#also plot twist he is not in fact bald yet

[onyourhyuck]

Popular. | N.JM | PART 4

— Prologue: “Where have you been all my life?” + “Hiding from you.”

— Summary: Revenge becomes love? Old faces become new faces? Where you enroll back to your old school where you got bullied, to get revenge on Na Jaemin but he cannot recognise you.

— Genre: Popularboy!najaemin x goodgirl!y/n. Revenge plot with romance and smut. Mention of bullying. Plot twists. Very sensitive subjects no minors. School sex(?) exhibition. Jaemin’s obsessed with y/n. Enemies to lovers (kinda)

— Notes: Popular — The Series Masterlist

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The school district seems to be under a different eye now. If you walk straight eyes we’re on a certain individual under a different spotlight than usual. Ningning saw the people stares as they whisper, some laughed and it made the absurdity feel even more intense than before.

“Oh my god is that her…?”

“No way… they look so different.”

“So much for natural beauty.”

The voices surrounding the young girl was like a black hole pulling Ningning in forcefully. What was everyone whispering about? The students were like a mirror reflecting back at the confused expression on the girl’s face.

What was with everyone today? Ningning thought it couldn’t be directed to her, right? Who in the world would laugh in her face and walk away? No one would. She’s literally terrifying to most people considering how unpredictable she can be. She saw the stares again and she glared back at them.

The girl moved away to meet up and find her good friend Chenle who has ears and eyes everywhere, she needs to know what is happening because something, something was right.

“Chenle, what is everyone gossiping about today?” She demands with her hand forward at the table and her friend gave her a little smirk.

He looks back at his phone and back at Ningning. “Did you get your nose done by any chance?” He giggles teasingly and she glares in confusion. “What?” She sits down and Chenle motions her to come over as he pats her back showing Ningning his phone.

“I mean… you were pretty cute when you were a kid. Oh especially when you shaved your head and went bald.” Chenle smirks.

Oh yeah his friend went pale the minute she saw that someone online completely anonymously posted the most private and ugly pictures of her when she was younger. Ningning feels her eyes widen as she looks around slamming Chenle’s phone down with her hand. Her friend watches the girl lose her mind and instantly it all makes sense why all the students were laughing at her!

Whoever did this was going to pay. Ningning looks at Chenle. “Stop laughing! It’s not funny. This is humiliating. Who uploaded this crap?” She snaps turning back to the account but the account was clearly fake and Ningning had no idea who would do this to her and especially, how did they get this stuff anyways?

“Holy crap… they have all my embarrassing pictures!”

She sits down holding at her hair roots practically ripping at them. She feels the anger boiling and rising in her stomach, the anxiousness and also the humiliation. No one humiliated her before, ever. And whoever must’ve done this had good reasons and good connections.

Ningning grits her teeth together. The more she scrolls down the comments the other students were making fun of her.

For once it wasn’t her bullying someone, someone was giving her a taste of her own medicine. But who in the world would even try to challenge her like this?Ningning has a feeling but she wasn’t quite sure if it was true yet or not.

The boy comes forward smiling ear to ear. “My favourite is this picture of you.” He playfully points to a picture of Ningning with clown painting on her face while she was covered in flower. She glared at the unserious boy slapping his arm and looking away from the photo. There was so many embarrassing pictures in fact they were all personal.

“Shut up.” Ningning lowly tells him.

No one should see them. No one. Ningning bites her bottom lip in anger when the sight of you walking to class comes across and she slams his phone once more on the table while she’s watching you like a deadly hawk.

There was a bad feeling about you. You must have something to do with this, surely? Ever since you came into this school Ningning’s life became upside down, as if you were meant to bring bad luck to her.

You sat in class with a huge smirk today. You feel rather happy for a specific reason, but you won’t mention anything and act like you know absolutely nothing. Playing innocent and dumb is your speciality anyways.

It’s always fun when you take a taste of sweet revenge. You would sit in your chair with your legs crossed over the other while you write your notes. Next door to your table was the boy staring at you the entire lesson like you were the lesson to him. He wasn’t listening to whatever the teacher was telling the class. He just paid attention to you.

For whatever reason you had a smirk but Jaemin didn’t question it. You seem happier than usual.

The class however was filled with tension as Ningning was watching the front with arms crossed and her hand pressed between her fingers, like usual class Ningning was scrolling through her phone on social media to see what the other people were commenting about her stupid pictures that were uploaded by a thief.

She knows you had something to do with it at least. Ningning has this feeling it’s you, because you bring bad luck to her.

“Hey, pst pst.” A voice on the side calls Ningning as they smirk throwing a paper ball at her desk. She glared at them and opens the paper only to read a teasing letter asking her about what she uses on her face to change so much.

Ningning glares and rips the paper to shreds. She doesn’t think she looks that different from her baby pictures.

But students and people in general find anything to exaggerate and make anything seem bigger than it actually is. This was all your doing and you’re proud when you hear the students tease Ningning in secret at the back. It reminds you back of your past. When you were in the same position as her with people teasing you about your appearance.

Back then you had it worse. Ningning did this to you and now you did the same back to her. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The ideology fits this situation perfect because you reap what you sow. And the girl was bound to get a bite back from someone, you just happen to bite when she least expected it.

The students made fun of your appearance, mainly your weight back then. Let’s just say you looked way different than you do know which is why no one has recognised you. Back then you wore less fancy and pretty clothes you didn’t bother to change when no one paid an eye on you.

Until… Ningning did. She took some pleasure in verbally abusing you everyday at lunch time.

And whenever those comments got to you more people thought it was okay. The other students took it too far though. When they saw Ningning bullying you verbally with abusive words about your appearance and so on, people took it to a physical matter and whenever gym class happened back then you would’ve left with tears running down your cheek.

You’re exactly like a shadow. You are seen but you don’t move until you’re alone in your own making. And back then you were a small tampered soul.

But now you’re a dangerous person, everything is fallen into your place.

Ningning might feel like her pride was hurt, you knew that because you adjusted this to feel so humiliating the entire school sees it. With no idea to know who did it it just be eating at Ningning’s mind so much and it brings you pleasure because you finally took your revenge on her.

Now you need two more to go. Only two more. Two more and you’ll be satisfied you said to yourself with a smile at your thoughts.

Jaemin leans closer to you. “What are you smiling at so much?”

You don’t reply knowing he was going to keep chatting to you if you answer back so you continue to write in the mathematics class.

He saw you doing the number sums in such fast pace and time. Jaemin wonders if you’re a genius or if he was just useless at mathematics. Maybe the second option but nonetheless he was mildly impressed.

But what really impressed him is that you’re now ignoring him and Jaemin let’s out a soft sigh as he plays around your hair around his fingers, twirling it like a little candy twister around his fingers while his lovingly gaze was watching your soft silky hair fall in between his hands. Your hair was so smooth and soft that when it makes contact with his skin he swore it felt like cotton candy.

The more the lesson continues and the ignoring him continues he feels a bit impatient and he starts to miss finding your reactions. You really have him wrapped around your finger without trying. It’s ironic. He can’t even recognise you and he feels so attached to you already.

“While I do enjoy the silent treatment I wasn’t aware I had done anything to you?” He said to you.

Jaemin trails softly but you bring your hair out of his grasp and tuck it on the right side without saying much when you got annoyed with him playing with your hair visibly glaring at the paper at what he was doing to you.

Your eyes move to meet his now. The moment your eyes met with the contact he fell deep in your beautiful glowing iris’ pupils. “Do you take pleasure in distracting me?” You snap a little in hushed whisper as you don’t want to deal with an angry math teacher today.

He whispers nodding. “Yeah I do. I like your fullest attention and when you don’t give me your attention i feel lonely.”

“What are you a child?” You feel baffled by his words. “I prefer the term ‘Your baby,’ actually.” And your eyes roll back when he said these to you. He was such a childish guy and a red flag.

But he knew what he was doing. He was flirting with you to make sure he gets security with you and then that is why most girls fall for him and his tricks. You’re different though he knows you’re not falling which is why he keeps coming back for more. The push and pulling game was the best and he loves, loves the chase.

The boy dramatically sighs as he was lovingly gazing on you while playing around with his hand on your thigh and moving your desks a little closer so the teacher doesn’t realise that you guys were speaking beforehand. Jaemin sneakily runs his fingers down your thighs against your jeans and you feel your eyes poking holes at him, like they were reloaded guns ready to shoot him on sight. You feel so dangerous but Jaemin might be an adrenaline addict right now considering you feel so, addicting, so much better than anyone else he has met.

There’s something about you that makes Jaemin so much more alive.

“Where have you been all my life?” He whispers smirking as he gently brushed back some of your hair behind your beautiful ears. He saw you were wearing earrings on them and you squint your eyes down at him with distaste towards him.

“Hiding from you.”

Without a second thought, no hesitation you bluntly say words that tear away at his heart but even if you say such harsh mean words to him that reject him. It never once made him stop before. He just comes back for more.

“Good thing I found you, beautiful.” Jaemin smirks.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

@onyourhyuck please refer from translating copyrighting and plagiarising my work thank youu! Please reblog this fic and follow me more for my Popular masterlist!

[preciouslandmermaid]

quiet fury in your head [xi]

Dream of the Endless x AFAB!Reader!Goddess / Sandman Fanfiction

Note: This one took me so long to write and i don't love it LMAO but next chapter is gonna be like pure smut-no-plot so...that'll be fun. The fic only has TWO MORE CHAPTERS until it's complete that's crazy lmao tagging @sapphireonline cuz they asked so nicely to be tagged :). Also, my fics on ao3 are for registered users only due to AI scraping.

No use of Y/N. See part 1 for all the tags tbh.

Warnings: none

Rating: 18+

(Read on AO3)    ||   (masterpost for other chapters)  

While standing on the shining, white salt flats, The Gates of Horn and Ivory open for you and the Dreaming cautiously welcomes you.

It’s emptier than you recalled (or perhaps the Dreaming creatures are hiding from you). You allow yourself the pleasure of viewing the Dreaming for the first time without anxiety and without fear. You glide your fingertips across a cobblestone bridge, and the clear, inviting bubbling brook beneath reflects an uneasy, shifting portrait of heartbreak and exhaustion. It takes a moment to realize the reflection is your own. You push away from the bridge, dusting residue from your palms, and trek deeper into the Dreaming.

A swarm of blue, shimmering butterflies fly past – their wings glow beneath rays of sunlight and faint glimmers of light trail in their wake. You lift your hands in greeting, hopeful that one might land upon your palm, but they merely dance through your fingertips with glittery wings before vanishing into the air. These creations radiated with such gentleness and care.

Morpheus’ absence is a thorn beneath your nail. You wrestle your difficult emotions into subservient silence. Your desire for him will achieve nothing and accomplish nothing. The prideful King has made his choice. He chose a glass orb prison in an amateur’s basement rather than to be with you and fulfill a centuries-old promise to reunite.

The landscape deepens to rich burgundy, dusky tan, and blooms beneath effervescent golden sunlight. The dry, warm air fills your nostrils and lungs. You stand on a plateau of flat, crimson rock. The sun remains in a perpetual state of dusk, painting the sky periwinkle, and pink, and streaking claws of orange. You crouch and lift fine, rusted sand and gravel into your palm. You hold it for a moment, sensing its warmth, feeling the essence of Dream’s magic before releasing it, and watching it swirl and twist on the wind.

A creature approaches you, timidly, and is burdened by a shell on its back—its face is weathered and gray. The skin around its neck is saggy and loose. A lantern swings on the tall, oak-sculpted stick it carries. It stands a few feet shorter than you, squat and bipedal, and watches you with beady and cautious eyes.

It bows its bald, speckled head. “I remember you,” it says in low, resonate timbre. “The Dreaming whispers your name, Lady Morrigan.” It speaks slowly with small ‘hmms’ between each word.

You think of the Corinthian. Do all the creatures assume you abandoned them? Is this creature yours? Did you create him? You hold no memories of creating anything inside the Dreaming. You only manipulated what already existed. Yet, you cannot ignore the fact that you may have forgotten something. Anything is possible in the life of a reborn God.

“Do they know I died?” You ask, “that I was unmade in the minds of Men? That I was forgotten? Erased?” You can’t help but spit that final word with contemptuous venom. The graciousness of forgiveness is a difficult lesson to learn.

The lantern swings when it starts to walk again. “The minds of Men may have forgotten. We did not.”

“Do you expect my gratitude?” you ask dryly.

Are you supposed to give this tortoise-creature a boon? That is what your devotees of old wanted. They had chanted, and sacrificed, and called you into their battlefields or into their beds. They begged for your blessing on all fours and you were fickle; You would kiss the brows of beloved warriors, or bite their hearts with a freezing, cold grip.

But you are no longer Nemain of the Sisters Three. You are simply The Morrigan, Queen of Nightmares, a forgotten monarch in the realm of Dreams. Your purpose slowly manifests before you. You promised Dream that you would return. If only he wasn’t so unreasonably stubborn, then he would’ve been next to you, with Roderick’s bones ground to dust beneath your heel. You desire for vengeance seizes like a vice around your throat. Roderick ought to be dead. The roots of his family tree torn asunder and fed to his funeral pyre.

The creature finally deigned to respond, “I expect nothing, my lady.”

Its black tongue licks its’ wrinkled, dry beak. You sense its’ desire to leave. The Dreaming flutters with this knowledge and cajoles you into trying to get it to stay. You fold your arms across your chest. It moves at a glacial pace, its’ lantern swinging, its’ clawed feet kicking up small plumes of reddish dust.

You say, “It will take you decades to reach where you’re going.”

“It is not about where I will be,” It says, “it is about the going.”

You shrug and allow the creature be.

*

You cannot effect anything within the Dreaming. Those powers remain locked inside a small ring that Dream used to wear on his pinkie finger. Aimless, you walk through the Dreaming, and you talk to Her inhabitants and in the words of a strange tortoise—you focus on ‘the going’, rather than the destination.

The castle doors groan when they open. From the outside, it seems as if nothing had changed, but the interior plumes with dusty motes and freckles of ancient, unraveling magic. Your fingertips trail against the dusty banister as you move through the arched hallways with new eyes and a wounded heart.

You don’t know this castle well. You never traversed it when you were confined to the Dreaming. Except for one place, of course. A place where an old friend might be found.

The scent of paper and leather fills your nostrils and Lucienne steps from the aisle of books as if she was expecting you.

“Lady,” she bows her head as she says it.

“Lucienne.” Her name is a feathery sigh from your throat. The sudden warmth that spreads through your chest is unexpected, but not unwelcome. Lucienne’s face hasn’t changed. Her inquisitive eyes peer at you from behind her rounded spectacles. Her full cheeks round when she smiles.

“I cannot express how good it is to see you,” she says, a book clutched to her chest. “The shelves knew of your return before I did.” She looks up, her expression icing into fraught sadness streaked with regret. The spine of a book trembles, like a frightened creature, before drops from the shelve and falls open to reveal its blank pages. Are all the stories gone?

“They are not all empty,” Lucienne says, as if reading your mind, and offers the book she’s holding to you. You read the etched, golden title. The Adventures Of...it reads before fading away onto the stiff leather. You flip through and discover an irregular layout of full chapters combined with blank sheets.

You ask, “What else remains?”

“Your room,” she says, returning the book to her hands and wearing it like a shield before her heart. “I did not go within, of course,” she adds quickly, “but I know it’s there.”

You knew it too. You lick your lips and silently leave the room without farewell. Lucienne doesn’t call after you, nor does she ask the questions you can see written across her face. There will be a time for questions later. Right now, you need to explore and confirm this reality – this land of broken Dreaming. A palace without a monarch. A graveyard without a keeper. A home without a hearth. The doorknob turns beneath your palm, welcoming you, as so many small pieces of the Dreaming tend to do.

A room you never slept in—except for when you were poisoned. A closet with clothes you never wore—except for your single black cloak. You step into the closet and quietly admire the craftsmanship of Dream’s meticulous touch. Your fingertips glide through gauzy starlight, twinkling in your palm. You lift your nose to floral fabrics and your stomach swoops at the scent of full spring dancing through your nostrils—lush, bright meadows, humming bumblebees, and the tickle of pollen at the back of your throat. The burning cold of frost, the viscous-ember of magma, the angry swell of a blue-gray sea; all of it is contained within your wardrobe.

Your jaw clenches. How can someone capable of such careful beauty be so stubborn and illogical? Why can’t he see that his realm need him? That his selfishness is causing harm? You clench your hand around fabric that is storm-cloud and heat-lightning.

A name drops into your mind. A name you had accidentally forgotten. You sweep yourself into the dress in swirls of gray-and-white color before you vanish from the Dreaming in a thunderclap.

*

Your toes sink into the damp, cold sand and the rainwater prickles onto your skin. The air hums with the brewing storm. Something in your veins – something powerful – ricochets down your spine.

“Dima!” you shout into the roiling, dark clouds above the ocean. “Morrigan, Goddess of Nightmares, calls upon you.”

The lightning flashes and strikes, erupting a piece of earth beside you, and sending hardened diamonds into the air as the budding rain commits to a roaring deluge. Dima is crouched in a three-point landing, her head bowed, kneeling and reverent at your feet. Your heart burns with joy.

“Rise,” you say while opening your palm to her. “I would meet your eyes as a friend.”

Her hand slides into yours and you meet her white-eyes with a smile aching your cheeks.

“You changed your name,” she says. You cannot tell if the water down her face is from the rain or her tears. In the end, it does not matter. You are happy to see her. She came when you called. She remembered you. That is all that matters.

“You remember me.”

“I am not as fickle as mortals.” Dima sniffs. “The sky, the stones, the water, and trees…” She gestures with both arms to the world. “We don’t forget.”

You say, “Neither do Endless.” It wasn’t only Dream’s devotion that re-made you and brought you back into the world as a Goddess. Dima, too, played her part in your revival. An Endless and the personification of Storms believe in a Goddess. What an odd following you have claimed. Dima looks away when you mention Morpheus.

“He lifted your banishment,” you whisper, and your words are clear despite the storm. “Didn’t he tell you?”

Dima folds her fist over her heart. “I could not go back without you.”

“Then come back with me now.” You offer her your hand once more.

Her smile is bright. “Is this a choice or an order, my Lady?”

You chuckle softly, shaking your head at the gall – the bravery – of her. You are the Queen of Nightmares and yet Dima does not flinch. Perhaps that’s because she knew you before your death. You don’t frighten her and you don’t want to. She was your first friend, after all.

“A choice, Dima.”

The rainfall starts to lessen. “Then I choose to accept.”

*

50 years later…

(1972)

This is your third time visiting Fawney Rig. The second had been a rushed visit after you felt Jessamy’s death. It had been like an arrow through your lungs. You brought yourself to the cellar and demanded Morpheus allow revenge—if not for him then for Jessamy.

You were bound to Corinthian’s promise to not harm Roderick. But, you could harm others. You could make them all suffer for their foolishness. You could make Roderick miserable. But, you wouldn’t do it without Morpheus’ blessing. He needed to balance the scales. He needed to owe you his life, or something close to it, so that you could truly be equals.

