way of saying “General Ed”. I did earn my two minors though, so I guess that’s something!

15. Relationship Status - Single. Very Very Single. I haven’t had a single date in about 10 years. By the looks of it, I’m going to stay single.

17. Do you have a crush - Do celebrities count? If not then no. I don't even know anyone IRL to have crushes on. I legit have nobody in my IRL life outside of my parents and my case manager. Kind of hard to have a crush when you don't have any friends or even acquaintances.

21: How was your day - Well, today I got nothing accomplished. I did have a meeting with my case manager, so that was nice. It’s nice to have someone to talk to and infodump on (which she lets me). Outside of that I woke up, had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, had a nap, and went to Dairy Queen for ice cream on the way home. Unfortunately, DQ is on the far side of town and by the time I got home, it was melted. So it went in the fridge to eat later once it refreezes. Outside of that it was a pretty boring day.

25. Your fears - Whoo-ee. Ok. So coming in with the borderline I’d say my biggest fear is abandonment. That just comes with the territory. After that I have a huge fear of storms and waking up in a fire, both brought about by recurring nightmares. I also have a fear of flying (too much Air Crash Investigations) and I hate elevators. I’m not claustrophobic mind you, I just have a fear that they will fall on me. Anything over 3 stories and I’m having an anxiety attack. There are other, lesser fears but those are some of the big ones.

26. Your dreams - Well, in a literal sense, my dreams are wild, crazy adventures that I get most of my fanfics from. From a metaphorical standpoint I really don’t have any. I’ve given up on hoping for anything good in my life. I’m too busy trying to get from day to day to indulge in long term planning. I know it seems terrible, but it’s the truth.

29. Hobbies - Obviously action figures, that much is clear. I collect and customize them to display in my apartment. I also like making digital art (sometimes) and am starting to get into illustrations/artwork. However, I don’t have a tablet/pen for the computer so everything is done with the mouse and GIMP (which makes it difficult). I’m an avid collector of digital media. Some of my big ones are Doctor Who DVDs, Wrestling Entrance Themes, and Official Xena Photos (not the physical ones, jpeg scans). I used to be big into Wizard101 and, while I don’t really play anymore, I still like following the game on YT and on here.

33. Languages you speak – Only English, except it’s a very specific English. I usually speak what’s called the “Yinzer” dialect which is a dialect that is unique to the Pittsburgh region. That’s why you see me use the word “Yinz” a bunch. That’s our word for “You guys” or “Y’all”. However, while most of my speech is Yinzer, I have watched enough British TV in my lifetime to have picked up some Brit speech. It confuses the hell out of people when I use it because you’ll have me say things like “My apartment needs cleaned” and then follow it up thirty seconds later with, “I’m rubbish at cleaning.” My mother has picked up on this and sometimes calls me her “British Daughter” because of it.

41. Your Device Background – My phone’s lock screen is a picture of Shane in his Roman Centurion outfit from the one Royal Rumble photo shoot. My phone background is a checkered wallpaper with “SZ” on it for Sami Zayn. (That one might be getting changed if he stops being Sami.) And my computer background is just a night sky over the mountains. I rarely ever see my computer wallpaper so I don’t mind that it is a generic background.

46. The most dangerous thing you’ve done – You know how Lucy breathes fire on Xena? I taught myself how to do that. That wasn’t bright to begin with but it was made so much worse that I was underage and couldn’t buy Bacardi and was using lamp oil instead. I was young and dumb.

48. Some things you’ve tried in your life – Funny thing, I’m a sucker for strange foods. There was a list going around that said “How many of these weird foods have you eaten” and I think I had eaten all but six of them and that was only because I didn’t have access to them. I’m proud to say that, since then, I’ve knocked Quail Egg off the list! Turns out the local Japanese restaurant served it. So that knocked it down to five. Still need to get ahold of some gator meat and haggis. I’d love to try Foie Gras but it’s just so damn unethical that I don’t know if I could bring myself to eat it. Pheasant is another one that I’d love to try but I can’t convince my parents to buy me one (and I’m far too poor to afford it myself). But, yeah. I love strange foods. I’ll pretty much try any food once if I know it’s safe to eat.

54. Any tattoos or piercings – Unless you count partially pierced ears then no. And my ears are only partially pierced because after I had them done they got infected so I tried to let them heal shut. They ended up not closing fully and now, if I’m not adverse to a bit of pain, I can still wear earrings occasionally.

59. Song you wouldn’t normally admit you like – Judas is my guilty pleasure song. I know Jericho is a douchebag and I have tried to hate the song but I can’t. I end up singing along every time.

68. Favorite Movie/Series - Hmm... well, my all time favorite movie is definitely “The Towering Inferno”, hands down. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve seen that. I’m a sucker for disaster movies and, in my opinion, that one is the cream of the crop. I actually like it better than “The Poseidon Adventure” simply because I think the movie is inferior to the book. That said, I’ve also read both of the books that “The Towering Inferno” is based on and I like the combined movie better than them. Favorite series, however, I don’t think I have one definitive favorite series. I’ve had favoriteS like Xena, Buffy, Sherlock, Doctor Who, etc, but I’ve never had one all time favorite.

73: Favorite Greek God – Oh geez. Hmmm... You know, I’m going to have to go with Hermes here, primarily because I have this theory that he is the god of the internet. I know there was no internet in ancient Greece but, frankly, Hermes is the god of commerce, communication, travelers, and thieves. While it’s true that Hephaestus is the god of technology and would probably be the god of computers, I fully believe that Hermes would be the patron of the interwebs.

81 Favorite Books – In all honesty, going to college for 8 years burned me out for reading and now I can barely bring myself to read a comic book. For this reason, most of my favorite books come from childhood. My all time favorite book as a kid was “Flight #116 Is Down” by Caroline B Cooney. It was a disaster story about plane crash in a young woman’s back yard. Somehow, everyone didn’t die – a fact which was called out in the final pages when a fireman says that the crash was extremely odd because “usually they’re all dead.” That book might be another reason I’m terrified of flying. Other favorite books of mine was the “Fear Street Saga Trilogy” (Not the Fear Street Series, the trilogy that served as the origin story). I also like the Hitchhikers Guide saga but when I found out that Douglas Adams died before he could finish the saga, I stopped reading after book 4 so that the story had a happy ending. Novelizations in general are a big thing for me too, I’ve read some really good ones over the years and it’s fascinating to see how they differ from the movies they’re based on.

96. Hero or Villain – Well, if my dreams are anything to go by, I’m a villain at heart. I know, weird right? You all think I’m such a nice person but really, I have a huge dark side to me IRL and, if I was in a world where superheroes were real and I had superpowers I would almost certainly use them for evil. Or, at the very least I would use them to force social change ala Dr. Horrible.

98. Shapeshifting or Controlling Time – SHAPESHIFTING! Oh my goodness shapeshifting! I would love that so much! First of all, I wouldn’t be this huge anymore. I could be as heavy or a skinny as I want. Also, I wouldn’t have to worry about looking old or losing my hair! Plus, can you imagine the cosplay potential!? Forget dressing as the 13th Doctor, I AM THE 13th DOCTOR! That would just be the best!

PHEW! That was a lot! Thanks so much for the ask! This was fun. I love ask games.

#ask games

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lhs3020b · 3 years

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The Wooden Spaceships, by Bob Shaw

The Wooden Spaceships is the sequel to the first Land/Overland novel, The Ragged Astronauts. It's set about a generation after the ptertha-driven migration from Land; civilisation on Overland is at least stable now, if not entirely-comfortable. Unfortunately "comfortable" isn't what Toller Maraquine is looking for in his older years. Apaprently he hasn't learned any lessons about getting what you wished for, because bad news arrives on Overland in the form of an airship from Land! That's right, apparently there are survivors on Land, and they're not very happy with their neighbours.

My thoughts are under the cut...

TWS is a bit of an odd book. It's really two main stories, somewhat awkwardly joined together. There's the plot with the attempted invasion by the New Men - briefly, the children of people who proved to be unusually-resistant to pterthacosis, who apparently are either immune or are tolerant enough to the disease that they've managed to live to adulthood. The New Men, sadly, have learnt nothing from their parents' folly and may actually be worse people; their survival seems to have convinced them that they represent a sort of superman who are destined to rule the universe. I suppose a more-sympathetic interpretation might be that they're the products of a collectively-traumatised society, and are dealing with said trauma by projecting all their negative feelings onto imagined enemies on Overland. That said, regardless of interpretation, their actions are not sympathetic and King Rassamarden is clearly a psychotic nutjob.

Also, it's worth noting that they are the New _Men_. While presumably New Women must exist, we never see any. This was an interesting ellision given that TWS is generally a step up relative to TRA for gender stuff. TWS is still quite bad, don't get me wrong, but there has been some improvement. Berise is a plot-relevant female character who actually gets to do stuff, the Kolcorronian king's key adviser is actually his wife Queen Dasseene and there has been some progress on the social front. The Air Corps has been opened to female applicants and it's implied that society as a whole has got a bit more equal. (That said, let's not go too far with this - this is still a society where an aristocrat can have innocent people executed on a whim, as we see with the Sergeant Gnapperl subplot, so Overland has a long way to go before it could be described as a genuinely-civilised society. It may have got a bit more egalitarian one way, but it's still a monarchical despotism ruled by the threat and fear of absolute force.)

Toller, of course, ends up involving himself neck-deep in the war with the New Men. This has the effect of cratering his marriage to Gessalla. In what is genuinely a moment of awesome from her, she tells him that while she's glad he's still alive, she's had quite enough of spending every day wondering whether today is the day she's going to have to bury her idiot husband's corpse. It's stressful and unpleasant, she's lost quite enough in her life already (literally including her homeworld!) and if he can't settle down and sort himself out, then they're through.

Toller, of course, can't deal with this. His marriage thus collapses, and that leads us onto the second part of the novel.

Incidentally, before we get to that, allow me one small tangent. We're halfway through the trilogy, and Toller has entirely forgotten his previous wife. After she disappears halfway through TRA he just - forgets? un-persons? has selective amnesia? goes into denial? refuses to take any responsibility for his own actions? - her entire existence. Toller, you were MARRIED to this woman! Seriously, what a cad! We never find out anything about what happened to Fera at any point in the series. Even in the third novel when a return to Land happens and Shaw could have tied the plot-thread off, but we get nothing.

(Since we never find a body, I've decided to invoke headcanon. Like Toller's father, Fera was one of the rare people who are entirely-immune to pterthacosis. As such she actually survived the implosion of Ro-Atabri and the end of civilisation on Land. After some confusion she eventually moved into an abandoned princeling's palace and has been living out her days in comfortable luxury; she spends her time either walking by the river or reading books - a hobby she recently developed - and occasionally she has been known to take lunch with some of the more pro-social New Men, so she's not entirely without society either. She mostly keeps away from them, having made a reasonable judgement of their character, but that said the odd social do can be refreshing. All considered it's not the worst situation she could have ended up in, and she's certainly managed better than virtually everyone else in Kolcorron. When the Overland exiles' return to the planet happens in "The Fugitive Worlds", Fera - still alive, though an old woman by then - sees the balloons and discovers that she simply has nothing to say to the people who abandoned her to her fate 50 years earlier. As such she decides to avoid them during their visit. In the abstract she supposes that it's nice that society has survived over on Overland, but really, neo-Kolcorron's antics are just Not Her Problem Anymore, so why even bother?)

The second part of the novel concerns a group of Overlander colonists who have recently arrived in a remote area of the planet, newly-opened to settlement. (One oddity of the novel is that for a planet whose population still must be less than a quarter of a million, nonetheless people are spread quite widely across Overland.) The area they've arrived in is fertile, has a pleasant climate and even pre-existing houses, built then abandoned by the last group of prospective colonists. You see, unfortunately, it appears to be haunted.

Bartan Drumme, the semi-leader of the group, is mainly there because he's trying to court his would-be bride Sondeweere. Amusingly, Sondeweere has his number and is quite-blatantly stringing him along, mainly to annoy her domineering uncle. Bartan is of course entirely-blind to this - honestly, Land and Overlander men all seem to run at a permanent +10 to Oblivious - and the "romance" proceeds in exactly the dysfunctional manner that you might imagine. Unfortunately, what would have been an amusingly-cringy romantic dark comedy gets interrupted when the new arrivals in the Egg Basket region start falling ill. Bad dreams, disturbed moods, sleepwalking, full-on psychotic breakdowns - all is not well in the Egg Basket. It quickly becomes apparent that the region is being influenced by some sort of external force. The sensible people leave; the less sensible people cling on and meet with various misfortunes.

(If there is one moral to the Land/Overland trilogy, it seems to be "if you see any hints of trouble, pack your bags and leave NOW, because things will only get worse, and don't expect the government to do anything even minimally-useful".)

Anyway things go from bad to worse, the Egg Basket's mini-society essentially collapses, and then Sondeweere gets abducted by aliens.

Yes, you did read that right. A spaceship turns up and hoovers her up. In context it's not quite as random as it sounds, but it is still quite random.

Anyway this leads Bartan to a decision that he wants to retrieve her from Farland, the third planet in the Land/Overland system. He teams up with Toller, who is now deep into the rebound stage following the implosion of his marriage. Along with Berise and some other acquaintances of Toller's, they construct a spacecraft capable of travelling outside of Land/Overland's mutual atmosphere and set off for Farland. Technically they're under commission from the King; honestly, I got the sense that the King and Queen have simply had enough of Toller's antics, and see this as a convenient way of getting rid of him.

Then reality ensues and they almost die, because nobody on the ship knows anything like as much about either outer space or basic Newtonian physics as they think they do. In fact it turns out no-one has any grasp about continuous acceleration, and they've been running a continuous halvell/pikon thruster-burn for entire days (somehow without running out of fuel, either - apparently the specific impulse on the pikon/halvell reaction is something insanely high?). By the time Sondeweere becomes aware of the ship's situation, it's running at over 100,000 miles per hour and is barely days away from reenacting the Chixculuub meteor on Farland.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention - Sondeweere was abducted because her nervous system had become host to an alien parasite (the same one that was causing mass psychosis in the Egg Basket) and she now has superhuman intelligence and telepathic powers. And also, a far better grasp of modern physics than anyone aboard the titular wooden spaceship from Overland. Fortunately, Sondeweere is able to take charge of the situation and arranges something close-ish to a soft landing on Farland - the crew don't enjoy the experience, but they get to walk away from it, and that's about as good as it gets in aerospace incidents!

Anyway my review here is a bit forced, but that's because the last 40% of the novel also feels a bit forced. The pacing is off and the narrative makes some rapid jumps. Honestly TWS's problem is that it's actually not one novel but rather two separate novellas that have been welded together in a particularly-awkward manner. A lot of things aren't really followed up or tied off properly. The fact that Farland is inhabitable and also inhabited turns up quite late in the book and is dealt with in what I felt to be a bit of an unsatisfactory manner. I was also intrigued to find out that all three planets orbit within 42 million miles of their sun. Apparently the star must be some sort of K dwarf, I guess - no, in fact it may well even be a brighter M dwarf, because this is roughly the orbital radius of Mercury! This is odd because the sunlight is never described as being pink-ish. The only thing I can think of is that maybe nuclear fusion also behaves differently in Land/Overland-verse? Perhaps not only is Pi equal to 3 but perhaps smaller stars are hotter and brighter than they would be here? Or maybe everyone's so used to the pink sunlight that no-one thinks to remark on it at any point?

(Canonically they do fuse - in fact Sondeweere actually has a go at explaining nuclear fusion to Bartan and the others at one point, which was thoughtful of her, though sadly the Overlander males remain as obtuse as ever so the effort may have been wasted.)

Anyway overall, I think this book suffers from a bad case of "mid-trilogy syndrome". I'm glad that female characters are handled better here, and I was cheering for Gessalla when she told Toller to fuck off. The extra expansions to the universe were interesting, and it was also interesting to see the gradual consolidation of colonial life on Overland. Madcap as it was, the interplanetary voyage to Farland did have some "big-picture" excitement too. That said, however, the books minuses were continued dropped plot-threads from the previous novel, unevenness in pacing and perhaps also just having too many ideas in a small package.

#Bob Shaw #The Wooden Spaceships #Books 2021 #LHS reads

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svankmajerbaby · 4 years

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13, 20, 30, 40 !!

thank you so much for the ask!!!!!!

