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agirlunderarock · 4 years

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How I accidentally wrote 20 page paper on Boromir for one of my Final Ever University Papers PART 3

Okay folks so I think we’re a little more than halfway through? I think??? I don’t freaking know this is the exact same feeling I had while writing the paper-

Will I ever come to an end?

We just don’t know

If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 just click the text and it’ll take you to the link

So where did we leave off last time?

I told you exactly how academics where taking a crap on the goodest boi and so this time I’m going to explain why Faramir is the better character foil. Because instead of using Boromir as foil for say Aragorn or Sam, I say they should be using Faramir. I think specifically I left you guys with this lovely little picture I made myself of their character arcs:

If you can’t read it, I’m sorry its pixilated, thats just how the program gets when you try to make an image that compact to fit on a large presentation poster with an already large image. But anyway the important thing in this image isn’t whether or not you can read the damn thing, no, its that Boromir and Faramir’s character arcs are nearly exactly the same.Boromir and Faramir face political, and familial pressures, and faced with the question of what to do about Frodo and the ring. Both brothers are introduced in places that are supposedly out of their element. Boromir is seemingly described as more prepared for battle and fighting, yet we meet him in a council meeting of all things, and Faramir who is supposed to be #intellectual we meet after he and his men have just conducted a raid on an enemy patrol. They’re later both faced with questions of doubt and what they feel they need to do to protect their people. Denethor asks a lot of them and it takes a toll in some way shape and form. but the main points of their character arc ultimately come down to the conflict of family, country, and the fellowship.

like okay I’m not gonna lie, I really just want to put this picture in here and I have a funny story about how this picture made it in the research project but basically even the movie backs up that Boromir’s real foil is Faramir.

shit what was I saying?

Oh yeah

so basically in this flashback from the two towers we get a good side by side comparison between the brothers. Clearly they look alike, but look at how they’re dressed. Boromir’s in full armor my dudes, sword looks like its partially out of the scabbard- but really the main thing you need to focus on is the costuming in this shot, because the costuming here is, of course a reflection of their roles as military leaders, but also a major reflection of their personalities and really how their character arcs play out as a whole. Boromir is usually on the defensive (note I say defensive not ready to throw down) not just in battle because Mordor is like constantly like “Knock Knock can we come in?” but when he gets the Rivendell too, he’s being defensive because it almost sounds like these people half way across the world are going to forsake his home and the people he loves. So yes, I’d say my boi gets to be a little abrasive and wear emotional armor. He’s got a lot of feelings and he doesn’t get to talk about them because either 1. he’s with his troops or 2 he’s surrounded by people he doesn’t know that well i.e. the fellowship early in the story.

Faramir on the other hand is wearing some pretty light armor. He’s more open than Boromir, and if I remember correctly its said in the book that Faramir had taken to talking with Gandalf often when he was young and stuff- I don’t remember tbh I’m at that point where I haven’t read a book in a year cause I’m so damn tired, and I get canon and fanon mashed up sometimes. But what I’m trying to get at is, Faramir lets himself be open to more ideas, to more people, he’s more trusting of people’s intentions probably that numorian thing that he and Denethor have tbh. So basically what I’m trying to say is the main difference between the two brothers is how they deal with fear and anxiety.

Again Boromir tries to hide and swallow his fear and anxiety- he has to as a military leader shit happens. Faramir, looks for as many plans as he can to relieve some of his fear and anxiety- he’s also a leader shit happens.

So remember back when I said that Aristotle said some bullshit about how betraying your father is like the shittiest thing a person could ever do ever? Or when I said the heroism through obedience is absolute bullshit? If not too bad that was your reminder, though I genuinely don’t remember if I talked about the latter.

Denethor becomes the focal point of how these characters are compared. I say this because there is never a moment in the books were we actually have a conversation with all three of them present, but we know that he makes the same demand of both of his sons, that being find out what Isildure’s Bane is and then find a way to protect Gondor by any means. Not necessarily a bad request, its just HEAVY and the way its delivered in Return of the King is heavy and hurtful. I sir I know your mad stressed but also

YOUR SONS ARE MAD STRESSED SO CAN YOU PLEASE NOT HAVE CONVERSATIONS LIKE THIS:

“‘Your bearing is lowly in my presence, yet it is too long now since you turned from your own way at my counsel. See, you have spoken skillfully, as ever; but I, have I not seen your eye fixed on Mithrandir seeking whether you said well or too much? He has long had your heart in his keeping.

‘My son, your father is old but not yet dotard […]

‘If what I have done displease you, my father,’ said Faramir quietly, ‘I wish I had known your counsel before the burden of so weight a judgement was thrust on me.’

‘Would that have availed to change your judgement?’ said Denethor. ‘You would still have done just so, I deem. I know you well. […]But in desperate hours gentleness may be repaid with death.’

‘So be it,’ said Faramir.

‘So be it!’ cried Denethor. ‘But not with your death only, Lord Faramir: with the death also of your father, and all your people, whom it is your part to protect now that Boromir is gone.’

‘Do you with then,’ said Faramir, ‘that our places had been exchanged?’

‘Yes, I wish that indeed,’ said Denethor. “For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil.” (Return of the King 794-795).

Like thats a big load for two dudes to carry man

Like I get it but thats heavy and I cri for both my bois having to deal with this war their whole life

But you see what I’m getting at here. Theres a lot of expectations for these boys, and really they just need hugs, and I need a hug rewriting this part into non academic language because it makes me BIG SAD

But whats interesting about the expectation that his sons only be loyal to him, is that in attempting to obey their father, THEY GET FUCKING WRECKED. Boromir ends up scaring Frodo to the point the Fellowship breaks up, and Faramir ends up like almost dying and gets his men wrecked. Now I’m not saying Aristotle is full of bullshit, but he’s full of shit, and I’m gonna learn you why.

So before I say which critic actually puts everyone else to shame by praising two hobbit bois, let me make this clear: Boromir does not die trying to obey his father, he dies actively disobeying him. Instead of trying to find Frodo and still get the ring like Denethor would have wanted, Boromir goes dies defending Merry and Pippin. HE COULD HAVE LEFT THEM IN FAVOR OF GOING AFTER THE RING BUT HE’S A GOOD MAN WHO WANTED HIS HOBBIT CHILDREN WHO ARE TECHNICALLY JUST AS OLD AS HIM TO GET AWAY AND BE SAFE AND HE DIED. Faramir on the other hand nearly dies while trying to carry out his father’s orders and thats tragic but again- shit happens.

According to no braincells Aristotle, one of these is right, even with the tragic outcome and one is wrong and deserved to die.

WRONG

In Ian Romuald Lakowski’s, "Types of Heroism in The Lord of the Rings," he acknowledges that through Merry and Pippin there is heroism in DISOBEDIENCE. For Boromir and Faramir this means obedience or disobedience is not a simple right or wrong choice, and in both of them being disobedient to their father is a more sure sign of their heroism.

I mean think about it, the very action every critic characterizes Boromir for is based off of his obedience to his father. He’s villainized for trying to take the ring from Frodo, when the reality is, the man was struggling with trying to figure out what the right course of action was. ITS THE SAME REASON FARAMIR TAKES SO DAMN LONG TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH FRODO AND SAM. THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

So what ends up happening? Faramir is praised a good guy for disobeying, and really in the end the real Boromir comes back when he disobeys Denethor too.

But we’ll come back to some of that in a bit,

Because STRESS is not enough to bind these two as better foils than other comparison that can be made. Because again, critics like to praise Faramir and elevate him and I’m not about to put them against each other.

Like despite their differences Boromir and Faramir’s relationship with one another isn’t characterized by fear or power or even that #stress but genuine love for one another. And this is important, because though no critics ever sighted a page for their reading of Boromir as a greedy little shit, I believe their interpretation comes from second hand accounts of his character. Instead of actually looking at what he says and does to be his true self. They characterize Boromir by his single action of trying to take the ring from Frodo instead of looking at him as a whole.

Boromir’s relationship with his brother is incredibly important because given the circumstances and everything that they’ve been through and even though they have very different thought processes, they should have a rocky relationship, but they don’t. They have a very good relationship.The appendices give a nice description of the things we never got to see happen in the book

“…there was great love, and had been since childhood, when Boromir was the helper and protector of Faramir. No jealousy or rivalry had arisen between them since, for their father’s favour or for the praise of men. It did not seem possible to Faramir that any one in Gondor could rival Boromir, her of Denethor, Captain of the White Tower; and of like mind was Boromir” (1032).

Actually

I take it back

Never say never get to see because in the council of Elrond, Boromir literally shows us his relationship with his brother and what kind of person he is.

“ Therefore my brother, seeing how desperate was our need, was eager to heed the dream and seek for Imadris; but since the way was fully of doubts and danger, I took the journey upon myself,” showing that he willingly put himself in danger to protect his little brother (The Fellowship of the Ring 239).

The reason I bring this up is because I don’t think critics look at what Boromir actually says and does through out the book. I literally don’t understand where or how they would even perceive this as an ulterior motive or that he does anything with ill intent. AT THIS POINT THERE IS NOTHING THAT SUGGEST HE MIGHT BE. BECAUSE LITERALLY EVERY ACTION BOROMIR TAKES IS TO PROTECT SOMEONE ELSE

Like maybe they take the first description of Boromir to be negative:

“a tall man fair and noble face, dark-haired and grey-eyed, proud and stern of glance,”

But none of these are inherently negative. Proud and stern aren’t negative words. Proud doesn’t become negative until you pair it with the action of taking the ring from Frodo and THATS ASSUMING that he’s taking it for himself to use and that he himself wants power.

BUT HE DOESN’T- and we’ll get to why later

OR maybe they’re trying to take what Faramir has to say about his brother to the extreme end:

“‘And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that his father was not king. “How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king, if the king returns not?” he asked. […] Alas poor Boromir. Does that tell you something of him?’

‘It does,’ said Frodo. ‘Yet always he treated Aragorn with honour.’

‘I doubt it not,’ said Faramir. ‘If he were satisfied of Aragron’s claim, as you say, he would greatly reverence him. But the pinch had not yet come. They had not yet reached Minas Tirith or become rivals in her wars” (The Two Towers 655 ).

Which I’m gonna be honest is fair assessment. But like Boromir’s asking these questions 1. as a kid, and as I myself was a child who hated incompetency, ITS CONFUSING AND FRUSTRATING TO BE DOING ALL THE WORK AND NOT GET THE CREDIT? (RIGHT NOW I’M LOOKING AT PEOPLE WHO REPOST FAN ART WITHOUT THE CREDIT- I WILL FIND YOU AND SMITE YOU)

but anyway, yeah you know what that question about kingship tells me- HE WANTS TO KNOW WHERE THE FUCKING KING IS???? Like thats not inherently a greed thing- Only if you’re looking at it from like a religious standpoint and blah blah blah Catholic teachings about- but again

Then good boy Frodo looking out for him, I’m gonna cry, points out the obvious- that Boromir respected Aragorn, and Faramir has the nerve to say- yeah but wait until the group project falls apart- then see what happens

and let me just say

Faramir

sir

my boi

YOU CLEARLY HAVE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE A GOOD TEAM FOR YOUR GROUP PROJECT BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU. IF ARAGORN WENT IN THERE AND THINGS STARTED GOING WRONG AND PEOPLE STARTED DYING OF COURSE BOROMIR WAS GOING TO BE PISSED- LIKE THEY WAITED HOW LONG FOR WHAT????

It’d be like if someone you didin’t know came over to your house told you not to make dinner in your own house, that they knew their way around the kitchen- WHEN THEY DON’T KNOW YOUR’RE ALLERGIC TO PEANUTS, proceed to start a fire while trying to fry up some chicken, and then saying they’ve got it under control, but the fire dept can’t put out your oven. I mean thats worst case scenario.

I’m sorry but just the thought of someone I know/am related to coming into my room and touches my goddamn light switch gives me anxiety- BOROMIR HAD TO TRUST THIS STRANGER WITH HIS COUNTRY

But like the movie tries to get you to agree with the line of thinking, that Boromir is about himself and doing it to glorify himself. take THIS SCENE

You know the one, that shot in Rivendell and Boromir is exploring on his own and casually picks up the sword, you know THE SWORD and kinda low key plays with it for a hot minute- you know, the way you walk by the nerf swords at a walmart and you pick one up to wack your bro with it, but then you remember you’re 23 and he’s 18 and taller than you now so he’ll beat the shit out of you if you start shit. But anyways, Boromir picks up the sword and cuts his finger, is amazed that its still sharp, and then puts it back only to have it teeter off and he walks away quickly like nothing happened. If you’re a small brain critic you’ll see this scene and say “Ah yes, in picking up Narsil Boromir displays a desire for power for himself, and in cutting his finger it shows that this desire is his ultimate demise. He might think he’s ready for power and deserves more, but by walking away he shows that he’s actually irresponsible guffaw” I demand you go back and read that in your guadiest accent. But hear me out. Remember that nerf sword you picked up in the toy aisle, instead of being the grimlin you know you are deep in your soul, you take a few practice swings for your audition fantasy and put it back and start walking away just to realize that the walmart employee had been watching you the whole time and the whole bin of plastic and foam swords comes tumbling down bring with it a Hot Wheels track and collectible cars, and you just look at the employee, and they just look at you, and then you brain just short circuits and so you keep walking down the aisle away and laugh cry across the store because you don’t know what the fuck just happened. And thtas the energy that scene gives to me.

But I’m getting away from it all because the real arguement against the way this scene is framed is one question he poses right before he attacks Frodo:

“What could not Aragorn do?” ( The Fellowship of the Ring 389).

He makes a big speech here about Frodo giving up the ring, but he doesn’t talk about him using it himself, instead he wonders, What would Aragorn be capable of?

Does that sound like a question someone crazed with a drive for power would ask?

I don’t think so

Why even mention Aragorn if he wanted it for himself right?

We’re dissect the fuck out it in the next part don’t you worry.

I think I’m almost done

#Boromir #The Lord of the Rings #character analysis #character development #Character Study #Sierra vs the Academics #I just really love Boromir guys #This one took forever to write and its not the best #Can you tell when I finally hit my beats #I had to stop though because I was about to introduce another major idea but we'll get to it later

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shingekinosimpson · 4 years

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Chapter 9 of You had me at B minor now on Ao3

It’s a dumb thing to say and I know I sound like a total dork, but...texting Marco might be my new favourite thing. We text each other A LOT over the next few days, but the weird thing is, it isn’t weird in the slightest. Once we start it feels like we’ve been doing it forever. I’m proud to say I’m the one who got the ball rolling. After everything that happened on Wednesday night, I made damn fucking sure I reached out the second my sleep deprived brain was coherent enough.

