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i have NEVER understood those fics where anakin turns 18 and SUDDENLY everything’s different between them and obi wan is suddenly attracted to anakin, UNTIL i watched hayden christensen in “goosebumps” (1997) and then immediately after in “are you afraid of the dark?” (1999). because wtf the way puberty hit this boy like a ton of bricks.

hayden christensen at 16:

vs. hayden christensen at 18:

bonus: a critical hit. “higher ground” (2000) hayden christensen at 18, ft. pouty lips and frosted blonde tips.

literally RIP OBI WAN. it’s been real bitch 🫡

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AU where Vader joins Luke at the end of ESB but all of Vader’s underlings are too scared to tell Palpatine that he deserted so they have to pretend Vader is still on their ship and hunting down rebels like Palpatine told him too for as long as they possibly can

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SPENCER REID IS COMING BACK TO CRIMINAL MINDS I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THIS 😭😭😭😭

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I know Anakin's desilusions of grandiosity are the talk of the town, but something something Padmé dehumanization of herself as a result of so much survivor trauma and so many close death calls. She's the senator with the highest murder attempts on her, she gets assesination attempts weekly and brushes them off, and she keeps chasing for justice to the point of collition, she sees people dying around her all the time but she keeps on living and living, at some point she's flirting with death as much as Anakin does in the battlefield. And something something, Anakin, ironically, in his extreme trauma and fear of death taking the people he loves, being the only one to say "You're a person, and your name is Padmé, not queen nor senator, and you're as fragile as any other live being" Something something the irony that person that most adored her being also the one who saw her as a person Something something Anakin commiting atrocities not for a goddess, no for a politician no for royalty, for a person. Something something how contrarian it is, that Anakin sees himself as a weapon, and Padmé's extreme guilt becoming what seems like superiority.

And particularly here in this comic something something how easily Anakin can walk through that storm Padme has created, how easily he can enter into her headspace and she doesn't flinch, doesn't blink, she isn't even surprised because she expects him and he's the only one that knows and can reach her like this, they're just having a conversation, something something.

Something.

I swear this was the end of me, so idc if i'm rambling, this comic kept me up awake for more than one day, because the power would go out every single time i sat to work on it, damnit

i need to sleep asap, and eat, eating first probably

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ANAKIN SKYWALKER & FIRE

"The fire was bringing awareness to the fore. This will happen to you. Anakin gasped. He was not dreaming. This is your destiny, your fate. Obi-Wan said nothing. Anakin knew where the voice was coming from, whom it belonged to, but could not believe what he knew. There will be heat and death and resurrection. A seed will quicken. Will it burn or shine? Will it think and create or be ruled by fear and destroy? And then the voice fell silent." — ROGUE PLANET BY GREG BEAR

The Phantom Menace (1999) dir. George Lucas / Rogue Planet by Greg Bear / Attack of the Clones (2002) dir. George Lucas / Attack of the Clones Novelization by R. A. Salvatore / The Clone Wars: Wild Space by Karen Miller / Revenge of the Sith (2005) dir. George Lucas / Revenge of the Sith Novelization by Matthew Stover / Anakin & Padmé fanart by @origampx / Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth by Karen Miller / Darth Vader (2016) comic series by Kieron Gillen & Salvador Larroca / Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno / Return of the Jedi (1983) dir. Richard Marquand

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....💕

[-]

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“It feels like we've been apart for a lifetime. . .”

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Do you know how shows always have teens taking care of a babydoll as some sort of homework? Like, I don't know if americans really do that. But Imagine if the Jedi do.

So they give the padawans these baby dolls to take care of for Idk how much time and Anakin, being Anakin, just...is unfairly good at it. He names the baby doll Jinn and imagine Obi-Wan having breakfast with Anakin who's pretending to feed the baby doll thing and just...staring because it's extremely uncomfortable.

Then Obi-Wan shares a tea with Quinlan or idk, any other Jedi and he's looking over at Anakin who is in the background with a damn stroller, while Quinlan's padawan (Ayla, if I'm not mistaken?) already lost one arm of her doll and just left it there on a corner because of course a normal teenager would find this boring. And Obi-Wan is starting to get desperate because "Is this normal? Is this because he wasn't raised in the temple? Is this a Tatooine thing?"