13. Describe your writing process from idea to polished i’m not really sure, but i think i’d go something like this: i get the idea usually by either being obsessed with a property (whether it’s frankenstein, beetlejuice or barbie) or by thinking up characters and adding traits and backstory to them, and then thinking up possible dynamics for them to have with other characters. then, i try to figure out a particular context (place and time) that could fit these characters, and i make sure to think it up in such a way that it doesn’t really conflict with the source material (for my barbie-frankenstein fanfic, for example, i didn’t want to set it in early 19th century, because i wanted vivianna to be able to become barbara roberts at some point, and as such it was more comfortable to preserve the victorian aesthetic while also being closer to the 20th century); if there’s not a proper space and time these characters can feel comfortable in (whether because of a particularly tense political situation, persecution, or simply The Wrong Aesthetic Choice), i make up one. after that i begin to write dialogues and location descriptions, try to picture it all in my head as clearly as possible. then, after i have some scenes written and some interactions done, i try to organize them, thinking what should come first, what can lead to a good finale, what would be the most important moment for each character and so on. when this is done, i usually already figure out the ending and can structure everything to lead up to it. after that, it’s all a matter of sitting down and writing between the scenes i’ve already done, editing them and adding whatever new ideas i get in the meantime. usually this is what takes the longest, because by this point i’m losing steam and interest and become distracted by new projects... but sometimes i manage to finish it and by then the editing process starts on full, checking for any grammar or spelling mistakes, wrong pronouns or words or names, usually cutting down on redundant descriptions or dialogues, adding things if i think something is not clear enough or erasing things if they seem too on the nose, and then i do this over and over until i feel it’s good enough.

20. How many WIPs and story ideas do you have? oh boy do i have plenty. i’ve sorta finished the first novel of the story of Olimpia Gómez -the first one is simply called “La Ejecutora, 1938″; i’m currently writing the second, the third and the fourth ones -”La Ejecutora, 1946″, “La Ejecutora, 1954″, and “La Ejecutora, 1966″ respectively. then i also have almost finished my stage adaptation version of “Corpse Bride”, which i renamed “Death and Marriage”. i’m a chapter away at finishing my toy story fanfic, “Sitting On The Shelf”. i’ve written a single chapter of a beetlejuice fanfic about the maitlands that i still haven’t found a proper name fore, but which i’m very excited about. i’m writing several chapters at once of a massive addams family fanfic, focused on most of the main family characters’ backstories or developments beyond the nineties movies, which i’m calling “Family Beyond Blood”. i’ve started a little princess tutu fanfic that i’m not sure if i should continue, but which is a stylistic deviation of what i’ve been writing so far, so that’s good. i’ve kind of abandoned another fanfic idea i had, “Vulnavia & Vulnavia”, from one of my favorite horror movies, “abominable dr phibes”, which i have to come back to... and like the madwoman i am, i’m planning on rewriting the star wars sequel trilogy, so i got that in my to do list, as well. besides those fanfics, i got a sci-fi novel being developed, called “Los Prototipos”, about two twins that escape the enclosure where they had been raised to find out they were being studied to make a single-minded working force (kind of like the replicants in blade runner) with an expiration date -all this set in a dystopic 1960s country somewhere in latinamerica, tackling issues of economic imperalism, forced labor and independece through revolution. this is one of my most political works, so i’m giving it a lot of space to breathe. i’ve also began some time ago a series of noir/horror short stories set in Buenos Aires, one of them based on a short movie script i’ve written, which i’m really excited to do -because i’m usually crap at writing short stories -but i’ve left it in standby until i finish the bigger projects first... and then I Have Scripts, Baby! “Mi Amiga Carolina”, about a possessed doll that emotionally manipulates a depressed teenager that moves alone into her grandmother’s old house; “El Moderno Prometeo”, a (mostly) faithful retelling of frankenstein set in Argentina, focused on the family drama of the frankenstein family and on the relationships between victor, daniela (justine, here being his older sister), quique (henry) and elsa (elizabeth); a screen adaptation of a novel of a friend of mine, “La Chica Que Trabajaba Los Sábados”, about a non-practising jewish woman in Buenos Aires who falls in love with a rabbi, and how their relationship ebbs and flows; and “Verano en los Manzanos”, about a boy who lives in rural Córdoba who falls in love with a girl from Buenos Aires (i try to write what i know, usually), and who as they grow up become a couple, have a kid, and ultimately wind up apart due to his struggle with depression and her own struggle with acute anxiety, all of this interweaved with his own return to the little forgotten village he grew up on, where he reflects on the life he used to have. so, in total... 16 WIP. plenty.

30. Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet i just now realized that i forgot to mention it in the last point, but technically i havent’ even started, so yeah, it’s just an idea: a series of sci-fi books about a parallel history in which India was the first country to go to the moon, and in which South America has the ASADE (Asociação Sul-Americana D’exploração Espacial), where they train cosmonauts to explore the vastness of space: set in an alternate 1930, a team of specialists on several fields and from several countries (the ones I got thought up already are captain Alfonsina Shua, from argentina, and copilot Adolfo Chaviano, from a paraguayan-argentinean couple) go on the fifth ever tripulated voyage. on an exploration, copilot Chaviano gets lost and disappears in space, cut off from his crew, and ends up going through a wormhole and crossing a threshold between sci-fi and fantasy of a blooming star -rendering him immortal but extremely radiated, which allows him to continue exploring space (ending up in several planets, registering his encounters with varied extraterrestrial cultures) while back in Earth the ASADE and his family try to locate him and bring him back home -it’s basically “The Martian” meets “The Little Prince”. and then, there’s the sequel series, about the three grandchildren of Adolfo Chaviano, who, after his death, discover that their grandfather had been developing a time machine alongside Alfonsina to go back in time and look for a way to revert the effects of the radiation in him, in order for him to live longer -and, perhaps, to find the way to become immortal and continue exploring the deepest limits of space. set in an alternate 1971, where space travel is now commonplace, the three siblings, Lena, Majo and Laucha embark on a space mission, meeting all sorts of new characters similarly affected by radiation and some mysterious magical/space properties, in order to find Alfonsina and ask her to give them one more chance to ask questions and say goodbye to their grandfather. so yeah, i got a lot of ideas, but i haven’t been writing any scenes yet -it’s still all in my head so far.

40. Share some backstory for one of your characters well, the original character i’ve got developed the most is Olimpia Gómez (whose birth name is Beatriz Moreno), the orphaned daughter of two spanish union workers who were killed in the Semana Trágica on 1919 by the mysterious Society (of course, working in cahoots with the repressive government), and taken in by that same Society and raised to kill supposed “criminals and dangerous subjects”. trained in the countryside, taught to always be ready to die an honorable death for peace and justice while on duty, she’s taken to Buenos Aires to prove herself by stealth-killing the targets she is given, who she is told are people beyond salvation. she’s never been popular, but her closest friend, Eugenia Menéndez, always tries to get her to open up and join her own attempts at having a normal social life -which is quite difficult when being a spy and “executioner”. Olimpia has a boyfriend, fellow agent Evaristo Gutiérrez, but by the time they’re nineteen their relationship feels cold and strained, and at the same time there’s the pull of one of the most powerful members of the organization, Azucena Velázquez, daughter of two high-ranking agents: she’s kind-of out as a lesbian (only able to be so because of her high status), and has always been interested in Olimpia; Olimpia has to wrestle with her own internalized homophobia, feelings of guilt and bisexuality in order to finally decide who she wants to be, alongside her discovery of precisely how the Society is corrupt and extremely politically motivated when electing its “targets”, which leads Olimpia to try to escape it -despite knowing that the Society is everywhere, and if she can manage to escape, it’s because the Society allows it in the first place.

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kyluxtrashpit · 4 years

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TROS Review

Okay here is my extremely long (almost 4k words >.>) review of tros. And that’s without the 2k meta on redemption arcs I also have filed away lmao. First off: I am not leaving the kylux fandom. It’s not a good enough movie to warrant that. Second: I might make a post of things I wished we’d gotten later, but this is already WAY too long lmao. Warnings for spoilers, opinions, and general negativity

EXPLICIT RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

So. I have watched the thing. I went in knowing the spoilers and oh boy, am I glad I did. Still, overall this movie was… not great lmao. It’s messy and the pacing is off and there are some very weird and straight up Bad moments, but I’m not actually upset about it anymore. It’s more like ‘there’s a lot to unpack here’ except we’re not going to unpack it or even throw away the whole thing, it’s just gonna become that one box that’s still packed and untouched from when you moved 3 years ago. It’s there, but you rarely think about it beyond the occasional ‘maybe I should finally unpack that? Nah, too much effort’

I see a lot of people writing fix it fic and that’s totally valid but tbh… I don’t think it’s worth the effort for me. I think I’m just going to pretend it never happened and write my kylux the way I always have. Maybe I’ll do something with tros at some point, maybe some mean!Hux + redeemed!Ben because I’m awful lmao but for now, it hasn’t changed my plans at all. Which is actually a good thing tbh

Anyway. I’ll start with the good simply because there’s less of it lmao. Best thing about the movie? Everyone in it is looking like a fucking snack. It’s great. These people have always been hot, but this movie really nailed that. Also the trio stuff was fun and felt genuine. I LOVED the hints that Finn is Force sensitive, and I liked him in this movie even though I wish he got more story/time. I enjoyed Rey at the beginning, but her actions and plotline made less and less sense as the movie went on. Kylo was fun; I had gotten worried after that interview that said he’s calm now but he wasn’t lmao, like at all, so that was good. Also I didn’t like how Hux died but I’m endlessly grateful Kylo wasn’t the one to kill him. That might’ve actually ruined the ship for me

The visuals were excellent (save that strobing near the beginning; I’m not epileptic, but I had to close my eyes because it was too much). Some of the jokes hit will, as did some of the emotional bits (Chewie’s “death” was very well-executed and Rey’s scream broke my heart). Weirdly enough, C-3PO is kind of the heart of the movie, which I did not expect at all. Lando’s appearances were too brief but good. I also loved D-O a lot and he’s very cute. I liked seeing a bunch of new planets and environments, however briefly. The acting was also really great throughout on most accounts. I really enjoyed 2 of the Hux scenes (when he’s sitting in that board meeting making a face like he’s mentally eviscerating everyone in the room and when he gets so excited to finally get to blow something up and then Kylo shuts him up with the Force BUT WITHOUT HARMING HIM!!!)

That’s kind of it tbh. The movie overall is really messy. I’ve seen people say it feels like a fever dream and it really does. I’ve seen descriptions of people dreaming the plot of tros and they’re less weird. The pacing in the first chunk is way too fast and there’s way too much to take in. Then things get weird in the middle. Then, well, that ending. It feels like it’s trying too hard to be liked. It’s ‘joke’, ‘reference to past movie’, ‘joke’, ‘reference to past movie’, ‘mention of hope without showing it’, etc. etc. on and on throughout it. Some of those are fun, but it got tiring very quickly. And it made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief long enough to actually get into it

I also saw a lot of reviews saying if you didn’t like tlj, you would like this one. That was not correct. I disliked this for many of same reasons I disliked tlj, but it also managed to hold tfa’s weaknesses as well. Honestly, tros feels like the worst aspects of tlj mixed with the worst aspects of tfa, mixed with way too much nostalgia and then blended up with a good heaping of mania and desperation to keep it going. It tried so hard, wanted to be liked so badly, and you can feel that watching it. It doesn’t feel genuine

It also feels like every single movie in the ST was actually from a different trilogy. None of the 3 connect to each other. You can’t say tros is a successor to tlj or tfa; it’s totally on a different path, which I’m honestly not sure how they managed that. As much as I felt tlj wasn’t a true continuation of tfa, tros feels like its own trilogy mashed into one movie. There wasn’t one consistent plot or character thread to follow between all 3 movies

I think bringing palpatine back was the first fundamental mistake. It didn’t fit. And after creating Kylo and Snoke to be very specifically Not Sith, why bring the Sith back all of a sudden? Palpatine has had his day and he didn’t need this. No one did. Much as he was creepy as hell and that was well done, it didn’t feel right to have him there. Also, I really don’t like the implication he procreated at any point skdfjskldjk

As for Rey… I know I’m in the minority here, but I never found here to be a good narrative foil for Kylo. The connection between the two doesn’t really interest me at all (and this was one of the reasons I didn’t like tlj). It worked better if they were related, which was the biggest reason I was a proponent of Rey Skywalker, but that didn’t happen. The commonalities they have are just: 1) can use the Force, 2) have been lonely. The contrasts are: 1) light vs dark (sort of; this is less explicit in tfa and I miss that greyer view of the Force) and 2) had a family vs didn’t. And that’s pretty much it. In order for 2 characters to contrast and hit the ‘complimentary opposites’ sweet spot, you need much, much more than that. Finn has and always will be a better foil for Kylo and it’s a damn shame they abandoned that in tlj and even more so in tros. I have more thoughts on her that I’ll get to later too

I did like Rey in the beginning, but the longer it went on, the less I could rationalize her actions. Why is she doing that? Why is she trying to ditch her friends all the time? Why does she heal the cave snake? Why does she stab Kylo when he’s just become a non-combatant? Why does she heal him after? Why is she trying to reach out to the spirits of past jedi? Why did she Do That after she wakes up in the end? Why did she then seem to not even care that Kylo died right after? None of this is explained. Show, don’t tell, is great, but you can’t just make massive leaps like that. I didn’t get it. None of this felt like the character I’ve gotten to know over the last few years, nor did it feel consistent within the movie itself

That said, I want to discount one complaint I’ve seen: I got no impression she’s exiling herself on Tatooine at the end. It’s very clear she’s just doing a quick funeral ritual for Luke and Leia. The Falcon is still there, ready for when she’s done. I don’t get where the ‘she’s all alone in the desert again forever and ever’ comes from because it’s clear she’s not. It’s just a private ceremony (plus obvious fanservice). That’s it

For Finn: I liked that his character got to be a lot cooler here. I’m sad that he didn’t get half the attention and plot he deserved, but at least he wasn’t treated as a joke and a coward. My tlj complaint for Finn was that he went through the exact same arc he did in tfa over again; here, he doesn’t. He’s clearly grown into himself. That I liked. But damn, he was supposed to be a main character and he really got sidelined hard. It’s also very clear finnrey was planned at some point but didn’t end up in the final cut. The tease with that felt cruel tbh. He deserved to get to tell Rey he loved her on screen

And Poe: Poe was okay in this one. He felt to me like a different character in tfa and tlj, but this one managed to mesh the two characterizations well. He’s a bit of a hothead who doesn’t think (tlj), but he also really cares about people and is trying his best to lead (tfa). That was very successfully done. However. Poe is the one character with the most backstory. He’s got novels, comics, all of it. Where in the fuck is this history of being a spice runner in all that??? Sketchy as hell to make your one Latino character being a drug runner but you know. It also felt like a HUGE retcon of the one character that actually has fully revealed backstory. Also his thing with Zori was just weird and forced and exhaustingly heterosexual. Completely pointless tbh

As I was rereading this, I realized I forgot Rose but really, that’s because she does pretty much nothing. She has very few lines, never comes along. It’s like they forgot she was there. Or just didn’t care. It was really sad and a huge disrespect to everything KMT has gone through. Both her and her character deserved more

For Hux: I liked the 2 scenes I mentioned above, but other than that I was disappointed. I said this on twitter already, but the biggest crime they committed was getting rid of his fanaticism. Tlj may have turned him into a joke, but at least he was still a zealot. Here, it’s clear he gave up his last fuck like a year ago. It’s 9 am and he’s had 6 glasses of wine because he’s lost the will to live and it’s all pointless. Might as well fuck around and give the Resistance info that might lead to the end of everything he’s worked for his entire life because nothing matters and at least Kylo will lose. That’s dumb and violently ooc. I get him being a traitor to Kylo, I am DOWN for that, but not to the FO. He cares about the FO. He is fanatically devoted to the FO. That was ridiculous and wildly out of character. Also the FO is just gone in favour of Palpatine’s fleet as soon as Hux dies? What happened to them? Are they still out there? Who even knows? WHAT A FUCKING WASTE

Also Pryde? Fuck that guy and fuck JJ/LF/Disney for thinking it’s okay to have an old imperial kill Hux. Especially since the visual dictionary today confirmed Pryde knew Brendol and our Hux had known him for years. The possible implications are gross as fuck. If anyone was going to kill Hux one on one, it should have been Finn (with a wonderful stormtrooper rebellion arc involved) for the sake of both characters. I’m personally going to choose to believe Hux was wearing a blaster proof vest (thank you, Delilah Dawson, for putting those into Black Spire as canon) and faked his death. He’s living in blissful exile with Millie now or rebuilding the actual FO and ready to take over as the Emperor he deserves to be

Oh and Leia’s scenes did feel weird. I appreciate them trying to incorporate her, but it didn’t quite work. I feel like having her be offscreen yet present would’ve worked better than most of what they used. Some worked better than others though. I also have some Thoughts about her death but I’m about to get into the second half of the movie stuff and I’ll cover that there

Now Kylo. My darling, sweet, disaster boy. So. Okay. I knew no matter what happened his end would be controversial. And I have a lot of feelings on redemption arcs that can be distilled into one thing: if they’re written well, I like them, no matter how much bad the character has done; however, they are almost never written well enough. One of the first things I said coming out of tfa back in 2015 is ‘that’s going to be a disappointing redemption arc in a few years’. It was never about what ending I wanted (I actually favour something more grey than simply ‘oh he’s good now’ or ‘dies evil’, but that was way too ambitious for them to attempt so I never bothered to hope for it), because I knew it was coming. So this didn’t really bother me beyond the fact that it was too sudden. I do blame that partially on tlj, because it took Kylo from conflicted and torn apart to ‘yeah, I’m in charge now’, but I still think this was not the way to do it. Anyway. I have a 2k word rant somewhere about redemption arcs and when they work and when they don’t that I never posted and this is the much, much shorter version of that

