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maulusque · 4 years

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WHAT IF MAUL KIDNAPPED ANAKIN RIGHT OFF OF TATOOINE

(I started writing this and then it got out of hand and now it’s 3:30 in the morning, rest of it’s under the break so i don’t monopolize your dash)

So for whatever combination of reasons, Maul spits out the kool-aid and gets really disenchanted with Sidious a lot earlier than in canon. He starts wondering things like “why is he not telling me his master plan if i’m so important to it?” and “why do i get nothing more than vague promises of power sometime in the future, when i should be guaranteed a position as his second-in-command, after all I’ve done for this guy?” and “why does he treat me like i’m disposable, and then constantly tell me i’m crucial for his plans?”

and he starts thinking things like “hey wait a minute, none of that childhood torture made me better at anything sith-related, it just gave me crippling trauma that actually impairs my capacity for self-control and incredible violence” and (possibly due to his experiences at Orsis Academy) “oh whack looks like kids learn a lot better and faster when they’re, like, having fun? Whatever ‘fun’ is?”

and anyway by the time he gets to tatooine with orders to “find that stoner jedi and kick his ass”, Maul is pretty annoyed at his master. And when he senses not one, not two, but THREE powerful force-presences on Tatooine, one of which vastly eclipses any other force presence he’s ever felt, and belongs to a nine-year-old slave boy, Maul gets an idea. You know, (he thinks), his master sure would love to get his hands on a force-baby like that. Master Sidious sure would be evilly thrilled to have an extremely powerful nine-year-old delivered directly to his doorstep on coruscant, with the jedi having to do all the heavy lifting of training the kid. Master Sidious would probably want nothing more than to have this kid be taken in by the Jedi, so he can start grooming a new apprentice.

And Maul, full of spite and an as-yet-undiscovered need to adopt every force-sensitive in sight, decides to deprive Sidious of a potential apprentice. He follows Anakin to Naboo (in this universe, Anakin still wins the podrace, still wins his own freedom), and, after the fighting is over, sees a prime window of opportunity, and kidnaps Anakin right out from under the Jedi’s nose.

(In this universe, Obi-Wan does not cut Darth Maul in half and dump him down the garbage chute- Maul, unwilling to do his master’s bidding any longer, doesn’t go full out against Qui-Gon, doesn’t kill him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t get that grief-and-rage filled boost that helped him dismember Maul last time. The fight ends, the Jedi are convinced that Maul is dead, and Naboo is freed).

Once Maul has the kid, since he’s a pragmatic guy, he also returns to Tatooine and takes the kid’s mom. Maul doesn’t know how to cook, do laundry, tie shoes, or any of that shit. He doesn’t want to have to PARENT the kid, he just wants to train him.

Maul has zero money, and also zero subtlety, so he stomps into Watto’s shop, grabs him by the neck, and says “The boy's mother is coming with me. You will disable her slave chip and let her leave unharmed, or I will squeeze your head off.” Watto complies. For Anakin, this is his first real impression of Maul- storming the junk shop and threatening his former master for the freedom of Anakin’s mother.

Maul is determined to do a better job training Anakin than Sidious did training Maul. Because FUCK Sidious. Maul can be a WAY better Sith than Sidious ever allowed him to be. And since Maul is slowly realizing how... unhelpful... the way he was raised was, he’s determined to figure out how to do it better.

So he reads. He reads training manuals, child psychology books, teaching books, studies on motivation and performance, anything he can get his nerdy little hands on. He learns that frightened children don’t perform well. He learns about “trauma”, and how “trauma” makes it hard to control your emotions sometimes. Well, you can’t have THAT in your ultimate sith apprentice. Okay, so no scaring Anakin and no traumatizing him. Maul quickly realizes that literally everything he does frightens Anakin or his mom, and frightening Anakin’s mom also frightens Anakin (cut him some slack, he’s literally never been in a positive relationship, Maul has no model for any behavior other than “evil abuser” and “subservient slave”).

Maul is not an idiot. He knows he’s not doing it right. He’s reluctant to start teaching Anakin ANYTHING until he knows he won’t accidentally damage his precious spite-apprentice. So he mostly ignores the kid while he reads and learns.

He also observes. Specifically, he observes Shmi Skywalker. Somehow, she seems to be able to interact with Anakin without scaring him. She can even tell him what to do without scaring him. She can teach and correct him without scaring him. And she never physically hurts him at all. Maul is kind of blown away- he didn’t even know it was possible to interact with people like that? HOW does she DO it???

So Maul watches and learns. He practices. Shmi helps, guides him, tells him when he messes up and tells him how to do it better. Maul gets a lot better at restraining his murderous urges. Turns out, if you immediately kill everyone who annoys you, it’s hard to ask them for advice after. The other person Maul gets pointers from is C3PO, the protocol droid the kid dragged along. Maul understands 3PO better than he understands Shmi and Anakin. 3PO is a droid. Maul was raised by a droid. Maul knows how to talk with 3PO, whereas talking with Shmi or Anakin feels like wandering around in a fog full of landmines.

So anyway, Maul and 3PO become unlikely friends, and, as Maul, determined to out-parent Sidious in every conceivable way, learns more and more social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills, he truly comprehends how fucked up his own childhood was. There’s rage. There’s grief. There’s murderous desire for vengeance. But there’s also Anakin. Who would be scared if Maul smashed the ship or killed random people to vent his anger. Anakin, who needs something called a “positive role model”, who needs to be taught how to use the Force, and who needs the adults around him to have their shit together. There’s also Shmi, who makes him soup and hot chocolate when he’s feeling bad, and tells him off for breaking things, and who helps him get better at being a real person, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from him other than a general expectation of not hurting her or her son. So Maul deals. He grows. He heals, slowly. There’s setbacks, and gains. And somewhere in there, he starts teaching Anakin how to use the Force.

The problem is, Maul learned to access the Force first through fear and anger. Turns out, it’s really hard to teach someone fundamentals of force usage via fear and anger without first having to traumatize them. So right away, Maul hits a barrier. He doesn’t have any clue how to teach Anakin a different way though. He needs help.

But also, FUCK the jedi. NO WAY is Maul asking the Jedi for help, he hates the Jedi. Maul is still a Sith, he’s just a new, better kind of Sith, the kind that trains apprentices who are gonna kick WAY MORE ASS and be HEALTHY WELL-ADJUSTED PEOPLE while doing it (let him dream, ok?). So Maul starts hauling Shmi and Anakin around the galaxy, seeking out any non-Jedi Force-users they can, to learn Force techniques that the Sith didn’t teach Maul.

They spend time with the Guardians on Jedha, with those weird duck-people from that one episode with Jar-Jar’s girlfriend, with some wacky monks on a tiny island in the ass-end of nowhere, and even some time with a long-lost sith cult in a box system in the middle of the Unknown Regions. Maul learns. Anakin learns. Maul uses what he learns from the other force-users, combines it with what he knows, and teaches Anakin even more. The Jedi and the Sith are really the only two groups who really use the force for Big Impressive Things, like telekinesis and lightning and whatnot, so while the other force groups would have a lot to teach them both, they wouldn’t really be able to teach Anakin how to levitate something. And you can’t be the kick-assiest, bestest Sith Apprentice Ever if you can’t levitate shit. So Maul takes takes all these new techniques, like “being calm and chill when you meditate instead of super pissed off” and “using the Force while not being filled with incredible rage” and “mindfulness techniques” and “who knew you could do cool stuff like floating rocks without having to exhaust yourself by hating everything in existence, including yourself” and applies them to the skills and methods he already has. He and Anakin have to do a lot of fumbling and exploring and mistake-making, but they figure it out. And Anakin learns. And he kicks ass.

When Anakin is 11, Maul hauls him off to Ach-To to dig a crystal out of the roots of an ancient tree. He tells Anakin to hold it and meditate, to let his emotions rise around him, to feed them, to pull them through the crystal, let it resonate, let it take on the shape of his strongest feelings. After all, that is how Maul was trained to bleed his crystals. Maul’s pain and fear and anger yielded him red crystals.

Anakin comes out with yellow. Determination, fierce protectiveness, drive, hunger for justice, righteous fury. That is Anakin’s lightsaber.

Anakin grows up, planet-hopping with his Mom and Uncle Maul in a beat-up freighter with under-the-hood enhancements out the ass (Maul ditched the Scimitar right after Tatooine so his master couldn’t instantly track him down, and Maul and Anakin are both huge mechanics nerds and bond over things like “but what if you put ANOTHER PLASMA CORE IN THE ENGINE”, so this ship is, uh, certainly some sort of thing). Anakin grows up learning a hundred different Force traditions- just about every major Force tradition in the Galaxy (except for Jedi), and more than a few obscure ones. He grows up, tinkering with his droid, learning Juyo from Maul and how to sew a button from his mom. He grows up, beholden to two destinies only: “Help me take down Sidious, because he’s an asshole and a shitty Sith Lord” and “do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a Sith and no one gets to tell you what to do” (”except me.” Shmi interrupts. “Sith Lords still have a bedtime.” “Sith Lords still have a bedtime,” Maul amends, having no desire to repeat what happened when he encouraged a ten-year-old Anakin to ignore all the rules on purpose).

And what Anakin wants to do is what he’s always wanted to do- go back to Tatooine and free the slaves. Maul thinks that a big project like that would be an excellent learning opportunity for Anakin. He also wants Anakin to succeed, so he sits him down and talks logistics. How do you free the slaves without hundreds of slave owners detonating their chips when they hear what is happening? How do you keep them free once you do that? How do you get them jobs, clothes, food, houses? What about the ones who want to leave Tatooine? What about the ones who want to stay? And what about the economic upheaval that will happen when you deprive a whole planet of its cheapest source of labor? When Anakin is fourteen, they start planning.

When Anakin is eighteen, they make their move. Anakin, coordinating with Shmi, who returned to Tatooine three years earlier to organize things on the ground (living with a woman named Beru Whitesun, who is a gateway to the Freedom Path network), activates several massive orbital EMP devices, frying every electrical device on the planet, including slave chips. (The EMPs came from a pirate friend of his mom’s, who seems to do whatever she wants as long as she makes him hot chocolate). All over the planet, lights go out, slave chips fry, and radios go silent. And Shmi’s agents get to work. Ordinary citizens all over tatooine grab their rifles and head out. They meet up with others in their settlement, and the teams sweep the area, following a plan devised by Skywalker and Whitesun. They systematically visit every house in every settlement, city, spaceport, and town that is known to house slaves, and tell the slaves to grab their families and most treasured possessions and follow them.

(Tatooine is a sparsely populated planet- you can count the major settlements on two hands. If it weren’t, this would never have worked.)

Not many slaveowners put up much of a resistance- fifty angry masked people pointing guns in your face tend to make you compliant. The only slaveowner who puts up more than a token resistance is Jabba the Hutt. His resistance, however, lasts about thirty seconds, before Anakin cuts off his head.

Maul meets Anakin at Jabba’s palace, where he’s rounding up the last of Jabba’s cronies.

“No trouble?” Maul asks.

“Nope,” Anakin replies. “You?”

“None.” Maul said. Turns out, it’s like, super easy to take down an entire criminal organization when you can turn up to a meeting of the Hutt family heads, kill them all, and waltz out past all their security forces without breaking a sweat. (Seriously, it’s kind of hilarious how Maul is literally just that good).

“The slaves here are freed?”

“Yep,” says Anakin. Then frowns. “Hold on...” He senses a presence. Big, hulking, simple, and starving. He can sense that, whatever it is, it hasn’t seen the sunlight or been able to move freely in years.

So anyway, that’s how Anakin turns up at Mos Espa at first sunrise, riding on the back of Jabba the Hutt’s pet rancor. “Who’s a good girl,” Anakin says, scratching behind her ear nubs. “You are!” And she is a good girl. Padme (”I just think it sounds like a nice name, you know?”) is very good at dispersing angry slaveowners who look like they might start rioting.

The slaves freed overnight have been gathered together at pre-designated safe zones-mostly warehouses or large buildings that Shmi has been buying up over the years for exactly this purpose.

(The slaves living in remote settlements, at moisture farms and homesteads, didn’t get a visit from the freedom teams. However, Shmi had a plan for them too. She has made overtures to the Tusken tribes. Once she managed to negotiate her way into speaking to one of the leaders without getting killed, she sold them a story, a dream. A revolution. Free the slaves. Transform Tatooine. She doesn’t promise the Tuskens to expel humans from the planet entirely. She promises them equal rights under the law (she also promises the existence of laws in the first place). She promises them the right to raise Banthas, the right to traverse their ancestral lands and the return of sacred sites taken from them, the right to trade, the right to control who passes over their lands. She promises them the right to water and shade. And, she promises them half the seats on the ruling council she plans to set up. And so, on the night the EMPs blow, Tusken raiders visit every homestead on Tatooine (again, there’s only a few hundred, a thousand at most), and kidnap the slaves. Perhaps not the most reassuring experience for enslaved peoples who have been taught their entire lives to fear the Tuskens, and not without reason, but, nevertheless, it is freedom).

As the new day dawns- Tatooine’s first dawn as a free planet- Anakin, Maul, and Shmi know that the easy part is over. Now, they have to house tens of thousands of people currently cooped up in warehouses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They have to establish and keep iron-tight control over the planet and its settlements, and quash any violent reprisals before they gain momentum. They also have to completely rebuild an economy completely upended by the overnight emancipation.

However, Shmi’s not the only one who’s been busy for the past few years. While Shmi was on Tatooine, planning a revolution, Anakin and Maul were traversing the galaxy, gathering resources, using the Patented Maul Method (TM)- breaking into the headquarters of powerful organizations and threatening to kill everybody in charge unless they did what they said.

As the second sun rises, ships begin arriving in Tatooine’s orbit. Pop-up housing is dropped onto the outskirts of Tattooine’s settlements, the kind that mining companies use to set up new bases on mineral-rich asteroids. The accommodations are small and sparse, but each family has a kitchen, bathroom, beds, and private space. Huge generators are hooked up to cool the new housing. Anakin knows that the already-existing slave quarters, made of stone with no windows and mostly underground- are already built to keep the occupants cool, but he refuses to make the former slave population live in slave quarters. Some of the freed people are moved into Jabba’s old palace, some into buildings abandoned by rich business owners who fled the planet when they saw what was happening. Food, water, medicine, clothes, books, toys, tools, and shoes are deposited. (the Republic’s equivalent of the FBI had been utterly baffled when Galaxy’s three biggest criminal organizations started moving cargo that looked less like a drug trade and more like a disaster relief mission).

Anakin walks among the newly freed slaves, reassuring them- yes, you are free. Yes, you will be fed and housed and clothed as long as you need it. Yes, we will try to find your child/husband/wife/mother who was sold years ago. Yes, you can go home, you can do whatever you want.

He also asks for volunteers. And he gets them. Hardly anyone would say no to the chance to work with the Skywalker, who once was a slave like them, but freed himself and returned, who freed the slaves in one night of glory, and appeared at sunrise riding a rancor.

Anakin sends out messengers, all across the planet. “Tatooine is a free world,” they say. “All slaves are hereby freed, by order of the He who Walks in the Sky. Any slaveowners who, by their own free will, turn over their detonators will not be harmed. Any who resist, will be.” Not many resist.

At the end of that first day, as the suns are setting, once the freed peoples of Tatooine are fed, and given water, and sheltered, Maul comes to Anakin.

“I am proud of you.” He says. “You have come into your power, you have mastered yourself, and so have mastered the Force. You have the freedom and the power to do anything you choose. You are no longer my apprentice. Lord Skywalker, you are a true Sith Master.” Anakin pulls him into a hug. He maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe also feels mildly annoyed that Anakin is a full head taller than him now.

(Sidious would be truly, utterly offended at Maul’s criteria for Sith-Lord-ness. “THAT’S NOT SITH” he would have said. “THAT’S BARELY EVEN DARK SIDE ADJACENT, YOU ARE DILUTING OUR THOUSAND YEAR HERITAGE-” but Maul wouldn’t care about Sidious’ stupid opinions, anyway).

And Anakin and Shmi get to work. They employ the newly freed people of Tatooine, constructing permanent houses, tearing down slave markets, building critical infrastructure. Anakin pays them more than a living wage, thanks to the extremely deep pockets of Crimson Dawn. He brings in doctors and teachers, and guarantees healthcare and education for all who want it (whenever one of Crimson Dawn’s higher-ups says “wait, why are we dumping massive amounts of money into this one random-ass planet?” Darth Maul just casually sidles up behind them with his lightsaber until they remember that he can literally just show up anywhere, at anytime, and kill them unless they do what he says. If Maul’s busy, he sends 3PO instead- 3PO’s been outfitted with about ten times as much weaponry as is legal, and can be very convincing when he wants to be).

While Anakin works on infrastructure and supporting the freed peoples of Tatooine, and unfucking the economic trainwreck they caused, Shmi and Beru work on the government. They write down a few, very basic rules-Tatooine is to be ruled by a council of people, half of whom will come from the Tusken tribes, all of which shall be selected by fair and free election. All citizens of Tatooine shall have the right to vote in these elections, and the right to vote shall be guaranteed to all- except for those who have ever owned or sold a sentient being. (it was a huge debate in the Lars-Whitesun-Skywalker household, this matter of restricting voting rights. In the end, it was decided that slaveowners, and ONLY slaveowners, were to be the sole exception for universal suffrage). Every citizen of Tatooine is guaranteed access to food, medicine, and water, and has the right to have their grievances addressed by the council.

Shmi works quickly to gather her council- she knows she has to do it fast, to prove to the Tuskens that she is as good as her word. The first elections are chaotic, and perhaps not completely non-violent, but in the end, there is a council of twenty representatives, with Shmi Skywalker representing Mos Espa.

The Council proceeds to have raging- and occasionally violent- debates about the structure of their future government. What rights to guarantee citizens. Should they have a court system? What about a financial system? How are they to guarantee water, food, and medicine to everyone? What even are taxes?

The Rebuilding of Tatooine is long, and hard, and contentious. There are arguments and rage and fighting- the repatriation of traditional Tusken lands is especially fraught. But Shmi promised, and so she makes it happen (Anakin and Padme may have helped too). Maul, for his part, keeps training Anakin, and keeps managing the criminal underworld with a careful balance of death threats and actual death, but mostly stays out of the way of Anakin’s Senior Project.

Soon, Anakin is able to re-purpose the pop-up housing, since most people have moved into traditional Tatooine-built homes, suited to the environment. The newly restructured economy is tentatively taking its first steps, and Tatooine’s baby government is becoming less and less dependent on intergalactic criminal funding (partially thanks to Anakin confiscating the entirety of Jabba’s personal fortune). He spends a lot of time in Council meetings, trying not to scream at people while also trying to stop Padme from eating them. The Council debates what is next for Tatooine, and eventually, they vote to petition the Republic for membership. Tatooinians, as a people, including the Tuskens, are fiercely independant, but, as Shmi points out, joining the Republic would guarantee them to certain things like humanitarian aid, a voice in decisions affecting interplanetary trade routes and taxation, legal legitimacy and the right to call on the Republic for aid should their sovereignty ever be threatened. Most importantly, slavery is illegal on all Republic planets, which means that if any slave-owning organizations ever pushed in on Tatooine, there would be another (much better funded) organization to call on to help quash it.

