#Cross Stitch mothers wear 2021 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

starculler · 3 years ago

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Whumptober 2021: Day 3

Word Count: 6341 || Read on Ao3

Tags/Warnings: Star Wars, Anakin Skywalker, Boba Fett, Time Travel, Alternating POV, Violence, Injury, Blood, Slavery/Tatooine Slave Culture, Death Mention, Hopeful Ending

Inspiration: Family is more than Blood by Quillfeet

Got this one in by the skin of my teeth lmao. Did my best to handle any sensitive topics as carefully as I could under a time constraint, but feel free to let me know if any issues crop up.

Anakin bounced on his toes, eager to see the stranger who’d drawn so big a crowd long after the suns had set, but unwilling to leave his mom’s side. Not when he could practically feel the tension in the air, thick enough to cut through with even the dullest, poorly-made shiv. Still, impatience and curiosity burned through him and his admittedly small well of patience had already been wrung dry after an unbearably long day of having to behave in front of Watto, his customers, and the other masters in the market.

He tugged on his mom’s warm, calloused hand and she squeezed his, her grip tight but not painful as she peered over another slave’s shoulder. She frowned at whatever she saw, brow pinched and her mouth pursed in the way it sometimes did when she tried not to look worried in front of him. Anything that worried his mom like that should have made him nervous. It didn’t. He practically vibrated out of his skin at her side instead, his need to know turning to a prickling itch that crawled up his arms and down his back.

“Mom,” he said, low and in the tongue only Tatooine’s slaves knew, the word drawled out into an almost-whine he was nearly too old for.

His mom only squeezed his hand briefly, a reprimand and warning, and Anakin’s shut his mouth before any of a dozen question slipped through his chapped lips.

One of the slaves, a twi’lek near his mom’s age, on his other side turned their head just enough to make it obvious they’d heard him. He flushed, embarrassed until they winked and shifted so there was a a small gap to see through between them and the human blocking most of Anakin’s view. He wasted no time leaning over, putting most of his negligible weight on one foot so he wouldn’t pull his mom’s hand while he snuck a glance and give himself a away. Not that it mattered.

He gasped, all the breath stolen from his lungs when he caught his first glimpse of a scene seemingly pried free from some of his worst nightmares. Funny enough, the first thing he saw wasn’t the stranger body, but the sand beneath them: wet like someone had spilled water on it and dark red, almost black in the low light of old, flickering lamps made of more rust than metal — most of which he’d helped his mom fix more than once. Eyes wide, his gaze trailed up from there, from the soles of the stranger’s ratty boots to the top of their head for just long enough that the image of them burned itself into his memory.

Too soon and not soon enough, his mom pulled roughly on his arm, tugging him close against her side and hiding his face in her skirt. He clung to the dull, brown fabric and soaked in her familiar warmth even though it did nothing to stop the way his body shook. She squeezed his shoulders, but did nothing to scold him for looking. There was no sheltering a slave from horrible things. Not really.

Anakin had seen a lot of bad things in his terribly long eight years. He’d seen slaves beaten bloody and others blown up, some so violently that there was almost nothing to give back to the sands when they were mourned. He’d watched his mom scream and bleed and, once, beg to take his punishment when he’d been even younger and taking it himself might have killed him. He’d seen slaves in chains marched across the market and put up for auction. Others he’d watched be chased out of Mos Espa entirely, out into the sea of sand never to be heard from again.

This, however, was new. A cruelty his mom had so far kept him safe from, laid out on the sands of the slave’s quarters for all of them to see. The stranger’s face had been the most visible without any of the tattered bodysuit in the way. It almost looked like some master had at least taken a vibroblade to their face, carved him up bad enough that they were missing a good amount of dark, curly hair on one side of their head. The rest of them, he thought, looked a bit like a krayt dragon tried to chew them up only to spit them out halfway, leaving them worse for wear but just functional enough that they hadn’t just left them out on the sands to die.

Whoever they belonged to, Anakin hoped he never found out if only because not knowing might keep him and his mom safe from being sold to them too.

By the time he’d calmed down enough to pry his hands free from his mom’s skirt and shuffle back around to see, the bulk of the crowd had drifted away — off to sleep or work or wallow until the suns rose on another grueling day. The only ones left were him and his mom, a few adults rushing soiled and new strips of cloth back and forth, and the three grandmothers kneeled beside and working on the stranger. His mom squeezed his shoulders again, half distracted by a conversation with another mother about infection and recovery and the fact that they had no water to spare for the stranger bleeding on the sands as aged but experienced, sun-weathered hands stitched the worst of their wounds closed.

Anakin leaned back against his mom, watching. Without anyone to block his view, he could see more of the picture than his first glimpse had allowed. A red and tan bodysuit torn to shreds that might have been white before the blood and the sand had gotten to it. Strips of cloth ripped by experienced hands to be used as bandages. Green armor whose paint looks like it had been half-dissolved rather than properly stripped off, carefully pried away from the body and set aside with all the gentleness something so obviously expensive deserved. A not-so-small arsenal of blasters, grenades, a rocket and rifle, and more knives than Anakin cared to count all set just as carefully aside with well-deserved fear rather than reverence.

And pain. He saw it in the twitch of the stranger’s lips and the furrow in their brow. In the way they seemed to flinch at the grandmothers’ not-quite-gentle touch despite how he was sure they couldn’t be awake. He saw it in the ragged, uneven way their chest rose and fell, like just breathing was so hard it might as well have been crossing the dunes in a sandstorm.

He frowned. He remembered being so sick once he could hardly breathe — how much his chest had hurt and how his mom had helped soothe it by rubbing something gooey and awful-smelling into his skin. Remembered being punished, ten stinging, throbbing, bleeding lashes on his back, and how he’d cried while his mom held his hands, whispering in his ear to comfort him while another slave had stitched the worst of them closed. He wondered if the stranger had someone like his mom to hold their hand and help them breathe before they’d wound up with whatever awful master had done this.

It made his stomach twist itself into knots to know that they had only the grandmothers to help fix him and an audience to watch and fetch supplies, but no one to help make the worst of the hurt go away. And Anakin…

Anakin felt a tug, deep in his stomach and behind his navel. The kind that urged him to be silent, to run, what people to avoid, or what he needed to do to fix up a droid or appliance just right. He didn’t think before he moved, ducking out of his mom’s loose grip and ignoring her startled cry of “Ani!” as he trotted forward until he stood next to the stranger, deliberately slotting himself into place where he knew he wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.

One of the grandmothers, Amiya who Anakin knew his mom still called auntie even if she’d only ever been grandmother to him, looked up at him as he approached. She slanted a glance at his mom and for a second after she looked back at him, he thought she was going to send him away. Instead, and to his surprise, she only pursed her lips and waited, her work paused mid-stitch and her one scar-split brow arched as she waited. Anakin complied hastily, though the words come out tongue-tied and clumsy despite how he’d spoken the slave’s language just as long as — longer than, even — he had Huttese or Basic.