HeresJeany:

Hey bud. You doing okay today? Hope you managed to get some sleep when you got home x

Yeah I know, a kiss on the end. If I had a fan club, I'm sure they’d be pissing their pants with excitement right now. I must have deleted and retyped it about five times before I said ‘fuck it’ and hit send. The message just didn’t feel sincere enough without it. And if he decided to rip on me for it, I wouldn’t care. I don’t care if he teases me - actually, I quite like it when he teases me.

I also got the gossip from Connie that same morning. He was up and looking super perky when I eventually rolled out of bed and went in search of some breakfast.

“Morning! D’you want a coffee?” he chirped.

I could tell last night had gone well – it was written all over his face - but when I pressed him for details on why he’d had an ‘amazing night’ he got very coy.

“You kiss her?”

“No, but she gave me a kiss on the cheek before she went home.”

“…Aaaaaaaand?”

“And nothing!” he chuckled. “Nothing else happened.”

“Connie c’mon. You’re grinning like a Cheshire fucking cat. What else?”

“Look I swear all I got was a peck on the cheek but…I dunno. We just, we had a really good night. I think she likes me too. I think…I think this might actually happen finally.”

“Really?”

He had shrugged his shoulders, but I knew he was ecstatic.

“I think so. I’m not rushing into anything - things are good the way they are now – but I’m not being an idiot either. I’m not pushing her away with mean jokes or playing games like I used to.”

“You mean you’ve finally realised being a stroppy little bitch isn’t exactly a turn on?”

“Hey!” He chucked a tea towel at my face. “Cheeky bastard! But yes. I’m just being straightforward, and things are…things are good.”

“Man. I can’t believe Sasha might finally give you a chance. You’ve been crushing on her for like, how long?

“Too long. Hey,” he smirked. “If Sasha and I finally get it together, you gonna try again with Mikasa?”

“Ha! Yeah right. She’d probably laugh in my face, which I guess is a step up from punching me in the face like the first time I tried it on with her.”

I’d felt weird in that moment, knowing I have this big crush on Marco and not telling Connie about it. I knew it was for the best – if no one knows then Marco can’t find out – but still, it didn’t sit well with me. I felt guilty for keeping it from Connie, but also a little down that Connie could talk about his crush and I had to keep mine a secret. I kind of wanted to talk about it.

“So, you lusting after anyone at the minute then?”

The words had barely left his mouth when my brain did a complete one-eighty and started freaking the fuck out.

Oh god no. I take it back. Please don’t ask me anything!

“You’ve not been on any Tinder dates for a while. Is nobody swiping right for my little Jeanbo?”

“N-nah,” I’d said in a fluster. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Once I get that uniform I’ll be beating them off with a stick.”

Pretty typical of me to deflect something with cockiness but thankfully, Connie took the bait and we started talking about my ever-closer start date – two weeks left to go.

Later that day, I had a reply from Marco waiting for me and we’ve text each other every day since. We started off reasonably civilised, but it didn’t take long for things to escalate into the ridiculous or just random shit we knew the other would like - he sent me a video of Chino Moreno singing with the Pumpkins captioned ‘the planets have aligned’, I responded with a gif of Ned Flanders screaming. I sent him a slideshow of baby sea otters I found on Instagram, he replied with a picture of himself with heart eyes that nearly made me spit my coffee out. He sent me a (weirdly brilliant) 80s remix of a Linkin Park song, I sent him a boomerang of me dancing like a twat.

Don’t get me wrong, we do actually talk in between all these daft pictures and videos. I just can’t help that my first thought when I see something funny is ‘I need to send this to Marco!’ and I really love the idea that he thinks the same thing about me.

I feel a little guilty today though. We were texting each other ‘til quite late last night even though I knew he was at work today. We somehow got onto the subject of Lord of the Rings and then fell down a huge rabbit hole about Frodo and Sam and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Yeah, I know - what a couple of nerds.

I woke up around 10 and sent him a text, apologising for keeping him up. I get a reply at lunchtime.

ItsaMeeMarco:

Hey! Don’t be daft. I’d say it was more my fault anyway. Sorry for keeping you awake with my nerdiness B-)

HeresJeany:

Dude I work in a bar, I’m used to late nights ;) What you doing with the kids at nursery today? Quantum physics and modern philosophy no doubt

ItsaMeeMarco:

We managed to cover quite a lot of that yesterday so we gave ourselves a break with a messy morning today

HeresJeany:

What the hell is a messy morning?

His next message is a picture with the caption Well my pants now look like this so have a guess :p

It’s a photo of one of his legs, stretched out, with a few red and green handprints smushed into the fabric of his joggers.

Is it wrong that I still think his leg looks sexy? Probably.

HeresJeany:

Haha! Hope you weren’t too attached to those pants

ItsaMeeMarco:

You should see the state of some of the kids. One literally painted himself top to toe and then lay down on a pile of cornflakes

HeresJeany:

Fucking hell that’s hilarious!

We send a few more messages back and forth while he’s on his lunch break and when his last one promises to text me later, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

Continue reading on Ao3

#jeanmarco #jean x marco #jeanmarco fanfic #jean kirschtien #jean kirstein #marco bodt #fanfic #snk fanfiction #ao3fic #aot fanfiction #AoT #aot fandom #fic: you had me at B minor #lgbt fanfiction

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salty-donut-collecter · 5 years

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Why Not?

Part Twenty-Three

Twenty-Two {Masterlist} Twenty-Four

Chapter Word Count: 1638

Trigger Warnings: This is a very dramatic chapter honestly, so uhh

People get hurt, yelling, crying, mentions of neurodiversity

Please tell me if I need to tag anything else :)

*Also, I’m planning on having this story as a slow burn, so please be prepared :)

Prompts: “Do I look like I give a fuck?”, “I don’t know what I’m feeling, but I’m feeling a lot of it.”, and “Not to dictate your life, but drop your shitty friends.”

A/N: Okay, so this gets... interesting. I'm not going to tell you how things go in the future, but know that this is a very dramatic turn and I guess I just wanted to warn you a bit before I posted it. I'll answer questions as long as it doesn't spoil anything, so feel free to ask away

Happy reading! (Also, feel free to comment your thoughts! I love reading comments :))

Also, if you’d like to be added to the tags list, please let me know! :D

_____________________________________________________

You walked down the stairs seeing red, your eyes probably glowing as you couldn't help but hear the numerous amounts of thoughts running through everyone's heads. Complete focus wasn't there. The world blurred, mixed with reds and blacks. Accents of sunlight making everything feel like the Greybeyond from Lord of The Rings after Frodo had put the ring on.

When you get to the living room, you don't stop. The room quiets as everyone starts to stare. Within moments, you have a full room of eyes on you. Their thoughts won't stop, they're clouding your mind like smoke in a strip club.

Through all the noise, you heard Steve speak.

"Y/n, what're you--" his voice was low, like he was talking to an enemy, so you had no moral conflict in interrupting him.

"All of your kids are neurodivergent, and are currently suffering." You practically growled, "And yet you guys are continuing to argue so LOUD without ANY consideration for your children-- the children you chose to adopt and take care of." you spit, your hands balling into fists.

You saw Bucky's face go pale. He glanced at the exit.

A dry chuckle escaped your lips. "You really think they want to see you? After everything they've just listened to?" another sarcastic huff. "Why don't we settle this somewhere they won't hear you?"

Snap.

Your hand was still up when Steve's shield hit your face. Your jaw dislocated-- or maybe it broke. You weren't quite sure. Either way, you took your hand, which was still in its previous position of post-snapping, and used it to relocate your jaw. Seconds later it was healed.

"I'd like to say I'm a very sympathetic person, Steve," You took a breathe, still overwhelmed by the overlapping voices that were composed of everyone's thoughts, "That's why I'm maintaining my composure."

Another breath. You blink.

"However, becoming unhinged and attacking me out of nowhere won't do anyone any good for multiple reasons." you frowned, "I figured, since you'd been the one to teach Maverick that, that you too would understand the concept." your frown deepened, "But I guess being wrong is today's family trend." you sigh.

The place you'd transported everyone wasn't actually real. Technically, they were all still in the living room, passed out. Would you tell them that yet? No, but it helped when you thought about Steve throwing his shield at you thinking it'd actually do anything to you. He had seen you fight, after all.

So yes, instead of actually attempting to teleport them anywhere (which was only something you'd thought you might be able to do), you made it look like you'd teleported them to Château du Guildo, Créhen, France. They were awkwardly standing in the ruins' courtyard during a chill, starry night.

You made things as realistic as possible to evade any suspicion. However, Tony, who was just wearing a tee-shirt, was almost shakey with his arms crossed because you hacked into everyone's hypothalamus (which controls how you feel temperature--Bruce had you learn the known parts of the brain to make your job "easier") so they could feel their surroundings. You used to do things like this for HYDRA as a method of torture, but you tried not to let those types of thoughts enter your mind right now. You didn't need that. You needed to stay focused and concrete.

The more you thought about the way Katie looked at you as you looked

Around at the people your siblings called parents, the more your anger started to boil.

"Now that we have you out of the house," you forced yourself to calm down a little, rubbing the very realistic pain that was still present in your cheek, "What in the fucking UNIVERSE WAS THAT ABOUT?!" You didn't quite scream, but you wanted to--oh how you wanted to.

The so-called Avengers just looked down for a moment.

Then, of course, Steve fucking spoke up.

"Well," he looked around at his teammates, which apparently didn't include you anymore. What a shame. "Some of us don't think you should be... included on the team anymore."

A laugh, one that was so dry and sarcastic, it almost became real, left your lips. "That's rich." You chuckled, wiping a fake tear from your eye.

"Y/n, they're serious." Tony gave you a concerned dad look.

Your semi-forced smile dropped, "I know how serious he is, Tony." You Looked over to Sam, already knowing he was probably on Steve's side. He always was, after all, "They think I'm still controlled by HYDRA. They think I'm a double agent."

Sam stepped up, "HYDRA has nothing to do with this."

Vision chimed in for a moment, "Y/n, we think you're... unstable." he looked at you with a sincerity that no one else seemed capable of, "We only wish to expand your mental stability in order to prevent more outburst that could possibly cause harm towards others. Particularly Katie, and her siblings."

Tony stepped up, now just as angry as he probably was before, "Y/n wouldn't lay a finger on that girl and you know it!" he furiously spat, his hands shaking as he angrily pointed a finger at Vision.

"Tony, we're not saying she'd want to do anything." Steve seemed desperate to make Tony understand, you realized he'd probably been trying all night and getting nowhere. "No one in their right mind would want to hurt that little girl, but--"

"And when was the last time Y/n was in the wrong mindset?" Pietro asked, stepping up to Steve boldly, "When was the last time she did anything without a reason?" he asked, his arms disdainfully swinging at his sides.

Rhodey gave him a pointed look, "What do you call hacking into our locked files and illegally copying them to her laptop?" he asked.

"I call it finding the answers she should've had access to in the first place as a member of the Avengers." Wanda looked at Rhodey like she was reminding him of the fact that she could tear him to pieces in a matter of moments, and that she was definitely thinking about it.

"That's like giving Peter access to all of our files" Natasha rolled her eyes.

"He has access to all of our files," Tony corrected, "He's just too distressingly polite to look through them without our permission." He added.

Peter, who wasn't too far away, nodded. "I feel bad if I don't ask Mr. Stark first, but I do have access to everything, just like Mr. Stark and Steve," he told them. "I thought Y/n had full access too, so I didn't really think anything of it when I heard she hacked us, because what else are you supposed to do when you don't have the password and everyone else is asleep, right?" He nervously chuckled and watched himself shift his feet due to the vast amounts of attention he'd just accidentally earned.

"Besides, what's it to you anyway?" Clint just looked done with everyone, "We're prepared to deal with her if she does lose her shit, which isn't going to happen btw," he paused to take a sip from the coffee pot no one had noticed he had, "and it's not like she's as difficult as Barnes was!" Another sip, "Like, I love the kids as much, if not more, than you do, but she's not a threat to them. They love each other too much." He gave Steve a side look, "Almost like you and Barnes," he commented, proceeding to take a long, loud drink of his coffee as the rest of the world processed what he'd said.

Steve blushed, but didn't let Clint get to him.

"I still think that we just need to make sure--"

"What, exactly?" you snapped, "Because, I don't think there's literally anything for you to be worried about, Steve." You'd slowly become calmer in this atmosphere. It wasn't getting out of hand anymore, and it was more of a debate now. However, hearing Steve had caused your blank expression to fade into a blatantly irritated frown/scowl situation.

"We just want to make sure you're... yourself." Sam tried to reason, "We want to make sure you're well enough to have full control of yourself--"

"So it is about HYDRA?" you interjected, already knowing how the rest of his statement would've sounded.

No one said anything.

You scoffed, "unbelievable." you look up to the heavens you hoped didn't have to see this, "To think I believed you when you told me I was a part of the team. That you thought I was all better and wanted me here because I made a good edition." you threw your hands up as tears started to form in your eyes, "And all that other complete bullshit you were feeding me." You laughed, your voice breaking, "When all you really wanted was another helpless mess that wanted nothing more than to try and make up for all the horrible things they'd done. You wanted someone just trying to change-- because after James, Pietro, Wanda, really everyone here, you just couldn't get enough. You just love a sob story, huh?!" You sniffed, looking down at everyone around. Most everyone just had their heads down in shame.

You smiled, nodding as the tears started to fall. The overlapping voices weren't helping, but you could barely hear them anymore. Not over the quickly developing silence that your brain demanded.

"Not even a word." You continue to nod, not knowing what else to do, "I get it. I see." A sad, sinister smile appears on your face as an idea popped into your head.

"That's alright," You stopped nodding, smiling at the floor and whispering, "that just means you won't mind when I leave."

With that statement, you look up just in time to see everyone's final face of panic before--

Snap.

_____

Taglist: @introvertedsin @galacticalstarcat @acidrain707

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glassrain · 5 years

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My favorite part of The Fellowship of the Ring

(Brace yourself - this is probably not going to make much sense at all.)