Also. Okay. One more thing on this. So I usually don’t like redemption arcs because they’re written badly, but my least favourite redemption arcs are those that end in death. The only one I can think of that actually worked was Vader’s, but it doesn’t work as well with Kylo. Why? Because redemption is about making amends, not being punished. It’s about choosing to stop doing bad shit and instead to do good things to make up for what you’ve done. In self-sacrifice, not only does it send the message that the only path to redemption is death, but also it means you do literally one thing and then die. That’s it. One good deed, die, you’re done. That’s too fucking easy. True redemption is waking up every single day, for the rest of your life, and continuing to choose to do good. You know that evil is easier, feels better; you’ve done it. But you’re making the choice to keep doing good and to make amends instead. And you do that for years. Decades, even. That is SO MUCH harder to do than just one good thing and then immediately dying without showing if that change is lasting or not. That is how redemption is achieved: in making that choice not once, but again and again and again. So yeah. I didn’t like that. Death redemptions aren’t convincing to me because one choice is easy; consistently making that choice over the rest of your life is much, much harder

End of point: if they were going to redeem Kylo, he needed to live and work to make up for his past mistakes in order to make it impactful. It’s a damn shame he didn’t

Also: having Leia die for the sake of a man, son or not? FUCK THAT. And, even worse, if we follow the movie’s logic: Leia died trying to reach and save her son. Which lead to… him dying anyway?! Which means Leia’s death is meaningless and she died for literally nothing. Fuck that. FUCK THAT. What the fuck. That’s bullshit

Again on the redemption: Kylo just… kills his good friends the KOR without a shred of hesitation? Also the KOR literally never speak? And Kylo says literally one word (‘ow’) after the redemption? I admit, it was fun watching him fight and also watching him get hurt. If I ignore the context of it, watching him crawl out of the pit, scrabbling on the ground, so hurt he can’t even stand up? Fuck. That was good shit tbh. Also those big, desperate puppy eyes. They’re even worse with him as Ben instead of Kylo. Bravo to Adam for playing such a convincing sad boy. I hate that his scar got healed though; I liked it

Now. The whole ending and the plot stuff. Rey being a palpatine is… okay. Fine. I don’t like it but whatever. Seems like an unnecessary excuse to bring him back. Also Luke and Leia knowing? How? Luke knew Rey for literally 1 day. And how would Leia know? And why not tell Rey, who was so desperate for answers to her past when they thought Palpatine was dead? It makes no sense. It’s just very unnecessary. Not to mention the line “you’re a palpatine” is not a thing any real human being would ever say, jfc that was clumsy and unrealistic dialogue. I don’t mind Rey going a bit dark for some time, but this was not the way to do it. Also I was really hoping for a resolution beyond ‘dark siders dead, light sider alive’ because the dichotomous nature of the Force MAKES NO SENSE. Balance is needed. Leaving the only Force user alive a light sider means something dark will come again for the sake of it – Rey should’ve gone grey and tbh tfa made me hope this trilogy would end with all surviving Force users grey. So that was disappointing

Now. The kiss. Straight up: I do not ship it. I don’t mind if other people do, but I do get touchy when they go out of their way to prove there’s nothing inherently problematic about it. I ship kylux; it’s problematic as hell. That’s a good part of why I like it. So I’m fine with r*ylo shippers as long as they do the same. Problem is: most don’t and go around insisting it’s actually the highest romance possible while leaning on incredibly misogynistic and racist tropes to prop up that argument rather than accept their ship has some questionable parts to it (like kyluxers do). It’s more a problem with the fandom for me than it is the ship in theory. Still, I don’t like it and that’s what matters for this

The fact of the matter is it felt extremely sudden and out of place. The entire first half of the movie is Kylo being an aggressive, creepy asshole to Rey. I can theoretically entertain the idea of Kylo having feelings for her (though I don’t), but I cannot see the other way around, not when Rey has so many kind, wonderful people around her. Which is why this feels so weird. There was not enough build to it. I saw a cam clip off reddit before I went in, so I had accepted it was happening but I expected a lot more lead up to it to make it not seem so sudden. None of that was there. There was no build up or reaching of understanding so it reads exactly like those versions of it I dislike: there is nothing wrong with a man berating you and insulting you and attacking you and you should love him for it. That is not enemies to lovers. That’s just abusive bullshit

And then the death. Both of them. Rey dies from… what exactly? It’s never shown at all. And same with Kylo. The leaks said it was Force exhaustion, which a) why? And b) that’s not clear in the damn movie. You need to explain things!!!! And also that means Leia, Luke, Kylo, and Rey all died (even if one didn’t stick) from using the Force too hard. Meanwhile Darth Maul survives getting cut in half and Palpatine survives falling down a shaft in a space station that explodes 2 minutes later (and, you know, all the wacky Force shit he did in this movie too). The fuck? It’s dumb. I hate it

Also the dyad thing was weird. I know the early leaks had it more explained, then the leaks said they cut it, but now it looks like they left in 3 lines of dialogue with it and cut the rest. Again, explanations people! This is not a thing in previous canon! Maybe in the EU, but that’s not canon anymore! The fuck!!!! The idea is dumb and forced to begin with, but the execution made it worse

And now for the final, largest criticism I have. A confession: I am not a star wars fan by nature. I’ve always liked them, but I preferred other sci-fi more. I’m more of an invasive species who forcibly carved my way into this fandom ecological niche because I really loved Kylo lmao. But if there is one thing star wars is defined by, I don’t think it’s love or family or any of those common themes people say. It’s hope. That’s the thing star wars does well. Even when things are darkest, it keeps the hope alive and it makes you feel that. Good will triumph. There is reason to believe in heroes, even when they stumble

This movie is not hopeful. Rogue One, a masterful tragedy, still manages a message of hope despite every single lead character dying. This one doesn’t. And tbh, I think tlj missed on this a bit too (a lot of talk about having hope, not a lot of showing us reasons to be hopeful), but it was still there. Tros does not feel hopeful. The Skywalkers are all dead. Rey has decided to download the legacy (why? No idea! The whole message was ‘don’t be afraid of who you are’ and she just then decided to become someone else? Makes no sense!!!). Anakin’s sacrifice meant nothing because Palpatine came back (and it is CRIMINAL we never got an Anakin and Kylo scene). Han and Leia’s and even Luke’s (a bit) deaths meant nothing because yeah, Kylo turned back in the end, but then he died anyway. They all gave their lives to save him and it was all for nothing. He’s still dead. Palpatine is gone and so is his fleet, but what about the FO fleet? Are they still out there? Are there brainwashed stormtroopers still trapped in its clutches (also, they were so close with Jannah and Finn to adding depth here, but nope, the stormtroopers are still cannon fodder in every fight scene even though they’re literally slaves!!!!)? Who knows!

This movie only feels conclusive in that so many characters we love are dead. That’s it. There’s more questions than answers and so much left unresolved. There’s no sense of hope in it. There’s barely a sense of victory. It’s not satisfying. Even the celebration at the end feels weird and like it’s trying to force you to be happy. The jedistormpilot hug was good, but the lesbian kiss was such a cheap attempt at trying to appease people calling for representation. The moment with Lando and Jannah at the end was probably the most hopeful part of the movie and neither of them are lead characters

Idk. I know this is pretty negative. But I didn’t really enjoy this movie. Some parts were fun, or funny, or exciting, or emotional. But overall? No. This was not a satisfying conclusion for any of these characters, either the new or the old. They missed. Hard. Not one character was truly done justice. And it’s disappointing. But it’s over now and I have no intentions of letting it dictate my fandom activities. I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen and call it a day

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hauntedfalcon · 4 years

Text

Happy Christmas, Star Wars Is Over

that was a thing I saw with my own two eyes

“we have to End the Saga! ... but also leave ourselves opportunities to make more money” you really clearly cannot have it both ways

there was... so much about that movie that I would have been able to tolerate... if the trio had been together the whole time

but the instant Rey left the group, it became a terrible movie where stupid things happened for no reason, and there was nothing good going on to balance that out

the trio interactions were, give or take one uppity Poe, everything I wanted

they were so good together

literally I yearned for two whole movies and I finally got what I wanted for a little while

anyway as for the rest of the movie, you know the trolley problem?

they had a couple options for tracks to follow after TFA and TLJ

and instead they just... steered the trolley off a cliff

what hit me hardest was the moments where Rey had the helmet on in Luke’s X-wing, and the moment where she sleds down into the Lars homestead

cute moments! recognizable moments! music cues that helped us recognize them

but the actual takeaway was that she had received absolutely no development since the first time we saw her put on an X-wing pilot’s helmet or sled down a sand hill

none of them did

when people kept asking her in TFA who she was, I never took that to mean “tell us your family name” or “which extremely powerful being gave you your powers” but what is your identity and how do you find it for yourself

which is a theme that could have been explored if they weren’t busy driving the fucking trolley off the cliff

what did any of it really mean? what’s the plan for the future? in thirty years does it all start over again when another Sith lord turns out to still be debatably alive?

also everybody saying “we have to do this or the General died for nothing” like by that point? she had already? died? for nothing???

she projected herself through space to distract her shitty son long enough for Rey to stab him! that was the point!!!

that was the death of her son that she foresaw at the end of her Jedi path! coming to terms with that and making it happen herself for the good of the galaxy could have been a thing!!!

all of these plot points are stupid, but there was a coherent way to connect them, and the movie just kept trying to contradict itself instead

disrespectful honestly

keeping her corpse under a sheet until Kyle faded away was extremely disrespectful

also not a fan of how they tried to build scenes around the scraps of extra Carrie Fisher footage they had to work with

I maintain Leia should have been the one to do the jump at the end of TLJ, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with this bullshit

Rey should have been a Kenobi

Rey Should Have Been A Kenobi

but moreover, Rey Should Have Been Able to Forge Her Own Identity Independently of a Lineage

which would have done wonders for the trilogy and put her on equal footing with Finn’s character concept

if, let’s say, Palpatine was not a thing in this movie, and let’s say she ended up in Transport Tug of War with Kyle anyway, and she still accidentally Force-lightninged the ship and had to deal with that afterward?

that would have been interesting! grappling with your own capacity for doing evil is interesting! “you have a capacity for doing evil because of your wrinkly granddad” is NOT

imagine the conversation in the ship after the lightning where Finn says he gets it and Rey says he doesn’t, and Finn says yes, yes he does, because everyone has the capacity to cause harm regardless of the scale of it, but it’s the choosing that counts

imagine if these characters got to say things to each other that actually mattered to the plot

what a waste of Jodie Comer

why hire Jodie Comer and only put her onscreen for five seconds

that’s like hiring Thandie Newton and killing her off after twenty minutes, or hiring Ming-Na Wen and killing her off after one epis--oh wait

I was listening hard during the Every Jedi Talks At Once bit and it did my heart good to hear Qui-Gon again

no Chirrut Îmwe though. see? disrespectful

my beloved Finn

my beloved Finn is finally confirmed Force sensitive, and there is no time to build on that afterward

my beloved Finn meets more people who broke First Order conditioning and refused to fire on civilians, who escaped and lived free, and we get a thirty-second conversation about it and it’s never mentioned again

that should have been the A-plot

my beloved Finn held. Poe’s. hand. and it was clearly a thing they do regularly

my beloved Finn was so competent

my beloved Finn was a GENERAL

and that’s it. that’s all I’ll ever get of my beloved Finn

Lucasfilm is not going to mention him ever again

I am getting emotional now, back to things that made me angry

what the fuck are they trying to pull with Poe

a spice runner? a spice runner???

no nope no you’re not making him the Han of the sequel trilogy Abrams

and then the whiplash of him being given command and wishing he had Leia’s guidance again and getting guidance from Lando instead and immediately acting on it? there’s actual Poe! right there!

I don’t understand who it is they keep trying to convince us he is, but the real Poe always comes through in the end, thank you Oscar Isaac

the hug

the hug and the focus on Finn holding both of them and crying with relief

I sure did miss Rose

introducing just enough new characters for everyone to have a ~safe~ potential love interest was so transparent

there’ll be a comic book or a novel set decades down the line where some background character will be mentioned in passing as Finn and Jannah’s kid, and that will be that

that being said now that we have Jannah you can pry her from my cold dead hands

the fact that they didn’t even talk about why Lando left the fight???

the leaks I read were from an earlier cut of the movie where Lando told them he had a young child who was kidnapped by the First Order

he didn’t get to say anything about it this time??? it was implied to have been Jannah but they didn’t even get that much? they want us to believe he’s been hanging out on One Party Every Forty-Two Years Planet just because?????

hyperspace gets more and more watered down with every consecutive movie

it’s to the point where even the purrgils don’t seem that special anymore

the disposability of all the ships was almost as irritating as all the planet-hopping

ships, just like lightsabers, are entirely renewable resources, there is one around every corner

my “the Force is really just the ghosts of dead Jedi intervening for the living” theory is still going strong, especially now that Luke could lift his X-wing

Yoda had to do it in ESB because Yoda had more dead Jedi friends than Luke :)

I legit squealed “WEDGE” when he appeared for 1.9 seconds

afterwards my best friend was like “what’s a Wedge? was it that Mike Pence guy” and I lost it

Leia’s lightsaber was so pretty but I’m sad the blade wasn’t red in this canon

Disney hopes you enjoyed 1.5 seconds of lesbian representation in a Star Wars movie, now never ask for anything again

Dominic Monaghan was also there for some reason

I’m running out of things to say, everything else in this movie was too fucking stupid to even talk about

especially That

we’re not talking about That

at least we’ll always have The Mandalorian (pending any fuckery in the finale)

#Star Wars for ts #The Rise of Skywalker SPOILERS

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mossflowermouse · 4 years

Text

Second ‘When Christ and His Saints Slept’ reaction post (part one here), covering chapters 11 to 20 aka the bit where I start shipping actual historical figures for the first time ever (other than Wars of the Roses-era people, but that’s different because they were actually married and it wasn’t a ship ship in the same way these are. Anyway.)

Chapters XI and XII:

Annora and Ranulf still love each other :) and they found a loophole so they can get married when Maude's queen! I really should've remembered about that plight-troth. Now a bit worried about all the ways this could go wrong, not least because I'm aware Maude doesn't become queen, but that was really sweet and I'm glad they're happy and things have been resolved (ish)

UGH, GEOFFREY. He's being awful about Maude and Henry's overhearing :(

Between the odd mentions of her here and what little I know about her historically, I'm so excited for when Eleanor of Aquitaine shows up!

Whoops, Chester. Genuine anger and a lack of mercy from Stephen may be a rare thing, but I have a feeling this has crossed the line.

I like it when Maude has interactions with people she likes and trusts - her brothers, Adeliza, and now Brien. It's good.

...okay I might be starting to ship this.

Oh dear I'm definitely shipping this. It's impossible and a mess and they both (Maude especially) seem like they'd rather be swallowed by the earth than actually admit to feelings, but it's so sweet and they trust each other so much and must have such a long shared history? Help?

And also lbr this is just That One Dynamic that absolutely kills me in every piece of media. The mutual trust, the quiet but unbreakable loyalty, the circumstances making things so difficult for them? This is absolutely my thing.

This might be the first time I've actually shipped people who existed. Like, there were some good moments in TSiS but all with people who were actually couples in real life. But with this, I don't know many of the specifics, I have no idea what happens to Brien and only know slightly more about Maude. This is strange.

AAAAAHH. Maude you can't do this to my heart. You just can't.

Chapter XIII:

I like Robert.

Hmmm. Looking at both sides' chances in this battle, and knowing Stephen gets captured at some point during the Anarchy, I have a feeling I know how this will end.

Why does it feel like the awful déjà vu of this part was intentional. This is making me have Bosworth-related emotions all over again.

Okay, wow, that was all quite a lot to take in. Chester's plan was good, and I'm grateful that he saved Robert; wasn't expecting William of Ypres of all people to flee*; Stephen's determination is also making me remember Bosworth in TSiS; I liked the bit with him and Robert and Ranulf at the end.

Chapters XIV and XV:

Aww, family (Maud and Robert and Ranulf)

Maude :')

Matilda just found out about Stephen :(

Maude's going to have trouble winning over the people. London's apparently still loyal to Stephen, and their favour was often an advantage in struggles like this war (looking at you, Edward IV)

I'm feeling more sorry for Constance with every scene she's in or mentioned. Things just keep getting worse for her.

William de Ypres just showed up; Matilda is (understandably) furious about the Battle of Lincoln and letting him know it.