The Republic requires that a petitioning planet’s head of state visit the Senate on Coruscant to ask the Senate for entry into the Republic. The Council, grumbling, re-jiggers their constitution to allow for a “chief councilor”, and promptly elect Anakin to the position (”Fuck me,”) Anakin says. Maul laughs at him, then sobers and tells him to be careful on Coruscant (”My former master lives there.” he says. “Mind your shields, and do not let him know your true nature. You are not yet ready to take him on, and you have your planet and your people to think of.” “Yes, Uncle Maul.” Anakin says. “I will be careful.”).

Anakin shows up in the Galactic Senate, sandy robes, uncombed hair, and half smirk on his face. “I am Anakin Skywalker, free person of Tatooine,” he says. He presents the case for Tatooine’s admittance to the Republic in a booming, confident voice, drawing on his inner strength- his righteous anger and determination to ensure his people’s future- to keep his voice from wavering.

There are grumbles. Muttering. No Senator wants to be the one to blatantly say “no”- it’s a sort of miracle story, Tatooine, the little planet that rose up and threw of the shackles of slavery and now wants to join the Republic- the exact sort of mythos that the Republic itself is built on. It’s bad PR to vote against that little planet. But at the same time, Tatooine is a sandy, useless dustball that’ll need fiscal support from the Senate, with nothing to offer in terms of economic value. Many Senators are debating with themselves, not whether or not to say “no”, but how to vote “no” without losing ten points in approval ratings.

Until the Senator from Naboo, a diminutive woman who somehow reminds Anakin of his rancor, stands up. She gives an impassioned, off-the-cuff speech, reminding the Senate of how her own planet had thrown off the shackles of oppression not ten years ago, how the Republic was founded by planets like Tatooine, and how, most importantly, they had no legal basis to deny them entry, and if the Senate voted no, Naboo’s lawyers would litigate the issue six ways from taungsday- which, due to a clause in the Senate’s constitution that forbade them from passing legislation while the issue of a planet’s admittance to the Republic was on the floor, would effectively paralyze the Senate until the courts made a ruling. And, as Padme made sure to emphasize, if the court’s decision was not favorable, she would appeal. She could feasibly stop the Senate from doing anything for years, if necessary.

Tatooine is admitted to the Republic.

“Two Senators,” Anakin demands. “In order for my people to be fairly represented, my planet requires two Senators.” When complaints are made, Jar-Jar Binks threatens to explain the complicated dynamics of a planet attempting to grapple with a colonial past. He doesn’t have to. Tatooine gets its two Senators.

Anakin meets with Senator Amidala in her office, to thank her.

“Of course,” she said. “I remember a little boy who helped free my planet- how could I not help you when you needed it?”

“Uhh, thanks, yeah, that’s, really nice of you. Like your hair. Which is nice. In an objective sort of way,” Anakin says, because there is no universe in which Anakin is not a complete idiot in front of Padme. “I named my rancor after you,” he blurts.

Before Anakin is scheduled to leave Coruscant, the Jedi send a knight to scope out the new planetary leader. Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up at Anakin’s hotel room, and goes “Oh. It’s.... you.”

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin grins. He only knew him for about two days when he was nine, but he still greets him like an old friend, like a brother. They fall into easy, teasing conversation. “I thought you were dead, I confess, after you disappeared from Naboo,” Obi-Wan admits. “I am truly sorry that I was unable to fulfill Qui-Gon’s promise to train you as a Jedi Knight.”

“That’s ok,” Anakin waves his hand dismissively. “I got trained as a Sith instead.” Then he freezes. Oops. He was not supposed to say that. Maul would be so disappointed in him.

“Beg pardon?” Obi-Wan says.

“I, uhh, got trained, as a, uh, sift...er? Instead? A sand sifter? I sift sand for a living?”

“You said Sith.”

“No I didn’t, I definitely said sift.”

“No, you said Sith.”

“I definitely did not.”

Anakin changes the subject, and Obi-Wan lets it drop. He’ll tell the Council, of course, but he honestly cannot fathom the concept of this kid being a Sith. He senses nothing Dark about him- well, at least no more dark than is present in any sentient. Besides, it’s not like there are any Sith Lords around anymore, ever since he killed Maul (luckily, Obi-Wan doesn’t see the picture in Anakin’s wallet, a candid shot 3PO took in the cockpit of their family’s ship. Fifteen-year-old Anakin, at the controls, hyperbrake still on with his hands on the hyperdrive lever, Maul, standing behind him, hands gripping Anakin’s seat and face distorted half-way through a panic-induced rant about flight safety, and Shmi, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, laughter on her face and knitting needles in her hands).

Anakin contacts his mother, tells her the good news. The Council, moving with alacrity, elects Tatooine’s first Senators. And four days later, one year after the Dawn of Freedom, Senator Shmi Skywalker and Senator Ooutrigh (a Tusken warrior) of Tatooine arrive on Coruscant and address the Senate for the first time.

Of course, while Anakin has been growing up, planning for Tatooine’s future, and annoying the shit out of Maul, Palpatine’s own plans have continued apace. Barely four months after Tatooine is admitted to the Republic, Obi-Wan finds himself in an arena on Geonosis. The battle goes much differently this time, partially due to the fact that Anakin has retrofitted the cargo bay of his family’s ship to house Padme (the rancor, not the Senator), and descends onto the Arena sands just as Yoda and the Clone Troops arrive, and deposits both Padme’s (the rancor, and the Senator) into the melee.

“Hi, Obi-Wan!” Anakin calls, whipping out his lightsaber to deflect the hail of blaster bolts (Maul would disapprove, but Maul isn’t here, he’s ten clicks away, chasing down the Jedi dropout Sidious replaced him with).

“Anakin, what the FUCK” Obi-Wan says, staring at Chief Councilor Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, riding a rancor and swinging an honest-to-Force yellow lightsaber.

“Master Yoda, what the FUCK” Anakin says, later, after the battle is over, when he finally gets Yoda to answer his questions about the clone troopers. “You found out about an entire-ass army of slave child soldiers commissioned AND PAID FOR by one of your own council members, and your reaction is ‘oh thank goodness, now we have an army?’ What the FUCK is WRONG with you?!” Yoda tries to explain to Councilor Skywalker that the situation was dire, they’d had no choice, but Councilor Skywalker just keeps repeating “AN ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS” at him. “No choice, we had,” Yoda says yet again.

“BULLSHIT, you had no choice!” Anakin yells. “You could have chosen to not use the entire army of slave child soldiers that you legally own!”

“Let Kenobi and the others die, you would have? Hmm?”

“PROBABLY, YEAH!” Anakin hollers (”Thanks,” mutters Obi-Wan). “Sometimes the choices you have all really suck, but you still have to make them! You can’t just pretend you didn’t have any options, you HAD OPTIONS, and you chose the one that involved using a SLAVE ARMY OF CHILD SOLDIERS.” He gestures behind him to the battlefield, where clone troopers and medics are moving amongst the bodies, white and red stark against the sand, tallying their dead brothers.

Yoda shakes his head. “emotional, you are, young Skywalker.” he said. “Cloud your judgement, your feelings do.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking emotional!” Anakin practically screams. “I have personal beef with slavery, so excuse me if I feel emotions about it. Your problem is that you’re able to use an ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS and not feel bad about it! Your lack of emotions is clouding YOUR judgement!” He stomps off. Yoda shakes his head. Skywalker is young, and too close to the issue of slavery to really have perspective on it. He does not understand. It was a great loss to the Jedi Order when the Council rejected him, all those years ago- if he had been trained as a Jedi, he would have learned to put aside his emotions about slavery, and he would have understood why it was necessary now. If Anakin could have heard what Yoda was thinking, he would have turned right back around, picked Yoda up, and punted him like a limmie ball.

Anakin and Maul return to Tatooine. Maul offers to assassinate the entire Jedi Council, but Anakin says no. He’s still fuming about his conversation with Yoda. He knows he gets emotional. He knows that Yoda isn’t entirely wrong- he knows he lets his emotions cloud his judgement sometimes. It’s something he’s worked hard on, over the years, him and Maul. How to take a step back from the emotions howling in your head, and how to view the situation without them getting in the way. And what kinds of situations you should let your emotions guide you. Anakin thinks he’s damn well entitled to strong emotions about slavery.

Short of declaring war on the entire Jedi Order, Anakin doesn’t know what to do about the Republic’s slave army. The Tatooine Council releases a public condemnation of it, explicitly calling it slavery and calling for the clones to be freed. The Council seriously debates joining the Separatists, until Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor) and Shmi look in-depth at the Separatist Council, which is buried deep in the pockets of corporate interests. Shmi files a lawsuit, under the Republic’s anti-slavery legislation, suing for the freedom of the clones. It’s a battle of miserable inches, and meanwhile, the war rages.

With Dooku gone, Sidious’s only means of controlling the Separatists is through Grievous and Ventress, both of whom are loose cannons whose loyalty (and competence) he seriously doubts. It’s frustrating for him, and not necessarily better for the Jedi and their army (of slave child soldiers). Sidious needs to keep the war in careful balance, neither side gaining too much ground, to draw it out and grind the Jedi down and manipulate their public image until he can heap all the blame on them. Without Dooku to pass down his orders, he has no way of keeping a firm check on the Separatist Council, and the Seps are in serious danger of completely overrunning the Republic. The droid army is fifty times as many as the clones, and the Separatists have the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and all of the major military tech corporations on their side. Honestly, it’s a testament to the Jedi and the Clone Army that they haven’t lost the war in the first month.

Speaking of that first month, Anakin doesn’t spend long on uninvolved in the war. Scant weeks after Geonosis, the Separatist Army threatens to roll right over Tatooine on their way to gaining control of the Outer Rim Hyperlanes. Tatooine has no army, doesn’t even have a police force. It has no fleet, no orbital defenses, and the droid army headed their way has ten times more droids than there are guns on the planet. The Council faces a choice. Ask the Republic to send in the GAR to defend them- ask for an army of slaves to be sent to die on Tatooine, to stain the sand with enslaved blood so soon after Tatooine clawed her way to freedom, or do nothing, and almost certainly ensure the annihilation of Tatooine and her people. To die, or to live by the blood of slaves who died for you. It’s not a pretty choice.

In the end, the choice is taken away from them (and perhaps it’s a kindness, that they weren’t forced to choose, perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but it is what it is). A GAR cruiser shows up in orbit, and the Council is hailed by a man identifying himself as Captain Rex, commanding officer of the 501st legion of the GAR.

“The Republic sent you here?” Anakin asks, incredulously.

“Well, not exactly.” Captain Rex hedges. “The 501st is due for leave on Kamino, but the hyperdrive was making funny noises, so we decided to stop off in the nearest Republic system to check it out.” Rex shrugs. “If a bunch of tinnies just so happen to show up, it’s not like we’ll just sit back and watch.”

“Why are you doing this?” Anakin asks the clone captain, once they’ve got him on planet and in the council room. He’s got a lump in his throat, and his eyes are stinging. The 501st has no Jedi on board, no natborn officers, and no orders to go to Tatooine. Rex and the 501st showed up here of their own free will. Because they wanted to. To defend Tatooine.

“Geonosis.” Rex says. “On Geonosis, you saved the lives of over two hundred of us. Including me. We couldn’t stand by and let your planet fall to the Separatists, Councilor Skywalker.”

After the battle, during the cleanup, when Tatooinians are passing through the rows of injured, giving out water- giving out life- Rex tells Anakin the other reason.

“We all know about Tatooine, sir.” He says, quietly. “A bunch of slaves who stood up and said “no,” and took their freedom.” He shrugs. “Stories like that, it gives us hope. For the future.” He fixes Anakin with a stare. “If we let that hope die, we die too. Tatooine cannot fall.”

That is the first time Anakin and Rex fight together. Somehow, when the 501st leaves Tatooine, Anakin goes with them- officially, as a consultant/observer, appointed at the request of Senator Skywalker to observe the GAR and monitor the health and wellbeing of the troopers. Unofficially, Anakin and Rex become a lethal team, making the 501st one of the most effective legions in the Galaxy. Anakin isn’t dumb. He knows he’s being a massive hypocrite, running around with an army of slave child soldiers. Rex, however, insists that it’s different.

“First of all, we asked you to come with us.” he says. “Second of all, it’s not like you staying behind would have made any difference in our situation. And besides, scrapping clankers isn’t the only reason I asked you to come with us.” Anakin raises an eyebrow.

And Rex introduces Anakin to his older brother, Cody, commander of the 212th (Anakin is happy to see Obi-Wan again, but appalled to meet Obi-Wan’s fourteen-year-old togruta padawan, because why would you put a CHILD in a warzone, in a COMMAND POSITION). And Cody brings Anakin in on The Plan. The clones will not remain slaves forever, and they will not wait for some elusive promise of gratitude after the war is over. They will take their freedom, and they will defend their own, and they’re asking Anakin, who freed the slaves of Tatooine, to help them do it.

“So basically, you want me on as a consultant.”

“Basically, yeah.” Cody says. “And also as a guy with a lightsaber who can leap fifty feet into the air and dodge blaster bolts. Those are always handy to have around.”

So Anakin and Rex and Cody, and Cody’s small circle of commanders, lay their plans. And in the meantime, there’s a war to fight. Shmi’s still on Tatooine, but Maul comes with Anakin and the 501st. He and Rex get along like a house on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them- they do nothing but argue and needle each other. Rex sarcastically calls Maul “Commander Maul” because it pisses him off so much, and it catches on with the whole legion. Maul constantly mutters about murdering and/or poisoning Rex.

But after Ventress almost chokes Rex to death, and breaks into his mind to make him do her bidding, Maul doesn’t leave Rex alone for a week, and clutches his hand tightly in the medbay. Rex doesn’t mention it, so neither does Anakin.

Padme, on the other hand, makes no secret of how much she loves Rex (the Rancor, not the Senator, though she likes him too). Padme seems to have concluded that Rex is some sort of long-lost hatchling, and can be seen chasing Rex down the hangar bay, trying to corral him into the nest she’s constructed in the corner reserved for her. Rex gets used to surprise cuddles from a massive predator.

The Jedi Council are at their wit’s end with Skywalker, but their hands are full and honestly, he’s a benefit to the war effort, so they assign Obi-Wan to “supervise” the legion, and leave them to it. Obi-Wan and Anakin strike up a deep friendship, unfettered by the baggage that comes with being master and padawan. Obi-Wan finds himself having serious questions about the Jedi’s role in the war, since Anakin is not at all shy about challenging him on the whole “slave army of child soldiers” thing. Obi-Wan is also, quite frankly, too busy to effectively teach a padawan, and by this point, he knows that Anakin’s had some sort of Force training. He’s fought beside him enough to be confident in his skills, and often sends Ahsoka on extended missions with the 501st, and explicitly begs Anakin to help him fill in the gaps in her training. Anakin obliges enthusiastically.

Of course, Maul helps train her too. Obi-Wan shows up on the Resolute one day to pick her up, and asks how her training’s going.

“Great!” She says. “Skyguy’s weird uncle is teaching me jar’kai-”

“Anakin has an uncle?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised. “Who knows jar’kai?”

And so Obi-Wan and Maul meet once again. And Obi-Wan is just absolutely pole-axed.

“Darth Maul?” He splutters. “Is your uncle?”

“Not biologically,” Anakin shrugs. “He practically raised me, along with my mom. He taught me everything I know about lightsabers and the Force.”

“...”

“...you did say Sith, Anakin, you bastard, sand-sifting MY ASS-”

“Oh, it’s you.” Maul says. “I won’t kill you, but only because Anakin likes you.” Obi-Wan throws up his hands.

Somehow, Obi-Wan and Maul come to an understanding. Somehow, Obi-Wan doesn’t turn him over to the council.

At one point, a giant of a zabrak, easily eight feet tall, with skin a poisonous yellow, shows up, claiming that Maul is his brother, and that he’s here to bring him home to Dathomir. Maul takes one look at Savage and goes “Fuck that”. “I will train you in the ways of the Force,” he says. “I can show you power like you’ve never wielded before.” he says. “You shall be a great and feared Sith Lord,” he says. “Have some hot chocolate, you look cold,” he says. “Put on a sweater.” Savage, slightly bemused, comes to terms with the fact that he’s just been adopted.

It’s Maul who figures it out, of course. How could he not? He was raised by Sidious. He knows how devious he is, how his plans have layers upon layers, backups upon backups, contingencies stacked from here to the Outer Rim. Once Sidious moves, you can be sure that any reasonable outcome will be in his favor, because he has completely engineered the situation before you were even aware it existed.

The Sith caused the war and are playing both sides. The Sith caused the clones to be commissioned (these things are trivially easy to figure out, if you’re paying attention). The Sith want the Jedi dead.

“Contingencies,” Maul mutters. “It’s always a trap, and there’s always contingencies.”

When he finds the chip in Rex’s head, he shakes with rage and refuses to talk to anyone, fearing, for the first time in years, that he will lose control and hurt someone he loves. It is Rex who talks him down, who manages to get close to him, who embraces him and lets him cry on his shoulder, then scream and rage and punch the walls. When Maul is able to explain, Rex has to choke back his own terrified, horrified sobs. He holds them back, and calmly looks at Maul and says “What are you going to do about it?”

The surgery, they discover, is simple enough. An astromech can do it in two minutes (C2PO can do it in seventy seconds, and Artoo can’t stand it). When Anakin is told, he goes quiet for a minute, and when he looks back up, it is not Anakin, Rex’s friend, Maul’s kid, who is sitting at the table in the briefing room. It is He Who Walks in the Sky, Huttslayer, Breaker of Chains, who looks back at them. Anakin Skywalker has always wanted nothing more than to free all the slaves. And Anakin Skywalker’s destiny has always been to do what he wanted.

They tell Cody. They modify their plans. They quietly contact medics throughout the GAR, and Artoo quietly sends the details to every military astromech he trusts. When the army is safe from Sidious’ control, Anakin, Rex, and Maul conspire to lure him off of Coruscant. Maul takes over Mandalore, exiling the duchess and announcing a New Sith Empire. Sidious shows up, declaring that Maul has become a rival, disowning his former apprentice and attacking him, with intent to kill. Savage loses an arm. Maul almost loses his life. But as he lies on the ground at Sidious’s feet, arms trembling with the effort of holding the parry keeping Sidious’ saber from his throat, he hears “We’ve got the face shot! Go, go go!” in his earpiece. Gunfire, real slugthrowers, difficult to block with a saber, erupts around him. C3PO and his arsenal, along with Fives, Jesse, and Echo, the 501st’s best ARC troopers, open fire on Sidious. The Sith is forced to back away, raising a hand to stop the bullets in midair. Maul leaps to his feet, and Anakin joins him, lightsaber drawn.

