#I do not like george lucas so it works well

[marvelstars]

Anakin and Slavers

"His undoing is that he loveth too much"

George Lucas

One thing that I always liked about George´s work in relation to Anakin and slavery is how out of the left field he and Dave Filoni wrote Anakin´s relationship to the people who owned or saw him as a property at one point or another and yet it makes total sense for his character.

For example kid Anakin has no doubt that Slavery is horrible and at 9 he is actually working towards developing technology to help free his Mom, friends and himself from it. He hates with capital H the fact those people have control over the life and death of other people but at the same time he has great compassion and kindness which his mother helped nurture. This along with the fact that Watto was the only adult male figure who was around during his early chilldhood, this complicated his feelings towards slavers in a very tragic way.

Anakin feared Watto´s violence and didn´t for a moment doubt he would have been willing to sell off his mother or him if the customer got to a big enough price but at the same time he listens to his advice when he travels to the dune sea to do his work with the jawas and his pov is almost as important as his Mom´s, in the novelization of TPM Anakin remembers not to talk to strangers or to get close to Tuskens Raiders camps thanks to Watto´s advice.

So in Anakin´s mind, Watto is someone he fears but also someone he takes advice from, respects to a point, sometimes gets sassy to and actually listens to almost as a father figure BUT at the same time he has no doubt he would activate the killing chip if he tried to escape.

Pain/abuse/fear mixed with care/advice(sounds familiar?) Anakin knows slavery is awful but he can´t help but see Watto as a person because of who Anakin is, Annie is a kind and understanding person and to point may justify Watto as a "Man of bussines" and "Not as bad a other masters" "It could be worse" but he definitely doesn´t trust him in the same way he does his mother, she is blood, she is family. He and Mom are a team.They shared their secrets.

The first time Anakin saw Watto again after being freed, he was a Jedi with training, almost a knight and the first thing he does to the guy who beat him and his Mom some years ago is to ask him if he can help with the ship parts Watto is working on because he noticed Watto is struggling and his bussines is falling down compared to how it was when Anakin was a kid. When Watto noticed who Anakin was he didn´t reject him and accepted his congratulations but keep himself appart, hoping to learn about his mother whereabouts.

When Watto told Anakin he sold Shmi, Anakin doesn´t have a reaction, he takes Watto´s justification of "I am sorry Ani but bussines are bussines and anyway the person who bought her freed her and married her" Anakin doubts it´s as good a picture as Watto is talking about but he takes his justification and leaves.

When he meets Owen, Beru and Cliegg he sees they are indeed nice people and the reason for his mothers suffering is something completely different that they were not able to stop so he doesn´t blame them for her fate. When Anakin lost his mother it was only natural for him to seek a family, someone he could share how he really felt and his secrets, he could not be part of the Lars family but Padme was willing to love him so she became his new confirmed family, right along with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka but while he had to show himself different to them, he didn´t had to do that with Padme, just like he did with his mother.

In the clone wars Anakin shows again this complex view of slavers with Queen Miraj Scintel, the cartoon goes out of it´s way to show she looked at him as pretty property and he didn´t let her forget that and actually it was strongly suggested he may have been raped by her at some point to keep safe Obi-Wan, Rex, Ahsoka as well as the people they wanted to save while he got enough soldiers to stage their rescue. Anakin had a plan the whole time just as he did as a kid so he keep his cool even when he saw another slave choose suicide over keep being under the control of Scintel. Yet in the end when the Queen was killed by Count Dooku Anakin felt sorry for her, he could not help it.

So this mix of rejection/anger/hate/disgust towards slavers mixed with pity/understanding which is something that was part of what made Anakin a good person gets used agaisn´t him in his relationship with Palpatine.

He first shows himself as the father figure Anakin thought he could find in Qui-Gon before he died a better father figure than Watto had been, a father figure that didn´t reject this title like ObiWan did, Palpatine did this to get his trust as a young child and later young adult and then he showed himself as the real sith master he actually was, Palpatine knew that Anakin wasn´t a stranger to be treated as property by people who showed themselves as good advicers or somehow not as bad as others despite their actions. So Anakin´s initial compassion, kindness and understanding for people that abused him is played agaisn´t him to make him fall to the darkside and chain himself again to another worse master who didn´t just seek to use his skills and body but who wanted his soul as well.

And the same reasons why Anakin justified Watto at first when he was a young kid also applied to Palpatine, he may be a sith but he ran the Republic better than those corrupt politicians, he isn´t a perfect Emperor but in Padme´s absence he is better than the alternatives. He isn´t as bad as a master and anyway I deserve this because I fell to the darkside and nobody can come back from that, if he abuses me I got this coming because I choose this and he still teaches me the ways of the force, he rescued me from Mustafar when Obi-Wan left me to die and he didn´t have to, he is all I have left.

So once Anakin´s voice died down Vader was left with many reasons to say to Palpatine "What´s your bidding my master?" because in his mind master isn´t a word that contradicts father and Palpatine became his father in all but name, this makes George´s words about Anakin fatal flaw being the fact he loved too much make complete sense and it´s a tragedy.

[antianakin]

So, when I read George Lucas' quotes about attachments, he's all like:

"Accept that your loved ones are going to die someday. You can't do anything about that. Don't be a jerk because you're afraid of losing them, don't lash out in vengeance because they are hurt, don't shoot up a school to save their lives. Don't try to control people's fate. Don't get married because that's a form of ownership."

Am I crazy...but none of this sounds that that difficult or hard to do?

But when you read around the SW fandom, they talk like the Jedi practice some kind of human rights violation, like they're out here demanding that children suppress all of their emotions, forget about the people they love, that everyone should be able to spew their obsessive anger and misery all over everyone else, and that the Jedi are wrong to suppress a person's right to destroy as many relationships as they see fit.

In fairness, I DO think that it's hard to do sometimes. And I think that that is part of the point. Letting go of people, places, and things that you love is never easy. It's IMPORTANT, but it's not easy. It can even be painful sometimes to let these things go, especially if you aren't used to it. It's EASY to lash out at people when you're upset, it's EASY to be scared of losing what you love, it's EASY to decide to do whatever it takes to avoid that. It's a LOT harder to understand yourself well enough to recognize why you're actually upset and then calm down before you do something you'll regret later. It's a LOT harder to just accept that you're going to lose something you love because that's just how life works. It's hard to accept that everyone, yourself included, has the capacity to be tempted by selfishness.

And i don't think that the message Lucas is sending is that marriage sucks because it's a from of ownership at all. I don't think that's why the Jedi don't allow marriages. They're not trying to stop ANYONE from getting married, we never see or hear them discussing how bad marriage is, it's a cultural thing more than anything else. And my personal opinion is that marriage requires a COMMITMENT that can make being a Jedi difficult, so they DISCOURAGE marriage. Any relationship comes with expectations and obligations, but there are certain relationships that often come with greater expectations of commitment which require a lot more time, attention, and effort given to said relationship. Romantic relationships, and especially marriages, are the most likely relationships to expect major commitments to your partner. Friendships tend to be more flexible about that kind of thing. It doesn't mean that the feelings in a friendship are any less deep or profound, it just means that friendships and romantic relationships often tend to come with very different expectations of commitment. And the expectations involved in friendships tend to be more compatible with the Jedi way of life than the ones involved in romantic relationships (especially marriages).

It's genuinely no different than what nuns do (minus the celibacy aspect). I don't think that nuns feel that marriage is bad, or that it's a form of ownership and so that's why they all choose to never get married. Nuns believe that they have a higher calling to serve their god and they don't want to be distracted by an exclusive relationship that could get in the way of that service. This parallels the way that Jedi are implied to feel a call to destiny, a higher calling to serve the will of the Force, so they choose never to get married (and often to simply not enter into committed romantic relationships at all) because those relationships often involve expectations of time, attention, effort, and exclusivity that they cannot provide because they've chosen to give it to something else instead.

Certain people may not AGREE with the choices a nun makes, they may personally view such a choice to be really weird or unusual or even upsetting, but that doesn't really matter. It's their choice to make and it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. As much as some people might look at a nun's lifestyle and go "I'd never EVER want that life", a nun probably looks at the choices made by people who get married and go "Wow I'd NEVER do that." Both choices can be valid and just because it doesn't make sense to someone else doesn't make it wrong or inhumane. Marriage can be beautiful, that commitment to someone can be a really wonderful choice to make. Likewise, the choice NOT to get married in order to give yourself to what you believe to be a higher cause can ALSO be a beautiful, wonderful choice to make.

[mortuarywriting]

Falling into Place

Ao3 Link - [First] - [Next Chapter ->]

All things considered this isn't what you were expecting to wake up to when you went to bed. One minute you're on your phone, trying to pass out, and the next? You're here. You've had some interesting greetings in your life, but dropping about six feet and having twelve guns leveled at your face? That takes the cake

Warnings:

Reader Insert, Plus-Size Reader, The Author Regrets Everything, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Isekai, canon divergence Look we're gonna dig into the implications of omegasverse changing bits and pieces of history as well as addressing whatever the FUCK is happening as CoD's history. Idk man Godzilla is canon and nobody bats an eye at that fact and you think I'm gonna be normal about that? No

You could be having a worse day, you think, as you stare at the interrogation table you're cuffed to. They could've shot you the second you fell the six feet from the sky into a random army base. That's a very real thing that could've happened.

But no, you just had a dozen guns pointed at you in one moment and a slew of questions you didn't have satisfying answers for.

No, you had no idea how you got there. You'd been in bed tooling around on your phone and then you were falling.

They asked who you worked for, and were not impressed by your mundane answer. You didn't work for some pmc or intelligence organization. You asked them to their faces if they thought you could pass a PT test if you tried. Not that they answered or appreciated your point, mind.

It was only after you gave them whatever identifying information you had that things got… spicy.

"I would love to tell you what this designation of yours is if you tell me what you mean. Is it like a classification of civilian versus enlisted? Is it physical? Is it your horoscope? I don't know what I don't know," you explain again for the Nth time. You didn't wanna play twenty questions but here you fuckin were, captive audience and all.

The man asking you questions had lost his charming good cop look. He was getting more and more annoyed on this one, "your designation," a demand, not a question and sure as shit not an answer.

"Again, would love to tell you! I don't know what you mean! Feels like some kinda Star Wars thing," you grumble the last bit to yourself but the man cocks his head.

His eyes narrow, "what are… Star Wars, you said?"

You blink owlishly, "beg pardon?"

"Star War. Clarify."

It's your turn for your brow to furrow, and furrow it does, "Star Wars? As in the multi-billion dollar franchise created by George Lucas and eventually sold to Disney," your tone is questioning, just shy of asking if the guy lived under a rock but his expression didn't let up and the last thing you needed was bad cop, so you continued, "the story of what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? The political space series of movies versus Star Trek's more scientific and discovery based longstanding TV show? Nine major movies and the Clone Wars before Disney sunk their talons in. Like yeah we got more shows and movies that expanded the universe but they also cut out decades of book contributions in their acquisition and that kinda sucked. But yeah, that Star Wars?"

"Nine movies," his tone is disbelieving, and now it's your turn for your eyebrows to raise, "can you name them?"

You nod, "well yeah. Do you want them in episode order or release?"

His brows furrow, "did they not release in order?"

"In a sense? Three trilogies, 4-5-6 back in the late 70s early 80s, then 1-2-3 in the late 90s early 00s, and 7-8-9 through the teens. So order, yes, just… not a cohesive one."

"Release, then," he leaned back and crossed his arms, a position you'd love to mimic if you weren't cuffed to the table for… an indeterminate period of time now, actually.

"A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi-"

"Woah now, empire? What's a jeddy?"

You give him a blank look, trying very hard to mask your disbelief as you look between him and the mirror behind him. You look at your reflection, take a deep breath, and- "sir would it be easier for you to maybe check the internet?"

He seemed to bristle, nose flaring and looking at you expectantly.

You just… kinda sat there. You tapped your fingers together on the desk and kept the eye contact he was intent on. It took a good minute and him getting progressively pissier before you simply ask, "would you like the other movies now?"

You didn't expect an explosion of movement from the man. He downright snarled and slammed his hands on the table as he burst to his feet, the sudden change sending his chair screeching back before falling with a clatter. You leaned as far back as your cuffed hands would allow, eyes wide and a panic rising.

Both of you turned to look at the door when it slammed open with a barked, "Williams!" 

The man who opened it reared back a bit, "Christ, layin' it on a bit thick," he groused, his tone sounding more like someone chastising a teenager for using too much Axe body spray. He smoothed his posture back into something casual as he fanned the air dismissively with a hand, "cap wants you to take a walk."

Your interrogator- Williams, apparently- stares at the man in the door, the two locking eyes before the one in the door straightens from his purposely relaxed posture. You watch the both of them, noting the shoulders tensing as the two just. Staring at each other? Eventually the guy who'd been grilling you looked away and stormed out, the man in the doorway letting him slip out easily enough before turning a charming look back to you.

He took a minute to fan the door a few times to get newer, blissfully cool air in before he entered the room, "sorry 'bout him. He really did a number in here," the new guy tsked before closing the door quietly behind himself.