Alliance time! This is one of the things I was vaguely aware of before starting the book, and the anticipation of it has been a lot of fun. Also, I like how honest he’s being here - he made a choice, realised/decided it was the wrong one, and is making no excuses, instead being clear that he wants to try and make things right. The contrast with, say, Bishop Henry’s total lack of self-awareness (or maybe it’s wilful ignorance?) about his moral bankruptcy is wonderful.

Chapters XVI and XVII:

My ship! They're interacting!

HAND. KISSES. My weakness. I know they're the norm and not necessarily romantic at this time but still.

I am deceased. This ship has killed me and they've only had two direct conversations.

Bishop Henry is possibly about to switch sides. Again. I ought to keep track of who’s betrayed both sides the most times (probably him right now).

It's been four months since Matilda joined forces with William de Ypres to try and save Stephen, I wonder what they've been up to? (They haven’t been mentioned in the novel since then)

Everything about this:

and then THIS:

I love this conversation for so many reasons. Most of which involve Maude and Brien because apparently now I’ve dedicated my life to being emotional about them.

Matilda!!! It’s been too long.

Okay, so based on Northumberland's thoughts:

hmmm, new ship?

they're using nicknames they're being familiar this feels like a Big Deal for people in their position at that time. It’s certainly a level of informality that very few others have in the book so far.

Wait they just mentioned a Thomas Becket. Is he that Thomas Becket? I know his feud was with Henry II, whose reign begins in about fourteen years, so it's possible.

I love every mention of the chronicles. It's really cool having the regular narration of the novel interspersed with little pieces of old accounts.

I also love the little moments like Ypres here and his quiet admiration of/confidence in Matilda.

Chapter XVIII:

Not content to just leave me to deal with my feelings from the last few pages, the chapter opens with this:

Immediately following that last part, we now switch to Matilda’s thoughts about de Ypres? He’s trying to hide his exhaustion and she’s not having it? Literally standing over him to make sure he eats? Fond??? Yup, I'm definitely invested in it now. These relationships will be the death of me.

Stephen listing Ypres as one of the people who he could never expect to help Matilda :')

And he's just found out about their alliance!

The guard saying "No one knows how your lady won him over" before being cut off is just really funny. I'm just picturing all of England in total confusion about how Matilda managed to get this cynical, battle-scarred mercenary's unwavering loyalty after Stephen couldn't manage the same. Just. The entire country, collectively looking at this alliance and going '???'

"I had my own miracle all along. I'd married her!" Stephen you cinnamon roll you're completely right

Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien

:DDDD

...I have become hopelessly obsessed. This book has two ships that are my favourite dynamic. Two. This is turning into Code Geass all over again.

(The dynamic is "mutual trust, admiration and respect; if there are romantic feelings, they might be ambiguous and possibly not acted on for any one of a number of reasons, most of which can be summed up as ‘external circumstances getting in the way’; absolute loyalty through thick and thin; help each other grow and get through difficulty; one or both is probably also a little scarred by the world". Bonus points if they have a long history, or any period of time spent together that’s not fully described in canon and can therefore be speculated about.)

Chapter XX (and some reflections on XIX):

The thing about recognising Matilda’s habits:

made me think immediately of this post

Hell yeah teaming up to get Chester to leave.

Ypres just internally being like “oh god I’m actually caring about someone’s emotional wellbeing what is this what do I do”:

(also “the one man she trusted not to lie to her” is sweet but it’s also kind of upsetting that Matilda’s surrounded by allies and yet knows she can’t fully trust most of them)

my heart???

Some of my favourite ships are the ones where I don’t even know if I see it as platonic or romantic, just that these people have such deep affection and trust for each other and it’s wonderful. This is absolutely one of those ships.

I’ve not written anything about the destruction(s) of Winchester, mainly because this book is once again difficult to put down, but suffice to say that it’s pretty harrowing. Seeing things from the perspectives of Maude and Matilda, who haven’t witnessed this side of the war up close before and are feeling responsible for everything awful that’s happening, as well as Ranulf, who’s similarly horrified and hasn’t seen this kind of destruction before, possibly makes it even worse. Also I love the occasional scenes from the point of view of ordinary citizens – it really makes the wider effects of this civil war between cousins sink in. This may have begun as a personal tragedy for Maude, Stephen and their loved ones, but it’s become a catastrophe affecting so many more people across England, Normandy, Anjou…the fact that the narrative brings in the thoughts of people from all across society in recognition of this is one of the things that makes this book so good imo.

Okay, so I’m getting very attached to quite a lot of these people and it’s occurred a few times that I don’t actually know the dates of death for anyone except Stephen. But because this is history and also the first book in a trilogy spanning many decades and the characters are (as far as I know) not immortal, they’re all going to die at some point. I just don’t know when. There is no way to be prepared for the sadness that this book and its sequels will bring.

OH NO RANULF

At this point he should really just stop trying to break into nunneries. As Gilbert mentioned, it never seems to go well.

Wait, if they’re specifying not to kill Ranulf does that mean everyone else who was with him was killed? FEAR

Okay good there are more survivors

That fire was awful. Although I’m going to keep in mind that Gilbert and Marshal are only dead according to the people outside the church – the narration moved away from them when Marshal lost his eye, so there’s still hope (albeit not much). Also, this really showed both sides of de Ypres – he’s managed to be merciful and ruthless in the same paragraph.

Ancel!

And Ranulf is free, but with a hefty dose of survivor’s guilt.

Awww, Maude’s really openly relieved he’s safe. Robert too.

Gilbert’s alive too! I’d suspected but wasn’t sure. Glad for him and Ranulf that they’ve got each other back.

*I’d known that he’d abandoned a battle at some point before allying with Matilda, but had thought that referred to his feud with Robert during the Normandy campaign, which was briefly mentioned earlier, so this came as a surprise.

#when christ and his saints slept #sharon penman #witness my slow descent into madness #a solid 90% of which is thanks to about five characters #and the realisation that this book contains That Dynamic #that I'm always weak for #iz.txt #penmanblogging

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 5 years

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a language that i never knew existed before - Day 15

For @varksvader, who asked for a modern AU “ where Rey and Ben come out of the movie theater, and one of them is highly emotional after watching it”.

This ended up becoming three times Rey and Ben come out of the movie theater and it’s the longest prompt fill so far, but I hope you like it all the same. Thank you for the prompt, and happy holidays!

If anyone else would like a Reylo ficlet of their very own this holiday season, I’m still accepting prompts!

25 Days of Reylo Also available on AO3

It’s her fourth time watching the movie, but Rey finds herself just as overwhelmed as she was the first time around. The last minute of the end credits is still rolling, a slow score pouring out of the speakers as she and Rose get up to join the crowd filing out of the theater in the kind of zombie-like crawl that’s to be expected after a midnight showing.

It’s that one precious moment between fantasy and reality, that small window of time after two hours of escapism and before real life returns with a vengeance, and Rey is content to savor it in silence until–

“A total and utter waste of time,” a man boldly proclaims in a sharp accent as he and his friend join the line, exiting from the aisle just above her and Rose. “At least the originals had a proper villain instead of this wannabe–”

Before Rey can lunge forward and correct the shallow idiot, a hand wraps around her forearm and holds her back with surprising strength. “Don’t,” Rose mutters as her blunt fingernails dig into Rey’s skin. “Just… let it go, okay? They’re probably just casual viewers who don’t know what they’re talking about anyway–”

“I can’t believe they threw away decades of expanded universe lore for this bullshit,” the man’s companion agrees, his voice heavy with disdain. “Kylo Ren is probably just based off one of the writer’s Sith personas from when they were thirteen or something,” he scoffs dismissively just as the group of them step into the blinding lights of the outside world, and Rose wisely lets go of Rey’s arm with nothing more than a defeated sigh.

“Just don’t get us banned,” is her final request as Rey steps forward to tap the second man on his shoulder. He turns around without her having to speak up to get his attention, and regards her with a look that’s part wary, part weary as he crosses his arms over his surprisingly broad chest.

Rey should’ve seen that coming when she had to reach all the way up to tap his shoulder.

“Can I help you?” the man asks, and the hint of a smirk tugging at his lips is enough to snap Rey out of her observation of his dark locks and thick lips. She offers him a sickeningly sweet smile instead, one meant to unsettle rather than charm.

“Well, first of all, they didn’t throw away the whole EU,” Rey informs him, keeping her customer service smile on, “which you might’ve known if you had bothered to read the full announcement when it was released rather than skim the headlines and immediately head over to Reddit to whine with your fellow purists.”

The man’s hands fall to his side as his flame-haired friend with the grating, carefully affected accent continues to walk away, either not realizing that he’s leaving his companion behind or not caring.

“Second, Kylo Ren is nothing like Darth Vader because he’s not a Sith,” she points out a little smugly even as a part of her realizes she’s gaining steam a little too fast. “In fact, he’s not even fully Dark, which might be why he doesn’t check off all of your traditional, basic boxes of what a villain should look like. And by the way, hating Kylo Ren doesn’t make you a better fan than the rest of us; it just makes you one of the literal dozens of whiny gatekeeper fans I’ve had this conversation with in the last two weeks–”

“I don’t hate him,” the man cuts in quite unexpectedly. If anything, Rey had been prepared for a sneered dismissal of her as a fake fan; the explanation that follows instead is unlike any reaction she’s gotten over the past two weeks. “I think he’s an emotional mess and he makes for a weak villain, but as a character there’s obviously layers to uncover and room for him to grow so…” he trails off with a shrug that disturbs the hair resting on his shoulder and causes a thick lock of hair to flop into his face.

It’s… surprisingly adorable.

“Oh,” Rey mouths to herself, still trying to catch up to the fact that she’s no longer in attack mode. “Oh,” she repeats audibly, and then tentatively adds, “Actually, if you are interested in him, they released a pre-movie novel that covers his early childhood and some of the factors–”

“Solo!” the ginger friend snaps from down the hall, near the counter. “Please don’t tell me you’ve gotten into a debate with your fellow nerds, I simply don’t have the patience for this childishness–”

“Fuck off for one minute, Hux,” her unexpected stranger calls back with a dismissive wave of his hand before turning back to Rey. “So I, um, I’ve got to go but… would you maybe want to talk about this some other time? You seem like you actually know your shit, and believe it or not, the Reddit purist crowd gets kind of annoying after a while,” he grins, as if she hadn’t lumped him in with them just minutes ago.

Rey doesn’t usually like surprises – a childhood filled with instability and unexpected changes will do that to you – but something in her gut tells her that this man might just change that.

Gut feelings – now those she likes and trusts. So against all reason, Rey holds out her hand and says, “Give me your phone, I’ll give myself a call and we’ll see how I feel about this in the morning.”

She texts him a list of pre-movie reading material as soon as she gets home.

“I’m just saying,” Rey shrugs as they walk out of the second movie two years later, hand-in-hand like the touchy-feely couple they’ve been for the past eighteen months, “I called it right from the start. Rendemption, here we come!” she declares a little too loudly for the rest of the midnight crowd, judging by their glares.

Or maybe they’re just the kind of haters she would’ve gotten into a fight with two years ago, and it’s only her giant hulk of a boyfriend that’s keeping them from debating her now.

“Okay, so maybe he’s not as hopeless as I thought he was,” Ben concedes with a soft smile that doesn’t belong on the face of someone who’s just lost a long-standing disagreement with his gloating girlfriend. But then again, Rey’s always gotten the feeling that Ben has been rooting for Kylo to turn his life around just as much as she has; maybe even more, given the parallels he sees between them that he’d once confided in her about.

She stops short just outside of the doors, much to the displeasure of the other grumbling moviegoers, and pulls Ben aside. “Hey,” Rey says gently, reaches up with her free hand to cup Ben’s jaw. “No one’s hopeless. Not Kylo Ren,” she whispers, lets it linger for a beat before she works up the nerve to add, “and definitely not you.”

There’s a terrible beat of silence, a moment suspended in time as their lives fork out into two paths, and Rey has no way of knowing which one they’re taking until–

Ben smiles, turns to press his lips to her palm. “You’re my own personal Kira, aren’t you?” he murmurs gently, bringing his other hand to rest over hers. “The only one who believes in me no matter what.”

Rey nods and stretches up on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the lips. “Does that mean you’ll leave the past behind for me?” she paraphrases the movie, hiding her nerves behind a teasing note.

It’s been two months since he left Snoke’s company, two months of him trying to decide if he wants to keep going down the dark road he was on when they first met or if it’s time for him to reclaim old noble intentions which have been gathering dust ever since Snoke hired him right out of law school.

“It means I’d give you the whole galaxy if I could,” Ben promises her with that boyish smile of his that lights up her world and warms her from the inside.

“I don’t need the galaxy,” Rey tells him as she draws the hand still in hers around her waist instead and tucks herself against his side as they begin to walk again. “Just you.”

Ben laughs quietly, his warm breath tickling the shell of her ear before he presses a kiss to her temple. “Sweetheart, you’ve had me since the very first moment.”

They linger in their seats long after the music ends and the screen goes dark, taking some time to process the end of the trilogy that’s come to mean so much to them.

“Ready?” Rey eventually asks when she notices that they’re the last ones left, and Ben merely replies with a nod and a squeeze of her hand as he helps her up and they begin to leave the darkened hall behind.

“God, that was perfect,” she sighs as they leave the theater, disposing of her empty extra-large popcorn bucket before she turns to Ben to see if he’s smiling as hard as she is now.

He’s not.

In fact, Ben’s the farthest thing from smiling right now, what with his bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

“Baby!” Rey gasps in concern, doing her best to reach up and cup his face with both hands. “What is it, is something wrong–”

Ben turns into her touch, nuzzles her palm before he reaches up to take her hands in his and lower them back to their sides. “It’s okay,” he assures her after a beat, and Rey watches with slow-dawning relief as his lips curve into a smile. “It’s okay, I’m okay,” Ben says with a little laugh, a confusing note of wonder in his voice.

“Then why…?”

“I just… you were right, it was perfect,” Ben agrees with a sigh of his own. “And seeing Kylo at the end there, with Kira by his side and their whole lives ahead of them… I guess it just reminded me of how far we’ve come and how lucky I am,” he shrugs, still wearing that beatific smile that reminds her of the one he’d worn as he watched her walk down the aisle towards him.

“Oh, Ben,” Rey says softly, shakes her head with a fond smile before she tips her chin at him in a gesture he’s grown all too familiar with in the last few months of her pregnancy. At eight months, it’s gotten significantly harder for her to reach up on her tiptoes; any vertical kissing is only made possible by Ben bending all the way down to meet her.

It seems like a waste for all that effort on his part to result in a chaste peck, but they are still in public.

“Let’s get you home, Mrs. Solo,” Ben murmurs against her lips before he stands upright and wraps a protective arm around her.

Rey leans into him with a sigh, rests her head on his shoulder as Ben shuffles them forward. “I say this with all the love in my heart,” she prefaces as they step out into the chilly December night, “but I can’t believe I’m the pregnant one yet you’re the one who cried over a movie.”

Ben huffs as he pulls the keys out of his back pocket and unlocks the car parked just a few feet down the street; he’d waited nearly half an hour to get a spot right outside for her sake. “Hey now, you know better than anyone else that Star Wars isn’t just a movie to us.”

It really, really isn’t. They’d met because of these movies, bonded and fallen in love over them, used their understanding of these fictional characters as a shorthand to communicate their deepest fears and wildest dreams with each other. Every fiery defense of Kylo Ren that Rey has ever delivered was in part inspired by and meant for Ben, and it was his chance at redemption that helped Rey finally convince Ben that there’s no such thing as the point of return.

In a way, Star Wars is as real to them as anything they’ve actually lived through, as fundamental to their relationship and their life together as any other experience they’ve shared.

Hell, if it weren’t for these movies, they might never even have met.

Rey places a hand over her stomach, thinks of everything she’s been blessed with ever since a chance meeting at a midnight showing of a sci-fi movie about space and lasers and hope.

“Yeah,” she tells her husband as he helps her into the passenger seat and carefully secures the seat belt over their daughter. “Yeah, it’s definitely more than just a movie.”

This is more than two thousand words. I don’t even know what happened, you guys; I sat down to write two ficlets and ended up spending all my time on just one. This isn’t even a ficlet anymore, technically.