The fight is quick, but brutal. Maul’s hands threaten to tremble with terror, facing down the horror of his childhood, the monster whose treatment of him is woven fundamentally into his psyche, whose shadow has haunted Maul all his life, and still invades his dreams. But he reaches out to his family, to Rex, beside him, steady, full of faith in him, to Anakin, a blazing sun of love and anger, a shield of raw power, and to Shmi, all the way in her Senate offices on Coruscant, cool and calm and soothing like a desert spring as ever-present as the stars. His hands do not tremble. He raises his lightsaber against his master, beside the blade of his son. Together, they beat the Sith Lord back. Anakin binds the Sith’s blade, knees him in the ribs, and while Sidious is thus occupied, Maul cuts his head off.

“You were a terrible parent,” he pants, and spits on the corpse. Then, he collapses, and Rex is there to catch him, and Maul clings to him and shakes, and cries. Anakin reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, and Rex pulls him in with a look, and together, they surround Maul, a bulwark against the rest of the world, a safe circle for him to fall apart for a little bit. At some point, one of them unstraps the small camera that Maul had been wearing on his chest. Ahsoka has, at that point, already sent the footage to every major news office on Coruscant.

That evening, plastered all over the galactic news, is a video of the Chancellor himself, showing up on a neutral world and attacking its sovereign leader, wielding red lightsabers of all things. And it’s obviously the Chancellor; there’s a clear shot of his face when he knocks Mandalore’s ruler to the ground and the camera gets a good view right up into his hood.

It’s a massive scandal. One tabloid shows the footage with a little counter in the corner, counting up every treaty and galactic law that Palpatine violates onscreen. The only thing that saves Palpatine from impeachment and arrest is the fact that he’s already dead. Inquiries are launched, investigators are sanctioned, documents and hard drives and testimony are subpoena’ed. Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor), spearheads the investigative committee, and within a month, they’ve uncovered decades worth of bribes, backroom deals, contracts with droid manufacturers, clear evidence of Palpatine authorizing Republic funds for weaponry that went straight to the Separatists, and even communication records between the Chancellor and the two military leaders of the Separatists. Grievous and Ventress go into hiding (the Tales of Grievous and Ventress, unlikely buddies forced on an intergalactic road trip on the run from the cops, is a story for a different absurdly long post at 3am). The Separatists break down in chaos, and the war grinds to a halt. In the middle of all the political hurricane, Cody enacts his plan, and the entire GAR simultaneously deserts, and fucks directly off to Tatooine. This ignites another scandal, with Senators calling for Tatooine’s expulsion from the Republic. Shmi stands in her Senate Pod, hands tucked into her roughspun sleeves, listening attentively while Senator Burtoni of Kamino accuses her of theft.

“If Tatooine does not return the stolen military assets, the Senate may sanction the use of force!” the Senator from Ryloth threatens.

“Pardon me,” Shmi says, “May I ask what army the Senate is planning sending to invade Tatooine? I was under the impression that the only Republic army was already there.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence.

In the middle of the shitstorm, before Shmi is arrested and Anakin declared an enemy of the state, Shmi’s lawsuit finally receives a ruling. And just like that, the clones are legally free. And the judge orders the Senate to pay reparations. Anakin cackles with glee when he hears.

Rex and Cody, with the full support of the people of Tatooine, begin the long, hard, work of resettling their brothers and building a life for the vod’e. Shmi files a lawsuit against the Zygerrian Empire. Savage receives a new arm, courtesy of Anakin, who may or may not have added a few extra utilities to it. Ahsoka is knighted, and controversially invites Anakin to be present at the ceremony, along with Obi-Wan. Maul admits, very quietly and where only Rex can hear, that he doesn’t actually want to poison him. “I know,” Rex says, smiling at him. Anakin, meanwhile, finally marries Padme, the love of his life (the Senator, not the Rancor).

And in Mos Eisly, there is a stone slab, pulled from a crumbled wall and stuck upright in the ground in the middle of the square. No one knows who put it there, but someone carved fifty-seven names into the stone. The fifty-seven names of the clone troopers who died defending Tatooine from the Separatist army, at the beginning of the war. The last slaves to spill their blood on the sands of Tatooine.

#maul adopts anakin #and invents a new kind of sith #which is almost nothing like the old kind of sith #just co-opts the name really #rex/maul #kinda? it wasn't on purpose it just happened #my writing #maulusque's writing #might slap this up on ao3 later #we'll see

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cafffine · 3 years

Note

hiiiii this is the Satine x Obi-Wan anon from the other day!! literally any/all of your writing is like. God Tier, but I especially love your codywan stuff ! if you’re working on any new stories with Cody I’d LOVE to hear about them, and if not that’s totally cool too!!!! anyway ty for sharing your writing with The Internet <3

omg sorry I'm answering this like a week late but hi!! good to hear from you again!!

OK SO right now I'm working through a fic about Jesse BUT once that's done (it'll be two chapters at most, not a long-term project at all) I'm gonna get back into some codywan stuff for sure.

I have a bunch of ideas and I don't think any of them are short so here's what I'm trying to decide on rn:

1) Modern setting werewolf black comedy that I pitched right here. I think it'd be a fun story to be working on as halloween rolls around, and it'd be EXTREMELY loosely based on my favorite film: An American Werewolf in London which would make me super insane.

2) The actual dynamic of a clone/jedi ship is so strange and flawed and interesting to write about. I think I did an okay job with it in Blood Orange, but if I were to come back to a canon setting I'd want to get kinda Jedi critical because hey that's always fun.

What I have as a vague outline is a story set post-O66 where Cody is in charge of a group of rebellious clones, and he suddenly runs into Obi-Wan, an ex-Jedi on the run with baby Luke.

They'd have to come to terms with the fact that they both survived, and that if they're gonna work together again, Obi-Wan has to treat Cody as an equal. Also Luke is there and he's a force sensitive baby. And finally, as if that weren't complicated enough, they were not in a romantic relationship during the clone wars BUT .... they did hook up once and never talk about it. It's fine though, that was a long time ago, nobody remembers. 👀

3) Baseball AU? Idk if anyone would be interested in this except me. I watch baseball obsessively and know way too much about the sport so I could totally write myself into a spiral.

I'd want it to be more ensemble focussed and the codywan stuff would be a bit of a side-plot for Cody but still a fun time. I don't have an outline for this one yet but Rex would play catcher it is very important that everyone knows Rex would be a catcher.

4) Rock Band AU! Omg I started this as a joke with my sibling like 2 years ago but it would actually be pretty fun. Anakin on vocals/bass, Ahsoka on guitar, Rex on drums, they're called The Jetti and they're gonna be the next big name in modern rock.

They get invited to the Grammy's so Rex brings his older brother Cody who pulls him to the side during the afterparty and asks, in a panic: "Hey Why Didn't You Tell Me Your Manager Was Hot?"

And Rex is like "ew lol Obi-Wan is not hot he's an asshole, also he's Anakin's brother so, please don't hit on him."

Whatever though, it's not like Cody's a journalist who gets asked to follow his rock star brother's band on their stadium tour and write a rolling stones cover story that will double as the announcement for their third album.... right?

Also, damn, that Maul guy who works the lighting rigs is SUCH a bitch.

Ok I think those are my main contenders right now 😅 I still don't know which one I'm gonna go with but they'd all probably end up being super long so I better choose well lmao. I hope at least one of them sounds interesting?

And thanks again for messaging me!! I feel like this post will end up being pretty helpful in the decision process lmao

#I'm not kidding either I have no idea which one I should go with #the canon setting one would probably be the most interesting in terms of character work #werewolves would be very romcom. baseball would be fun because of a big cast. rock band would also be romcom but the other characters would #have more to do and it'd be less of a relationship study and more of a comedy of errors #uugghhh much to think about!!!#codywan #anonymous #ask

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queen-pudi · 3 years

Text

Cuteness Overload

Hello! So I’ve never written a fic before and English is my worst subject in school but when I realized I read every single fic on this app for Fire Force I got sad so I made this. Please enjoy and if you like it maybe I’ll make more! Also thank you to @seashellsandshores for getting me into Fire Force, proofreading this for me and overall being a great friend!! She is a much better writer than I am so please check her out!!

Viktor x Reader

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Being a new recruit to Company 8 was something you thought you were prepared for but apparently weren’t. You were a little shy in the beginning but over time you warmed up and created a family within Company 8. Sure most families don’t have siblings getting attacked and kidnapped by a cult every 2 weeks but it’s still a family nonetheless. Your power was the ability to use your hair as any sort of weapon you want. It was a little hard to get used to but once you got the hang of it was super useful on the field.

However, you still had a hard time controlling your power, especially when you were flustered or nervous. When you were a bit flustered like most people you’d blush but sometimes you’d been known to get so hot your cheeks would go up in flames. Sometimes going as far as your hair catching on fire and wrapping yourself in a cocoon.

At first, it was annoying but overtime you got used to it, and overall most of your shyness was just you trying to avoid having to explain why you were having a mini bonfire on your face. You had been doing a great job until Viktor showed up.

When he joined Company 8 you just about burst into flames. In your eyes he was perfect. He was everything you wanted, witty, smart, kind, and extra points for the height and that beautiful head of hair

When he first came to Company 8 he wanted to learn as much about everyone as he could. This meant he wanted to set up appointments to meet with each and every one of you guys, this obviously including you. Due to your condition and his overall, well everything, you were dreading this moment. You had gotten better at hiding it but normally you weren’t going to be as close as you were with him. It was just going to be you and him with all his attention on you.

“SHIT” you screamed, at the mere thought of talking to him you had burned your pillow and effectively rendered it useless. Sighing you threw it with the other ones and went to get a new one.

Viktor saw you as an enigma. You had been actively avoiding him ever since he came to the company. Only ever speaking to say Hello or goodbye or “Arthur accidentally stabbed himself with his sword again” You barely even made eye contact with him and he was starting to get curious. He knew he could be a bit eccentric but you haven’t even spoken enough to see that side of him.

Truth be told he also fancied you. He thought your quiet nature was cute but he also found it fascinating how you became so confident and fierce when you were in battle or when you were in a meeting. He wanted to get to know you but every time he got close you’d dodge him or go off with someone else.

He was patient though because he knew his time would come where he could sweep you off your feet and impress you with his intelligence.

While you avoided him for a while it was finally time to have your meeting with him. To say you were nervous was an understatement. You were like a walking radiator at that point. It’s amazing how you aren’t a puddle right now.

After standing outside the lab door debating the consequences of just quitting and joining the circus you finally gained the courage to knock. Before you could though Viktor was already opening the door on his way to find you

“Y/N! I was worried you wouldn’t show up!” He exclaimed just a little louder than he wanted to and instantly regretting it once he saw you flinch

“Well, I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to improve on my abilities!” You said trying to come off confident but ultimately failing when your voice started to crack. You walked into his makeshift lab. It wasn’t perfect but it would do for now. You observed all the equipment like a child, curious on how it works and what it was used for.

You stopped when you felt a pair of eyes watching you. You turned and saw Viktor looking at you with a dopey grin. You spun around fast, feeling your face warm up not even a minute into this and you were already on the verge of erupting.

For the first 5 minutes, it was an awkward silence. While he took your vitals you were trying not to turn into hades as he was just inches away from your face. He was trying to scramble for something to say. (All that brainpower and he can’t even think of a dad joke smh)

“Well it looks like you are perfect!” he said after finishing the first round of tests. You knew he meant you were in good health but to hear him call you perfect was enough to set your cheeks blazing. You were scrambling to calm down before he took notice of your predicament

The next test was just accessing your abilities. Show all the things your hair could do and so on. Nothing really interesting, although you did burn a hole through the wall and almost gave yourself some wicked whiplash.

For a while he was chalking this up to the uncomfortable setting of him constantly probing you with tools and questions. After a while though he started to worry it wasn't the setting that was making you uncomfortable but him.

Viktor tried to make conversation but all he would get was a few chuckles and some nodding. It was starting to get to him. He knew he wasn’t as sweet as Shinra or as Attractive as Obi but he thought he was good enough in the looks department and overall a pretty nice guy.

The meeting eventually came to a close and he had just about enough of your lack of response. As you were on the way out he just couldn’t help himself

“I’m sorry but am I doing something wrong?” he asked, concern lacing his voice, you stopped in your tracks and looked at him in confusion

“No you have been great-” “ Then why won’t you talk to me, hell you barely even look at me!” He cut you off. He was frustrated at this point, and rightfully so.

Thinking back on it you had been a bit ruder than you intended to be. While trying to keep your distance you had basically ignored him. It was almost as if he was just another wall to you.

“I have been trying to talk to you for weeks only for you to avoid me at every chance you get. I was hoping to maybe establish some sort of friendship during this meeting but you have been ignoring me and when you do acknowledge me it’s with short responses and nods. You don’t have to like me but at the very least you could pretend for a second-” He blurted out.

He hadn’t intended to word vomit all at once but he couldn’t help himself. He was a curious creature by nature and he needed to find the answers to all these questions he had.

“It’s not that I don’t like you, it's just the opposite! I just…” you trailed off you had noticed that in his state of frustration and your panic you 2 had inched closer to one another. Your faces just within inches of one another.

Ultimately it was too much and you could stop your cheeks from flaming up. Viktor backed away in shock wondering why you didn’t mention this before. Before he could ask what was wrong you had cocooned yourself in a little hairball out of complete embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to! You are just so nice and smart and I just get so flustered when you are around! I want to get to know you but then this happens and I’m sorry-” you were trying to calm down but you just kept getting more embarrassed causing your cocoon to heat up more.

Viktor was just in awe. Besides the fact that you were in the process of turning into a human butterfly, he sort of found it adorable. This combined with what you were saying he was also in the process of burning up

“Y/N! It’s ok! I’m not mad!” he said in an attempt to calm you down “I actually think it’s sort of cute” he mumbled just loud enough for you to hear. This intrigued you enough for you to calm down so that you could look at him, cheeks blazing an all.

“Really? What’s so cute about me turning in a human lighter?”

Viktor laughed while taking a seat next to you “I find everything you do cute when you laugh and your nose crinkles; cute when you yawn and instantly cover your mouth with both hands to hide your face: cute, and when you turn into human torch from fantastic four when you get embarrassed: cute” he confessed

You slowly cooled down and let your hair unravel. You mustered up all your courage to look at him. Your cheeks were still emitting flames but not as bright as before. He gave you a soft smile which you returned. You don’t know how it started but slowly you 2 started to lean in. Lips just a breath away from each other until

“Viktor Y/N its time for dinner…” Hinawa said, bursting into the room. You and Viktor bolted away from each other, flames starting to engulf your face. Hinawa paused, processing the scene that was in front of him.

“Lieutenant this is not what it looks like! I mean it sort of is but it’s also no-” You screamed frantically

“When you two are done making out can you please join us for dinner. Afterwards we can discuss workplace romance and fill out the proper paperwork.” He announced while on his way out.

Mortified you wrapped yourself up into a burrito and ran out the room. Left in the lab was Viktor who looked just about as red as you, wearing a lovesick smile, “Like I said: Cute”

#viktor licht #fire force #fire force viktor #fire force imagines #fire force x reader #enen no shōbōtai #enen no shouboutai viktor #enen no shouboutai x reader

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calltomuster · 3 years

Note

Ok ok I've been wanting to ask you this for so long but I was so shy about it and didn't but I'm GOING FOR IT

Do you have any favorite headcanons about Fuzzy?? What were his early days like on Kamino? What was his first meeting with Obi-Wan like? Was it casual, serious...did he immediately know Obi-Wan would be a problem child lol? Are there any moments you have in your head between them or Fuzzy and his brothers that you want to share? Dare I ask, where was he for Order 66? Did he even survive that long?? What happened to him afterwards, if he did?

Idk I just really want to know everything about this boyyyyyy and if you feel like sharing, that would be !!!! super cool!!!! I've been talking my friend's ear off about him so I'd love some new trivia to impart lol!

Thanks for making my world brighter <3

YOU CONTINUE TO GIVE ME LIFE, @the13thbattalion. LIFE, I TELL YOU.

(You also have the dubious honor of being the first person to slide into my askbox in literal years, so congrats 😂. Made my day!)

Under the cut because I am Verbose™️.

Well first of all I’d like to say that my favorite headcanon (can I call it a headcanon if his entire existence is my headcanon????) is how he got his name, which I’ve talked about in both fics he’s been in so far because I love it so much. Clone names are so fascinating to me because they have so much more meaning than names in our world, as they’re given once someone has an actual personality as opposed to at birth. Every clone has a story behind how they got their name, even if it’s just as simple as “I liked the way it sounded.”

And with Fuzzy’s name, it’s got both a double meaning AND irony, which is just the best. All I’ll say for now is that he was named on Kamino by his batchmates. I just wrote out a whole 600 word mini-fic on exactly how he was named but I’m now realizing that I might actually put it in the fic itself so I’m holding onto it for now. I’m tentatively planning on making the last section from Fuzzy’s POV and this would fit in there, but if it doesn’t work out that way I’ll definitely post it on here for you!

Aaaaaanyway, what else can I say about Fuzzy? The bit I just wrote goes into his early days on Kamino, so maybe I’ll talk a bit about his first meeting with Obi-Wan? Ooh, but that would also go really well in the fic itself… Darn it! Well, let me just say that at first no, Fuzzy didn’t anticipate a lot of problems coming from Obi-Wan. I mean, he was a Jedi! Jedi were, like, wise and stuff. And this Jedi seemed especially polite and competent. So Fuzzy gave him the same spiel he gave everyone (batchmates and superior officers alike) about taking care of himself and coming to see him if he ever had any problems and that was that. And so if, for a while, he never saw the General in his medbay, well, Fuzzy figured he was just very good about taking care of himself. Boy, did he soon learn!

Oooooh, Order 66… I admit I haven’t thought too much about what happens there with Fuzzy but sadly, I imagine he was just orbiting Utapau in the Negotiator, waiting for the injured to arrive. After all, General Kenobi was going after Grievous, and that had never ended well in the past for anyone. And then the order came through and he doesn’t remember much after that. Until… well, that’s a story for another day! Mwahahaha.

One final thing about Fuzzy that will almost definitely make it into the overall fic but I’ll put here anyway: he has a lot of fun with shinies. Loves them. Mainly messing with them. After all, they’ve all heard about the head medic for the 212th. Some of them hear of his reputation but not his name, and so make the mistake of laughing in his face a little when they’re introduced to the terrifying head medic and he’s called Fuzzy. And some hear of his name and not his reputation, and so expect some sweet, doting, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly medic and are then confronted with the man himself. Both scenarios end with Fuzzy getting up in the shiny’s face with a scowl and screaming something along the lines of “My name is Fuzzy! Is there something funny about that to you, trooper?! Huh?!” and then the shiny will quake in his boots and shake his head really quickly and stammer out a “No, sir!” and Fuzzy will maintain eye contact for a few seconds too long and then draw back and give them The Spiel about not getting hurt as if nothing happened. Fuzzy finds that the shinies are much more motivated to keep themselves healthy if they are just the slightest bit scared of him. Of course, once they are actually hurt and in the medbay they realize he’s mostly bark rather than bite so learn to love their head medic.

(And Fuzzy, of course, is a bit of an asshole but he’s not an asshole, so once he learns about Obi-Wan’s PTSD he changes his demeanor around him and does a lot of research, as we’ll see in the fic!)