Yet, Morpheus did not speak to you.

That had been about fifty years ago—give or take. It was time to see if the Dream Lord’s stubbornness had finally eroded. The snowfall is light, though thick piles rest on the pine like bruises. You choose to feel the cold. You let it push through the weaves of your wool coat and prickle against your cheeks and nose.

You reach for the doorknob and your fingers freeze in mid-air, straining against an invisible force, before omniscience wraps itself around you. They’ve warded Fawney Rig from me, you think with a furrowed brow. It was Corinthian, of this you have no doubt.

“Cowardly little nightmare,” you mutter to yourself, though you are a little impressed. It’s been decades since you’ve seen Dream, yet Corinthian is afraid of you, and worried that you’ll find a way around the promise that was made. “Smart,” you concede, blinking snowflakes from your eyelashes, “but cowardly.”

You reach out to Dream through the ambiguous, void-space of one mind talking to another.

“I do not expect a reply, Lord of Dreams, but I’d like you to know that they’ve warded the mansion against me.” You pause walking the perimeter. “So, even if you wished for my help, I could not give it.”

The magic surrounding Fawney Rig is well-crafted, tailored, and not even your various shape-shifted forms can penetrate it. You circle towards the entrance.

“It’s snowing. The moon is full.” You don’t know if Dream can hear you, but it feels nice to try. He rejects all of your ritual daggers, but perhaps he will take this instead – insignificant details of the world that he loves from the Goddess he revived.

“I’ve always had a fondness for nights like these. The world is gray and white. The moon is like a silver coin in the sky.”

You crumple powdery snow between your fingers. “You know, the mountains were my favorite place in the Dreaming. They still are, if we’re being forthcoming about it. I’ve yet to visit them again. They remind me of...solitude and serenity, the clarity that comes from being a distance.”

You pull a novel from the inner lining of your coat. There are hours before the next shift change and you want to see if the guards perform any rituals during the transition. You are curious to discover if you can break these bonds.

The hours whittle away as you speak to Dream, mind-to-mind.

“I heard about Roderick’s death. It could’ve been crueler. Should have been.”

“I would’ve driven him mad, if it had been me. I would have plagued him with visions of his dead son until he freed you with broken, bloody hands.”

“I ran into your sibling, Desire. About…” You count the years in your head. “Thirteen years ago? I asked if they knew I’d die if I returned to the Heart Tree and they said they had their suspicions.” You scoff. “Which I believe means yes. You likely know them better than I, so draw your own conclusions.” You idly wave your hand as if brushing the story aside.

You disliked being set up as a pawn in an emotional chess game between ancient, cosmic entities. You had told Desire as much and were seething when you turned your heel and said, “Leave me out of it next time.”

You aren’t a pawn, anymore. You look after the Dreaming. You look after mortals—especially young, scared children, like that little girl with the dog—regardless of whether or not they provide offerings or prayers. You don’t like to get involved in their messy, dramatic, and short mortal lives, but you like to watch them. You like to see how the threads of fate unravel and twist unexpectedly.

In time, you know that ‘The Morrigan’ will eventually reach the collective consciousness, but you just don’t yet know what new stories they will tell.

“I’ll return when I can.” You rise to your feet from where you had been sitting in the snow.

“Why?” His voice scrapes through your mind like gravel. Your knees buckle and you catch yourself on the manor’s brick wall. The cold air bites through your lungs. You want to live inside the roughed caress of his voice. A sweeter sound never made, you think, as you try to calm your heart.

Your heart hums. “Nobody else listens half as well as you do.” You touch your forehead against the wall and the Ward stings your skin.

“Until next we meet, Morpheus.” The promise lingers in the air among the snowflakes.

[violetnerves]

The Rise and Fall of Jenny Hopkins, aged 15: Bully Genderbend Au/Rewrite. Chapter 1, Part 1:

So this is Part 1 of an au/rewrite I've been working on for a bit... And it ended up getting out of hand because I ended up hitting over 12000 words just for Chapter 1 alone.

As a result, I had to split Chapter 1 into 2 parts, and even after that, both parts ended up being over 6000 words. It seems like a lot to me personally, but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, here's a summary of the au:

In this Au/rewrite of Bully, Jimmy Hopkins is instead Jenny Hopkins, a 15 year old girl with a history of delinquent behavior. She exhibits some symptoms of Anti-Social personality disorder, even being diagnosed by a therapist with Conduct disorder.

The female cast has been expanded a bit, and some of the existing female members have been fleshed out a bit more, some of the male cast has been given some care too. As a rewrite some things have been changed about the Canon story, partly to fix a few plot holes and issues with the original that may have been caused by the original games rocky development history, though not to the point where it's unrecognizable since I do enjoy the game's original story, despite it's many faults.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy what I've written so far.

Part one of Chapter 1 starts under the divider. I'll also be posting the story on AO3, under the account: BlueEclipse7573

Total word count: 6565

Content warning for violence and strong language. If there's anymore I should list, please let me know!

'Here we go again'

I was laid back in the backseat of my stepfather's rental car, staring up at the roof. It felt as though we'd been driving for days, even though it'd been a 1 hour trip to Bullworth from the hotel at most.

"Jenny..." My mother spoke up, trying to get my attention after i'd decided to just ignore her for the whole trip. "...Please say something," her tone was aggravated at this point, annoyed that she was being given the silent treatment by her own daughter.

Yet again, I didn't want to bother with a response.

It's not like I wanted to be mean to my mom, but it was the nicest thing I figured I could do to protest against getting sent to yet another Boarding school while my mother ran off for the year with yet another one of her flings.

The silence, aside from the noise of the car, would continue on until my new step-father, who was old enough to be her mother's father, decided he was going to parent me despite the fact that I'd only known the old guy since last week, when we'd first me during my mom's wedding.

"Speak to your mother, Jane..."

*'Oh, please'*

"What? Who are you? Mom, this creepy old guy is talking to me, I think he might be one of those 'perverts' you've warned me about," I replied. Granted, the new guy - whatever his name was, mom went through men like one of those revolving doors you see in fancy and expensive hotels, so I never really bothered to catch his name - surprisingly hadn't been creepy around me, at least compared to the other men mom decided to have relations with.

Mom always did have shit taste in men.

Mom groaned, clearly being driven up the wall by my attitude at this point.

"Jenny, please be nice to your new step-father. He's not a 'pervert'."

I sat up.

"Yeah, you might be right, but he's not really doing himself any favors with the whole 'fat, old, and balding child molester' look he's got going on."

The old man sighed, and mom turned her head to look at me, her mouth twisting into a snarl. I wasn't phased, I was used to it at this point. The older woman looked like a clown with how overdone her makeup was, with her dark purple eyeshadow and lips covered in a cheap waxy red lipstick, and with a foundation that barely matched her actual skin color.

She looked so old and trashy with all that crap on her face.

"That's enough! I've had it with you, you little brat. All I want is a little peace and quiet with my new husband, and you insult him!" Mom wailed, setting a manicured hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Now look what you've done, you've upset your mother!" The old man growled. "I've got half-a-mind to beat you..."

I frowned, giving him a clear stink eye.

I knew it. Just another phony. Just like the others.

"I doubt you would, i'm sure you only do that kind of crap to the women dumb enough to marry you."

The two adults gasped.

"I can't believe you, you little monster! We'll deal with you when we get back from our honeymoon... next. year..."

Mom had left it at that, much to my relief.

Getting into arguments with mom never made me feel good, even if I did enjoy pissing off whatever awful man my old woman decided to bring into her, and therefore our lives. I didn't want our relationship to be so bad. She was my mom after all... So why couldn't she just act like it for once?

It was sooner rather than later when the car slowed to a stop, and I looked out toward the large, foreboding entrance to the school I'd be stuck in for an entire school year.

The entrance to the school was a large, old-fashioned, dull red and white stone archway, the red color clearly faded a bit with time and wear. Chipped into the stonework near the top of the structure were the words "BULLWORTH ACADEMY." The dark Iron gate doors were wide open, yet I couldn't help but think they looked the complete opposite of inviting. Like a fancy jail cell.

"Finally..." The old man sighed heavily with relief.

*'Yeah, feelings mutual you shriveled old bastard'*

"Here we are, young lady, Bullworth Academy, just the kind of place a girl like you needs."

I pushed open the car door, grabbing my purse on the way out. I didn't even bother to spare a glance at the two adults behind me in the car.

"Have fun, Jenny! I'll think of you from our cruise ship!"

Mom giggled in response to her new husband's goodbye, but all I could give was an eye roll in response.

"Whatever," I muttered, shutting the back car door behind me.

The car revved, and the vehicle left the property entirely. Against my better judgment, I turned and watched as it drove off the premises.

I couldn't help but wince, accidentally letting the hard, emotional barrier I'd built up over the years crack a little.

"Mom, why'd you marry that phony? What is wrong with you?" I asked no one but myself. A question that already had an answer, and one I'd asked so many times before.

Mom married that old fart for protection, for money, and just because she wanted to. Getting a good husband for herself and a good father never was a factor for her to consider, not with how much of a revolving door her love life was. I hadn't been a priority to her for the last 10 years. It was always going to be just *her* needs.

So what *wasn't* wrong with her?

"I can't believe this..." I said to no one. A lie, really. One I'd said way too many times.

And I'd probably keep saying it for as long as I lived.

I was so caught up in wondering why I still wanted to defend my mom from her own awful decisions that I hadn't noticed the clicking of heels against concrete slowly growing louder.

"You must be the Hopkins girl,"

I jumped and turned, taken aback.

"Huh? Where'd you come from?"

It was a woman who was doing a bad job of looking younger than she actually was. She wore a dark, long-sleeved dress shirt with a matching pencil skirt. Her hair was done up a bit, curled up into rolls at the ends. In general, the woman had a very... old-fashioned look to her, as if the act of stepping out of my stepfather's rental car had sent me back in time a few decades.

"We've been expecting you, welcome to Bullworth Academy... (sigh)," the well-dressed woman said, putting an odd emphasis on the word Bullworth as well as raising and dropping her arms in a slow, dramatic arc as she did.

*'So weird'* I let the thought hover a bit.

"I'm sure you'll be happy here, very happy indeed..." She shrugged, "Anyway, I can't spend my life waiting around for naughty little girls... I've got a *man* to make happy"

*'Yeesh, you already remind me of my mother. That can't be a good sign.'*

"The Headmaster is expecting you Hopkins, in his study,"

"Ok, I'll go see him then," I replied. I then immediately turned and walked in the opposite direction of the school.

"Oh no, no, no, his study is over *there* girl, in the main building?" The over dressed woman adruptly mentioned in a hasty manner. I frowned and turned back to the woman, who pointed a finger towards the largest building on campus.

"Right... my bad ma'am." I tugged on the strap of my purse, silently annoyed that I wasn't able to get away with fleeing and hiding out until the school year ended.

It's not like mom would've noticed if I'd done that anyway.

I walked in through the entrance to the campus, already feeling like a trapped animal despite the gates still being open.

"Don't keep Dr. Crabblesnitch waiting, he's a brilliant man... brilliant..."

The gates behind me closed, and along with it, my one chance at freedom.

The woman took off without me for some reason, and I was left to just look around the area.

In front and to my left and right were two other buildings, both two stories tall.

However, I was stopped in my tracks by a group of three male students, all of whom seemed to be lacking the sweater vests that they should have been wearing. Their dress shirts weren't tucked in and instead left to hang out. They weren't even wearing slacks either. Instead, they all wore denim jeans for pants. Were they even following the dress code for this place?

They crowded around the middle of the two routes to what I could see were the two dorms, separated by gender.

It seemed they immediately noticed me as well, eyeing me down as fresh meat, clearly noticing I wasn't wearing the uniform.

Well, things were already off to a good start. I was still near the frigging entrance!

That *had* to have been a record.

The one in front, a white blond with a pimple problem, but an oddly charming smile approached me. The two behind the blond were backing him up, a dark-skinned black guy with a rather enthusiastic tone of voice yelling excitedly at the blond to "put the new kid in an armbar" and another white guy, except he had brown hair, as well as slightly tanned with a slingshot sticking out of his front pocket. He was quietly looking over the situation, It's like he was scheming hard about something, and I had a feeling it couldn't be anything good.

I was short, even for a girl, standing at barely 4'10. So despite the blond probably being average height for a guy his age, that still meant he had the height advantage. Same for the other two guys, who were a bit shorter than the blond but still obviously taller than me.

But that didn't mean much, in my opinion. I always felt the saying, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall" was accurate for a reason.

And if he didn't want to back off, "blondie" here was going to learn why pretty damn quick.

"Hey, new girl, a pretty face like mine is expensive to care for... How about a little dono to help keep it lookin' good?" He stuck out a slightly calloused hand, palm up and in my face. The other two boys behind him chuckled as if the whole thing was just a practical joke to them. One that "I" was the butt of.

I spared a glance at his open hand and then up to the face of the boy it belonged to.

"Wash your face first fucko. You've got the little dipper growing out of your forehead," I mocked, hissing the sentence out spitefully and glaring up at the taller boy. The grip on my purse tightened a bit.

My response made the blond drop his smile. I was white-knuckling the purse strap at that point.

"Eh! Wrong answer!" the blond reached for my bag.

Friggin' idiot.

Before he could react, I grabbed the arm that was reaching out for my bag, tugging him forward. I drew my head back and slammed it on his jaw, sending him falling back as I let go of his arm.

The two boys behind him yelled something out - a name, "Trent" or something - but before they could retaliate against me, I ducked away and sprinted off in the direction of the main building.

On the way, I bumped into a few students, earning a few insults and curses thrown my way. Luck was on my side, though, as a student exited the school building just as I neared the main door. I ran in while the door was still open, and it slammed shut behind me. I let out a breath, stepping forward into the large room.

A few students had taken notice of my adrupt arrival, but only for a few seconds, because they quickly went back to their daily routines just as soon as they had stopped.

*'...I guess that could've gone worse...'* I thought, heading up the stairs and into Dr. Crabblesnitch's office.

The first room I entered into was weirdly dark, with the only bit of light coming from the ceiling of the other room, which looked to be Crabblesnitch's main office. I took a few steps inside until I was in the other room, catching Crabblesnitch's attention soon after.

The light above turned out to be a skylight set into the ceiling, illuminating the room in the sun's natural yellow glow. There wasn't any sign of artificial light in the entire room, which... gave me a few thoughts, the first being of how cool it'd be to take pictures in here. The second thought was of how comforting this place should feel... yet I couldn't help but feel so uncomfortable and tense. That clearly wasn't a good sign.

"Ah, yes, so you must be Miss Hopkins," the older man said, gesturing for me to take a seat on one of the chairs lined up right in front of his desk.

I sighed.

"Uh huh," I said, hoping to get out of this room as soon as possible.

Crabblesnitch's brow furrowed, clearly annoyed with my overtly informal reply.

"What? 'Uh huh', what?"

I grumbled quietly.

"...I meant 'yes sir'..."

"Very good, now let me see..."

I sat down as Dr. Crabblesnitch brought out a folder nearly bursting with papers, which were the documentation of my record from the last 7 schools I'd attended along with some police reports. I thought it was impressive how thick the folder was. Anyone else probably - rightfully so maybe - might've felt a bit of shame looking at it... but not me. You couldn't pay me to care really.

So it wasn't surprising that the papers pretty much smothered Crabblesnitch's desk, covering the fine maple in a sea of white. As well as some red and black, due to the pen ink on the papers.

Crabblesnitch feigned a gasp, dragging his finger over multiple spots on different papers.

"My, my, Miss Hopkins, you've done a lot of naughty things, haven't you? Vandalism, graffiti, bad language, violent conduct, disrespecting staff, a shoplifting charge, and is that..." He motioned to a particularly large bit of red writing. "Arson? Oh, I'm absolutely terrified of *you* Miss Hopkins!" Dr. Crabblesnitch concluded, feigning fear much like that gasp from earlier.

"Aw c'mon, give me a break. That last one was an accident..."

Aside from everything else. Arson was probably the one I *hadn't* meant to do, oddly enough.

Crabblesnitch didn't appear convinced.

"Regardless, I don't think I've ever met a girl like you, never in all my years! You must be the rudest little girl I've ever encountered!" He lowered himself down to meet me eye-to-eye. "Tell me, Jane, why should I waste my precious time on *you*?"

I shrugged in response.

"I dunno."

Dr. Crabblesnitch stood up straight.

"Because it's my calling! It's what I do!" The older man pointed at Jenny. "*You* excel at causing trouble..." He gestured to himself. "And while my expertise is in fixing little boys rather than little girls, I'm sure my methods could work on someone 'butch' such as you, eventually you'll be the respectable young woman that you're meant to be! I have a good feeling about you, Miss Hopkins, I'm sure you and I could grow to be great friends..."

*'Sure, whatever you say.'* was my first thought. Okay, not really. My first thought was actually: *'Did he just call me 'butch'? What does that even mean? That's a name, isn't it?'*

Regardless, I was able to see through this guy like glass. I was sure the Dr's definition of a "respectable woman" was probably a few decades passed.

I was starting to see a pattern...

"Now, you keep that nose clean girl, or I'll scrub it raw myself if I have to!" He turned to the open door of his office. The clacking of heels caught my attention, so I turned to look as well. The lady who'd met up with me and abandoned me at the gate earlier strutted through the door, a serving tray with a tea kettle and a matching tea cup set in her hands. "Ms. Danvers?"

"Yes, Headmaster, and I've got your tea..."

"You are good to me, Ms. Danvers"

"No more than you deserve... Headmaster," Ms. Danvers said demurely, setting the tray down on a nearby table.

*'Ugh, i'm gonna hurl. Might get me in trouble, but that's better than whatever i'm sitting through right now.'* I shifted in my seat a bit, looking away.

"Ms. Danvers, would you kindly take our new friend Miss Hopkins here to the girl's dorm so she can be properly attired?"

"Certainly Headmaster," Ms. Danvers turned in my direction. As she did, her expression instantly changed from pleased to something akin to a disgusted sneer. Like she was addressing a bug she'd accidentally stepped on. "Come along, girl. I haven't got all day,"

I stood up, but before I could finally leave, Crabblesnitch addressed me one last time.

"And remember, young lady, you will have a clean nose, so keep it clean; or we'll do it for you."

As I left Crabblesnitch's office, I pondered at my current situation.

*'So, here I am at the worst school in the country, whose alumi are nothing but arms dealers, serial killers, and corporate lawyers. Real scum. And that out-of-touch old creep thinks he can tame me? We shall see my friend, I only give people what they have coming to them'*

Oh, that's good, that's something I'll have to remember to write into my diary later. I stuffed it in my suitcase for safe keeping, which was *hopefully* put into my dorm room.

Ms. Danvers and I stepped back into the school's main office.

"Go, run along to the Girl's dorm, young Hopkins, i'm far too busy to deal with you." Ms. Danvers abruptly said, much to my confusion and a little bit of anger..