Your brow furrowed even as you slowly relaxed a bit, had this Williams guy like… farted or something? A nice quirk of ventilation keeping you from smelling something abhorrent? Either way you simply shrug as he walks in and tips the chair back up, sitting and giving another reassuring smile, "how you doing, love?"

You opened and closed your mouth a few times before simply settling on, "I'm a bit… whelmed? This has been," you give as vague a rolling gesture as you can without your cuffs rattling too badly, "a lot? And I have no idea what just set him off either?"

It's the man before you's turn to quirk a brow, "no idea?"

"If I knew the answers to his questions I'd've given 'em by now. I don't, though, and then he just started staring? And hell I just thought it was some kinda macho 'I can stare the truth out of you,'" you pitched your voice lower and pushed your shoulders out for a second to mimic the douchebag behavior before settling, "so I kept eye contact because I'm so out of my depth I have no reason to lie at all and now…" you trail off, gesturing around the room, "all that."

The man nods slowly, "alright love, could you tell me about the last five years?"

Your brows furrow, "oh fuck, 2019 was five years ago wasn't it. God, time is an illusion. Anyway, you want what I was doing leading up to and through the pandemic?"

You think he might've startled for a second but he simply moved to scratch his chin, "mhmm. Just your thoughts on the last five years is all."

So… you ramble. Because he was nice and not prodding or asking weird questions. You talk to him about your job before the pandemic, how people thought covid was just a flu until the death tolls kept climbing, how tons of governments dropped the ball on a local or country-wide level and how that kicked back onto your life, and then the absolute crapshoot of the last election cycle, the shitty 'oh no this is the new normal everything is fine' behavior that has lead to surges and cycles of a fucking plague and so on. He simply nodded, gave some sympathetic hums and winces appropriately at your experiences.

"And did you go back and watch Star Wars through that? Or other things Disney owned?"

And, well, that was a weird way to phrase it but you shrugged, "the mouse is just shy of a monopoly and not one that anybody can take that down so… yeah, I guess? They kept putting shows out and expanding their Star Wars universe so that's been kinda neat to watch but not just them, no. Couple other games and stuff like that to keep me busy, too," you kinda handwave and shut up because panic rambling to MILITARY PERSONNEL is probably not your smartest move in hindsight. Especially when you don't know his name. A+, self.

You tap your fingers against the metal table as he looks at you, "and you said covid has a long term effect of ruining people's senses of smell and taste?"

You nod slowly, "yeah, dude? It's one of the biggest warning signs for most people? Like if everything starts tasting like it was made by a middle class white mom who keeps shoving random letters in her kids names you should swab? That kinda shit?"

What rock has this guy been living under? You were pretty sure the military were supposed to be way more familiar with this shit all things considered, but you've been wrong before.

It was his turn to give you a bit of a wide eyed look before he poorly covers a laugh, "alright, that's fair. I need to go talk with my captain," he hooks a thumb over his shoulder to the window, which didn't surprise you that there had been people back there. He offers a reassuring smile as he stands, humming idly as he pushes the chair back in. He pauses mid-step, "you mentioned that there were cards…?"

You find yourself nodding slowly, "yeah it was important and you couldn't fly or go to certain places if you didn't have one for a while. Should still have a picture of mine buried on my phone," you really didn't wanna get another first-round of covid shots, you REALLY didn't wanna repeat the 24 hours of suck for no reason.

"Cool, thanks," he flashes another charming grin before he slides out of the room.

You lean back in your chair, what an odd guy. Nice though.

-------

"Right," Gaz says as he opens the door to Price and Ghost, "either our mystery guest is off her nut or she's legitimately from somewhere and somewhen else."

Ghost and Price look at each other before turning back to Gaz, this… complicated matters.

Well, it's not like you hadn't given them information to identify yourself. They'd dig up who you were one way or another.

-------

You stare blankly as the nice man from before gives you a sympathetic look, "what do you mean I'm dead?"

Behind him is a guy you're not sure if he's just fuckoff huge or if he's just moderately huge and it's forced perspective.

You don't think it's forced perspective.

You are absolutely trying not to panic spiral.

You are absolutely doing a horrible job at that.

"Well," he opens the file before him and there's a news article, proudly proclaiming "Locals Die in Horrible Freak Accident" like that's not some form of you that was looking like some smear on the pavement, "there's this. Fingerprints match up. Can check for dental if you're really curious."

"Were there even any teeth left after that," you mumble as you take and read the offered article. Seven people were involved, the pictures used are mostly flattering. Hell, you almost don't mind what pic they used for an alternate you but… "that's certainly not the pic I would've wanted. Maybe this me had different tastes?"

You take the time to actually read through the article. It's not helping because for as much as you stare at the page you're not absorbing any information. Some form of detachment, if this was really you? You'd died. A different you but a you nonetheless. You died and you're reading how it happened. There was a lot to unpack in all this and you just needed to put the suitcase away for now. You'd much rather throw it away at this rate.

You were rapidly coming to the understanding that you and Toto were not in Kansas anymore, and there wasn't a convenient yellow brick road to get yourself back home. No easy way to get the hell out of Dodge either. Was it Dodge or the O.K. Corral that was in Kansas? No the O.K. Corral wasn't in Kansas- Dodge was though, that's right. 

This analogy was getting away from you and some part of you figured this was just your brain trying to protect yourself but… wait, wasn't this a metaphor? There wasn't 'like' or 'as' or goddammit not again.

You recognize some names here and there but largely everyone involved were perfect strangers. The article doesn't cover if it would've been slow or quick. You hope for the smear that it was quick. Smears like that don't happen slowly, right? Well, not unless it's like a dramatic slide down a window, but not usually across pavement like that.

Still not sure how you feel about all of it. Bit morbid being confronted with your mortality like that.

Certainly answered a lot of questions about your theoretical passing you never thought about. Like if the obituary for you in what you know to be your own home and world is just as… really kinda just mediocre as this. Have you really done nothing of note for an obituary? Damn.

You kept pouring over the article, each pass bringing new words into focus that help connect the picture a little bit, but… Something repeated in the article made you pause, "two alphas, four betas, and an omega?" 

There was no decent way to ask about that. Any questions invoked from here would border into dangerous territory better kept between yourself and a private browser history. You knew what you were about but there was no fucking way.

"Their designations," the nice man whose name you still hadn't caught explains, "mostly explaining their secondary gender."

You look at him owlishly. You pray to whatever God might be listening that you wake up shortly. Or that the earth below your feet opens up and swallows you. Whichever comes first, the mortification will snipe you otherwise.

"Please tell me this is an elaborate joke at my expense," you are very quiet as you are trying to get really cool with a lot of things really quickly.

"Negative," the big fucker in the back practically growled and you knew that voice would do things to you if you weren't half stepped out of your own body. 

You missed whatever his followup was but your brow furrowed when you checked the date on the article, "I've been dead for months? That…" you let the paper fall from your hands. Everything about this is wild at best and very overwhelming at worst. 

A lot of this qualified as worst.

You look up at the two, missing the odd look they shot at each other as you try to pull yourself back together, "so now what? You've got a not-a-smear of me that fell from the sky onto a secure military base, and where I'm from we didn't have," you paused to gesture between the paper and the two soldiers, "dynamics was it? That was just a fanfiction special."

"Fanfiction."

The way he said it was so carefully neutral you paused, "oh my god without Star Trek to popularize fanfiction and the fan community, how has fandom evolved? Is fanfiction a thing- well, yes, it does fanfics have been a thing since Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy and even before- well, the question is more if it's still popularized? Are there still the wattpad fics of- I am getting so off track. What exactly is the next step?"

You look from the nice man to the big fucker and back, neither saying anything but looking at you with careful blankness.

You felt like you were being weighed and measured in their eyes.

You hoped to anyone listening that you weren't found wanting at least. Not when you're in the shit situation it looks like you ever so increasingly fell into.

"Considering I'm. Not smear. And very much not from here? Are blanks a thing? Or is that what a beta is I'm," you trail off, brow furrowing, "fuzzy. On the whole thing. The flavor of understanding, dynamics, and population skew tended to be dependant on the author's level of horny."

The did get a bit of a snort from the pretty one before you, the one in the back tilting his head just so as the pretty one spurred you on, "okay please don't take this the wrong way, you have given me nothing to go on but A/B/O and-" a finger was raised in question to that, you quickly explaining, "the fanfic shorthand for the universe without being a mouthful. Anyway- I've seen population numbers being roughly the same across the board, I've seen alphas and omegas at roughly 1% of the population of society on either end, I've seen alphas at about 5% and omegas at 1%- those ones are usually the most horny I swear.

"And it's all over the board, no consistency- sometimes it's betas are infertile, sometimes they're the straightman to the comedy that's an alpha and omega trying to woo each other without being too horny to function. Sometimes it's a sliding scale where being beta just means you're more the more middle-ground regulated hormonally with alphas and omegas being the opposing ends of a spectrum. Can you please say something and give me a fucking break because my panic rambles are probably like. Some kinda prejudiced. I'm still not over the 'I'm supposed to be a smear on the ground we don't even have dental images of to confirm who it is anymore' nugget you dropped on me. I think I'm doing well for this"

You would rather not tell them that as soon as you're out of this box of a room you were gonna be curled up in a ball and unabashedly weeping. That was none of their business.

The pretty one gave you what you're sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile but the quiet stretched just a bit too long. You looked from one to the other before leaning forward, "is this supposed to be soothing in some way? Because it's just a bit of an extended awkward silence and that's uh-"

It was the big one in the back's turn to give an amused snort, the pretty one looking bashful, "right, sorry, we uh-"

You jerk a bit, "wait, was that supposed to be some scent thing," you really didn't wanna say pheromones and potentially dig yourself into a deeper, more awkward hole based on Horny Pseudoscience.

Pretty rubbed the back of his neck, "something like that. You really couldn't smell anything?"

You know the exact Face you're making. It's very much your 'I have told you this and I'm getting tired of having to repeat it' face. You can tell he clocks it but for the record, because to your mortification this has to be recorded, you simply give a succinct, "no, I haven't smelled anything. Not from you, not from him," you jerk your head towards the big fucker, "and not from douchebag from be- Williams! His name was Williams. Nothing. Really had no clue why you were fanning the door when you came in."

You sigh, rubbing the heels of your palms into your eyes, "okay. Assuming I'm not about to be put into past tense a second time. Do we have any idea what popped me out here?"

The sentences are stilted, you know you're getting more rattled the longer you're here but sue you alright it's been the worst six hours of your life here.

They just continue to look at you, pretty keeping a polite almost customer service look as big one just stares unceasingly.

"Right. Okay. Am I going to be reintegrated to society or is this," you gesture around the little room as much as you can, "looking like my home for the foreseeable future."

No change in what you can see of either's expression, and you just sag. Deep breath in, deep breath out, "cool. Alright. Well. I know nothing of how biology is altered here, I'm not sure how that has impacted changes throughout history, and frankly I don't know what your pop culture has done. I'm assuming math and written languages are largely the same but in all fairness I don't know what I don't know."

You just stare quietly at the table for a bit longer before looking back at the two of them, "is there anything else you need because I can feel the freakout creeping up and while I know there's no real privacy, uh…"

The pretty one looked back to the big one, at some point you're sure you'll get some sort of names but for now? Now you watch the big one nod, the pretty one give you a polite smile and some vaguely polite bullshit your brain is swiftly going too far out to hear.

You only hope that whoever is behind the mirror is polite enough to look away as you put your head down on the table and give yourself the opportunity to, just this once, cry. As a treat.

[Next Chapter -> ]

[dotthings]

Congrats to the fans of the wee woo show. I don’t go here but it makes me happy to witness how this arc for Evan Buckley got to bloom and I’m happy because I hope this reflects another shift in the TV industry.

For some media commentary context for you: ABC network is owned by Disney. Fox network was owned by Rupert Murdoch. So I can see how the network change for 911 can easily be a factor on how this got greenlit, after years of creator Tim Minear’s intention to work in hints, on the off chance he could take it there. (I don’t go here, but I did my reading). Oliver Stark who plays Buck also revealed he's been for it and couldn't say anything, until he was sure they could do it, until it aired and was out there. (*steeples fingers*)

For further context, Bob Iger—with George Lucas’ vocal support—just fended off a right wing coup on the Disney board from the kinds of people (like Peltz) who complain “why do we need so many female leads” “why do we need movies with all Black leads.” While it doesn’t mean Disney is no longer an evil megacorp, I’m pointing out that its CEO defended inclusive Disney brand content to the shareholders and the board, as well as dismantling the idea that it can’t be entertainment while being diverse.

The ripple of this goes outside of the wee woo show fandom. I’m seeing the joy on my dash from people who don’t watch the show or don’t watch it regularly, as well as from people who have been watching a long time and noticed things and realized there was a progression and it was there all along, and I know how much this must mean to a lot of people. With the world being how it is, with what people are facing inside the US from the far right, in their real lives.

It’s very hopeful in general for inclusion levels on a major network TV show, owned by a big evil megacorp. Representation matters.

Also I'm aware the wee woo show already had a queer couple, plus it's already an intersectional inclusive series, that’s great.