So it’s been a while since I’ve rewatched The Fellowship of the Ring and I might not be remembering everything perfectly. But my favorite part - my favorite part of the entire movie - is during this one scene. Boromir is being effected by the Ring, he’s acting a bit ... off. I don’t remember all the specifics, whether Boromir is talking about how someone else should carry the Ring, or how they might be able to use something so powerful, or whatever, but the scene is pretty tense and everyone’s on edge. I think Aragorn orders him to back up and snaps him out of it. But we’re focusing on Boromir’s almost hypnotized movements, we’re focused on Frodo’s nervous eyes and Aragorn’s sharp, commanding tone. Then Boromir comes back to his senses and slowly withdraws and pretends nothing happened, and we all take a collective sigh of relief, and we were so focused on the drama between Boromir and Frodo, and then the camera pans this quick shot of Aragorn’s hand carefully easing off the hilt of his sword. Like, I love that shot. Because despite the fact that nothing bad or even threatening is happening, that scene has this eerie sort of tenseness to it - Boromir’s not acting aggressive or evil, yet Frodo’s got this look on his face. Frightened, but not certain if he should be, not quite able to say why. Boromir isn’t a threat ... but the promise of a threat hangs heavy in the air and the audience can practically taste it, but they don’t quite know where to turn their attention. Boromir? The Ring? If Boromir were drawing his own weapon, he could be disarmed and the threat taken care of. Instead, he’s reaching like a lover and despite the fact that warning bells are going off in your head you don’t know how to resolve the issue. Nothing’s wrong but something’s wrong, and Boromir isn’t attacking, but ....

And everyone feels so defenseless in this scene, because how do you fight this kind of an enemy? The Ring isn’t violent - it’s seductive. The enemy is in Boromir’s head and around Frodo’s neck, and despite the fact that everyone can tell that this is wrong, the audience doesn’t know how to stop it, or even if it can be stopped. And everything about this scene is so uncertain. So when we see Aragons easing off his weapon, that’s something solid, something certain.

We didn’t even see him reach for it. And despite the fact that he clearly knows something’s off with Boromir and commands him to back off, we’re still asking ourselves, What if Boromir takes the Ring? What if he turns evil? What’s about to happen? And when we see this shot, we see that Aragorn knows, just like we, the audience, know. The fact that he sees the threat of the Ring and is prepared to act on it. Because we saw the Ring affected Bilbo, and now Boromir - who’s to say it won’t affect Sam, or Legolas, or the entire fellowship? Yes, they might be fighting Ringwraiths and orcs and all that, but the real enemy is right there in their midst, and that moment is when we know Aragorn knows it. And is prepared to fight for it.

It’s also a confirmation for the audience. Throughout this whole scene, all the danger is potential. Boromir doesn’t threaten Frodo. Throughout this scene there’s this little part that whispers, Boromir hasn’t done anything wrong. Do we even have to be afraid right now? Yes, this is bad, but how afraid should we be right now, exactly? This quick, 2 second shot tells us, Very. Be very afraid. Don’t let your guard down.

(Also, this shot is a delightfully subtle showcase of Aragorn’s protectiveness of Frodo. I love his relationship with Frodo, and how noble he is and how seriously he takes his vows to protect Frodo, and this shot captures that all perfectly.)

I remember once I was watching Fellowship with my best friend and we came to this scene, and I guess I glanced away from the screen for just a moment, and she said, “I love that part.” I looked up again. “That part where you see Aragorn ease off his sword.” And I was like, “No. I missed it! That’s my favorite part!” And she paused the movie immediately and was all, “Oh, no. You can’t miss that part - it’s the best part. You want me to rewind it? Let’s rewind it.” And honestly that’s true friendship - being willing to rewind and rewatch two scenes just so you best friend can revel in the entire impact of her favorite 2-second-shot of a three hour movie.

#lord of the rings #analysis #random thoughts #this is ... i don't exactly know what this is #but it was fun #please feel free to scroll past and ignore my raving over two seconds of lotr #this was all just for fun #Becca rambles when she's tired #the fellowship of the ring

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task-modelcam-blog · 5 years

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Social Media Storytelling: Here’s How To Do It Right

Have you ever had those moments where you read a novel once and remember what that one minor character said that one time but stutter and stumble while trying to remember an answer you swore you spent days studying and revising?

Don’t worry; you’re not the only one.

The reason you can vividly recall a story is because it keeps you interested with its use of language, its plot twists make you say ‘I did not see that coming’, you feel like you can relate to the perfectly flawed characters, and the cliffhangers, oh the cliffhangers sometimes make you want to chuck the book across the room and rage about it on social media.

While all an academic book does is give you information, and important as it may be, you just can’t find it in you to get interested because why would you want to read about plants or statistics or trigonometry when your favorite underrated character is about to die.

And that is the exactly how social media storytelling is different from a typical social media post.

Social Media Storytelling? What’s That? When people hear the word “story” they think books or movies, but really, aren’t stories all around us? Your best friend ranting to you about how she’s having the worst week is a story, so is the saga of your pet cat ruining the sofa that your mom relates to you over the phone.

Stories go beyond the ‘Once Upon a Time’s’ and ‘Happily Ever After’s’ of a good book, they surpass the action sequences you see on the screen; a story is any narrative, real or fictional, that captivates you in the moment and holds your attention way after it’s over. Stories aren’t limited to the words you read in books or scenes you see in movies Storytelling, in the social media marketing sense, means that you use social media to tell your brand’s story, to convey its voice.

Oh, so it’s just another strategy to get more leads?

No.

Social media storytelling is not just a tactic to sell your products or services. In fact, if you use it as a tactic, your stories come off as a gimmick rather than an actual story. People don’t like indulging in gimmicks.

The goal isn’t to sell your product; that comes later. With storytelling, you tell your audience what your brand is all about.

The Ingredients Of Good Storytelling Every good book is a balanced mix of three vital ingredients (sure, there are more but these are the vital ones): The Protagonist; The Goal; and The Development. These three ingredients also make up a good brand story so let’s begin to understand what each one is and why they’re so important.

Protagonist

Every good book needs a protagonist; The Hunger Games has Katniss Everdeen, The Lord of the Rings has Frodo Baggins. In case of social media storytelling, your brand is the protagonist and just like any protagonist, your brand needs to have a personality, strengths, and flaws. Taking a note of the ideals your brand values and analyzing the history of your company is a good way to learn about these ‘personality traits’.

Obviously, these traits will keep changing as the company grows; in fact you should make sure they are changing (for the better) because a protagonist who doesn’t change as the story is called a ‘flat character’ and no one like reading a story that stars a flat character.

Goal

Another important characteristic of a good book is that it has a goal that the protagonist wants to or needs to fulfill. You can find your goal somewhere in your business plan. There are two types of goals that writers chalk down for their Main Character: internal goal and external goal.

Analyze your business plan. What is the core objective of your business? Do you want to get more leads? Or increase sales? Or are you looking at expanding in the future? Whatever it may be, make a note of it because that is your internal goal.

Goals give your business purpose; having clear, achievable goals will help you get to where you want faster Now, your audience is really not interested in your internal goal. They don’t care about your profit margin or sales numbers; they care about their experience. So your external goal needs to be something that pertains to your audience. It could be something as philanthropic as ‘bringing education to the rural areas’ (like P&G’s Shiksha) or something as simple as ‘making your life easy’ (Amazon’s Echo).

Having a clear view of your internal and external goals is essential because you will have to build your brand story in a way that fulfills both of them.

Development

In the end, what makes a story substantial and relatable is not the MC’s back story or even the captivating finale; it is the development, or rather, how the writer chooses to develop the story. This includes everything from the language, to the tone, the plot points the writer chooses to highlight, etc.

Digital marketers tend to forget the development part of brand story. It’s not their fault really; social media, by nature, is built with people and brands talking about themselves and it’s easy to forget to develop your brand story among promoting new products, keeping up an active interaction with the audience, and coming up with new content all the time.

But, like mentioned earlier, a character with no growth makes for a flat character. Similarly, a story with no development is a dull, boring story.

Imagine that your protagonist (your brand) is at point A and the goal (both internal and external) is at point Z, development is how your MC progresses from point A to B to C and so on. Just like in a novel, it is important that you keep an eye on what kind of language you are using and what tone you’re implying. This is crucial because using the wrong words or tone can easily make something intended to be sassy come out as mean.

The Brand Archetypes So you have the puzzle pieces for your brand story, now what? That’s a question that haunts every writer that has ever had a story idea, which is why people have come up with ‘archetypes’. These three archetypes of social media storytelling will give you a starting point from where you can develop your brand story. (If you want to learn more about brand archetypes, I have a 2-part series about the 12 jungian archetypes and how to apply them to your brand strategy).

#Social Media #Social Media Storytelling #story #social media marketing #Protagonist #Goal #Development #Brand Archetypes

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wordsinwinters · 7 years

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Then Again, P5 Peter Parker x Reader

Author’s Note: Finally, the first Peter P.O.V. chapter!

Thank you to everyone who liked the previous parts and to my new (and old) followers! I’m so excited to share the upcoming chapters where things get more intense. That being said, let me know what you guys think of this bit!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

And here it is,

Then Again, Part 5:

(Words: 2,381)

If I said that this was the worst week, and that yesterday was the worst day, of my life, I would be an absolute idiot. Of course it isn’t. But it does suck. It sucks a lot. A lot, a lot. The last few months have been pretty awful, but for some reason, this has been the worst week of them.

Y/N is just so happy. It’s driving me nuts.

I blame it mostly on Halloween. If Halloween hadn’t happened the way it did, maybe everything would be different and the other things would matter less.

That night, Y/N and I were supposed to meet MJ and Ned at Ned’s apartment before going to Betty’s party. (Ned forced us into it, I didn’t really want to go in the first place.)

Anyway, Y/N came to my apartment first so we could walk to Ned’s together. Just as I answered the door, MJ sent something to our group snapchat. The little popcorn sound echoed between us as I let Y/N inside. I pulled out my phone.

“It’s from MJ,” I said, opening it.

MJ, dressed as someone from the 1700s judging by the bonnet, was perched on the back of Ned’s couch and holding a whip outside an open window; Ned was in the background, running toward her from the hallway. He was wearing an Indiana Jones costume and his signature Don’t you dare, MJ! face.

I laughed.

“Look, MJ’s already tormenting Ned with his own costume,” I said, showing Y/N the picture before it disappeared.

“What?”

She looked at the screen and froze.

“It’s a costume party?”

I thought she knew, especially since Ned talked about it so much. I hadn’t planned a costume, but that’s because I was hoping if I showed up to Ned’s without one, he might tell me not to come at all. I guess it made sense though. I’d been wondering all week what she was planning to wear. I thought I even asked her at one point. Maybe not. Yeah. I wouldn’t have wanted her to think I was being weird.

“It’s not a big deal. I don’t have a costume either.”

She groaned.

“No, I should’ve paid more attention to Ned when he told me about it. I’ve been so… so out of it and distracted lately, and I can’t let him down like this. I know how much it means to him. I told him just an hour ago that I was completely ready for tonight. I can’t believe myself.”

I tried to console her a bit, make jokes and lighten the mood. But she was kind of right. Ned had been talking about it a lot and she had seemed pretty distracted the last couple weeks. Plus, we only had an hour before we needed to leave.

I remember wishing May were home. She would know how to help. But she must’ve been busy because she didn’t answer any of my texts.

As Y/N beat herself up for being unprepared, she kept pacing and wringing her hands. Then, she stopped.

“I always told myself I would never ask this,” she said slowly, “but Peter, can I... try on the suit?”

I always told myself I would never let my friends try the suit on. I didn’t want it to get complicated. I mean, once you get a hang of the suit, it’s kind of addicting.

In that moment though, I wanted to let her. She tends to get stressed when she isn’t one hundred percent on top of things and this was definitely one of those times. I thought it would help distract her while I came up with costume ideas. And maybe another reason I didn’t want to admit to myself yet.

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I let you try it out?”

She shrugged, the corners of her lips tugging upward. I smiled immediately, like a reflex. I could tell she was getting excited. Weirdly, I felt excited too. I told myself it was a reaction to feeling helpful.

“I just thought Ned said something about it once. Like you were overprotective of it or whatever.”

“Pff, no way.” I tried to be nonchalant. “Ned is always saying crazy things.”

That wasn’t true and we both knew it. Awkward things, occasionally. Crazy, not so much.

I dug the suit out of my bag and tossed it to her.

While I waited out in the living room for her to change, I heard a sharp thud from my room. I ran to the door.

“Uh, you okay in there?”

An oomf later, she replied, “Yeah. I just tripped a little. The suit’s fine! Hit my funny bone, that’s all.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Not for the suit, obviously. It can take a beating.

A minute later, she called my name. Her voice carried a distinct... reluctance.

Outside the door again, I offered up a, “Yeah?”

I know, I know. I’m an idiot.

“Um, how exactly does this work? I can’t figure out how to make it not so... baggy.”

“Hit the spider.”

“Hit... the spider?”

“Yeah. In the middle?”

She groaned and opened the door.

I had to shove down the laughter rising in my throat. She was in the suit and holding it up by the collar, clutching it to her chest. That was the first time I realized how short she is. I would notice it a lot more after this whenever she stood next to me, Ned, or better yet, MJ. Y/N is short enough to wear the suit and practically swim in it.

At that moment, Y/N was helpless.

“‘Hit the spider.’ Really? What does that even mean?”

Her confusion was amusing, but how could she not see the black spider symbol right under her hand?

“Ignoring how ridiculous you look, which, by the way, is off the charts ridiculous, it means,” I said, stepping forward. “Hit. The. Spider.”

I lightly punched the spider symbol, as if it was a fist bump.

Probably a stupid idea, seeing as it was situated sort of... right between her, um, breasts?

Makes sense that she screamed a bit.

“Jesus! Are you serious? More of a warning would have been nice!”

The suit can be shocking if you aren’t used to it snapping like that. I’ve gotta admit, I was not used to it snapping on her. On me, yeah. Of course. But on her... not at all. Luckily she was too engrossed in the suit to have noticed my expression. I remember thinking, it definitely doesn’t look so ridiculous on you anymore.

“Oh my God,” she muttered, looking at her arms as she turned them here and there. “This is so weird.”

She moved her shoulders a bit as if testing mobility, then her fingers, toes, legs.

“This is... the weirdest sensation. I can’t tell if I hate it or if I love it.”

Actually, that’s probably the best way to describe how I’ve been feeling since then.

That night, we never ended up going to the party. Y/N called Ned to explain that she didn’t have a costume and he immediately said it was alright if we didn’t make it. Something about, “MJ is already enough to handle at the moment.”

Instead, we stayed in and watched Lord of the Rings while Y/N kept experimenting with the suit. Testing different web shooters (she nearly destroyed my closet), watching Spider-Man Youtube videos in the mask and mocking my “poses” (for the record, I do not pose... as often as those videos suggest), and talking to Karen (they got on immediately). Once she started asking Karen personal questions, like her first one about me: “What does Peter talk to you about every day?” I decided it was time to end her Spider Time.