"Weren't you supposed to take me there? Like Dr. Crabblesnitch told you to do?" My mind thought back to those boys from earlier. I didn't doubt that they would try to harass me again, especially after what I'd done to their buddy.

"The girl's dorm is the first building to your right when you enter the school. I'm sure you can find it on your own. You'll have plenty of time to get unpacked as your schedule is still being set up due to your mother's inability to send in your admission slip on time. Now, get a move on, little miss." Ms. Danvers replied, pretty much ignoring the question.

Well, there went my security.

I struggled not to flip off Ms. Danvers on my way out as I left the building. On my way out I saw a group of well dressed guys who all simultaneously radiated an air of smug get into a fight with what I could only guess were a few background characters from the movie Grease.

What the hell was wrong with this place?!

*'Just gotta get to the Girl's dorm, and I can keep my head down till lunch. Seems like a solid enough plan to me.'* it wasn't like I had classes to go to, at least not until tomorrow, or, if I was lucky, the day after maybe; Until then, just keeping a low profile was the best option.

As I made my way down the steps, I noticed two of the bullies from earlier walking my way, the karate obsessed one and slingshot kid. Without hesistation, I began speed walking back to the large circle walkway near the entrance, the middle area separating the two dorms. In my haste, I figured going right was correct, going off of memory of what Ms. Danvers had told me minutes earlier. I mean, shoot, my memory couldn't have been that bad, could it?

*'Ms. Danvers said something about going right, so i'm going right. Screw it'*

It was only when I reached the front of the building that I realized I'd fucked up my directions. I could clearly make out the words, 'BOY'S DORM' above the entrance to the building.

The blond, Trent *if* my memory was correct - considering how I ended up here, I was justified in having my doubts - who had tried to shake me down for money earlier stood in front of the steps leading to the dorm's entrance. His lower lip was swollen and turning a nasty shade of red and purple. He was joined alongside two redheads - auburn on the right and maroonish in front of the two - dressed similarly to him on the stairs leading up to the Boy's Dorm.

"It's her! That's the new girl who did it, Wade! I'm gonna end up relegated to backstage duty for my next play because of her!" Trent motioned at me, then to his throbbing, already starting to redden lower lip as he addressed the leading redhead.

"YOU'RE GONNA GET IT WWIIMMMPPP" the other red haired boy to the left practically shouted out. I wasn't sure if the guy lacked an inside voice or if he was just *really* that mad about what I'd done to his buddie's lip.

"You're dead, new kid, DEAD!" The redhead who'd been referred to as "Wade" shouted, making his way down the steps with his fists up and at the ready.

I backed away and turned, ready to sprint away again. Instead, I found that there were 4 other people behind me. There were the two other boys from earlier, the karate kid and Slingshot blocking off the entrance along with a black haired boy with a hell of a black eye on his right eye in the middle of them, though he looked a bit nervous. I knew he was with them, though, with how similarly he was dressed, with the white school button up with jeans look.

Then there was the last member, and she probably stood out the most, even though she was clearly with them given her outfit. She was a blonde, like Trent; and while that probably didn't necessarily mean they were related, the way she smiled certainly matched the same one he'd had earlier. She had those... weird emo kid hairstrips, the ones with jagged purple and black stripes. Her button-up shirt was open, and under it was a black spaghetti strap undershirt.

Her makeup was all fucked up, streaks of eyeliner haphazardly swiped under her eyes onto her cheeks as well as on her lips, which had some purple lipstick on peeking out from underneath all the mess. It was like she'd done her makeup while she was in the middle of a mental breakdown, just swiping and swiping until she'd finally felt satisfied.

She wore striped arm warmers and even though she wore jeans to match with the other boys, they were noticeably ripped to the point where the right pant leg was just gone, cut off to probably the beginning of her thigh. Underneath that was a pair of thigh-high socks, similar in color to her hair strips and arm warmers. Her shoes were a pair of Chuck Taylor shoes, yet again, the same color scheme to the aforementioned other articles of clothing she had.

She still had the school issued skirt and tie, but even she'd managed to put her own... unique touch on how she'd worn them. The skirt was tattered, not really exposing anything since she wore jeans, but I was surprised she was bold enough to just wear them destroyed like that. Then there was the way she wore the tie, which had me all kinds of confused. She had it in her hair, using it as a hair tie to pull some of her long hair into a side ponytail.

It was kind of difficult not to notice and point out all the oddities of her outfit. It was just... all out there.

She held up a video camera and pointed it at me. Great, so she thinks she's gonna record me getting my ass kicked? Nice, real nice. What a goddamn joke. I was just gonna be a part of something her and her buddies would laugh at later.

"Yeah! Get her! Get the new kid!" the karate obsessed boy jeered.

*'Damn it, mom, why'd it have to be this school?'* I thought as Wade began to get closer and closer.

"You jerks are really pissing me off! That's not something you wanna do, I'm only gonna tell you once! Screw off!" I carried myself and threatened him in the most intimidating way I could. A part of me knew it wouldn't work, though. It rarely ever did.

It wasn't fair. People always just had to pick on me, and for what? For what goddamn reason?! Why was I some kind of target for people to pick on?!

"A bit late for that bitch! Now put up or shut up and i'll beat your ass!"

I grabbed at the strap of my purse, letting it slip off my shoulder and fall to the ground.

What right did these jerks have to push me around? What dumb justification did they have? It was probably some bullshit about them being sad or something, as if that gave them any right...

I scowled, stepping forward towards the taller red-head.

Well, no more. These guys were clearly asking for it, so they were going to get *exactly* what was coming to them. I'd make damn sure of it.

I didn't notice the growing crowd forming behind the bullies blocking my only exit. Mainly students lured by all the commotion going on. I hardly heard the yipping and yelling of the crowd, my anger and frustration causing it all to merge together into some incomprehensible mish-mash of sound.

Wade took a step toward me, getting within a distance where he could hit me; instead, my fist cracked against his face, and the sound of my knuckle hitting spongy skin made an unpleasant sound. The force caused Wade to stumble back. His body barely turned 180 degrees before he fell back. His body hit the stone ground, and, for a moment, it all went quiet aside for the sound of me exhaling angrily.

Trent and Troy looked down at Wade's knocked out body in surprise, then looked up at me. It wasn't long until Trent blurted something out.

"Grab her Ethan!"

Behind me, Ethan grabbed at my arms, clearly trying to restrain me, but I realized he wasn't that much taller than me, so I retaliated by headbutting him. I whipped around, realizing that it was the Kung-fu kid from earlier. I threw a hard punch at his gut, and it was enough to double him over.

With my back turned, Trent took the opportunity to grab what little hair I had on my head and yank me back, followed by him pinning my arms while Troy prepared to punch me in the face.

Bad idea.

I ducked at the last second, and instead of Troy's fist hitting me, he'd accidentally socked Trent in the jaw instead.

"OH NO, I DIDN'T MEAN TO-"

Trent let go of me, and I kneed Troy in the crotch. Returning the favor, my fist met the middle of Troy's face. I got a bit of a thrill as I felt some of the bones of his nose crack from the force. He screamed and fell over, his nose already gushing.

I backed away, now facing the rest of the jerks who were stupid enough to mess with me.

2 down... 3 more to go. Trent, black eye kid, and Slingshot.

The three came at me all at once. Black eye kid tried grabbing for me.

"Nobody beats on Tom's frie-AaagGGGHHhhh!"

I kicked the kid, whose name was Tom, apparently, hard in the groin. I slammed my head on the left side of his face, subconsciously hoping to give him another black eye just for being stupid enough to grab me.

Slingshot grabbed me, and I took Tom and shoved him at Slingshot, causing the both of them to topple over. Slingshot kid hit the ground rather hard, and with the weight of Tom, he was knocked out.

Then there were just two, me and Trent.

He caught me off guard. Trent threw a punch at my face, and it connected. I stumbled back, and he hit again. That time it was a kick to my gut.

I found myself stumbling back a bit, but rather than that screwing me over, instead I ducked his punches. Trent was a lot taller than me, and I knew an easy way to use that against him.

I backed off, ducking to avoid both his punches and kicks. This only agitated him further, and he tried to get closer.

Before he knew what I was doing, I charged at him. I ducked, wrapping my arms around his waist and tackling him to the ground. He couldn't even act, freezing up as I laid punches on his face and chest. I was nearly out of breath by the time I was done.

Eventually, Trent stopped resisting altogether, head lolling to the side as the only sound he made was some pained groans.

I stood up, and only then did I notice the crowd blocking the entrance.

Every single one of them was shocked, and for a moment, their reactions had me a bit giddy. Especially the other Bully girl who was dressed weird, who was still filming *everything.* She appeared as if she wasn't sure if she should still film everything or not.

I was tempted to laugh until I heard a familiar voice behind me.

"Y-You! Bitch! Once I'm- I'm done with you! You'll be drinking from a straw!"

Behind me, Wade yelled, and I turned around just as he swung for my face clumsily, as if my earlier punch still had him a bit dazed. I grabbed his arm, forcing him to turn.

A smirk crossed my face knowing what I was about to do.

With Wade's back to me, I grabbed his jeans and gave him a wedgie, causing him to squeal in a high pitch. I kicked him in the lower back for good measure, and the combination of the kick and his dazed state caused Wade to lose his balance, and just like when I'd slugged him in the face earlier, he fell and knocked himself out on the concrete.

And then it was all over.

I turned to Trent, and just to rub salt in the wound, I snorted and spat a wad of snot and spit on him.

"That's what happens when you screw with Jenny Hopkins! Who's your momma! Yeah!" I raised a fist to the air in triumph. Sure, my face kinda hurt and I was sure it'd bruise like hell, but hey! Things were actually going my way for once! I totally taught those jerks a lesson!

The crowd at the entrance began murmuring, and while I didn't catch what everyone was saying, one sentence stood out to me for whatever reason.

"Wow, what an idiot. Russell isn't going to like this." One of the more snobbish, uptight voices in the crowd spoke, giving me pause.

I waved it off, and spat back.

"Pft, who's Russell? I'll kick his ass too!" I said proudly. I'd already beaten all these guys. How could another dude be any more trouble?

My newfound confidence proved to be short-lived, however, as I began to feel the earth shake from beneath me.

An Earthquake? In New England?

No, that couldn't have been it, did they even have earthquakes in New England? What else could it be?

Whatever it was, it couldn't have been anything good, judging by how the crowd that surrounded the entrance to the Boy's Dorm just seconds earlier seemingly vanished without a trace, including the weirdly dressed girl.

A loud, ear shattering bang of wood hitting stone sounded behind me.

I twirled around, my usual squinted eyes now wide open in *bafflement* at the sight of the possible missing link in human evolution that she'd kept hearing about from those Bigfoot hunting shows.

At the top of the steps to the Boy's Dorm, an overly large ogre of a - Adult? Teen? I couldn't tell - student, judging by the uniform, stood as tall as he was wide, his frame taking up the entirety of the double door frame. He took one look at me, and then the group of boys laying prone on the concrete.

If this was a cartoon, I was sure there'd be steam pouring out of his ears. His face was redder than a chili pepper from rage.

He yelled, literally roaring as if he was some kind of beast instead of a man... boy...

...Whatever...

"YOU'RE DEAD, NEW KID! DEAD! ROAARRR!"

*'Fuck my life.'*

The brown haired beast rushed toward me, and for the first time in forever, I was stuck in place and couldn't move.

His fist met my face, nearly knocking me off balance. I felt a hot fluid spray out of my nose from the hit, and my hands clasped my nose immediately after, coming back colored in a dark red that contrasted heavily with the light freckled skin of my hands.

I yelped, stepping back as the beast roared again and beat his chest like a goddamn gorilla. Before he could unleash another blow, however, a voice I didn't recognize yelled from behind me.

"Russell! Russell, no sir! Back off of that girl at once!"

I turned and saw as a thin, young adult woman with yellowish blonde hair ran towards Russel and I, getting in between the two of us. She started grabbing at my shoulders firmly as a way to get ahold of me and away from the much bigger boy in front of us.

My nose blood trailed down my mouth, and I tasted copper - A taste I was all too familiar with - as I looked to the woman who was now focused on Russell.

"That'll be enough of that young man! I know your mother taught you better than to lay your hands on a fellow student like that!" The woman who couldn't have been that much older than me barked to the boy who towered over her. The over developed brute didn't give much of a reaction. In fact, it didn't seem like the kid even had much of anything going on upstairs.

Yet he complied, stomping back into the Boy's Dorm, like a well-fed bear returning to its cave to hibernate for the winter.

I sniffed, looking up at the woman.

A teacher that actually gave a shit for once? It was like I'd found a 4-leaf clover... or something like that.

When the woman turned to me, her face looked like she'd been on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment. Yet when she spoke again, her voice was weak and quiet, but not really wobbly like you'd usually notice from somebody about to cry.

"Oh dear... Your nose is bleeding... I really ought to take you to see the nurse for that, it could be broken..." She pointed at the main school building, to the left door next to the main entrance. "The nurse's office is just right there."

I shook my head.

"N-no, it's fine. I know what a broken nose feels like and what I've got... isn't it." I said, blowing my nose and feeling a bit of blood ooze out. To say I was familiar with having my nose broken would be like asking me if I was familiar with eating. Or breathing. "I just need a napkin or tissue, whichever one I can get a hold of."

The lady still looked a bit worried, but she didn't hesitate to dig into the satchel she had hung on her shoulder. She brought out a small pack of tissues sealed in a plastic wrapping, opening it and offering some of them to me.

"Here, you ought to make your way into the Girl's dorm. It's the building just over there. Mrs. Peabody is inside, and she'll make sure you're taken good care of. She looks after the girls here in Bullworth Academy."

She stuffed the remaining tissues back in her satchel as I tore and stuffed the pieces of it up my nostrils to block the blood flow. I felt and looked dumb, but that was better than getting blood everywhere.

Begrudgingly, I thanked the blonde woman, and in response, she gave me a smile. It was... rather nice. But I didn't give much of a response other than a nod. Adults tended to be two-faced and phony, and for all I knew, this was just gonna be something temporary.

"Oh no need to thank me, miss, I'm just doing my job." she gave me a pat on the back, which simultaneously felt a bit patronizing... but also kinda nice.

Huh, it looked like she really was just a nice lady. At least something was going good for me today.

"My name is Dr. Lamb, i'm Mrs. Peabody's aid as well as the school's guidance counselor. We'll probably be seeing a lot of each other from now on," Dr. Lamb looked around at the bullies who were currently writhing around in pain on the ground. I noticed she had a frown on her face, which made sense given what she had to deal with now... thanks to me no less.

"Go ahead and get yourself settled over in the Girl's Dorm. Mrs. Peabody might be a little strict, but she genuinely does care for the well-being of all the girls here in the Academy. I'll just take these boys over to Nurse McCrae."

I looked around and only then really took in the carnage I'd caused. Trent, Wade, and the rest of their buddies were sprawled out all around us. At least two of them had a bloody nose, and the kid with the thick Brooklyn accent had a tooth knocked out and a small trickle of blood trailing down his lips. Yeesh, I might've headbutted him harder than I thought. Wade's underwear peaked out of the back of his pants as he laid face down, clearly stretched out from the wedgie I'd given him.

I felt like grinning, but I felt that'd probably upset Dr. Lamb. She'd already been so nice to me, fucking up her opinion of me by being my typical snarky bitch self would suck.

"Yeah, I'll just get going... Thanks Dr. Lamb..."

I looked to the Girl's Dorm, only to notice her, the girl from before who'd been recording everything, running back to the scene. I'd been prepared to beat her ass like I'd done to her friends when she just bumped into me, running past *without* apologizing and yelling:

"Guys! Don't worry, I've got my healing crystals!"

A chorus of groans came from the boys lying down, and I stifled a laugh before making my way to the Girl's dorm properly.

[crysdrawsthings]

Okay, this moment in the False Gods with Horus introducing Mournival to Petronella.

While they were wrestling Torgaddon so he will not tell a joke about damn bear again. With Loken specifically holding Torgaddon head under an elbow.

Amazing. The gift that keeps on giving. The most epic "behold... My friends!" moment imaginable.

[rayshippouuchiha]

Yamada: so how did you and izuku start dating

Aizawa: I saw him crush a watermelon with his thighs and I accidentally said out loud “oh god I wish that were me right now” and here we are now

~The way this immediately and completely ate my entire brain~

Of three things Aizawa Shouta is absolutely sure:

One, he simply was not built for operating during the daylight hours. Nighttime really is where it's at in his opinion. The general lack of crowds and eye-searing sunlight just can't be beaten. (Dusk and dawn hours also get a pass but they're both on thin ice.)

Two, the beach is a sandy hell-scape whose only redeeming factor is the convenient access it provides to the eldritch horror that is the ocean aka the place he'll doubtlessly end up drowning himself when he finally, and according to Hizashi inevitably, snaps and runs gibbering mad into the abyss.

And three, he's absolutely and irrevocably cursed. He's being singled out and punished from on high by the gods themselves. His name is writ large across the cosmos in mockery. There is a cosmic "kick me" sign taped to his spiritual back and Shouta's going to hunt his former student Sero down and give him detention for life for encouraging his family's patron god to put it there.

By this point it's really the only logical explanation.

Which, as a card-carrying atheist, he's pretty sure is saying something about the depth of his feelings regarding his current circumstances.

Because there's no other explanation for why or how he's managed to find himself in this current situation.

The situation being, of course, Shouta, in full hero gear, standing in the hot sun on a pristine sandy beach, surrounded by screaming fans as he provides extra security and crowd control for the 20th Annual Heroic Sukiwari Charity Drive.

Shouta has seen hell and it is both Ms. Joke's open mic night and this exact moment right here.

Because, again, he's absolutely 100% cursed.

And the avatar of said curse is, obviously, his soon-to-be ex-best friend who somehow roped him into this entire thing.

Because some people say divine retribution when talking about cosmic revenge plots but Shouta tends to just says Yamada Hizashi. The two are, in many ways, interchangeable.

Shouta's going to put purify salts in all of Hizashi's hair products and also his sugar jar and possibly his energy drinks the next chance he gets.

Because if he never sees another shirtless pro-hero or another watermelon again in his life it'll be too soon.

He's pretty sure he has permanent hearing damage from all of the screaming and screeching the crowd's been doing since this thing started.

And if, after all these years of friendship with the personification of a megaphone, watching a bunch of pro's crush watermelons with nothing but their personal strength on a beach to raise money for various charities is what finally destroys his hearing Shouta is going to shave Hizashi bald before he finally embraces sweet death.

Or enacts Nezu's birthday plans and becomes a supervillain.

The jury's honestly still out at this point.

Shouta does his best to shut out the screaming behind him as one of the cameramen slides up beside him, getting a better angle on the stage as Hizashi, who's currently screeching about Miruko's performance, practically dances across the sand in front of where Shouta's standing.

"Wow, wow, wow," Present Mic chants as he dramatically fans himself, "that was one on heart-stopping, hare-raising show. Let's give it up for everyone's favorite bad, bad, bunny, Miruko!"