There shouldn't be limits placed on inclusion though. “But you already have X” shouldn't be weaponized to tell people to shut up. There is no “enough” or “too much” when it comes to inclusion. While I'm not for undermining the inclusion that's there, I've seen that weaponization used with a series that hasn't been great on inclusion, and I've seen that weaponization used for 911, which is. It's a sus argument.

Indirect and unintentional as it is, also bi Buck shut down every concern troll, every gaslight, every denial, every rationale I've ever seen people deploy against bi Dean. Everything from people who don’t understand what bi actual means—“but he likes girls so he can’t be bi”—to “but he wasn’t declared bi from the start of the show so he can’t”—yes he can and the wee woo show just did. On one of the original big three networks. Or people who say it would "ruin the character." Really? “But he’s an action hero”—so what? Evan Buckley is a hero, Dean is a hero, both badass action heroes. “People who see this as canon are delusional”—Evan Buckley went O RLY? Not so delusional now, is it.

Evan Buckley avenged bi Dean.

It’s self-evident. It’s right there. Different show, different network, but the concepts are familiar, the situation has a certain familiarity. This turn of events on an ABC show didn't just make bi Dean fans valid. bi Dean fans were always valid, the bi Dean reading was always valid. But I appreciate how much what happened on the wee woo show bonked people with a truth stick, about self discovery, character arcing, queer readings, queer coding, and the validity of merely noticing things.

[longtallglasses]

“I’m gay,” he blurts out suddenly, because if this is how his life is going and he’s gonna die in the next 12 hours he at least needs to let Mike know that.

“What?!” Mike whips around so hard he almost loses all balance and falls to the ground. He catches himself thankfully right before he does.

“I’m gay,” Will says again when Mike is in front of him. Mike’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open just a bit. Will doesn’t feel any emotion to his confession at all, it’s not news to him obviously, but whenever he imagined finally telling this to Mike he thought it would feel so dramatic. That it would feel like he was ripping open a part of himself, but given everything it feels like he’s just letting Mike know what his star sign is.

Mike however looks like he’s gonna have an aneurysm. He’s short circuited. He’s dumbfounded. Will is honestly a little surprised this is so shocking to him like did he never even consider-

“Uh-.. uh I know.” Mike stumbles on his words like bambi.

Wait what?

“What do you mean you know?”

“Uh, that I know… I know you’re- you’re gay.” Mike stammers out like he’s never said the word in his life.

“Did Lucas tell you?” Will accuses. He doesn’t want to think about the state that Lucas must be in but if he told Mike anything…

“No! Wait, Lucas knows?”

“Yeah, I told him. How do you know?”

“Well, I..” Mike struggles, “I just assumed… No! Not that I assumed, I just inferred.” Mike rubs a hand over his face, “Well, you know, I figured it out, kind of… like I just realized you didn’t really like girls, which is okay! I mean I get it girls are whatever… but then you know how obsessed you were with George Michael… well I just put two and two together and-”

“Ok, Ok,” Will stops him there, “how long have you known then?”

“I don’t know.. Um, like since last year?”

Will lets out an internal sigh of relief. Ok, he can work with that. He would’ve thought it was earlier given when Mike had started to stand farther and farther away from him, this trip excluded for obvious reasons.

“And you’re cool with it?” I mean he has to be at least pretty cool with it if he’s with him here right now.

“Of course! Of course I’m cool with it, I lo- I- I, you’re- you’re perfect.” Mike settles on and Will sees the look of strained cringe Mike just can’t disguise, and he can’t help but laugh at how utterly ridiculous and pathetic his best friend is.

Mike chuckles at himself too. Sheepishly running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, you know what I mean..”

Will forces himself to not laugh in his face any longer, at least they can still do this. He might be dying soon and a ghost of a witch might be after them and their friends, but this can still feel nice.

“Yeah I do, it’s okay. You’re perfect too.” He still blushes as he says it even if it's supposed to be half a joke. The huge megawatt smile that blooms across Mike’s face after he says it is pretty worth it though.

Mike tries to tamper it down by looking away and clearing his throat, but he’s not too successful, so Will helps him out.

“Let’s, uh, let’s get this stuff up,” he says to break the moment, and Mike is happy to spring to action to not talk about this anymore.

from my blair witch project wip mostly spoiler free lol things are getting spooky but you gotta come out to your crush before you die...

[fantastic-nonsense]

honestly I think if you complain about Star Wars focusing too much on the Skywalkers because "the galaxy is bigger than one family" and "not everything has to be connected" you have fundamentally missed the point George Lucas was trying to make with the original movies.

Star Wars is VERY deliberately an optimistic, cyclical, and myth-based family drama structured around a single family's story, and that purposefully generational story is the story George Lucas saw as the core point and purpose of Star Wars:

“It’s the missing link,” Lucas says. “Once it’s there, it’s a complete work, and I’m proud of that. I do see it, tonality-wise, as two trilogies. But they do, together, form one epic of fathers and sons.” [x] The first three movies had all kinds of issues. [Disney] looked at the stories and they said we want to make something for the fans. So I said all I want to do is tell the story of what happened. You know, it started here and it went there. It's all about generations and it's about, you know, the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers; it's a family soap opera. I mean, ultimately. We call it a space opera, but people don't realize it's actually a soap opera. And it's all about family problems — it's not about spaceships. [x]

He also wrote Star Wars for the express purpose of attempting to teach people that everything is interconnected and everything we do has an impact that resonates beyond our own lives:

Paul Duncan: "It takes a lot of people to build the ark." George Lucas: "Yeah. And it needs to be done through reason, love, and compassion, not through force. The films are trying to stress the idea that everything is interconnected. I like to make movies that are complex, but it's not obvious to people unless they start digging into it. Most people don't realize it and can't grasp the whole entity because they're focusing on four or five pieces out of 200, and often they don't want to hear about the other pieces because it requires additional thought and ideas outsides of the films. There are cycles and cycles in the story and the characters throughout all six episodes. There are cycles of the same thing being repeated over and over with different groups of people, and the outcomes change because the characters have grown or changed over the story. The repitition shows the characters' development. [x]

GEORGE LUCAS: At some point you do have to become an independent person. And it’s about learning to let go of your — your needs, so to speak, and — and think of the needs of others. BILL MOYERS: So “Star Wars” is — yes, it’s about cosmic, galactic, epic struggles, but it’s at heart about a family. The large myth set in a local family. GEORGE LUCAS: Well, in most — most myths center around characters and — and a hero, and it’s — it’s about how you — how you conduct yourself as you go through the hero’s journey, which everyone goes through. It’s especially relevant when you go through this transition phase. Most societies it’s when you’re 13 or 14. In our society it’s sort of 18 to 22, somewhere in there, that you must let go of your past and must, you know, embrace your future and — and in your own self, by yourself, figure out what it is — what — what path you’re going to go down........... .......BILL MOYERS: And what do stories do for us in that sense? What do myths... GEORGE LUCAS: They try to show us our place. Myths help you to have your own hero’s journey, find your individuality, find your place in the world, but hopefully remind you that you’re part of a whole, and that you must also be part of the community, and — and think of the welfare of the community above the welfare of yourself. [x]

Lucas structured this tale in two ways: through Anakin's deconstructed hero's journey (in the form of a Greek tragedy) and Luke's straightforward hero's journey (culminating with Anakin's redemption) and showing us how this one family's multi-generational story had a huge impact that went beyond their own lives and echoed throughout the galaxy. That was the point!

While there are plenty of other stories not centered on the Skywalkers that can and should be told within the universe, ultimately people need to keep in mind that Lucas was not shy about his intentions in making the movies: he WANTED to write a straightforward retelling of "old stories," and he wanted to do it through the lens of a personal family narrative.

All of the Star Wars material that focuses on non-Skywalkers (which has ALWAYS been around, Rogue One and TLJ and The Mandalorian and Andor and etc etc etc were NOT the first ones to do that) is great, but it's a bonus! An add-on to the core story and point of the franchise! It's not that they're unimportant, because they're not, but at some point it should stop surprising people when the Skywalkers and/or the events of the original six movies get referenced or utilized.

It just bothers me when I hear these complaints because like...if you don't like the Skywalkers, why do you even watch Star Wars? None of those other stories would exist without them! Please just go enjoy another sci-fi franchise and stop complaining that the main characters of Star Wars are being focused on or are popping up in places it makes total sense for them to be!

[gffa]

I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately.  The question he’s replying to is about His Dark Materials, where someone wondered if mothers gave birth to their children’s daemons at the same time they birthed the child, and his response was, “It’s a metaphor.  Don’t force it to do the work of a fact.” And I think this is a huge source of disconnect in Star Wars fandom as well, that for example George Lucas has been extremely clear on why Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side, which was because he was greedy, possessive, afraid, and refused to accept that life changes and he couldn’t hold onto people, that he refused to do so.  It’s a theme in a fairy tale. Is it true that, in our complex and profound real world, that childhood trauma of being a slave would affect things on a far deeper level than is written into the story?  Yes, of course!  But Anakin Skywalker is written to a theme, not to a fact.  Star Wars is not about real world facts, it’s about themes in a fictional story.  Listen, George Lucas fuckin’ loved his themes, okay.  LOVED them, possibly more than the characters themselves! We absolutely can have fun speculating about what Anakin’s childhood trauma added onto his story, but ultimately it’s not actually a part of the theme and not part of the narrative as it is.  Characters in the story cannot react as if Anakin’s specific childhood trauma is an element in his choices because it’s not part of the narrative, it doesn’t exist to them, because Anakin Skywalker is a theme in a fairy tale, not a fact. I think that’s where a lot of disconnect is coming from when we talk about “whose fault is it that Anakin Skywalker fell!?” or “how could this have been prevented!?” or “why don’t you have more sympathy for the former slave!?” because, while my heart aches for Anakin, it’s not the reason he fell, and trying to make it so is like trying to ask what happens when a mother gives birth to a child in a world of daemons--it’s not the point of the inclusion of that plot element, treating the characters as if it were is trying to make it do the work of a fact, rather than what it is. Such work has its place in fandom, especially in the transformative part of fandom, but it’s not part of the narrative itself and I think recognizing that disconnect might help clarify why there’s so much frustration in why some fans may never see eye to eye.

[morganbritton132]

would steve ever insist that eddie comes to basketball games with him just so they have an excuse to get those good seats right at the court that famous people and celebrities usually get?

Eddie is not Steve’s go-to person if he wants basketball tickets.

He goes to Lucas because every doctor knows a doctor that knows someone with season tickets they never use. And also, Steve kinda wants to go to the game with someone who, you know, will actually enjoy being there.

Eddie’s undying hatred of all things sports is, well…undying.

But Steve’s been a Pacers’ fan since the first time his dad shoved a basketball in his hands and taught him how to shoot. He has watched them lose in the playoffs every year that they make it to it, but he’s convinced. 2014 was going to be different.

He just can’t get tickets. He spent all day trying to buy them online and failed, and all the resale tickets are for seats that suck or way over his paygrade. Him and Eddie pay for their own hobbies out of their separate bank accounts, and Steve can’t afford the absolutely ridiculous price that’s being asked so…

“Please?” Steve asked, big puppy eyes and adorable little pout. He knew what he was doing and so did Eddie. “Pretty please? I never ask you for anything, Ed…Okay, fine, except for all the stuff I ask you for, but this is different. It’s a small price to pay to see my team win.”

“Your team that has literally never won in the history of all time?”

“How many championships does Leg-less the loser elf have?” Steve asked.

“…It’s Legolas,” Eddie said. “And he was a part of the fellowship that kinda saved the world.”

“So was I,” Steve pointed out. “And I deserve this.”

Steve didn’t ask for courtside seats. He didn’t ask to be sat among the rich and famous. Hell, he didn’t even ask Eddie to go with him. He just wanted to see if Eddie had a connection that could get him a ticket for a seat that wasn’t in the nosebleeds.

Steve doesn’t really believe that the tickets Eddie showed him are real until they are sitting in their seats – their seats that are courtside and five feet away from Paul George warming up. Steve is so excited to be there that he pretty much misses Eddie shaking someone’s hand right in front of him until he’s nudged in the shoulder, “Babe, you know, Sandy, right?”

“Yeah, totally,” Steve says absently, sparing a glance in the direction Eddie was gesturing before looking back out at the court. It takes him a second for his brain to register who he was just looking at and then, “Holy shit, you’re Sandra Bullock.”

She is just as beautiful and as nice as Steve has always thought she was, and she’s amused by him which makes Steve blush. She holds out her hand to him, “And you are…”

“I’m…” Steve trails off, only picking back up his train of thought when Eddie laughs loudly beside him. “Steve. I’m Steve. Uh, Harrington. Eddie’s – I’m – we’re together, by law.”

“We’re married,” Eddie grinned, throwing his arm over Steve’s shoulder, and wiggling his wedding ring at her. “Still working on how to tell people, obviously.”

She congratulates them and talks to them a bit about the game (bring Steve out of his starstruck stupor), and even buys them champagne as a late little wedding gift. It’s a blast.