(Yes, I was worried Karen would tell her how often I talked about her - but to be fair, she is my friend. Obviously I talk to Karen about her a lot. I just couldn’t figure out why it was more than Ned or Aunt May or MJ. And Karen had plenty of ideas I knew she would love to tell Y/N about.)

“That’s enough! Karen, say goodbye now!” I hurried.

“Really, Peter? We just started a real conversation. You didn’t tell me the system was a person! I’ve been so rude - I’m so sorry, Karen, if I had known-”

“Come on,” I begged. “I’m being serious. I don’t want the suit to be a thing with everyone. Better to stop now, before you get... attached.”

“Attached?” The left eye of the mask widened to match her sarcasm. “Worried I’ll steal it and hide in a cave, stroking the fabric? My precious Spidey suit?”

“Very funny,” I said. “And you just said, ‘My,’ so clearly, you are being affected!”

I reached across, about to hit the spider, when I realized exactly what the suit would do if I did, and pulled back.

Not a good time to accidentally see her naked.

I swear, I didn’t mean to think that. But that idea - of one of my best friends, that way, in my room - took me off guard. Like a massive idiot, I jerked back too quickly. My ankle hit hers and she fell on top of me, simultaneously hitting the spider and setting off a series of awkward movements in which she tried to hold the suit together and I tried not to, well, see too much. (I saw a tiny bit, not going to lie.)

On the t.v., the Watcher in the Water began attacking Frodo, so the chaos of fiction and real life blended together in the worst way possible. The screaming from the movie made our own awkward grunts and “Sorry!”’s more intimate by contrast. Mostly it was just weird because she was practically drowning in the deflated Spider suit and as we moved against each other, trying to get off of each other, it wasn’t much of a barrier between us. Plus, the baggy mask on her face was a weird addition to the situation.

After untangling herself from me, she stood up gingerly and pulled the mask off. Her hair was a nest, a soft I-wish-I-could-reach-out-and-feel-it-moving-through-my-fingers kind of nest.

“D-do you mind if I change now?”

My mouth gaped. Here? Now?

“I mean, if I have to call May to escort you out, I do have her on speed dial.”

Without me here. Duh.

“Yeah. S-sorry. I’ll just, um, get up then.”

I must have looked like an idiot, staring at her from the flat of my back on the floor, practically spread eagle. Sliding past her to the door, I swear I noticed blush on her cheeks. Then again, my own face was burning. But then again, that was because I realized I liked her. Like really, really liked her. So maybe her blush meant she liked me too?

That was Halloween.

Six months later, that memory plays back almost every day. On top of six months worth of other memories. She’s there, in my head, all the time. Simple things, like her ridiculous victory dance when she wins Scrabble or her helping Aunt May make dinner (and when it comes to food, she helps a lot - in terms of taste and frequency) or even Karen telling me that she sent me a text, they all make my chest hammer. It’s the absolute worst, all variables considered.

I don’t know. This week has been weird. Seeing her so excited reminds me of how she looked trying on the suit which reminds me of everything else from that night and how I’ve never worked up the courage to just ask if it meant anything. Knowing that it’s way, way too late to ask now makes me a bundle of nerves and serious regret. Plus, her unguarded joy and enthusiasm itself.... It’s a lot to take in. Sensory overload or something. It’s like, I catch a glimpse of her teeth as she’s laughing and my brain spirals into One Hundred and One Ways I Could Make Her Laugh If She Was In Love With Me Instead or Ten Kissing Scenarios In Which She’s So Happy We Can’t Kiss Properly Because We’re Smiling Too Much. This week, these imaginary scenes keep getting out of control. It’s driving me nuts.

I need to stop thinking about her. It’s impossible when we’re always together, though. All of us. I can’t tell which is worse: when it’s just us, or when it’s us and MJ. And Ned, obviously.

So the last few days, I tried to keep a smidge of distance. Yesterday was particularly rough. Ned and MJ convinced her to skip a bunch of classes with them. They sent me dozens of snapchats, half trying to rope me in, half reporting on their adventures. (My favorite was when they nicknamed Flash an Ass-Hat Rich-Boy Bitch-Boy. Or maybe it was the video of Ned where he dissolved into a fit of laughter because he couldn’t say the phrase more than twice without messing it up.)

At the end of the day, because we all have Psych in seventh hour, I may have annoyed them by leaving that class early. I couldn’t help it. Y/N was so stupid crazy beautiful happy and it was agonizing to watch her scribble notes back and forth with MJ, her pen clicking in the almost dark as she did everything she could to not laugh and disrupt the episode of Mind Games playing on the screen. I had to get out of there before I got, like, a boner or something.

That was weird. And graphic.

God, it’s such a mess. I’m such a mess.

The point is, I need to stop thinking about her like that and just forget what happened yesterday and this morning and six months ago.

That being said, it’s not exactly easy when she’s been pissing me off the last few days. This stuff with MJ and Flash is starting to seriously eat away at me. Some of it isn’t her fault, and I’m trying to work through that on my own, but plenty of it is and I can’t tell if she even cares how I (or Ned) feel about it.

I hate these secrets.

Part 6

Next update: Friday, October 13

(Spooky. If anyone wants to be tagged in updates, let me know.)

If you liked this part, have any questions, or want to offer some constructive criticism, send me a message! My asks and messages are always open to anyone. I know I’ve only posted around 8k words so far, but I have upwards of 23k written and a few small notes of encouragement would help the writer’s block I’ve been struggling with lately.

Thank you to those who have reviewed! My beta, of course: fanboyswhereare-you, and tomhollandimangines - you guys are the best.

P.S. I’m still working on getting a AO3 account. Once I do, I’ll post each part on there as well and then post a link to the complete story here on Tumblr.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker #spider-man x reader #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #tom holland #spider-man homecoming #spider-man fanfic #avengers #avengers imagine #infinity war #part 5 #sp:hc #spider-man: hoco #peter parker x you #tom holland x you #spider-man x you

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actuallyvady · 6 years

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@snootch I’m just gonna make a new post so I am not spamming someone else’s post with this BUT! TOLKIEN NERD TIME!

So, the scene where Saruman dies in the movie sets up the fact that they took out my actual favorite part of the books. Like, when I saw that scene happen I went OH NO THEY TOOK OUT THE SCOURING OF THE SHIRE like, right then.

So! The Scouring of the Shire is a massive chunk of the end of the Return of the King and, I think, a thematically significant one. In the book, rather than falling to his death off the tower, Saruman escapes-- as does Wormtongue. Our heroes kind of go ehhhh? I mean they have more important things to deal with and kind of figure that he’ll be a problem later but they don’t have time for that right now.

And they’re right, he is a problem later! When he escapes, he goes right to the Shire. He knows it’s the hobbits’ fault that he lost, and he wants to fuck with them. So he moves into Bag End and starts doing his Industrialization thing to the Shire, cutting down trees and shit, and just making the Shire a terrible place. And he’s got plenty of time to do it! Because our plucky heroes have to go fight in wars and destroy rings of unholy power and then see their friend crowned high king and eventually make their way home... all of which takes a while, and the hobbits have no reason to think there’s any reason to hurry.

When they do finally get back to the Shire they start hearing about some guy named “Sharkey” and running into his human lackeys and all the changes he’s made-- most of which they cheerfully ignore. Spending the night in a guard tower where the guards aren’t allowed to feed them? That’s fine, they’ve got plenty to share, are they allowed to feed the guards?

The best is when some duly appointed sheriffs arrive to arrest them in the morning. Just picture it: Nine-fingered Frodo, who destroyed the One Ring, Sam Gamgee, steadfast and afraid of nothing, Merry and Pippin who are both actual soldiers, of Rohan and Gondor, respectively. They’ve been on some of the worst battlefields the lands have seen this age and been through hell. And these hobbits of the Shire show up to arrest them. This leads to a hilarious sequence with our plucky heroes agreeing to be arrested since they were going that way anyway and riding their ponies while their “captors” walk along sulkily beside them.

When they get to the Shire proper and see what has happened they don’t hesitate before joining and ultimately take charge of the resistance-- these are hobbits, they’re not all happy with the new state of things-- and it isn’t long before the Shire is taken back. Frodo, who doesn’t want to see any more death, tells Saruman to just get the fuck out of the Shire and not come back... but Wormtongue stabs him in the back, and that is what ultimately kills him-- betrayed by his pet traitor.

And then we have to rebuild. That’s why it matters when Sam becomes the new mayor-- because he’s the one that helps rebuild. His gift from Galadriel was a box of earth from her orchard, which he used to help regrow the trees that Saruman had destroyed-- Sam the gardener helped the Shire heal. (She also gave him a mallorn seed-- those beautiful trees in Lothlorien? There’s now one in the Shire.)

The whole sequence is just... I love when stories talk about what happens when heroes go home at the end of the adventure. Merry and Pippin, battle-hardened soldiers (and unusually tall for hobbits thanks to the ents), come back and lead the other hobbits in a battle to take back their home. Sam, who was stuttering and nervous and shy, is now a confident and capable leader, and exactly what the Shire needs.

And Frodo... Frodo doesn’t belong there anymore. The others are able to take their experiences and shape them into a new life back home; Frodo can’t do that. There is no one in the Shire that can understand what he is feeling, not even Merry or Pippin or Sam-- though Sam did bear the ring for a little while, he was not scarred by it the way Frodo was. Frodo spends a few years at home, finishing writing his story in the Red Book, but he’s not healing, the way everything around him is. That’s why he sails away in the end-- there is no place for him anymore.

And in the movies we lost all that. We got brief glimpses of things being different when they came home, but...

I get that it would have added another, like, hour or more to the film but I don’t care-- there’s too much that’s thematically important that was cut, I would happily tack on that extra time just to get the real ending.

Meaningful content aside, I would sit in the theater for another hour just for the comedic value. This is what they were arrested for:

“Gate-breaking, and Tearin up of Rules, and Assaulting Gatekeepers, and Tresspassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.“

I understand that reading the trilogy is an undertaking and I don’t for a moment blame people for not having done it... but the scouring of the shire is, to me, worth all the hundreds of pages of walking through forests.

#okay i am exhausted and babbling from memory #(other than the list of charges they were arrested for i googled that)#so i probably got a bunch of details wrong and left shit out #but yeah #best thing in the damned books and forever bitter that it was left out

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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This going to sound harsher than I mean it to but...I think there is a certain subset (and I really do think it is a subset and NOT the majority, far from it) of female fans who are in their own way as guilty in regards to Peter’s character as they are of what a subset (albeit a way more vocal and currently in charge subset) of male fans are guilty of in regards to MJ’s character.

They are very quick to throw the shade at the character (even throw him under a bus at times) without either properly contextualizing the specifics of a situation they are talking about or else not bothering to place themselves in his shoes and try to imagine realistically how me might feel.

Or else they simply don’t try to ask “Okay Spider-Man is doing this thing that seemingly makes him look bad. Let me consider if there is a believable enough justification for his actions before I commit to condemning the character.”

On tumblr I’ve seen that more and more among some posters in particular female ones (far from all of them though, like I said I believe them to be a minority) who clearly do LIKE Spider-Man, both as a series and as a character, nevertheless throw out shade along the lines of:

- Well he just makes such poor life decisions

- He’s such a MESS, God get your life together Peter

- What an asshole he was for not wanting to meet Mj because he didn’t realize she was pretty

- Peter has such an EGO, look at whenever he used to interact with other heroes

- Peter is so self-centred wow

- MJ and Felicia and Gwen are too good for Peter

Saying Peter makes poor life choices is untrue half the time and only true the other half of the time within the context of a dramatic entertainment series wherein it’d be boring if certain concessions were not made.

Saying his life is a mess is intrinsically idiotic for the same reasons saying MJ sucked for worrying about Peter and complaining about his life as Spider-Man the way she did in the 90s. If YOU were in either of their positions and had the same histories, the same emotional attachments would YOU be much different? Would YOUR life be totally in order when you spend a large chunk of your time being a superhero both to financially support yourself and you know for ENTIRELY ALTRUISTIC REASONS? Would YOU honestly NOT act the way MJ did in the 90s?

These sorts of attitudes to me demonstrate a really, really weird dismissal of the (relative) realities of life as or with a superhero. It’s like Peter being Spider-Man somehow ‘doesn’t count’, like he’s going out to play sports or something as opposed to actually being something important that should be taken into account when analyzing his life. Like...the entire premise of Spider-Man very much hinged upon the notion of showcasing the realities of life as a hero, how it came with a cost and didn’t fix everything. Like Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man No More literally SHOW you that NOT being Spider-Man WOULD allow his life to NOT be a mess, but that’s the price he pays for making sure nobody else loses THEIR Uncle Ben.

Did Peter used to have an ego? Yeah...as did you know...EVERY Marvel hero under Stan Lee. Shit Silver age Superman had a humungous ego. It’s a trope something you don’t take 100% at face value. That smoothed out with his maturation and whilst he still had an ego at times, that was a debilitating flaw, just something that happened every once in a while as it would for a lot of people.

Not to mention after what he has lived through and how hard he is on himself most of the time SOME ego is surely forgivable, healthy even. Which brings me to the whole ‘he thinks everything revolves around him’ argument.

No...he doesn’t. He just holds himself to an incredibly high standard due to an obviously highly traumatic event he went thorugh growing up compounded by a few other similar events (Gwen’s death) as well as threats to his life and those around him by individuals specifically out to get him (Betty Brant was targeted at least 3 times in the Ditko run).

Is it any wonder he’d be somewhat self-centred? And not even self-centred in a selfish way, self-centred in a ‘I suck, I let everyone down, I should have done better.’ Kind of way which is a million miles away from say pre-heart injury Tony Stark kind of self-centred.

And finally the thing about not wanting to meet MJ...I’m sorry...how many male and female teenagers would NOT have been apprehensive over a blind date their old fashioned Mom set up for them out of fear that the date will be unattractive. Especially when in canon the qualities mostly pushed about her was that she would allegedly ‘make a good housewife’.

That isn’t a ‘Peter Parker is shallow’ thing or a ‘men are shallow’ thing. That’s a ‘teenagers who’re naturally immature and inexperienced with dating, romance, sex, etc tend to be shallow’ thing.

Don’t lie to me and pretend like the pre-Parallel Lives 14-18 year old Mary Jane herself would have been all for meeting her aunt’s neighbour’s geeky ass nephew. She wouldn’t have been and we all KNOW she wouldn’t have been. And that’s okay, that’d be realistic and entirely in keeping with how most teens (male or female) would feel in that situation.

Let me be clear there are MALE readers guilty of this too (especially on CBR) but maybe it’s because I spend more time here in my (admittedly far from comprehensive) observations the fans who say stuff like that tend to be female more often than male.