For her part, Miruko just struts off the small stage with a nonchalant wave to the crowd, her tiny white bikini in place and the pulverized remains of the half dozen watermelons she'd dropped kicked into soup left behind her.

"But don't lose that rhythm yet listeners," Mic announces gleefully. "Because we've got one more hero set to take the stage! So, without further ado, it's the moment I know a lot of you have been waiting for, myself included if we're being honest. The pièce de résistance of our little shindig, the showstopper himself, the one, the only, the #1 Can Do Hero Dekiru."

The crowd is absolutely deafening.

And, for once, Shouta has to grudgingly admit that he can't actually blame them.

Shirtless, sculpted shoulders and tight abs on display thanks to his low sitting and almost criminally short green swim shorts, and with his trademark bashful smile in place, Dekiru trots out from behind the curtained-off area with a crate of watermelons resting on his shoulder like it's no big deal.

Shouta's pretty sure someone to his immediate right faints but considering they're not currently a trample risk he ignores it.

But the casual show of strength with no quirk use in sight is more than a bit impressive.

For all that people, romance specifically, and attraction in general, have all been things to be considered on a firm case-by-case basis for Shouta, even he has to admit that Dekiru is ... captivating.

Rather drastically so for Shouta considering he's never actually met the man before in person.

Though Shouta does feel like he almost knows him on some level considering the fact that it really would take an act of the actual gods to get Yagi to shut up about his erstwhile protege during staff meetings.

Dekiru waves his free hand at the crowd as he sets his crate of watermelons down on the stage.

"Show us what you've got!" Mic demands from a few feet to Shouta's left. "And let's give him some encouragement listeners!"

The crowd starts up a loud and steady chant of "De~ki~ru!" as the hero pulls his first watermelon out and begins his set.

With an effortless flex of muscles, Dekiru digs his fingers into the watermelon and wrenches it completely in two.

Shouta reaches up to tug at the top of his uniform, relishing the small sip of cool air it grants him.

Shoulders and biceps flexing, another watermelon meets its end between Dekiru's palms.

Shouta really needs to add a water bottle to his utility belt because hydration is important. Or so he's been repeatedly told.

"Those hands, those muscles," Mic groans dramatically. "He really is the Can Do Hero!"

Cheeks noticeably flushed, Dekiru sits down on the stage and fits a watermelon between thick, toned thighs.

His hips twist, those thighs flex, and the watermelon cracks, spilling juice and sweet pink flesh all over Dekiru's lap.

"Oh god," Shouta can't help but say, "I wish that was me right now."

On stage Dekiru's eyes go wide as his attention somehow abruptly zero's in on Shouta.

It's at that moment that Shouta becomes aware of the deafening silence that's fallen over the beach.

Head-turning agonizingly slowly to the left, Shouta's confronted with the sight of Mic, microphone in hand, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

His sunglasses are askew and he's staring at Shouta with a look on his face that's one part horror and one part unholy glee.

As a matter of fact, the entire beach is staring at him in much the same way.

For a moment Shouta just freezes, body going still at having so much attention turned in his direction.

This ... was not the turn he was expecting the day to take by far.

His first instinct is to, honestly, use his scarf to slingshot himself directly into the sun so his soul can be cleansed with cosmic fire.

But then ...

"Ah," Dekiru speaks up from on the stage, one hand ruffling the back of his hair and cheeks darker than before, "maybe we could go on a date first though? If you'd like?"

There's suddenly a part of Shouta that doesn't actually want to delete himself from existence via self-immolation.

And there's an even large part that doesn't want to outright reject Dekiru's seemingly sincere offer.

Because, when it all comes down to it, Dekiru seems to be, by all accounts, what passes for exactly Shouta's type.

Whip-smart if his very public arrest record and tendency to argue online and on the air with people he disagrees with is anything to go by.

Cute, with that dark green hair and sharp undercut, matching wide eyes, and a face sprinkled liberally with freckles.

Leanly built and small enough that Shouta's sure he could move him around easily but obviously muscular enough to be able to put up just the right amount of resistance in the right situation.

And, above all else, if the stories are to be believed, obviously some degree of batshit insane.

More than one story Yagi had told during breaks had Shouta questioning if the man had imported special American demons back to Japan and then stuffed them all into the deceptively charming and approachable-looking hero that is Dekiru.

So there's really only one logical way to proceed forward in this situation.

Shouta grins.

Several people in the crowd around him step back.

He's pretty sure he hears someone start reciting a prayer.

But Dekiru just blushes, eyes locked on Shouta's and teeth tugging at his lower lip.

"Hope you like coffee," Shouta finally says into the breathless silence that's fallen over them, "and cats."

Dekiru lights up, a smile brighter than the sun and twice as deadly blossoming across his face.

Just off of Shouta's side, Hizashi's busy having some kind of hysterical seizure.

Around them the crowd is going absolutely feral.

Yagi's going to birth actual kittens in the middle of the staff room when he finds out about this.

Shouta can't wait.

[4ragon]

Any Simon Blackquill thoughts?

Bro you have no idea how many thoughts I have about Simon Blackquill.

I keep saying this, but I used to hate this dude a lot. I went into Dual Destinies with a lot of spoilers, but I hadn’t realized that Simon Blackquill was just a dude convicted of murder?? Prosecuting?? For some reason??? And again, DD was that game that really liked to stretch the limit of my tolerance. I get that they retroactively make it work like they do with every other ‘pushing the limits’ plot twist they’d take away at the last second, but at the time, it was just one more “Oh okay, they’re just going to not care about making sense” to add to the pile. It was stupid! And Simon was a mean asshole, I didn’t get him. I didn’t get why people cared about him. Sure his backstory was sweet but what was the point of what he was doing anyway? I didn’t get it.

And for a while after I finished Dual Destinies, that was kind of it. He was a frustrating presence, and he was boring and bland, and I didn’t care for him.

And then I replayed Dual Destinies with some friends, and I realized: Oh? Wait. This guy is genuinely kind of funny????

Like. Simon Blackquill is really funny. He’s funny! He talks like a fucking ye olde samurai for literally no reason, and the things he says make no sense. He switches rapidly between angry no-nonsense asshole and “Ah Yes Your Baldness That Man Is A Ghost” and then he just up and leaves in the middle of court to go for a walk??? Like. He’s unhinged and weird and I appreciate that.

So that was it, right? He went from Bland and Uninteresting to Funny. Maybe that was enough. Surely there wasn’t more to it than that, right?

Listen. You guys. I think Simon Blackquill is my favorite prosecutor.

He’s got all these layers to him. There’s this angry no-nonsense ruthless prosecutor, who is dangerous and scary, who threatens people who annoy him, who has this short fuse. And then he’s refusing to respect a single person he talks to like some sort of petulant, sulking teenager, calling the judge Your Baldness and lounging backwards at the bench and falling asleep during a very boring testimony. And he laughs at his own jokes even if they’re bad, and he loves that fucking bird so much, getting angry and menacing when someone said “Birdbrain” in a derogatory way. Guys, he was So Stoked To Kill A Whale. And for what??

And then you add into the mix the fact that he’s on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.

Like. How much of how he presents himself was a defense mechanism of a scared young man who had to pretend to be a ruthless murderer at all costs? He had to be this violent, scary monster because the moment he stopped was the moment the jig was up, the moment he failed. There was not a person alive who knew that he was innocent, other than Athena and the Phantom, and the fact of the matter is, there was no instance where Simon could let that facade drop even for a second, probably even for himself.

Like he had to have been terrified to let his guard drop with anyone. For one, as a man who was supposed to put criminals in prison, being this ruthless scary monster was probably his biggest defense he had in prison. And conversely he couldn’t even drop the act around people he trusted if he had any hope of convincing them he murdered his mentor in cold blood.

And he was so ready to die for Athena, too. He was so close to his execution. And he had to keep pretending, keep building these walls around his heart just to save one girl from taking the blame. He’s an asshole, and I wonder how much of that was a conscious effort to drive people away? How much of it was him not wanting to hurt people by getting close to them, and how much was him not wanting to hurt himself? I feel like he did desperately want to be saved, wanted to cling to life, was terrified of what was happening, but anything that could possibly give him that hope was also just as quickly going to damn Athena, and he couldn’t even let himself care about that, or about his own personal wellbeing, since after all, he himself was throwing all that away anyway. All he could do was cry in private, letting his tears stain his face but not even caring enough to wipe them away.

I’ve said it before, but the Simon who went to prison and the Simon who was released from prison had to be two different people. He spent so much time becoming the Twisted Samurai and facing his own mortality that so much of who he was had to have been warped and twisted just to survive, just to keep himself together until he could be sacrificed for his mentor’s child.

There’s clearly so much trauma wrapped up in him. And yet there’s still this twisted humor that he thrives on. He fucks with the other inmates by greasing the floors, he asks Apollo if he wants to come back to his prison cell for the night for Some Fucking Reason and then has to write fucking Lines like a middle schooler. He’s trying to squeeze all this humor out of his shitty taste of freedom as he hurls himself off a cliff, while still being an uncooperative asshole to everyone around him.

Shit, dude, I love Simon a lot. I love characters clinging so desperately to these facades they create to protect themselves. I love characters who are so desperately lonely and still lash out to keep people away from them. I love it. I love it so much.

And I love that he’s a little more chill in SoJ. He’s reconnecting with some old friends, eating at restaurants he used to love. He’s still spending time with Athena and growing past the horrible shit he’s been through. And he’s still this smug, uncooperative asshole, butting heads with anyone and everyone he physically can, but there’s no longer that air of “A dying man recklessly wringing everything he can out of the last year of his life,” now he’s just enjoying being an asshole. And you know what? I think he’s earned it.

There was an artbook or something that described pre-prison Simon as polite and reserved. I do like to think there was a mischievous side to him too, especially given the fact that he had someone like Aura as an older sister. But he was just a polite, gentle soul who had to twist himself into something horrible just to get through to the other side. And now he gets to heal and grow, and get a new chance at life that was taken from him for seven years.

Shit. I can’t believe how much I’ve grown to care about this shithead.

[khaleesiofalicante]

You know? "Hello" is getting kinda boring, so now I will say hi and something in a different languaje every time :) I got the idea and now its canon (Also, please correct if I use the words wrong) So...

Ciao!!! Spero che tu abbia passato una bella giornata🧡❤️ Facciamolo!!

I'm liking Amari...🥺

"She had grown up in a better world. Because of Uncle Alec." YES. My boy is beautiful!!!

I literally hate Kyle so much...

SELENA IS A BADASS!!

I love Amari 🥺💙

Seraph baldes not working??? This isnt good

Ragnor paled at that. “The Lightwood cousin?” (I cant 😂😂)

Ragnor is such a mood!! Also love how he loves Selena 💜💙

“I won’t tell the Consul you are the admin of the Alec Lightwood group chat.” “You have no proof!” Amira grinned.  (OK, when can I marry her???)

Michael!! I need a ship name for them!!!

Shit. Now I'm worried. What will happen if Alec goes to Idris??

Idk why but Jace training with Lexi is so fucking beautiful!!

The pain again!!! My heart is already broken all over again...

"He had wanted to set the world on fire and burn with it." I JUST WANT THEM TO BE OK!! 😭

Now that we see the context of the chaotic room scene, it has a different twist...

Jace is a fucking amazing father!!

Clace🥺🥺 why is this hurting so much??

“Thank you, Luca,” Clary replied and turned to him. “What did you do?” (the fact that they are adults and have been married for years, yet its the first question in Clary's mind is awesome 😂)

Uwevkwke so many Clace feelings!!

"It couldn’t possibly be fine. I watched them burn a part of it on a pyre yesterday." 🥺😭

No. No no no. Is it.. It cant. Alec?? Please let me be wrong!! Shit. It clicked in me a second before!! NOOO!!  Dani you really know how to connect the dots and create a plot twist all at once!!

“Honestly, I don’t know why I am shocked at this point. We knew this was coming.” Ok, I got to admit I did laugh at this😂 Also, SAME!!

I love Gigi!!!

Ugh why do they have to go through this??? I want to wrap them in a blanket and hide them!!

Roman!! We are seeing Roman!! Yessss. I literally screamed 💙🥺

Ok, Max apologising to Jackson. I needed this!! Yup, he seems really bad at hugs 😂 I love the silent agreement. I really like this dynamic

"Brother David" This. This is the dead of me.

Elyaas??

I... I'm confusion. This is too much. Wow. I need a moment. Who is waiting??? Nskwkdbd what???

So, in a nutshell: Alec is not only going to die if he goes to Idris, he is sick. Roman will appear and someone is waiting for Max in Edom. Yup. I'm scared

Love it💙💙Arrivederci! Ci vediamo la prossima settimana

I love this idea! Your creativity (and love) amazes me 🥺💙

I'm excited to see what language comes up next 😂

Gentle reminder that ily and wishing you a wonderful weekend!!!!

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: 12 Snoke Facts You Might Not Know

https://ift.tt/2Tc5xc4

Set up in the first half of the Sequel Trilogy as a powerful new Star Wars villain, Supreme Leader Snoke of the First Order turned out to be something else entirely. Despite fulfilling the role of Emperor Palpatine in The Force Awakens, he’s completely off the table by the end of The Last Jedi. And in The Rise of Skywalker, the galaxy is only big enough for one galaxy-conquering villain as Kylo Ren’s fall shows.

By the end of the trilogy, Snoke is revealed to have been a bio-engineered villain all along, Force-puppeted tool Emperor Palpatine used to regain his grip on the galaxy while hiding his weakened physical form on the Sith planet of Exegol. His triumphs no longer truly his own, Snoke’s ultimate legacy is the rise of Kylo Ren as well as legendary motion capture actor Andy Serkis’ performance. 

As we look back at Snoke’s short tenure as the big bad of Star Wars, here are some facts you might not know about Supreme Leader Snoke: 

1. Snoke Was a Strand-Cast Created by Palpatine

Emperor Palpatine created Snoke to be his proxy through which he could regain his power. Although Snoke was bio-engineered in a lab on Exegol, he was a strand-cast, not a clone. This bit of Star Wars jargon means Snoke isn’t an exact copy of anyone, but isn’t natural-born either. We’ve heard the term “strand-cast” before. In The Mandalorian, Kuill speculates that Grogu might be a strand-cast — a speculation which turned out to be wrong when Ahsoka revealed Grogu grew up in the Jedi Temple. 

Palpatine’s ultimate plan was to use Snoke as his voice to whisper in Kylo Ren’s ear. It was one of several ways he was working behind the scenes all along to build the First Order — itself just a shell for the new Empire being built on Exegol. With his own clone body decrepit but his spirit still strong in the Force, Palpatine could possess other people but was looking for a permanent new vessel. 

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

Snoke was likely born from these experiments but was too imperfect a vessel to house Palpatine’s spirit. There were other candidates, like the strand-cast who became Rey’s father. But since the process that created strand-casts could not reliably replicate Force-sensitivity, Palpatine’s “son” was not Force sensitive. It was another dead end. The Sith lord next turned his attention to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker.

This strand-cast/cloning storyline shares several plot points with the classic Dark Empire comic series, where Palpatine bided his time until he could come back in a younger, stronger clone body and re-create the Empire.

2. Snoke Wasn’t Aware of His Own History

Unlike Palpatine’s strand-cast “son,” Snoke didn’t know he was created in a lab by the Sith lord nor that he was being manipulated to rebuild the Emperor’s forces. In fact, despite being created some time after the Battle of Endor, he believed to have lived through the rise and fall of the Empire.

All of this is revealed in the novelization of The Force Awakens, in a twist that might actually have been a result of The Rise of Skywalker not having been written or planned out yet. But his status as a Sith sleeper agent fits with Palpatine’s plan, too. Snoke truly believing that he himself was really a dark Force user who had lived through the Galactic Civil War likely prevented Ben Solo/Kylo Ren from sensing the deception throughout his time as Snoke’s apprentice. Palpatine needed Snoke to believe the lies he told Kylo Ren so that he could more easily manipulate the fallen Skywalker.

3. Hugh Hefner and Snoke’s Injuries Informed How Serkis Played the Character 

Andy Serkis rose to fame as the motion capture performer behind Gollum’s creepy mannerisms in The Lord of the Rings, quickly becoming well-known for injecting unique life and personality into monstrous characters. For Supreme Leader Snoke, Serkis drew from “the gold-lamé Hugh Hefner look,” the shining robe evoking the Playboy magazine founder. Serkis says he and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson also considered drawing inspiration from “so many different dictators,” but settled on the uncanny Hefner idea. 

Snoke’s visual appearance was still being finalized when Serkis joined J.J. Abrams to work on the character for The Force Awakens. Therefore, the actor developed his ideas about the character at the same time as the artists were developing theirs. In The Last Jedi, Snoke finally appeared in the flesh as opposed to as a hologram, allowing Serkis to draw even more from the villain’s grotesque physical appearance. 

Serkis says he imagined Snoke’s deep scars were the source of some of his anger. “He’s terribly powerful, of course. But he is also a very vulnerable and wounded character,” Serkis told EW (via io9). “He has suffered and he has suffered injury. The way that his malevolence comes out is in reaction to that. His hatred of the Resistance is fueled by what’s happened to him personally.”

4. His Look Was Based on Classic Horror Movies 

According to the book The Art of The Force Awakens, “J.J. [Abrams] and [creature effects supervisor] Neal [Scanlan] didn’t want him to be old and decrepit, like the Emperor,” said senior sculptor Ivan Manzella, who sculpted a maquette of an elderly, bald face for Snoke. Early ideas made the difference even clearer by making Snoke a female character. 

The final result did look a lot like Palpatine, though: a hunched old man with a face distorted by deep wrinkles and scars. Manzella, who also made the final sculpt, says that Abrams wanted his look to evoke Hammer Films horror movies (such as classic takes on Frankenstein and Dracula). In particular Peter Cushing, who played Victor Frankeinstein and Abraham Van Helsing in several Hammer movies, was a direct inspiration. 

Manzella also added what he felt was a sense of beauty to the character: “I imagined him to be a beautiful marble sculpture, so dark and menacing, but actually quite beautiful to look at … It’s almost like Snoke was quite handsome when he was younger.”

The Frankenstein comparison is especially apt since Palpatine and his Sith cultists built Snoke themselves.

5. Snoke Is Not a Sith Lord 

You may have noticed that Snoke does not have the “Darth” title like the Dark Lords of the Sith do. He was never given one because he isn’t technically a Sith Lord. But the fact that he’s a bio-engineered being created by Palpatine explains why his training of Kylo Ren followed the Sith mold so closely, since all along Palpatine was trying to manipulate Ren.

During the time of The Force Awakens, many fans theorized that the next film would reveal Snoke to be Darth Plagueis, the Sith master who taught Palpatine the ways of the dark side. Plagueis was interested in extending one’s lifespan through the use of the dark side, so an old man with mysterious origins could very well have been him. This theory didn’t pan out. 