“They need someone,” he said, soft and suddenly too aware of how quiet the quarter was at night. “To help. Like mom does when I’m sick or hurt.” He stopped, floundered for a moment before adding, so low he almost doubted she heard him: “There’s not a mom to help them, but I can. I want to.”

Amiya watched him, her gaunt, wrinkled face the even and placid mask most of the adults like her and his mom wore where they might catch a master’s eye — a mask Anakin would also wear one day when he was older and had to hide his feelings from whoever would own him. After a long, almost uncomfortable moment she nodded. He flashed her a bright smile and kneeled in a patch of night-cooled, mostly blood-free sand. For a long time after Amiya turned her attention back to the stranger, Anakin just stared. The damage looked so much worse up close and the smell of the gore alone was nearly enough to make him sick. He didn’t realize he’d started to shake until a gentle hand pressed against his back, slick with blood that would stain his shirt as it rubbed comforting circles between his shoulder blades. The white-haired grandmother the hand belonged to smiled, thin and sad, when he turned to her, and he offered his own much wobblier one back.

“Breathe through your nose,” she advised, voice cracked and croaking from long-healed damage, and he did. It helped, but not much. Still, she patted him twice more on the back and offered up a firm “good boy” that sounded prouder than he thought was warranted.

Anakin sucked in three bracing breaths, shallower than he would have preferred, before carefully — more carefully than he’d ever done anything else — picked up the stranger’s larger, brown hand to cradle between his own smaller palms. He didn’t squeeze. Didn’t pull. Barely even breathed. He just rubbed his thumb over their split, scabbed knuckles and pushed safety and comfort and the other warm things he felt when his mom chased away his pains and nightmares at them. Imagined them flowing down from his thoughts to his arms, pooling in his hands to be poured out from his palms and into the stranger’s rough hands, absorbed through the skin like the first sip of soothing water on the worst days.

Whether it worked or not, he wasn’t sure, but he thought that maybe some of the tension in the stranger’s brow and the stutter in their chest eased just a little bit. He stayed there, holding their hand and sometimes babbling, soft enough it almost counted as a whisper, switching between all three of the languages he spoke and even into brief bouts of untrained Bocce in the hopes that they knew at least one and would find it comforting. It could have been minutes or hours before his mom came to collect him, his head bobbing and eyes threatening to close as exhaustion swept over him. She crouched behind him and ran her fingers through his hair a few times before she spoke.

“Time to sleep, Ani.”

“But mom—” he started, voice more of a brief mumbling slur for all that he didn’t get to say more than those two words before Amiya cut in.

“Mind your mother, Anakin.” He ducked his head, chastened. “You’ve done good tonight, but it’s past time for little ones to rest. This one’ll be here come the suns’ rise and you can sit with them then until you and your mom are off to your master’s.”

Anakin nodded, mumbled a tired “Yes grandmother Amiya,” and patted the stranger’s hand twice before setting it down with a quiet promise that he’d be back as soon as he’d woken up. He stumbled when he stood, grateful for his mom when she put her hands back on his shoulders and steered him back home all the way to his flat pallet. Sleep claimed him easily that night, too tired to even dream.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The world was pain. Burning, stinging, cutting pain day after night after day for what might as well have been a small eternity trapped in the wet, writhing darkness where only his own nightmares provided grim relief until he clawed and rent and tore his way out of that hell and into another. He gasped and dragged himself forward, burning from the heat of the suns above and the sands below until he felt he’d boil away entirely.

Death would have been a mercy, but mercies had never existed for men like him.

He crawled and shoved and pried his way through the sand with the same desperate, all-consuming determination he’d relied on all his life. A legacy left to him by his father. A curse when giving up would have been a kindness to his battered body.

Time was nonexistent. Unimportant to him in his struggle. Day or night mattered little in the suffocating, sweltering heat when he knew the desert would swallow him whole at any moment. Should have swallowed him whole, but didn’t. The desert, for once, was kind and he hated it for that.

He hated it for letting him live, tortured and weak and pitiful enough that no one he knew would have looked twice at him. There were voices and hands, reaching and gentle and alarmed. He hated this one act of kindness — not mercy, this could never be mercy — the desert had granted him and he fought, battered and bit and snarled in the vain hope they’d leave him for dead when he proved too much trouble. They took it as challenge instead and won.

Defeated, he let himself fall into his exhaustion wondering if he might slip away in his sleep instead and prove their efforts useless.

His nightmares weren’t welcome, but they were familiar to him by then.

He watched his father’s head fall from his shoulders a half dozen times as his body was dragged, unconscious, through the desert.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Anakin sat with stranger the next morning like he’d promised, all but sprinting out the door of their tiny home as soon as his mom had told him he could go. He stayed until his mom called him back and worked with her in Watto’s shop until the toydarian let them leave just as the first of Tatooine’s suns had touched the horizon. When they returned, the stranger had been moved into one of the few empty homes in the quarter — the slave who’d lived there recently sold and a replacement yet to be found — to avoid the worst of the day’s heat. He sat with them again after late-meal, holding their hand and talking, helping with any small task he could until they shooed him off to bed.

His mom stayed with him, longer sometimes and well into the night. She helped whoever else was there keeping an eye on the stranger teach him how to change bandages, spot the signs of infection in a wound, to decide which remedies and medicines were critical and which could be spared and saved for later, as well as how to make a few of the most basic ones.

“There isn’t much we can do for them,” Amiya had told him, grave but gentle, on the third night, “except wait and watch, and ease some of the pain if we can.”

He’d nodded, feeling tears prick at his eyes even as he bit his lower lip to help keep them from falling. His mom brushed her fingers through his hair, pulling him close to her side while he worked to breathe through the tangled knot of emotion pressing on his throat.

“It’s not fair,” he said, voice thick, and his mom clucked her tongue, not unsympathetically.

“Life rarely is, Ani.” She pressed a kiss to the top of his head, then leaned her cheek there like she could drape herself over him — a blanket to blot out the world’s cruelties. “Sometimes, your feelings won’t matter,” she said, sounding wretched as the words settled heavy in the air between them. “Sometimes — most times — all we can do is live in reality and accept that it might be cruel no matter what we do, knowing that denying it will do us no favors.” Anakin sniffed, pulling his knees in towards his chest. “And we will live, knowing this and knowing that being kind in the face of this cruelty is the bravest choice we can make.”

“Are we?” he asked after a long stretch of silence, feeling small and miserable. His mom hummed a question against his hair while Amiya stared at him, dark eyes seeming to peer right through and into the core of him. “Kind, I mean. Is. I mean. I heard some of the other adults — I didn’t mean to listen, really, but they were talking about. About…” He trailed off, but Amiya picked up the thread as seamlessly as if she’d read his mind.