It’s nowhere near AS bad as the shit that unjustifiably gets thrown at Mary Jane mostly by male fans, but whilst collectively it might be worse each accusation is as equally unfounded.

And as someone who truly loves both those characters I loathe seeing either of them unfairly thrown under the bus that way by people who aren’t even bothering to TRY to justify what the characters are doing out of laziness, a desire to be snarky or just enjoying the act of ripping into them.

In much the same way a lot of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fans these days have been defencive and protective of Luke and Frodo in light of the mass shade thrown at both characters, I’ve become more and more like that towards Spider-Man in recent years. I’ve been like that with Mj for ages but only recently have I felt it necessary to extend it to Peter too.

I don’t know WHY exactly these sort of ill considered, narrowminded, half assed criticisms are emerging more and more these days. I can’t blame it on the existence of other Spider characters because I’ve more frequently seen this stuff stem from people who didn’t even discuss guys like miles or Kaine or Spider-Gwen. Just Peter himself.

The hard truth is...I think gender might be the biggest factor.

Like I said I really do think this is a MINORITY of female fans who say the stuff I’ve discussed but I think for them there is a certain lack of empathy or at least attempt to honestly see through the eyes of Spider-Man himself because they are female and he is male.

Whilst this doesn’t seem to happen much at all in Harry Potter fandom (which might possibly be owed to Harry being a male character written by a woman), critically the HP narrative is mostly utterly dominated by seeing through Harry’s eyes it makes identifying with him less of a leap as compared to Spider-Man where there is more ‘distance’ between the character and the reader.

The Spider-Man series is mostly from Peter’s POV but whilst Harry Potter rarely deviates away from Harry is experiencing at any given moment within his own skin, Spider-Man cuts to other scenes and other characters and even presents scenes with Spider-Man from their POV very frequently. It’s perhaps the natural pay off to the comic book medium vs a novel. You do have to SEE your protagonist from the outside whereas with a novel you can much more easily be on the inside looking out.

I think because of that relative distance, for some (but far from all) female Spider-Man readers it becomes easier to emotionally/mentally not make the leap into his head and really questioning why he thinks, feels and acts in the ways that he does beyond what is on the surface level presented to us.

Peter talks back to the Fantastic Four when he first meets them. It must be because he’s an asshole and not because he’s you know, a teenager, who just lost his Dad, is desperate for cash, is somewhat naive and used to being an entertainer and wrestler

Although I think at the end of the day a character can be relatable and identifiable regardless of what their identity might be (skin colour, gender, etc), I do feel that male readers of Spider-Man are probably going to be more inclined towards empathising with Peter and inclined towards trying to see if there might be an explanation for his actions.

The reverse holds true as well. It’s painfully obvious that 90% of the garbage criticisms levelled against Mary Jane throughout her history stemmed from mostly (but again not all) male readers who were simply not even trying to put themselves in her shoes or else couldn’t.

Okay sure, you could argue institutionalized sexism or the larger proportion of male to female Spider-Man readers is the reason there seems to be way more male MJ bashers than female Peter bashers, as well as using that to explain why the female Peter bahsers still seem to like the character on some degree whereas MJ’s loudest bashers tend to just hate on the character.

However I’d also propose that a big reason for one group’s larger and more intense negative feelings compared to the other stems again from the genders involved.

Male readers are going to find it comparatively harder to make the jump into MJ’s head and seeing things from her POV than they would Peter’s simply because they are men and she is a female character.

It’s far from impossible and I think most male fans do make the jump. But it helps to explain why so many do not. The problem is exacerbated by MJ being a supporting cast member and thus her POV and panel time is given far less breathing space than Peter’s, who’s story and POV dominate the narrative. So when MJ is compalaining about Peter’s life as a hero to him in a scene from his POV it’s challenging for male readers to take a step back and consider HER pov.

I’m not even calling that some kind of soft core misandry or misogyny.

I just think it’s something that naturally occurs for a lot of people as a consequence of life and the style of storytelling weare discussing.

Doesn’t make it cool to do though.

Stop bashing MJ AND Peter and try to justify anything they do before you tear into them.

#Spider-Man #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mjwatsonedit #MJ Watson #Peter Parker #Marvel #marvel comics

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avelera · 7 years

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Avelera’s epic “Why I Love Boromir” post aka

Boromir. So much more than a meme.

Agarlandoffreshlycuttears asked me to talk about my love of Boromir since I have a few Aragorn hate posts out there and boy does this topic of discussion take me back.

(For the record, a lot of my earliest opinions of Boromir was formed as an impressionable 14 year old experiencing her first head-over-heels male crush (I mean seriously, look at this guy:

) but people aware of my love of Thorin have probably noticed I tend to have a thing for complicated characters who experience a fall from grace. I find them much more interesting than characters who never need to struggle with morality or see a serious risk to their soul. I don’t hate Aragorn as such, but I have a lot of issues with the way his character was handled, so I hope the negative stuff comes across as more tongue-in-cheek and critique-oriented rather than bashing.)

So let’s begin from the beginning with some very Nuanced and Intellectual™ reasons to love Boromir.

- In Rivendell, Boromir first shows us how awesome he is by riding in on a horse like a goddamn Disney prince *swoon*

(damn-you-why-can’t-i-find-a-gif-of-this.jpeg)

With that out of the way, let’s list his many virtues:

Boromir is practical.

During the Council he proceeds to bring up some rather valid points about the risk of the whole “the Hobbits are bringing the One Ring to Mordor” thing. We, as viewers, know they’re the main characters so the hobbits will probably succeed. But from an objective viewer within the Middle Earth universe, this plan to destroy the Ring is batshit crazy from the outset and it only gets worse when we decide hobbits are the ones to do it. We’re literally going to take some of the weakest, smallest, least experienced creatures no one has ever heard of in the world, give them a super weapon, then have them go with an honor guard of 5 effective fighters (including Gandalf who has been known to fuck off at random intervals when escorting hobbits on dangerous quests) to the only place in the world where, if the Ring goes there, Sauron wins. Game over. He gets his lich-y phylactery back and gets super powered like it’s goddamn Mario Star Power. Everyone dies. Boromir’s people in Gondor (and Aragorn’s people, if he ever gets around to it) will die first. Horribly.

But, y’know, the power of love and friendship will somehow win the day so once literally 4 guys decide that this admittedly horrendous plan is the only one they’ve got, Boromir gamely comes along. He can’t even pledge his sword because Aragorn took that line already, thanks Aragorn.

Why not just take my kingdom I’ve been training to rule my whole life while you’re at it. OH WAIT.

Boromir is kind.

As the Fellowship cross Middle Earth, climb the mountain, the shots of Beautiful New Zealand are endless, we get the freakin adorable scene of Boromir training Merry and Pippin to fight (thanks for nothing Aragorn, I guess giving them swords was as far as you thought out how helpless these guys are). If this smile doesn’t melt your heart I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.

But seriously, everything about the friendship of Boromir with Merry and Pippin gives me happy smiley tears.

Boromir is human.

They climb some more mountains, Boromir has one of the most freaking amazing scenes in the whole movie where he picks up the Ring and is clearly hypnotized by it, illustrating its danger and the danger he poses to the Quest as a result.

I’m going to leap ahead here and say why I love this scene, and that’s because Boromir actually faces the threat of the Ring, unlike Aragorn. We do have a moment between Aragorn and the Ring later when Frodo (recently traumatized by Boromir’s freak out) asks Aragorn if he can protect Frodo from himself. The fear of being like his 2,000-years-dead ancestor flashing in his eyes, Aragorn sends Frodo along (to almost certain death).

But the thing is, the Ring was never really a threat to Aragorn, we never really got a scene of him struggling with it at all. It’s what makes his “fear of being like Isildur” so baffling and annoying. At no point does Aragorn actually struggle with that risk. Unlike Thorin (and I’m gonna have to Thorin-stan here for a moment because my love of Thorin is intimately tied into my love of Boromir) who fears the hereditary madness of his family for good reason because he does succumb to it and then break free, Aragorn’s fear comes across as whiney (and even carrying borderline internalized hatred of Men given to him by movie Elrond) given its lack of justification within the films. Told to us as Aragorn’s main emotional motivation and fear, besides that of annihilation if the Ring isn’t destroyed, it ends up being extremely weak that he supposedly fears this ancestral corruption which never has any tangible impact or risk to him. Frankly, the only time it really comes up that Aragorn is related to Isildur are both times pretty freakin’ awesome for him because they involve raising a ghost army to Deus Ex Pulverize Sauron’s forces and becoming king of a frickin’ wedding cake of a multi-tiered beautiful city that Boromir had to talk him into liking in the first place.

*Ahem*

But anyway, that scene on the mountain is super creepy and gorgeous and I love it.

Boromir is hilarious.

Boromir is empathetic.

Boromir is the one who spots the trauma that the Fellowship has just gone through by losing Gandalf (and Gimili is no doubt still reeling from the revelation of his family members’ deaths in Moria) and calls for a quick rest now that they’re out of the mines. If I hadn’t already been in love him from the training scene with Merry and Pippin, I probably would have fallen even harder at that scene. He’s empathetic in a way a good leader should be. While Aragorn’s point is valid about the arrival of the orcs and their lack of time, he comes across as kind of a dick about it and I can’t help but be uncharitable in my view of him as a result. It feels like the threat of the orc’s pursuit is set up just to make Aragorn right and Boromir wrong, since without that threat Aragorn would very clearly be the bad guy in that scene. Would 5 minutes have really made that much of a difference?

Boromir loves his people.

Probably THE moment that won me over about Boromir was the moment in Lothlorien when he gives his worshipful account of Gondor to Aragorn. In the extended edition the scene continues to one where he chastises Aragorn for not showing more interest in Gondor.

(Also, look at him in that scene, GAWD)

I think this pinged me at a young age for several reasons.

- First, a love of the wider “off screen” world. LotR is a sprawling book, but a film can’t always show what’s going on outside the narrator’s view. Through Boromir in this scene and several others, we get a sense of what our characters are fighting for. It would have been easy for the stakes of LotR to remain the lives of the Fellowship members, certainly they are the ones in the most immediate peril. But Boromir’s speech reminds us of the wider world and the threat it faces, the nations that will fall and the lives that will be ruined if Sauron wins. It re-frames his reasons for wanting to use the Ring - he feared the argument against using it was just a matter of moral purity, at the risk of Gondor falling and with it that everyone he knows and loves will die.

Can Boromir truly be blamed for not understanding the threat of the Ring? I think even the most ardent fans are sometimes puzzled over exactly what the Ring does, and what it would do should it fall into the wrong hands. Throughout a story based around the threat of the Ring, the Ring itself and its powers remain strangely abstract. So I don’t think Boromir’s view of the debate as an unconvincing one between the very tangible threat of lives lost vs. the more abstract risk of moral corruption that even Elrond and Gandalf never clearly express is understandable. We as the audience have greater perspective on the threat of the Ring, and by the end Boromir understands that threat too, how at the very least the Ring will turn friend against friend in the pursuit of its power, and he fully repents.

- Second, Boromir’s love for his people highlighted Aragorn’s failing, which lead me to the heart of much of my dislike of Aragorn’s character. As someone who read the books before seeing the movie, I was rather annoyed by the whole “reluctant king” trope that was shoved onto Aragorn for a modern audience. It is a rather cliche moral imposed by PJ that we see throughout his Tolkien works, that those who want to be king will be necessity be bad kings, and that tropes annoys the fuck out of me throughout fantasy in general.

(Certainly there is the risk of the power-mad, but I think that puts us at risk of one of our current issues, the paradox that those who want power in order to good are therefore under suspicion and those with greater experience at governing are seen as a threat so we should only allow the incompetent BUT ANYWAY)

Aragorn in the books wanted to be king. He worked hard to be worthy of the people of Gondor by serving in various militaries such as Rohan’s throughout his younger days. He wanted to be king in part to be worthy of Arwen, but also because he loved the people of Gondor. His avoidance of the throne was about building up the necessary skills to be worthy of it. By throwing out that aspect of his character, and replacing it with a nebulous fear of being like Isildur, an ancestor that died two thousand years ago (which is like someone fearing they’ll be just like their ancestor, Julius Caesar, or Elizabeth II fearing she’ll be just like Henry VIII if we want to take Numenorean life spans into account by which I mean completely batshit crazy example of a fear BUT ANYWAY). This alteration to Aragorn wreaked quite a number of consequences.

For example, it kinda makes his attitude towards Arwen seem kinda shitty because instead of working hard to be worthy of her he’s kinda just a smelly ranger who is actively avoiding his responsibilities in order to traipse around the wild and serve in random militaries like Rohan for funsies and while I respect Arwen’s choice to love whoever she wishes, it kinda makes Aragorn the deadbeat in that relationship.

But the major consequence of reluctant king Aragorn is that, yeah, I kinda gotta agree with Boromir - his lack of interest in the people of Gondor is really troubling. It wouldn’t be hard to see Aragorn as someone who prefers the elves (who raised him) and generally from his actions and his words sees Men as a lesser people. That’s not someone I would want as my king, quite frankly, if I were a Gondorian.

In addition, we have the fact that Boromir’s family the Stewards have been ruling Gondor for centuries. It would literally be like the aforementioned descendant of Julius Caesar showing up in Rome today and saying they have an ancestral right to rule there, ie it’s batshit crazy but we’re living in a fantasy world SO ANYWAY. Boromir (and Faramir) have more experience and arguably a better claim that Aragorn in the films. Denethor was a good ruler until he got his hands on a Palantir, but even if Denethor is now a poor ruler, I still have a lot of sympathy for him because this was done to him by evil forces beyond his control (in parallel to what happened to Gollum and to Bilbo and Frodo through the One Ring. Literally. The Palantir and the One Ring are both connected to Sauron who is actively corrupting them. So anyway, all the Denethor hate makes me sad and I’m probably the only person in the whole fandom who actually has a soft spot for him.)

So to recap, that conversation in Lothlorien to me showed that Boromir 1) cares about a wider world than the Fellowship, and that the Fellowship isn’t the only thing going on. 2) That he’s a pretty damn good leader who cares about his people, in contrast with Aragorn. Even if we accept that “Learning to love the people of Gondor” was part of Aragorn’s character arc, and Boromir’s fridging death demonstrably pushed him in the direction of “learning to love the people that he’s “destined” to rule” can I just point out Holy SHIT Aragorn why do you need your friend DYING to figure out why maybe you should care about the people you’re supposed to rule????