Thanks so much for asking all these questions! It really forced me to write down all the things that have been floating around in my head and it gave me ideas for the fic. Please feel free to jump into my askbox any time!!

#the13thbattalion #clone oc fuzzy #obi-wan kenobi #my writing #asks #series: battle scars

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rxsie-the-demon · 4 years

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Brooklyn Baby | JJ Maybank

SERIES MASTERLIST

A/N: heyo! so i haven’t written fanfic in FOREVER, and i never have on tumblr. so please be patient with me (haha). this is gonna be a series, basically everything that i want (dreamed?) about that happens in season 2 of outerbanks. i hope you enjoy!

chapter summary: Nikki Reddy is new to Outer Banks High School, aka ‘Kook Academy.’ After befriending Topper, Kelce, and Scarlet and getting a crash course on OBX culture, she meets the school outcast, Kiara Carrera

warning: swearing, mentions of drowning, shooting, death, smoking, etc. nothing super bad, just usual stuff from s1

word count: 2075

CHAPTER 1: Shades of Cool

I honestly had no idea what was going through my brother’s head when he decided to say, “Fuck it, let’s move to the Outer Banks.” In the middle of the school year. In the winter!

Like, he could’ve at LEAST waited ‘til the summer or spring. But nope, we’re going to the Graveyard of the Atlantic in fucking January.

JANUARY.

I can’t even wear cute sandals or shorts.

I sighed deeply and turned into the parking lot of Outer Banks High School, or as some kid I heard called it, Kook Academy. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean because no one at the school seemed crazy. But then again, this was my third day here. For all I know, these kids are batshit crazy.

I parked her white Lamborghini Aventador that I had gotten for my sixteenth birthday (just Sweet Sixteen things) and grabbed my pink Kanken backpack and flung it over my shoulder, brushing her shoulder lengthed hair out of my way. Stupid hair always getting in the way of everything. While I walked into the building, I pulled her schedule out of the pocket of the bag, not remembering where my AP US History class was.

“Nikki! Hi!” I heard a girl’s voice call out. Turning around, I was met with the energetic, and for a lack of a better word, preppy girl who was assigned to show me around the school two days ago. Scarlet, I remembered. The girl whose name matched her hair. Next to her, the tall, HOT, tan blonde friend wearing khakis and a sweater, and the other boy, also tall, equally hot, dark-skinned friend. Topper and Kelce, was it? I couldn’t remember. Or was it Topher, like Christopher? I knew a guy who went by Topher instead of Chris. He was a weird guy.

“Hey! Scarlet, right? And...Topper and Kelce?” I gave them a sheepish grin. “Sorry, I suck with names.”

“No, it’s all good, broski,” Topper smiled. “And you got them right if that makes it better.”

I sighed with relief. “Oh, good.”

“I LOVE your dress,” Scarlet cooed. I did too. A yellow plaid cami dress over a thin, white turtleneck sweater, complete with white converse and a simple silver necklace with an ‘Om’ symbol.

“Aw, thank you! I love your outfit, too! I could never rock a green tube top and jeans, you’re BLESSED.”

“We should start walking to class, guys,” Kelce interjected, “Otherwise we’re going to be late, and Miss Newbie here doesn’t need that on her third day of school.” Topper rolled his eyes and laughed.

“Facts, love. Let’s get a move on,”

As we turned to walk to class, we passed by this girl whose rather dull aura caught my attention. I only saw part of her face when we walked by her, but she had sunken eyes as if she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in who knows how long. Her frizzy brown hair was spilling out of the hood of her black sweatshirt, and her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her black sweatpants.

Honestly? I thought she looked like shit. But not in an insulting way, in an “Are you ok? Do you need a hug?” kind of way.

“Hey, Top,” I turned next to him to asked, “Who’s the girl in all black that looks like she’s gonna pass out?”

The three OBX OGs spun their heads around to catch a glimpse of who I was talking about, before letting out a laugh at her question. “Ah, that’s Kiara. She’s a freak.” Top responded, chuckling.

I smiled sarcastically, a little mad that they outright insulted someone like that, but couldn’t show it because, well, I had no other friends. “True, but uh, how so?”

“She’s friends with Pogues, that’s how.”

“...Pogues?”

“The poor kids on the island, from The Cut. They’re all freaks and whores, they run around, stealing stuff, trying to shoot people.” Scarlet chirped up, emphasizing the different words. I nodded slowly.

“Yeah! This one Pogue, John B, like, he stole my girlfriend, uh sorry, EX-girlfriend from me, and his buddy JJ tried to shoot me in the head!” Topper exclaimed. Nikki’s eyes went wide.

“Wait...hold up, wait, he- WHAT? WHY did he try to shoot you?”

“I got into a fight with John B.”

“OK BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE’S GONNA- WHAT?”

“OK OK, I may have stuck his head underwater for a bit. I wasn’t gonna KILL him, I was just messing around, you know?” Topper looked at Kelce and Scarlet, who agreed with him, “Gotta show those dirty Pogues their place.”

I laughed dryly. What the flying fuck?

We stepped inside the classroom and took our seats, with me right behind Scarlet, and Topper and Kelce on either side of her.

Scarlett spun around. “Bro, our teacher isn’t even here!” She rolled her eyes and pulled out her Puff Bar from her bar and took a hit. She looked over at me and held it out for me. I shook my head no and turned to Topper. “Wait, Topper, that ex-girlfriend. Does she go here?”

Kelce and Scarlet immediately looked over at Topper, who looked like I just ran over his cat.

“Oh I’m sorry,” I immediately apologized. “I shouldn’t have asked about-”

“No, no, it’s ok,” Top said awkwardly and coughed. He turned to face me with a sad smile. “Uh, remember how I mentioned she’d left me for some Pogue?”

“John something, yea?”

“Well, he killed her and himself, about six months ago.”

My jaw dropped. “What the fuck?! How are you so casual about- Shit I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, he shot the last sheriff, Sheriff Peterkins, who by all accounts was actually a sweetheart. Then he proceeds to convince Sarah, or maybe he blackmailed her, I don’t know, into riding his boat into a tropical depression. We found the wreckage of the boat a couple weeks later, but...their bodies were never found...”

“Holy fucking shit.”

“Yeah... That girl, Kiara, she was best friends with both John B and Sarah. John B was, by all accounts, trash, but he was still her friend, I guess.”

I nodded slowly, trying to process all the information Topper had just dumped onto me.

Despite my extremely wealthy upbringing, I was raised to not be classist. Or at least, I hope that’s how I turned out; Scarlet, Topper, and Kelce also don’t seem like the most honest people. But these...Pogues that they were talking about...don’t seem like the sweet people.

But something about that girl’s eyes...they seemed so sad. You don’t feel for someone like that unless they’re a good person. Right?

*****************************************************

Our teacher was droning off about...gosh who even fucking knows, I stopped paying attention the second he walked in.

I was on autopilot mode, taking down notes but not, like, actually paying attention. Instead, my mind was on these really cute boots I saw while online window shopping yesterday. I had bookmarked the link. Maybe I’d buy those?

“Nikhita!” My teacher called out. Hearing my first name, I snapped back to reality.

“Hi!” I smiled back. The class chuckled a bit.

Mr. Obi, a Nigerian man with the biggest glasses I’ve ever seen, rolled his eyes. “Hello. Did you hear what I said?”

“Not at all, sir, not at all.”

Topper and Scarlet were losing their minds; the former had to put his head down on his desk because he was laughing so hard.

He sighed and shoved his glasses up his nose. They slid down again. “I asked you what was the impact of the election of 1860?”

Shit shit shit shit shit

“Uh...wait, we want to war? Yea, that, like, started the Civil War.” I said, thankful I knew the answer. Mr. Obi was unimpressed.

“Mhm. Anyway, so...” and he continued to drone off.

Topper turned to me, smiling, and we both laughed.

As the lesson went on, I kept glancing at the clock. Ok, 45 minutes left, which means we’re halfway through class.

Mr. Obi kept going on and on about the Civil War, until, 15 minutes later, a little alarm went off on his phone. He turned and pressed the ‘Stop’ button.

“Right on time. Ok, so, I shortened today’s lesson because I wanted to talk about your project. Nikhita, you got here two days ago, the first day back from winter break, so you have no idea what I’m talking about, and I’m sure most of your classmates have forgotten. So I’ll refresh your memories: the second semester of U.S History is not going to the usual. You’re going to have a semester-long project that can be about anything. Literally anything, so long as it has something to do with either world history or current events. Yes, I know this is a United States history class, but we expanded this project to make it more interesting for you guys..”

Mr. Obi stopped for a second, looking at all of us. I nodded, partially because I felt bad because everyone was just giving him black stares, and because I found this project interesting.

“Now, in the past years, I left my classes to choose their partners or groups. But before the break, I’m sure you all remember the catastrophe that was your mini-project, yes?”

The class mumbled something incoherent, except for the boys in the back of the class who started cheering, which made our teacher smile.

“Well, because of that, I’ve decided to choose your partners for you. Well, more like the Pyramid of Doom.”

The Pyramid of Doom. This mini pyramid statue that has a little opening on the top, with all of our names in them.

Mr. Obi opened the Pyramid and began. I stayed quiet, listening to see who I was going to be paired with. Hopefully one of my three friends, or maybe one of the boys in the back. They’re cute.

When my name was called, I leaned forward to pay attention. The intensity, the suspense. Who was gonna be my partner?

Mr. Obi stuck his hand in the Pyramid and pulled out the next piece of paper. “Kiara Carrera.”

My eyes went wide.

******************************************************

“So, you excited to be partners with the freak for class,” Topper asked, taking a bite of his pasta. I laughed sarcastically.

Outer Banks High School has an A/B schedule, which means third block is two hours instead of 90 minutes, and everyone has a different lunch at a different time, depending on their class. On A days, I have lunch with Topper and some other kids. On B days, I’m by myself.

Today’s an A day.

“It’ll be fine. She doesn’t seem that bad.” I turned to my left to face him, popping a grape into my mouth. Yum. I love grapes.

“Yea, just wait ‘til you get to know her,” this boy across from us said. “She’s so weird. She hates being a Kook. Like, she never goes golfing.”

“Or shopping!” One girl piped up. “She just likes to sit at the beach and surf, and smoke weed and stuff.”

“Well, that sounds fun,” I shrugged. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love going to country clubs, and shopping, and going out to get breakfast, but I love chillin’ at the beach. Maybe she just has different interests?”

“Ok, that’s fine,” Topper stated, “but she’s friends with Pogues. And not just any Pogues - John B Routledge, JJ Maybank, and Pope Heyward.”

“Ok, but like, one of them’s dead. Look, I’m all for holding people accountable for their actions, but...bro, stop tryna cancel a dead dude,” I laughed. Topper punched my arm, and I winced jokingly.

He wrapped an arm around my waist, and I blushed a bit. Topper’s cute, definitely, and I like the attention, but I knew what was going on. Sarah Cameron, the dead girl, was this school’s Queen, with Topper as King. He’s looking for a replacement, not an actual girlfriend.

But...I liked the attention. I put my head on his shoulder.

“Hey, so, my friend Rafe’s 20th birthday party is this Friday. He’s a family friend and I would love it if you’d join me at the party.”

I turned to look at him, debating whether or not I wanted to go to some rando’s birthday party. But Topper knows him, and it seems like everyone else does, too.

“Sure,” I smiled. “Why not.

__________________________________

chapter two

#outerbank #outer banks #jj #jj maybank #john b #john b x sarah #obx kiara #pope #jj fluff #jj smut #jj angst #obx fic #obx

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himboskywalker · 4 years

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I decided to watch Ewan Mcgregors filmography as I could last year because I had seen so little of it and mY GOD I couldn't believe how much nudity there is in his films lmao he's got like 80 something works and you writing out that ewan nudie list is just like "oh yeah ok def not a fever dream i really did see ewans balls in almost every 90s/2000s film he ever starred in"😂😂😂

Not a fever dream at all but it is a pure delight. 😂 He does have the highest number of films with his naked dick in it for an A list actor by a long shot. What I find particularly funny is that in more recent years, he’s been in more mainstream stuff like Nanny McPhee or Christopher Robin, so any newer or younger fans know him from that,Star Wars,and maybe Trainspotting if they’re a movie person. But the fact is McGregor became well known in the 90s as an indie actor precisely for roles like Trainspotting or The Pillow Book or Velvet Goldmine,which are all rated R and super low budget through small studios. What’s great is I think a lot of us delve into his older stuff at the same time,so I went through the exact same process as you a few years ago and watched all of his 90s and early 2000s stuff back to back and was like ?!???! Jesus Christ this man’s dick is in EVERYTHING?!????Which like —10,000 complaints but Ewan McGregor is a very famous,very well respected A list actor and it’s so shocking to watch his old filmography and it’s just dick!balls!dick!dick!gay sex!dick!more gay sex!

I have a lot of mad respect and positive opinions on this aspect of his acting though. McGregor was doing full frontal and gay sex scenes in the 90s when verrrrrrry few other actors would have been willing to do the same. Hell,most male actors still refuse full frontal nude scenes when McGregor has done, as we see from my very scientific list (ha) at least 7 or 8. Interviews with him on the subject & his many gay/bi roles are quite funny because he’s so chill and just like,no I’m not interested in men but I think it’s quite liberating and refreshing and I feel very empowered to be totally naked so it’s all good. I’ve always thought McGregor has this very unique visceral sensuality and physicality to him that I think is evident in his cleaner roles too,like Obi-Wan in Star Wars. Anyway Ewan McGregor fucks and I think it’s quite lovely he decided it’s totally cool that the rest of the world gets to know and see that too. 😂

#long post #ewan mcgregor #anyway sorry nobody asked me to go on this long about how attracted and in love with ewan mcgregor i am #i think its very sexy he likes to get naky and kiss men and be the villain for feminists in roller skates #he loves to lightsaber fight and he’s got one of the biggest dicks in hollywood (which we can confirm) and what more could you ever want?#obi wan kenobi #star wars #ewan mcgregor movies #i’ll shut up now #trainspotting #velvet goldmine #the pillow book

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norcumii · 4 years

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Ruminating on Rebels, 2

I know I took awhile with this episode, but boy does it feel long. The pacing is off? Or my brain is just unhappy. No idea which. I suspect that’s just my brain, though.

SPOILERS AHEAD. REBELS CRITICAL. For details what this is about, here’s a post. My relevant tag is “throwing popcorn at Rebels”.

Episode 2: Spark of Rebellion Part II

Overview:

Ezra runs into the Star Destroyer to warn the team, gets to Zeb and Kanan just before they get ganked at the cell block. Sabine cuts the gravity, leaves a lot of explosives at the control room, but Ezra gets caught on the way out. The Ghost crew makes it to hyper before finding this out from Zeb, vote on going back or not. Kallus makes a pretext of questioning Ezra (note: I think it’s meant as legit, but it felt lackluster), and then Ezra escapes as the Ghost crew arrives to rescue him. They meet up part way and book it, only to find that while escaping, Ezra overheard where the wookies REALLY were being held. Off they go to Kessel to save the wookiees! Fight scene at the spice mines, leading to Kanan using the lightsaber and getting ID’d as a Jedi, Ezra faces off against Kallus to save a kid wookiee, the team escapes. Kanan offers Ezra a chance to join up and learn to use the Force, and away they go to a dramatic voice-over by Obi-Wan via holocron recording.

Random impressions:

These wookiees are AWFUL

PLASTIC FOR YOU, PLASTIC FOR YOU, BAD ACTION FIGURES OF EEEEEEVERYONE

I really, REALLY, R E A L L Y don’t like Hera. She’s advertised as team leader and Space!Mom, but all I keep seeing is manipulative bullshit. Apparently letting Ezra take the holocron was a test to see if he was Force sensitive. Her comment in the Ghost the last episode about “If all you do is fight for your own life, then your life is worth nothing” - aaaagh. That – I get what they’re TRYING to say, about having Purpose is good, but having been in A Very Bad Place where all I could do was cling by my fingernails and try to take care of myself because 1, no one else would and 2, that was literally all I could manage – that just smacks me in the face with guilt-tripping. I know it’s not meant to be that, just...UGH. At best, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m going to continue side-eyeing her until she proves she’s not ACTUALLY an asshole, and yes, that is apparently an uphill battle.

The rescued wookiees say that if the Ghost crew “ever need help, they’ll be there” - THAT BETTER PAY OUT BEFORE THE SERIES IS OVER. (spoiler: Wookieepedia indicates it does not. I am disappoint, though I will keep an eye out in case it’s wrong.)

I am totally convinced now that Ezra HAS actually been using the Force awhile. The way he somersaults over crates into cover – dodging blaster bolts – and then later over a trooper to get between him and a Wookiee kid – that’s something Ezra KNOWS he can do. Like, past experience doing that sort of leap. I want to see how this interacts with Kanan’s lessons.

Kanan dodges bolts a lot more than he reflects them, but when he does they tend to take out troopers effectively. Someone’s spent time practicing.

Speaking of, he goes WAY hard on the Stoic Holy Jedi (With A Lightsaber Up His Ass) thing. Ugh. I want the goofy smuggler more. That’s more fun, AND show’s growth away from his past. We’ll see how that interacts with right now he’s trying to Jedi because oh noes, it’s a padawan (WHUT DOOOOOO)!

When Kanan shows up to save Ezra, he’s is riding on top the ghost, which pops up alongside the catwalk. ....meaning Mr. Drama Llama opened the doors to a shipping crate in flight and somehow flipped his way up to the top of the ship, OR lightsabered his way an exit through the TOP of the crate, which I hope was done carefully or they took out parts of the magnetic seal keeping the crate attached to the bottom of the ship. ...Jedi. SIGH. WHY COULD NO ONE MAKE A CRACK ABOUT THAT? YES IT WAS IMPRESSIVE, BUT THEN AFTERWARDS IT MAKES A GREAT TENSION RELEASE TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT WAS UNUSUAL. Meh. Ok, that one’s probably me being too finicky.

Sabine left about 20 explosives in the control room. Just one of those has been shown to be enough to blast open doors and destroy a speeder bike. HOW MUCH BOOM DO YOU NEED? I mean, ok, this leads to a hole in the side of the super star destroyer (venting atmosphere! :D That was some LOVELY animation and there WAS squee about that!)

Zeb is a gods damned wreck. If he were less physically violent, I would pick him as a favorite, because interesting non-human and it’s clearly trauma and not knowing how to people that leads to him being...him. However, I can’t get over the way he’s THAT rough. There’s a line between “you’re dealing with old issues poorly, and that expresses itself through (at best) roughhousing and not gauging your own strength” and “you’re beating up on others and using your trauma as an excuse for it, and we all know how well ‘cool motive still murder’ works as a defense.”

When Ezra left, Chopper made sad bwoops and waved goodbye in a non-sarcastic way. Whut.

The animators are still not getting clear direction. The bit that really jumped out at me was when Ezra saves the kid wookiee, he’s shown hoisting the kid’s cuffed hands and looking all puzzled at the binders – and we just saw how he IMMEDIATELY knew how to pick those things open on the adult wookiees. Possibly just me being nitpicky again, but it’s very jarring to me.