But... I’m kinda happy with it? It’s not perfect, far from my best work, but it ended up closer to my original outline than anything else I’ve written recently, so I’m okay with it. I hope you are too. Thanks for reading, and please don’t hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

#reylo #reyben #kylo ren/rey #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #ficlet: language that i never knew #my fics

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la-knight · 5 years

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BOOKS I (RE)READ IN 2018: FURTHERMORE BY TAHEREH MAFI

"Alice Alexis Queensmeadow, 12, rates three things most important: Mother, who wouldn’t miss her; magic and color, which seem to elude her; and Father, who always loved her. Father disappeared from Ferenwood with only a ruler, almost three years ago. But she will have to travel through the mythical, dangerous land of Furthermore, where down can be up, paper is alive, and left can be both right and very, very wrong. Her only companion is Oliver whose own magic is based in lies and deceit. Alice must first find herself—and hold fast to the magic of love in the face of loss." "Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything. Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic." "Love, it turned out, could both hurt and heal." "Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you're there, you're lost forever.” "Alice was an odd girl, even for Ferenwood, where the sun occasionally rained and the colors were brighter than usual and magic was as common as a frowning parent." "Making magic is far more interesting than making sense." So I actually read this book a few months ago and then recently reread it via audio so I could remember all the details for this review. I was first introduced to Tahereh Mafi’s work through her book Shatter Me, her debut novel. Ironically, it wasn’t through any of the ways I normally hear about books - Booktube, Goodreads, my best friend, Booklr - but from my husband’s aunt. She runs - or used to run, not sure if she’s still doing it - a book review blog. And she posted a review of Shatter Me and I was like, “What a weird, interesting writing style, lemme check this out.” At this point the entire Shatter Me Trilogy plus novellas had been published and I devoured all of them (still need to review those, too). So when I heard Tahereh Mafi was writing a middle grade book, I got super excited! Especially because this was during a time when I was too stressed out to read any YA, since most of the YA I like involves having to save the world and all the stress that entails. I need to lay out some trigger warnings real quick: the main character, Alice? Her mom is incredibly abusive, both emotionally and physically. It’s treated as not such a big deal in the book, which is honestly the story’s only real flaw, but it’s bad. It took me seven tries and resorting to an audiobook (and even with a fantastic narrator, that short audiobook took me almost a month to get through) because the abuse was so bad. So:

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE OF A CHILD BY THEIR PARENT

Let’s get started, yo! First of all, the setting. OMG. See, I love tthis thing called Victorian fairy tales, which is something you can find in books like Mary Poppins - these super fantastical bits of whimsy that just warm your heart and make you grin because they’re so creative and fun. In the Mary Poppins books, you can jump into chalk drawings and go to a circus amidst the stars and make friends with a woman who sells living candy-cane horses. In Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series, there are shadow balls and talking phonographs. And in Furthermore, there’s light raining down from the sky in literal drops, sticks of magic you use like money, and forests full of invisible berries. The way the world is put together and described, so full of color and imagination, is awesome and beautiful and I could picture it perfectly. It reminded me in all the best ways of books like The Phantom Tollbooth (one of my favorites). But I wouldn’t want to live there, because Ferenwood is full of colorism and ick. Alice, the female lead, is an albino in a world where color is important and the darker you are, the more magical you’re considered to be. So Alice gets treated like garbage.

Also I think Alice may be autistic, but I don’t know if she’s deliberately coded autistic or if Tahereh Mafi did it by accident while trying to make Alice eccentric, but she comes across as autistic. I’ve actually begun to pay more attention to that sort of the thing in recent years, being autistic myself, and I see it a lot - authors giving their characters autistic characteristics, often without meaning to. I just touch on it here because Alice is already treated badly for being albino, but she’s also considered a freak because of the way she behaves - like an autistic preteen. And I wonder if Tahereh Mafi did that on purpose as a sort of commentary or not, because while Alice is treated badly by the people of Ferenwood for her behavior, the Narrator (who is an actual character in the story; love when that happens) always sides with Alice in this regard. The storyline is sweet and I love it. Alice tries to compete in the magical testing all the preteens do on their twelfth birthday, and so she dances. And her dancing is magical but it’s not Magical, you know? So she fails the test. Well, turns out a boy who passed the test the year before, Oliver (the brat), needs Alice’s help fulfilling a quest - rescuing Alice’s missing dad. So they go on a quest together, although Alice hates Oliver (and rightly so, he’s rude). They go to a dozen different and cool places, all of which are dangerous and all of which are different. I wish we could’ve spent more time in those places but I understand why we didn’t. The only annoying thing is there’s an origami fox on the cover but it only pops up in one of the worlds for like two pages and then it’s gone and I thought we could spend more time both in that world and with that creature since it ended up on the cover. But alas, not. I understand why - middle grade is often cursed to be short, especially if it’s the author’s first MG novel ever. Once you get big and bad like Rick Riordan you can start tossing out gihugic tomes like Son of Neptune or Blood of Olympus on the regular. Oliver’s reason for needing Alice was one I didn’t see coming, nor was her magical talent - a talent they hint at throughout the book but never explain until near the end, at the perfect moment. I thought it was an interesting commentary on how young girls perceive themselves, that Alice hates this marvelous, amazing talent she has of bringing color into the world from nothing...because she can’t use it to change how she looks. Society has trained her already, by the age of twelve, to discount something incredible about herself because she can’t use it to make herself into what society wants her to be. That’s pretty impressive for a book this short. I loved some of the more deliberate messages in the work - the thing I mentioned about society’s pressures on young girls, and also that it’s okay to tell boys to screw off if they’re mean to you, and to have hope and to look for second chances (Alice thinks she only has one chance to pass the test and believes her life is over when she fails, only to find out she can try again the next year). I love all of that, and the lyrical and whimsical quality of the prose, and the world building is so creative and also makes me a bit hungry (people eat magic in this book, among other things; I wonder what it tastes like). Now...let’s talk about the abuse. That’s my biggest issue with the book. Alice’s mother is a total bitch. And not in a cool, kickass way like the lady in the show Empire. She’s vicious, she’s cruel, and she’s abusive. Alice knows - and the Narrator confirms - that she turned bad when her husband went missing, and apparently the worry for him and the strain of raising four kids on her own is making her hard and sad, but I don’t give a shit. I was hoping Tahereh Mafi would’ve gone all Hansel and Gretel on this lady and when Alice comes home with her dad, the wife’s dead or something. She beats Alice (at one point she beat Alice for chasing a boy out of the place where she was sleeping, even though he kept staring at her in her sleeping clothes, because apparently the boy - Oliver - had the right to break into their barn at 3AM and ogle Alice???), she verbally abuses Alice, she sends her to bed regularly without dinner, is constantly criticizing, won’t hug her or kiss her, and - this one really got me, for some reason - forces her to do illegal things. Those invisible berries I mentioned? Alice can find them and bring back whole baskets because of her magical gift, and so her mom sends her out to pick them all the time. If she brings home enough, her mom smiles. If she doesn’t, her mom yells and calls her names and sometimes beats her. Guess what? Picking those berries is illegal. We don’t find this out until much later in the book, but it is. The thing I didn’t like about the berries is that Oliver, who’s thirteen, is less concerned about Alice’s mother beating her for not picking enough contraband berries and instead focuses on how her ability to find the berries in the first place means Alice has really impressive magic. NOBODY seems to care how much Alice is being abused, not even the Narrator. The Narrator sympathizes with Alice’s hurt feelings and despair over her missing Father, but it’s never objectively stated that her mom is abusing her AND SHE IS. Yeah, her mom is sooo glad to have her back after Alice almost dies on her trip with Oliver, but so what? My roommate’s mom is so abusive that my roommate’s clergy leaders, doctors, and psychological therapist all said my roommate needed to cut ties with said mom, even though my roommate’s mom has also exhibited the same kind of “oh baby I’m so sorry, I love you so much” bullshit. That’s what abusers do. So I hate Alice’s mom. She literally makes her daughter feel like if she doesn’t risk her life numerous times AND bring her father back, there is no chance her mother will ever love her. And if she pulls that stuff off (which she does), then MAYBE her mother will love her. Nuh-uh. Nope. Hate that bitch. Other than that, I really loved this book. The characters felt real (Alice is me, but without my anger), Even the ones I didn’t like were still REAL, and well-drawn. The world building and word choice is fantastic. Basically, if you can get past the evil mom, read this book. World Building: 1 star Realism: 1 star Word Choice: 1 star Plot: 1 star Characterization: 1 star - ¼ star because Oliver Newbanks is an obnoxious little creep - 1 star because the mom is AN ABUSIVE EVIL BITCH - ¼ star because NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT THAT +½ star because Alice is amazing and has a genius brain and I love her Total score: 4/5 stars Would I Buy It: Yes! I own it and loved it enough I got the sequel for Christmas (in...2017...I've been sitting on this review for months...)! Would I Recommend: yes, but with trigger warnings. Again, highly abusive evil bitch mom who somehow doesn’t die.

#books of 2018 #book review #aesthetic #Furthermore #Tahereh Mafi

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davidmann95 · 6 years

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i saw a stars war

First movie the family’s been to at the new theater since we moved, and thankfully it was up to snuff - even the 3D worked, and I had not initially been wild about the only showing we could workably get to being in that format.

I don’t have a review as such, just disconnected snippets of thoughts that’ll go into spoiler territory below the cut, but this was a really damn good movie. Great performances, juggled a lot of plot incredibly effectively, gorgeous, exciting, bold, and with some frame-worthy shots. I have no doubt Abrams’ll pull it all together just fine for IX to finish it off, but now I’m much more enthused at the prospect of Rian Johnson having a trilogy entirely to himself after this sequestered in its own physical and narrative territory from the series up to this point.

* Great as Rey, Finn/Rose, and Poe’s individual plots were, I feel like they didn’t completely dovetail thematically; there were linkages, with the idea of saving over destroying between Finn/Poe and fallen idols in Rey/Finn, but it didn’t totally feel like a whole. Even a touch self-contradictory, with the fire of youth leading them astray being the issue in one plot, while it’s the old fogeys not understanding that their problem is they need to hand over the reigns in another. That said, I expect that’s in large part a consequence of this being the middle chapter of a trilogy and hope Abrams will be able to resolve it, though it’s by no means a ruinous flaw even if he doesn’t.

EDIT: On second thought, there is a pretty consistent theme: we ALL make terrible mistakes, the difference is if we try and become better (Poe reassessing his priorities, Finn realizing he needs to fight rather than flee the First Order even in a morally murky galaxy, Rey getting her head straight in general on the Force and realizing there's never gonna be a partner/mentor/parent out there who'll be able to comfortably place her where she needs to be, Luke realizing his flaws don't need to be the eternal flaws of the Jedi as a concept) or keep doing the same shit (Ren breaks free of his restraints, but only so he can double down even further).

* Speaking of the Finn/Rose plot (and I do like her role in things here, even if I have a bad feeling she was written if not outright conceived at least in part to diffuse the chemistry between Finn and Poe ala the 50s Batwoman being a response to Wertham), who’d have expected a main Star Wars movie basically telling us to eat the rich - or at least run them over with their own space-horses - because capitalist war profiteers enable imperialism? Neat.

* Leia getting to be a literal space princess was bomb, but what the hell are they going to do without Carrie Fisher? The deaths of Han and Luke at Kylo Ren’s hands were clearly setting up her confrontation with her son to complete the set in the finale, and now it’s just hanging. The filmmakers are by no means totally screwed, they have time to figure it out, but I do not envy whoever has to decide how The Finale Of The Biggest Series In The World is going to work now that they’re tragically missing one of its guaranteed, foundational key components.

* Luke’s grand cock-up worked really well for me on a character basis; it’s the same moment as when he lost his shit against Vader when Leia was threatened with corruption and he needed to recollect himself, except this time there wasn’t a chance to backtrack. Ultimately going out to the sight of two suns as on Tatooine was a nice touch too, and Hamill brought it here as much as I figured he would. On that note, while we got his moment of truth when he turned against the Jedi, still relatively little idea as to what prompted Kylo Ren to villainy beyond a general lust for power, unless you take Luke’s peek into his head as a sign that he was simply always fundamentally unbalanced. TFA seemed to imply he saw his rejection of the light as something akin to a moral imperative, and I hope IX fleshes it out just a touch more, even if there’s no need to overexplain it either.

* Not what I’d expected with Rey’s parents even if it was my second guess - I figured they’d be rando merc’d Jedi pupils to invert the Empire reveal ( “I didn’t kill your father, I am your father”/“I’m not the family you probably expected me to be, I killed your family”) - but this definitely works.

* Snoke’s beautiful, ridiculous, comfy, louche-ass dictatorial lounging robe! Ruined! And Snoke got diced too, courtesy of the same twist that undid the villain in the superhero episode of Rick and Morty (this “I am your father”-level kicking-over of the table being of course the one thing I’d been spoiled on, because the internet is bullshit). Some are pissed we’ll now probably never know what his deal was until some tie-in novel fleshes it out, but truthfully: who gives a damn what his deal was? Much like the Emperor before him, he was clever and powerful and bad, and that was all that mattered about him; dancing that dance again would’ve been redundant in the extreme, there was clearly nothing much of substance to him worth spending time spelling out (aside from whatever his longterm plan was, which would’ve been inevitably doomed to fail anyway) given the visibly arch nature of his villainy even in The Force Awakens, and he was too powerful to ever be taken in a direct fight by our heroes sans Luke, if even he could do it. So why not take an RPG to the structure of these movies as they’d been built up to this point, and throw the enemy camp - and the endgame prospect of the entire series - into as much confusion and disarray as the heroes are left in? Suddenly, just as Kylo Ren seems to have sincerely committed to being the bad guy to the end of the line, he’s actually managed to win it all right off the bat, but at the price of having to *manage* it all as it’s falling apart when he has no clue what the hell he’s doing and everyone knows it.

* Rey and Poe going “oh dang, we’re 2/3rds of the new main trio but we haven’t met yet two movies in! Hi!” was nice. Was I alone in getting a sense of it being framed as them liking the sight of one another? I wouldn’t especially be rooting for them to be paired together at the last minute - especially given, again, I feel like it would be partially in response to Finn/Poe’s popularity and a simple attempt at pairing everyone off Very Heterosexually, with Rey in TFA and the rest of this movie mostly just doing her own thing minus any relationship business - but Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac are also both ridiculously gorgeous people, so I wouldn’t complain either.

* I love Porgs, they're great, and Chewie fucking ate one in front of its friends, and all's right with the world.

#Star Wars: The Last Jedi #Star Wars #Rian Johnson #Rey #Luke Skywalker #Kylo Ren #Snoke #Poe Dameron #Finn #PORGS #Opinion

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carthonasi · 6 years

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My Thoughts on The Last Jedi

It’s been about 3 days now since I’ve seen The Last Jedi and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the movie and man oh man, do I have some thoughts on this sucker. This would have been out sooner but I unfortunately had to work all weekend due to the movie’s release and have only gotten around to making this post now. Spoilers under the cut.

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Okay, spoiler time. I’m going to do split my thoughts into a pros and cons list, and for once, I’m actually going to start with the negatives considering all of the controversy surrounding the movie.

CONS

Luke’s characterization for a good bit of the film is so off. Like, come on, you expect me to believe the same Luke Skywalker who refused to kill his father would attempt to murder his nephew in his sleep? Nah, that’s fucking bullshit. I could buy it maybe passing his mind, but to physically turn on that lightsaber? No. It was shit. And it was clearly only there to give Kylo some sort of sympathetic backstory. There were other things that irked me about how Rian Johnson portrayed Luke, but that was my main grievance.

I’m sure someone has written up a better explanation as to why this sucks so I’ll just leave this here simply: I hated that Luke died

Rey and Luke’s plot on Ahch-to just felt like a let down to me. Nothing really deep here, just felt it didn’t live up to the hype. This might change after a second viewing.

I wasn’t a big fan of how much the movie focused on Kylo, including the majority of Rey’s plot being focused on saving him when just a movie ago she literally was ready to kill him for killing Han. (More on things I liked about Kylo in the Pros section)

WHY DID NO ONE BESIDES REY MENTION HAN??? WHY DIDN’T LEIA ESPECIALLY MENTION HAN??? WHY DIDN’T WE GET TO SEE LUKE REACT TO HIS FRIEND’S DEATH IF WE FOUND OUT THAT HE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT??? WHY WASN’T HAN MENTIONED MORE???

While I loved Finn and Rose and even liked their plotline (More later in the Pros), I felt the kiss from Rose came out of nowhere. I mean, it was obvious she had a crush, but idk. If they’re pushing FinnRose in the next movie, I’m gonna be slightly disappointed with the build up since their dynamic screamed platonic to me.

When we walked out, my brother mentioned to me that the humor felt “too much”. I didn’t agree or disagree with him at first since I had noted that something about the humor felt different, but now I agree with him as I saw someone mention exactly what type of humor this felt like. This was Marvel^TM humor. And not the good Thor Ragnarok kind. Some of this felt like the faux-Whedon quips that have become standard for Marvel movies. However, I will say that this doesn’t cover all of the humor, just that some of it felt like my brother said: “too much”

One thing that bugged me about the Holdo/Poe plot was that everything could have been avoided if she had told Poe the plan. Like, I understand this is a movie and they needed conflict, but this was handled very poorly in my opinion.

On the subject of Poe, his character felt slightly off compared to how he was portrayed in TFA and some other material. For a standalone movie, his arc was good and handled decently, but considering this is a follow up and the middle movie of a trilogy, it just seemed off to me. Maybe a second viewing will clear it up for me, but idk that was just my first impression.

Speaking of, I felt that while this movie worked really well and was very good as a standalone movie, I do not think it works well as a sequel to TFA. There were so many elements from TFA that seemed wasted or just completely forgotten. It was very obvious that this movie was written before TFA was finalized, as Rian Johnson has stated. Which leads me to…

Rey’s parentage reveal. It was shit.