But back to Lothlorien: Boromir feels the increasing presence of the Ring. He is shamed by Galadriel’s scrutiny, she scares the shit out of everyone, particularly him but the reason she so quickly identifies the threat Boromir poses is because she feels that threat as well. Both Galadriel and Boromir share the quality of protectors of their people who have a Ring freakout in front of Frodo (though Boromir gets a lot more flak for it than Galadriel).

I don’t think that point can be overstated. Boromir’s vulnerability to the Ring comes from his love of his people, not from personal ambition or love of power, except in how that power can protect others. It’s one of the evils of the Ring that it takes that which is good in people and twists it to evil purposes. (One could even argue that the Ring did this to Frodo as well, using his love and protectiveness of the Shire to make inroads into his mind and heart, when as a result of agreeing to carry it to Rivendell to get it out of the Shire he ended up being that much more exposed to it.)

Boromir is remorseful.

To be honest, the scene of Boromir succumbing to the Ring’s call is one of the greatest emotional beats in the films. I don’t feel any need to defend Boromir’s actions, they’re obviously terrible there, but godDAMN do they drive home the threat of the Ring. And here’s the thing, that threat wouldn’t be nearly so scary if it didn’t happen to such a demonstrably good person who clearly cared so much about the hobbits that he was willing to die for them. Even without his guilt over his attack on Frodo, you know he still would have gladly died saving Merry and Pippin’s lives.

Let’s not even go into how fucking heartbreaking everything about his death is because I might burst into tears right here. Suffice to say, Boromir’s death was heroic. He didn’t need to die to redeem himself, he deserved to live, that argument in general is stupid. His death is tragic because of what a great person he was, and the Ring is terrible because of what it did to such a great person.

Boromir was a hero.

We do get that one shining, gorgeous moment in The Two Towers EE with the retrospective on Boromir. Standing by his brother, surrounded by his men, we get a glimpse of the leader he was before he faced the corruption and deprivation of the quest. For all that Boromir is often used as an example of the corruptibility of Men in the narrative, it is clear that he was always a hero, and that the reason the threat is so fearsome is because of the heights he fell from in his moment of doubt, and how brief that fall was speaks to the strength of his will.

Boromir for me into the category of fascinating Tolkien characters who truly struggle with evil. Frodo, Bilbo, Thorin, Galadriel, Theoden, Denethor, and Boromir all go head to head with the corrupting powers of Sauron (and Sauron-like forces) and risk losing their soul to them. Some fail. Some do terrible things while they’re fighting off that influence. But for them the risk is real, what will happen if they don’t throw the influence off is clear, and the avenue into their hearts is often their love of their people and those dear to them in life. That makes them complex, interesting characters. It’s the reason I find Aragorn’s flirtation with corruption to be unconvincing, because he never seems truly at risk and there was never a real moment where it seemed he might give in or what the consequences would be if he did. By contrast Boromir did show us the risks. He was complex, he showed us the world beyond the narrow scope of the nine members of the Fellowship, he showed us what was at stake both on a global scale and on a personal one. As a result, he was one of the most fascinating characters in the film trilogy and I love him to this day.

Some Boromir fic recs, if you made it this far

(Both are non-shippy/Gen because the only person I ever wanted to ship Boromir with was me, and goddamn the LotR fandom had some great gen fics)

Boromir’s Return, by Osheen Nevoy - in which Boromir returns to life and must struggle with his own redemption, and the strange creature that resurrected him (not a Mary Sue), one of the most complex and well-written fanfics I’ve ever read.

Veiling of the Sun, by @thegraytigress - Boromir succumbs to the Ring for more than a few moments, joining forces with the orcs sent to collect Frodo, and everything that can go wrong does go wrong. He eventually wakes from the haze to see with horror what he has done, and must set out on the road of his own redemption while the Fellowship tries to put back together the broken pieces of a quest gone horribly wrong. Heart-wrenching, one of the greatest LotR angst fics I ever read.

And the greatest gif ever made:

#boromir #lotr #fellowship of the ring #my meta #boromir meta #aragorn hate tag #i mean it's pretty mild I just think Boromir is better

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kazhan · 6 years

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THOUGHTS ON THE LAST JEDI

Hello there!

Here are my thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi. First of all, it’s FUCKING LONG because I had a lot to say so… sorry?

Aaaaaand I hated the movie, sooooo you’ll probably won’t like this if you loved it. Careful, it’s super salty!

Oh, and of course I SPOIL THE WHOLE MOVIE!

THE FIRST ORDER AND SNOKE

In TFA, we learn that the First Order ‘rose from the Empire’s ashes and that they are fighting the New Republic to take over the galaxy. We have no idea how long this has been going on, but we do know that the New Republic is supporting the Resistance (they are two different things!) and it looks like the First Order is not yet controlling the galaxy. Now, during TFA, the First Order destroyed five planets of the New Republic with the Starkiller. And during The Last Jedi, we understand that the Republic is almost destroyed (apparently, Leia’s fleet is the only thing that’s left of the Republic and they’re only supposed to have friends in the galaxy, because now the Republic and the Resistance are the same thing?), and it looks like a lot more planets are controlled by the First Order.

The New Republic was composed of five planets?

How could the First Order struggle so much against the Republic and the Resistance if they’re only composed of five planets? Do you have any ideas how many planets there are in the Star Wars galaxy? At the end of ROTJ, the Empire is destroyed and we see numerous planets celebrating its end. Building a new Republic to rule the galaxy couldn’t have been easy so yeah, let’s just assume that even if 30 years have passed and even if, apparently, a lot of systems were thrilled by the Empire’s downfall, a few systems only were part of the New Republic. Once again, how can the First Order appear so powerful and resourceful (their weapons, their army, etc…) and still struggle so much against the New Republic and the Resistance, if all they have is five planets and the small fleet we see in TLJ?

TFA didn’t explain anything about the First Order so I was expecting TLJ to tell us more about it, but… well, that never happened. And I know books and comics were published to try to explain how we got there but the first trilogy never needed books to fill plot holes. And I’m here to talk about the movies only.

I’ve seen people say that we don’t need to know, because we didn’t know anything about the Empire in SW4 and it was fine. Well, let me tell you, you are WRONG. Sure, we didn’t know everything about the Empire, Vader and Palpatine but by the end of ANH, we did know this:

The Jedi used to work for the Republic to maintain peace in the galaxy before the Empire took over;

Vader killed all the Jedi for the Empire;

The Clone Wars is somehow connected to the Republic’s downfall, which means that the Empire was created 20 years ago;

The Rebellion has been fighting for years and some of its members fought alongside the Jedi during the Clone Wars;

Obi-Wan used to be a General and fought for Princess Leia’s father during the CW, against the Empire;

Vader killed Luke’s father;

The Emperor manipulated Obi-Wan’s apprentice and is the reason he became Darth Vader.

We are told all these things during Obi-Wan’s conversation with Luke. One small conversation between two characters tells us what we need to know to understand that the Empire wasn’t always there, that Vader and the Emperor are the reason it was created, etc… AND by the end of ESB, we knew this:

The Emperor knew Anakin Skywalker;

The Emperor is a Sith;

Vader is Anakin Skywalker.

More information to understand who those characters are. And honestly? It’s far more information than what we know now about the First Order and Snoke. Now, at the end of TLJ, what do we know about the First Order?

The First Order ‘rose from the ‘ashes of the Empire’;

The First Order uses the same weapons, military system and methods than the Empire;

The First Order wants to take over the galaxy because they think the New Republic is corrupted;

The First Order has strong connections and resources, but we have no idea with who, and how.

We don’t know how or when the First Order was created. We don’t know how they managed to get so many resources, nor which parts of the galaxy are actually controlled by them. We have no idea how powerful they are and yet, they seem as dangerous as the Empire was when it was controlling the whole galaxy.

Now, what do we know about Snoke?

He is like… super powerful. He can lift people and manipulate them like puppets without moving a single finger, he managed to connect Rey and Kylo by creating a Force Bond between them, he managed to manipulate Kylo Ren without Luke Skywalker noticing;

Something happened to Snoke and disfigured him;

Snoke wants all the Jedi dead;

Snoke wants Kylo Ren to be like Vader;

Snoke is the Knights of Ren’s Master, he taught them and Kylo Ren.

Where does his desire to see Kylo Ren becoming Vader’s legacy come from? He looks old so we can assume that he was already there when the Empire was still a thing, but who was he, what was he doing? He’s not a Sith, the Emperor and Vader were the last ones, but then what is he? He looks so strong, how come no one ever heard of him before? How did he become the First Order’s leader, why do people follow him? Because as far as we know, if the First Order’s generals (like Hux) want to destroy the Republic, it’s because they think it’s corrupted, because they think the First Order will do a better job at ruling the galaxy. Snoke wants… the Jedi to be destroyed. He doesn’t even seem to be a politician, or to want to have anything to do with politics. So why does he lead them?

And now, we will never know where he came from, why he was so powerful and what he wanted, because he’s dead (and I’ll come back to Snoke’s death later). He was presented as the new ‘Emperor’, the new evil mastermind in TFA when he is in fact… nothing?

Let’s go back to what some people said about us not needing to know all this because we didn’t know everything either in the first trilogy. I just proved that we did know a lot more and there are other things I’d like to say to explain why it’s just a huge plot hole to not have more informations about the First Order and Snoke.

George Lucas had always planned on telling us everything about the Emperor and how the Empire was created, by the time of the original trilogy he knew he could leave a few blurry things because he would explain them later and it didn’t make people frown in confusion when he stated that the galaxy was ruled by an Empire. It was the very beginning of the story, if he wanted to begin with ‘this galaxy is ruled by an evil emperor’ it rose no questions. No more than ‘in this story, there’s a power called the Force’. But TFA isn’t the beginning of a story. It’s a sequel, a new chapter to something already existing. And at the end of ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance won, peace was to be restored to the galaxy, the Sith were gone and the only ‘trained’ Force user left was Luke Skywalker. Now, TFA tells us that after 30 years, the Empire is still somehow there, alright, but how? Snoke, a super strong Force user, is leading the First Order, alright, but how? We don’t know anything.

“We don’t need to know everything!”

Alright.

Imagine.

At the end of LOTR (I’m only talking about the movies, because we’re only talking about movies here), Frodo destroys the ring and peace is restored in the Middle Earth. Well, 30 years later, the Gondor and Rohan are wiped out, and an evil guy wearing a ring with an army of uruk and orcs is ready to burn the Shire. But no one ever tells you who this guy is.

How he got that ring and built his army.

How he managed to wipe out the realm of men nor what is going on out there.

You know nothing, but you don’t need to know, right? It’s not like we knew much about Sauron, right?

Or imagine. Harry Potter: 30 years later, the Death Eaters are back, led by a guy no one ever heard of, they took over the Ministry and are ruling over Great Britain, the Order of the Phoenix led by Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are hiding, trying to escape/ fight them. But no one ever explains how that happened.

It kinda feels wrong, and like something’s missing, right?

Exactly.

And since Obi-Wan managed to explain who was Darth Vader, more or less how the Empire took over the galaxy and more or less who was the Emperor in one scene, don’t tell me that we couldn’t have had that in TFA or TLJ.

SNOKE/KYLO/REY

People were happy because they thought Snoke’s death was surprising. Well, if you pay attention, it really wasn’t. The whole scene between Snoke, Rey and Kylo was the SAME as the one between the Emperor, Luke and Vader in ROTJ.

EMPEROR/LUKE/VADER:

Luke surrenders himself to Vader in order to protect his friend, and because he thinks there is still good in his father and he wants to save him;

The Emperor wants Luke to turn to the Dark Side and to take Vader’s place;

The Emperor lured the fleet by giving them the code they used to get to Endor, but it was a trap meant to destroy them;

The Emperor forces Luke to watch the Rebel’s fleet being destroyed to anger him and make him Fall;

The Emperor tortures Luke and tries to kill him when he realizes that he can’t turn him to the Dark Side because he is ‘a Jedi, like his father before him’;

Vader is obviously conflicted during the whole scene;

Luke begs his father for help;

Vader kills the Emperor to save his son.

SNOKE/REY/KYLO:

Rey surrenders herself to Kylo Ren because she thinks there’s still good in him and she wants to save him;

Snoke wants Rey to tell him where Luke is in order to kill the Last Jedi;

Snoke lured Rey into coming to him by creating a Force Bond between her and Kylo because he wants him to finally ‘fulfill his destiny’;

Snoke forces Rey to watch the Rebel’s fleet being destroyed to make her realize how desperate the situation is, in order to make her reveal where Luke is;

Snoke tortures Rey and tells Kylo to kill her when he realizes she is a ‘true Jedi’ and won’t tell him where Luke is;

Kylo is obviously conflicted during the whole scene;

Rey lowkey begs Kylo not to do it;

Kylo kills Snoke to free himself of his control over him (and probably because he was getting sick of being treated like shit by Snoke), in order to ‘save Rey’ and ask her to ‘join him and rule the galaxy with him’ (sounds familiar?)

I know, a few details were added, some motivations were changed, but… deep down, it’s still the same thing. So the moment Rey surrendered herself and was led to Snoke by Kylo, I knew he was going to die, killed by Kylo. I didn’t know how, nor why, but I knew it was going to end this way. Snoke even died for the same reasons the Emperor did: his pride and arrogance made him think his apprentice’s loyalty was absolute (I won’t linger on the fact that Snoke appears to be suuuuuper powerful, but he didn’t hear nor ‘feel’ the lightsaber moving RIGHT NEXT TO HIM).

You know what else I knew? That killing Snoke wouldn’t be Kylo’s redemption. That he would still be a fucking asshole. Vader didn’t only kill the Emperor because there was still good in him, but because Luke was his son. His own flesh and blood, the only thing he had left of his beloved wife Padme (you know, the woman he loved so much he turned to the Dark Side to save her?). Kylo didn’t kill Snoke because of his love for Rey, she’s no one for Kylo, even their ‘special bond’ was fake because it was created by Snoke who just admitted it minutes ago. He didn’t kill Snoke to save her because watching her die would have been too much to endure (the same guy who killed his own father in the previous movie!!!).

He killed Snoke to get rid of him, because he was sick of being manipulated and torn apart between who he is, and who Snoke wanted him to be.

And honestly, Kylo killing Snoke as a Redemption act would have been too much like ROTJ and well, they couldn’t make an exact copy of the previous movie, right?

People thought it was smart. People thought it was a very clever twist. Well, let me tell you, you don’t make a smart and original movie by taking another movie’s plot and twisting it. You make a smart and original movie by creating your own plot, your own scenes. A plot twist isn’t smart and cool because people weren’t expecting it (and as I said, it was to be expected, honestly), it’s smart and cool because it’s well-written.

Now, what does Snoke’s death feel like to me?