And then the day when the assignation ends finally rolls over and Obi-Wan is relieved because finally he won't have to see more of the absolute horror that is watching a young teenager acting like a great single parent to a doll. And for the first time so far, Anakin gets the best calification ever. But THEN they tell him to retrieve the damn doll and Anakin goes all puffy like "I CAN'T JUST GIVE JINN AWAY"

And the masters are like...trying to placate this teenager who suddenly is having the weirdest reaction they have ever seen and they call Obi-Wan because how they deal with a meltdown over a doll? But Obi-Wan being Obi-Wan just says one of these attachment speeches and extends his hand to ask for the doll and Anakin is already shaking while everyone is like wtf is wrong with this kid. And Anakin just...stright up starts running, that's right, he kidnaps the doll he has been taking care of for what, a month? two months?

So you have the hilarious image of Anakin running with a doll and Obi-Wan running after him yelling at Anakin because of course they would do that.

And I don't know how or what, but then they come closer to some shaft in the temple or maybe a balcony somehow and Obi-Wan tries again to tell Anakin is just a kriffing doll, padawan, isn't alive at all! And Anakin trips and loses the grip on the doll, so the baby doll falls down the shaft.

Cue to Anakin looking in horror sending waves of loss through the force as the babydoll falls while everyone else is just...confused, utterly confused.

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I feel like we need a refresher on Watsonian vs Doylist perspectives in media analysis. When you have a question about a piece of media - about a potential plot hole or error, about a dubious costuming decision, about a character suddenly acting out of character -

A Watsonian answer is one that positions itself within the fictional world.

A Doylist answer is one that positions itself within the real world.

Meaning: if Watson says something that isn't true, one explanation is that Watson made a mistake. Another explanation is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a mistake.

Watsonian explanations are implicitly charitable. You are implicitly buying into the notion that there is a good in-world reason for what you're seeing on screen or on the page. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie all the time because they're from a desert culture!")

Doylist explanations are pragmatic. You are acknowledging that the fiction is shaped by real-world forces, like the creators' personal taste, their biases, the pressures they might be under from managers or editors, or the limits of their expertise. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie because somebody thought they'd sell more units that way.")

Watsonian explanations tend to be imaginative but naive. Seeking a Watsonian explanation for a problem within a narrative is inherently pleasure-seeking: you don't want your suspension of disbelief to be broken, and you're willing to put in the leg work to prevent it. Looking for a Watsonian answer can make for a fun game! But it can quickly stray into making excuses for lazy or biased storytelling, or cynical and greedy executives.

Doylist explanations are very often accurate, but they're not much fun. They should supersede efforts to provide a Watsonian explanation where actual harm is being done: "This character is being depicted in a racist way because the creators have a racist bias.'" Or: "The lore changed because management fired all of the writers from last season because they didn't want to pay then residuals."

Doylism also runs the risk of becoming trite, when applied to lower stakes discrepancies. Yes, it's possible that this character acted strangely in this episode because this episode had a different writer, but that isn't interesting, and it terminates conversation.

I think a lot of conversations about media would go a lot more smoothly, and everyone would have a lot more fun, if people were just clearer about whether they are looking to engage in Watsonian or Doylist analysis. How many arguments could be prevented by just saying, "No, Doylist you're probably right, but it's more fun to imagine there's a Watsonian reason for this, so that's what I'm doing." Or, "From a Watsonian POV that explanation makes sense, but I'm going with the Doylist view here because the creator's intentions leave a bad taste in my mouth that I can't ignore."

Idk, just keep those terms in your pocket? And if you start to get mad at somebody for their analysis, take a second to see if what they're saying makes more sense from the other side of the Watsonian/Doylist divide.

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"But that’s still a priority, and I do hope to visit it."

visit????? my brother in christ YOU SHOULD BE LIVING THERE OMGGGG

we're really not getting twow

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we're really not getting twow

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put three f/f ships you like in the tags. doesnt matter how obscure or embarrassing the media, go for it. and no, your m/m ship doesnt count as women

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nancy being concerned that mike and holly and karen are going to die after vecna's vision and shes the one who ends up dying

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if byler only becomes endgame bc el dies trust i WILL be committing horrific acts of terrorism upon the duffers

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Oh. “Zombie Boy” is a homophobic nickname

I guess this should’ve been pretty obvious. I mean, Will is a confirmed gay character, who is walking around town and having a mean nickname constantly hurled at him. Clearly there is some queercoding in that.

But does that mean that the nickname is homophobic in universe? If that were the case, why not just call him homophobic slurs in the first place?