The “I swear, if he gets left behind again it is not my fault!” bit showed up, and I can’t tell if that’s them trying to make the repetition is funny thing, or establishing a trend? I mean, I COULD see a longer running...not gag, but trend, of Zeb having to either leave or haul Ezra out of things and them bitching at each other over this for YEAAAAARS until it’s just an easy thing, a well-worn way to poke at a friend like an affable punch to the shoulder that is just a thing they do. Which could be cute, if done right.

Hopefully more coherent views:

The inter-group dynamics are wild, and I don’t think I mean that in a complimentary sense. Zeb is just...kinda broken, ok. Sabine was kind of a non-entity through most of this. I don’t have the spoons to count her lines, but the most memorable thing that she did was want to know how the explosion looked. Which...ok? I guess? Hera had more characterization, and we got the Competent!Pilot thing – along with the Manipulative Asshole thing, which yeah, I’m eyeballing a LOT more. Chopper came across as irritable and generally a cranky old man, which would fly better if Zeb wasn’t already trying to squat on that territory. It makes things feel more grating than perhaps they are. Kanan is your average Jedi but in better clothes, and I can’t tell how much sanctimoniousness is he doesn’t know how to teach, how much is just discomfort, and how much is I don’t like the manipulation of Ezra.

As for Ezra, he’s got some NEAT skills. I...kinda like the whole “nope, I’m not a hero, not running out there in a the middle of a blaster fight to save some rando” attitude because it’s hints of the hero’s journey having far to go, but there’s not enough heart of gold for me to give any shits. He’s TOO caught up in his own situation for me to care (and while I don’t blame him as a character for that, it makes him a third-rate Aladdin archetype. All the ‘in the rough’ but no ‘diamond’).

Kallus is satisfying to dislike, for all that he feels like a poor man’s Thrawn. The temper tantrum of kicking the surviving stormtrooper off the catwalk was gratuitous, but fine. We’re not supposed to like him. (Yes, I know about later, but I’m ignoring that at the moment.)

So. Yaye, I guess. We have our characters, we have our villain and our on-the-sidelines villain in the Inquisitor waiting to swoop in to be all mastermind badguy. We have our setup, and a few potential threads to follow back on.

End summary:

That was a weak (second half to a) first episode. I mean, again, that’s not a killer, but nothing about the show grabs me and goes “ISN’T THIS THING AWESOME???” There’s too much internal conflict without enough glue to bond people together, I have strong reasons to dislike almost everyone (and the rest are too undeveloped yet to really hit me one way or another). With the animation doing nothing for me, it’s...getting no traction so far.

#rebels critical #star wars rebels #thinky thoughts #long post is long #throwing popcorn at rebels #spoilers #yes i am this slow watching media

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jayne-hecate-writer · 4 years

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The Mandalorian... In Lego form

What can I add to the praise about the Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian, that has not already been said?

Yes, it is really very good, I was captivated within the first minute and was heart broken during the third episode, entitled The Sin, when the Mandalorian handed over the child to the Imperial officer, played so beautifully by Werner Herzog. Of them all, it is probably episodes three and four that are my favourites, showing the more gentle side to the character. But let us be honest, when choosing favourite episodes of this series, we the viewer have been rather spoilt because there is not a dud among them. Not even the sixth episode, which was a heist story and could easily have been done rather badly, but wasn’t and even included a fabulously dry Dave Filoni cameo as a New Republic pilot. No, not a single missed beat, bad line or failed joke throughout series one.

This is not to say that it does not have its cold brutal moments though, the Quarren being bisected in the first episode was utterly shocking, you even hear his legs heit the floor! Encasing the good natured Mythol in carbonite was really mean. Yet, they saved the humour of child abuse right up until the end and the speeder scouts indifference in violently handling the child. These moments of suffering are balanced so perfectly with real heart and leave a lump in the throat, even when dealing with an assassin droid walking into a lava flow. Terminator eat your heart out!

So, it must be time to combine some of the biggest loves of my rather childish, adult life into one hobby, namely my love of Star Wars and my love of Lego. With every new franchise released under the Star Wars banner, Lego get good dibs on making tie in sets. With the release of the Mandalorian, the Lego sets have been exceptional and if you have not yet seen them, you should go and have a look at the Brickset page.

The first set, number 75254 or AT-ST Raider is a glorious reworking of the beloved Imperial walker, as seen during the Battle of Endor, but here it comes with loose wiring and scratched paint. The colours are indicative of rust, repainting of old worn out parts and some battle damage, all achieved with coloured bricks and several stickers. The effect is really very pleasing and the walker stands at just over twenty five centimetres tall. All that it is missing is the red glow in the cocpit. The minfigs that come with this set just wonderful. Cara Dune, played so effortlessly well by Gina Carono in the show, is a really lovely minifig, although having a globally available minifig of your character must be exciting even for a movie star. Along with the walker come two raider pilots and then even Mando himself, in his dirty and mismatched armour, which is a little odd. By this point in the show, when he meets and briefly fights with Cara Dune, he already has his new Beskar cuirass of armour, complete in shining silver. So one has to ask why he is presented to us in the older colours of his armour that was destroyed by the Mudhorn in the second episode? Over all though, 75254 is a lovely set, even with the annoyance of having to apply stickers (which is a topic that takes on the additional needs of disability issues for me and my manky old lady fingers), rather than using printed pieces.

Set 75267, the Mandalorian Battle Pack is simple, cheap and rather pretty. This is a basic set with four minifigs, all in various colours of Mandalorian armour which may be different clans, with a small gun emplacement and speeder bike. The warriors are split equally male and female, but I have no idea which is which, due to the lack of lipstick, floral tops and flowing long hair, the usual key indicators used by Lego to show the gender split (stories of my subverting this by placing the ‘male’ bodies with the ‘female’ heads, are very likely true!). Removing the helmets reveals an unprinted black head, which is slightly disturbing, but this is something that Lego had done for several years now.

The big set of this theme for 2020 has to be the fabulous ship used by the Mandalorian, the beautifully named Mandalorian Bounty Hunter Transport Ship… Oops yeah, it seems that somebody fucked up. Set number 75292, Razor Crest has in some cases been renamed following claims of trademark usage by another company, who just happen to make Lego compatible sets and some may claim have been guilty of cloning Lego sets without license. Oh dear.

I pre-ordered my set a good three months prior to release and thank the heavens that I did, because it was hopelessly delayed and finally cancelled three days after release and so I had to deal with Lego directly... during a pandemic outbreak... when every anguished parent with a Star Wars addicted child was no doubt screaming for their Mandalorian set too. Lego were hellishly busy and no doubt there were many like me, disappointed Amazon customers scrabbling to find the sets they had ordered weeks before. How many of those adults with debit cards were buying the toy for themselves though, remains a closely guarded industry secret.

When the set arrived, I was impressed by the actual size of the box which was huge and which my cat now uses for a bed! This was just the outer packaging used by Lego to ship the set, but the actual set box was still quite large and also beautifully printed, if surprisingly heavy.

Building the model was fun, even if there is a fair amount of repetition due to the chirality of the ship and the usual struggles with yet more bloody stickers! The engine nacelles are probably the least screen accurate feature, given the rough tooth like arrangement on the front intakes bares little resemblence to the smooth circular versions on the screen rendered ship. This is a tiny little complaint about an otherwise awesome model though. (I am just going to pause here for a moment. Are they really air intakes? Given that this is a spacecraft and it can travel at ‘light-speed’, why does it have these large open front intakes that resemble the compressor fan of a jet engine? Actually, that is a stream of thought that can only lead to sadness, especially with the roar of said engine as it flies across screen, supposedly in space, you know space. The place where NO ONE can hear you scream! But can hear if you miss a gear on your spaceship!)

Minfigs with this set are thoroughly cool, with our classic Mando himself, Din Djarin. He does of course have the child with him and the fidure of the child is adorable. This set also includes Greef Karga, a Scout Trooper and IG11… Um. Once again, this is a potentially confused set. Is this from the first episode or the last two? I don’t recall seeing the Scout troopers in the first episode so much, but they are present and a large part of the finale. Mando does of course have some serious issues with droids, having been orphaned during the Clone Wars, by a B2 Super Battle Droid (Speaking of droids and the Clone Wars, this does explain to me why when Luke and Obi Wan visit Mos Eisley, the cantina owner tells Luke that the droids are not welcome. It was a glaringly obvious issue that I never gave thought to, of course people would mistrust droids, the Clone Wars were a political tool used by a member of the elite, to secure their own power while creating political turmoil in which they could thrive and in which many thousands of innocent people lost their lives. I wonder if this was written to parallel real life, not that we have many examples of this in the real world), which is shown in heart breaking visceral detail during the several flashbacks we see. Again, this is just another element in this series that goes to such great depth to give the characters real heart. Anyway, back to my point, a part of his redemption was Mando coming to accept and even trust a droid, which he does with IG11, despite it being Mando himself who terminated the IG unit to begin with. So with a Scout trooper, IG11 and Greef Karga, would it be fair to say that with the child in hand, Mando should be in his silver Beskar armour? It would appear not and thus Mando is still in his dirty, rusted and damaged armour with this set. At some point they simply must release a set with him in shiny new Beskar, but maybe that will come with the release of Series two.

Over all, the sets released in this theme for 2020 have all been excellent and to an adult child like myself, well worthy of collecting, building and displaying… Because these are not toys! They are valuable collectors pieces, future antiques and actually rather pretty. Which leads me onto my next section, how to display the models while making them look like something interesting and not just a pile of bricks. I had a space that you could have called a bookshelf, not a great space for books if I am honest, being slightly awkward and on top of my Lego desk. So I decided to fill this space with a Lego Diorama that measures one hundred and six studs wide and twenty four studs deep. It was a crap bookcase and my Lego books kept falling over or worse, falling off altogether to land on whatever I was working on at the time. The gloss painted finish proved to be be sticky, which damaged a couple of my instructions booklets and well, these are the issues you get when you design and build your own furniture, out of scrap wood and offcuts. Yes, the furniture is a bit mismatched in my office, but I made nearly all of it. Maybe one day I will do a show and tell.

The display started as a simple thing, a couple of enclosed boxes in which I could build a pair of scenes. My first scene was the Rebel Alliance looking at a hologram of the Death Star, while planning an attack on the technological terror. It is half based on Episode four with a dash of episode six. I added flickering lights and a large Death Star shell from the planets sets and stood back to admire my work. It was… OK-ish and sat like that for several months as I planned the next box and then what was to go above it.

With the release of the Mandalorian, I knew that the remaining box had to be the Covert, with the Armourer and her forge. I also knew that with the Razor Crest, I wanted some kind of scene above the covert to place both the ship and the AT-ST together, which while technically mixing a couple of episodes set on different worlds, could be seen in the soul of the show, rather than an accurate depiction of the Mandalorian itself. With the addition of some more lights it was all going so well and then I had to re-home Vader's castle, a task of Sisyphean proportions.

Humour aside, I need a larger office. With my Solo, Rebels, Rogue One, Clone Wars, New Hope and final trilogy themes to my Star Wars Lego display, plus the collection of Technic lego so large it required specialist furniture to be built, I have run out of room. Vader’s castle is thankfully taller than it is wide and it fitted onto the shelf fairly well. It also took lighting effects really nicely and I was pleased with the results, in particular, the glowing hologram of the Emperor that appears in miniature in front of Vader's desk. However, it now looks like I have a nice castle, built on the edge of a run down city slum, with the sewers taken over by rogue blacksmiths and a group of noisy political activists. If any of you can spot the social commentary in here, well done you. Poor old Vader however can barely get any sleep, no wonder his mouse droid keeps leaping off the model and onto my carpet, it wants to escape for some peace!

So now that the office shelves are filled, what should I do next? Well actually, there are some things on the Razor Crest that I am not happy with, aspects that need some work to make it look a little better. First to go is that hideous hole in the top. Yes, it allows you to claw the pod out, but for display, rather than play, the hole is unacceptable. I made my own Moff Gideon (Using Winstone from Ghostbusters for the head and an Imperial Pilot body) and equipped him with a Darksabre. I added a pair of speeder bikes too, one for the scout that came with the Razor Crest and one for a scout that I added later.

I dread to think how much I have spent on this project, there is easily three hundred pounds in sets on my shelf alone, consisting of three large ships, one walker and a castle. There are also the various minifigs I bought from else where, such as the Rebel Alliance leadership and spare Mandalorian warriors. There are all of the lights, the wire and the switches, which cost about twenty pounds. It all adds up rather quickly and luckily for me, most of the Lego consists of bricks that I have collected over the years and a lot of those bricks were second hand.

Was it worth it? Yes it was. Not only was it a lot of fun to plan and build, but as a disabled person, it is nice to have a hobby that I can still manage and do fairly well. It is nothing like climbing a mountain, or wild camping with my mountain bike, but it stopped me going insane with boredom, especially during lockdown. Who knows what I can do next, but it is nice to be back on the technic and building actual gear boxes again.

#lego star wars #the mandalorian #star wars #lego moc #Custom Lighting #Disability #Lockdown #Scout Trooper #the razor crest #Darth Vader #Vader's Castle #AT-ST Walker #Scout Walker #Chicken Walker #The Armourer #Beskar #IG11 #The Child #baby yoda

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clairen45 · 5 years

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Luke Skywalker: Biblical Hero?

While reviewing the photographs from TROS published in Vanity Fair, I stopped on the one featuring Luke with R2D2.

At first glance, I honestly thought it was teasing about finally getting the true story behind the infamous Jedi Temple massacre, that one fatal night that tipped the scale into the birth of Kylo Ren. But as was kindly reminded to me by @tricaurelie, nope, because this is “old Luke”, the one that Rey got to meet on Ahch-To. The picture can sure be misleading as it reprises key elements from the Jedi Temple massacre, mostly R2 and fire. And the planet where Luke decided to establish his temple does exhibit some traces of vegetation, as seen here:

But, nope, this shot is not supposed to be about a flashback that finally tells us all about what and how it all went down, something that is important about the premices of Kylo Ren. Even though, you could very well imagine Force Ghost Luke (in his old form as recorded) coming to tell the story all over again. I don’t really believe in that theory as I enounce it. It’s possible, but meh... How Luke will play out, and this particular scene, who knows, but still, I want to come back to the way Luke is portrayed here and the symbolism behind it. This is very obviously a Moses display. The bearded patriarch. The burning bush. Alright. Let’s pause. Come to think of it, there is more than one biblical figure that can be related to Luke Skywalker.

Some Luke’s superfans would vehemently argue the case for Luke as a Christ figure. Savior. Super powers. The son. The Force is with him... And maybe the EU pushed forward this notion of superhuman, godlike Luke Skywalker. Though, let’s be honest, the only one clearly designed to look like people’s most popular mental picture of what JC may look like is obviously young Obi Wan. Like come on. To the point that you find countless stories and memes of Obi Wan honestly mistaken by people for Jesus. Obi Wan, you will always be the one and only Space Jesus! For real.

Fun fact is the same people who will shout that TLJ was #notmyLuke! should ironically rejoice in the fact that, in a way, Luke achieved some Christlike dimension by sacrificing himself to “atone” for others’ sins and redeem the lost sheep, aka Kylo. And when I say atone for others’ sins, no, this is not solely for Kylo Ren’s sake. He says it very clearly when he tells Rey about the Jedi:

the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris. At the height of their power they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.

He is atoning, through his penance and death, not only for his own hubris and failures (his pride in the mighty Skywalker blood), not only for the sins of his father, but also for the sins of thousands of generations of Jedi teaching, that eventually failed. That’s a pretty big plate. Yet, I don’t think this is completely fair to see Luke as just straight Christlike figure. There are lots of other major biblical figures that ring truer to his personal arc, such as:

1.DAVID

As in David and Goliath. Why? obviously the shepherd/farmboy that gets to be God/The Force’s agent against an enemy so massive that the fight initially seems like a joke, and who eventually delivers the lucky strike that takes the enemy down.

Bonus point: the severed head from Goliath is evoked in ESB when Luke cuts off Vader’s head...

Also David is a key figure into the lineage that brings forth the Messiah, as exemplified through the symbolic of the tree of Jesse. Out of the house of David, a Savior is supposed to come that will usher in a new kingdom. Hence why it was paramount in the New Testament to have Jesus Christ being a descendant of David to establish his legitimacy as the Messiah.

In SW, the “mighty Skywalker blood” is also supposed to create a chosen one who will bring balance back into the Force. A prophecy that was at the core of the second draft script for ANH, in the piece that Lucas referred to as The Journal of the Whills: “ …And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as THE SON OF THE SUNS." If Lucas had clearly originally thought that Luke could be this one (binary sunset, the son), the OT does not totally play that out. It was even totally dropped out of the storyline. Luke is not Obi Wan and Yoda’s “only hope” after all... and there was no reference whatsoever to a prophecy, or a savior, in the OT. Though, of course, Lucas decided to come back to his initial idea in the PT, with the prophecy becoming the leitmotiv of Anakin’s rise to the status of Jedi and eventual demise into Lord of the Sith. Remains in the ST the mighty Skywalker blood and lineage, with Kylo at the seeming end of the line... (seeming because, eventually, more babies will be on the way). Thus the title, The Rise of Skywalker, could not be more clear, like the tree of Jesse rising high into the sky to bring forth a savior...

2.ST LUKE

Easy one. Don’t think names have no meaning, they do. And writers pick out names for their characters for very good reasons, though not always totally conscious. Case in point, Luke. Lucas may have been drawn to the moniker for obvious homophonic reasons: Luke/Lucas. Luke means light. Sure, son/sun, binary suns, only hope, yadi yada. Comes the ST. Very clever thing happens. St Luke becomes handy. As one of the Evangelist, he is thus entrusted with “recording” precious testimonies about Jesus’s life and God’s message to mankind. Cool thing for old Luke is that he plays the same role, kind of. He is the custodian of the Jedi teaching. He is the last custodian of their legacy. He is also very literally custodian of books. And also, as I pointed out many times in my metas, like this one, the way Kylo Ren is always portrayed as a bull, well, guess what animal is symbolic of St Luke’s? Would you? Right!

3.ABRAHAM

Note that Luke did not end up in an inverted scenario where he could have been Isaac to Vader’s Abraham if Satan, instead of God, had demanded the head of Abraham’s son. Palpatine did not specifically request the death of Luke. It was never expected of Vader. The Emperor wanted to have Luke and possibly turn him. No sacrifice was required. And when Luke refused to bow down, Palpatine did not ask of Vader to put him down. He just took matters into his own hand.

In the ST, though, the way we get to see Luke’s temptation to kill sleepy Kylo is very evocative of Abraham raising his knife to strike down his son.

Debating the will of the Force over Kylo’s dreams was pretty much akin to Abraham listening to God’s voice putting him to the test... With more dramatic consequences in Luke’s case...

4.MOSES

Ok, so that’s the first one I mentioned when bringing up that VF photoshoot. Moses is a good one for Luke. The burning bush is obviously a symbolic they had fun with on TLJ with the whole burning of the Jedi library tree, with Yoda playing the voice that talks Luke back into reason and send him onto completing his mission.

Moses is mostly about guiding people to a better world that you will never reach. Thus, in SW lingo, balance of the Force. Peace to the galaxy. Happy end in IX, right? You betcha!