Eddie spends half the game flinching every time the ball bounces a little too close or a player nearly ends up in their lap, but Steve is loving all of it. The other half of the time, Eddie is having Steve explain what’s going on and who the players are, or he’s talking to the guy next to him.

It’s some square jawed model type that Steve doesn’t recognize and also, doesn’t like. He’s a little too friendly with his husband, especially when he curled a piece of Eddie’s hair around his finger. When the two of them end up on the kiss cam together, Eddie doesn’t even get a chance to register it before Steve pulls him nearly out of the camera frame and kisses him.

Later, fans will make jokes about the pictures of that night because it’s very clear that Steve and Eddie switched seats.

[chaos0pikachu]

Two Flavors of Japanese (BL) Cinema

Recently I came across a post that proposited that Japanese cinema hadn't changed since the 1950's and came in, essentially, two types. 

Let's discuss that. 

I can’t go into the history of all Japanese cinema in a singular blog post like that’s just not possible, there’s literal books and classes you can take on this subject, and I will be linking further reading down at the bottom of the post so you can do just that. 

This fact alone, should already disprove the point that Japanese cinema hasn’t changed since the 1950’s. Other than the fact that like, Japan isn’t a static society that is forever unchanging because human beings do not work like that. 

Which is why I’m writing this essay at all. 

I love cinema, I love storytelling and filmmaking. And, frankly, I may not be an expert but I am annoying. I own that. 

Japanese cinema has held influence over many directors, writers, animators, and so forth. 

Just watch this playlist of Sailor Moon references across various cartoons. Or how Satoshi Kon influenced the work of Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan. Or how James Cameron and the Wachowskis were both influenced by Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 Ghost in the Shell. And then there’s Akira Kurosawa who’s been cited as a major influence for directors like: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese and a slew of others.

I want folks to know there’s a slew of amazing films from Japan and that distilling the industry - the blood, sweat and tears of its creators - to a strict dichotomy of this or that, either/or is disrespectful at best and xenophobic at worst. 

It’s also just a shame because, like, guys there’s so many great films from Japan! There’s also probably a lot of great live action shows from Japan but I’m not super knowledgeable about them - I mainly watch anime so that’s not a great metric in terms of Japanese television - so I’m just talking about films in this post. 

Ok so main points I’m gonna address: 

Japanese Cinema hasn’t changed since the 1950s 

Japanese film style falls under an extreme dichotomy of cinematic/sweeping (described as “atmospheric”) or cartoonish/slapstick (described as “live action manga”)

Baby does any of this have to do with BL? (no, but it IS more gay than you think)

With these four films: The Hidden Fortress (1958), Lady Snowblood (1973), Gohatto (1999), and Kubi (2023). 

I picked these four because they’re all “period pieces” taking place feudal Japan - or with the aesthetics of feudal Japan, The Hidden Fortress nor Lady Snowblood aren’t based on actual historical events, like Gohatto and Kubi are, however loosely, but take place in an amorphous 15th to 18th century Japan - and I think they strongly show the development of this singular genre in Japanese cinema. 

Plus the latter two films, Gohatto and Kubi, are gay as fuck and I know my people. 

[you can also read this post on this blog post which includes additional links as tumblr has a limit and for easier readability as this is a long post]

The Hidden Fortress 

Released in 1958, directed by Akira Kurosawa it’s probably the most well-known film on the list. It’s a film that exists within the “Golden Age” of Japanese cinema alongside films like Kurosawa’s own Seven Samurai (1954), Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953). 

It was also the era where, after the American Occupation post-WWII a boom of movie distribution took place with new film studios such as: Toho (y’all know them from any Godzilla movie ever made), Toei (if you know One Piece you know Toei but they’ve done a ton of films both animated and live action) and others. 

The story is straight forward, two peasants, Matashichi and Tahei who bicker their asses off like an old married couple the entire film, happen upon a Very Hot Man with the Only Thighs Out (Toshiro Mifune was a BABE) named Rokurota and his companion a icy young woman named Yuki. 

Matashichi and Tahei have just escaped like, a ton of ~circumstances that include failing to become samurai, being broke as fuck, getting captured and forced into servitude - don’t worry that lasted like 6 hours tops - and then find gold hidden in a stick on a mountain. 

Turns out Rokurota has all the stick gold they could want! So they team up neither realizing Rokurota and Yuki are actually part of a clan that’s been recently wiped out and they’re on the run from a rival clan who has wiped theirs out. Yuki is the princess of said clan and it’s only survivor, while Rokurota is her samurai general and retainer. 

Tahei and Matashichi, living in ignorance of these facts, try to steal the gold away from them because they live that hustle life until the end when all is revealed and Yuki grants them both with a gold piece to share (this is a really big piece of stick gold). 

There’s other things that happen, like a fight scene between Rokurota and rival clan member, Yuki owning every single scene she in - I fucking love her - but that’s the gist. 

The story is, again, pretty uncomplicated, it balances the comedy of Tahei & Matashichi with the stoicism of Rokurota and Yuki well, and all the acting is strong. In terms of its film style, by modern day standards it’s not especially “cinematic” Kurosawa doesn’t favor fanetic camera movements, his camera is often very still and the movement he employs is often in individual character ticks, and/or background set pieces. This film has a lot of great set pieces. 

Kurosawa didn’t employ camera techniques like panning, he doesn’t really do extreme close ups, there's no swooping shots or fancy tricks, I’d say a majority of the camera shots in The Hidden Fortress are a combination of mid, and wide, with a few mid-close ups. One thing to notice is Kurosawa’s use of scene cuts; instead of a cut he used pan sweeps to change scenes. If you’ve ever watched a Star Wars film you know exactly what I mean. 

The Hidden Fortress, first and foremost, is an action adventure film. It has more in common tonally with Top Gun Maverick or Star Wars A New Hope, in that it's straight forward, sincere, and grand in scale, grounded by a very honest set of characters who are strongly motivated. 

I feel like in modern day discussions we association “action/adventure” films in a sorta of negative way; this is probably due, in part, to the oversaturation of the high budget blockbusters of the last ten years - oh MCU, how you’ve fallen - that are overly bombastic, overly complicated, overly connected, and the root of what audiences connect with - the characters - tends to be lost. 

Scott Lang's motivations in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania are to protect his teenager daughter and the family he's built, which are simple, strong, and relatable character motivations. However, they got lost in the conventions of the plot, the frantic energy of the film, the simple amount going on around Scott that his motivations become less a central focus and thus he becomes small within his own film. We, the audience, become distant and it grows more difficult to connect with what's happening. This can still work on some level, the Fast and Furious franchise isn't successful because it's sophisticated, but the Fast-chise has embraced it's cheesier conventions and spectacle, while blockbusters like the MCU's output, simple juggle to much all at once. It also helps that while the cast keeps growing in the Fast and Furious films, there's still less than ten characters you have to actually know and care about. To fully understand and connect with the characters of The Marvels, you have to watch Ms. Marvel and WandaVision on Disney+ and the task becomes more akin to homework than simply the enjoyment of watching a movie. 

The epic scale grows so large it feels daunting, rather than exhilarating. 

I think this is why a film like Winter Soldier, more so than most MCU films of the last decade, has continued to be a fan favorite of the universe and of blockbuster lovers whether you are a fan of the MCU or not. At its root, Winter Soldier is character driven, with deeply motivated characters,  which is what makes the action and adventure aspects stick. 

The Hidden Fortress is similarly character driven with a simple and straightforward story that is about honor, loyalty, a princess, a loyal samurai/knight, rebuilding a decimated clan, and two “normal” characters to keep everything grounded and relatable. Which in turn, helps make it timeless. While the filmmaking itself isn't grandiose as what modern audiences may be used to, Kurosawa knows how to direct a scene and more than that, direct his actors. Mifune is commanding as always, but for me, it's really actress Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki that steals the movie. 

Lady Snowblood

Released in 1973 and based on a manga of the same name by Kazou Koike and Kazuo Kaminura, directed by Toshiya Fujita, Lady Snowblood and its sequel Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance are considered cult classics. Lady Snowblood, famously, is Quentin Tarantino’s inspiration for his Kill Bill saga (like, a freaking lot). 

Lady Snowblood is a part of the era of “new wave” and “pink films” that were emerging in Japan and elsewhere. Stateside I think a close equivalent to both the style and content of Lady Snowblood and other films like it are exploitation films. In fact while watching Lady Snowblood I couldn’t help but get exploitation film vibes just off the aesthetics and thematics of the film itself. 

To break down Lady Snowblood’s plot it goes like this: Yuki is tasked with getting revenge on four people who had a hand in her father, and older brother’s murder, and her mother’s rape (which is seen on screen so warning for y’all this is def a Does the Dog Die movie). 

Yuki’s mother kills one of her rapists, but is imprisoned before she can kill the others and while in prison she purposely gets pregnant so her child can carry on her revenge after she dies. Yuki is born, and raised by one of the fellow inmates and a priest who trains her in martial arts. She’s raised as a “demon”, whose only purpose is revenge for her mother, father, and brother. And boy does she get revenge the film is violent and graphic (even if by modern day standards the blood looks fake as fuck the emotions are there). 

Like The Hidden Fortress this film is very character driven, with a highly motivated protagonist but it’s also revels far more in it's violence and the spectacle of that violence. Yuki, in comparison to her earlier counterpart Princess Yuki, is the driver of the action in the story. She's an active participant in the plot, and the story centers around her. Princess Yuki is commendable, she's compassionate, and she makes decisions, but the story is more about what she represents - a fallen princess - than what she does. She's symbolic, the embodiment of a leader, a samurai spirit of nobility who becomes a leader worth following. Yuki, on the other hand, needs no protection from others, she's a much more direct and active part of the story since the story is hers - and her mothers - she's more elegant than regal, and there's nothing necessarily 'noble' about her.  She's not seeking to rebuild her clan as a leader, her motivations are singularly about her revenge quest to fulfill her mother's dying wish. 

In some ways, they're very similar - Yuki also feels compassion for another woman who's been used by the men around her as Princess Yuki does - and in others they are very different and speak to the changing expectations and idealizations of women from the 1950s to 1970s. 

Lady Snowblood is also way more violent than any Kurosawa film I’ve watched including The Hidden Fortress. While there is action in The Hidden Fortress, it’s all employed with specific purpose. Which is one of Kurosawa’s strengths as a director. It’s calculated and singular. Yes blood spurts up in Yojimbo but it's limited; quick and efficient, with more in common with John Wick or Collateral than the more fantastical and aesthetic Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez fare. 

Lady Snowblood revels in the aesthetic violence, there’s no “purpose” for Yuki to cut an already dead person in half, she does it out of pure frustration and for the glory of showing the audience that internal rage. Of a body hanging, dripping blood and gore onto the clean floor as the curtain draws to a close. 

The film also features on screen rape, sex, and nudity which The Hidden Fortress does not. There’s an implication that characters in the film would assault Princess Yuki if they could, but nothing ever goes beyond brief implication (still gross tho guys come on). Whilst in Lady Snowblood, the rape is brutal, the violence is brutal, and the emotions are far more intense because of it all. 

The allowance - for lack of a better term - of this kind of material showcases a cultural shift overall in the terms of visual storytelling filmmaking began experimenting with in telling, and in what audiences were responding too. Lady Snowblood was a beloved success for its overall low budget. In comparison to the two, The Hidden Fortress is filmed better, with more technique and focus, Lady Snowblood almost seems rustic in comparison, but it's a sort of rustic that speaks to experimentation. 

Low angles from a characters pov staring high above her, extreme zooms on Yuki's burning eyes, the oversaturated colors of red-orange blood or green walls or white clothes, the starless pitch black sky as powdery snow falls. The images are arresting even if at times they're choppy, and while the film opts for non-linear chapter breaks to create a story flow in comparison to Kurosawa's iconic screen swipes and straight forward narrative, yet, both work. 

Gohatto

Behold, the promised gay cinema I promised. 

Gohatto is a 1999 film directed by Nagisa Oshima based on the short story, Shinsengumi Keppuroku by Ryotaro Shiba. 

Gohatto is a pretty late entry in the new wave/pink films of its heyday but those films were Oshima’s bread and butter. Often dubbed as one of Japan’s cinema outlaws for his anti-establishment films, one of his films, Night and Fog in Japan (1960) was pulled from theaters all together. Most people in the west will probably know him even tangentially for his queer film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence starring David Bowie and Beat Takeshi or for this absolutely banger quote from the New York Times article, A Japanese Film Master Returns to his Cinema: 

(If you’re a BTS fan, the composer Suga and RM like, Ryuichi Sakamoto, both starred and composed the main theme of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Forbidden Colors, he plays the guy in love with David Bowie’s character)

Gohatto combines the setting of a Kurosawa film, with the more experimental storytelling of Lady Snowblood, whilst imbuing the film with more surrealistic elements and more complexity. And making it gay like - for real for real. 

Gohatto goes like this: it’s the late 18th century in Japan, everything politically is on shaky ground, and the shinsengumi are looking for newbies to join ranks. Welp, they find two promising newbies and wouldn’t ya know it one newbie, Kano, is like, hella pretty. He’s got bangs. 