Ok, so maybe I’m biased since this was a a subject I’ve been reading into for a while, but this “reveal” did not sit well with me. For one, the reveal came from the fucking villain in a moment where he was obviously trying to manipulate her, so you know, I’m not inclined to believe him. And secondly, the reveal doesn’t line up with what was in the TFA movie proper, or in the TFA novel for that matter, which was based off an earlier version of the script. If Rey’s parents were drunks who sold her off for drinking money and were in a desert grave, why was she shown in her force vision in TFA, crying out for someone in a spaceship to come back? Rey clearly wasn’t a slave in TFA. If she was, she wouldn’t have been able to leave Jakku. I think there are more discrepancies that others have pointed out, but the fact of the matter is, things just don’t line up. I sincerely get what Rian was trying to get across by having her be a random, but God, the execution was so fucking terrible if you look closely. I’m gonna elaborate more in another post on this subject once I see the movie again tomorrow, but fuck dudes, this was so disappointing.

Ok, on a less critical note, I just felt the movie dragged towards the end. By the time they reached Crait, I was like, we’re not done yet??? I might have just been tired so if this changes on a second viewing I’ll add an edit.

Snoke was kind of a disappointment, but I never really cared about him so it didn’t really bug me. Not really an extreme con like the majority of this list, but it’s still a negative so here it is.

Also, I’m adding this in after writing my pros, but I just realized R2 had so little to do and now I’m sad.

Ok, so a lot of negatives. But there are a lot of positives too so let’s get to those.

PROS

LEIA FUCKING ORGANA. LEIA USING THE FORCE. LEIA BEING AN AWESOME GENERAL. CARRIE FISHER’S PERFORMANCE. JUST. LEIA.

VICE. ADMIRAL. HOLDO. DID. THAT. I’m not gonna fucking lie, that was hands down my favorite scene in the fucking movie. Besides another scene in the movie, it’s the only one that had me genuinely awestruck in the theater.

MY BOY LUKE SHOWING UP IN AN AWESOME BLACK OUTFIT AND TRIMMED HAIR TO SHOW UP HIS SHITTY NEPHEW. THAT SHOULDER BRUSH WAS SUCH A MIDDLE FINGER TO KYLO I LOVE THAT MAN. MARK HAMILL GETS TOP MARKS FOR PORTRAYING LUKE NO MATTER HOW CRAPPY HIS CHARACTERIZATION WAS IN SOME PARTS.

Ok, I think I’m past the screaming section of this lol. Moving on, I absolutely adored Rose. While her initial scene was a bit iffy, I quickly fell in love with her. Kelly Marie Tran nailed it and I can’t wait to see more of her in Episode IX. I only wish that we had gotten to know Paige a little better and seen her relationship with Rose before she died, but considering how the film started, I’m not too surprised that didn’t happen.

You know who else I love with all my heart? My beautiful boy Finn. John Boyega continues to make me love him as he sold all of his scenes in this movie. From his scenes with Rose, to the fight with Phasma, he never stopped being such a damn delight to watch.

Speaking of Finn, FINNREY FUCKING LIVES. I loved all the moments where they referenced each other and I had the biggest smile on my face when they reunited. God I love those kids.

Speaking of ships, REY//O IS FUCKING DEAD IN THE GROUND. But seriously, how are shippers thinking that this movie confirmed their ship? If anything, this just confirmed that Kylo is forever lost to the dark side and that Rey will probably end up killing him. She literally shut the door on him how do misread that scene?

Kylo was a fantastic villain. Adam Driver did a great job of portraying him and I love the lengths they went to show just how shitty he is and just how manipulative and evil he is. They even gave him an out with a sympathetic backstory, but nope, he’s still a piece of shit. I’m so glad and relieved he’s not getting a redemption arc because he such a good bad guy.

That moment where Rey made it look like she was gonna take Kylo’s hand but then swerved and went for the lightsaber and then left his ass unconscious, I was like, “that’s my girl”

Also the lightsaber battle beforehand between Kylo, Rey, and Snoke’s guards was genuinely awesome to watch. A great fight scene. I didn’t get the same emotional feeling that I did watching Kylo and Rey’s duel in TFA but it was still fucking awesome to watch nonetheless.

R2 projecting Leia’s message nearly made me cry.

Another thing that actually made me tear up? Luke and Leia’s reunion, even if Luke was only an astral projection in hindsight. It felt like a goodbye to Carrie, even if it wasn’t shot that way, and his line to Leia (I can’t remember the exact quote) really fucking hurt.

John William’s Score. I feel like this is a given. I will however note that I think I enjoyed the score for The Force Awakens more. Nonetheless, it’s still John fucking Williams and as such it’s still fucking good

As you can see, I’ve got some very mixed feelings on the movie. No doubt I forgot to mention something, but I’m still pretty wiped from working all weekend. But I’ll just leave with this. I think as a standalone movie, this was very good. There were some great cinematic moments and awesome action sequences. Based on that, I’d probably give it an 8/10. However, as a follow up to TFA, it left me disappointed in many fields, which considering it was written before TFA was actually finished, isn’t all that surprising. So under that criteria, I give it 6/10.

However, I do think you guys should see the movie for yourselves and make your own opinions. It’s such a decisive movie that I think that the only way you’re gonna know how you feel about it for sure, is if you see it with your own eyes. And if you happen to love the movie, I’m happy you got an enjoyable experience.

#star wars #the last jedi #tlj spoilers #tlj #sw spoilers #star wars spoilers #my thoughts #sorry this is technically late since it's 12:13 my time #but this took longer than i thought to type up yikes

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ds4design · 7 years

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Lando Calrissian Ponders a Very Important Baby Gift in This Excerpt From Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End

One of the most significant events between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens is the birth of Han and Leia’s son Ben. In this exclusive excerpt from Empire’s End, the final installment in Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy, it turns out Lando’s been a bit too busy to pay much attention to his old friends or their babies.

The Aftermath novels have been chronicling the continued fall of the Empire and rise of the New Republic following the Emperor’s death. While they primarily follow a small group of rebels who hunt for missing Imperial officers (and occasionally Han Solo, when he goes missing), each book checks in with characters all over the galaxy; in Empire’s End, due out February 21, that includes Lando. In this excerpt, he recollects how he took back Cloud City, but also has the best idea for a baby gift in any galaxy.

First, here’s the official synopsis of the book:

EVERY END IS A NEW BEGINNING.

As the final showdown between the New Republic and the Empire draws near, all eyes turn to a once-isolated planet: Jakku.

The Battle of Endor shattered the Empire, scattering its remaining forces across the galaxy. But the months following the Rebellion’s victory have not been easy. The fledgling New Republic has suffered a devastating attack from the Imperial remnant, forcing the new democracy to escalate their hunt for the hidden enemy.

For her role in the deadly ambush, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane is the most wanted Imperial war criminal—and one-time rebel pilot Norra Wexley, back in service at Leia’s urgent request, is leading the hunt. But more than just loyalty to the New Republic drives Norra forward: Her husband was turned into a murderous pawn in Sloane’s assassination plot, and now she wants vengeance as much as justice.

But Sloane, too, is on a furious quest: pursuing the treacherous Gallius Rax to the barren planet Jakku. As the true mastermind behind the Empire’s devastating attack, Rax has led the Empire to its defining moment. The cunning strategist has gathered the powerful remnants of the Empire’s war machine, preparing to execute the late Emperor Palpatine’s final plan. As the Imperial fleet orbits Jakku, an armada of Republic fighters closes in to finish what began at Endor. Norra and her crew soar into the heart of an apocalyptic clash that will leave land and sky alike scorched. And the future of the galaxy will finally be decided.

And here’s the excerpt. We hope Lando actually got baby Ben the gift. Or maybe that’s what turned him to the Dark Side?

“Lobot, we’re home.” Lando lifts a dubious eyebrow as he looks around, exasperated. “Guess the Empire didn’t keep up with housekeeping.”

This is the Casino level. Game machines line the smooth blue alactite floors far as the eye can see. Sabacc tables, too. And pazaak. And jubilee wheels. Along the far wall are banks of holoprojectors meant to show the latest swoop race down on the track-tubes piped through Bespin’s toxic Red Zone atmosphere. Once, this was a shining pillar of gambling excess: classy and bright with light coming in through windows looking out over the sun-kissed clouds. Now it’s wrecked. Trash drifts and tumbles. Machines have been turned over, their credits cut from inside like food from a beast’s belly. The windows are covered over with metal. The holoprojectors are dark. Lobot steps up alongside Lando. The computer forming a half-moon around the back of the man’s bald head blinks and pulses, and at Lando’s wrist is a communication from his friend and cohort:

I’ll look into rehiring staff immediately.

“Do that,” Lando says. Then he thrusts up a finger. “Ah. But make sure we’re hiring some refugees, will you?” The galaxy’s like a cup that’s been knocked over, and now everything’s spilling out. Whole worlds have been displaced by the war. Lando can’t let Cloud City turn from being a city of luxury to being a tent city of expats and evacuees, but he can damn sure give those people jobs. That’s his favorite kind of arrangement: the kind where everybody gets something for their trouble. They win. He wins. The ideal for how everything should work.

Cloud City was always that, for Calrissian. It was a respite—a refuge from the Empire while at the same time not existing to spite the Empire, either. He thought, Hey, everybody can be happy, baby. The Empire didn’t have to care. The rebels didn’t need to care. Cloud City could hang in the air above Bespin, separate from all the chaos, from all the strife. Come here, taste a little luxury. Meanwhile, he could mine the Tibanna gas, sell it to whatever starship manufacturer wanted it (the stuff was perfect for making hyperdrives, because with Tibanna, a little went a long way). Meanwhile, Lando could sit back, have a drink, roll some dice, find a lady or three.

Yeah. It didn’t work out that way.

He knows now: In a war like this one, you don’t get to be in the middle. You can’t play both sides. He’d lived his whole life shooting right down the middle, never taking up a cause except the one meant to support his own empty pockets. Those days are over and so is his love of sweet neutrality. When Vader came here, everything changed. He lost Han, for a time. He lost Lobot and Cloud City. He lost nearly everything.

But he gained a little perspective.

And he picked a damn side. Because sometimes, you want to win, you gotta bet big. You gotta put your stack of chits in one place.

It paid off. The Empire is gone. And now he’s a hero of the Rebellion (and oh, you can be sure he used that to con more than his fair share of free drinks, not to mention the attention of beautiful admirers). But all he wants is his city back. After Endor, he thought he would just be able to sweep in here like a handsome king retaking his throne in the sky—but then that son-of-a-slug Governor Adelhard formed the Iron Blockade. He kept the people here trapped not only by a well-organized Imperial remnant, but also by a grand lie: that Palpatine was not dead. And Lando knows that old shriveled cenobite is dead—because he’s the one who took out the Death Star’s reactor core. And because Luke said the monster was dead. Can you believe it? Palpatine and Vader. Both gone. Two scourges, scoured from the galaxy.

Suddenly he had a second war to fight. Here he thought the Empire was done for and Cloud City was once again his. What an eager fool. Nothing’s ever that simple, is it? It took months and months. He had to stage an uprising. Had to interface with Lobot on the inside. Had to cash in favors with a handful of scoundrels—like Kars Tal-Korla, that pirate. All because the New Republic wouldn’t commit a military action to retaking the city. He respects it, he understands it, and Leia put it best when she said, “The Rebellion was easy, Lando. Governing’s harder.” The chancellor was just trying to hold on to whatever advantage she had—and then with the Liberation Day attack on Chandrila . . .

Well. All that is over and done. No need to dwell.

Cloud City is his once again. Lando starved out Adelhard. Most of the Imperials surrendered. It’s over. Thank the lucky stars.

He steps forward into the Casino level, and he and Lobot aren’t alone. He’s got a ragtag force with him: some of his Wing Guard security forces, but some New Republic soldiers, too. It’s just enough to perform cleanup on those who linger behind, clinging to the illusion they can still win this thing.

Together they march forward through the wreckage of the Casino level. He asks Lobot: “The holdouts are ahead?”

Yes. In the Bolo Tanga room.

“Fine, fine, let’s get this over with and evict our final tenants.”

As they walk, Lobot looks over at him as a new communication flashes across his wrist: I am told to remind you that the princess will soon give birth and you have not yet procured for them the standard natal gift.

“What? That’s impossible. She was just—I swear they just got married—didn’t I just get them a nuptial gift?”

It has been the proper biological time. You just do not realize how much time has passed. We have been busy.

“So have they, I guess.”

Also, you never got them a nuptial gift.

He sighs. “Okay, okay. Buying gifts for a kid. Can we get him a cute little cape and a mustache so he looks like old Uncle Lando?”

Lobot doesn’t respond, offering only a humorless stare.

“Fine, fine, I’ll think about it.” His mind drifts briefly to Han and Leia. Han, one of his oldest and greatest friends. And sure, one of his greatest rivals, too. He misses that old reprobate. The crazy times they had!

Good times even when they were bad. And now, Han is with Leia. Hoo, boy. Those two are a pair of rocket boosters firing full-bore. Lando just hopes those two engines are both firing in the same direction—because if they’re ever pointed at each other, they’ll burn each other up.

We’re here.

That, from Lobot. Ahead waits the door to the Bolo Tanga room. Lando can see it’s been sealed with mag-alloy. He turns to Captain Gladstone of the Wing Guard. “We got imaging?”

Gladstone nods. “They’re holed up in there. They’ve broken through to the beam outtake shaft, which in theory would lead them to the engineering sublayer—”

“But the fumes coming up through the shaft will kill them if they try.”

“That’s exactly it, Baron Administrator.”

“So they’re trapped.”

“Like crete-bugs in a beetle-bag.”

“All right, let’s open it up.”

From the book STAR WARS: AFTERMATH: EMPIRE’S END by Chuck Wendig. Copyright © 2017 by Lucasfilm Ltd. Reprinted by arrangement with Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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peremadeleine · 7 years

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My Best and Worst Books of 2016

Best

Tam Lin, Pamela Dean (Fantasy)

The rest of my picks are listed in no particular order, but this one definitely takes the top spot. Dean’s lyrical prose, her enchanting and authentic little universe, her genuine, three-dimensional characters, the way she interweaves the mundane and the magical and slowly builds up to the big fantasy reveal…it all had me hooked from the beginning. Tam Lin is also as much a loving homage to a four-year liberal arts education as it is a folklore retelling, and as a slightly “homesick” graduate only two years out of college, I loved it all the more for being both.

The full list is below the cut. A few more categories and complete reviews of all books listed are also on my blog, Luthien Reviews.

Three Dark Queens, Kendare Blake (YA Fantasy)

This book is, as I said in my recent review, “really something.” Strong world-building, a suspenseful slow-burning plot, and some great characters all add up to a wonderful read. And unlike in a lot of YA books that are marketed as “dark,” I appreciated that Ms. Blake proved herself willing to “kill her darlings,” as the saying goes. That went a long way towards making my reading experience far more gripping. While some element of Blake’s world and some of her characters need more depth added to them in the sequel, I still ate this one up.

House Broken, Sonja Yoerg (Contemporary)

I picked this one up for personal reasons thinking it would be a bit light-hearted, but in reality it’s a sobering multi-generational tale that revolves around the consequences of substance abuse and family secrets. The three main female characters–grandmother, mother, and daughter–are well-drawn. They come across as both realistic and sympathetic even at times when they aren’t likable. The revelations contained within the last hundred-fifty pages are difficult to swallow, to say the least, but are nevertheless handled deftly and delicately by the author in an excellently crafted debut.

Dark Triumph, Robin LaFevers (YA Fantasy, Historical Fiction)

By turns dark, funny, and romantic, this book shows up its prequel, Grave Mercy. This book, not that one, is the top-shelf historical fiction about lady-assassins that I wanted to read when I started the His Fair Assassin series in the first place. The sharp-witted and sharper-tongued heroine, Sybella, is a delightfully active narrator–she gets stuff done–and her story bursts with action and intrigue. Apart from a slightly weak ending, Dark Triumph is intense, entertaining, and sets the trilogy up for a (hopefully!) excellent conclusion.

Still Star-Crossed, Melinda Taub (YA Historical Fiction, Romance)

This “sequel” of sorts to Romeo and Juliet boasts a much more engaging plot than the play upon which it’s based. Believably sixteenth-century characters, well-executed Shakespearean-inspired dialogue, and overall solid writing come together to create a unique novel with a lot of charm and humor. Even a few implausible plot twists and a (sigh) love triangle failed to spoil Melinda Taub’s terrific debut for me. I’m still hoping that she’ll put out something new in the next few years.