“About a mercy.”

He nodded. His mom stiffened, hugging him tighter. He knew there was mercy in death on Tatooine. He’d heard slaves beg for it before, beaten half to death and left, bleeding and wheezing on the ground. He’d watched one new mother walk out into the sands with her baby one night and come back alone in the morning. He’d even seen a grandmother, withered hands bloody and holding a shiv as she walked out of the house of a slave who’d lost most of their arm when their chip detonated and survived, only for the wound to grow infected and the slave so weak they could hardly drink a sip of water.

He didn’t like it, but he knew.

Amiya sighed, leaned back against the night-chilled stone, and looked at the ceiling.

“Let me tell you a story, Anakin,” she said, and he thought she sounded older then than she ever had before.

“Okay.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The nightmares had no end. They played on loop — his worst and his best memories twisted together with things that had never happened at all until he couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. He lived them. Was them. Played his part in them until he was sure he really had died out there on the sands and this was hell.

If it was, he wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of seeing him beg even if all he wanted in the worst of it was to wake up, ten years old again before everything had gone to shit.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The stranger woke with a groan on the fifth morning, just as Anakin had turned his back to follow his mom to Watto’s shop. He gasped, nearly tripping over his own feet as he rushed to spin back around.

“You’re awake!”

They blinked up at the ceiling, stiff as a board the second Anakin had practically shouted the words before slowly, probably painfully, turning their head to look at him. Anakin rocked back on his heels, mouth open and the words just about ready to burst out of him when they beat him to it.

“What?” they asked in Basic, voice a rough, crackling growl that could have been natural as much as it might have been from a parched throat or their injuries.

It was Anakin’s turn to blink then, uncomprehending for a moment before he realized he’d spoken to them like he would have any of the other slaves in the quarter. He flushed, fumbling for a moment from embarrassment before managing to wrangle together the right words.

“I said: you’re awake. You’ve been asleep for five days! Well, four, but today makes five. So, five days.”

“Oh.”

They stared at him, blank except for the obvious signs they were in pain — their pinched brow, their thinned lips, the pallor of their skin, better than it had been but still noticeable — and Anakin fidgeted in place until his mom called his name. He looked back at her, to the stranger, and briefly to his own feet before turning a bright grin on them.

“I have to go now, but Mom and I’ll let someone else know you’re awake. They’ll give you some of the water we all helped save up just in case you did really wake up. Which you did!” he added, too excited to keep himself from pointing out the obvious.

“What?” they asked again, but Anakin had already turned back to his mom with a cheerful “bye” thrown over his shoulder.

The day passed in an agonizingly slow haze of nerves and excitement that had cooled briefly after Watto yelled at him some time close to midday, and reignited when he and his mom started the walk home under the violet-orange lit sky of late-evening-nearly-night. She steered him home and forced him to eat his late-meal before setting him loose with a small smile and a firm warning to be careful. He grinned at her, nodding even as he practically tumbled through the door and back out into the quarter to make his way to where they’d been keeping the stranger.

“Hi,” he said, peeking through the tattered fabric hung up in place of a proper door.

The room was almost empty, lit mostly thanks to the three moons peeking up over the horizon and the last traces of the twin suns falling on the other side spilling through two windows, little more than a pair of squares cut out of solid rock, and the open, arched entrance. The stranger was the only person inside, propped up to sit against the wall furthest from the door, and mostly hidden in shadow except for the light cast from a neat little device about as big around as the palm of Anakin’s hand that they’d put down next to them. On their other side was a pile of their green armor, all but a pauldron which they’d been turning over in their hands until Anakin had poked his head in.

Their small arsenal of weapons, however, had been moved to the corner of the room furthest from them. Not that he faulted anyone for that. Every slave in the quarter would be in trouble if anyone found them, whether they’d actually helped the stranger or not.

“Hi,” they replied, suspicion all but dripping from the word as they slowly lowered the pauldron down to rest in their lap.

Anakin smiled and took the attention as permission to step inside, settled down with his legs crossed on the room’s sandy floor. Even from a few feet away, he could tell they looked better than even that morning — still battered and bandaged and a little paler than they probably should be, but whole and alive in a way they hadn’t been while asleep. Unconscious, technically, but technicalities rarely mattered to an eight-year-old. The silence stretched between them, both of them staring at each other until he chose to break it.

“How do you feel?” It was only polite to ask, even if it wasn’t what he really wanted to know. A dozen questions burned his tongue, but his mom hadn’t wasted time teaching him to be rude so he kept a tight leash on them and waited. Thankfully, not for long this time.

“Fine,” they said, curt if not a bit gruff. They sounded better, he noted, than they had earlier. “You’re the kid from this morning.” They furrowed their brows, speaking slowly like they weren’t quite confident about being right. Anakin nodded even though it hadn’t quite been a question. He knew that feeling well, after all. “What’s your name?”

“Anakin. What’s yours?”

“Boba.”

Anakin cocked his head to one side and asked, shameless: “Just Boba?”

“Just Anakin?” they drawled in return, their unbandaged brow arched. Anakin grinned, all teeth and excitement. He liked Boba.

“Anakin Skywalker,” he offered, expecting to get Boba’s surname in response only to be disappointed when all got instead was a a slow blink and a huff of breath that could’ve meant anything and nothing at all.

“What’re you doing here, kid?”

He pouted, watched Boba’s lips twitch up into a smirk, and pouted harder. He wondered, somewhere in the very back of his mind, if it was smart to be there, alone with someone who wore armor and had weapons and as much muscle and healthy bulk as Boba did. There was a danger to them, in the way their eyes never quite settled on Anakin in favor of scanning their surroundings again and again. It was there in the way they sat, too. At ease, like even injured and newly-woken they knew they could fight their way out if needed. Anakin wondered, but stayed, knowing his mom wouldn’t have let him come if anyone had mentioned they were dangerous.

“Rude,” he said, still pouting but also a little joking. Testing. Boba rolled his eyes and waited for a proper answer. “I come here every day. I even did the bandages on your arm.” He gestured to Boba’s left arm where they’d been sliced from elbow to shoulder, jagged and sloppy. It had needed stitches in three different places where the cut ran extra deep — the wound too long to spare enough thread for the whole thing. “Mom had to fix it the first three times, but I got it right this morning. Before you woke up.”

“Shouldn’t you be out doing … kid … things? Fun things?” Boba asked, sounding suddenly awkward, their gaze sliding away from Anakin after the clumsy question and looking for all the world like they hadn’t really meant to ask it.

“Maybe.” Anakin shrugged. “Watto’s been in a bad mood though, so mom and I have been getting home really late all week. Even if I wanted to, all the other kids would’ve gone home by the time he let us go.”