6. Rian Johnson Felt Snoke’s Presence Distracted From Rey and Kylo Ren’s Stories

The fan theories didn’t line up with what The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson had in mind for moving the Sequel Trilogy cast into the future. In a conversation with EW (via Collider) Johnson explained his reasoning for knocking Snoke off the Sequel Trilogy’s chessboard.

“When I was working on the character of Kylo, I came to a place where I thought the most interesting thing would be to knock the shaky foundation out from under him at the beginning of this movie…By the end of this film, he’s gone from being a wannabe Vader to someone who is standing on his own feet as a complex villain taking the reins.”

But if Kylo took the reins, where would this leave Snoke?

“That made me realize the most interesting thing would be to eliminate that dynamic between the ‘emperor’ and pupil, so that all bets are off going into the next one. That also led to the possibility of this dramatic turn in the middle, which could also be a really powerful connection point between Kylo and Rey.”

Instead of focusing on Snoke’s history, Johnson found Kylo Ren’s ongoing story more relevant and felt killing Snoke was necessary to push his former apprentice’s arc forward.

7. Snoke Chose Ben Solo Because of His Skywalker Blood

Speaking of the Sith, Snoke may not be one, but he is interested in the lineage of one of the strongest Sith of all time. He chose to corrupt Ben Solo specifically because he was the grandson of Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were perhaps too ingrained in the light side and too dedicated to the cause of the New Republic for Snoke to manipulate them, but the mercurial and directionless Solo was the perfect target. Using Ben’s obsession with Darth Vader to turn him further to the dark side was a relatively easy task for Snoke.

In the comic series The Rise of Kylo Ren, we learned how Snoke began reaching out to Ben from an early age– and another comic, Age of Resistance: Supreme Leader Snoke, also fills in some of Snoke and Ben’s history. Before the events of The Force Awakens, Snoke spent a lot of time planting seeds of distrust between Ben and his uncle and teacher Luke Skywalker from afar, all while biding his time on a space station with an expansive garden, where Ben flees for guidance after the destruction of the Jedi academy. 

Read more

Movies

10 Best Star Wars Villains Ranked

By Megan Crouse

Movies

Star Wars: 15 Palpatine Facts You Might Not Know

By Megan Crouse

Some time after this, Snoke took Kylo Ren to the Force cave on Dagobah from The Empire Strikes Back to experience a vision. There, Kylo kills an illusory Luke, but stops short of killing his parents. But Snoke encourages him to use his anger, fear, and other emotions associated with the dark side to complete his training.

The visual dictionary for The Rise of Skywalker shows how deep Palpatine’s plan went. It says Palpatine intended killing Snoke to be the mark of Kylo Ren’s full descent into the dark side and rise into Sith-hood. Snoke’s death was in a way a symbolic killing of a Sith master — it’s traditional for the apprentice to kill the Master — while Palpatine himself remained alive and well to take over as Kylo’s new master. A final, decisive victory over the Skywalker bloodline.

8. Snoke Trained At Least One Other Apprentice Before Kylo Ren

According to the The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, Snoke canonically trained someone else before Ben. Little is known about this mystery apprentice. We don’t know the person’s name, when this took place, or how it connects to Palpatine’s overarching plans. The existence of this apprentice is implied by Snoke’s description of Kylo Ren as his most gifted apprentice, suggesting there must have been someone else to compare him to. 

In the Age of Resistance comic, Snoke also mentions that he plans to have more apprentices after Kylo Ren is gone. But Ren cuts that plan short in The Last Jedi.

9. Snoke Had At Least One Earlier Run-In With Luke

The facial scarring and collapsed cheek Serkis talked about might have been created by Luke Skywalker. In The Rise of Kylo Ren, Ben Solo alludes to “what Master Luke did to you.” But Snoke is more interested in Ben’s conflict with Luke. 

What happened between Snoke and Luke is still unknown. It’s possible that whatever confrontation led to Snoke’s scars was also the first time Ben met Snoke. 

10. Snoke Played a Key Role in the Empire’s Transformation into The First Order

Since Palpatine had to hide his weak clone body from everyone except his secret Sith acolytes, he placed Snoke in charge of the day-to-day growth of the First Order. Through his own lackeys, General Hux and Captain Phasma, Snoke spearheaded the new stormtrooper program that captured and indoctrinated children, building a military force powerful enough to go against the New Republic. And behind the veil of the Unknown Regions, an uncharted sector of the galaxy where the New Republic held no dominion, Snoke helped reorganize what was left of the Empire into the First Order, eventually becoming its Supreme Leader. 

Snoke’s Attendants, the purple-robed aliens seen briefly in The Last Jedi, are also part of this initiative. They are the ones who helped the Imperial remnant settle in the Unknown Regions, using their abilities to blaze hyperspace trails that made First Order conquest much more efficient.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

11. Snoke’s Flagship, The Supremacy, Is the Only Ship of Its Kind

Snoke’s flagship was ripped in half by “the Holdo maneuver” in The Last Jedi, a strong blow by the beleaguered Resistance. Along with being the site of Snoke’s throne room, the Supremacy also contained enough factories to produce entire fleets for the First Order.

In fact, it was the base of operations for the entire First Order, which did not have a capital planet but instead maintained their military superiority from space. Technically, the Supremacy was a Mega-class Star Destroyer and the only one of its kind ever made. 

12. Snoke’s Ring Contains a Relic From Darth Vader’s Castle

Snoke was a collector of Sith relics and secrets, traveling around the galaxy in search of knowledge, settling on his Force philosophy, and collecting things before he recruited Ben. It’s unclear how much of this Sith pilgrimage really happened versus the memories implanted by Palpatine, but it does appear that Snoke did actually discover the lost concept of a Force dyad, which he used to bring Rey and Kylo together.

He also discovered many dark side artifacts. One detail that’s easy to overlook in The Last Jedi is Snoke’s ring. The gaudy gold ring contains a hunk of black crystal. The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary defines this as obsidian from the catacombs beneath Darth Vader’s fortress on Mustafar. The ring also features “gold etched with glyph of the Dwartii.” In both canon and Legends, Dwartii is a planet which is home to several different schools of philosophers. 

The post Star Wars: 12 Snoke Facts You Might Not Know appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3BVdLGO

[vsullivan]

Lucky 7 | Steve Harrington x Reader - pt. 2

WARNING I haven’t finished season 3 yet, I’m on chapter 7 and am savoring the episodes so I’m trying not to binge them. But I’ll be writing more don’t worry! Sorry if I make plot errors. Also, I want to make it a point not to really describe Seven’s physical appearance (other than clothes, and I’ll probably make references of her having hair but not really describing the haircut), I feel like leaving it ambiguous really helps readers envision how they want Seven to look and I want everyone to feel included :^)

  Father had made it very clear to her that these memories she’s seen are not her own. They are not hers to act on, nor hers to replicate. She is simply recounting these scenes and relaying them back to the men in white coats. And for a long, long time, she complied to these rules.

 Chapter 2: Mall Trip

 Father had made it very clear to her that these memories she’s seen are not her own. They are not hers to act on, nor hers to replicate. She is simply recounting these scenes and relaying them back to the men in white coats. And for a long, long time, she complied to these rules.

 Another power of hers that Father discovered was the ability to force others to perform actions against their will or knowledge – just from a simple gaze. As she does to view memories, she can grasp that tendril and give the individual tasks that they will execute without question. She had not realized this discovery caused others to become wearier around her, for Father was an expert of concealing the truth. However, she did notice that she was forced to wear her eye mask more often, and the men in white coats began to wear sunglasses during experiments. When she asked the reason why, Father simply stated “For your safety.” She didn’t question it.

After her first successful attempt of controlling someone’s actions, similar experiments were thrown in amongst the usual memory exploration. She’d been told to make someone tie their shoes when they were wearing sandals; to make a bald man to brush the hair he did not have – simple tasks that would be unusual for the individual to do of their own will. Eventually, she grew bored of these experiments, and when she expressed this she was scolded and harshly dragged to her room.

When she was alone, she sometimes dreams of having a family who hug and smile at her without that layer of fabric that prevents her from seeing those eyes full of love and arms that stretch out to embrace her. She would use the faces of mothers and fathers she’d seen in others’ memories, of siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, all to dream of her having the same simple life. She began to envy family life of individuals’ whose minds she explored.

And when she grew older, she began to envy their freedom.

-         

Seven already accomplished her first task of begging Hops to borrow his ride to the mall. It was a struggle each time, because despite him having taught her to drive a vehicle, the thought of her, without a license or any real identification whatso-damn-ever, scares the pure hell out of him. However, those puppy eyes get him every time, and he always winds up tossing her the keys, a frown on his face as he warns her to “Don’t kill yourself, my car, or others. In that order.” That makes her smile every time too.

 Once, Seven met Steve and Nancy’s ex friends from highschool. The girl, who had a pretty face but a nasty mouth, commented on how ‘good will’ Seven’s outfit was. At first, she didn’t know what that meant. Her response was to smile and utter a thanks, while the ex-friend’s face contorted into a look of confusion. The male who accompanied her snickered, eyeing Seven up before stating “Cute, but yeah, you look piss poor.” At that, Seven’s smile fell and she noted how Nancy’s gaze turned heated as she stared at the two degrading her new friend.

 “Let’s go.” Nancy said as she took ahold of Seven’s wrist, guiding her away from the mocking that ensued as she was pulled away. “Have fun with Nancy The Slut Wheeler, hobo.” The male shouted after them, and Seven’s couldn’t stop herself from turning back to meet the boy’s gaze. She grasped ahold of that tendril, and next thing you know he poured the slushy he’d been holding over his head and slinging the remnants on his companion who squealed in response.

 “What the fuck, Tommy!?” Once Seven looked away the boy snapped back to his senses. He made an “Oof” sound as he was smacked in the gut. “I-I don’t know, what just happened?” He stumbled over his words, the girl beside him began to berate him as he fumbled over how to explain what the hell just happened.

 Wiping the blood dripping from her nose, Seven smiled as she listened to the two’s heated discourse, knowing full well Nancy had the same little smirk as she continued to drag Seven away from the scene.

 From that day on, she never thought to change her wardrobe. Not only did she not have any money aside from the spare change Hops would give her to treat El to some snacks and pizza, but she really liked her oversized sweaters and faded denim jeans, thank you. Sometimes she did wonder if Steve also thought she looked like she’d come ‘straight outta good will,’ but he’s never given any indication that he did. In fact, he once complimented her on one of her father’s old leather jackets she’d worn to one of the group’s monster hunting meetings. She would never not appreciate Hops’ hand-me-downs, even if they were way too damn big. She made downsizing her clothes a hobby anyways.

              With that notion, she didn’t bother to change her outfit before hopping into the car and starting her drive to the mall. As always, she drove five miles under the speed limit – something Hops trained her to do. However, she always wondered why the cars behind her honked sporadically and drove only a centimeter distance between their vehicle and her own. When she asked her dad he said, “Don’t worry about it, they’re the ones that wind up in the ditch.” And because she didn’t want to wind up in a ditch, she sometimes drove another five miles below when the road was crowded. For some reason, this made even more honks sound in the distance.

She parked as far away from the building as possible, fearing someone might scratch the car up – or something that would undoubtedly get Hops’ panties in a twist. Turning off the engine, Seven sighed, anxiety had been building the whole ride there – and not solely because of the stream of honks that followed her during the drive. She threw her head back against the seat, her heart pounding as she envisioned the same chipper grin he’d given her the beginning of the summer, despite the red of his cheeks that she later discovered was a result of embarrassment. The kids told her that he was embarrassed of his uniform, but she herself thought it was adorable – she’d never seen that kind of outfit before, and really didn’t know what a sailor was until someone explained. When he first shouted “Ahoy, young lady.” Her eyebrows furrowed and struggled finding the words to respond with. When Steve’s face flushed an even brighter red, the kids she’d came with snickered.

She closed her eyes and spoke a silent promise to herself; I will not embarrass myself. I will not embarrass Steve. I will not be the cause of Robin calling him a dingus. As a matter of fact, I will not go in the store. Her eyelids then fluttered open, finally grabbing onto the handle of the car door and getting out the mini sauna it quickly became under the summer sun.

Marching to the automated glass door of the building, something that still fascinated her to this day (although this time she did not feel compelled to step in and out of the building to entertain herself for thirty minutes before Hops found and asked her what the hell she was doing). Her pace quickened as she strode across the brightly lit store fronts, her eyes staring straight ahead. Her mission was Scoop’s Ahoy, and it wasn’t long before she neared the neon ice cream signs and slowed her pace.

Wanting to relish her drive-by, she slowly carried herself across the space, side eying the interior of the store. A frown found its way to her lips when she didn’t see that beautiful big head she’d come all the way here to see. Actually, no one was at the counter. Disappointment settled in the pit of her stomach as she passed the storefront all together. Sighing, her pace slowed even more as her gaze drifted to the floor. That is, before she her name being called.

“Hey, Sev!” She recognized that voice as Robin’s. Looking up, said girl strode to her, a big grin on full display. “Come to see your favorite dingus?” She winked, causing Seven’s face to heat up. “N-No, I-“ She stammered, “I-I was just passing by.” Robin hummed as an eyebrow of hers perked up. “Oh really, where were you heading exactly?” It took more seconds than it should have for Seven to come up with an excuse, for she really didn’t know any of the names of the other stores in the mall – she hadn’t even been in any aside from Scoop’s.

Robin giggled at Seven’s struggle, a knowing look present in her gaze. Seven didn’t even need to grasp a tendril to know what the girl was thinking. “Right-“ She cooed, the playfulness in her tone rising drastically. “Well, I had just gone off the girl’s room, but now I gotta get back to work.” She then stepped forward and turned her head back to Seven. “You know, the dingus is here too. Why don’t you come say hi?” She winked once more before scurrying back into the store, likely a tad late after her extended break.

Seven’s stomach flipped repeatedly, knowing Robin would undoubtedly declare her presence to Steve. The mischievous teen would likely tell him that Seven seemed to want to come to Scoop’s Ahoy specifically, and she worried if she didn’t show then he’d wonder if she didn’t want to see him – which she did, very much so, but also didn’t want him to think she wanted to very much so. Oof, she really needs to work on how to counter Robin’s tricks.

Taking a breath, Seven exhaled as she leaned her shoulder against the nearest wall. She might as well get it over with. Then, she lifted herself and took her time walking towards the neon signs once more. Her heart was racing as she turned her head to peek in, and she was instantly greeted with the big grin on Robin’s face and a head of hair with a white little sailor’s cap on top sticking out from behind an ice cream display shelf.

She watched as her friend said something Seven couldn’t hear over to the same sailor hat wearing figure looming next to her. Next thing you know, Steve’s pretty face came into view, a grin of his own tugging at his lips as he spotted Seven still peeping inside. Her stomach was doing summersaults as she dared to step into the store, but his smile still coaxed her in. Once she was near the counter, he rejoiced, “Ahoy there, pretty lady.” He spoke, her face flushing at the compliment and her heart racing from just being within the same room as him. “You too.” She said too quickly, immediately regretting her choice of words as her blush spread.

However, it seems as if he’s gotten better used to her anxiousness. “Why thank you,” His eye contact never faltering. “My bad day just got better.” She smiled and added, “Why’s that?” Robin snickered then, shaking her head as she began looking over the register. Steve threw his coworker a quick scowl before turning back to Seven, the smile back on his handsome face. “Well, seeing a pretty girl like you always gets me back into the swing of things.” Seven’s smile grew wider, and he noted to himself that he needed to compliment her directly, otherwise it goes right over her pretty little head.

“You made my day better too.” She added, now picking at the buttons of her shirt to try and relieve some of that nervous energy. “Oh really,” He quirked a brow, “You know how this day could get even better?” She picked her head up from where they were focused on her anxious fingers to that endearing set of brown eyes that looked back at her. “What?” She asked sweetly. “If you would be so kind as to accompany me to a movie at-“ Suddenly, the shout of his name caused Steve to look past her, Seven turning to see too.

A set of pearly white teeth, curly brown hair, and what seemed to be a boy scout uniform greeted them as the boy waltzed his way right up to the counter next to Seven. It took Steve a moment to double back to reality, slightly annoyed by the interruption, but he couldn’t stop the grin from forming as he shouted “Henderson! I missed you buddy.” Seven smiled as she watched the two reunite. Hugs ensued before Dustin turned to give Seven a hug of her own. “Missed you too, Sev.” He said, and she smiled. “Same her.” She stated, not noticing the way Steve looked at her and younger boy – a mix of contentment and slight, and I mean very slight, jealousy written on his features. He’ll have to get back at the little shithead for interrupting him asking out the girl he’s been trying to score a date with for nearly a year.

Sensing that she should probably leave to let the boys catch up, she backed away and cleared her voice. “I’m really happy to see you again, Dustin.” The boy grinned at her before she turned to look at both Steve and Robin. “And you two, but I guess I should get going.” Steve nearly sputtered as she turned to walk away, Dustin throwing him a bamboozled look as the older boy nearly toppled over the counter to reach out to her.

“Oh, wait uh, hey!” He called out, causing Seven to stop in her tracks. Steve swallowed nervously as he watched her look at him in surprise. “Do you, do you-“ It took him a moment to think, “Uh, want to go with the movies with me tonight?” He said, a nervous smile gracing his lips. “It’s a comedy!” He added, and she smiled back at him, and he braced himself for another round of anxious rejection she always served him.

However, this time nothing stopped her from saying what she always wanted to. “Of course,” She stated simply, “What time?” Don’t be fooled, her heart is about to burst from how fast its beating and she even surprised herself with how she so easily accepted his proposal. His eyes widened, bewilderment adorned his face from the surprise acceptance as his brain scrambled to answer back.

“Hm, how about 7?” He grinned, mentally patting himself on the back at his smooth recovery. She nodded quickly, this time she knew better than to answer back as if he was saying her name instead of a time. “That’d be great!” Hearing that, he had to resist the ‘hell yeah’ that resounded in the back of his mind as he said, “I’ll pick you up around 6:40 then.” She nodded once more, sealing the deal and neither of them could be happier.

“Wow, so you finally got that date, huh?” Dustin sounded once Seven had left the store, his arms crossed as he watched Steve continue to stare in the direction in which she left even after she’d already disappeared. “Uh, um, yeah.” He snapped out of his thoughts and turned to his good friend who seemed annoyed, yet happy for him at the same time. “I’m impressed,” Robin suddenly stepped in, apparently Steven hadn’t notice her go in the back and get the white marker board that presented “You Suck, and You Rule” on either side.

There were at least 10 tally marks on the side of “You Suck,” all of which indicated how many times he’s tried and failed to get Seven to go out with him. But now, finally, he watched as Robin slowly opened a marker and mark that first tally under “You Rule.” She smirked as she put the cap back on.

“Now let’s see how many more you can get, if any.”

              Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Tag list: 

@a-girl-who-loves-disney <33 

idk what happened i tried to edit the post and then everything was gone rip. 