Cleopatra’s Shadows, Emily Holleman (Historical Fiction)

Lush with rich historical details, political intrigue, and wonderfully compelling characters, this novel tells the stories of Berenice and Arsinoe, sisters of the (in)famous Cleopatra VII of Egypt, and of their struggles following the coup that makes Berenice the queen of an increasingly unstable kingdom surrounded threats from all sides. Berenice is fierce but troubled, while Arsinoe begins as a naive child but grows into driven and determined young woman. Shadows is a well-written, well-researched debut for Emily Holleman whose sequel comes out this year–hooray!

The Midnight Dress, Karen Foxlee (YA Fantasy, Mystery)

I never reviewed of this beguiling little book properly. It’s two parts coming-of-age story, one part fantasy, one part murder mystery. It offers poetic language, a breathtaking setting, and sympathetic and somewhat tragic characters. Though I can’t honestly remember the finer details, I remember getting swept away by Foxlee’s lyricism and the magical realism that transforms the plot from merely sad to something truly haunting.

Worst

The Boleyn King, Laura Andersen (Historical Fiction)

What a total waste this was. It was one of the only books I “DNF’d” last year. The premise is great: what would have happened if Anne Boleyn had given birth to a son and had never been executed, therefore reducing Henry VIII’s number of wives to an unremarkable two? But the writing is juvenile at best, clumsy at worst; the characters, both real and imagined, are simply awful (Anne Boleyn is portrayed as a shrill, short-tempered egomaniac, surprise…); the plot centers around a ridiculous love triangle, and there are so many anachronisms and unbelievable conversations that I had to give up a hundred or so pages in. Really, really bad.

Blackhearts, Nicole Castroman (YA Romance, Historical Fiction)

More trash historical fiction! This one reads like a poorly-written, melodramatic high school TV show. It’s dressed up with some very vague (“floppy hat,” “powdered wig,” etc.) historical details, but those can’t hide the forced teen angst at its core. Oh, and it’s marketed as being about a young Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard–the infamous pirate–even though almost nothing (much less any pirating) actually happens. I didn’t care about a single one of the characters; they’re all arrogant, selfish, and spineless. To make matters worse, the writing itself is choppy and bland, and the author herself comes off badly in her (inaccurate) author’s note at the end. Suffice to say, the whole experience of reading this ] left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Hold Me Like a Breath, Tiffany Schmidt (YA Romance)

This was the first book I read last year, and it was such a let-down. Despite its crime-family marketing, it has nothing to offer besides a dull, meandering plot led by a remarkably inactive, clueless, whiny “heroine,” as well as a love triangle about as interesting as plain toast. Even if it was doomed to fail as an organized crime story, I felt that it should’ve at least had something worthwhile to say about disabilties, given that the MC has a rare debilitating blood disease. But no; she walks around feeling sorry for herself and crying, and that’s about it. What little plot there is relies on unbelievable coincidences to work, meaning I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes. It is, overall, a very weak, very boring novel.

The Darkest Evening of the Year, Dean Koontz (Crime/Thriller)

A less-than-thrilling thriller full of underdeveloped Very Good characters with haunted pasts pitted against over-the-top Very Bad ones. Also dogs…a lot of dogs. The plot is contrived and, again, relies on a bunch of coincidences to work at all. The back cover declares that it’s “The Silence of the Lambs meets Marley & Me,” but that’s total hogwash. Silence is legendary. Meanwhile, I can’t recall the name of a single character from this bloated and uninspired book.

The Star-Touched Queen, Roshani Chokshi (YA Fantasy, Romance)

Purple prose does not a good fantasy novel make (in fact, sometimes it gets in the way of actually telling a story). Despite the interesting premise and beautiful writing, the actual world-building and plot are paper-thin and often confusing, which is a real shame, because Indian and Hindu mythology are so fascinating. A retelling based on those ideas, set in that culture, should be something special. But here, all the characters and the heroine in particular are forgettable. The romance falls flat as well, which makes it difficult to buy into the rest. The second half is so chock-full of rushed, underdeveloped backstory that I completely lost track of what was going on. Fortunately, though, the one character who did interest me is getting a stand-alone novel of her own. I’m hoping that Chokshi’s hot mess of a debut is just a fluke and that her genuine talent will make the companion to this book a pleasure to read instead of a chore.

#book reviews #books #literature #ya lit

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tricialucido-blog · 6 years

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Kaufman and Kristoff’s “The Illuminae Files” pt. I

Hi there! This is my first attempt at blogging about books I’ve read for leisure. I was inspired greatly by the bookstagram and booktube communities in Instagram and YouTube, respectively, and while I enjoy seeing content from both platforms, I feel like there’s something else I want to see from book bloggers that’s currently not present in the content trend today. I’ve seen a few bloggers here and there whose content I really liked (a personal favorite is booktuber @LilyCReads), but I guess it’s high time I shared my personal sentiments and commentaries myself. I still don’t know where I want to take this, but starting somewhere is better than nothing amirite. Anyway, here goes.

Note: This is a spoiler-free review. Part II, which I will link here as soon as I’ve posted it, will most likely be full of spoilers because I will talk about the key themes and important quotes from the books. Beware and proceed with caution! :-)

Title: The Illuminae Files (trilogy); Illuminae (Book 1), Gemina (Book 2), and Obsidio (Book 3)

Authors: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Genre: science fiction, military space opera, epistolary

Rating: 5/5 stars

Story Time! ✨

Before I dive right into the books, let me tell you guys a bit of a backstory. I’ve always enjoyed science fiction, especially space opera (a close contender is steampunk). Mind you, though, I wasn’t really part of the Star Wars crowd (I was more of a Harry Potter pre-teen) as I was growing up, so I can’t really point to the franchise as the origin of my interest. No, I’d say I started getting interested in the science part before I discovered that it could be fused with fiction. I loved encyclopedias and the annual almanacs when I was a kid, and up to this day it still baffles me a bit that I was that kind of kid before books and (eventually) the humanities dragged me into their fold. I was deeply fascinated by the heavenly bodies, and up until I realized I had acrophobia (fear of heights), I even wanted to be an astronaut. My venture into science fiction and its subgenres was a little less scholarly. I’m not ashamed to share that I fell in love with space opera through fan fiction, specifically an old X-Men fan fiction. That masterpiece really changed my reading experience.

It was my youngest sister, a bonafide bookstagram lurker, who introduced the Illuminae Files trilogy to me. All she said was, “It’s an epistolary. I think you’d like it,” and I was already purchasing the second book (she already bought the first one). This is where it gets kinda funny, because originally, I read Book 2 (Gemina) first before I picked up Book 1 again this summer. I read the words “...breaking up with her boyfriend” in the synopsis and I instantly got turned off haha! I easily dismissed Illuminae because I thought it was just another typical YA love story packaged differently (but ultimately still the same formula), and I was just so exhausted with the same old variations. For the record, I was wrong, okay. But anyway, my sister assured me that I wouldn’t miss much if I start withGemina (which, totally false) and that the spoilers were negligible (only because when I got “spoiled” in Gemina, I didn’t realize at the time the significance of what I found out ahead, and when I picked up Illuminae, I already forgot most of what happened in Gemina). [Story Time: End]

Now that story time is over, I just wanna point out that after typing this whole chunk of word vomit, I realized that I’m already so chatty and I haven’t even started on the books themselves! I swear, I’m only letting this run as long as this because it’s the first one, and I have a lot of behind-the-scenes anecdotes that I really want to share. I hope I don’t drive y’all away hahaha, so let’s just jump into the “review” part.

The Gist ✨

The year is 2575, half a millenium ahead of what constitutes as “today”. Human civilization has moved past the uncertainty of space explorations, of the search for the “second” Earth. Distant corners of the universe? Not so distant anymore. Space travel that spans light years? Now simply one “jump” away. For all the fancy technological advancements that humankind has achieved, they still aren’t beyond mass murder for the sake of money and resources. At least that’s what I gathered when megacorporation BeiTech Industries brutally massacred the citizens of a small far-flung colony called Kerenza IV, where there was a ongoing illegal mining of hermium, a precious resource in this universe. The trilogy revolves around the protagonists, victims and survivors of BeiTech’s brutal invasion, and their search for justice while fighting for their lives in the yawning emptiness of space. There are all sorts of characters within each book, including a Skynet AI, and all sorts of trouble as well.

Reactions 💖

Stylistics. As I’ve mentioned above, all three books are hashed out through a collection of files, chat logs, and video transcriptions to name a few. And duuuuuuude. Kaufman and Kristoff really did an incredible job with the lay-out of Illuminae Files--hats off to their entire team, there is no denying the genius behind their concept of what an epistolary is. It was exciting to dig into the books to examine every detail and every Easter egg that they left in each well-planned page. Although, I’ll be honest here, there were a few times that I really got confused and lost in the story--not in the sense that I was intensely absorbed with what was happening but rather, because there were a lot of details and clues to take in. It was easy to be overwhelmed by everything that was happening. Add the fact that there were events happening simultaneously, and were described in completely different media (this will make much more sense once you pick up the first book). I don’t consider it an entirely negative thing because the confusion really helped in blindsiding me from most of the major plot twists; in fact, I’d say I enjoyed the story more when my theories were debunked by the more awesome plot twists.

World-building and plot. Speaking of plot twists: the plot had some really well-placed surprises and shocks. I love that the romantic scenes were not distastefully added. In fact, instead of stealing the limelight from the major conflict as well as the science-and-technology “vibe” of the story, the romance further heightened the stakes that the protagonists were risking with every decision and plan they concoct.

The authors did not give us 600-pages of long-winding narratives (per book) and chunks of justified text divided into chapters--no. They gave their readers a feast of visual exercise and yet, using less words (than a standard 300-page novel) and hardly a clear-cut linear plot progression, they raised a lot of important questions that we could use some time to ponder on (more about these in Part II--beware of spoilers, though!). What I always look for in science fiction (and fantasy as well, for that matter) is a well-executed world-building. It doesn’t matter if the premise is unique if the author did not manage to back the novelty of their idea; sometimes, if the world-building is particularly lacking, it really puts me off from the plot itself. In the trilogy, it wasn’t a problem at all, which helped to make me more absorbed with all the adrenaline-infused twists upon twists in the story.

I also have to commend how well the authors incited reactions from their readers--at least in my reading experience. One particular conflict in Illuminae really gave me goosebumps and sent a chill down my spine (won’t elaborate haha you’ll know if you’ve read it!!). Ugh, remembering it as I type this has me shivering involuntarily again. Those were some real creepy scenes, I tell you.

Characters. Most of the protagonists (but not all) paired up in different points of the story, so it’s easy to view them as such: couples. I don’t think I hated any off the them, even with my initial avoidance in reading Illuminae because of Kady and Ezra’s established relationship; in fact, the romance between all of them turned out to be not overbearing at all. Having said that, I think it’s a great disservice to each character, especially the couples, to view them only within the confines of their relationship dynamics. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff both did a great job in adding layers upon layers of character development of the protagonists; furthermore, they were not stingy in adding characters and giving them actual personalities, and even though at certain times the sheer amount of characters got really confusing, in the end I consider it a plus on their genius and detail-oriented world-building. These two did not hold back in conceptualizing and planning. They were good at deliberately leaving out certain information, that’s true, and they got me to believe that nothing was amiss--only to exclaim “oh shit…” when things finally fall into place.

On the other side of the spectrum, BeiTech’s foot soldiers were ruthless and machine-like, and performed well as villains; however, what I loved about Illuminae Files are the details that the authors added--seemingly inconsequential details that will make you pause for a bit and remember that these brutal murderers are just as human as the protagonists, that while it’s easy to view them as merely “BeiTech”, there are still individuals behind the uniforms and high-calibre assault weapons. These details will lead you to the thought that both villains and heroes experience the same spectrum of human emotions, and it is jarring and terrifying to be reminded that only a thin line divides the two “sides”.

Anyway, this is where I’ll end Part I.

Watch out for Part II soon, which I will link below as soon as I’ve posted it.

Wow. So that was a pretty intense word vomit. Apologies for being so chatty, and if you managed to read this until the very end, thank you so much! I’d love to know what your thoughts are, if you’ve read the trilogy or if you’re planning to), etc. Let me know if you liked this type of in-depth (read: intense and overboard) review or if you hated it haha! Leave a comment or hit my ask box and I’ll be happy to reply! Part II will be up soon. See you! <3

Photo credits:

Book covers | bumblebeerosee on Redbubble

Space | Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Space (2) | Max McKinnon on Unsplash

#tricialucido #feature book review #illuminae files #amie kaufman #jay kristoff #science fiction #space opera #epistolary

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starringemiliaclarke · 7 years

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Press: Game of Thrones: How They Make the World’s Most Popular Show

TIME – The battle for Westeros may be won or lost on the back of a lime green mechanical bull.

That’s what it looks like on a January Monday in Belfast, as Game of Thrones films its seventh season here. Certainly no one believes the dragons that have thrilled viewers of HBO’s hit series exist in any real sense. And yet it’s still somewhat surprising to see the British actor Emilia Clarke, who plays exiled queen Daenerys, straddling the “buck” on a soundstage at Titanic Studios, a film complex named after this city’s other famously massive export.

The machine under Clarke looks like a big pommel horse and moves in sync with a computer animation of what will become a dragon. Clarke doesn’t talk much between takes. Over and over, a wind gun blasts her with just enough force to make me worry about the integrity of her ash blond wig. (Its particular color is the result of 2½ months’ worth of testing and seven prototypes, according to the show’s hair designer.) Over and over, Clarke stares down at a masking-tape mark on the floor the instant episode director Alan Taylor shouts, “Now!” Nearby, several visual-effects supervisors watch on monitors.

Clarke and I talk in her trailer before she heads to the soundstage, at the beginning of what is to be a long week inhabiting a now iconic character. Behind the scenes it’s more toil than triumph, though. The show’s first season ended with Daenerys’ hatching three baby dragons, each the size of a Pomeranian. They’ve since grown to the size of a 747. “I’m 5-ft.-nothing, I’m a little girl,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Emilia, climb those stairs, get on that huge thing, we’ll harness you in, and then you’ll go crazy.’ And you’re like, ‘Hey, everybody! Now who’s shorty?!’”

She has reason to feel powerful. On July 16, Clarke and the rest of the cast will begin bringing Thrones in for a landing with the first of its final 13 episodes (seven to air this summer, six to come later). Thrones, a scrappy upstart launched by two TV novices in 2011, will finish its run as the biggest and most popular show in the world. An average of more than 23 million Americans watched each episode last season when platforms like streaming and video on demand are accounted for. And since it’s the most pirated show ever, millions more watch it in ways unaccounted for. Thrones, which holds the record for most Emmys ever won by a prime-time series, airs in more than 170 countries. It’s the farthest-reaching show out there—not to mention the most obsessed-about.

People talk about living in a golden age of TV ushered in by hit dramas like The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. All had precisely honed insights about the nature of humanity and of evil that remade expectations of what TV could do. But that period ended around the time Breaking Bad went off the air in 2013. We’re in what came next: an unprecedented glut of programming, with streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu jumping into an ever-more-crowded fray. Now, there’s a prestige show for every conceivable viewer, which means smaller audiences and fewer truly original stories.

Except for Thrones, which merges the psychological complexity of the best TV with old-school Hollywood grandeur. You liked shows with one antihero? Well, Thrones has five Tony Sopranos building their empires on blood, five Walter Whites discovering just how far they’ll go to win, five Don Drapers unapologetic in their narcissism. Oh, and they’re all living out their drama against the most breathtaking vistas not of this world.

The phenomenon is fueled by a massive worldwide apparatus that, in a typical 10-episode season, generates the equivalent of five big-budget, feature-length movies. Even as the series has grown in every conceivable way over the years—it shoots around the globe; each episode now boasts a budget of at least $10 million—it remains animated by one simple question: Who will win the game in the end? And if Thrones has taught us anything, it’s that every reign has to end sometime.

1. the fiction

It all started with a book. In 1996, George R.R. Martin published A Game of Thrones, the first novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. (Back then, he conceived of it as a trilogy. Today, five of the planned seven volumes have been published.) As a writer for shows like CBS’s The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast in the late ’80s, Martin had been frustrated by the limits of TV. He decided that turning to prose meant writing something “as big as my imagination.” Martin recalls telling himself, “I’m going to have all the characters I want, and gigantic castles, and dragons, and dire wolves, and hundreds of years of history, and a really complex plot. And it’s fine because it’s a book. It’s essentially unfilmable.”

The books became a hit, especially after 1999’s A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords a year later. Martin, who writes from his home in Santa Fe, N.M., was compared to The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. Like Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Martin’s Westeros is a land with a distinctive set of rules. First, magic is real. Second, winter is coming. Seasons can last for years at a time, and as the series begins, a long summer is ending. Third, no one is safe. New religions are in conflict with the old, rival houses have designs on the capital’s Iron Throne, and an undead army is pushing against the boundary of civilization, known as the Wall.