5.ST JOHN OF PATMOS

That one is a great one. St John is the famed author of the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, and thus, one could say, the last apostle (wink wink). The Book of Revelation is of course better known as the book of the Apocalypse, which is not only about the myriads of horrible things likely to shower upon mankind and the world (like, the end of the world) but also about the promise of a new world ushered in, the new coming of Christ and a new Heaven and Earth coming to replace our current ones. No more suffering and death. And no more sin. Interesting piece of information about this revelation is that it came to St John on the island of Patmos where he was sent into exile....

Ummmm.... Exile on an island? Where have I ever seen that? I also love the way that St John is always represented with a bird...

And that, in fine, the Luke we get at the end of TLJ, is about to deliver a prophecy of sorts: “The Rebellion is reborn today, the war is just beginning and I will not be the last Jedi.” One that is about death and destruction (war is beginning) but also mostly about hope. Luke,the prophet, is also the first voice we hear in the teaser for episode IX. One that is very much about hope. And also very much reminiscent of the tree of Jesse:

A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight

Mind you then who the son of suns is at this point...

#reylo #reylo fandom #star wars fandom #luke fandom #luke skywalker #symbolism in star wars #bible and star wars

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keensers · 4 years

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ALL THE EVEN QUESTIONS!!! And any process questions!!! Ok goodnight

hello j!!!!! this is many questions but i will skip the ones i did already (all from here)

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

right now in star wars land, quinlan vos and also every single clone. i love the clones. also, i love writing everyone in the obi wan-anakin-ahsoka chaos lineage. i love writing banter, and that lineage is banter all the way down. at least, in the post-empire world, where imo anakin and obi-wan are back to being ahsoka’s super annoying brothers, except they’re ghosts, so she can’t even fight them to make them go away.

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

generally yes, at least with fanfic. most of the time when i write fanfic it’s because i desperately want to see how those characters behave with a particular narrative or with different situational constraints, or i have a worldbuilding idea i think is really cool. so i love reading fic where other people do that work so i don’t have to! especially with worldbuilding, there are fics where i’m absolutely just in awe of what the authors have managed to do, whether it’s a shift in one aspect of the characters that has a kind of domino effect on every single relationship they have and every action they take, or whether it’s a new, slightly off-tilt universe that they’ve built from the ground up and populated with brilliant new versions of the same people. i write a lot of canon-divergence-by-intervening-circumstances, so i’m a big believer in this, and i love reading it. other writers are much, much better at it than me.

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

i think this is a process question! i am a longfic writer because I have a hard time saying anything in less than 1000 words, and i’m mostly a plotter, if by “plotting” you mean “vividly hallucinating focal point scenes and stumbling through figuring out what happens between them to get from one to the next, with occasional flashes of insight or inspiration.” i wish i was a better plotter than i am… which is part of why i'm trying to really hash out a lot of the details of atr4 in an attempt to exert some semblance of control over the story.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

scream into a pillow + frantically type 2000 words in one day + lie awake in bed thinking about the next scene + do nothing for a week or a month + get hit over the head with how much this fic/concept means to me personally + start typing again + type 500-1000 words every day for two weeks + repeat until done or abandoned

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

hm… only insofar as “famous” means “impactful,” “good,” or “makes a lot of people feel things.” so i guess no, not inherently.

14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

at the beginning, and then again at the end! because the one i start off with is always wrong by the time i finish…

16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)

well, for the last 8 months i've been in star wars hell because i got so mad at tros that i wanted some actually-good star wars content so i watched all of tcw and just wildly, wildly overprojected onto obi-wan “exhausted but tenacious” kenobi. (i wonder why??? no i don’t.) then i had a great many Thoughts about how to link the prequel trilogy/tcw with the sequel trilogy, which has resulted in me seriously contemplating writing 300k+ of one ‘verse, which i have never ever done. i think the longest thing i've ever written was 75k, and that was orig fic. so my “new thing i'm trying” is plotting out 10+ stories in the same ‘verse and then actually writing them… or at least trying to.

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

sometimes! really old stuff feels like someone else wrote it, which is very strange. but, yknow, sometimes you read through the entire body of work that exists on ao3 for what you want to read about, and you lace up your clown shoes and go read your own damn fic.

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

i think it has, and i definitely hope it has. i think i used to overdescribe and maybe now i underdescribe, which isn’t good either, but i do feel like i've gotten better at plotting and at character arcs that make sense and, generally, at getting a handle on characters’ behavior. also, high school me wrote in a very flowery yet rudderless kind of way, and i think now i have a better sense of both direction and show-don’t-tell.

#fic meme #YAY!!!!!!#now it's time to spend 10 days doing nothing except reading legal textbooks #marnz

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twilightofthe · 4 years

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For the Star Wars questions- 16 & 19. :)

Thank you!!! (y’all this got ridiculously long for two damn questions lol)

Send me a number and i’ll tell u my fave/least fave:

16. Book/Comic (Aight, so I’m actually not a huge comic reader in general, most of my comic knowledge comes from other fans on here posting about them, so this is gonna be mainly book-focused)

FAVE: Welllllll, since I’m literally incapable of narrowing down my favorite anythings, I’m gonna do faves for both canon and EU novels.

Canon-wise, it’s a tie beween A New Dawn and Ahsoka. I know I don’t post about them as much on here, but I truly have a super soft spot for Kanera and Kanan and Hera’s characters, they’re just so GOOD and I love themmmmm aaaaaaaaa. You get super good insights to how Kanan was running wild and traumatized and trying to repress everything and how Hera was a little naïve but still tough as nails and she had a dream and she was going to make it happen or so help her, ugh I just love how the story showed how they’re strongest as a team working together and I just love character dynamics where the two are so obviously married and kinda snark at each other sometimes but they have each other’s backs through everything and know each other like the back of their hands and uggghhhh this is just such a healthy good ship and such a good book. The Ahsoka novel is just fantastic all on its own because it shows Ahsoka as a young adult, kinda floundering and lost in this new world, full of guilt over what happened with Anakin and the Order, trying to do what she can to help people and just enduring because she’s a survivor, she was raised (by two argumentative, adoptive parents who love her very much SO SAYETH THE BOOK) to be a survivor and handle herself, but that doesn’t mean she’s not lonely as all hell. And oof I just fucking adore Kaeden Larte and her relationship with Ahsoka (who absolutely comes back and marries her once the war is over oh yes) and her relationship with Miara and ugh just all of it is A+++++. E.K. Johnston is just an amazing author in general and her other book, Queen’s Shadow is one of my two canon runner ups because I am in love with her Sabé and her Padmé. Other canon runner up is A Certain Point Of View, if only for the “Time of Death” chapter. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of it is also fantastic, but oh god it kills me DEAD OBI WAN DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER AND I CRY I REALLY CRY

EU-wise (oh god, I haven’t even gotten to least-faves yet), it has to be the Revenge of the Sith novelization. Without a question. Y’all it’s SO FUCKIN’ good, and in my personal opinion should be considerrred canonnnnnn (look I think the reason they gave for excluding it is that there’s no mention of Ahsoka or Rex or Mandalore or any of the stuff that happened literally the day before which is valid, but I counterpoint that Anakin is a mess with A Lot Going On At The Moment, he could have just forgot? He forgets most of his morals, all of his common sense, and three of his limbs by the end of the story, Snips could have just slipped his mind! xD). Anyway, besides the fact that it’s like 99% written in Obikin-colored glasses which really just makes me happy as a person because I love it being acknowledged just how important they are to each other, it really offers a deeper insight INSIDE the chaos going on in Anakin’s head, the mess, just why he falls so quickly and so awfully. I love it gives the Padmé plot that got cut on screen some validity. The beautiful beginning and the goddam introductions to Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi are just A++++++++++++++ and oof other people can more accurately describe just how good this book is, but I love it a Big Lot ok?

LEAST FAVE: Okey doke, here we go.... So firstly for canon, I’m not the biggest fan of how Claudia Grey writes Leia’s character. She’s a wonderful storyteller and I love her worldbuilding, but just the way she characterizes Leia herself never felt... right, ya know? Idk, I can’t really explain it, but it makes it difficult for me to enjoy her Leia novelsWarning right now that this is a VERY unpopular opinion and my opinion alone, please do not yell at me! So as skilled and admired an author Timothy Zahn is, I don’t like the Thrawn books. I’m sorry, I don’t. To me, Thrawn is just.... ok so he’s like BBC!Sherlock but in space. The plot makes a big deal about how “oooh cool and intelligent and Literally Better Than Everyone Else” Thrawn is, but the only way they really show his “cleverness” is by either him solving problems by pulling together information that literally no one but the writer knows and then acting like it was oh so obvious and in front of everyone OR, the story dumbs down other characters to make him look smart. And maybe it was because the one Thrawn book goes after Anakin/Vader in particular to do the latter is what kinda ticked me off on Thrawn books in general, but y’all, it really ticked me off, because Anakin is like the lowest hanging fruit for an author to pick to make their character look good in comparison, and therefore it is done All The Time (LOOKING AT YOU, CLONE WARS), which I think is lazy and an insult to Anakin’s character. Look, I am fully aware Anakin Skywalker is a dolt to the highest degree sometimes, but he is ALSO A GENIUS. He is SMART. IT IS CANON THAT HE IS SMART. So when the Thrawn book has Thrawn constantly one-upping Anakin The Useless Doofus (and Padmé a bit!!!) and then doing it again once he meets him as Vader, that just makes me hmmmm.

The canon comics are actually gonna be featured on the list here a bit because if y’all don’t already know my hatred for That One Particular Vader Comic (not the rest of the series run as I have not read it and from what I hear, it’s excellent and I’d probs like it a lot) doing the implication in a dream sequence where it says that Palpatine used the Dark Side to impregnate Shmi and create Anakin, well I HATE IT. Look, I know the plot was literally about Sidious trying to mess with Vader’s head and that dream shouldn’t be trusted, but it fooled all the fans too and now like 60% of Star Wars fans actually believe Sidious fathered Anakin and I am so damn tired of hearing about that. Yeah, now that Reylo is canon, that comic’s authors are trying to do damage control by saying that no, Sidious isn’t Anakin’s father and Rey and Ben are not second cousins, but they’re still being mysterious about it and “oh well it COULD be this--” so now there’s just more fans who are digging into that theory just because they don’t like Reylo and I don’t really care for the ship either but I really HATE the entire “Born of the Dark” concept for reasons I can explain more separately, so I’m pissy at that particular comic for spawning it. I know it’s petty but I do.

EU-wise, well, this is gonna be unpopular too, cuz I haven’t read most of the EU stuff, and from what I’ve heard of it, there doesn’t seem to be much that I WOULD like. The movie novelizations all seem good, but everything else??? “Obi Wan prequels but guess what, he had a shitty childhood too!” uh, no thanks, the rest of his life sucks enough, I want to see him happy. “Mandalorian worldbuilding, but they’re all a bunch of stoic, overpowered badasses who are Good At Everything And Better Than Literally Everyone and the plot bashes the Jedi left right and center!” ehhhhhhhh pass. “What happened after Return of the Jedi, except the Skywalkers still don’t get a happy ending because the galaxy goes to war again, Han and Leia’s son turns evil, Luke Suffers, and Palpatine comes back again!” nah, that sounds too depressing-- oh wAIT :) :) :)(at least the EU actually lets Han and Leia grow old and happy together okay okay that’s enough sequel salt for one day)

19. Outfit

FAVE: Everything Padmé Amidala wears in the movies. No I will not narrow it down. I am in love with her whole wardrobe and I want it.

I also love the standard Jedi tunics and tabards and cloak (c’mon, the cloak completes the picture!) It’s just such a signature and unique look that’s supposed to combine medieval European knight tunics and samurai warrior clothing and just the #aesthetic is oof, just wonderful.

Also Sabine Wren’s armor and its various paint jobs. It’s just so uniquely her and bright and beautiful and badass in all its stages and yes good I like it.

Also Lando Calrissian’s cloaks! Swooshy and colorful and good! I love cloaks!

LEAST FAVE: Gonna go with my petty, silly ones first, and those are all of Padmé Amidala’s outfits that are only seen in the The Clone Wars TV show (so not the ones that were based off of movie costumes). Eh, actually three of them were nice, her orange outfit she visits Mina in, her white casual housedress, and her black slinky Clovis dress. All of her other series-only outfits made me highkey pissy because they were either A.) Wrong for the situation she was in, B.) Defied the laws of physics and should not have held the shape they did/stayed on her body, or C.) just plain UGLY (the highest crime of all), and for the animators to have the audACITY to put any of those things in the mere vicinity of the most stylish woman in the galaxy is an insult to Padmé, an insult to ME, and an insult to Star Wars as a whole (yes, I am mostly joking, but come on!). No, I will not give the designers the excuse of clothing being difficult and expensive and time consuming to animate because I have SEEN the fancy, PRETTY outfits of the other ladies of Padmé’s status on the show. Everything Satine Kryze wore was intricately beautiful as all hell and I loved it. Riyo Chuchi’s two outfits were lovely and fashionable. Heck, I’m pretty sure I liked Mina Bonteri’s outfit too. There were tons of people on that show with stylish clothing! How hard would it have been for the animators to remember Padmé doesn’t wear exposed midriffs on official government business? That dresses with no sides or back cannot be sleeveless or they will not stay up? Not give her hairstyles that looked like either a goddam tuning fork or like Jimmy Neutron’s mother? That beige jumpsuits are BORING and adding a mauve vest is NOT enough to make it exciting!!!! xD xD xD

Aight, now in more seriousness, I also hated both of Ahsoka’s outfits in the original TCW show. Enough people have spoken on why sending a fourteen year old into an active warzone in a tube top and miniskirt is a BAD IDEA, but like it just makes me extra mad when you remember her older and more experienced at Not Getting Pulverized Masters were both in full concealing robes and chest and shoulder and shin armor, so you can’t even pass it off as Jedi not getting hurt as easily. Her updated outfit was only slightly an improvement because her Masters STILL got at least fully covering robes and arm bracers, while Ahsoka still had her entire back exposed, leg holes exposing valuable arteries and stuff, and a goddam boob window that basically signals “shoot me here”. Look, I know the animators goofed, and I know how they have learned from it because from Rebels on, they never show her as improperly covered for battle, in the new TCW season both outfits are cute and practical too, but seeing her running around in her red outfits actively impeded and took me out of my watching experience because I was cringing over her having a lack of protection, that it made her that much more vulnerable to injury.

Finally just gotta give a standard raised finger to the Slave Leia Bikini. Carrie Fisher hated it so I do too.

#thanks so much!#now i'm all worked up over Padmé's TCW costuming jeez #like there was one other outfit of hers the purple midriff exposing dress that was pretty i liked it #but like.... it was NOT something she would wear to meet the fucking Queen of Naboo like seriously #@ liz i got your ask too don't worry but it is a wee bit longer and i'm still working on it lol #asks #nerdgatehobbit #star wars #star wars stuff #queen of my heart #snip snap #ahsoka tano #padme amidala #ship: space parents #space cowboy #mvp (most valuable pilot)

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kenobios · 4 years

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rotj: my thoughts

positives and negatives. spoilers ahead

so, i wasn’t gonna write one of these but i felt i needed to get some stuff off my chest so i can move on. i was just gonna pretend this movie didn’t happen but i think i can come to eventually accept that it did now that i’ve had time to digest everything.

POSITIVES:

- honestly... from my first viewing there isn’t a lot i like. but i’m sure this will improve the more i watch the film and actually have the chance to form an opinion on more things within such a hectic onslaught of information. - i laughed. c3po and that little fixer dude were genuinely funny (to me). dio (sp?) was super cute too. tbh i never cared much for droids (my obi-wan is coming thru here) but i actually enjoyed them so that’s a win for me - very pretty film. visually spectacular. - fast-paced. not boring for a second (to me). kept me entertained. - rey’s yellow lightsaber. i actually liked this even tho it doesn’t match up with current canon (yellow being for temple guards). it reminded me of bastila and i was just waiting for her to show it off as a double-sided saber... which i didn’t get but it still looked like it was built for it so i’ll take the win. - the idea of palpatine being powerful again but it would have been cool to see a younger version of himself - rey and ben teaming up and the intimate moment they shared which felt genuinely beautiful and was one of the highlights for me

now here’s the ISSUES i have off the top of my head, some of them having been mentioned on this blog before:

- the trio. everyone else has already said it. forced and uncomfortable. it felt like they were setting up a love triangle for the first half of the movie as well, which was weird. when they had poe and rey have those ‘moments’ or when they bickered with each other i was like ‘they better not be tryna spring up some hanleia dynamic on us for the last film between these two’ especially while also baiting finnrey (which is never touched upon again after the first half of the movie, yikes)

- towards the end of the film, i turned to the person next to me and said “this reminds me of a video game plot” - i couldn’t pinpoint exactly why that was, but it was just a feeling. and not a deep, thorough video game plot either. another reviewer said something similar. it’s just... very shallow, expository and it feels like it’s dragging you and the characters through very railroaded and forced missions/battles. i mean at the start they’re really just looking for something, going to someone, that person says they need to talk to someone else for the thing, they go to another person, etc. which is a type of mission device used in games as well. it also felt to me like one of those japanese otome games where rey is the bland female character that all the male characters fall for (poe, finn, kylo) and she gets her pick of which one she wants to romance, which was cringe.

- i didn’t hear the characters. i only heard what they were forcing the characters to say in order to progress the plot or explain the plot. the characters themselves became faceless inserts for exposition. so many times i heard a character say something and thought... that was a jarring piece of dialogue that seems both out of character and unnatural to say at that point in time.

- although i said being fast-paced could be a positive, it was largely a negative for me. at one point it felt like slide transitions were happening at minute intervals. a major plot point would be revealed and then no time is given to process, it’s onto the next major scene. this left everything feeling very rushed and messy, which i believe is due to half the film being cut for time constraints.

- each character is either twisted into an unrecognisable character, or ignored/not given the time they deserve. rey? blank slate female protag with a famous bloodline and who barely reacts to the things going on around her (leia dying, ben dying, she disregards her ‘friends’ on multiple occasions). like others, i always defended rey’s abilities, but this film is too much. she has been made a mary sue. finn? rendered nothing but the ‘friend’ pining after a girl and only briefly gets time with his own story which is never fully explored in this film by any means. poe? turned into a grumpy, seemingly jealous ‘friend’ with a shady past that felt like they were trying to make him the ‘han solo’ of the trio rather than going with what we already know about his character. leia? now this is hard, and i respect what they tried to do, but i still felt like her death could have been done a bit better rather than the quick ‘shock’ moment it was. also the stuff with luke training her is a no for me. way too shoe-horned and part of what made leia cool to me was that she was a skywalker but didn’t need to be a jedi. her powers were elsewhere. kylo? don’t get me started. rose? who? she may as well not have been in this movie with the way they ignored her character and showed how little the other characters care about her. it broke my heart.