Boba’s gaze snapped back to him as he talked, focused instead of awkward, and only offered a low hum in response. He felt a little like a piece of meat in front of a starved massif, but did his best to channel a bit of his mom’s unwavering calm. Not the mask she used in front of the masters so much as the air she adopted in front of some of the new slaves brought to the quarter, scared and alone.

“Any siblings?” They sounded almost hopeful when they asked, only to scowl when he shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, popping the p. “It’s just mom and me. Do you? Have siblings, I mean.”

“No.” Boba sighed. “Sort of, but not really.” Anakin wrinkled his nose.

“How’s that work?”

Boba didn’t answer, only waved a hand at him in a vague gesture he took to mean it was complicated. He nodded, understanding. Slave families were always complicated, and he’d learned not to ask about complicated things when they didn’t want to be talked about. Instead, he changed tracks and poked at one of the many other threads he’d wanted to pick at since Boba had woken up earlier.

“How long have you been on Tatooine? I’ve been here my whole life, but my mom wasn’t. She got sold to Gardulla a long time ago before she lost a bet to Watto and he won both of us.” Anakin’s lips tugged up into a grin and he leaned forward, excited despite himself. “Before that she said she was in space, on a real ship and everything. I’m gonna go up into space one day! Get on a ship and fly right off Tatooine and see all the stars up close.”

Boba leaned back, drawing one of their legs up so they could rest their left arm against the knee as they listened. It made it harder for him to read their face, but not impossible. And Anakin was nothing if not good at figuring out how people felt if he concentrated hard enough.

“Sounds like a good goal,” they said, amused. When they said nothing else, Anakin frowned.

“Aren’t you gonna answer?” Boba tipped his head just slightly to one side, and he huffed, shoving as much exasperation into the breathy sound as he could. “My question? About how long you’ve been here.”

“Long enough.”

He nodded, humming a little in response. It made sense, he mused, that someone with a master as mean as Boba’s might not want to keep track of how long they’d been with them. That thought, though, brought up another very important question that Anakin wasn’t sure anyone else had thought to ask them yet. He hesitated, mouth suddenly dry as he shifted in place, and picked at the hem of his tan shirt to buy himself a few seconds more.

“Have you—” He stopped. Pressed his lips into a thin line so he wouldn’t give in to the urge to lick them. “Terrin and Bhan found you out in the sands behind the quarter,” he said, carefully picking his words. “Mom said they brought you back here. And. Well, uh.”

“Spit it out kid,” Boba said, not unknindly but not kindly either.

“It’s just, five days is a lot y’know? And-and some masters’ll wait a few, yeah, if they hurt you bad enough, but. But five is a lot, ‘specially for a slave, even if you look really well fed and have cool armor and get to actually hold weapons. But five is a lot of days! And I was really scared I’d wake up or-or come back from Watto’s and you’d be blown up ‘cause your master didn’t wanna wait anymore and—”

Boba moved, faster than someone that hurt should have been able to, and leaned forward, almost crouched, with his hands up, palms out. Anakin’s mouth snapped shut on instinct and he sucked in a huge breath of air, relieving the ache in his lungs he hadn’t noticed in his rush to get all the words out even as the rest of him tensed. They waited until he wasn’t practically gasping, their already dark eyes almost black in the shadows.

He’d thought Boba felt like danger before, but now they looked it, balanced on the balls of their feet with their hands out in front of them. For a moment, it was like seeing double: Boba as they were, bandaged and hurt, and another Boba clad in green, well cared for armor, crouched much like they were now except they held a blaster in one hand and a vibroblade as long as Anakin’s forearm in the other.

Just then, Anakin thought, a little hysterical, they looked like the predator they could be.

As quickly as it had come, the moment passed and he was left with only Boba as he knew them: unarmored, unarmed, dressed half in the remains of his once-white undersuit and the ratty strips of cloth they’d used to dress their wounds. He breathed, long and slow, until his heart felt a little less like it wanted to beat its way out of his chest, and forced the rest of his body to loosen up at least a little, not wanting to look too much like an animal about to run.

“You think I’m a slave,” Boba said, almost a whisper, but Anakin couldn’t find it in himself to nod or speak. Not yet. “Thank you,” they added, a lot like they were trying not to spook him, “for the concern, misplaced as it is.”

It took a few tries, but Anakin finally found his voice for long enough to ask, soft as he could: “If it wasn’t a master, then —” He swallowed even though his mouth felt drier than the desert. “Then who did this to you?”

They didn’t answer right away, taking a moment to lower themself back down with a groan half-muffled behind gritted teeth. Anakin felt small under their gaze if not quite scared, but did his best to keep himself upright rather than cowed.

“I did,” Boba answered, strained, with a weight to the words Anakin didn’t understand. They did nothing to make him feel any less small, no bigger than a single grain of sand. “I was stupid. Wound up in—” They paused, squinted at Anakin, and then quickly amended what they’d meant to say. “Wound up in trouble with no backup.” They shrugged, the dark circles under their eyes looking suddenly so much bigger. Heavier. “I remember a little of how I got out, but not how I wound up here in … Mos Espa I think someone said.”

Anakin opened his mouth, not sure at all what he wanted to say, if anything, until his mom’s voice at the entrance startled him.

“Anakin, time to sleep.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, eyes firmly set on Boba, but Anakin nodded anyway.

He stood, brushing sand off his pants for a moment before looking back at Boba. He smiled, dimmer than before, and said: “Goodnight, Boba. See you tomorrow,” he added and waited until Boba’s lips twitched up again — not quite a smile, not quite a smirk, but an invitation back all the same. He did grin then, offering up a little wave before turning on his heel to follow his mom.

“ ‘Night, Skywalker,” he heard Boba say, as the cloth in the doorway settled back in place.

Anakin took his mom’s hand when she held hers out. She squeezed his fingers briefly, then tugged him close. He breathed in. Out. And listened for the little notes he sometimes heard on the wind — the tug in his gut and the pull in his bones that sometimes pulled him closer to one decision or another. He felt it, faint but there. A warmth like good, hot food in his belly or his mom’s hugs after an awful dream, and for a single second, the scrape of fingers on metal ringing in a way he’d never heard before but made him think of Boba regardless.