[captaindaddykru]

Top 5/Bottom 5 Kudos Fics

tagged by miss emily @arysafics​ herself and obviously i do whatever she wants me to so here we are.

What are your five most popular works by kudos (in descending order)?

we’re only alive if we bruise - arrow, 996 kudos

Felicity wasn’t really sure what to expect when tall, dark and armed walked into her office all the way down in the IT department, but it sure as frick wasn’t a marriage and a pack of trained Russian assassins escorting her at all times.

uhm yeah, little cringey reading it back but bratva!oliver still has my heart

we both pretend (but i know that i start where you end) - the 100, 878 kudos

"You’re not like, going to ask me to shave my head, too, right?” “God no.” She squints her eyes at him like she’s imagining it. “You’d look like a giant--fat, bald baby.” / Or, Octavia's pissed the thing her brother and best friend finally bond over is the fact Clarke has cancer.

not an accurate portrayal of cancer as i’ve had people scream to me about in the comment section multiple times, but at least it has a happy ending!

i would give my life just to hold your hand (i’m your number one fan) - the 100, 607 kudos

Wells: an OSCAR winner is hyping you up, C, free of charge

Clarke: He’s not just an Oscar winner. He’s also an asshole

Raven: is that why you two have been DMing for months now?

Or: He was an Oscar winner, she writes song for a living. Can I make it any more obvious?

loved writing this one but did NOT think it was gonna get the hype it did. honestly my most liked one i think

break up with your girlfriend (i’m bored) - the 100, 547 kudos

"Isn't she dating that TA? From the history department? The hot one?"

Clarke must still look confused, because Raven rolls her eyes, adding, "Octavia Blake's brother?"

"Right," she answers, a beat too late, her friend too intoxicated to notice. Clarke vaguely knew Bellamy Blake. Monty was her lab partner in bio, and he knew Jasper, who in turn was friends with Octavia, whose brother was him. She even took a class with him serving as the TA last year; remembers arguing with him on more than one occasion; remembers having heated discussions about the renaissance, semiotics, the social significance of La Gioconda; remembers he was somewhat ridiculously attractive.

So yes. Vaguely rings a bell. Yet, she doesn't see what he has to do with any of this. Then her eyes widen slightly. "You want me to—"

"Steal her man," Raven fills in, pointing a lean finger at her. She thinks it's directed at her anyway. Then she's back sipping on her drink.

OR: The logical thing for Clarke to do when some succubus on campus screws her over is to let it go, be the bigger person, let karma take care of it. Yet, there she is. Trying to platonically seduce it's boyfriend while still trying to remain morally correct.

yeah iconic tags and to think this was all borne out of my hatred for echo

too good to be all mine - the 100, 524 kudos

Clarke hesitates, then licks her lips, hastily urging, “Let me give you my number, in case she needs me, or you have to go home or something.”

He presses his lips together, and she just knows he’s trying to keep a smug smirk from breaking through on his face. “Better late than never.”

When an one night stand doesn't stay an one night stand, but instead you're suddenly kind of raising your adopted three year old together and you're trying to make a move but you don't know how.

jesus. very bad summary. did not think this fic was as good as people seem to think it is, but alas. happy they like it.

What are your five least popular works by kudos (in ascending order)?

venus, planet of love was destroyed by global warming - the 100, 9 kudos

In a world tainted by darkness, Harper meets Monty.

fic written for a competition

now the movie never ends - glee, 11 kudos

Quinn Fabray, captain of the Academic Decathlon team and professional student, and Noah Puckerman, first class deliquent with some community service hours to fill, team up to lead the infamous Brainiacs to victory. — Or Quinn and Puck as Rachel and Finn, with a small plot twist.

yes i was a quick crackhead. no i do not wanna talk about it. i fucking loved this fic tho might fuck around and reread it to cringe<2

and all these mistakes we’ve made - glee, 11 kudos

"No," she states desperately, shaking her head lightly, before barely whispering, not able to stop herself from making him hate her, "No. I was pregnant this - this year. I went to the hospital and then - then I wasn't anymore."

thought this was some deep shit when i wrote it

now it’s clear as this promise - glee, 12 kudos

Finn and Rachel become YouTube sensations thanks to a little bet.

always thought my one talent was writing crack fics and thats why i thrived writing glee fic but this is one of my better ones imo

when the party’s over - the 100, 14 kudos

Bellamy goes into the anomaly to save Octavia. What he finds, is a trail of bodies.

{Or: a canonverse take on Hansel & Gretel}

me, JUMPING at any chance to write octavia as the villain she is

tagging: @kombellarke @hiddenpolkadots and whoever wants to 

[survivingthejungle]

Hopeless Wanderer

You weren’t really sure what had happened.

   During a typical walk in the forest in your small Northeastern city, you had slipped on a particularly mossy rock while wading in the creek. Upon standing up, the forest had completely changed. No more was the golden sunlight filtering through the trees; now everything was gray and significantly colder than it should’ve been for mid-July. The air was definitely more frigid than it was a few minutes ago. And where were all the birds? How did it get so dark all of a sudden? And why did the forest look different than it had before you fell?

    It won’t do me any good to stand still and act dumb, you thought to yourself. Better start back the way I came. Or at least… the way I think I came.

   As if the new cold air wasn’t bad enough, it seemed that the forest had become even hillier than usual. And the more you looked around, the more you were beginning to suspect that this wasn’t the same forest you stepped into this morning. But rather than stay frozen in your place, you kept walking, trusting that eventually you might be reconciled with civilization.

   And you were. Only… not one you recognized.

   Am I hallucinating right now? you wondered. Did I hit my head on those rocks harder than I remember? The scene in front of you was most definitely not your town. Not even close. There were hundreds of people traipsing around what seemed to be either village or a very, very large campsite wielding dangerous weapons like swords and axes, as well as brightly painted shields adorned with runes. Their clothes were much more practical for the weather than yours seemed to be; layers of furs wrapped around them like shawls and coats, and plenty of layers of fabric underneath. Some firepits were scattered across the plot of land you were looking out at, and people were littering the streets going about their mundane routines— be it skinning and cooking meat, weaving fabric and baskets, building more weapons; you name it, these folks were doing it.

   What was stranger was that you couldn’t find a car in sight. In fact, there weren’t even any paved streets as far as you could tell. No tall buildings; the village was all one level. And you were confused. And scared.

    Am I intruding on something? you asked yourself. Maybe I should turn around and go back the other way. But before you got the chance to get very far into the forest, you heard someone shout, “Spy!” and suddenly tens of footsteps could be heard racing towards you.

    Oh, fuck. Surely they don’t think I’m the spy? you hoped. But instead of waiting up and asking them, your trusty lizard-brain instincts commanded you to run; and run you did.

The strange looking villagers had an advantage against you, though. They were familiar with the terrain; you were not. And so, after tripping over a particularly large fallen tree trunk, you were captured by a handful of aggressive  looking men and women covered in tattoos. “Who are you?” one man yelled at you. “Who do you serve?”

“No one,” you replied, “I got lost! Please get off of me, I just want to go home!” You struggled to push the man off of you, but he held your chest down with his forearm, and you couldn’t manage to shake it off.

“She’s a liar,” a woman offered. “I bet she’s a witch. Take her to Ragnar.”

“Very well. Up, witch,” the man commanded you, and roughly pulled you up by your shoulder before someone else forced your arms behind your back to bind your wrists.

Paraded through the village, you felt like a carnival attraction. People of all ages gathered in the streets to see you marched into the largest building in the whole place, gazing at you like they’d never seen a teenage girl before. “Is she a witch?” you heard one woman whisper.

“Look at her clothes! Where do you think she’s from?” asked one young child to another. You were met face to face by three guards standing ready at a set of closed doors.

The man who had been shoving you along said to them, “Let us through to see Ragnar. We have found a spy and a witch, all in one.” The men simply stepped aside after pushing the doors open. I was lightly pushed inside and found myself in a large room lit by candles and torches mounted on the walls. In the center of the room was a long table with a few chairs on all sides, and ahead of it, on a semi-raised platform, were what looked like thrones for a king and a queen. Said king was currently sitting on his throne, as if the visit had been expected.

The king-figure spoke first. “Who is this?” He eyed me.

“We think she's a spy, King Ragnar. She came out of the woods to survey Kattegat and tried to run away, but we caught her.”

“We also think she is a witch,” said the woman who aided in capturing you. “There is something strange about her, more than just her clothes. She can not be a regular woman.”

Ragnar responded by telling them, “Thank you for bringing her to me. I will deal with the spy-witch from here. You may go.” They bowed to him before turning around and leaving, your head twisting around to watch them go.

“I’m not a spy. And I’m no witch, either. I got lost in the woods, and I want to go home,” you told him once the doors had closed again.

He looked at you sort of funny before chuckling. “I can tell you are no spy. What good would you be, getting caught so easily?” He got up and walking a bit closer to you. “A witch, though, I could believe. And what about your clothes? Do you wish to turn to ice in this weather?”

“No,” you said, “But I wasn't expecting it to get this cold so fast. It’s the middle of July, it's supposed to be hot.”

“What is July?” he asked, genuine confusion evident in his expression. “A feast? A holiday?”

“No,” you answered, almost equally perplexed, “It’s a month… You know, like.. in a year?”

“What are you saying?”

“Where am I?”

“You are in Kattegat, where else?”

“Okay, well where's Kattegat?”

“Norway, of course. How do you not know where you are?”

Norway? Norway? Like… with vikings and everything? Not a chance. “That’s not possible. I can’t be in Norway. I've never left the U.S. in my life,” you told him.

“What is that?”

“The United States?” you responded. “Of America? Land of the free, home of the brave... You know?” He shook his head in confusion.

Then a pit of dread filled your stomach. Something was seriously, unequivocally, undeniably wrong. “What year is it?” you asked in a dreadful monotone. “It’s 2018… correct?”

“What calendar do you follow?”

“The Christian one?”

“That can’t be right, then. The Christians’ calendar is nowhere near 2000,” he told you.

“Oh my God. Ohh… my God. I need to sit down,” you whispered before plopping down into one of the chairs around the table. You crossed your arms and put your head down before speaking again. “I'm gonna fall asleep, wake up, and this will have all been just a horrible nightmare,” you said, though your words were muffled. “How are we even having this conversation right now? As far as I can tell, I’m speaking modern English, and that hasn’t even been developed yet.”

“You must be speaking Norse,” he said, “Because if you were speaking the language of the Saxons, I would have noticed.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” you cried.

Just then a loud bang was heard, followed by a shuffling noise. “Who is this?” a new voice asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ragnar, “She has yet to tell me her name.”

“It’s (Y/N),” you offered. “Nice to meet you. I’m having a crisis.”

Some more shuffling followed. “And what crisis might this be?” asked the same new voice. You lifted your head to find the source, and found him sitting on the ground, looking up at you.

“I… I don't even know. Nice to meet you,” you held out your hand to him. “Wait,” you said, noticing his puzzled expression, “Are handshakes a thing yet?” You looked to Ragnar.

“I don't know what that is, so… no.”

“Fantastic.”

“This is my youngest son, Ivar,” he told you. “He is a cripple.”

“Good for him,” you deadpanned. “Sorry, that was rude. I’m not a rude person,” you said to Ivar, who had an unreadable look on his face, “In just stressed. I have no idea how to get home from here.”

“Well then,” Ivar started, simultaneously pulling himself up to sit in the chair next to yours, “You are lucky. My father is an excellent navigator, and Floki is an excellent boat-builder.”

“I don't think boats or compasses can get me where I need to be, but thank you for trying to help,” you told him.

“Ivar,” Ragnar addressed his son, noticing his confusion, “(Y/N) is not of this world. She is from… Where are you from?”

“America.”

“And she thinks she is from a different time, as well.”

“I don't think, I know. I know I’m from a different time.”

“Well, until you can figure out how to return, you are welcome to stay as a guest in Kattegat.”

“Really?” you asked. “Even though people think I'm a spy and a witch?”

Ragnar chuckled. “They may think you are, but I know you are not. You will be under the protection of the king,” he promised you. “Ivar! Introduce her to your brothers.”

“Yes father.”

Before following Ivar through the town, you looked back at Ragnar. “Thank you,” you told him. “It means a lot.”

—

“Where are we going?” you asked Ivar, who was crawling around on the ground like a snake.

“I am taking you to my brothers, like Ragnar said.” Suddenly Ivar was stopped by a strange looking man with tattoos on his bald scalp and a beard.

“Watch yourself, cripple, before you cause more trouble than you already have!”

“Hey!” you shouted at the man. “Apologize! That’s such a cruel thing to say. Don't treat another human being like that. Say you're sorry,” you commanded him.

“Yes, Floki,” Ivar nearly giggled, “You heard the girl. Say you’re sorry.”

“Who are you?” the man asked, ignoring Ivar for a moment to focus on you. “I have never seen you in Kattegat before. And you dress so strange!”

“I’m (Y/N). I’m… not from around here.”

“She is a guest, Ragnar said she is under his protection until she can get back home. Say hello, Floki.”

“Hello,” he smiled at you. He reminded you of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. His cheesy grin and comical voice put you at ease. “You probably think I am a bad person, talking to Ivar that way. It was only a joke. I have known him his whole life.”

“Floki here is Ragnar’s best friend,” Ivar explained to you.

“Oh. I understand. It’s nice to meet you, Floki.”

“And it is nice to meet you, (Y/N). I hope you enjoy staying in Kattegat.”

“You and me, both.”

“Floki, have you seen my brothers?” Ivar asked him.

“Yes! They are at the training grounds, like always.”

—

“Hvitserk! Sigurd! Ubbe! Come look!” Ivar yelled once you both reached a clearing in a different part of the woods. Three men— Men? Boys? Guys?— were currently training with an assortment of different weapons and fighting setups.

“What is going on, Ivar?” Asked one of the blonds. They all abandoned their activities and stalked over to where you stood while Ivar pulled himself up to sit on a tree stump.

“Go on, introduce yourself,” he advised you.

“Um… I’m (Y/N),” you started.

“Are you a Saxon?” asked a man whose hair seemed to be somewhere between red and brunet.

“No, I’m American. You’ve never heard of America, though, because it hasn’t even been discovered yet.”

“Ivar, what is she going on about?” asked the dark blond, the one who had not spoken yet.

“They found her in the forest and brought her to father. Apparently, she is from a different time,” he told them, a sarcastic, cynical tone to his words.

“Yeah, sure,” the same blond retorted. “What is she really? A new slave? Are you going to torture this one like poor Margrethe?”

“Woah,” you interrupted, “I’m not anyone’s slave, nor will I ever be, so jot that down.” You were met with three pairs of wide eyes. “Your dad’s trying to help me find a way to get home. I’m sticking around, in the meantime,” you explained.

“So… you are really from another time?”

“It would seem so.”

“I am Ubbe,” said the redhead/brunet one. “This is Hvitserk,” he pointed to the dark blonde, “and Sigurd,” then the one with longer blonde hair and braids.

You gave a slight nod of your head. “Nice to meet you.”

“Who are you staying with while you are here?” Ubbe asked you. “Of course, you are more than welcome in our home,” he trailed off. He was a womanizer, a flirt, you could tell; in fact, it seemed they all were. Even their father. It’s hereditary, you realized. But the fact still stood— if you didn’t take them up on their offer, you’d be sleeping outside on the cold hard ground.

“I think that might be what I’m doing, then.”

—

“Maybe she is meant to be an oracle from the gods,” Floki told his friend. “How else could she have gotten here, except by them? Surely she is here to give our people guidance.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Floki,” Ragnar responded. “I am going to talk to the Seer about her. He surely knows what to do; otherwise, he would not be a Seer!”

—

“Ragnar Lothbrok, back again,” the Seer said.

“That I am. And since you know I am here, you must also know why.”

“You want to know about the girl from the forest. And you think that I have the answers.”

“Well, that is your job.”

“Yes. Yes it is. I will tell you that she is who she says she is; a time traveler. The gods have granted her a precious gift, to come and go throughout history as she pleases.”

“She wants to go back,” Ragnar mentioned. “If the gods sent her to be our guide, surely we can not let her leave?”

“She will not leave. At least, not for long. She needs this,” he said, and handed the king a piece of green thread with a golden clasp dangling off of it. “When the gods told me she was coming, they also instructed me to fashion this for her. It acts as a binding agent between our worlds. She needs only envision where she wishes to go, and she will go there.” Ragnar got up to leave, but before he got to the door, the Seer said one more thing. “Have no worries, King Ragnar; she will come back. And she will help the kingdom of Kattegat flourish.”

—

“Oh God,” you gasped, breaking the silence of the walk back to their home. “My mom has no idea where I am right now. Oh my God! People probably think I got raped or murdered by some freak in the woods! She’s probably organized a search party… I hope I haven’t made national television-” Your panicking was cut short by a hand clamped over your mouth.

“Stop worrying so much. You can’t do anything about it from here,” Sigurd reminded you.

“Just eat something and get some rest. You’ve had a strange day, you need time to process,” Hvitserk added.

“Yeah, okay,” you nodded, mumbling mostly to yourself, “True. True. What food do you have here?”

“Slave!” Ivar yelled out. So insensitive, you thought. “Bring our guest some food, yeah?” The servant nodded, terror in his eyes, and ran off somewhere to do Ivar’s bidding.

“Hey… don’t talk to people like that. There’s no reason to be so mean. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar,” you threw in the old adage your father used to tell you when you were younger.

Ivar just stared at you for a moment before turning back to his brothers. How strange she is, he thought. “You are brave, speaking to a prince like that.”

“I sure am. It’s just a little sad that no one seems to have ever taught you basic human decency. Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ never killed anyone.”

“Tell us, (Y/N),” Ubbe interrupted, sensing that an argument was brewing, “What is your world like? The future?”

“Well,” you began, “It’s a lot different than it is around here. We have really advanced technology and machinery—”

“Like what?” Hvitserk asked.

“We have cars, which are like carriages that don’t need horses.”

“How do they move, then?”

“Gasoline. It’s a natural resource; it won’t be discovered for a long time, so don’t go looking for it. We have T.V.’s, which are like…” And on you went, trying to explain the technology of the 21st century to a bunch of Viking princes from the Middle Ages.

Eventually, Ragnar even returned home, and dinner was served not long after. The food had been brought out to you by a handful of servants— and you emphatically thanked them every time, just to make a point to Ivar. You were very exhausted. “Where do I sleep?” you asked.

“I will have some slaves prepare a bed for you. We do not have any spare rooms, I am sorry— you will have to sleep in the Great Hall tonight.”

“That’s fine by me,” you told him, “As long as I don’t have to sleep on the floor, I don’t care.”

“Very well!” he laughed. “In the morning, I will send you home.”

“You know how to get me home?” you nearly yelled.

“Yes. But for now, please, you are welcome as a guest in my home. I ask that you stay until daybreak. I want you to go to the Seer before you leave.”