- rey palpatine? though i’m a rey kenobi fan, i was happy with rey nobody. i liked what it stood for. i didn’t mind the idea of rey palpatine in theory, but the way they force-fed this to us in the film rather than building it up left a bad taste in my mouth and i’m going to have to pass on it. if they wanted to have her related to palpatine, they should have just made her a clone imo. it would have matched with what was being built up prior (in tlj with the clones in the cave), it would have explained her ties to the dark side, it would have completed the palpatine/skywalker poetry, and it would have still been congruent with her being a ‘nobody’ since that’s essentially what clones are seen as in star wars. also we wouldn’t have to think about the fact palpatine got laid. laboratories were already set up in jakku by palpatine. cloning itself was shown in rots anyway (snoke) so?

- although i’ve wanted ben to be redeemed... it still felt too rushed in this film. also, he does display some toxic tendencies as kylo ren towards rey (trying to manipulate her to go with him) which didn’t sit well with me but i didn’t really see ben/kylo ren in his scenes sometimes anyway, since he was also forcibly used to give exposition to us/rey. i did like his scene with his mother and father in the film but i just needed more than that to really feel his redemption rather than the quick switch we got.

- i originally wasn’t okay with the whole ‘bringing someone back to life through the force’ thing since i always liked the idea palpatine was just saying that to honeypot anakin, but decided i’m willing to accept it as a unique ability they had for each other due to their force bond. but then... ben dies anyway. and it’s done in such a way that leaves you feeling ‘wtf just happened?’. it was random, forced, didn’t feel necessary and it just... happened. no one reacted to it. he wasn’t referred to or mentioned after this. the last skywalker goes out just like that. poof. okay. so was this a shock death or was jj genuinely trying to appease people who didn’t think ben deserved redemption or to live? either way ben lived such a sad, cruel, manipulated life that his death seemed unfair and we’re all supposed to think this movie is hopeful and celebrate a few minutes later? i don’t think so. in fact, everything that happens after that scene feels incredibly uncomfortable because of the massive tonal shift.

- the kiss. ok don’t hate me. i enjoy reylo. but i honestly think the kiss wasn’t exactly... needed? maybe it was just because everything else felt so forced but it felt a little forced in this scene for me. for me, the hug ben gave rey just beforehand spoke more volumes of their intimacy. i did mention their intimate moments above as a positive, so i still like this overall moment (in addition to the moment rey heals him). but the hug spoke enough to me that it would have been nice to keep it more subtle yet obvious enough (thanks to their acting) that they cared deeply for one another. but then again, this is what i felt before i knew ben died, so. idk. i guess it would suck for ben to die without having kissed rey? how about just don’t kill ben off. have them hug instead of kiss and then leave us to fill in the gaps as they both live. how about that.

- the rey skywalker thing is embarrassing. and rey ended up alone in the desert... just how she started. i just can’t. by the time this came on the screen i was ready to leave. i only stayed because i HOPED there would be an after credits showing her on the falcon, or her training finn to be a jedi, or her speaking with any of the force ghosts (luke or ben or anakin).

- speaking of which. why were there no force ghosts in the scene where she fights palpatine? we just get voices? that scene really lacked impact and the whole fight sequence just felt blah. palpatine came back super strong and then he was gone in moments. there should have a) been force ghosts or some kind of visual presence of the jedi to help rey whether physically or just boosting morale and b) ben should have fought palpatine with her.

- why is rey alone in the desert? i honestly didn’t think this meant she was going to be a hermit until i came online and saw that’s what everyone else thought. but just... why? why is she not passing on the jedi ways she fought to keep alive? or the knowledge she has gained/kept in the sacred jedi texts she stole? surely not. surely that is her plan. surely ben saved her not just because he loved her but also because she can carry on the skywalker legacy NOT by dying alone in a desert but by training new jedi. (which, again, SHOULD HAVE BEEN FINN AS THE FIRST NEW JEDI!) or better yet, a new type of jedi that don’t follow toxic ways but that incorporate both the light and dark side of the force like she does? and calling THEM skywalkers? but nope. instead she ended up back where she started. except with less personality this time.

- i can’t talk enough about how cool it would have been to have jedi!finn at the end. talk about coming full circle from the promo baits they had for TFA of finn with the lightsaber. AT LEAST GIVE US THIS.

- the whole movie just felt like a massive disrespect to the previous film. everything rian built was trampled on, retconned or ignored. say what you want about tlj and rian, but this is what happens when you ignore or try to retcon the preceding film whether you like it or not. everything feels messy and the plots get screwed up. this movie would have been largely different (better) had they not tried so hard to pretend tlj didn’t exist. even if you didn’t like it, take the plot and mould it into something you do like. don’t just toss it aside and lose all sense of continuity between the films. i don’t blame jj for this exactly, but rather the disney committee that were too afraid to acknowledge tlj’s existence due to the reception it got from fans and thus felt the need to have jj ‘fix/retcon’ things rather than build upon/improve things.

- oh yeah hux. that happened, i guess. i thought it was weird and it kinda sucked that they did that. who cares about the new guy? general pride or whatever? no one. surely making general hux more menacing couldn’t have been THAT hard. but no. we get a rather silly death instead. alright. at least he can forever be known as the petty king of star wars.

- there’s probably more. i could write an essay but i’m getting tired of complaining already so i’m leaving it here. if you happened to read this far and want to talk about it with me some more, my DMs are open!

overall, i just hope some canon content is going to be released, either in the form of a book or a comic, that explores more of this following the movie. i want to know more about finn’s story. i want to see whether rey does stay on tatooine or whether she trains jedi. i want to see whether she communicates with ben through the force, or just, y’know, any closure on that would be nice. i want to see the director’s cut with the other half of the movie. then, perhaps, i will know peace.

#tros spoilers #star wars #ight it's off my chest #i feel better now #even though i feel there is still more i could talk about #that's it for me

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themanicgalaxy · 3 years

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SPN 2X5 Simon Said

aight only one, I got my hot cocoa bomb, i got my palmieres

oh no Plot Episode

also no rock and roll mv :(

oooo spooky phone call

is this guy a hunter? what’s with the vision of the gun?

OH is it not a happening thing? is it a prophecy he’s turning true?

AH a vision within a vision that’s pretty cool

when does carry on wayward son play, I just realized

YAY WE’RE GOING TO THE ROADHOUSE AGAIN

KICK HIS ASS AND HUSTLE HIM JO!

and in a STUNNING turn of events, Dean has to be the polite one

it’s honestly nice to have some kinda fluffy plot episode

LMAO and Ash doesn’t have pants

DR BADASS AWWWW HOW DID DEAN KNOW

Jo is playing...can’t fight this feeling??

This is literally the one REO Speedwagon song I actually know

“he sings it from the heart” “he sings it from the hair” AW Jo and Dean argue about music that’s sweet

Dean’s nervous smile at Ellen

You scared of my mother *Dean still grinning* “yes”

HA AND hE’S SINGING IT AW

Sam is so fucking Done

it’s SO NICE to get some fluffy stuff for a bit

that’s...a hilarious van

I love how Dean loves the van design

And now Dean is the like...upbeat “are you ok” guy damn this guy is a repressing champ

the “those things were asking for it” feels out of place given the vampire episode like...two episodes ago, but I think dean’s trying

oh my god this is where they filmed Psych. It’s the same layout

AHHH

lmao if the van guy and Dean talk about cars

OH MY GOD HE HAS PERSUASION POWERS HE STOLE DEAN’S RIDE OHHHHH

I feel like I thought he did before Sam mentioned demon boi

is his name Azazel? i don't care

“obi-wan’d me” ha dean you FUCKING NERD

AND THE MAN STEPS DIRECTLY INTO TRAFFIC WHY DOES THIS GUY WANT TO KILL THIS DOCTOR SO HARD

goddamn Dean got “can’t fight this feeling” STUCK IN MY HEAD DAMN YOU DEAN

I am HEAVILY appreciating that I can understand more of the rock, and that they’re doing more, it just makes me happy

Dean why do you talk to your car like that Dean I’m begging you get therapy

these fools reference OJ I barely understand OJ

Is Dean thinking OJ did it, does that mean something?

Why is Dean enjoying this guy’s ride so much DEAN YOU NERD I GET IT YOU LIKE WEIRD SHIT

“One day I wanna sit down and eat something I don’t have to microwave at a minimart” ah yes Dean’s cooking origin story

OH it works on Dean but not Sam

THE FUCKING SMILE “Yeah my bro thinks they’re something wrong and will be Very Evil and I hope he’s wrong” *dumb precious smile*

poor Dean keeps getting mind-whammied

OHYMHGOD SHE’S COMPELLED TO DOUSE HERSELF IN GAS

“it’s gonna be ok” is a phrase that’s really starting to freak me out

ah so it isn’t him

Andy: these are not the droids ur looking for

Dean the nerd who I think relates to this guy/finds him cool: *smiles* Awesome

oh my god he works at the coffeeshop

and she’s crying? I think she’s more conscious?

WHY IS HE RUINING HIS BROTHER’S LIFE

This incel is...so creepy

this guy should never have been given magic powers what the fuck

“you can’t have him” what the fuck is wrong with you

I do find it kinda sad/funny that every time Sam is unaffected/gets along with these people, and Dean just gets the short end of the stick and is in pain/bad vibes Every Time

oh my god he doesn’t have to use his voice

“she’s trying to come between us” that’s insane

at least Andy is calling him insane too

Anyone who ships siblings, please pay attention, god i hope this is on purpose

“Man with the yellow eyes” Sam: OWO

OH N ONO T DEAN

ANDY! YES GOOD! KICK HIS ASS ANDY! SHOOT HIM!

Andy manages to get the cops off of him

Tracy is obviously fucked up about this

Andy is a good guy, I like him a lot

CONNECTION! THEY GIVE HIM PHONE NUMBER!!

“you be good...or we’ll be back” Dean

he looked so sad to say it too

Sam he saved people’s lives, he’s not a killer

“right circumstance, everyone’s capable of murder” I mean he’s right but

Dean: I will be Repressing these Fears today

“What are you, seven?” pfft

ELLEN! CALLED!

Ellen: ya wanna tell me

them: no, it’s family business(ew)

and then Ellen tells them to stop being little shits YAY ELLEN

FUCK Y E S SUPPORT STRUCTURE

“we can’t track them”

“Jo, you better break out the whiskey instead”

god i love Ellen

WRAP UP!

1. ok, so I assume they had more of a budget this season because they’re using more well-known songs, which means I GET TO HAVE MY BRAIN OVERWRITTEN BY HARD ROCK! WHEEEEEE

Can’t fight this feeling already starting living rent free, I can’t stop it

2. Really fun episode, plot that wasn’t super super depressing(which I’ve seriously missed), I liked good twin and evil twin, it wasn’t even that cheesy, and I really like the fact that it worked on Dean but not Sam, I thought that was Nifty

3. CONNECTIONS! RECURRING CHARACTERS!! FINALLY!! THE ROADHOUSE, ASH, ELLEN, JO AND DEAN’S THING?(I get I’m supposed to ship it, but it’s cute and fun rn, i like them as friends at least) AND ANDY?? YAY

4. the brothers arguing about Sam being a killer was like...it got repetitive after a while. Dean getting really excited/nerding with Andy was really sweet tho, I really liked that

honestly, it was just nice to feel a little bit happy/laugh a bit. I needed this episode to be the way it was.

#pawswatchesspn #2x5 Simon Said #look there's not that much to analyze #but solid episode #made me happy

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jmkitsune · 6 years

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I love star wars and this post WILL contain many spoilers to the sagas. I’ll try my best to limit them but many will have to be discussed. As they pertain to The Last Jedi. I apologize now, if you wish to avoid them- dip now. It will be a trap :D

those who know me would probably say I breathe star wars more than air sometimes...well in times that I go off about it, they probably think if star wars was not to exist I’d simply blink out...maybe let’s not find out please.

However with the new sequels a LOT of my friends had, to my surprise, kept on me about wanting to talk about the Last Jedi. I hadn’t seen it by the time they all had due to different reasons so they all were desperately saying how badly they wanted me to see it. They “needed to talk about it with me” some said, others simply were hella curious with my “love for the series, how did it hold up in MY point of view”

This is a new feeling, being the token star wars fan in my group is normal but this idea of my love for it being something that meant friends who normally aren’t into it or would just LET me talk about it then move on was now replaced with “Hey...TALK ABOUT IT WITH US”

Mind you...this post is like scratching the sruface so it’s not gonna encompass allll my thoughts, that’d take WAY WAY too long so yeah.... strap in I’m calculating the jump to “holy fuck JM is a nerd”

I say this- all of this is over the time of me watching all that I can about star wars, reading all the material I’ve read and accepting the OLD CANON is gone, it’s legends now. The NEW CANON is what it is, I love both equally and accept that Legends is that- LEGEND, what gets recycled will be, the rest...well won’t be.

Alrighty so- I remember being 16 or 17 and hearing that Lucas viewed the OT and Prequels as Poetry, he wanted there to be Rhyme scheme in the movies, which you can see in this video (this one includes new trilogy and Rogue one)

youtube

see, when I learned that, I wasn’t smart as I am now in terms of writing/story telling. I was just some high schooler who wanted to write something LIKE STAR WARS and be able to create that feeling that Lucas gave me everytime I saw those opening crawls, heard a lightsaber ignite, the sound of an X-wing opening it’s s-foils, hearing Luke say “I’m a Jedi, like my father before me.” etc

Now that I’m older, have experience more in writing, experience in critiquing and not simply LOVING for the sake of loving without having a critical eye I see where flaws are in the movies. Every story has flaws. DEAL WITH IT. What I started to see what this poetry finally. I mean this in a different way than people might expect me to mean. I finally understood why certain scenes were shot the way they were, it wasn’t “oh hey that looks familiar, its a coincidence.” no it was intentional. It was meant as a callback/throwback/etc, it’s done to inspire this feeling of “Hey, in a galaxy far away- didn’t something like this happen?” it evokes the feeling that whatever scene it reminds you of evoked.

When Luke loses his hand, you feel the same feeling as when Anakin loses part of his arm. When you see Star Killer base for the first time, it’s meant to draw the same momentary feeling you got when you FIRST see the death star. Not a “oh another super weapon” but “oh. My. Gods...that is huge.” cause remember the preivew for Rogue One? The star destroyer coming out of the shadow of the Death Star, that looked big as a ship right? Then the camera pans out and you see the dish being installed and then see the SAME STAR DESTROYER LOOKING TINY...the scale was done perfectly. It created a reaction in us. A feeling of being small, insignificant next to that technological terror, right?

Now discussing why I loved Episode 8 (even with it’s flaws) I draw heavily on this poetry in star wars.

Star wars is supposed to be poetic, each stanza (trilogy) mirroring but differing from the one before it. (the following three things will be generalized and brief but I’ll expand as Igo, don’t worry.)

Prequels- a gilded age, corruption abound, Jedi in their prime, undermined by a single Sith who was RIGHT THERE, heavy tech vs nature esque war (clones of biologically human vs droids) and the fall of a young man who was given too much responsibility too young and in his attempt to save those he loved, destroyed all he had thought he'd love in his childhood due to seeing that the Jedi (his heroes) were not really what he imagined they'd be (he saw holy warriors of GOODNESS) only to find, closed minded arrogant corupt and well frankly inept council of monks who turn on their own code when it meant "destroying the sith"

Original Trilogy- gritty war for good vs evil, the evil so...sterile, white and male vs a rag tag/dirty femine lead rebellion, technological terror's vs natural force powers, a father being redeemed by his son who refused to only see the bad like others did, and that bringing of balance. Anakin had destroyed the Jedi Order in his original fall, leaving only Two Jedi (Yoda/Obi wan) and when they died it left 2 sith vs Luke, and in the end to save Luke- he destroyed the last two Sith- Palpatine and himself- allowing only balance. Luke someone who was neither Jedi/Sith, he was...a Jedi LIKE his father who sought balance

New Trilogy- complacency has lead to not only corruption again but the return of said sterile white male dominated evil threatening the peace of a more nurturing New Republic, the heroes of old brittle and fallen from grace due to the weight of what they did in their past being HEAVY and the new gen "meeting their heroes" only to realize, heroes are simply people that made hard choices and do the right thing, making them now heroes to many to come

notice how some things from the prequels made it to the OT? The New trilogy? And some things in the OT happened also in the first and third trilogies? There is not an ABAB rhyme scheme, its more free verse but there is still a scheme in there. It happens subtly and in ways that flow naturally (Even if they are intentionally constructed rhymes)

Now we come to the “villains” each trilogy gave us, let’s see the rhymes there.

Prequels-

Darth Maul-

the Rage, the unbridled hatred for the Jedi. His arrival signified the Jedi’s flawed sight. His combat with Qui Gon and Obi Wan challenged many things, it challenged the viewers in light of “we didn’t know bad Jedi could do this?! (he was the first to carry a double sided saber) he was so acrobatic, he was young he was GOOD with a saber. He made TWO JEDI work their hardest to beat, and only lost after that LONG drawn out conflict. Notice also how he existed. He WAS the Phantom (A sith assassin) HE WAS the menace (he was harassing Qui Gon on Tattooine, then again on Naboo.) Maul also was the indicative of what the Jedi feared most. The return of the Sith. It meant there was one more in the universe. The Rule of Two is introduced. One Master. One Apprentice.

Darth Sidious/Palpatine-

The chess master, the villain in plain sight, the father figure to our hero, the man who if you forget is the villain, sometimes would be believable as a good guy. Guys I grew up with the OT from my earliest memories. I knew it was “Emperor Palpatine” but I also remember in 99, 2001 and 2003 until the scenes happened obviously that Senator/Chancellor Palpatine was NOT the Emperor. I could not connect it because Prequel Palpatine (until scenes happen) WAS A GOOD GUY, he wanted to bring peace and prosperity to the REPUBLIC. HE LOVED DEMOCRACY. Like Obi Wan says in Ep 3 to Padme “we were tricked by a lie. A lie by the sith, a lie that convinced us that our enemy was not right where we were.” Palpatine IS A VILLAIN because he convinces you he didn’t exist. He was the devil who tricked humanity into thinking wasn’t real. But you knew he was...but couldn’t prove.

Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus-

Political villain. He wasn’t bad for evil’s sake (he didn’t have sith eyes like Maul/Sidious) he was a man who was broken by the flaws in the Jedi Council. He lost his padawan (Qui Gon) and that mourning turned into bitter resentment, he saw through the problems the Jedi Order ignored in themselves, found a teacher in Sidious who promised to give him the chance to wipe the slate clean. His political villainy come from good intentions paving the way to hell.

General Grevious-

The Proxy villain. He is literally there to take the heat. He isn’t “human” he is more machine than living creature. He hates the Jedi and you can see that he is a proto vader of sorts. His breathing is broken, his lacking in “organic traits” and hatred for everything is rhyming in Vader’s soon to come, but it rhymes in a foreboding way. Especially when Anakin says to him “General Grevious, you’re shorter than I expected” he wasn’t meant to be taken lightly but yet we take him lightly because we ALL know (even those who watch the prequels first) that something DARKER does exist. Grevious- though scary and not someone you wanna fight one on one, you know isn’t the worst monster in the galaxy. He’s just an angry bitter cyborg who steals lightsbaers. He’ll get what he deserves soon enough, the monster will be slain by the brave knight.