He let his mom hold him all the way to his room until he kissed her goodnight. His last thought before he fell asleep, curled up on his pallet and tucked under his thin, scratchy blanket, was of the stranger named Boba and the pleasant notes plucking a tune inside and around him, whispering to him even on the edge of his dreams.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Boba watched Skywalker — Anakin Skywalker — leave, nothing but a kid smaller than Boba ever remembered being: naive and vulnerable and dressed in all the inadequate trappings of a slave and so damnably bright that it hurt to look at his little, hopeful face. Not so much as a hint of the Jedi knight he remembered from his youth — most of it propaganda he’d caught glimpses of in prison and a few jobs before the Empire erased everything — remained in the child except maybe in the edges of that smile, confident if not yet cocky, but innocent. Painfully innocent.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the skin on his palm still a little raw from the acid in the sarlacc’s stomach. Maybe, he thought desperately, he was still there, being slowly digested to death because surely, surely, that made more sense than what every other conclusion he reached for pointed to. He had to be dead or dying, not—

Not 36 years in the kriffing past, if the date the woman who’d told him where on this godsforsaken planet he was had given him was right. It made no sense. He wasn’t a Jedi — little gods no — and he had no connection to their Force or any other magic. He didn’t think the sarlacc had anything to do with it either, but that still left him with no answers and a galaxy’s-worth of questions.

“Fuck,” he growled, as much a helpless sound as it was a curse to whatever or whoever had caused this. He’d wring their neck as soon as he found out, even if it meant figuring out a way to strangle some magical cosmic thing that a dead order of damned wizards had believed in. For now, though, he was stuck. Injured and healing, without a ship or a credit to his name, no reputation to speak of, and Anakin fucking Skywalker who apparently helped nurse him back to health and had promised to come back in the morning.

And a father who was alive somewhere in the wider galaxy.

The realization came slow and with all the strength of an imperial star cruiser hurtling forward at full speed. He swallowed, blinking back a wave of stinging tears as something thick and pitiful welled up in his throat. He breathed, deep and slow, and forced himself back into order by sheer force of will. He was still stuck on Tatooine, tucked away in the slave’s quarter by some idiotic sense of communal good-will that would do nothing for their self-preservation, but he had time. He had time, if not a lot, to find his father and… Do something.

“Fuck,” he said again, but it was tired. A thick and bone-deep weariness that threatened to suffocate him if he thought about it for too long.

He sighed and wondered, for just a moment before he let sleep drag him back down into the darkness and nightmares, if his father was the man who’d raised Boba already, or someone else entirely. He hated that he didn’t know which one he’d prefer if he woke again tomorrow and found that time travel really was the answer to where — when — he was.

#whumptober2021 #no.3 #who did this to you?#star wars #anakin skywalker #boba fett #fic #blood #injury #death mention #my fanfic

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poorboypictures · 3 years ago

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Major America: Ch. 1

Jordon Wilkinson was seven years old when he first learned of Captain America; he and his siblings were told by their grandfather of the time he fought beside Captain America and Bucky in World War II. All were enthralled, but none more than Jordon himself. Jordon began reading all he could about the Captain’s escapades before and during the war, learning his origin, his identity, and his disappearance; taking the hero to heart, Jordon stood up for those who couldn’t stand for themselves throughout his life, even joining the military after the Twin Towers fell, serving seven years before a hip injury took him out of action permanently. In 2012, Captain America resurfaced and Jordon was thrilled to have him as a moral standard in the country again, only to notice a change in the hero over the years.

***

2021, nine years after Captain America was freed from the ice; Major Jordon Wilkinson sits in a security office picking at his spaghetti and meatball lunch, staring intently in thought. Wally Gertz, his partner, is fidgeting with a Rubik’s Cube keychain with his feet up.

“Something wrong?” Wally asks.

Jordon blinks a few times and looks over at Wally. “Hmm?”

“Lunch ended ten minutes ago and usually you finish in five minutes just to keep watch on the feed.”

“No, I just have a lot on my mind.” Jordon takes a bite of his lunch as Wally puts away the cube.

“We’ve been working the same shift together for three years, Jordon; I would think I can read you well enough.”

Jordon sighs and pushes his lunch away before leaning back in his chair.

“You know the phrase ‘never meet your heroes’?”

Wally takes his feet off of the desk and leans forward. “You met him? You met Captain America?” He asks, eyes wide.

Jordon slowly nods. “The saying is true. At least, it wouldn’t have been if I met him when he came out of the ice. He’s changed and I think society was what did it; a man out of time, trying to keep up with the seventy years he missed, and I believe it corrupted him.”

“Sounds plausible; society is a bit of a mess these days.” He straightens his hat. “It’s a shame someone can’t just grab the shield and say ‘I’m the Captain now’.”

Jordon stops completely, an idea forming.

***

Later that day; Jordon is in his apartment on his computer, looking for a shield.

“The shield is the easy part.” He says to himself. “It’s the costume that will be hard to get; how am I going to get an extra thousand dollars for an accurate costume?”

He pauses as something dawns on him.

“Hang on…”

He gets up, grabs his phone, and calls someone as he sits back down at the computer.

“Hello?” Georgie Berke answers the phone.

“Georgie, it’s me, Jordon.”

“Hey, Jordy! How are you doing? How was your nephew’s birthday?”

“Loud, and disruptive, but I love him, so I didn’t leave. So, hey, I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“How does one get an accurate costume?”

“Jordy.” She says teasingly. “Are you getting into cosplay?”

“Georgie, I’m 43 years old, I don’t do cosplay.”

“I’m 37, Jordy, what’s your point?”

“My point is-.” He says with a tad of frustration. “I want an accurate costume and I would like to know how to get one for a good price.”

“Weeelll… if you had an extra small fortune to spend on one you could do that.”

“Nope.” Jordon shakes his head. “I have bills to pay.”

“Then you could make a costume with your own twist, I’ve seen plenty of cosplayers use this method to save a buck without having to get a cheaply made costume.”

“That sounds doable. Thanks.”

“May I ask what exactly this is for?”

“… No. Bye.”

He hangs up, opens a new tab, and begins searching for his costume-with-a-twist.

***

One week later; Jordon is in his apartment listening to a police scanner app on his phone as he peals masking tape off of the recently painted heater shield; just as Jordon finishes taking the tape off, dispatch warns of an attempted robbery at a nearby bank.

“That’s a mile from here…” Jordon says to himself as he looks at his partly assembled costume on the couch; he looks at the shield and back to the couch, wondering whether he should go without a complete costume.

Jordon sighs and quickly puts the costume on, wearing the shield on his back like a backpack; he jumps down the fire escape and onto a red 2013 Harley-Davidson Breakout, tearing out of the alley way and down the street.

Literally a minute later, Jordon pulls into the alley next to the bank and walks into the rear entrance to hear two men trying to break into the safety deposit boxes; he sneaks up behind them, pulls out his gun, pistol-whips one crook, knocking him out, and knocks out the other with his shield, only for the resounding “clang!” to catch the attention of the crook standing guard at the other side of the room.

The crook shouts at Jordon. “HEY!”

Before Jordon can turn around and shield himself, the gunman shoots him in the thigh and side; Jordon holds in a scream of pain as the gunman empties his magazine into the shield; as the gunman tries to quickly reload, Jordon sprints forward at full speed and punches the man out cold only to find himself in front of the remaining three robbers ready to fire on him.