“Yeah, no problem. I can get home!” you cheered to yourself. “Oh, God, I can’t wait to take a shower.” A mattress-like object lined with straw was brought out into the room where you were all congregated, as well as a handful of warm animal furs, and even a pillow! It was set down and made a few yards away from where the fire was burning; when the servants were done, you kicked off your shoes and laid down, placing a fur over you to act as a blanket. “Goodnight, everyone; see you tomorrow,” you called, followed by a big yawn.

“Sleep well,” a few responded. “Good night,” said the other few.

—

Feedback is welcome and appreciated <3

[mst3kproject]

108: Project Moon Base

Saying ‘fuck this movie’ doesn’t seem like enough, really.  Please take a moment and picture the full Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing it to the tune of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.  That should about do it.  I’m gonna say ‘fuck’ an awful lot in this review, like even more than I usually do. I really hate this movie.

This was a very moon episode.  After a couple of dull and suspenseless episodes of Radar Men from the Moon, we get on to Project Moon Base.  In the far future year of 1970, the Enemies of Freedom are working to destroy the UN’s space program.  To do this, they kidnap a Dr. Wernher and replace him with a lookalike, who is ordered to go to the atomic-armed space station and destroy it in a suicide mission. He’ll have crew-mates on his rocket, though – and Major Moore and space program legend Colonel Briteis aren’t going to let him complete his mission without a fight.

Wow, space spy capers and secret plots!  It sounds so exciting when I write it down!  Too bad this movie is actually so dismally fucking cheap and boring.  The KGB apparently works out of a nicely decorated living room somewhere, and the Spacom offices aren’t much better.  Everything is bare walls, clean tables and desks, and giant clocks on the walls, and none of it resembles a place people actually work in.  The actors all look like they’d really prefer to be anywhere else and recite their lines at a fast clip that suggests they’re just trying to get this ordeal over with. Given the characters they were being asked to play, I feel for them.

And then there’s the stuff that’s just fucking surreal, like the skullcaps or propane-tank-headed spacesuits that wouldn’t have been out of place in an episode of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger. Or the fact that the first ‘suspicious’ thing the fake Dr. Wernher does is support the wrong baseball team.  Or the annoying reporter whose name is Polly Prattles (I guess to imply that she endlessly ‘parrots’ everything she’s told?) and who dresses like a disco ball!

About the only thing that really earns any points is that the effects people made a commendable effort to be realistic.  Stuff like the lunar rocket and the frisbee-shaped space station are intended to look practical rather than future-y, and there’s a discussion of orbital mechanics (though it’s confusing and useless to the plot).  Navigation information refers to bright stars like Fomalhaut and Polaris.  Microgravity is mentioned and there’s even a pretty neat shot where characters walk on the ceilings with magnetic-soled boots!  I’m also impressed that they actually filmed some miniatures for their rocket takeoff scene, instead of using the same stock footage we’ve seen in fifty other films.

That’s only a fraction of the movie, though.  The other ninety-eight percent or so I absolutely despise from the very bottom of whatever twisted black abomination remains of my soul, and the reason why is the fucking characters.

The first characters we meet are the villains, although calling them ‘characters’ seems like a stretch.  I’m not entirely sure who any of these people are or who they’re working for… I’m gonna keep calling them the KGB for lack of a better descriptor.  They’re bland men in bland suits who behave as if destroying the capitalist west is just their day job – the bald bellhop guy may say it’s a twenty-four-hour job, but I bet these guys are out of that hotel room the moment the clock clicks to five pm.  Even the guy posing as Dr. Wernher isn’t very interesting.  Shouldn’t at least one of these people have some kind of motivation besides getting paid to do this?  What happened to revenge, or fanatical loyalty to an ideal, or desperation to protect a family who’ll be killed if you don’t comply?

Weirdly, it’s the fake Dr. Wernher who is the closest thing we’re given to a POV character!  We follow him into the hotel to take over from the real scientist, and them learn about the space program in tandem with him.  If not for the opening crawl I’d be wondering if we’re supposed to root for this guy.

Our so-called ‘heroes’ have some more personality, but those personalities are the furthest thing from likable. First there’s Major Moore, a big sulky baby whose masculinity is threatened by Briteis outranking him.  When he finds out he’s been cut from the mission in her favour he whines, and when he finds out he’s been assigned as her co-pilot he whines more because now he’s got to take orders from her.  At the end when they marry, he is promoted to Brigadier General mostly so that he’ll outrank his wife!

Briteis herself is no better – we see a few sides of her and they’re all terrible.  She pisses and moans about not wanting to interact with Moore, either, and then engages in passive-aggressive dick-measuring contests with him while the two of them are supposed to be flying a spacecraft and saving the free world.  You almost can’t blame him for his jealousy when she takes every possible opportunity to rub things in his face.  When things go wrong she manages to land on the moon, but then becomes a breathless damsel in distress, leaving Moore to make all the decisions… and then when they’re saved, she reverts right back to whining.

(Yes, by the way, the non-MST3K edit does show them actually landing, and no, it's not very exciting.)

The General in charge of these two is an ass, as well.  He basically guilts Moore into accepting an assignment he doesn’t want, and when Briteis protests it as well, he tells her to shut up and then threatens to spank her.  These people are supposed to be members of the military, an organization that is associated with rigid discipline, efficient organization, and a strict chain of command, and yet they display less professionalism than kids at a lemonade stand.  Jesus Christ, how about we just let the bad guys take over the world?  They at least have some fucking dignity.

The moment we discover Briteis is a woman is supposed to be a big surprise, since the characters have carefully avoided any gendered language so far – this seems to hint that we are looking at a future where equality of the sexes has been achieved, but what we see after that quickly disabuses us of the notion.  Not only is Colonel Briteis treated like a misbehaving child in spite of her rank, but we’re told that the only reason women are allowed in the space program is to save weight – though not in the case of Prattles, who is told to her face that she’s too fat to go!

In questioning Briteis about how she pilots the spacecraft, Wernher actually treats her with more respect in her expertise than any other character.  Are we sure we’re not rooting for this guy?

Of course the idea of Moore taking Briteis with him to set up the communications relay instead of Wernher never even comes up, despite the fact that she must be infinitely more qualified and much less likely to try to kill him.  This whole sequence is weirdly mis-used.  We’re expecting Wernher to either try to sabotage things somehow, or for Moore to believe he will do so and a fight to result.  I guess it’s more realistic, seeing as how the survival of both men depends on the relay, that they cooperate successfully – but if that were supposed to be the case, then why does Wernher die in a total accident, falling from a rock and cracking his helmet open?  It doesn’t resolve anything, it’s just a quick and lazy way of getting rid of the character so we can focus on Moore and Briteis and I don’t wanna focus on them.

Wernher’s death also leaves the audience sitting through the last part of the movie without any idea why we’re still watching this.  The villain’s dead, so why isn’t the movie over?  Even if we didn’t hate Moore and Briteis, we’ve actually known Wernher for longer and the movie was set up as if his mission and its defeat were the main storyline.  If he’d been dealt with in a more satisfying manner, either by changing loyalties, or by being killed or recaptured in a way that felt like a victory, it would be easier to move on with the rest of the story.

The final ‘fuck you’ from this movie’s sexual politics is the revelation at the end that the President of the United States is also a woman.  You know what that means?  That means the writers thought they really were showing us a gender-equal future!  They honestly believe that women in positions of power really will freak out and automatically turn to the men for help when things go wrong.  They seriously think that women holding high ranks in the military will be threatened with spankings by their superior officers and that’s completely okay.  And then when you watch the movie again, the scene where Briteis tells the General that the President has ordered Polly Prattles be admitted just looks like a bunch of girls ganging up on a boy they don't like.

Quite a bit of effort went into the effects in Project Moon Base and into its idea of the future (note how they predicted cordless phones!), but it was all wasted on bad actors, shitty sets, and a script that feels like a first draft.  Nothing in the film comes across as properly concluded – not the space mission, not Wernher, and certainly not the love story between Moore and Briteis.  Fuck this movie.  Fuck, fuck, fuck this fucking movie.  Fuck everyone who made it, fuck MST3K for bringing it to my attention, and fuck me for watching it again!  Fuck.

[jamesfilmbased]

Posting: The Life of Oharu

For the second film of the week, we have The Life of Oharu, a 1952 historical drama directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. The film follows a former lady in wating, the titular Oharu, and her subsequent fall from grace.

Man, what a movie. I want to preface my posting by saying that I found the movie’s score and cinematography to be unparalleled; it’s hard for me to understate just how impressed and stunned I was with Mizoguchi’s filming techniques. The film features lots of slow, one-take shots that really exemplify the director’s “one scene-one shot” methodology. The result is a movie that produces some truly grand scenes. I also liked the framing that the movie used, and thought it was really cool when the film wrapped back into its opening scene.

This is why it’s such a shame that I have to admit that, outside of those technical aspects, I despised the film. Essentially, my issue with it boils down to the plot featuring a woman who, through no fault of her own, experiences nothing but misfortune; the film is two hours of her being rebuked and screwed over by horrible people in a horrible society. An ultimately, at the end of the film I found myself asking: for what purpose? I admit, I probably didn’t understand what the film was going for, but I found that the magnitude of suffering that Oharu went through was so unrealistic, so unrelatable, that I couldn’t help but view the film as being more akin to a black comedy rather than a drama. Every time the setting changed or she met a new character, I was wondering how they would make her life worse. Every time she seemed to achieve some level of stability, I already knew it wouldn’t last. The worst part is that, for me, these twists were so predictable that they became laughable. The point of no-return was when the woman asked her to style her hair and I immediately though “ah, she’s gonna be bald or something and that’s gonna turn into jealousy and Oharu is gonna be expelled epic style” and lo and behold, it went down as exactly that.

The kicker is that, again, Oharu is for the most part a flawless protagonist. Sure, she has quite a bit of pride that never really goes away in spite of her circumstances, but this is never the instigator or root of any of her problems; it is always the other people in her life (often, but not always, men) that find some new ridiculous way to worsen her situation.

I understand that perhaps the whole point of the film was to show that women end up suffering because of the folly of men. In fact, I noticed quickly that Oharu’s initial foray into prostitution as a courtesan is a result of the fact that her father racks up debt that he cannot repay, mirroring the fate of Mizoguchi’s real life older sister, who was similarly sold to a geisha house when their father plunged the family into debt.

Yet, in spite of that, I just completely missed what the film was trying to communicate through that theme. Again, the fact that Oharu is made to suffer for two hours and sixteen minutes to increasingly absurd twists of fate doesn’t do anything for me. Reality, in my view, is so rarely as devoid of positivity or auspiciousness as it is for Oharu that it makes the whole thing kinda hard to take seriously.

Maybe, just maybe, this was the intent. Maybe, it is because Oharu is so infallible and ultimately obedient that she is never able to take hold of her own fate until the very end, when she runs away from the Shogun’s troops to become a wandering nun. Perhaps the point was that the reality of life in Tokugawa’s Japan (and to a lesser extent, modern and postmodern Japan) is that individuals have little control over their own lives. All they can do is go along with things and hope to not get crushed.

In the end, I thought the movie was a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, I also thought it sucked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

[ellie-bee242]

“Show Lexi some love” Show us she’s a valid character and not some basic sugar baby.

Nonnie….

Did you even read the whole ass rant I wrote out to that other anon where that “show Lexi some love” quote came from? Cause I think you just ignored it and that seems like a dumb move.

*sighs* but oh well. Guess I’ll just have to show you. Again.

just a warning that there is sensitive materials underneath the read more. be cautious because even if I’m pissed that y’all keep thinking this about Lexi I don’t want you to have a panic attack from the mention of a topic that triggers you.

Chapter One. Lexi is fucking kidnapped and she has moments where she cries but she’s still fucking badass enough to competently lie to some fucking teenagers so that they don’t get murdered with her. Because she definitely could have tried to escape when the elevator opened to them and gone “GET HELP THEY’VE KIDNAPPED ME” But she knew that it would only end in all three of their deaths. And yes. She cried. But she saw a man killed in front of her and that’s all she did. I would have thrown up, I would have sobbed and constantly begged for my life, I would have peed myself out of fucking fear. She saw a man killed in front of her, and then seconds later had men debating whether or not they should rape her before killing her. And then they decide that they’re going to hand her off to their boss, which we now know is Mitch who is not for that at all, but at the time in her mind, she had no idea. She thought they were going to hand her off to some pot bellied middle aged balding man or WORSE. And that he was going to violate her body before murdering her. And she fought them in the beginning and at the penthouse. I would have been a sobbing shaking mess, and I know that because a guy approaches me in a fucking crowded mall to tell me some vulgar compliment and I freeze and smile awkwardly until he leaves. Men are terrifying. And yet Lexi decided she would fucking fight these huge fucking walls of muscle. To at least try. And the second they throw her into the room, she’s looking for a weapon, for a way to defend herself. Badass survival woman.

Chapter Two. Lexi’s life has been threatened, and she’s been warned not to go to the police or leave town. So she smartly doesn’t do those things. She goes about her life like normal, and when the scary ass mob boss comes to her she doesn’t freak out or scream and alert a very crowded establishment that something is wrong because she knows that he would probably just kill everyone there because he clearly doesn’t have a problem with murder. And then the man basically forces her to come within reaching distance because she can’t refuse him otherwise people will know something’s wrong and that raises the same issue as above. So she goes to this man, and accepts the “hush money” so she doesn’t raise red flags. And then she finds out how much money he stuffed in her thong and immediately thinks “oh shit he gave too much I need to find him so he doesn’t come after me for this money”. And then when she goes outside she’s approached by a creepy, possibly drunk, dude who’s getting in her space and hitting on her and instead of having a severely PTSD induced panic attack (considering the last time someone invaded her space they threatened rape and murder) she stands the fuck up for herself and doesn’t let this man intimidate her. She physically incapacitates him until he promises to leave her alone. Badass.

Chapter Three. The man who could murder her at the drop of a hat gets her alone in a room and instead of refusing, which she technically could refuse him service, she braves it and goes in and allows him all up in her personal space. Which allows her to find out, “hey he’s not stalking me with the intent to kill me, he’s just interested in me and he’s got a dumb way of trying to show it”. And she completely takes control of the situation once she becomes comfortable with him. She lets him touch her. That’s a huge fucking step from “oh my god you’re going to kill me” to “hey you can touch me if you want to while I grind all up in your lap”. Badass.

Chapter Four. She’s fucking held at knife point for the second time in as many weeks and she doesn’t scream for help, she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t physically fight him because dude has a fucking knife to her throat, that would just be dumb since he just wants her purse. So she easily gives it up. Throws it behind him so he’d be forced to leave her and go retrieve it if he wants it so bad that way she can run the fuck away. And then. Mitch shows up. And kills a man. In front of her. Two times she’s witnessed murders and both are connected to this guy, cause the first was killed on his orders. Maybe she should run for the hills or go to the police but she already knows those are no-go’s because they would end in her death to protect his organization. And dude also just technically saved her life and her money. She lets him walk her home so nothing else bad happens to her. And yes I did say she let’s him. Because she knows she could tell him to leave her alone and he’d do it because he’s respected her boundaries (in twisted ways) so far. But she lets him walk her home, and she realizes he’s hurt and she invites him into her fucking home. DUDE COULD STILL KILL HER AT ANY POINT IF HE DECIDES SHE’S A LIABILITY TO HIS WORK AND SHE INVITES HIM INTO HER APARTMENT KNOWING FULL WELL THEY’RE THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE IN IT WHERE HE COULD KILL HER LIKE HE KILLED THE MUGGER. And she cleans his wounds. She shows care and compassion to this man even though he could very well murder her at any point still and she trusts that he’s being honest when he says that he won’t kill her. Badass and caring and trusting.

Chapter Five. I’ve mentioned chapter five a good deal. Men break into her apartment. Violate her safe space, rob her, violate her body, and when they leave she doesn’t curl up in a helpless little ball and become a mess, she goes and grabs a knife so that if they come back before Mitch gets there she can properly defend herself. Bad. Ass. And then when she’s at Mitch’s place (the place that terrified her in chapter one) she’s at ease, and she trusts Mitch enough to go to him when she has a nightmare and can’t sleep alone because of it. She has emotions and fears, and she clearly feels scared. And she seeks out comfort because she doesn’t have a problem showing her vulnerability to Mitch now because she trusts him.

Chapter Six/Seven. She is literally cuddling with a scary ass mob boss and talking back to him, and she teased him for not knowing his way around his own kitchen in the previous chapter. And in this chapter she clearly shows discomfort at the thought of Mitch paying for a storage unit to hold the things from her apartment, she tries to refuse the expensive phone that Mitch buys her and she refuses up until the point she finds out that if she does refuse it someone else could be negatively impacted.

Chapter Eight. She is tired of waiting for Mitch to ask her out so she takes charge and asks him, and then she tells him he isn’t allowed to go overboard. And when she tells him that if he goes overboard she’ll feel out of place he offers her money to buy a good outfit and she tries to deny him. She fights with him about it until he wins because Mitch is a stubborn bastard. And you know for a fact that at VS she would have used her own money had Mitch not told Luke to lift her wallet from her purse. (yes, he did that) She wants to be independent but Mitch keeps thwarting her plans. He wants to take care of her and spend money on her. This is all him and his doing, she’s not asking for his money he’s pushing it on her even though she’s shown discomfort with it.

Chapter Nine. I don’t know why I need to talk about this chapter because it’s clear she’s fucking badass, but I am breaking it down chapter by chapter so. SHE HOLDS THE ATTENTION OF AND CAPTIVATES A MAN WHO COULD HAVE LITERALLY ANYONE HE WANTED. SHE’S SO FUCKING CONFIDENT IN HER APPEARANCE CAUSE SHE FUCKING KNOWS SHE LOOKS GOOD. BAD.ASS.MOTHERFUCKER.

Chapter Ten. Same as chapter fucking nine thank you very much.

Chapter Eleven. She decides to go swimming and Mitch asks her to wait so she does, but when he takes too long she decides to go on her own and ends up alone with three other guys at the pool. And instead of shying away, she doesn’t give a single fuck because what is a couple frat boys to what she’s experienced now? And when they approach her she doesn’t want them bothering her so she agrees to sit with them and then proceeds to sass men who could probably hurt her, with no remorse. BADASS DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

Chapter Twelve. She takes good care of her man. End of. Fucking amazing. I wish I was in her position.

Chapter Thirteen. Yes she accepts the fucking shoes but he says he wants to buy them for her. She complains about their price and wanting them but only after he coaxes the truth of why she’s upset out of her. And she doesn’t ASK him to buy them for her. No. He offers. So she decides, what the hell, I want the shoes, he wants to fuck me while I wear the shoes, everyone wins. It’s just one pair. Yes it’s a three hundred dollar pair but she also knows that he won’t take no for an answer, and honestly if she had said no boy would have just taken her computer when she’s not around and gone through her search history until he found and bought them for her anyway. MITCH HAS NO BOUNDARIES LBR.

Chapter Fourteen. SHE. SETS. GROUND RULES. SHE KNOWS SHE CAN ONLY CONTROL HIM SO MUCH IN THE RESPECT OF WHAT HE BUYS HER BUT SHE DEFINITELY ENFORCES THAT CONTROL.