He’s so pretty in fact that all these other dudes in the shinsengumi crew wanna smash, I mean down bad like the Taylor Swift song or whatever I don’t listen to Taylor Swift. 

This is all treated with a lackadaisical normality; there’s teasing about “I never considered sleeping with a man before, but damn that Kano kinda…” but there’s never a moment of “omg they’re GAY?”

Beat Takeshi’s - who’s also in this film, he’s been in a lot fo queer films I'm noticing - character Vice-Commander Hijikata Toshizo often asks other characters not if they’re attracted to Kano - the implication being that they are - but rather if they are in love with Kano. Because lust is fleeting, but love is dangerous to your duty. 

Kano also might be a spy, or a murderer, it’s all very ambiguous and the ending isn’t a “happy” one. This isn’t a film about a love story of any sort, it has more in common with erotic thrillers than the action adventure of The Hidden Fortress, or the rape revenge fantasy of Lady Snowblood. Where as the former films have definitive endings, Gohatto ends ambiguously. 

What actually happened? And why did it happen? What did it all mean, in the end? The film offers no strict answers to these questions, asking instead, that its audience to come to their own conclusions. It’s also much more historical than the previous two films, taking real life historical figures like: Hijikata Toshizo, Okita Soji, and Kondo Isami and asking the question, “hm, what if they all maybe fell in love with this super pretty man before being overthrown and what does that mean metaphorically?” 

The Hidden Fortress doesn’t ask its audience to interrogate society in any meaningful way and that’s not a knock against it, it’s just an observation. Lady Snowblood specifically presents the plight of women, and a slight take on classism within the system, through the lens of violence and destruction. Gohatto is much more metaphorical, it’s not providing the audience with a direct message like the former two films, but presenting it’s thematics in a much more abstract way. The Hidden Fortress is an action adventure, with heroes who achieve their goals and overcome their obstacles. Lady Snowblood is a rape revenge with an understandable protagonist who succeeds in her bloody revenge. Gohatto has no heroes, and offers no straightforward catharsis at the end of its story story. 

Its film style is also far more atmospheric compared to the epic scale and straightforwardness of The Hidden Fortress, or the lower budget charming violence of Lady Snowblood. 

There’s lots of mood lighting, overhead shots of characters dimly lit, camera cuts to rain after two characters have sex, extreme close ups of one character observing Kano’s eyes and lips. It’s not a black and white film like The Hidden Fortress, but it’s not nearly as saturated in color and brightness as Lady Snowblood. 

Lady Snowblood drips with color, and light, even at night there always almost seems to be a spotlight on Yuki with an empty starless sky in the background. Gohatto is much more grounded in realism than high visual aesthetics, opting to create more of a lingering dreamlike trance or fog to the cinematography when the story’s final act begins to unfold. 

Yet, one thing Gohatto has in common with both The Hidden Fortress and Lady Snowblood is its violence; operating somewhere between the two. Like The Hidden Fortress the violence is quick, purposely, and specific, and like Lady Snowblood blood spurts, gushes, and heads are displayed proudly and grotesquely.

Kubi

Kubi is a 2023 film directed by Takeshi Kitano aka Beat Takeshi - this is the third time his name has been dropped in relation to a queer film in this post go Beat Takeshi - based on a novel of the same name that Kitano also wrote. 

Kubi is like Beat Takeshi’s sengoku period slash RPF fanfic come to gruesome bloody (literal, not British) life. A period piece epic; Kubi is both about samurai warlords and a historical event known as the honno-ji incident, which took place in 1582. It features various historical figures like Oba Nobunage - if you’ve watched some anime or played some JRPGs you’ve probably at least heard of this name before - and other prominent historical figures of the time. 

The basic gist of the movie is Oba Nobunage is both really good at his job, so he’s super powerful politically, but he’s also a grade-a asshole whom all the other important samurai lords fucking hate. However, they also all fucking hate each other and all want to take Nobunage’s place and get all that sweet, sweet power for themselves. The honno-ji incident involved one of these guys doing a coup for reasons still unknown today and then pretty much almost immediately dying swiftly after leaving another samurai lord to take over. 

Kubi takes these historical events, and is like “okay but what if we added some gay innuendo and gay sex to this drama?” with more beheadings than a French revolution. 

Out of all the films on this list Kubi is, admittedly, the one I enjoyed the least, however, it’s an interesting retrospective on the growth of both the Japanese film industry and this specific genre in and of itself. 

Kubi’s film style is very modern, it’s beautiful, it’s sleek, it’s expensive looking. And yet there’s specific scenes that feel like callbacks to the Kurosawa era, like the black and white flashback between Nobunage and his fellow samurai lords. One of Kurosawa’s top films was Kitano’s Hana-Bi (1997), and Kitano has worked with Kurosawa’s daughter on costume design on four other films as well, so these references feel not only purposely because of general influence but also referential in a way. 

In terms of story and tone, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress is sincere and straightforward, Lady Snowblood is experimental and fearless, Gohatto is introspective and suspenseful, whilst Kubi is unrelenting and even feels mocking at times. There is no break in Kubi's violence, there's almost no tenderness or softness, characters are selfish, and self-centered. The selfish, but joyful peasants in The Hidden Fortress don't exist here, and are replaced with a peasant character who murders his own friend and then rejoices over being relived of his family once he discovers they were murdered too. At times, Kubi feels like a subversion of the more glamourous depictions of the samurai in film. Which feels as though following similar footsteps established in Gohatto which also explored, subtextually, the faults within the samurai media persona. 

At times the film feels almost like a dark comedy, it doesn’t glamorize these samurai warlords, nor their clans, nor their ideals in the way The Hidden Fortress does, nor does it interrogate them in the way Gahotto does. Instead the story at hand is presented with a brutal realism, objective if a bit mocking with a side order of gay sex. Which isn’t presented in a mocking way so much as just an everyday aspect of life. 

When Mitsuhide and Murashige are caught by spies sleeping together there’s no shock or awe about it, just a calm report and the bigger issue is Mitsuhide hiding a fugitive more so than him sleeping with a man.

Similarly, when Nobunage is literally fucking one of his vassals in front of Mitsuhide, it’s not to disgust the other man, but rather a powerplay of sorts to make the latter jealous - at one point Nobunage promises if Mitsuhide accomplishes a mission for him, he’ll sleep with him - and it seemingly works to some degree. There’s subtext throughout the film that Mitsuhide might be, if not in love with Nobunage, want him in an obsessive way all the same (including being down to bone). 

Like with Gohatto the queerness is inherent, just a part of the culture. It’s not “romance” by any means, but it is simply a part of life and the culture itself. 

In terms of characters, Kubi's characters couldn't be more different from the characters in the previous mentioned films. The Hidden Fortress characters like Princess Yuki and Rokurota are easy to like, honorable, quiet, steadfast; while Matashichi and Tahei are less outright likable they offer a grounding and relatable to the big presence that are the former two. In Lady Snowblood, Yuki is quiet, calculating and menacing in her own right, truly embodying the idea of cold vengeance which makes her intriguing. In Gohatto Kano is elusive, which adds to his sensual allure, Okita is playful yet clearly hiding a more sinister air about him, and you just feel bad for Tashiro who’s pushy but seemingly sincere in his affections for Kano. 

Kubi has no by-the-by “likable” characters, every character is out for themselves in some way shape or form. So much so that the brief tenderness between Mitsuhide and Murashige is like a balm to a burn. Though I did absolutely enjoy the scene-chewing of Ryo Kase who played Nobunage. While Nobunage isn't a "likable" character by any means, he was so fun and engaging to watch he became a highlight of the film. 

Stylistically, this is a very modern epic film; it’s the type of film in terms of scale I imagine Kurosawa could have made if he had access to the same technology, but also wouldn’t because there’s no stillness or sincerity to it. The violence is also more in line with Lady Snowblood, but with a budget. Heads are lopped off with ease and at times with glee, dead bodies, headless bodies with crabs crawling out of the necks, a literal pile of heads for trophies it’s all here. It’s beautifully and dynamically filmed, it has a similar scale of a Lord of the Rings, or a Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms. 

Big set pieces, big costumes, big landscapes, big battles, and bigger body counts. It also has the largest cast of any film on the list - kinda neat that Kitano and Asano Tadanobu were both in Kubi and Gohatto together - and the best costumes of the bunch. 

It also, in my opinion, has the most complicated plot of all the films because of the heavy political intrigue - though this, admittedly, could be because of the culture gap as I’m not overly familiar with Japanese history. 

Okay so like, where does all this leave us in terms of those original bullet points? 

The Original Bullet Points

Japanese Cinema hasn’t changed since the 1950s 

If there's one thing - well okay many things cause I'm greedy but overall - I hope I've been able to outline here with these four films is that obviously Japanese cinema has changed since the 1950s. And thoroughly at that. Not just in terms of style, but in terms of character presentation, tone, stories technology, experimentation, and a growing reflection of the shifting and developing culture. 

It’s not simply that all four of these films are different stories, but that all four of these films are addressing different aspects of their modern culture via these period pieces, as well as, viewing this time period in ways that reflect the filmmakers own experiences and how they feel or felt about the world. 

Kurosawa was born in 1910 to Kitano’s 1947, Fujita and Oshima’s 1932. Kurosawa’s father was a member of an actual samurai family, his worldview would be thoroughly different from someone like Oshima, or Kitano, or Fujita’s. Some overlap, sure, but also still thoroughly different. 

And I feel that you can see that in their films; Kurosawa’s samurai films are almost referential at times, not always, but his work with Toshiro Mifune often leans that way; in The Hidden Fortress Mifune’s Rokurota is deeply loyal to his lord, the Princess Yuki, to the point that he won’t shed tears over his own sister being executed in her place. He spares the life of a rival because he respects him even though they stand on opposing sides. 

The samurai in Gohatto and Kubi aren’t nearly so idealized nor idolized, there’s very little “honor” in Kubi and even less loyalty. Whilst in Gohatto there’s a deep and subtle interrogation of the strict and oppressive bylaws of the shinsengumi. In one such scene, Kano is having drinks with a man who is interested in him, Yuzawa, who’s passionately talking about how the shensengumi uphold oppressive ideals including classism. 

[And then he jumps Kano’s bones I guess politics got the dude going lmao]

The Hidden Fortress’ Princess Yuki is at first, masculine - in story she was raised as a man rather than a princess - from the way she walks to the way she talks. She’s fierce, and upstanding, while also being compassionate to other members of her clan; even saving a young woman who’s a member of her clan that had been sold. There’s a regal quality to Princess Yuki. 

In comparison, Yuki in Lady Snowblood is elegant, and feminine, before striking out violently. Princess Yuki never has an “action scene” and in fact for a chunk of the film has to pose as a deaf woman to hide her identity. While not a passive participant in the plot, nor does she directly drive the action herself. While Yuki, well the entire movie is driven by her actions and the actions of her mother. The story is first and foremost, hers. 

Meanwhile women just like, they don’t exist in Gohatto or Kubi they’re like, in the ether~~~ they’re drifting, keeping out - or kept out? - of the drama. 

Given the vast differences in both style, tone, story and execution, how can you say wholeheartedly that Japanese cinema hasn’t changed since the 1950s? 

Japanese film style falls under an extreme dichotomy of cinematic/sweeping (described as “atmospheric”) or cartoonish/slapstick (described as “live action manga”)

I’m just…not gonna get into the overall history of Japan's adaptation of manga into live action films cause it would derail this conclusion and I ain’t got the time for that. I would like to note, Lady Snowblood is a live action film based on a manga of the same name - and it is not slapstick. It doesn’t even have comedic elements, it is a violent rape revenge story; I don’t think there’s a single moment where I chuckled. The Hidden Fortress is far lighter in tone, while Gohatto has more in common with Lady Snowblood - deeply and sincerely serious - and Kubi goes for a darker sort of comedy. 

This is just incorrect information. Personally I’m of the mind that “cinematic/sweeping is too broad a spectrum to even quantify as a film genre they are descriptors. 

That said, I don’t think Lady Snowblood is cinematic or sweeping. Gohatto is the only one on the list that’s even close to “atmospheric” though all four films have atmosphere - because atmosphere is a film technique it’s not a genre of film - The Hidden Fortress and Kubi are the only two I could qualify as “cinematic/sweeping” because they’re going for a larger bombastic scale. Though I feel folks watching The Hidden Fortress in the modern day might not find it cinematic because of how static and slow the film can be at times - the first act is long and drags quite a bit. 

To place such a strict dichotomy on an entire industry of filmmaking is simply bad film critique at best and xenophobic at worst given the context here. I’ve only talked about four films in one singular genre, I didn’t mention the countless other new wave films, or the birth of the kaiju genre with Godzilla, the expansion into horror and grindhouse - where does a film like Tag (2015) fit into such a strict dichotomy? -  nor the long, long history of animated works from various insanely highly influential and/or successful directors like Satoshi Kon, Makoto Shinkai, Hideaki Anno, Rintaro, Mamoru Hosoda, Mamoru Oshii, Isao Takahata, I mean the list goes on and on. 