“Oh, crap…”

Jordon ducks behind the shield as the three men fire at him, emptying their magazines; they stop to taunt him as they reload.

“You supposed to be Captain America or something, man?” One asks.

“He’s got a round shield, you imbecile!” Another taunts.

Jordon takes a deep breath, blocking out the pain from being shot, and pulls out his gun.

“Come on, just like in the military.” He whispers to himself

He stands up and hits the first two gunmen in the shoulder without effort, but he and the third gunman fire at the same time; Jordon hits the gunman in the shoulder same as before, and the gunman hits Jordon in the bicep. The gunman goes down and Jordon holsters his gun, his breathing shaky; he looks around at the employees and citizens getting up from the floor.

“Is everyone okay?” He asks, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

A man in a suit nods. “Yes, we’re fine, but you need a doctor.”

“I’ve suffered worse, trust me.” Jordon says as he turns to go back the way he came in.

“Wait!” A woman calls. “What do we call you?”

Jordon stops and looks back. “I’m… Major America.”

He heads to the back of the bank to leave.

***

Soon, in Georgie’s apartment, Georgie is watching the news as she sips from a cup of tea; the news anchor is reporting on the bank robbery when the footage of the fight is played on screen. Georgia spews her tea out, coughing.

“JORDY!?”

***

In Jordon’s apartment, Jordon is sitting at his dining table stitching up the wound on his side when his front door bursts open, causing Jordon to jump as Georgie bolts in.

“Why didn’t you tell me!?”

Jordon grabs some gauze and puts pressure on his wound that has begun bleeding again.

“I really need to lock my door more often.” Jordon says, wincing. “Can you pass me that whiskey?”

He points to the bottle on the kitchen counter and Georgie hands it to him, watching as he takes a swig.

“Why are you drinking while stitching yourself up?” Georgie asks. “How do you even know how to stitch a wound?”

Jordon continues stitching.

“Back in Iraq our field medic got hit by a frag grenade along with a couple others; the anesthetic was apparently hit and drained out so we raided the basement of a bombed bar and the medic taught me how to stitch a wound because I had the steadiest hands.” He takes another swig of whiskey. “Sometimes the old ways are the best.”

He finishes stitching the wound and places some gauze over it.

“Can you hold that while I wrap the wound?”

“Fine.” Georgie huffs as she holds the gauze in place. “Just tell me what you were thinking when you decided to do this?”

“What are you? My mother?” Jordon quips as he finishes wrapping his wound. “I’m a grown man who can make his own decisions.”

“Not when they get you nearly killed!”

Jordon stands up and puts his shirt back on.

“I fought for seven years in a country that hated my guts, I can stand to fight a few more in another country that hates my guts. Doesn’t matter what you say, Georgie, I won’t stop what I’ve started.”

Georgie sighs and crosses her arms in a huff.

“No, you’re right; you’re an adult.”

She notices his bloodied costume and picks up the sweater.

“Also, what kind of costume is this? A baby could do better!”

“The gloves and jacket hadn’t arrived yet, they’ll be here in a couple of days.”

Georgie looks at him, cocking an eyebrow.

“Are you… Are you cropping a jacket?”

“… Noooo…” Jordon answers reluctantly.

“What color is the jacket?”

“Blue…”

“The only way you’re going to get the look you want is by cropping the jacket.”

“Fine! Yes, I’m going to crop the jacket!” Jordon winces and holds his side after the defeated outburst bothers his wound. “Okay, back to small talk.” He says, pained.

Georgie picks up Jordon’s helmet and mask and gives it a once over.

“Where did you get this?” She asks.

“The helmet was my grandfathers; quick coat of paint and it was perfect.” He takes a swig of whiskey once again. “The mask I found at an antique shop; the tag said it was an aviator’s mask used in the war, but I’ve never seen one like this before.”

“And the shield?”

“Got that online, bought three and tested two of them on my uncles range to see what guns they could handle; surprisingly a lot. I’m going to have to buy more after a while though, I’ll need to make a budget for that.”

“You really are serious about this, aren’t you?” Georgie asks, pulling a chair up next to Jordon.

“I am.”

“Why, though? What on God’s green Earth would get you to do this?” She asks, genuinely concerned.

“America needs a hero who will truly fight for them, a hero who understands what it means to be the little guy, America needs an underdog; do you think Ironman understands what it’s like to live paycheck-to-paycheck, or if Thor understands what it’s like to get mugged and you can’t pay your rent by the end of the week?”

“Probably not…” Georgie says.

“We rely too much on them; yeah, they’ve saved the world, but we don’t need Black Widow to find a stolen car. I’m going to try to be like that spider guy in Manhattan; he sticks to one area and does it well.”

Georgie stands up and stretches.

“If you’re going to do something stupid, I may as well help: if you find any information you can’t track just call me and I’ll see if I can find anything for you; I’m pretty good with computers, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll see you Monday.”

Georgie smiles and leaves the apartment.

***

A couple days later; a young man is being mugged by two men in an alley way, getting beaten; someone clears their throat and the muggers stop and turn to look down the alley to see Major America wearing a complete costume.

“Alright, boys, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He says.

The muggers look at each other and pull their knives.

“Hard way it is.”

He raises his shield and jumps into the fray.

End.

The Incomplete costume.

The Complete Costume.

Don't judge the art too harshly, I know what I have to work on I don't need people pointing it out.

Also, I suck at writing origins, I'm better at writing stories where the reader is assumed to know exactly who the characters are.

#captain america #america #major america #star spangled man #patriotism #patriot #original character #oc art #oc artwork #oc insert #fanfiction #fan fiction #fanfics #fanfic writing #oc insert au #au #alternate universe #art #artwork

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enbycalicocat · 4 years ago

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Day 11: 6th of February, 2021

A woman walks into the ocean in a red ball gown.

That sounded like the beginning of a joke. Like the one that goes, 'why did the chicken try to cross the street?' The only thing that’s missing is a good punch line. I don’t know any, I’m not good at that, but I can throw a mean punch if anyone ever does try to make a joke about me.

In the middle of the night, wearing a red ball gown, she decides to walk into the crashing waves in front of her.

That one sounded like the start of a tragedy. Like this woman (me!) is walking into the ocean to commit suicide or something. And she’s not. I mean, I’m not. Ugh. Whatever. Nobody is dying tonight (unless you find a punch line for that earlier joke). And, more importantly, it’s not the middle of the night.

Look, just let me do it. Clearly you don't know how.

Now, ahem, where were we?

Ah, right!

So, why did the woman in the red ball gown walk into the fierce water at 9 pm?

Of course, because she is in fact a mermaid.

I’m a mermaid. And this red ball gown is my outfit for tonight’s dance.