It feels like Rian Johnson didn’t give a shit about Snoke, thought that the character was useless and uninteresting and decided to get rid of him as soon as possible because he didn’t want to even try to make this character interesting.

That’s not being smart, that’s being fucking lazy.

FINN IS UNINTERESTING AND HIS WHOLE ARC WAS USELESS

TFA introduced us to Finn, a young man who was kidnapped as a child by the First Order, brainwashed and turned into a Stormtrooper. Honestly, I loved that idea. I was really looking forward to see what they were going to do with this character. In TFA, it made him selfish (not in a bad way, it was a self preservation above all kind of selfish): he wanted to escape, fly away from the First Order and he found himself deep into the Resistance’s business but it wasn’t by choice. The only thing that made him stay was Rey, because he cared about her. He didn’t do things because he was brave, he did them because he wanted to protect Rey and save his own life.

Now, what did I want for Finn in TLJ? First of all, at the end of TFA, Finn was badly injured by Kylo Ren (the guy almost severed his spine in half???) so I expected him to be absent from a good part of the movie, or the movie to begin much later after TFA, not… a few days after Starkiller was destroyed? Fuck, I was worried for Finn, I wondered how he was going to get better, what was going to happen to him. Of course I knew he was going to survive, but there’s a difference between having him recover from deadly injuries and… well, those injuries not being acknowledged at all. And I wanted his past as a brainwashed Stormtrooper to be a big part of who he is, to matter.

What did we get? Well first of all, his injuries were apparently not that important. He was healed in a few days, no consequences, he’s perfectly fine. Even the jacket Poe gave him is perfectly fine, nothing happened. Remember, Kylo Ren pierced through his shoulder with his lightsaber and cut his back. Unless that’s a new jacket and it definitely looks like Poe’s jacket, I’ll just assume that Rian Johnson didn’t watch TFA or decided that nothing in this movie really happened.

Then, the fact that he is a former Stormtrooper and only knew this kind of life before he deserted doesn’t matter at all in TLJ. Well, he knows where to find stuff, because he used to wipe the floor on board the First Order’s ships. Yay.

But he goes from “Fuck the First Order, I’m out” to “I’m gonna sacrifice myself to save the Resistance” and nothing happened to make him change that fast. We had no character development and worse than this, his whole arc in the movie was useless.

Once again, people thought it was super smart to have them elaborate a plan, and fail. Because that’s how it works in real life, so it made everything a bit more realistic. SURE. It could have been interesting to see them go through all this to fail at the end because yes, everything doesn’t always go according to plan in real life and for once, the good guys don’t have it easy.

But the whole plot was so uninteresting and sounded so trivial compared to what was actually happening to the Resistance’s fleet?

Their friends are about to die, all that is left of the Resistance/Republic is about to be destroyed but sure, let’s spend a whole part of the movie on how corrupt the society is, how bad it is to mistreat animals and how slavery is wrong. I’m not saying these themes aren’t important, because they are, but they felt unimportant compared to what was happening to the others. It felt like bigger issues to deal with later because right now more serious and pressing matters had to be taken care of. I felt like Finn’s plot was there to fill the movie, to make it look like things were happening but… well, nothing really happened in that movie, and Finn is a very good representation of that fact.

I also had a lot of issues with Benicio Del Toro’s character’s, DJ, and Rose, but I’ll talk about them later.

LEIA AND THE FORCE

Well, I think everyone agrees on this one: Leia surviving this explosion and acting like Superman was ridiculous. It looked stupid and made it look like Leia is super strong with the Force and… since when is she able to do something like this? Did she get any training? I don’t think so.

But more importantly, what was the purpose of this scene? Was it to show us that Leia had the Force? Well, we’ve known this since Empire Strikes Back, it was confirmed by Luke in ROTJ, and we’ve seen it multiple time in TFA and TLJ. She felt Han’s death in TFA, she felt her son and Luke in TLJ. Leia has the Force, we knew this. And she didn’t need to fly into space to prove us that she is strong. Her strength in the Force is shown through her ability to feel her loved ones’ presence through the Force. But apparently, to be cool and badass, you have to fly, make people fly or mind control them.

Well, we already knew that Princess Leia was a real badass, we already knew that she was awesome, no one needed that stupid, ugly scene to understand that Princess Leia is a fucking Queen™.

REY’S PARENTAGE AND POWERS

You knew this was coming, right? I already had big issues with Rey’s powers in TFA. I thought she was too strong. The fact that she managed to defeat Kylo Ren didn’t really bothered me, we’ve seen that she was able to fight at the beginning of the movie, and Kylo was already injured and blinded by rage, while Rey managed to empty her mind and remain calm to get the upper-hand. So… I was kinda okay with it. What bothered me was the fact that she managed to resist Kylo’s mind control, and she also managed to easily mind control a Stormtrooper.

But then I thought… hey, we don’t know anything about her, she doesn’t even have a surname, she’s just “Rey” and well, that’s a bit shady (even Anakin had a surname and he was a slave). Then we knew that she had been abandoned on Jakku, and for some reason, she had a Rebel pilot’s helmet and doll that seemed somewhat important to her. And maybe it was just to show us that she was going to join the Resistance but… we knew that the moment we saw her, so was it necessary, or was it just a way to imply that maybe her parents were connected to the Resistance? And finally, in Rey’s Force vision, we heard Obi-Wan Kenobi talking to her and in TFA’s first teaser, Luke said this:

‘The Force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My sister has it. You have that power too.’

And it’s just a teaser, this line isn’t even in the movie, and we don’t know for sure who Luke is talking to (could be Ben Solo but honestly… it doesn’t make any sense) but still. It implied some form of connection between Luke and Rey.

I’m not saying I wanted Rey to be Luke’s daughter or a Kenobi or whatever. I’m saying that making her a nobody doesn’t make sense. And sure, in TLJ, Luke insisted on the fact that anyone can be Force sensitive and that’s absolutely true, it doesn’t depend on who your parents are (even though… well, it can help a bit). And I know people hated the midichlorian thing, but they’re a fact. Disney got rid of the Extended Universe and decided that it didn’t exist but they can’t. Ignore. Lucas’ movies.

So, sure, someone being strong in the Force doesn’t mean their parents were, and someone being strong in the Force doesn’t mean their children will be (even though… I’m not so sure, I mean, it’s kinda implied that Luke and Leia are strong in the Force because their father is, or why would Obi Wan and Yoda have decided to separate them and hide them from their father?).

Now, in TLJ, we learn that Rey’s awakening to the Force is due to… Kylo Ren having turned to the Dark Side? Or something like that. So… she wasn’t born with it? It came later? Or she was born with it but she’s getting stronger because Kylo is also getting stronger? I’m sorry, I’m confused.

And alright, let’s admit Rey is another ‘Chosen One’ more or less created by the Force itself just like Anakin was. Well, this is not original at all? Sure, now it makes sense that she’s ‘a nobody’ because Anakin was ‘a nobody’ too but why are people screaming genius when it’s something we’ve already seen before?

And it still doesn’t explain why Rey is so powerful. She manages to resist Snoke’s intrusion inside her mind (do I need to remind you how powerful Snoke appears to be?), she lifts a huge pile of big rocks effortlessly (she even acts… kinda surprised? I mean, her face says ‘I’m the one doing this? Neat.’ Seriously?). We’ve never seen Yoda, the greatest Jedi Master do something so easily, and Anakin never was that powerful, and he was the Chosen One, the subject of a whole fucking prophecy.

There was so much teasing, so many hints telling us that Rey was someone special, that her origins were probably important.

But she’s a nobody and people think it’s amazing because wow, I didn’t see that one coming.

Of course you didn’t see that one coming, that’s because it doesn’t make any sense.

Rey’s parents are nobodies, scavengers from Jakku and they sold her for drinking money before ending up in a pauper’s grave. In TFA, we saw the moment Rey was sold and a spaceship taking off the planet. I’m sorry, but it looked a lot like after leaving her on Jakku, her parents left the planet for good, but now, they were from Jakku and died on Jakku. Sure, they could have left for a while and come back later but it just feels like JJ Abrams wanted to tell a different story about Rey’s parentage and Rian Johnson decided that he didn’t care about that story.

Now, I really wouldn’t have been bothered by Rey being a nobody if the question of her parentage hadn’t been turned into a huge mystery and an identity crisis, something so awful Rey decided to hide it/forgot about it, etc…

I’ve seen people saying that Kylo Ren lied to her. He didn’t. That ‘big reveal’ isn’t meant for Rey, just like Kylo said she knew this already, it was meant for the audience. Rey isn’t shocked, she’s not surprised, she’s not yelling at him “it can’t be true!!!”. Rey’s face at this moment is the face of someone who knew all this and just didn’t want to admit it.

So no, I don’t think we’ll have another big reveal in the next episode, Rey’s parents are no one and the way it was done sucked.

LUKE’S CHARACTERIZATION AND DEATH

Oh boy, do I have a lot to say about this. Mark Hamill wasn’t happy with Rian Johnson’s characterization of Luke in TLJ and I 100% agree with Mark on this one. The guy I saw in that movie wasn’t my Luke either.

Who is Luke Skywalker? At first, he’s just a farm boy, barely an adult, who dreams to become a pilot and do great things, more important than being a moist cultivator on Tatooine. He’s stubborn, a bit whiny and he’s brave but he kinda gives up easily (we’ve seen this when his uncle told him to stay at the farm a little bit more, Luke threw a little tantrum and was better at brooding than actually doing something, and we’ve also seen it during his training with Yoda, where he gave up because he thought it was impossible). But he evolved through the movies and by ROTJ, he wasn’t really the type to give up anymore, he had an absolute faith in the Force and he was definitely wiser, too.

Luke Skywalker is also the guy who thought there was still good in the second biggest douchebag of the universe. Luke refused to kill his own father, even if it meant he was going to die, because he wanted to save him. At this point, Vader had murdered almost all the Jedi Order, including children, tortured Leia, blown up a whole system, there was literally no reason to believe he could be saved. And yet. Luke thought there was still good in him.

TLJ!Luke took one look at Ben Solo, his nephew, and he saw that there was so much darkness inside him he thought he had to kill him to prevent him from turning to the dark side.

I’m sorry, WHAT?

I don’t care that he only thought that for a second, I don’t care that he felt ashamed of himself right after that thought crossed his mind.

The fact that he even thought about killing Ben is revolting.

Ben was still young, his apprentice, his nephew, he had never done anything wrong at this point. Sure, Luke saw what Ben could do because let’s go back to one of Star Wars’ most important lessons: the future is always in motion and by trying to change it, you may actually be doing exactly what will make things go wrong. Luke was taught that lesson when he refused to listen to Yoda and left to save his friends in ESB: he lost his hand and didn’t even save anyone, he ended up being the one needing to be saved.

So yeah, Luke saw what could happen, not what will happen. How could Luke Skywalker, the guy who thought there was still good in a mass murderer, decide that he had to kill his own nephew because he might be dangerous?

It’s like he gave up before he even tried to look for a solution. That’s not Luke Skywalker. Also… no one is just… born dark and emo. That ‘big darkness’ Luke saw inside Kylo must have came from somewhere. Anakin ended up being a big asshole and he clearly wasn’t born like this, it didn’t come from nowhere, so what happened to Ben and what made him so… dark? We know why he’s like this now (his bloody uncle and mentor tried to murder him!!!!) but what made him so dark it scared the shit out of Luke?

Now, I understand why this made Luke feel like a giant failure, like he’s not fitted to train anyone and why he felt so ashamed he needed to run away for a while. There are a few lines delivered by Luke that I really liked because it felt true, who wouldn’t feel like shit after all that?

But.

It feels like in 30 years, Luke Skywalker never evolved. Even Yoda said it! He’s still the same as before, he didn’t change at all, he gives up too quickly, etc…

AND WHY THE HELL DID HE LEAVE A MAP FOR THE RESISTANCE TO FIND HIM IF HE INTENDED TO DIE ON THAT FUCKING ISLAND?

I mean, seriously?! If he didn’t want anyone to find him, why did he make it possible? If he never intended to go back to the Resistance, if he never wanted to train anyone again, why the map? And honestly, just like Mark Hamill said, Luke Skywalker wouldn’t give up that easily. If they wanted to make a darker version of Luke, they should have made it more realistic. Have him lose Ben and his new Jedi Temple but also Leia, Han, everyone, have him lose big battles against the First Order, watch the people he tried to save die horribly.

But this is just Luke acting like a big fucking drama queen and I’m sorry honey, but that’s supposed to be your father.

He abandoned his nephew, his sister, his best friend, he gave up on everything he stood for and that’s supposed to be an ‘original and interesting’ characterization of Luke Skywalker? He could have left to find a way to defeat Snoke, a way to get more in tune with the Force because not being able to save Ben and protect his other apprentices made him feel like he needed to reconnect with the Force, he could have left to find those books left by the Jedi Order because he obviously needed to know more to be a good Jedi Master.

There were a lot of better reasons, but Rian Johnson decided that Luke had given up.

Wow. It’s more like Rian Johnson gave up on making JJ Abrams’ ideas more interesting and decided to make them even more boring because he didn’t like them.

You want an interesting plot? Have Luke realize that the Jedi Order wasn’t perfect, that this Light vs Dark business created nothing but trouble, that it wasn’t how the balance was going to be brought to the galaxy. Have Luke learn the ways of the Grey Jedi. Hell, have him create the Grey Jedi (EU doesn’t exist anymore, so why the fuck not?) and teach Rey because that’s balance, and that’s why he failed with Kylo: he can’t be 100% Light or 100% Dark, he is both and he should be able to master both and not let it control him.

Instead of that, he gave up on everyone, including his own family, and decided that nothing was worth fighting for anymore.

He even had the audacity to lie to Rey about what happened with Kylo. And finally, because Force Ghost Yoda decided to kick his ass and remind him that he was being a whiny bitch, Luke decided to help the Resistance.

By dying.

His death was meaningless and useless. And I can’t believe Kylo even fell into that trap. Luke looked younger and he was using his father’s lightsaber, the one Kylo and Rey had just destroyed! I know Kylo is easily blinded by rage but can he get more stupid? Well, people were surprised when they realized it was only an astral projection even though they had clearly seen what Luke looks like now so I guess Kylo’s not the only one who’s blind.

And honestly, Kylo and Rey can do astral projections (they were connected by Snoke, sure, but that didn’t kill any of them, right?) but it exhausts Luke? I won’t say it killed him, because he obviously pulled a Kenobi there and… well, it was a pretty scene, with the twin suns reminding us of Tatooine’s twin suns, etc…

But Luke abandoned everyone, came back to give a speech about hope and taunt his confused, hurt and lost nephew, and died.