If you expand your horizons you’ll find so many amazing films that do not flatly sit in this one or the other imposed categorization. Think about what queer cinema you may be missing out on by adhering to this imposed binary. 

Baby does any of this have to do with BL? (no, but it IS more gay than you think)

So, in the end, what does this have to do with BL? I would say it has both little and a lot to do with BL/GL which are genres all their own in Japan and other neighboring countries; as such their subject to the same waves, exploration and expansion as the four aforementioned films. 

It’s easy, if intellectually dishonest and academically lazy, to look at The Novelist and What Did You Eat Yesterday and say “BL only comes in two shapes and sizes”. 

There’s chocolate or vanilla and that’s it. When in reality there’s lots of ice cream flavors available, even if chocolate and vanilla are the best sellers it doesn’t mean strawberry or mint chocolate chip don’t exist. 

Where does animated BL fall into this western imposed binary? How does capitalism affect the output of what gets made for the screen and how? How does the political climate affect what’s being financed? Are BL and GL works that are being made somehow unaffected, existing in a stasis state, by the works across the film industry? Even from other queer works of film? What are we, as outsiders, not considering when we engage with this media? 

If we’re only looking at BL/GL for “queer representation” what films and/or television are we missing out on from these countries? What BL/GL are we missing by only engaging with what's put in front of us, and not diving deeper into learning more, expanding our individual knowledge, and experiencing stories that might take some work towards seeing? Stories that might be outside of our direct comfort zones because they don't fall into those strict if seemingly comforting boxes. What exploration into queer identity are we denying or ignoring the existence of because of these imposed binaries? 

I know some folks who are more well versed in BL history that would and do consider Gohatto and Kubi BL or BL adjacent, but I also know most western, especially American, audiences would consider neither of these films BL. 

So where does that leave them?

Further Reading: 

Cinematic History: Defining Moments in Japanese Cinema, 1926-1953

A Brief But Essential Introduction to Japanese Cinema

Filmmaking from Japan: The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

Nagisa Oshima: Banishing Green

JAPANESE SOFTCORE: THE LAST OF TOKYO'S PINK EIGA THEATERS

The Last Samurai: A Conversation with Takeshi Kitano

The Evolution of the Japanese Anime Industry

Check out other related posts in the series:

Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes? | Trends in BL (Sorta): Genre Trends

[marvelstars]

Anakin & Trauma

So there´s this talk around saying that being part of the Jedi Order was akin to taking therapy and that it was Anakin the one who didn´t respond well to therapy and I honestly don´t know where to begin because this is honestly false and is victim blaming.

The Jedi Order´s Philosophy on it´s own isn´t a therapy, not even real world buddhism from which George Lucas took some narrative clues is a therapy, it is a way of life, yes, a philosophy under which it´s members WILLINGLY become a part of it but this isn´t a therapy.

They don´t address trauma, they don´t address anxiety, they don´t address suicidal ideation, etc.

In fact, while Lucas took some narrative clues from real world buddhism, we can´t truly say in good faith the Jedi Order works like real world buddhism, beggining with the fact that they take away choice from their members, they are brought too young into the fold to make a real decision over if they want to become part of their order or not, they take away their parents and cut all connections forever, that doesn´t happen in buddhism, they are openly an armed part of the state even if their functions are diplomacy, buddhism isn´t part of any state , I could go on but I guess the idea is clear.

So blaming Anakin for not "responding well to therapy" isn´t just false, it´s victim blaming, it´s willingly ignoring the context of the story.

In the story the roots of Anakin´s trauma came from slavery and the forced separation from his mother, both situations that never were addressed by the Jedi Order or by Obi-Wan in Anakin´s training, they were openly suppresed while sending Anakin the message that he was the problem for caring and fearing for his mother´s life, his mother who was left alone with a bomb inside her body in a planet ran by the mafia, this isn´t therapy, this is gaslighting.

Wether the Jedi Council or Obi-Wan were aware of it, they willingly made Anakin doubt his own reality and made him take the blame for not taking well his separation from his mother and I don´t know you but if someone, anyone, told me I had to leave my mother behind as a slave with a bomb inside her body because their physophy said so and I was their chosen one so I have to obey them I would have punched them in the face and left to free my mom, chosen one prophecy and Jedi be damned but Anakin was a child, he didn´t have the emotional and verbal skills to even express how wrong all of this was and how much harm they were doing to him.

The signals were clear from the beggining, Obi-Wan noticed that Anakin didn´t have any friends in the Order, that he mostly expend his time with droids and it was the same even when he became an adult and a respected general, can you imagine the level of isolation Anakin had to felt living inside the Jedi Order, that he no longer could relate to the people around him because they saw him as a stranger and he saw them as strangers as well?, that he had to expend his time with droids? when he used to have many friends and acquitances and people who cared about him in his planet of origin despite the horrible reality that he was a slave?, do you believe it talks well about the Order the fact Anakin had better emotional balance and support network living as a slave on Tatooine but with friends and family than living as a member of the Jedi Order?

The Jedi Order were not a supporting network for Anakin, they could not be because their way of life and philosophy openly harmed Anakin, keep him from addressing his trauma, keep him from having comunication with his mother, keep him from learning to manage his emotions without suppresing them and openly shunned him for his past as a slave in current disney canon so don´t tell me this is how a supporting network works or that Anakin was at fault for all of this.

The only person close and interested enough in Anakin to notice the dissaster happening to Anakin´s mental state was freaking Sheev Palpatine, he inmediately noticed Anakin was going to grow up bitter and resentful of the Jedi Order given how they keep him separated from his mother, he noticed he needed a friend who didn´t talk about the Jedi code every five minutes, he noticed he needed a father figure because he never had a father and Obi-Wan actively refused to be one given his beliefs and phylosophy, too bad for Anakin that Palpatine was also a sith lord who planned on destroying his very sense of self and person so he could use his power, he saw all of this happening and let it happen because it helped his cause and he could be the cool parent who lets Anakin talk about his issues without jedi philosophy as he used to do on Tatooine with his Mom and his friends while also adding some psycological issues of self worth to Anakin´s trauma under the image of him caring for Anakin´s well being. Don´t get me started on the Jedi Order allowing this for the sake of keeping a good political relationship with the Chancellor, what´s a kid well being in comparision to a good relationship with the Senate after all but this is a rant for another day.

While Obi-Wan´s love and company could and did help to weather the worst of this, the fact Obi-Wan seemed to care first because of his promise to Qui-Gon, the fact that he didn´t care for Anakin for himself when all people need to be cared for themselves at least in their early years to grow up emotionally stable, need to be loved for themselves, not just for who they are to an institution or as a symbol like the chosen one, which the Jedi Council shunned and put in doubt from the beggining anyway, even if Obi-Wan himself tried to believe in that because his master cared for that stuff, by doing this Obi-Wan subconciously send Anakin the message he was only worth to the Order and to him because he was the chosen one, if he wasn´t then he would have been left a slave on Tatooine just like his mother was, which isn´t that far from reality, Qui-Gon only got interested in Anakin for his force sensitivity, not his kindness and generosity helping strangers when he didn´t have much himself and was a slave.

This truly makes me mad because doing this to a kid isn´t just cruel, it´s abuse be it blind on the Jedi Order´s part or willing abuse on Palpatine´s part, an injustice, a never addressed injustice and even the narrative tries not to tackle this in all i´ts intensity but this is why Lucas said that Anakin was a victim and sure the Jedi were also victims of Palpatine and Anakin by proxy during Order 66 but I think fandom needs to address more in good faith that Anakin himself was their victim first if not the entire Jedi Order (and Palpatine of course) of the adults who were in charge and supposely cared for him and truly didn´t, not in the way that truly matters.

So it is any surprise Anakin wanted to leave the Order to raise his child with Padmé? because honestly I believe that in his situation that was the healthiest decision he could make without completely cutting his ties to what he loved and respected of being a Jedi, so it´s tragic he didn´t get that opportunity because the other adult in his life decided he wanted him as his weapon and manipulated him by isolating him from all his loved ones into becoming exactly that.

[stickthisbig]

I have no idea what this is but I decided to write down my grand theory of Star Wars and how authorship affects the ways in which stories are good and bad? Come for media critique, stay for the analogy at the very end about how Star Wars is like college, also there's gifs

The original trilogy is a series of derivative works. That's not a pejorative, but a description of their content and structure; they are constructions that use existing pieces to tell a new story. They are samurai movies, they are meditations on Joseph Campbell. They are the work of a film nerd trying to create a story that is Everything. There's nothing novel about the storytelling of the original trilogy; it was just particularly well executed, because they were made with love by a craftsman, surrounded by a team who kept him from giving in to the worst of his narrative excesses (most notably but not limited to Marcia Lucas).

There's a lot of No Reason in the original trilogy. Why's Darth Vader so strong in the Force? No reason. It doesn't have time to delicately explain everything, so it relies on the audience's understanding of the shape of the story to fill in the gaps. It's the time in the story for someone to fall in love, so a romance plotline it shall be. The author is trying to do something, and he successfully does it.

The prequel trilogy represents an older creator for whom derivative works were not enough, who had been creatively stifled by the very thing he created. (I strongly recommend Patrick H Willems's series about Frances Ford Coppola if you want a really interesting take on George Lucas and the tragedy of his career.) Extremely importantly, they represent a creator with almost unlimited cash and no one to tell him to tone it down.

Everything that is bad about the prequel trilogy is because they were made with a vision by a creator who was trying to do something. George Lucas has six hours and fifty-eight minutes of material prepared about diplomacy, representative democracy, and how all unchecked power is always all bad and by god we are all gonna sit here until he finishes it. The writing is so clunky because it is not there to build character or relationships; it is there to convey information. The sequences with the Gungans are such a mess because they're the injection of (very inadvisable) comic relief into a story that is not supposed to have any relief at all.

One of the worst sins of the prequel trilogy is the rejection of No Reason. It continually poses questions that do not need answers and then takes pains to answer them. Why's Darth Vader so strong in the Force? His mother conceived him as a virgin birth because of the Force, by way of midichlorians, which as we all know are the powerhouse of the cell. It is such a deeply unsatisfying answer, but George Lucas seems incredibly sincere about the fact that this is important. He is trying to position his derivative work within a new fandom context that conceives of his work as wholly original, and the wild thing is, I think George Lucas always thought all of this and just wasn't allowed to put it in. Improbably, the problem is not that he hasn't thought enough about his own lore, as a common charge goes; he appears to have thought about it way too much.

I have to confess to not being a prequel trilogy fan, but probably the single biggest thing to come out of it is Obi-Wan. Ewan McGregor almost instantly became the canonical version of the character. It's because the same thing that made it bad also made it good. It's a story that is trying to do something, and that is opening wide an almost Stendhal-syndrome-esque array of locations and people and stories. Fuck yes I want to hear everything about the person Alec Guinness used to be when he was young and badass, tell me everything about the weird desert guy. Of course I wanna go to Space Italy and see what the galaxy was like before it got dicked up. Sinister rise to power of Darth Vader's master? Check. Seeing the evil enemy built as a series of actions is the shit prequels are made for.

When the prequel trilogy is boring, it's because the pacing is fucking awful, especially in Revenge of the Sith. The dizzying array of new stuff is never boring, and you can all fight me on Kamino being one of the best planets in the whole series. When it's good to be in George Lucas's mind palace, it's extremely good. For better or worse, he did it. He gave his almost seven hour lecture, he said what he had to say, and he left.

And then we move forwards in time, into an era of Star Wars as a strategy rather than a story.

(I didn't see Solo, so it's not gonna be in here. Neither are any of the TV shows or the EU, because I have other shit to do with my life.)

The Force Awakens was not the first Star Wars film that was made by someone else; the authorship of The Empire Strikes Back is complicated- George Lucas kind of managed to ghostwrite his own movie?- but he definitely didn't direct it. Empire was very much still a Lucas production in which he was intimately involved.

The Force Awakens has a point, but it ultimately doesn't do anything.

It resets everything back to the start: an evil empire represented by British people in suits come to power; three heroes arise; a mentor who's incredibly important apparently despite only knowing the heroes for five minutes is murdered by a cloaked Force user; something is blown up. It is meant to stoke the fires of nostalgia, and it provides nothing substantive in terms of plot. In fact, it represents a retrograde movement. It is a very fun watch and a movie with absolutely nothing to say, at least nothing that wasn't written into the series thirty years beforehand.

It's not a surprise that, since it's just meant to get people hype and then serve them what they already know, the best thing it provided were its new characters. I was so stoked to see a Black person in a Star Wars movie; we got three new main characters and not a white man among them?? But let's fuckin' table that shit, because we all know what's coming.

[I was gonna put in a Kylo Ren gif but he looked like such a dipshit in all of them, you're welcome]

Actually I lied, I forgot that what came next was Rogue One. The purpose of the film is to make a war movie about Star Wars and like many/most war films, what the movie is trying to do is meditate on the duality created by the futility of war and the value of sacrifice, it fills in a blank in canon but is really a tone piece meant to make you have feelings and reflect, I watched it once and it was so touching and horrible that I've never been able to watch it again, 10/10 no notes

And then we have The Last Jedi, which is weird.