Thrones’ vast number of clans includes the wealthy and louche Lannisters, including incestuous twins Cersei and Jaime. She is the queen by marriage; he helped ensure her ascendancy through violence. Their brother Tyrion, an “imp” of short stature, is perhaps the most astute student of power. Then there are the Starks, led by duty-bound Ned. His children Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon and “bastard” Jon Snow will be scattered throughout the realm’s Seven Kingdoms. Daenerys is a Targaryen, an overthrown family that also—surprise—has a claim to the throne. Soon enough, Thrones devolves into an all-out melee that makes the Wars of the Roses look like Family Feud.

In the wake of director Peter Jackson’s early-2000s film trilogy of Tolkien’s masterpiece, Martin was courted by producers to turn his books into “the next Lord of the Rings franchise.” But the Thrones story was too big, and would-be collaborators suggested cutting it to focus solely on Daenerys or Snow, for instance. Martin turned them all down. His story’s expansiveness was the point.

Two middleweight novelists, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, had come to a similar conclusion and obtained Martin’s blessing at what the author calls “that famous lunch that turned into a dinner, because we were there for four or five hours” in 2006. The two writers thought Thrones could only be made as a premium-cable drama, and they walked into HBO’s office with an ambitious pitch to do so that year. “They were talking about this series of books I’d never heard of,” says Carolyn Strauss, head of HBO’s entertainment division at the time. “[I was] somebody who looked around the theater in Lord of the Rings, at all of those rapt faces, and I am just not on this particular ferry … I thought, This sounds interesting. Who knows? It could be a big show.”

HBO bought the idea and handed the reins to Benioff and Weiss, making them showrunners who’d never run a show before. Benioff was best known for having adapted his novel The 25th Hour into a screenplay directed by Spike Lee. Weiss had a novel to his credit too. The two had met in a literature program in Dublin in 1995 and later reconnected in the States. “I decided I wanted to write a screenplay,” Benioff told Vanity Fair in 2014. “I’d never written a script before, and I didn’t know how to do it, so I asked [Weiss] if he would write one with me, because he had written a bunch already.” It never got made.

The Thrones pilot, shot in 2009, got off to a rocky start. Benioff and Weiss misjudged how much planning it would take to bring Martin’s fantasy to life. To portray a White Walker—mystic creatures from the North—they simply stuck an actor in a green-screen getup and hoped to figure it out later. “You can maybe do that if you’re making Avatar,” says Weiss. “But we need to know what the creatures look like before we turn on the camera.” They also had trouble portraying Martin’s nuanced characters. “Our friends—really smart, savvy writers—didn’t [realize] Jaime and Cersei were brother and sister,” says Benioff of the ill-fated first cut. Ultimately, they reshot the pilot.

When Benioff and Weiss look back at that first season, they see plenty to nitpick. Their fealty to Martin’s text, for example, made Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion “Eminem blond,” per Benioff. (His hair was later darkened.) Still, the elements that have made the show a monster success were there—and audiences (3 million for Thrones’ first season finale) picked up on them. Arguably the most groundbreaking element was a willingness to ruthlessly murder its stars. Ned Stark, the moral center of Season 1, portrayed by the show’s then most famous cast member (Sean Bean, who starred in The Lord of the Rings), is shockingly beheaded in the second-to-last episode. By the third season’s “Red Wedding,” a far more gruesome culling, the show had accrued enough fans to send the Internet into full on freak-out mode.

Thrones had by then become the pacesetter for all of TV in its willingness to forgo a simple happy ending in favor of delivering pleasure through brutality. Even if you don’t watch, Thrones’ characters and catchphrases have permeated the culture (the apparent death of Snow was an international trending topic all summer in 2015). Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons and The Tonight Show have lampooned the show. And the recent South Korean presidential election was called on a national news network with depictions of the candidates duking it out for control of the Iron Throne.

2. the production

Wandering around the Belfast set, the scope and the orderliness of the enterprise is staggering. The wights, zombie-like creatures with spookily pale faces and dressed in ragged furs, form a tidy line as they wait to grab breakfast burritos. Outside the stage door, a few smoke cigarettes, careful not to ash on their worn-in tunics. “At first we had a season with one big event, then we had a season with two big events, now we have a season where every episode is a big event,” says Joe Bauer, the show’s VFX supervisor. Bauer and VFX producer Steve Kullback oversee a group of 14 FX shops from New Zealand to Germany that work on the show almost continuously.

One of those big events this season is a battle whose sheer scope, even before being cut together with the show’s typical brio, dazzled me. In order to get on set, I agreed not to divulge the players or what’s at stake. (Thrones has been promising this clash all along, and when the time comes, the Internet will melt.) It will be all the more impressive knowing that the cast and crew were shot through with a frigid North Atlantic wind that whipped everyone during filming and sent them all flying to the coffee cart during resets. (The cold, a prosthetic artist tells me, is at least good for keeping the makeup on.)

The setting is as grand as the action. The battle was filmed in what was once a Belfast quarry, drained, flattened out with 11,000 square meters of concrete and painted over with a camouflage effect—all of which took six months and required special ecological surveys. This kind of mountain moving, or leveling, is par for the course for Thrones.

Each season starts with producers Christopher Newman and Bernadette Caulfield circulating a plot outline on a color-coded spreadsheet, dictating what will be shot by the show’s two simultaneous camera units, which can splinter into as many as four. It’s perpetually subject to change, given the complications of a television show this ambitious—over seven seasons they’ve shot in Croatia, Spain, Iceland, Malta, Morocco and Canada as well as locations around Northern Ireland. While I’m in Belfast, my plan to watch Jon Snow in action is canceled because of inclement weather (that same wind) that makes filming from a drone hazardous. At this point, Caulfield will grab onto any small comfort. “Now the dragon doesn’t get any bigger,” she says, “so we know that much.”

Another breakdown goes out to department heads, and a massive global triage begins. Costumer Michele Clapton, for example, begins figuring out if she’ll have to dress any new characters or armies and then sets out on the most complex work. “I know that Daenerys’ dresses will take the longest,” she says. Each look, no matter the character, may take as many as four craftspeople to bead, stitch and—if there’s meant to be wear and tear—break down. Deborah Riley, the production designer, begins looking for references to new locations in the outline. Tommy Dunne, the weapons master, starts forging gear for the season’s big battles. “My big thing is the numbers,” he says. “I hope they won’t frighten me.” He made 200 shields and 250 spears for last season’s epic Battle of the Bastards.

Benioff’s and Weiss’s jobs amount to maintaining constant conversation with numerous producers. The pair are usually in Belfast for about six months a year. Wherever in the world they happen to be, they get daily video from the shoots and field an endless stream of emails from staff on location. During my visit, wolves described in the script as “skinny and mangy” showed up to the shoot looking fluffy and lustrous. Around the world, new message notifications lit up smartphone screens.

When Benioff and Weiss aren’t shooting, they’re writing. And when they aren’t shooting or writing—which happens rarely—they’re promoting. The two make a complementary pair. Benioff, who wears his hair in a Morrissey quiff, is the more sardonic one. Weiss, with silver rings in his ears, is nerdier and given to hyperbole. They say they’re still having fun making Thrones, despite the stakes, and still regularly find themselves surprised by its scale. Weiss recalls seeing the buck Clarke rides to simulate Daenerys’ dragons for the first time: “We knew it would be a mechanical bull. We didn’t know it would be 40 ft. in the air and six degrees of motion with cameras that swirl.” Says Benioff: “It’s like the thing NASA built to train the astronauts.”

Despite nonstop production, Weiss says, “There’s still a kid-in-a-candy-shop feel. You’re going to look at the armor, crazy-amazing dresses—gowns Michele is making—then you’re going to look at the swords, then watch pre-vis cartoons of the scenes that will be shot and you’re weighing in on shot selection. Every one of these things is something we’ve been fascinated with in our own way since we were kids.”

“Especially dresses,” cracks Benioff. Weiss adds, “Especially the gowns.”

3. the players

The first few seasons’ worth of swordplay and gowns turned the show’s cast into recognizable stars. But it’s the complexity of their characters, revealed over time, that made them into icons. “My friends always say to me, ‘It’s like you’re two different people. I see articles about you in BuzzFeed’—but then they see my Facebook posts,” says Maisie Williams, who plays the tomboy turned angel of vengeance Arya Stark. Williams was two days past her 14th birthday when the show debuted. There’s TV-star famous, after all, and then there’s some-percentage-of-23-million-people-has-been-actively-rooting-for-you-to-kill-off-your-co-stars-for-six-years famous.

Thrones’ story doesn’t ask its actors to break bad or good, and viewers stay tuned in large part because of the characters’ moral mutability. Consider Cersei, played by Lena Headey, who is either a monster or a victim. The character has become more popular with fans even as she’s wrought greater carnage, including blowing up a building full of people last season. “At the beginning, people were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re such a bitch!’” she says. “What’s moving is that people love her now and want to be on her team.” That Headey, a Brit, uses an exaggerated American accent as she delivers the harsher interpretation of her work is revealing of nothing, or a lot.

She’s thought through every element of her character, though, including the incestuous relationship with Jaime that provided the show its first narrative jolt. “I love to talk about all of it,” she says, citing her frequent emails to Benioff and Weiss. “Cersei’s always wanted to be him. Therefore, for her, that relationship is completion. There’s been an envy, because he was born with privilege just for being a man. I think their love was built on respect.”

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor who plays Jaime, is a bit less excited to discuss the subject. “I’ve never really gone too deep into the whole sister-brother thing because I can’t use that information. I have to look at her as the woman he loves and desires. Lena’s a very good actress, and that’s kind of what carries the whole thing.” He adds, “I have two older sisters. I do not want to go there. It’s just too weird.”

Even a character like Jon Snow, as close to a pure hero as possible as Season 7 begins, has outgrown the box he originally came in. Snow, an illegitimate child never embraced by his father’s wife, is a James Dean daydream of Sir Walter Scott. “I made mistakes and felt that he wasn’t interesting enough,” says Kit Harington of the way he’s played Snow. We’re in a Belfast hotel bar, and Harington is squeezing in a coffee before he makes an evening showing of Manchester by the Sea. “That sounds weird, but I’ve never been quite content with him. Maybe that’s what makes him him. That angst.” His character has been slowly absorbing lessons about duty and power—and “this year there is this huge seismic shift where all of what he’s learned over the years, suddenly …” Harington trails off. “He’s still the same Jon, but he grows up.”

Dinklage, too, found in Tyrion a character who surpassed his expectations. The actor says he’d never read fantasy beyond The Lord of the Rings. “That’s the part of the bookstore I don’t really gravitate toward,” he says. “This was the first time in this genre that somebody my size was an actually multidimensional being, flesh and blood without the really long beard, without the pointy shoes, without the asexuality.”

Thrones catapulted Dinklage, the only American in the main cast, from a well-regarded film and theater actor to among the most-recognized actors on earth in part because the asexuality is quite absent. Tyrion thirsts for wine, sex and, crucially, love and respect. As the offspring of a wealthy and powerful family, the first two are easy to come by. The latter not so much. “He covers it up with alcohol, he covers it up with humor, he does his best to maintain a modicum of sanity and he perseveres,” says Dinklage. “He’s still alive. Anyone who’s still alive on our show is pretty smart.”

Indeed, with just 13 episodes left, everything is possible—alliance, demise or coronation. “Every season I go to the last page of the last episode and go backward,” says Dinklage. “I don’t do that with books, but I can’t crack open page one of Episode 1 not knowing if I’m dead or not.”

4. the drama

The size of Thrones’ controversies have, at times, been as large as its following. Its reliance on female nudity, especially Daenerys’, was an early flash point. “I don’t have any qualms saying to anyone it was not the most enjoyable experience. How could it be?” says Clarke. “I don’t know how many actresses enjoy doing that part of it.” That aspect of the role has faded as Daenerys found paths to power beyond her sexuality. This evolution from a passive naïf into a holy terror who rules by the fealty of her subjects is what has earned Daenerys, according to Clarke, the audience’s loyalty. “People wouldn’t give two sh-ts about Daenerys if you didn’t see her suffer,” she says.

More controversial still has been the prevalence of sexual violence. Many of the major female characters have been assaulted onscreen. In a 2015 sequence, Sansa, the Stark daughter played by Sophie Turner, was raped by her husband. According to the logic of the show, the plot gave her character a reason to seek revenge and power of her own. It nonetheless generated substantial blowback online and clearly turned some fans away from the series for good. “This was the trending topic on Twitter, and it makes you wonder, when it happens in real life, why isn’t it a trending topic every time?” says Turner, who is 21. “This was a fictional character, and I got to walk away from it unscathed … Let’s take that discussion and that dialogue and use it to help people who are going through that in their everyday lives. Stop making it such a taboo, and make it a discussion.”

Benioff and Weiss claim to have seen no other possible outcome for a character stranded in a marriage to a psychopath, in a skewed version of feudal society. “It might not be our world,” says Benioff, “but it’s still the same basic power dynamic between men and women in this medieval world. This is what we believed was going to happen.” Adds Weiss: “We talked about, is there any other way she could possibly avoid this fate that doesn’t seem fake, where she uses her pluck to save herself at the last? There was no version of that that didn’t seem completely horrible.”

Even if Benioff and Weiss don’t always admit it, the show has changed. Scenes in which exposition is delivered in one brothel or another, for example, have been pared back. It’s at moments like these that the success of Thrones seems a precariously struck balance, thriving on a willingness to shock but always risking going too far.

5. the end of the end

Benioff and Weiss claim to have sworn off reading commentary about the show, good or bad. When I visit them in Los Angeles in March, they’re writing the next and final season. I peek into a fridge in a lounge area in their offices, a room dominated by a Thrones-branded pinball machine Weiss proudly points out, to find three cases of beer with Westeros-themed labels, low-calorie ranch dressing and yellow mustard. At this point, they have full outlines of the final six episodes. In fact, they’ve been working on the very last episode, possibly the most anticipated finale since Hawkeye left Korea. “We know what happens in each scene,” says Weiss.

The fact that they know is remarkable considering the show will reach its conclusion long before the books. The last new Thrones novel came out in 2011, the year the show began. The author describes his next installment, the sixth of seven, as “massively late.” “The journey is an adventure,” says Martin, who, at 68, has fought criticism that he won’t finish the books. “There’s always that process of discovery for me.” But with young, and rapidly maturing, actors under contract and a community of artisans awaiting marching orders in Belfast, the show can’t wait.

Benioff and Weiss always knew this would happen. So they met with the novelist in 2013, between Seasons 2 and 3, to sketch out what Martin calls “the ultimate developments” after the books and show diverge. The upshot, they say, is that the two can coexist. “Certain things that we learned from George way back then are going to happen on the show, but certain things won’t,” says Benioff. “And there’s certain things where George didn’t know what was going to happen, so we’re going to find them out for the first time too.”

In preparation for Season 7, Benioff and Weiss have gotten more possessive. That has further fueled fans’ curiosity even as it has created security challenges. In the run-up to Season 6, paparazzi shots of Harington—and his distinctive in-character hairdo—in Belfast tipped the Internet off that Jon Snow wasn’t, in fact, as dead as he’d seemed the season before. “Look at how difficult it is to protect information in this age,” says Benioff. “The CIA can’t do it. The NSA can’t do it. What chance do we have?”

It’s also changed the on-set dynamic. Coster-Waldau says Benioff and Weiss have “become much more protective over the story and script. I think they feel this is truly theirs now, and it’s not to be tampered with. I’ve just sensed this last season that this is their baby: ‘Just say the words as they’re written, and shut up.’”

Then there’s the end of the end, the finale likely to air next year or the year after. Benioff and Weiss are not writing the Thrones spin-off projects HBO revealed this year that could explore other parts of Westerosi history—some, all or none of which may end up on air. In the meantime, they claim not to be worrying about the public’s reaction to their ending. (Benioff says that when it comes to endgame stress, “medication helps.”) Weiss says, “I’m not saying we don’t think about it.” He pauses. “The best way to go about it is to focus on what’s on the desk in front of you, or what sword is being put in front of you, or the fight that is being choreographed in front of you.”

What’s currently before them seems like plenty. When I first met Clarke in Belfast, she was shooting on the back of a dragon. When I leave a week later, she’s still at it. “Thirty seconds of screen time and she’s been here for 16 days,” the episode’s director, Taylor, remarks at one point. Later on, I’d remember this moment of exhaustion when Weiss described seeing the buck for the first time. He went on to add, “It probably feels a bit less amazing to Emilia, who sits on it for eight hours a day, six weeks in a row, getting blasted with water and fake snow and whatever else they decide to chuck at her through the fans.” The table with the espresso machine—just beyond Clarke’s line of sight—is well trafficked.

Clarke doesn’t seem bothered, though, smiling and chatting with the crew from atop the buck. As the state-of-the-art hydraulics move her into position, her posture shifts from millennial slump to ramrod straight. In an instant, she converts herself into the ruler of the fictional space around her. On cue, she looks over her shoulder with a face of marble. She casts into an imagined world some emotion known only to her. She’s gazing into a future that, in the flickering moments that the story remains a secret, only she can see.

Press: Game of Thrones: How They Make the World’s Most Popular Show was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke

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