The waves enveloped me gently, even though they were forcefully striking the rocks around. Water would never hurt me. It knew me, it was my baby, my pet, my minion, my everything. So, walking to the point where the sea floor dropped down was easy.

There, the dress stuck to my legs and my body, like a skin. Because it was part of me, it was my body, my tail.

I swam leisurely, as I remembered my day.

Today was the royal ball where I would be presented as the princess' peasant girlfriend. Therefore, I had to look stunning and show those jerks how I could be fabulous without spending a single penny. Those pompous title-riddled fishes would probably spend tons of gold coins to look their best tonight. And my appearing there looking like a bazillion gold coins without putting in any money would kill them from envy.

Hence, very early in the morning, I walked out and went to the human buildings, to draw inspiration. That’s another thing the condescending shrimp that polluted our tribe with their hatred would never do, not even in a million years when the humans become extinct and the earth is empty.

We are sea beings. We have no reason to mix with the inferior animals playing around in the dirt and the contaminated air.

Yeah, well tell me then, intellectuals, why were we born with the ability to live on both the dirt and the water? Hmm? Why did our tails become legs and vice versa at will? Why could we breath the contaminated air as well as the water (which wasn't much cleaner than the air, to be honest)?

But they would never admit to it.

Well, better for me. They would never know how incredibly smart humans were and wouldn’t think of harming them. Separate societies and lives was the best for both of us. There were bad humans that could try to hunt us. And there were bad plankton-brained merpeople that could wish to keep them as pets.

Me? I lived my life in both places at the same time.

After walking around the shaped and stitched fabric stores in some human buildings, I finally had a design in mind. I never copied their… what’s it called? Clothes I think? Well, I never reenacted them exactly, because that was not nice. If it were me, I would be angry about someone stealing my ideas. Never mind if they didn’t even buy the thing in question, which was my case.

The moon was out and it was already late. Zaf would murder me. But then she would see the way I looked, and then she would kiss me passionately.

There was a public bathroom near the sea shore, and I locked the door with a flick of my finger as I walked in. What was about to happen couldn’t be seen by human eyes. For their own safety. They could not know. Or my people would hunt them. Even more as I was the only one so far that could do this. No one else in the tribe could.

Standing in front of the mirrors, I began to move my fingers, wrists, and arms, eyes closed, mind focused, giving shape to the picture in my head. The matter that made the… hoodie was it called? The fabric reformed under invisible threads of magic controlled by me. The matter of my… jeans, united with the upper one, becoming one single thing.

First came the vivid red color, then the fluffy waves above the breast part, the curves as it molded to my bosom, the folds of the navel part, only to my waist though because there the lower bell part started. Sparkling lights that formed beautiful earth flora silhouettes appeared, wider folds that made the bell look like the pretty shells I found on the shore. The back had a gorgeous bow in the lower part of my back, and above that stripes of matter covered but also revealed the skin beneath.

Separating bits of matter, they flew to adorn my wrists, fingers, ears, and neck, pretty transparent stones placed in silver metal.

Done! My eyes opened and I saw the vivid red color against my skin. Ah, this same color would look gorgeous when set upon Zaf's darker skin. Maybe tomorrow I would make her another beautiful outfit.

I smiled and began walking when I saw the point of my scruffy… Shoes? Oops. I forgot to change the stuff on my feet. Quickly it took shape under my scrutiny. My feet were revealed was thin silver strings crisscrossed them, I became a few centimeters taller as needle-looking matter under the heel of my foot separated me from the floor. These were called heels? Heals? Hills? Something like that.

Now I was ready. Looking like I belonged in the high court and the royal bloodline, all done without money. Those schmucks would choke on their krill and fish eggs when I told my mother-in-law (loudly so everyone else could hear well!) how I could shape my scales (and everyone else's if I felt inclined) at will.

See? It’s no joke. And it’s definitely no tragedy. It was the beginning of my life with Zaf. No more hiding. No more secrets. I would finally be acknowledged, and then I would ignore all their rules, all their stiffling mindsets, and all their prejudice.

A smile curled my lips as I finally neared the air dome where the ball would be held. Walking in, my tail became my dress, my feet, in all their shiny crisscrossing-strings and needle-looking-thing-under-the-heels-of-my-feet glory, touched the ground with an elegant click. Gasps resounded around me and silence fell.

I would love pissing them off and making their lives hell.

Prompt: 11. A woman walks into the ocean in a red ball gown.

Previous Day Next Day

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dweemeister · 5 years ago

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Best Live Action Short Film Nominees for the 92nd Academy Awards (2020, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

Since 2013 on this blog, I have been reviewing the Oscar-nominated short films for the respective Academy Awards ceremony. Normally, the Oscars are held on the last Sunday in February and we, the moviegoing public, are given more than a few weeks to seek out the nominated films. Not this year, as the ceremony was held at the earliest date ever (it reverts back to its usual starting date, the last Sunday in February, for the next two years starting in 2021).

There’s already been a winner in this category, but nevertheless here are the five nominated films for Best Live Action Short Film. Congratulations to Tunisia for two of the five entries, but all these shorts reflect the cinematic democracy that are the short film categories.

A Sister (2018, Belgium)

Also known by its original French title, Une soeur, A Sister is directed by Delphine Girard. It is the only piece among its fellow nominees that could be envisioned only as a short film. As such, its sixteen-minute runtime requires succinctness, the filmmaking as tightly wound as a clock. Late at night, a woman named Alie (Selma Alaoui) is sitting in the passenger seat asking the man (Guillaume Duhesme) for a cell phone so she can call her sister. We hear the first few seconds of this phone call. The screen cuts to black; next, we see a bustling room with numerous people gazing into computer screens, speaking to various people over headsets. We soon realize that Alie is dialing for an emergency call center. She is being kidnapped, and does not recognize the highway they are driving on. The operator (Veerle Baetens), confused by Alie’s coded language at first, eventually intuits what exactly is going on.

Alie and the operator exercise caution during these precarious minutes, as A Sister unravels in its teeth-grinding escalation of tension. Girard notes that the inspiration for A Sister came when she heard of a story of a young American woman calling 911, pretending that she was calling her sister – “it was the story of building a story of empathy and sorority that inspired [Girard].” Through meticulous research about protocols during emergency services calls that included interviews with said operators (who also made suggestions about draft screenplays), A Sister accomplishes a dramatic urgency that films with similar goals but last far longer never reach. The clever chronological edit in the film’s opening minutes contribute to that escalation; so too the decision to shoot from the backseat, obscuring Alie’s face to make the audience rely almost entirely on vocal delivery to understand her desperation and his paranoia (although the darkness of the surroundings can leave audiences confused in the opening minutes about who or what we are looking at). Not a second of A Sister is a wasted one.