The Last Jedi represents a step back to a craftsman at the helm, and the exact same shit happened again.

It shouldn't have, because it happened again in a completely different way! The Last Jedi is a singular vision with one creative direction, and that is the cause of everything that is bad and everything that is good about it, but Rian Johnson wanted to do something radically different than George Lucas. He's not interested in giving you his Star Wars lecture; he's interested in breaking Star Wars open, thrusting it bodily in a new direction. The Last Jedi represents at least as much movement as The Empire Strikes Back.

So it's not like a shock that the movie was wildly divisive, and lists of the best and worst things are the same items shuffled around. I honestly think Admiral Holdo's death is the finest moment in the entire trilogy, in terms of visuals and in terms of emotional impact. I fuckin' love that Luke was sitting on PTSD Island sulking, because it's some Luke shit to do. "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to" got me HYPE to see where this would go. I wanted to go on that ride. I've loved Star Wars since I was a tiny child, and I wanted to go on a journey into something that was entirely fresh.

Other people hated all of these things, and honestly in this case, I don't agree but I can't say they're wrong. Wanting Rose to be deleted from the series simply for using oxygen is racist. Wanting Snoke to have had more impact on the story is a difference of opinion. Either you were interested in this ride or you weren't, and you're not a bad person for not wanting that out of your Star Wars.

But on the other hand, it's not a very good movie.

The problems that make it not very good are the result of having one guy at the wheel. It's clumsily made. It feels like it ends three times before it actually does. The Canto Bight sequences are the work of someone who doesn't want them to be in there, and somebody who could play ball would have finessed the story to make them organic. Some of the CGI work represents a lapse in professional judgment. The Force dyad stuff does not make any sense at all, because it plays like somebody who couldn't really explain a thing they were doing but refuses to stop doing it.

It's so good when it's good. I just wish it had had another screenwriter who could have fixed what was bad.

I didn't care for Rise of Skywalker.

By the time it came out, I was experiencing a kind of numbness surrounding Star Wars; not literally, because I got my tattoos finished up just before it came out. I didn't have any idea what was about to happen. There were a lot of rumors circulating about the extent to which things had gotten rewritten, but it was pretty clear that whatever it was going to be was fully an Abrams/Disney thing.

And indeed, this time, they did make a movie that tried to do something. Extremely unfortunately, what the movie was trying to do was reinforce the status quo. It did this on every level- Holdo's sacrifice was made meaningless, the minuscule amount of queer content was palatably deletable, a woman of color's lines were given to a white man who was buddies with the director, the story reverted from "everyone's a Star Wars" to "there are only four people in the galaxy who matter", Poe's awesome storyline from the comics was thrust aside for a frankly kind of racist replacement, every bit of story development from TLJ was cast aside. There are no consequences for anything, because all that matters is moving to the end of the story; I cannot believe that absolute motherfucker made me watch Chewbacca die with my own eyeballs just to wave it away literally two minutes later in the clumsiest way imaginable. In the prequel trilogy, in Rogue One, in TLJ, everything everyone does matters so much. The minutest actions have huge consequences. In Rise of Skywalker, nothing matters even a little bit. Everybody just waits around for the main characters to get finished dicking around.

I cannot believe that it's a thing I would possibly think ever, but the only thing that got any work put into it was Kylo and Rey's relationship. Trust: I didn't enjoy watching it. There's a piece of Wishful Drinking where Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd are trying to figure out if Billie is related to the guy she's dating, due to a bunch of Hollywood marriages. Even after the shitstupid reveal of Rey's parentage, it still really, really feels like the same vibe. But by the time they kissed, I was like, "Yeah, I mean I hate it but I see where it happened."

Star Wars is like the end of a semester in college. The prequel trilogy is the period where you're studying, trying to cram so much stuff into your brain that you're never gonna remember. The original trilogy is exams, exhilarating and rocky but ultimately liberating.

The sequel trilogy is the party you go to afterwards. At 10 PM you're at The Force Awakens, singing along at the top of your lungs to a song that's catchy and doesn't have to be good. At midnight you're at Rogue One, where you break down sobbing in the bathroom. The Last Jedi is 2 AM, weird and full of promise, as if anything could happen.

The Rise of Skywalker is 11 AM the next day, when you've already broken down the details at brunch and are now lying in bed unable to nap, with the horrible certainty that this is all there is, you will never be more than yourself, just a regular person who carries no special importance.

I didn't like it in real life; I sure didn't want it from Star Wars.

[sahsalart]

Star Wars: Pa’loa Skywalker

It has just occurred to me that I never posted any of the character reference sheets for any of my Star Wars OCs! I intend to do a complete rewrite of the sequel trilogy in novels/comics. Since Disney proves time and time again how much unoriginal and stupid bullshit they create for the franchise. With that said, I am taking inspiration and pulling from Legends and The Expanded Universe lore as well mixing in my own original work to, hopefully, do justice to the original story that George Lucas created. I’m still working on the storyline for each novels which will be followed accordingly as Episode 7, Episode 8, and Episode 9 as well as scouting to hire an actual author to write the novels! I wish to pour my blood, sweat, and tears into recreating the sequels for a franchise that I hold dear to my heart so I unfortunately will not write the entire novel series myself. I consider myself more of an artist than an author so help will be needed :)

We’ll start off with the main star of the show, Pa’loa Skywalker. She is the only child of Jedi Master and Galactic Hero, Luke Skywalker, and fellow Jedi Master, Saasa Raassiks. A half-Human, half-Togruta hybrid. Born three years after the Battle of Endor in 7 ABY on her mother’s home planet of Zullu, Pa’loa’s birth was one of celebration and joy as it meant a new start to not only the newly freed Galaxy, but a new hope for the rebirth of the Jedi. In the early stages of her life, Pa’loa’s parents discovered that their daughter had natural Force-sensitive abilities that matched the likes of her familial heritage thus she was trained from then on in order to control those gifts. Pa’loa was educated by her father, Luke, on her paternal grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, legacy as a renowned Jedi Knight in the Old Republic and his eventual fall to the Dark Side as the heinous Darth Vader in order to not repeat history. When Pa’loa hit an older age to begin formal Jedi training, Luke choose to take on his own daughter as his Padawan Apprentice with her Mother occasionally stepping in as well. Pa’loa is the firstborn and eldest of the Skywalker grandchildren, having 3 younger cousins by her Aunt Leia and Uncle Han.

Due to her mixed-species ancestry, Pa’loa does not resemble your “typical looking” Human or Togruta. The most notable traits are her soft-pink colored skin, lighter pink facial markings, and Montrals and Lekku that she inherited from her Togruta mother. Dissimilar to Togrutas, she has visible human-like ears that function as her main source of hearing, and only having body hair in the form of eyebrows and eyelashes. Her Montrals and Lekku function a little differently from full Togrutas, such as they remain the same shape and markings from birth and do not grow as the individual ages, the same goes for her facial markings. Likewise, she can use her Montrals for passive echolocation to detect objects but in order to do so her ears must be covered or else it cannot function. She is able to subtly move her Montrals to convey messages and express emotions.

[just-prime]

I'm not sure if you've been watching The Acolyte, but my critically high levels of sodium over the Ahsoka series have returned with the revelation that Rosario must have fought Lucasfilm over fight/lightsaber training stipulating in her contract.

Manny Jacinto, who came to the role with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do trained for four months for his fight scenes before filming. Rosario repeatedly said in interviews that she trained for two hours a day while filming, and it was clear that she thought this was a lot.

I tried to write it off last year. Budget and time constraints, George Lucas overspent and Disney is doing things differently, the prequel era is dead-

No.

No, this is not the case.

Prequel era love and care in the arena of bringing characters who are expert sword wielders and martial artists to life is alive and well at Lucasfilm.

Daphne Keen fights like Ahsoka plucked from the middle of the Clone Wars and brought to life. Dean Charles Chapman's saberwork is a beautiful hybrid of Obi-wan and Anakin with lightning fast, graceful Soresu and saber spins, lightsabers are deadly once more and used in ways we haven't seen outside of animation and video games, and characters far, far older than 11 ABY Ahsoka have kinetic, energetic choreography because a 42 year old Jedi is nowhere near over the hill, and I'm done with being gaslit about her age.

There are many issues with this show, yes, but there are no cameos (save for one blink and you miss it), no name dropping to make the audience tear up and feel something based on the hard work of previous content. Nuggets are plucked from the EU and made fresh, like the delightful and creative use of cortosis. New force worshipping sects with their own beliefs are brought to life without being the Nightsisters. The galaxy feels large again.

It's everything Ahsoka wasn't and shows just how soulless an effort that show was. Ironically this is the show that's getting raked over the coals while nearly all criticism of Ahsoka was met with dismissal despite the show being desperately mediocre.

If you had asked me to go in without behind the scenes knowledge and tell you if Filoni or Headland was the one new to Star Wars and who was approaching this effort with genuine love of the material and passion for world building and adventure, it wouldn't be the guy who was recently made Creative Director.

I'm sorry for once again paragliding into your inbox (yes, this is the salty anon from last summer lol), especially if you aren't interested in The Acolyte, but it just sheds so much light on everything wrong with Ahsoka and how valid our criticisms were. Salt doesn't have an expiration date, so I hope this is a little bit of vindication!

Hello, hello! Hang up your paraglider, you're always welcome in my ask box.

I have been watching the Acolyte! I'll admit, I saved off answering this until the final ep had come out so that if there were any more cool fight scenes, they were not missed in my response.

Thoughts I had Pre Finale

All in all I agree completely.

While flawed (personally I feel like the acting on Osha and Mea is the weakest part of the show as a whole, as well as the fact that this very much felt like a movie idea stretched into a tv show) the Acolyte has been legions better than the previous slop that Disney Star Wars has put out recently. You know why? Because I had fucking fun watching it. Sure, afterwards I'd usually say something along the lines of 'wow the pacing is a bit weird' but all in all? Actively enjoyable. It never made me angrily close the D+ tab mid episode.

It's also been a facinating litmus test for what people are able to be chill about Star Wars and which ones are not able to handle it. The amount of reviewers and reactors whom I previously had massive respect for who just are acting like utter tools is really getting on my nerves.

Because in sooooo many ways this has been exactly what people have been asking for. A new perspective, with new ideas that isn't just focused on the Skywalker saga. And on top of that, holy fuck the fights are glorious. You are absolutely right, both Dafne Keen's and Tommon's fights prove just how well you can have lightsaber skills look from a single person, as well as the Wookie fight showing off some truly impressive choreo between the three.

And then you have Manny Jacinto...hello ARMS

The man is by far the standout joy of the series (followed closely by Sol) as the man just oozes charisma. His big fight against everyone was brutal and I'm glad to see that lightsabers are once again deadly in the Star Wars universe. Watching him mow through a legion of Jedi was so incredibly satisfying to watch, and again he is just knocking it out of the park with the choreo. LOVE the way that they've introduced cortosis into live action, especially in a fighting style. Headbutting a lightsaber was fucking amazing to witness. Though it's actually not the first time that it's appeared in Canon star wars, as it appears in the second canon Thrawn book, Thrawn : Alliances!

The exploration of the Dark Side is being done in such an interesting way, because none of the practitioners we've seen would self identify as 'dark side users' at all. Because sure, you have Manny Jacinto who is out being evil because the Jedi were going to label him as dark side either way so he might as well defend himself, for him it's just the way he connects with the Force. But you also have the witches, who's mind infiltration is certainly Dark Side, but are just out here living their best witchy lives. They live by their Thread, regardless of what the Jedi would call it.

As always, also the "the jedi need to be the coolest and the morally purest people in the whole wide world" people are having hissy fits, which is just like...no? Stop being allergic to nuance? We've seen time and time again how the Jedi were in fact a child taking cult (yes, yes they are, if you disagree i'd recommend going and rewatching TPM which spells it out pretty clearly) usually we've just been on the Jedi's POV so it seems justified. The Sol flashback episode I think shows off this mentality very well. He had good intentions, sure, but all in all, he wants to take and even Trinity calls him on it. It's a fascinating examination of what decades later would lead Anakin down a path of desperation.

Speaking of Anakin...People getting suuuuuper protective over Anakin's super special status as 'the chosen one' was also rather surreal to witness. Personally, I don't see how this invalidates his 'the chosen one' in the first place? But people were definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about, as opposed to offering actually constructive criticism, of which there are plenty of options.

Thoughts I had Post Finale

All in all, nothing really changed for me, as usual, the pacing was absolutely fucked and the action was absolutely incredible, and in the end, I enjoyed the experience of watching it.

I certainly appreciate seeing more of the Jedi actively covering shit up, both in little ways as well in big ways.

Also *waves* Hi Plagueis!

My main little gripe

I really don't get why they needed to actively tie Mr. Darth Hotpants over here to Venesta specifically? I get the want to connect him to an established character, it just rang a little hollow for me. I think I'd have preferred it if he was just a rando youngling who never even got to being a Padawan cuz the Jedi kept trying to basically de-dark side him ala grade schools punishing for being left handed. Donno, I just think that would have been a bit more compelling.