ORIGINAL TRILOGY VILLAIN

Darth FREAKING Vader-

Ok like guys

you need to understand. As before stated, when I was a wee little JM, I would spend A LOT (like I’m guessing daily) watching star wars as early as Kindergarten, imagine for a moment a tiny little JM cross legged on his bed, bouncing as the opening crawl comes, begging his mom to READ the crawl for him (every time cause dammit mom does it best) then stay when scenes had subtitles (Mostly Return of the Jedi but still) Star Wars to me...was like the story of knights or cowboys to other kids. Luke Skywalker was my goals, Han solo was the guy I hoped I could be cool as, and Leia was like AMAZING in terms of “hey girls are as cool if not cooler than guys!”

BUT VADER, Darth Vader’s first appearance to me was terrifying. We had just watched these humans all nervously watch a door, hearing these weird, alien, mechanical sounds creaking over their ship, the tension SO REAL to everyone, something bad is going to happen. Not because of a war but something else is going to come down on them. Those sounds are a clue, something not human is coming for them. THEN THE EXPLOSION AND GUN FIGHT HAPPENS! Soldiers are fighting, Storm troopers pushing in and taking out Rebels. Rebel soldiers running, screaming, trying to fight back, it’s assured that if you were in that hall you weren’t going home. BUT as a kid I BELIEVED they had a chance! They had to, they were the good guys, no bad guy could overwhelm the underdog….unitl BUM BUH DUM… imitates Vader’s breathing THAT MAN WALKED IN...he wasn’t a man though. He was a force, of evil, his breathing was labored but somehow terrifying, his face was a metal mask that inspired the look of something from nightmares, his cape billowed like smoke out of the darkest places, and his movements were deliberate, his actions cold and harsh. HE LOOKED OFFENDED that some of his storm troopers died on the floor. Like their death was an INSULT to his very existence, what would he do to his enemies when he found them?

This villain was one you FEARED, but not only that but when you learn from Obi Wan that he killed Luke’s father, you hate him. You want Luke or Obi Wan to beat him. You want this villain to suffer for what he did, he hunted down Jedi. He killed Luke’s father, he helped the Empire become what it is now. Vader became a target for your hate because that is what Vader IS. Darth Vader is hate incarnate. You learn in the Expanded universe (canon and legends) that Vader hates everything. But one thing more than others. HIMSELF. He hates who he was. What he is. What he has done. What he will do. Vader is walking hatred and that carries him, that sustains him. That is why he survived what created him. Hatred. We are meant to hate that. Because it makes for things later to be as powerful as they are. The twist reveals. The possibility of redemption. Everything HINGES on our hatred, fear and disgust with him.

Now if you’ll notice I’ve spent A LOT of time explaining Vader’s type of villain. Want to know why? Because like Vader, Star wars is very good at rhyming things. Notice though (cause its a carry over from Prequel to OT) Palpatine is not listed twice, he didn’t need to be. He is the same villain in both trilogies, he is the core theme rhymed. The anti-thesis to the goodness trying to combat evil in Stanzas 1 and 2. He is the core threat that both trilogies face and succumb to then revive to defeat.

Palpatine caused the corruption in Stanza 1, Palpatine orchestrated the political villain’s birth by unleashing the rage villain onto Qui Gon/Obi Wan. Palpatine is the force that pushes things from A to B he doesn’t need much depth in terms of rhyming him. Nothing CAN rhyme him. Like no villain before or after can Rhyme Vader truly. Only build up to him or try to recreate him….which means we walk cautiously into the 30 year gap that is the New Trilgoy.

30 years after Vader’s redemption, Palpatine’s death, Luke’s successful battle against the sith, the Empire’s fall...we meet our New Villains.

The First Order.

New Trilogy

Supreme Leader Snoke-

A villain we wanted to be more, we want him to be something that he isn’t because well we had been spoiled by previous villains. WE, those who lived through both previous trilogies, have gone through the rodeo before. We know there are TRUE villains out there, we have seen the DARKEST that the Sith could throw at us. However with Snoke we tilted our head and were curious. Was he better than Palpatine? Was Sidious NOT the worst out there? It seemed possible. He had his Knights of Ren, the First Order/Remnants of the Old Empire at his disposal. More than that- he had groomed his apprentice. Kylo Ren. Notice this isn’t a DARTH (the official title of each Sith Lord) This villain obviously harolded from the dark side, he wished to hunt and slay all the new Jedi Luke had groomed, yet he wasn’t a Sith...so what. Was. He?

We learned...exactly what we learned. Snoke was Snoke. His fate, his character, everything. WE LEARNED it in Last Jedi. I am not saying we wont get more from the EU (books/tv series/games/etc) but the movie gave us what was relevant to the trilogy/the movie poetry. Snoke was rhyming Sidious in one way- the schemer. He truly thought he had planned it all, he felt confident in his victory that he savored it while it hadn’t fully ripened. Picture if you could the scenes from Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the three scenes involving Nebula and that fruit she wanted to eat.

It wasn’t ripe the first time- Star Killer Base It wasn’t ripe the second time- Kylo got his ASS KICKED by Rey

It wasn’t ripe the third time- he presumed to know how Kylo would remain his servant always. Right up til he was skewered because of his arrogance. His plan wasn’t ripe, yet he bit into it to enjoy it’s predicted sweet victory taste.

Snoke is the villain who in his time believed that being only on his home stretch mile, could gloat that he run the race. He is the Hare teasing the tortoise. He is the cheater who tips his hand right before the other player reveals the royal flush they’re not holding and bluffing their way to hopeful victory.

Now. Kylo/Ben.

Ok. This is going to be a test for me cause honestly I had hopes for Ben/Kylo yes you’re getting both names here there is a reason

When The Force Awakens FIRST preview dropped and we saw Kylo spinning his saber towards Finn. I had one hope. ONE HOPE. This was that Kylo was a double agent. I hoped that Kylo being Han and Leia’s son (we knew before going in cause it was revealed) was tricking Snoke, playing the dark side user into believing he DID win Ben over. He fooled the evil master mind with Luke’s help. Faking the destruction of the Jedi Temple, his Knights of Ren undercover with him, a strike team sent in to infiltrate the First Order from within, giving Snoke his Kylo Ren as a Trojan horse. I NEEDED THIS. I needed to see that Luke was able to craft a team similar to the one who saved Han in Jedi.

Force Awakens Ended and well Kylo isn’t a double….at least not yet. He tried to teach Rey, and he didn’t want to kill Han. At least not in the Force’s eyes. The novelization said so, in killing Han he got weaker, a sith gets STRONGER in that type of event, yet Ben/Kylo weakens. It’s obvious the boy didn’t want to do it. I hoped with this confirmation it was canon that Ben was still in there. Not because I wanted this shitty man to be redeemed. He wasn’t Anakin. He didn’t deserve it. I wanted him to see his failings and CHOOSE to come back. More so I wanted to see that Han’s death was an intentional sacrifice for a greater good. I wanted Han to have given himself to save his son’s remaining spark of good, I NEEDED THAT. I needed to see a father who was primarily absent in his son’s life make that decision as a last ditch effort to assure his son that he knew the good in him was there, that the good in him was going to be what he is. Not the dark, bad, villain we saw in Kylo. It was a personal need.

Fast forward to Last Jedi. Here we go, Ben/Kylo was seen in previews as torn, breaking his mask that he fashioned after his grandfather’s mask. We see hesitation in his attacking of Leia’s ship in his TIE SILENCER, we see a moment of indecision, Kylo was wavering, Ben was surfacing. The scar looking mechanical- rhyming with Anakin and Luke- an injury leaving them with a mechanical healing method. It rhymed. Each Skywalker man now carried an injury that left them inching closer to “more machine than man” in a story that has HEAVILY been “Nature vs Technology”

Kylo/Ben however doesn’t reveal some secret double agent scheme.

No Ben/Kylo in a moment being REAL reveals his memory of events. Luke tried to kill him. He defended himself and made his choice. He saw his uncle willing to kill him for reasons mostly obvious, others probably still unknown to Ben/Kylo. His revelation also shows that he carries grudges from long in the past. He didn’t want to kill Han, but he carried the hatred of his father and mother’s failed relationship with him. We see that Ben chose to be Kylo Ren. It wasn’t Snoke puppeting him. At least not entirely, he used strings to show him what he could be. Ben however cut the strings and picked up the mask, the cape, the mantal and bled the crystal in his saber to make that thing red himself.

To Quote Obi Wan-

I walked out of that movie hearing it over and over because of Kylo’s accusations of Luke failing him and making him what he was. Yes Luke failed BEN. Luke in a moment of humanity, a moment of being an older, experienced, and tired hero...saw a potential threat and in his moment of humanity actually weighed the options of killing the threat of living with it- trying to temper it and extinguish it without succumbing to murder of his beloved nephew. Ben did not care. Ben- like the Jedi and the Sith, only saw in absolute. He saw Luke THINK about it, and decided that Luke made up his mind. Ben chose to be Kylo Ren, he could have stayed and talked to Luke, discussed what happened, reached an understanding and grew as uncle/nephew or teacher/student. No. He chose the quick and easy path, like a true dark sider does.

Ben Solo did die that night. Kylo Ren didn’t kill him though. Kylo Ren took up his face and wore him, as an insult to Luke, Leia and Han. Kylo Ren wore the face of Ben Solo to try and seduce Rey into joining him. Kylo Ren wore Ben Solo’s fractured and conflicted face when he tricked Snoke into believing he was a puppet so when the time came- unlike his grandfather (in his mind) before him, he could seize power. And finish what he started.

Kylo Ren wears Ben Solo’s face the way some Vlad the Impaler left the heads of his enemies on spikes to intimidate and psychologically destroy his enemies. Ben Solo’s visage and memory is used as a weapon by Kylo Ren to wrench Han’s heart and force him on that catwalk, in hopes of bringing his boy home. As a constant reminder of Luke’s moment in humanity as a Jedi in fearing what might come and causing it anyway, and then the following years of doubt, guilt and pain over the possibility of creating the villain that threatened the galaxy, killed his best friend and chased down his twin sister in hopes of slaughtering her and all she stood for. Kylo wore the mask of Ben Solo as a weapon to give Rey this idea of hope to save him and used it so that when it failed, in her moment of grief for her failure, he could seduce and turn her.

Like we saw- Kylo Ren failed. He failed to turn Rey multiple times. Not because oh she’s a good guy, she won’t turn. But because Kylo Ren can’t invoke a sense of loyalty. He wears the face of a boy who is dead. Kylo Ren is the monster under your bed who wears the face of your stuffed animal then rips you under it to eat you. We know you’re not the good guy you pretend to be. Rey didn’t believe he was bad, she knew it was a possibility but she- had hope- Kylo Ren doesn’t understand this.

In Harry Potter, Harry tells Voldermort that because he never knows love/friendship- Harry pities that dark lord. In Star Wars, Kylo Ren doesn’t know loyalty. He doesn’t know compassion.

He knows greed and fear.

He feared the light, he feared the sentiment that Anakin Skywalker held for his son slaying Vader for good. He craved the power Snoke dangled and held. He feared that if he remained like Luke’s Jedi were- he’d never taste what he felt belonged to him by right. He and Hux share this sense of entitlement due to lineage/bloodlines. It’s interesting when viewed from the point of view- he came from EVERYTHING and gave it up for what he thought was better.

The son of a Senator/War hero, a smugler/war general, nephew to the GREAT JEDI LUKE SKYWALKER and THE GRANDSON of the CHOSEN ONE Anakin Skywalker. This was not enough for him.

Rey – coming from nothing didn’t want any of those things. She didn’t care if she was something or anything. She just wanted to know who she was. She was originally a spec of sand on Jakku now she walked with Han Solo- the famous Smuggler (oh and the War General I guess?) she met Princess- Now General LEIA ORGANA, the woman who fought the Empire, who saved Han from Jabba (then slayed him) the woman who never quit. Plus she was to become the student of the mythical, legend- Luke. Fucking Skywalker.

She didn’t even feel worthy but accepted it because as she met each one- she learned they were people. They were not Gods, they were flawed like her, they made mistakes, they made choices they didn’t like, all because at the time, it was the best thing they could do. They were trying, they were hopeful, and they were good people.

Ben Solo knew these things- he was Luke’s heir to the Jedi Order he built. He learned from his Uncle without complaint until the end, he was the son of these two amazing people of the Rebellion. Then he learned of his grandfather’s identity...everything changed. He felt lied to. Which is true, but this is where Kylo Ren tasted life and needed more.

Kylo rhymes a villain from the old EU in my opinion. Well a few.

Darth Scion

Darth Traya

Darth Nilhus

See like Scion- Kylo is fueled by pain. Scion was physical pain, but Kylo is emotional pain. He strives to push himself into the most emotionally conflicted states. Sometimes physical too. He kept hitting his bowcaster wound in TFA, he surrounded himself with the images of his grandfather and sought guidance from his spirit while in his room and when we saw him attacking Leia’s fleet- he couldn’t pull the trigger to hit the bridge killing his mother. Kylo Ren is a dark sider who thrives when conflicted because it fuels his rash decisions and rage over indecisiveness

he reminds me of Darth Traya because of two quotes that remind of Kylo

“It’s such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it.” - Kylo was born from darkness growing Ben over time. He fell quietly then when he admitted his fall that night in his cabin with Luke- it was far more terrible than we expected. It was a dark dark night for all involved.

Second quote is -

“Know that there was once a Darth Traya. And that she cast aside that role, was exiled, and found a new purpose. But there must always be a Darth Traya, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal. Who has been betrayed in their heart, and will betray in turn.”

This reminds me because look at Kylo/Ben’s history- he felt betrayed in his life and in turn he simply betrays all those around him that he feels slighted by. He instead of healing and growing from betrayal, simply festers his pain and lashes out in betrayal back.

Darth Nilhus though is simply- both men crave an insatiable craving. Power doesn’t do it, prestige doesn’t satisfy, nothing does, nothing can. A dark dark undefinable hole exist in them both and calls to be filled and attempts to fill it always satiate for a small time before the rage demands more.

Alright so I’ve spent A LOT of time talking about the whole character rhyming and that tangent made this longer than it should be, so now I come to the fact that I started- why I loved Last Jedi.

deep inhale

ok ready?

yeah...Leia said it right- Hope.

That’s it. This movie was one event after another of things destroying your sense of hope.

Poe lost all those pilots/bombers in his plan to destroy the Dreadnought.

Leia was losing hope as each of her ships were being picked off by the Supremacy that tracked them through hyperspace.

Luke had lost all hope before this movie and Rey was losing her hope in turn because of his hopeless state.

Finn and Rose were losing hope in so much

1- Rose lost hope in Finn once she saw him trying to run

2- Finn lost hope in DJ once the shoe dropped.

3- Both lost hope in the plan once it was revealed to be impossible to succeed due to their betrayal

4- Seeing the Ram preparing to destroy their hiding base- Rose lost hope until Finn’s daring thing.

Rey’s hopeful attempt at saving Kylo/Ben, it was looking so good til the last second and that hurt the most, the team up WAS THAT HOPE REVIVED like it sparked a sense of “they’re brutally fighting for their lives like Sith, but elegantly together in everything like Jedi, this is THEM bringing balance, they are saving the Galaxy, Ben Solo is back…..or so we thought.

Like every time our heroes did something it backfired, blew up, failed, or simply didn’t go how they wanted.

But in the end- after all that

we got hope back

1- Rey saves the Resistence with Chewie and escapes Crait.

2- Luke saves them by buying time and giving himself in a LEGENDARY act of challenging the ENTIRE first order by himself and simply brushing it off like it’s no biggie.

3- Kylo FAILS in his first act of Supreme Leader in destroying his enemies and has to live with the fact that it was all his own fault.

Hope was revived in the fact that for all those losses, one after another, we learned something. Yoda said it. Failure is the greatest teacher and teachers can hope for their students to take what is taught and become MORE than their predecessors.

Luke passed on what he learned. He learned from his failings, he learned from Yoda, Obi Wan, etc. He passed it all along with the teachings of the original Jedi to Rey (not even REMOTELY close to all that being intentional) and she is now going to be more than him. As Luke was more than Yoda/Obi Wan (who believed Vader had to die, and Anakin was beyond gone.)

Rey is hope. She is that ray of light in the darkness. Leia knew to trust in her because after everything, Luke reminded her- they’ve survived worse and came back strong. Rey can do that with the next gen.

THE BOY AT THE END is proof. Rose gave him the ring, he is the exploited poor masses personified. He is the fans who see these movies, and hear the morals and see the heroes and emulate them. He is those of us who see the sky at night and dream of doing the right thing. He dreams of being that next legend. He knows he isn’t legendary but, if Luke Skywalker can, why not him? If Leia could? Why can’t his friend?

The boy at the end- force pulling the broom is the message of the Last Jedi.

Luke was the Last Jedi for so long, he passed on what he learned and because of that now, a new Jedi will Rise. Rey, along any and all those she inspires to combat the forces of people like Kylo Ren. The man who could have been what Rey is, but because he walked into a dark shadow and let it engulf him, the strength of the dark he drank from rose to meet him- Rey.

He now commands the First Order, his hate fueling his obsession to claim everything.

Rey- feeling lost has everything she needs- to find those who need her to lead them in resistance and rebel, the spark was ignited to light a fire, that WILL burn the first order down. The fire is Kylo Ren, his anger is going to burn everything around him and leave him alone while Rey is there, leading the triumphant return of justice and good to the Galaxy.

In FF Advent Children, Rufus Shinra makes a comment “If that cycle is the very truth of life, then history, too, will inevitably repeat itself. So go on; bring your Jenova's and your Sephiroth's. It won't matter. We'll do as life dictates and stop you every single time.”

This is star wars

it is history repeating itself. But every time someone does what the force dictates. Raises up, and stops it. EVERY. TIME.

The Force is the rhyme in the universe’s poem here. The force let’s the bad rise, the bad grows, destroying, claiming and leaving ruin in it’s wake. Because the darker the night, the brighter the dawn of the next day, when the sun returns, warmth fills the sky and clears the shadows to bring peace and life back to the galaxy.

This wasn’t alll intentionally drawn by the creators obviously but this is what a STAR WARS lover like me drew. This is the surface of what this movie and all the previous ones did for me.

It- like other mediums, some mentioned in this long essay- inspired hope. Hope that even when the worst nightmare claims me, planting my feet firm and igniting my lightsaber to fight back can be done, but its not the main thing I need to do. My main responsibility in face of despair, terrible things and true evil. Is not fight that which comes in hopes of destroying all that I hate in it. No. My job. My mission is to always remember to protect all that I love so it my flourish when the bad passes.

Star Wars teaches us to ensure that we don’t need to win by wiping out things, we simply need to make sure that which threatens us doesn’t consume that makes us good and turns us as putrid and evil as them.

#jm rambles #star wars thoughts #I don't talk ENOUGH about star wars #but hey here are SOME thoughts #they are nothing special #I seriously probably have given Adrienne SO MUCH STAR WARS talk in the past its ridiculous #I'm like a walking star wars dictionary sometimes #other times I'm a star wars op ed #there is no middle ground >.>#SPOILERS FOR STAR WARS

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