My rating: 9/10

Brotherhood (2018, Tunisia/Canada/Qatar/Sweden)

Having made its rounds across the international film festival circuit, Meryam Joobeur’s Brotherhood is an international cross-stitch of a short film serving as an expression of Joobeur’s Tunisian roots. The film’s tragic outcome and dour tone throughout make is akin to Greek drama, where the ending feels predetermined and the characters – in what makes them essential – barely evolve. In a coastal, rural Tunisian town, a married couple and their two youngest sons make their living as sheep farmers. The landscape is rugged, their lives simple. One day, the eldest son – who has been missing for more than a year – returns home. With him is his teenage wife, wearing a full niqab, pregnant, and instantly attracting suspicion from the father. The eldest son and his wife met in Syria, where the former joined the so-called Islamic State (referred to by everyone else in the family by its acronym, Daesh – considered an insult to those affiliated with ISIS) out of desperation to flee his implicitly abusive father.

Brotherhood is indulgent in its languor, sometimes hanging onto certain shots well beyond necessary. Long cuts are welcome in cinema to allow the audience to meditate about what has just occurred; their emotional and philosophical implementation in Brotherhood is inconsistent. A constant use of close-ups and the film’s 4:3 screen aspect ratio reflect each parents’ stubbornness that their opinions about their situation is correct, that the eldest son’s belief that he is morally unblemished (he professes not to have killed, nor having been an accessory to killing another). The near-complete use of natural lighting - the overcast skies, the orange hues of older electric lights – lends the film authenticity. Joobeur, a Montreal-based filmmaker, has stated that she made Brotherhood to reclaim the humanity that the Muslim world has lost to the West since 9/11. From the red hair of the brothers, the ambiguity of the eldest son’s time in Syria, to the dramatic irony that closes the film, Brotherhood always challenges those views that Joobeur wishes to reclaim.

My rating: 7.5/10

The Neighbors’ Window (2019)

Marshall Curry is principally a documentary feature producer (2005′s Street Fight, 2017′s A Night in the Garden). The Neighbors’ Window, which he directed, is only his third narrative short film and, unfortunately, the final product is indicative of that – he has directed a handful of documentary features and shorts, but the techniques and lessons learned there are not always congruent to narrative short films. Here, mother Alli (Maria Dizzia) and father Jacob (Greg Keller) are New Yorkers with young children (early grade school and preschool age) who have settled into what they both feel has become a monotonous lifestyle. One evening, they see through their apartment window that, across the street, a younger couple have just taken up residence. Without pulling down any blinds and in their erotic euphoria, the younger couple start unpackaging (and this has nothing to do with moving boxes). Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window (1954) but without the murder, Jacob and especially Alli will occasionally peer into their new neighbors’ apartment to voyeuristically observe.

The Neighbors’ Window has little to say beyond its assertion the grass is always greener on the other side – it pains me to have written such a cliché. Other than basic editing, this is a film devoid of any aesthetic experimentation or narrative interest. The film’s plot twist, inspired by a true story heard on the podcast Love + Radio, is not strengthened by the lackluster acting. The supposed emotional catharsis that should emerge in the film’s final moments is simplistic – redeemed neither by said acting or the film’s questionable screenplay. It is, at worst, tasteless. The premise of The Neighbors’ Window is indeed worthy of cinematic treatment – perhaps even as a feature – but Curry is not up to the task.

My rating: 6/10

Saria (2019)

It is a fine line between politically-tinged narrative/documentary filmmaking and agitprop. Bryan Buckley’s Saria, a dramatization of the events that led to the deaths of 41 girls between fourteen and seventeen years old in a 2017 Guatemala orphanage fire, almost becomes exactly that. Saria (Estefanía Tellez) and her elder sister Ximena (Gabriela Ramírez) are orphans at the La Asunción Safe Home. It is a safe home only in name, as Saria, Ximena, and the many other girls housed in the orphanage are victims of staff abuse or human trafficking. Saria and Ximena dream of a life far from the girls’ dormitory at the orphanage, and there have been mumblings about a joint plan between the boys and girls at the orphanage to cause a diversion in order to begin an escape, en masse, on foot, to the United States. Given that Saria is based on a tragedy, there is only one resolution possible.

However, despite being confined to that horrific ending, the film endows its two central characters with distinct personalities and aspiration to the extent that it can. In its twenty-two minutes, Saria not only depicts the squalor and prison-like conditions of the safe home, but the desperate humanity of its subjects – as if taking a page from Italian neorealism, this film has orphaned children playing orphaned children, but the direction and writing behind their performances can be frustrating. Saria is somewhat hampered by its editing, as the emotional impact of the escape scene to the film’s final minutes feel rushed. The film’s pre-closing credits reveal – that Saria is indeed based on actual events and no one has ever been held accountable for the deaths of the forty-one girls – is harmed because of the film’s prosaic editing.

My rating: 8/10

Nefta Football Club (2018, Tunisia/France/Algeria)

On its face, Yves Piat’s Nefta Football Club – another transnational production set in Tunisia – has all the hallmarks of a film that spirals into a disastrous conclusion. Yet what instead transpires is a witty comedy that mostly adopts the point of view of its two child protagonists. Near the Tunisian-Algerian border, Mohamed (Eltayef Dhaoui) and Abdallah (Mohamed Ali Ayari) are soccer-obsessed brothers bickering over who is the best player in the world: Lionel Messi or Riyad Mahrez (personally, I have never heard Mahrez in that conversation, but noting that he is Algerian and almost certainly the greatest Middle Eastern or North African player in history, this sounds like a realistic conversation). While heading home, the boys encounter a donkey wearing headphones and carrying bags of white powder. They take the “laundry detergent” home for their mother, with the intention to sell the rest to their neighbors. Somewhere in the desert, two men are waiting for their delivery donkey to arrive.

Don’t worry, those two men will never have a clue whatever became of their delivery. Piat came up with the idea for Nefta Football Club while recalling childhood memories of him and his friend sneaking out of their house at night, finding white powders that they believed to be illicit materials, and dumping all of this into a body of water. Nefta Football Club showcases a loving, hilarious relationship between elder and younger brother, as well as the perspective divides of the eldest brother’s teenage calculation and the younger brother’s innocence. Their life station is never fully explored, nor is it ignored by Piat. Piat’s screenplay – based on believable misunderstandings that are based on the characters’ personalities – is well-executed, as evidenced by its fantastic final punchline.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb ratings. Half-points are always rounded down.

From previous years: 85th Academy Awards (2013), 87th (2015), 88th (2016), 89th (2017), 90th (2018), and 91st (2019).

#A Sister #Brotherhood #The Neighbors' Window #Saria #Nefta Football Club #Delphine Girard #Meryam Joobeur #Marshall Curry #Bryan Buckley #Yves Piat #92nd Academy Awards #Oscars #My Movie Odyssey

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