My main BIG gripe

Why...THE FUCK...did they split up??? They burned waaaay more time having their little heart to heart then had it been all three of them fucking booking it to the ship. I just don't get it. I don't get why Mae or Osha would want to leave each other again, and I don't get why Manny Jacinto would willingly give up an additional fighter. I get the whole "There can only be two" bit, but A) Plagueis is already there on the island, so Osha makes it three and B) Osha's probably going to be more motivated with a little living reminder of the Jedi's lies being right there and present and C) Osha and Mae are both so fucking powerful why would anyone just let one half of the pair walk away????

It just didn't fit with any of the character's previous actions so it annoys me.

Kinda ended as I began, relatively neutral on it all. Think if pressed would give it a 7/10 just because the action was SO FUCKING GOOD, otherwise it would probably be lower due to the rather painful pacing issues and the meh acting on display from Amandla Stenberg which was just such a huge shame cuz I know she's got more range than this.

Mainly, I just really really hope future shows take from this just how good lightsaber combat can be when you have properly trained performers. THIS should be the standards, and it's painful that its not.

As always thank you for dropping into my ask box! You always give me so much to work with it's a joy to respond :D

[shares-a-vest]

@steddie-week Day Six: True

Call him a snap. A lovesick loser. A nerd. A guy who likes fantasy stories and make-believe a little too much. An idiot who is setting himself up for disappointment and heartbreak.

But Eddie Munson believes in True Love.

He has read the stories and been swept up in the romantic plotlines of his favourites. He creates NPCs for his campaigns with unnecessarily detailed backstories with whole lives set out for them. Then he uses them to write poems and short stories he keeps safe in his notebooks for no one to see, where everyone gets a sweeping grand love story and a 'happily ever after' waiting for them by the end.

He's well aware others catch on, especially after he starts dating Steve. Yeah, an actual real-life love story sweeps him off his feet and he lets his guard down. Dustin and Lucas call him, "a pathetic lameoid". Mike and Will descend into a chorus of gagging noises. Even the guys tease him for writing song lyrics featuring admittedly, very obvious saccharine declarations. George will give a "Yuck", Gareth practically sings out his disgusted "Ew" and Jeff gives perhaps the worst reaction of all...

"Eddie... just. No."

Steve might as well be a Prince. Or a Knight in shining armour. A combination of both, maybe? Mixed in with the weapons and demon-slaying expertise of a high-stats Barbarian who runs around shirtless.

When Steve visited him in the hospital, drugged-up delirium had Eddie's mind drifting to fairytales where he lay in a nightmare-riddled slumber as a blood-stained and beat-up version of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Just laying in wait to be fixed by true love's kiss.

Steve calls Eddie his Prince sometimes when he's being all sappy and cute. It makes them both blush and giggle because, while it's romantic, it is also Steve trying desperately to sound impressive.

But Steve really is the Prince. Eddie insists on the matter. Even when he arrives at the trailer from a closing shift at Family Video, visibly tired with dark eyes, hair now flat and unstyled with a pained expression on his face as he blinks at a snail's pace.

"Thank god, I'm home" he sighs, voice cracking a little as he sets his keys down on the shelf near the front light switch.

Eddie snaps his book shut (A collection of Grimm Fairytales, no less), feeling all giddy at the thought Steve considers the place 'home'. But his glee doesn't last long as his homebound Prince barely toes off one of his sneakers before he clambers forward, arms unstretched in the direction of the couch.

Eddie catches him - or more, Steve collapses onto the couch and rolls into him.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he panics, brushing back the mop of hair that has flopped in his face.

"I have a headache," Steve groans, talking into his makeshift pyjama top - an old Hawkins Tigers t-shirt, "Started as I was closing up."

Steve heaves his body against the couch, resting his head on the cushion back and screws his eyes shut. He fumbles with the buttons on his polo, failing to get anywhere near unbuttoning them. So, Eddie does it for him, barely finishing on the last one before Steve pops his shirt off and flings it halfway across the room.

Then Steve starts doing the same with his belt and fly as a wash of sickly paleness drains down his pretty face.

"I'll do it," he grumbles, pushing Steve's mighty paws away.

He helps there too, willing away a blush and a dirty joke as he loosens Steve's obscenely tight jeans. He isn't exactly sure how it works anatomically, but he is growing more certain with every headache that these damn jeans aren't doing him any favours (other than giving him a tight little, very squeezable, butt).

Steve puffs out what is vaguely a laugh before he slurs, "Think this is as far as you gonna get tonight, Eds."

He gestures at his underwear peaking out from his undone jeans.

"You want me to run you a bath? Squish you into the teeny-tiny combo?"

Steve sniffs under his arm and grimaces at himself.

"'Kay," he lolls his head back on the couch.

"Anything else?"

"Can you make me some tea?"

"Tea?" he questions.

He can't help it. Usually, he keeps his queries to a minimum when Steve is like this (which has been all too frequent lately) but this is a new request.

"Wayne made me some last week when I had a migraine."

"This is the first I'm hearing of it," he says, and in lieu of a physical presence, he glares at his uncle's recliner chair.

Steve smiles at the ceiling, his eyelids softening with a light flutter as he hums, presumably thinking about this magic tea Wayne is most definitely being interrogated about first thing in the morning.

"'S'nice," Steve shrugs.

"That old man with his tea collection like he's some old English Granny."

"Stops me from feeling sick."

Eddie leans over and pecks his deceptively-hot cheek. Stinky and on the precipice of a migraine or not, Steve is still his Prince Charming. He pauses there. Steve must feel his breath lingering because his lip quirks, threatening a smile and he opens his eyes.

"What?" he asks, a teasing tone dancing in there somewhere as he blinks slowly.

Eddie takes his hand and squeezes it.

"Let me kiss you."

"Okay," Steve replies and puckers his lips without moving an inch.

"True love's kiss will make you feel better, promise," he whispers as he closes the distance between them and presses a soft kiss to Steve's lips.

Steve squeaks out a noise and Eddie can feel his frown as he murmurs, "You're so silly."

[gffa]

I was wondering if you could share your thoughts and feelings on Felonys takes over the years overall? I know a lot of people see him as this grand savior of star wars without much more to it so I wanted to hear your take on how he handles the pre-established world he writes for and the dissonance with what George Lucas established/said before

Honestly, I think a lot of Felony's appeal is that he writes a very polished story and that's appealing to audiences (no shade, I'm part of that audience!) and that he has at least given some thought to what the Force means. There are a lot of takes he has that I agree with, I still quote what he says about the characters at times, but I think he has a big central problem and that's characterization drift-slash-the inability to let go. Well, two big central problems: He also can't write/finish a narrative arc to a satisfying conclusion. I have such a hard time getting into the Mandalorian storyline because it's been told in snippets for like 10+ years now and it's never really coherently come together, it still has huge gaps in it, it doesn't have a strong narrative central theme that he sticks to, but instead told through cameos and mini-arcs in separate shows. And when you examine a lot of his work, it often doesn't hold up to scrutiny because I'm not sure he has a solid thematic throughline that's driving him--like, some of the choices he made in season 7 of TCW are baffling--Ahsoka walks right by people who need her help, then says, "In my life, when someone needs help, I help them."??? When she wants the Jedi to help Mandalore instead of Coruscant, she says the Jedi aren't helping the people who really need them, despite that Coruscant is under attack and that's where Trace and Rafa are, the characters we just spent an entire arc on?? Ahsoka and Bo-Katan want the Republic to literally invade Mandalore, this is brought up in the arc itself, and then never mentioned again because it's inconvenient and the author doesn't want to deal with the established worldbuilding?? I also don't think he knows how to end a story, like I love Ahsoka as a character, but he very much does favor her and a lot of her appearances are starting to feel like she's only there because Filoni can't resist. She just never ends, there's no conclusion to her, what's even her character arc over the course of her life after the Jedi genocide? She's obviously dealing with trauma about it and now she's looking for Ezra to find him again, but what's the character arc on a personal level? Is she still dealing with letting go of Anakin, ~30 years after it happened? Did she not put that to rest in Rebels finally? @david-talks-sw has a great post about the differences between George Lucas and Dave Filoni here, illustrating that I do think Dave misses some really key points about characters that he has personal biases against. And, you know, I'm not getting after him for that, I disagree with him and I think he's wrong about a lot of stuff that Lucas directly established, but I also think a lot of people dismiss criticism of him because, oh, he worked with George and therefore he's an extension of George! No, he's a different writer with his own strengths and weaknesses, one I think who makes very popular (often for a reason) Star Wars, but I think misses the heart a lot of times. But I also often think of that he doesn't try to see himself as the grand lord of Star Wars, either, even he himself says:

He's not the ultimate authority on Star Wars, he's just as fallible as anyone else is, and always should be. I think he made Star Wars shows that a lot of people loved, he has a very polished style, and he has given thought to the characters he loves. He just also has biases and directly conflicts with George Lucas' established story and I think that's fair to point out. Maybe you like those better, I'm not trying to talk anyone out of that, but it's still fair game for me to point out that I think he's wrong about Star Wars just as often as he's right. (And that, as time goes on and The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett became more and more of a hot mess, I grew less charitable. This is a major overview, I don't want to get too into the weeds on this, I've gone over a lot it in past meta, and it would be exhausting to dig it all up again, but basically this is why I'm on the fence about Felony. He has a lot of weaknesses as a writer and I don't find I like his strengths more than I dislike his weaknesses sometimes.)

[radiosummons]

Real talk: Does the Jedi Order have a tax exempt status?

I know it's somewhat of a meme to make jokes about how the Jedi don't know how to pay taxes, or rather questioning whether they get paid or make any income at all. And, yes, this question is kinda dumb in the sense that whether the Jedi Order has tax exempt status or not, it doesn't effect the over all story or any actual SW lore in any way that actually matters.

I also know that tax exempt status works differently in other countries besides the US (yes, hello, I am American. I hate it here, too). But for the sake of taking this very dumb question at face value, would the Jedi Order:

1) Count as a religious institution in the eyes of Republic law?

2) If so, would their status as a religious institution have any impact on whether they attained tax exempt status from the Republic?

3) What standards and regulations would the Republic IRS have in place regarding tax exemption?

4) Do the Jedi even have an accounting department?

I would peronally argue that, yes, the Jedi Order is in fact a religious institution. On the account of the obvious connection to the Force and heavily coded (if not just downright) religious practices that the Jedi follow.

However, even if the Republic were to grant the Jedi Order the status of a lawfully recognized religious institution, I'm not sure if this would actually lead to them a guaranteed tax exempt status.

According to United States IRS standards and regulations, the Jedi Order could and would also be seen as a religious institution. However, one of the biggest stipulations for retaining tax exempt status is that the religious institution does not attempt to or make any influence on legislative or attempt to influence political campaigns.

(Palpatine voice: Ironic).

Now, if the Republic had similar stipulations, I would argue that, no, the Jedi do not get tax exemption. Mostly because one of the longest known duties associated with the Jedi Order is their role in assisting with galactic diplomacy. It would be literally impossible for them to not get involved in some capacity, especially when their aid is often directly requested (whether by a Republic aligned planet or not).

That being said, this is all going by the standards of the IRS. And at the risk of sounding too jaded, there are hundreds if not outright thousands of religious institutions in the US that should have lost their tax exempt status decades ago. And yet ....

Obviously, this all ultimately depends on what standards the Republic would theoretically have in place for situations like this. And while I would never actually want George Lucas--or any other writer for that matter--to attempt to give us a canon answer, I can't help but wonder.

Even if the Jedi Order was completely self-reliant--which I personally don't think is possible due to them, well, living on Coruscant for thousands of years-just as an example. It just doesn't make sense to me that the Jedi would limit themselves to only what they make in house when they could have easy access to other local businesses, ya know?--whose to say that they wouldn't still be required to pay for taxes like regular citizens?

The Jedi Temple, again, has literally been there for thousands of years. I don't think it's entirely out of the realm of possibility that the Republic wouldn't have sent their own SW IRS agent at least once to audit the Jedi Order.

I honestly wouldn't even be surprised if that Jedi Order would be given a slight form of tax exemption, but only if certain conditions were met. Like, I don't know, what if an official member of the local Coruscantii/Republic government were to make a direct request for the aid of the Jedi. Maybe they'd get a tax write off for all the transportation and housing (or vehicular damage) they'd acrue while on this government sponsored mission?

Or what about this? Business institutions in the US get tax write offs for charitable donations (which the fuckers exploit to hell and back, fuck me). I have to wonder if there was a point in time (maybe the early years of the ye Old Republic) where someone had to bring up the fact that a lot of what the Jedi do could count fall under charitable tax deductions. So if they wanted to continue taxing the Jedi Order, they'd probably have to change up the definition or something.

Idk, man, I'm sort of spit balling random thoughts at this point.

I'd also like to say that I believe the Jedi do, in fact, have an accounting department. Just to keep thing running smoothly in regards to the Temple budget and so on. It would be kinda hard to keep a place that big with that many occupants still around and for that long without having someone keeping a close eye on the Order's spending.

Mostly, though, I just find the idea of the Jedi being audited absolutely hilarious.