The nickname Zombie Boy always was kind of strange to me as well. Why make fun of a kid for coming back to life? Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? Maybe it’s a little odd, but why be so mean about it?

Unless it’s not the only thing they’re making fun of him for

TW for discussion of rape below cut

To understand the intent behind the Zombie Boy nickname, we need to go back to Will’s dissapearance in season one. Our boy Troy lays it out pretty plainly what everyone in town thinks happened to Will.

Not just that Will was killed, but clarified as “killed by some other queer.” The emphasis on sexuality adding an implication to his statement. What Troy is really trying to say is that Will was raped and then killed by a gay man, otherwise why bring up sexuality at all?

And to be fair to Troy, that is kind of what happened.

But of course the town doesn’t know this. The story that was told is that Will only got lost in the woods. That was the story published in the Hawkins Post, so that’s what everyone believes, right?

This is the version of events that Lucas tells Max, and he is immediately met with skepticism from her. Lucas then tells Max not to ask Will about it because he’s very sensitive about it.

I’m not saying that the town believes that there is something supernatural going on, but rather I’m thinking that the people of Hawkins at least suspect that there is something about Will’s disappearance that is not being talked about openly. Let’s not forget that the “Zombie Boy” note that Will receives in his locker is a desecration of the news article sharing his story.

So here’s what the town initially believed happened: Will was kidnapped and raped by a gay man before being thrown into the quarry.

And here’s what the town knows: Will went missing and was found in the woods before being hospitalized. He is very sensitive about the topic and doesn’t like to talk about it. After being released from the hospital, he is now occasionally pulled out of school early for doctor’s appointments—

Oh.

I mean, it is any coincidence that all of this is happening while Reagan’s name is plastered all over town? Is it just a coincidence that the anniversary of Will’s disappearance falls right on Reagan’s reelection day?

And just to cut through all the shit and stop being vague, I’m talking about the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s, and yes I think that part of the town believes that Will has it.

I recently read a post from @emblazons that struck me with just how laden the AIDS metaphor is in season. To quote the post as best I can, there is something described like a disease attacking Will’s body and slowly killing him, and the Reagan administration government scientists are trying their best to prevent the truth from spreading and view the possible death of a queer person as a non-issue.

Starting to think about it through this lens, a “zombie” is the perfect metaphor for how Hawkins now views Will. He isn’t technically dead, but they suspect he has a disease with an incredibly low life-expectancy at the time, so he’s essentially a walking corpse.

The nickname doesn’t start and end at simply making fun of Will for having a disease. What do zombies do? They try to bite and turn other people into zombies.

The town doesn’t just see Will as someone who has been infected by someone else with an illness, but as someone who has been infected and is going to spread his illness around.

The rhetoric regarding queers as people who spread disease and kill continues in season 4, when we see Eddie reading the article that links sodomy with satanic practices, violence and murder. We then go on to see the entire town blame Eddie and his group of “satanic” outcasts for spreading death in the town. This attitude is certainly not lost on Hawkins, and the show doesn’t shy away from showing it.

The way that characters in the show use and react to Zombie Boy match this as well. There is a certain level of vitriol that comes with Zombie Boy, and the nickname is what leads Jonathan and Will into their extremely coded conversation about being a freak.

If Zombie Boy is an intentionally homophobic nickname, then does that mean that in this scene she's actually saying...?

So I actually don’t think that Snowball Girl is being intentionally homophobic here (although, saying what is essentially “Hey f*****, wanna dance?” is still CRAZY)

I think it’s less realistic if the entire town is in on this conspiracy and more believable if say, the nickname was started intentionally as a homophobic jab by some of the townsfolk, but is ambiguous enough to be picked up by more naïve kids like Snowball Girl who may not realize the actual meaning behind it. It may seem like it’s only about his ressurection on the surface, but when you peel back the layers you see just how offensive it really is.

Using a vague nickname is also very intentional by the Duffers as well. If they wanted to be subtle about Will’s sexuality before later confirming it, then having a more ambiguous moniker rather than just having the entire town call him an evil queer.

Even if the town really is just making fun of him for coming back to life and nothing else, and there isn’t actually this rampant rumor spreading across Hawkins about Will spreading disease, the heavy coding and intention from the writers is still be there.

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if george lucas wasnt a coward we could have had lady vader and mama's boy luke

can you imagine the love of her sweet boy being the only thing capable of returning fem!anakin to the light 😭 its what we deserved

(also she would look so hot in the vader armor omg)