I’m going to summarize the whole “she’s living with him for free” issue since i already went in depth in that other rant. MITCH IS ALREADY PAYING FOR THE BUILDING AND HE PLOTTED HOW TO GET HER THERE BECAUSE HE WANTS HER LIVING WITH HIM SO SHE’S SAFE. IT WAS ALL HIS DOING AND ALL WHAT HE WANTS BECAUSE LEXI WANTED TO CONTINUE TO LIVE IN HER SHITTY UNSAFE APARTMENT. END. OF.

Lexi has always shown displeasure and discomfort in Mitch spending his money on her outside of maybe a date, and she even limited the amount of money he could spend on those.

Now. For the second, much shorter half of my fucking essay. Y’all keep calling her a sugar baby. SO. FUCKING. WHAT. IF. SHE. WAS? She’s not. But so what? THIS IS FICTION. THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO WRITE. IF I WANTED HER TO BE A SUGAR BABY I WOULD FUCKING DO IT. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT WHY WOULD YOU READ IT?

I FUCKING WISH I HAD A MOB BOSS MITCH TO SPEND HEAPS OF MONEY ON ME SO I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY OR WANT FOR ANYTHING. THAT’S MY FUCKING DREAM AND I’M NOT AFRAID TO ADMIT IT. I WOULD LOVE IT. I WOULD LOVE IF MITCH OFFERED TO PAY MY WAY THROUGH COLLEGE AND BUY ME GIFTS AND TAKE ME ON EXPENSIVE DATES AND BUY ME SHOES AND LINGERIE. I WOULD FUCKING LOVE THAT LIFE.

A life where I not only get to have super hot kinky sex with a beautiful as hell man, but said man WANTS to buy me nice things and have me live with him for free in his hella pretty penthouse? A life where I don’t have to work if I don’t want to cause a super hot man is saying “let me take care of you”? Where the fuck do I sign up?

I don’t understand why people are faulting Lexi for this if that was what she was actually doing (which I keep clearly showing that she’s not but y’all are blind I guess?)

Like the only logical conclusion I can draw for this, why you read the story but tear Lexi down at the same time and try to put her in a category she doesn’t fit in is this: Y’all are jealous of her. I know I am, it’s okay to admit it. It’s okay to admit you want to be in her general position.

But if that’s not the case, and you just hate that Lexi is apparently nothing but a gold digging sugar baby, and you dislike that so much then why are you following this story? If you’re afraid to ask me to remove your tag, just ask me I’ll happily remove it because I’m tired of having people misconstrue my character and critiquing her so harshly.

The fucking truth of it is that Lexi is my character, and as her creator if I say she’s not a sugar baby or a gold digger, then she’s not. End of. You guys might disagree but she’s not yours, you do not know her like I do because I have sculpted this character from scratch and literally no one knows her like I do.

But go off I guess. And by that I mean, go off my fucking story because if you’re going to continue to dispute me and discredit MY CHARACTER then I don’t want your readership.

Thank you for your time.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: so as I mentioned in my last post, I’m migrating some content over to this site from Facebook because of Zuckerbergs head-up-his-butt decision to ban antifascist and anarchist accounts. I haven’t been banned yet, but I’m not interested in losing my content if it happens. This journal is a re-post from my Facebook page and originally appeared on March 17th, 2020.

March 17th, 2020 – Debate Fallout (Literally)

Despite my overwhelming reservations, I, like millions of other Americans locked inside their homes to wait out Captain Tripps, spent the better part of my Sunday evening watching the Democratic Party nomination contest debate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. 

The debate itself was pretty much like all of the previous debates, which is to say, in a word – infuriating. If anyone can really have been said to be the “winner” of this contest, it was unquestionably Sanders but if American democratic socialists were hoping he’d just come out and destroy a completely incoherent Biden, they were undoubtedly disappointed. Bernie fell far short of saying what everyone following this race already knows to be true – that Joe Biden’s brain doesn’t work and his best chance of actually beating Trump in the fall rests on some combination of mass deaths caused by coronavirus and cheap Russian oil crashing the U.S. petrodollar. 

If anything, the debate was most memorable for the simple fact that Joe Biden spent the entire evening demonstrating that while he can’t tell his wife from his sister, he’s still capable of lying his butt off like a champ if the situation requires it. Please understand that I’m not talking about one lie here, or even Palooka Joe’s altogether routine habit of twisting the truth; Joe Biden went on CNN and bald-faced lied over and over while demonstrating the ability to falsify his publicly documented record in government on issues both large and small. Biden lied about his crusade to cut social security, his opposition to abortion rights, his opposition to the New Green Deal and the (late) timing of his conversion from an opponent of gay marriage, to a supporter. Palooka Joe also falsely accused Bernie of having 9 Super Pacs (Sanders has zero), he once again lied about his support for the Iraq war; from the Hyde amendment to Medicare for All, Joe Biden falsified not only his current policy positions, but his entire voting record as a government official – at one point, Joe literally said he hated the Bankruptcy Bill he himself f*cking wrote.

While the naive among us might have expected CNN’s (corporate media) moderators to step in and insist Biden stop selling whoppers like the debate stage is a Burger King take-out line, it will surprise no one who has followed the ongoing media machinations to destroy Bernie that this did not occur. Furthermore, the fact that Joe Biden objectively lied to the viewing audience, about verifiable matters of historical record, on at least twelve occasions during the debate didn’t seem to even rate a mention during the post-debate liberal media news roundtables that gleefully called the debate a win for Biden – a curious position considering the exact same “liberal” news organizations and in most cases the same pundits rated Mike Pence a loser against wooden ventriloquist’s dummy Tim Kaine in 2016, for adopting essentially the same strategy Biden did against Sanders – as soon as the cameras start rolling, Pence started to lie and simply don’t stop lying until the debate was over.

Yes my friends, for the astute observer the actual debate itself was merely a sideshow to the extremely revealing post-debate chatter of our in-pocket, pro-elite, for profit media minions. As I sat back and watched what is ultimately just the latest act in corporate “liberal” media’s efforts to elect a center right establishment Democrat and destroy Bernie Sanders (as well as the democratic socialist movement as a whole), I found myself wondering if the Democratic Party and their elite media allies even understood that with each bald-faced lie, and open act of duplicity, they were moving inexorably closer to becoming the architects of their own demise. You cannot of course fool all of the people, all of the time and anyone who actually watched that debate and thought the big news in the morning was Biden’s flavorless promise to nominate an as of yet unnamed woman for Vice President, and not the fact that Joe lied all night at a rate that would make even Downmarket Mussolini himself blush, is probably already working for CAP anyway. 

As shameful and alarming as the media’s performance on behalf of Biden was however, even *I* wasn’t really ready for the caronavirus subplot that played out after Bernie suggested that it was irresponsible to continue running the primary contests while the CDC is begging Americans to avoid groups larger than fifty people and the President himself is telling folks on TV that even gatherings of ten people aren’t safe. Sanders is of course right and that fact is becoming increasingly more obvious by the hour as the whole western world shifts towards a pandemic-induced lockdown; despite this however, the Democratic Party is going to run four primaries later today, even though doing so will undoubtedly help spread COVID-19 and indeed, cost lives. Perhaps more alarmingly however, the entire Democratic establishment including Joe Biden’s campaign itself, as well as noted liberal luminary influencers like CAP’s Neera Tanden and MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid have responded as if delaying primaries Sanders isn’t  going to win no matter when they are held, represents some kind of plot to steal the nomination from Joe Biden – a nomination that they feel belongs to the center-right establishment now, since they already stole it with rigged primaries and potentially a billion dollars worth of free media smears on Sanders. Grimly enough, the liberal establishment has actually gone so far as to declare wandering out in a pandemic to vote for Joe Biden a moral duty for Democrats in America; one woman even compared doing so to surviving the middle passage - a position that could objectively be described as “insane” if that term didn’t somehow fall to cover how crass all of this is.

As grim as it might be, I think it’s important that we face the facts here – we know how coronavirus spreads, we know that it’s disproportionately dangerous (and even potentially fatal) for people over sixty-five and we know that older voters are overwhelmingly going for Joe Biden in this primary fight. There is absolutely no f*cking way on earth you can tell me that Bernie and the left are trying to steal an already crooked as f*ck race by acting to… save the lives of Joe Biden voters in a nomination contest that Biden is going to win no matter *when* or *how* folks get to vote. Indeed it was initially impossible for me to understand what line of logic the sh*tlibs were pursuing in arguing that it was somehow wrong to ensure senior voters got to cast a ballot without potentially suffocating to death in agony for their troubles; it wasn’t until I waded deep into the comments section and noticed that most of the hired Dem Party online mercenaries couldn’t help but mention they wanted the primaries to end as fast as possible so Bernie would shut the f*ck up, that I was even able to grasp the horrifying endgame being played out here.

Look, I’m not a Harvard graduate but I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that “you should f*cking literally die so your corporate overlords can install Joe Biden and silence the left” isn’t exactly a message that endears you to the base – it’s one thing to lie to people on behalf of a desiccating mummy like Palooka Joe, but it’s entirely another to directly tell them you think grandma is an acceptable sacrifice on the altar of neoliberalism if it means maintaining corporate rule and the supremacy of elite capital.

In other words, expect rain.

- nina illingworth

Update: in the time since this post was written, Ohio has suspended its primary contest today (most likely until July 2nd) – as of yet, Democrats in Illinois, Arizona and Florida are still being encouraged to put their life on the line for Joe Biden’s nomination campaign.

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[gregorsamsadementiaravenway]

Stray notes after watching The Last Jedi

Or: why does this movie just keep getting worse whenever I remember it?

The notes are after the cut just in case someone hasn’t seen the film yet or doesn’t want a long ass bullet point post in their dash. Some of them are serious and well thought-out, some are nitpicky and some are there just for the heck of it.

“Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” - Why, that’s just peachy, Rian! Too bad the future your selling is a little shit.

In general, Rian Johnson doesn’t seem to have much respect for the past. See tathrin’s post about all the things established in TFA that were turned upside down in this film, but I think Johnson doesn’t have much consideration for the original trilogy either, reducing Chewbacca to a background character and trying to replace “May the Force be with you” with some other, less inspired line.

Seriously, why are they saying “Godspeed”? Did monotheism reach a galaxy far, far away and they now, suddenly, have a notion of God? And, while were at it, why is “treacherous snake” a thing, now? Are there snakes in the Star Was universe? ‘Cause, so far, all animals have been on the fantastic side of things. What else is there? Do they have kittens??? That’s an important question...

The movie had A LOT of hamfisted comic relief. Of course there were some honestly funny scenes (I will forever laugh at Rey feeling the Force with her hand), but most of the jokes felt very out of place. For instance, the first scene, with Hux and Poe. I laughed my ass off at that interaction, but that’s an SNL sketch, not a Star Wars scene. I was half expecting Matt, the radar technician, to show up.

Seriously, someone should tell Rian Johnson that he isn’t directing Guardians of the Galaxy. In more than one scene, the excess of jokes killed what should’ve a truly great, emotional moment.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much indifference do I feel towards porgs?

The ammount of queerbaiting that went into promoting this film was insane. Look, actors on franchises like this one have media training, so whenever, say, Oscar Isaac ran his mouth about the possibility of Finn/Poe being canon, he was at least authorized by Disney to do so (worst case scenario, he was instructed to sell this narrative). I didn’t particularly care about the ship and I think Poe Dameron could’ve died in TFA without any harm to the franchise, but to hamfist that non-sensical romance between Finn and Rose after feeding the fans’ hopes for a gay pairing was, in my opinion, downright cruel.

And don’t even get me started on Poe and Rey’s meaningful gaze at the end of the film, with Poe going all “I know” as if he’s Han Solo or some hot shit like that! Poe/Rey is the worst possible ship to become canon. Yes, the worst. Yes, you heard me, worse than Reylo.

Speaking of Reylo: after TFA, I said that I low-key shipped them ‘cause that’s the kind of fucked up ship I like. Look, there are people in this website who like to wear diapers and want to fuck Pennywise, so, screw you, I’m not apologizing for wanting to read fics about a fictional pairing made up of two adults. HOWEVER, this is not the sort of thing I want to be canon. From the get go, my opinion on Rey’s official love life has been “either she ends up with Finn or she ends up alone”. That being said, I think they handled the relationship between her and Kylo Ren very well in this film. I’m glad they didn’t deny the fucked up sexual tension that was going on there, especially coming from Ren’s side, and chose to play into it. A failed redemption arc fits them perfectly and Kylo Ren’s “please” when he asks Rey to rule beside him was a great moment for the character and one of the few truly emotional moments of the film.

But that thing were they get to hit on each other through the Force, sharing sad stories and touching hands? Yeah, I’m pretty certain I’ve read that fic. Actually, I’m pretty certain I’ve read about three fics like that.

Let’s keep on the Kylo Ren track for now, then: he did get some very nice character development in this film. The Last Jedi was more his than any other character’s, even Luke. For a minute there, before the movie came out, I thought they were going to make some changes to him due to the whole backlash, but they went full “overgrown angsty kid” with him in a way that actually made him more compelling. I like the way Luke’s fear ended up pushing a conflicted teenager into the Dark Side and that Kylo is still very much stuck at that moment. As usual with Sith and Sith by-products, Kylo Ren is moved by anger, and his anger feels much more real after this little bit of backstory.

Who is Snoke, though? Are they going to explain that in the next movie? It feels like they should’ve done it in this one, but I hope they at least give him some context before the trilogy is over.

Sooooo... Did your conflicted antagonist cladded in black, with black hair falling all over his face, just trick his bald, deformed Dark Lord by using his occlumency powers? *Owen Wilson voice* Wow.

“The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader.” - A perfect example of a really amazing moment botched by comic relief, ie, Snoke’s little tongue falling out of his dead body.

After the film ended, @robogigante​​ complained a lot about Hux’s transformation from an actual, threatening villan into a punchline, and, you know what? He’s right. There’s a scene there that looks like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I hate evil, square-headed BB-8?

I’m sort of glad Rey’s parents aren’t anyone important. Star Wars relies too much on heritage and it’s a nice change having a hero who isn’t Space Jesus or Space Jesus’ direct lineage. Her scene in the cave was incredibly beautiful.

They did point to something else in TFA, though, implying heavily that her origin was important and that Kylo Ren already knew about her. That was some Moffat level of badly written plot twist right there.

There’s something Emma Watson-y about Daisy Ridley. This is neither a compliment nor a complaint, just something I hadn’t noticed before.

Both Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver grew a lot as actors since the last movie, especially Driver. Even though it’s still hard to take Kylo Ren seriously sometimes due to Driver’s cry-baby face, he’s way more convincing in his rage and intensity than he was in TFA, where his acting felt a little too mechanical.

However, some of the other actors aren’t living up to their potential. John Boyega’s charisma is extremely underused and I know for a fact that Domnhall Gleeson can do a lot better than what he was given here. In a couple of scenes, even Hamill and Fisher seemed a little uncomfortable in their roles.

“Shit, we’ve already signed Lupita’s check! Gotta shove her in here, somewhere!” - I’m so sorry, honey. You are so beautiful and talented... You deserved way better than that.

Kelly Marie Tran is adorable and I absolutely love her in interviews and such. She seems like a delightful person. However, her character was completely unnecessary. Her only purpose was to serve as a future love interest to Finn, and I’ve made my thoughts about that pairing quite clear already.

“...it’s saving the ones we love...” - BITCH, YOU’VE KNOWN HIM FOR WHAT? A DAY?

As a matter of fact, all of that storyline felt completely unnecessary. It was as if the writers didn’t know what to do with Finn so they gave him a spunky sidekick and a pointless mission just to kill time. I found myself wishing he had spent the whole movie in a coma, and that’s really sad, because I really like John Boyega and was hoping he would become a strong protagonist for the franchise.

Another thing @robogigante​ pointed out (and I’m quoting him ‘cause I know he’s not making a post of his own) is that Holdo had no reason whatsoever to hide her plan from Poe or anyone else in the Resistance. She just... didn’t like Poe Dameron that much...

Excessive jokes aside, casino planet was okay and helped flesh out the Star Wars universe a little bit more. However, much like Phasma, Benicio Del Toro’s character (whose name I already forgot) was just another Boba Fett, all flash and no substance, and I particularly hate that “squeaky clean abused little children representing hope” crap. It’s one of the tackiest tropes in existence.

I did get the feeling that that kid is going to join the Resistance on the next movie. Like they’re going to do a ten year jump to justify Leia’s disappearance/death. It would also help the Rebels to get their shit back together, Kylo Ren to gain more control over the First Order and Rey to learn some more about the Force in order to meet her fate. The existence of that child is still horrible and that ending was so over the top I can’t even put it into words, but it’s a good hook for a leap that, if handled well, could be very good for the story.

I also got the feeling that they originally inteded to kill one member of the original trio per film. That would’ve been cool. Too bad Leia will have to die off screen.

Was it just me or is the timeline in this movie really weird? Poe’s plan seems to take place entirely in a day, maybe two, while Rey apparently spends at least a week in Luke’s island.

I’m glad Carrie Fisher got to have at least one badass Force user scene before dying. Her flight among the debris of the Rebel cruiser was a beautiful reminder of how powerful the Force can be, on par with Luke’s astral projection, not to mention a gorgeous scene in its own right.

Holdo and Leia definitely had a torrid love affair after the Organa-Solo divorce came through. No one will ever convince me otherwise.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I love the crystal foxes?

There was a preoccupying absence of wipe transitions and epic soundtrack inserts. Actually, I don’t even remember hearing any music at all. The editing was way too conservative. It didn’t even feel like a Star Wars movie, sometimes.

How is it possible that The Force Awakens was basically a remake of A New Hope and still felt more daring that The Last Jedi? Look, we already know you’re not killing any of the characters ‘cause they have to come back for the next installment, but raise those stakes a little bit, jeez! Give Kylo Ren and Snoke more conflict before their face-off, give Rey an opportunity to actually scare Luke with something that matters, give Finn and Poe a mission that actually means something to the Resistance, not a MacGuffin to keep them busy... Anything!

The Last Jedi is actually an okay-ish movie, to be honest, but, in a way, I think I disliked it even more than the prequels. Sure, The Phantom Menace is objectively a much worse film, but at least it had soul. George Lucas’ midichlorian and CGI packed soul, but soul nonetheless. The Last Jedi has nothing. I know Star Wars movies are all about the money, let’s not delude ourselves that this is in anyway high art, but this one just felt like the biggest money grabber of all. There is no personal investment in it whatsoever and no sign of what makes Star Wars Star Wars in the first place.

When’s Lando coming back?

BONUS: I am never watching a fucking 3D movie again in my life. The background always seems out of focus, it’s too expensive and I hate putting glasses on top of my glasses. I don’t care if I have to wait a month to watch the next Star Wars, I don’t care if I get spoilers, I’m not watching anything in 3D ever again.