He became a legend and a symbol of hope, great. Wasn’t he already a legend? I mean, Rey told us so in TFA, and we saw those slave kids playing with dolls and telling Luke Skywalker’s story at the end of TLJ so… why did he have to die? To make a diversion? I’m sure there were other ways to help the Resistance escape.

Luke’s death is another pointless and definitely not smart ‘plot twist’ and I can’t believe people are praising Rian Johnson for this.

ROSE

TLJ introduced us to Rose, a maintenance worker whose sister dies as a hero at the beginning of the movie. People were thrilled to see another POC getting a part in Star Wars and I understand why, but I wasn’t that excited, but I’ll come back to this later because I have a lot to say about diversity in the last Star Wars movies.

Now, Rose. She could have been an interesting character. Her sister just died for the Resistance and we saw her lowkey sad about it for a few minutes but I never felt like it was really important so why make this connection between Rose and Paige? She’s a maintenance worker and apparently she’s smart and brave too, so I thought I was gonna love this character.

But the plan to destroy the First Order’s tracker failed. The only reason why this character was created wasn’t even shown because Finn and Rose got arrested by the First Order before she could do her job! And because this plan failed, the only reasons why Rose was introduced to us were to fill the new POC quota on Disney’s agenda and to be Finn’s love interest because obviously we needed a (useless) love story (and of course it couldn’t be Poe).

I mean, it’s okay to tease people, queerbait and make subtle allusions, because it’s FUN you know? (LOL), but of course they weren’t going to be serious about this.

Finn didn’t need a love interest. He needed character development and he didn’t even get one. He just got one stupid kiss from a girl he met 12 hours ago because she’s fascinated by heroes (but somehow it’s also stupid to do heroic things? I’m confused again).

This character was wasted, and by being associated with Rose, Finn was wasted too. Honestly, at this point, I wish she hadn’t stopped him from killing himself in that heroic gesture because then, maybe she would have gotten a nice character development.

DJ = SHITTY LANDO

That… won’t take long. I already said that the whole Rose/Finn plot was useless because their plan failed, and because nothing important nor interesting happened to them during their journey.

But Benicio Del Toro’s character, DJ, is also one of the reasons why I really disliked that part of the movie. Honestly, this dude is more or less Lando Calrissian. Just like Leia, Han, C3PO and Chewie end up on Bespin because Han thinks his good old friend Lando will help them, Rose and Finn go find a hacker to save the Resistance fleet. Well, they don’t find the good guy, but they end up with DJ, the guy decides to help them if they pay them and-- oh, surprise, he betrays them.

Sounds familiar?

Sure, not for the same reasons, Lando is a good guy who did this to save his people, DJ did it for money.

And DJ remained an asshole, because if he had helped them in the end, I guess everyone would have said that DJ was too much like Lando. But he still feels too close to Lando. And once again, we are given a shitty plot twist just for the sake of twisting things.

THE ASSASSINATION OF GENERAL HUX

We get it, Rian Johnson. You didn’t like JJ Abrams’ work. You even hated some of his characters. But did Hux have to become the movie’s comic relief? The victim? The nazi officer straight out of a French satirical movie? TFA introduced us to a young officer blinded by ambition and by his convictions, able to make good speeches and entrance a full crowd. We - the audience - may have thought he was ridiculous because we don’t believe in his ideals. But he wasn’t ridiculous for his men nor for the enemy. General Hux reminded me of a young Nazi officer, so devoted to his cause he was able to give into mass murder, so sure he was doing the right thing for the galaxy. I didn’t think he was a funny character, I thought it was tragic.

In TLJ, he was mocked by everyone, Domhnall Gleeson even had to change the way he portrayed him to make him look stupid and ridiculous in every scene. A caricature rather than the representation of a man blinded by his beliefs. It was painful to watch and it wasn’t even funny. The Kylo/Hux rivalry in TFA was interesting, they were both fighting for Snoke’s favour and we could feel the tension between them because when one disappointed Snoke, the other was there, ready to gloat and prove that he was better. But in TLJ? It was just stupid, because despite all his flaws, Kylo isn’t ridiculous so of course he’s superior and Hux doesn’t even represent a danger to him.

But more importantly, Hux is, besides Kylo and Snoke, the highest member of the First Order’s army. Which means that he represents the First Order.

How can we take the First Order seriously, and see them as a real menace, if they are so. Fucking. Stupid?! When Poe taunts Hux during what felt like AGES at the beginning of the movie, I heard people laugh. It made me cringe. First because it was too much, secondly because why the hell didn’t Hux realize Poe was just buying time?

And through the whole movie, Hux is disrespected by his enemies, his allies, by everyone. There isn’t a single scene where he’s acting seriously. He’s just a moron, the First Order and the Resistance’s doormat.

“But Han mocked the Empire’s soldiers and officers in the first trilogy.” Yes, but he never made the highest ranked officer look like morons.

“But Vader mistreated his officers in the first trilogy.” Sure, but it wasn’t only meant to make them look ridiculous and make people laugh at them, it was also (mainly) to show how cruel Vader was.

I didn’’t mind Snoke punishing Hux because he failed him. But I hated how ridiculous and pathetic Hux looked and sounded like during that scene.

See what I mean?

General Hux could have been an interesting character, I was looking forward to seeing more about him, to see how far his devotion could get.

I got the most stupid running gag ever created. Thank you, Rian Johnson.

HOLDO’S PLAN

First of all, why did the Resistance fleet decided to jump in the middle of nowhere? Right after the hyperspace jump, they say they have to look for a new place to hide but honestly, couldn’t they do that while in hyperspace? Don’t they have a fucking list of bases they can use to hide in? Why are they so unprepared? Or they were super lucky to have jumped in the middle of nowhere, buuuut close to an old Resistance base?

Then, Holdo not sharing her plan with her people doesn’t make any fucking sense. She remained quiet just so Poe could have his little tantrum and stupid mutiny and just so Rian Johnson could “blow people’s mind” with his “amazing plot twist”.

Oh my god, you thought she was traitor, but she had a plan all this time!

Why didn’t she tell Poe? Because she doesn’t like him? Well then she’s even more stupid than he is. Even when he starts his mutiny, she still doesn’t tell him! How is that smart? How is that an amazing plot twist?

But yeah, if she had told Poe about her plan, Finn and Rose wouldn’t have left on their useless journey to look for a hacker, a good portion of the movie would have been erased and… well, would it have been so bad? Well, maybe people would have realized how devoid of any actual plot this movie is.

REY AND KYLO

Why does Rey want to save Kylo Ren? What does she know about him?

He tortured her;

He killed a lot of innocent people;

He tried to kill Finn (and almost succeeded);

He killed Han Solo, his own father and Rey’s first father figure.

She has all the reasons to hate him and to think he’s a lost cause and only deserves to get killed. And I was also revolted to find out that Luke had wanted to kill Kylo when he hadn’t done anything wrong, I was angry at Luke and I felt bad for Ben Solo, for that kid who must have felt terribly betrayed by his uncle and mentor, who must have been hurt by this.

But that doesn’t mean I want to jump into a ship and risk my life to save him. And that guy didn’t torture me, didn’t try to kill me or my friends.

So why does Rey suddenly wants to save him?

Oh because there’s still good in him and Rey is kind?

If there was that much good in him, we would have seen Kylo destroyed by what he did to Han Solo. Not torn apart, not confused, destroyed. If there was that much good in him, he wouldn’t have killed Snoke to take his place at the head of the First Order.

And you know what? This person explained exactly why Rey wanting to save Kylo didn’t make any sense so I’m going to be like Rian Johnson: fucking lazy and direct you to that very good post.

And you know what pissed me off even more than the fact that the girl suddenly felt the need to save the emo guy’s soul even though she had no reasons to?

The resemblance between Kylo/Rey’s exchange after Snoke’s death, and Anakin/Padme’s exchange on Mustafar.

KYLO/REY:

“Rey. I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy.”

“Don’t do this Ben. Please don’t go this way.”

ANAKIN/PADME: “[...] and together you and I can rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be.”

[...]

“You’re going down a path I can’t follow.”

Am I the only one who noticed that? Because let me tell you, that scene made me sick. Anakin and Padme are, in my opinion, a problematic ship, but that’s another debate and it’s probably not for the same reasons most people have, and TLJ decided to get two people who have absolutely no reasons to feel attracted to each other the more or less same lines Anakin and Padme had in ROTS?

Fuck you.

(And I’ll add this: I don’t care about Reylo. After everything that happened between them, their relationship cannot be healthy. I like reading about unhealthy relationships, they can be very interesting, but I’ll never put Rey in a HAPPY relationship with Kylo. I’m not trying to lecture anyone, just saying that Reylo is definitely not my thing.)

FORCE GHOST YODA

When I finished TFA, the first thing I thought was… why the hell did Anakin never appear as a Force Ghost to tell his grandson he was being a fucking idiot?

Alright, let’s just admit that the Force Ghost fought their battles, they don’t want to get involved anymore and the livings are supposed to deal with their own business.

But they had to bring back Force Ghost Yoda and it just ruined everything. Because now, Force Ghosts still feel the need to meddle, to give advice. So now, why the hell did Anakin never appear as a Force Ghost to his grandson to tell him he was being a fucking idiot?

Have you guys met Anakin ‘Drama Queen’ Skywalker? That guy would have slapped Ben’s face, tell him to burn that stupid helmet and kill that son of a bitch Snoke for trying to turn him to the Dark Side and manipulate him. Anakin would have killed Snoke himself, I mean, apparently, Force Ghost now have powers so why the fuck not?

And I liked what Yoda told Luke. I liked that he told him he was being a whiny bitch, that he admitted that the Jedi Order wasn’t perfect. But if Force Ghosts still meddle with the living’s decisions, why didn’t he slap Luke’s face sooner? I know Yoda is a fucking troll, but why did it have to come so late?

If Rian Johnson had never brought back the Force Ghosts, I would have just assumed that, as I said before, they were done getting involved in all this drama. But if the wise Yoda still meddles, why didn’t the others do the same before everything went so bad?

The only reason Yoda appeared in this movie is fanservice and I don’t mind fanservice, as long as it doesn’t make the whole plot completely incoherent.

THE KNIGHTS OF REN

This won’t take long: WHERE THE HELL ARE THE KNIGHTS OF REN???????

They’re not the guys in red armors Rey and Kylo fight, those are Elite Praetorian Guards, their uniform is close to the one the Emperor’s Royal Guard used to wear and they’re strong because they’re supposed to be Snoke’s bodyguards, not because they’re the Knights of Ren (and they’re 8 or 9, there were 6 Knights of Ren shown in TFA).

So where are they? What happened to them? They weren’t even mentioned in that movie, so what? Rian Johnson thought there were uninteresting too and decided to just…. forget about them?

THE LACK OF DIVERSITY

Yup, you read that right. Honestly, the issue I have with diversity in Star Wars is not only due to TLJ, Rogue One and TFA also made that mistake.

Yes, we have more POC and more women playing important characters and yes, that’s a good thing.

But.

Y’all can criticize the Prequel trilogy as much as you want (the movies have a lot of flaws) but George Lucas introduced to us a lot of amazing and super interesting designs for the Star Wars universe’s population. The aliens were colourful, beautiful and some of them only needed a little bit of makeup to show that they came from a different world, had different cultures, etc…

TFA and TLJ had the occasion to to give us amazing alien characters and give them a major role. I mean, we could have had some badass Twi’lek General and we got… Laura Dern straight outta Hunger Games. Couldn’t Rose be a Togruta? Or-- I don’t know, a kriffin Kiffar? Why do we always have simple human beings everywhere? There weren’t that many different and important aliens in the first trilogy because it would have been too hard and too expensive back then, but remember the Jedi Council in the Prequel trilogy? Twelve members, two humans.

I mean, seriously. We only see humans being part of the First Order’s army, so we can assume that just like the Empire, they’re racist assholes, isn’t it more reasons to give us important alien characters in the Resistance? Why are they all sidekicks or useless characters in the background?

Going back to TFA, even Rey or Poe could have been different species, were they scared that people wouldn’t feel attached to them if they were a bit blue, or had lekkus (or whatever)? Ahsoka Tano from Clone Wars is a Togruta, her colors and lekkus didn’t stop me from loving that character and feeling her pain?

Disney can’t pretend to advocate diversity, if they keep missing the best occasions to show that everyone, no matter their gender, skin colors and how many limbs they have, can be beautiful and brave and strong and a hero.

And by the way, I would have loved to see an alien Rebel tell anyone he joined the Resistance because the First Order are fucking assholes who kill/mistreat/enslave their people. It would have been much better than having Rose throw her uninteresting and meaningless point of view on the society, slavery and mistreatment of animals.

0 RESPECT FOR TFA

So it brings me to my last point: The Last Jedi is just Rian Johnson’s huge FUCK YOU to JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens.

And honestly, why did he even take the project if he disagreed with everything JJ Abrams did? TFA is not perfect, a lot of things were left unsaid, it was a bit too much like A New Hope but it was okay because a lot of people expected to find answers in TLJ. What did TLJ do? Well, the exact same thing as TFA: we still have A LOT of questions, it’s way too much like ESB and ROTJ (but in a bad way) and it even managed to make it worse.

TFA had nice ideas left to be used by TLJ, but Rian said ‘NO’ to all of them. At least TFA was beautiful, some shots and scenes were breathtaking, interesting and impressive.

TLJ has a few nice things. But it’s not even that beautiful, there was too much CGI, nothing creative in the way things were filmed, honestly, everything was just boring.

Luke throwing away the lightsaber Rey hands him felt like a big ‘fuck you’ to that beautiful last scene in TFA.

Rey’s parentage, Snoke’s origins, Luke’s map, the reason why Luke went into hiding, everything just felt like Rian Johnson hated TFA, tried to show how much he hated TFA but didn’t even try to correct what he thought went wrong. He was too lazy to even do that.

And honestly, nothing pisses me off more than a guy turning one my favourite stories into some kind of shitty pissing contest.

Well, that’s it. I’ll just add that the soundtrack wasn’t even that good, we mainly had covers of themes from TFA and the first trilogy, nothing new, nothing original. It just felt like John Williams was bored too and I completely understand the guy. Even Kylo Ren was disappointing, even if Rian Johnson obviously decided to focus this movie on him.

Now I can officially say that I’m done with the Star Wars movies, done with Disney, and I’ll finally spend my money on more interesting stuff.

Well, that concludes my salty and messy review, I hope you guys had a better moment than I did!

#tlj #star wars #the last jedi #rey #luke skywalker #kylo ren #tlj review #salty review #I'M SALTY #and also sad

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