#faceless ones trilogy

[whimsylueur]

Sneak peak/Val sketch

[nicstylus]

The Faceless Trilogy is done!

[artbyblastweave]

I think about Star Wars a lot more than I post about Star Wars, and I've had some free time recently to type up some thoughts on Episode 7 that've been swirling around in my head for a couple of years. There were a few ideas and plot beats, and moments of apparent self-examination in Episode 7 which I thought were fairly compelling, even though they ultimately paid no dividends:

First was Finn’s character concept. “Star Wars as experienced from the perspective of a Stormtrooper undergoing a crisis of faith” is a rich hook; humanizing and giving a face to what's basically the platonic implementation of the faceless mook. Unfortunately, the potency of the arc was undercut by the pre-existing textual ambiguity as to what stormtroopers actually are. Star Wars extended canon has settled on the idea that each trilogy features an entirely novel cohort of white-clad mooks, each with a fundamentally different underlying dynamic. The clones and the First-Order forces are different flavors of slave army; in contrast, the stormtroopers are more frequently portrayed in the expanded universe as military careerists, stormtrooper being a thing you work up to rather than a gig for a fresh conscript. A slave-soldier who defects is a very different character from a military careerist who defects, and they invite different analysis. There's a bait-and-switch going on here, in that Finn gestures in the direction of the familiar OT stormtroopers but can't comment on or examine them because he's actually part of a novel dynamic invented for the new movies. And there's one final nail in the coffin here, signaled by the number of times I've had to invoke the expanded universe so far. When Finn debuted, the racists were of course, legion, but I also ran into a number of people who were sincerely confused as to why they'd recast Temuera Morrison. Going off the seven films that existed at the time, it wasn't unreasonable to read the prequel trilogy as an origin story for where the OT stormtroopers came from. Going only off the nine films that exist now, it still isn't unreasonable! It's muddied from so many different directions by their failure to establish the ground rules in the mainline films before they tried to put on subversive airs about it. I am still irritated by this.

Next up is how Han Solo was written. I actually liked the tack they took with him quite a bit. Because initially, right, his role in the movie is just to be Han Solo. He's back, and he hasn't changed! He's still kicking ass and taking names, he's still the lovable scoundrel you knew and loved from your childhood- and the principle cast members react to his presence with the same reverence the film's trying to invoke in the audience, they've grown up hearing the same stories about him. Except that episode 7, at least, is also very aware of the fact that if Han Solo is still recognizably the same guy thirty years on, it indicates that things have gone totally off the rails for him. We find out that the lovable rogue routine is the result of him backsliding, his happy ending blown up by massive personal tragedy rooted in communicative failures and (implicitly) his parental shortcomings. It feels deliberately in conversation with the nostalgic impulse driving the entire film- here's your childhood hero back just as you remember, here's what that stagnation costs. And it also feels like it's in conversation with what was a fairly common strain of Han Solo Take- the idea that Ep. 6 cuts off at a very convenient point, and that Han and Leia's fly-by-night wartime relationship wouldn't survive the rigors of domesticity. Obviously, that's not the only direction you can take with the character; the old EU basically threaded the needle of keeping Han recognizable without rolling back his character development gains. But it felt like they were actually committing to a direction, a direction that was aware of the space, and not a reflexively deferential and flattering one, which at the time I appreciated! The problem, of course, is that for it to really land, you need to have a really, really strong idea of what actually went down-of what Han's specific shortcomings and failures were. And given the game of ping-pong they proceeded to play with Kylo Ren's characterization, this turned out to be. Less than doable.

Kylo Ren is the third thing about Episode 7 that I liked. His character concept is basically an extended admission by the filmmakers that there's no way to top Vader as an antagonist. Instead, they lean into the opposite direction- they make him underwhelming on purpose. Someone who's chasing Vader's legacy in the same way any post-OT Star Wars villain is going to, pursuing Vader's aesthetic and the associated power without really understanding or undergoing the convoluted web of suffering and dysfunction that produced Vader. It's framed as a genuine twist that there's nothing particularly wrong with his face under that helmet. Whatever it takes to be Vader, he doesn't have it, and he knows that he doesn't have it, and the pursuit of it drives him to greater and greater acts of cartoonish villainy. The failure to one-up Vader is offloaded to the character instead of the writers, and it was genuinely interesting to watch. For one movie. The problem, of course, is that if the entire character archetype is "Vader, but less compelling," you can't try to give the bastard Vader's exact character arc. You can't retroactively bolt on a Vader-tier tragic backstory when you spent a whole movie signaling that whatever happened to him wasn't as compelling as what happened to Vader. You can't milk his angst for two more movies when it's the kind of angst on display in "Rocking the Suburbs" by Ben Folds!

There's a level on which I feel like Moff Gideon was a semi-successful implementation of Vader-Wannabe concept; he's the same kind of middling operator courting the Vader Aesthetic for clout, but he's doing it in the context of the imperial warlord era, where there's a lot of practical power available to anyone who can paint themselves to the Imperial Remnants as a plausible successor to Vader. Hand in Hand with this obvious politicking, Gideon is loathsome, which relieves the writers of the burden of having to plausibly redeem the guy; he's doing exactly what he needs to do and there'll never be a mandate to expand him beyond what his characterization can support. Unfortunately, the calculated and cynical nature of how he's emulating Vader precludes the immaturity and hero-worship elements on display with Kylo, which is unfortunate; the sincerity on display in Kylo's pursuit of authenticity is an important part of why he worked, to the extent that he worked at all, and it'd be worth unpacking in a better trilogy. As he stands Kylo is a clever idea, and that's all he is- he lacks the scaffolding to go from merely clever to actively good.

[the-far-bright-center]

Can’t stand seeing posts and comments that are like ‘I wish Star Wars were good’ or ‘if only Star Wars were good’ — um, excuse me, it IS good????

The Skywalker saga is a good story.

The six Lucas films form two trilogies that mirror and complement one another.

That’s it, that’s Star Wars.

If you don’t like the real Star Wars, and don’t think it’s worth anything, then what are you even doing in the fandom?

One of the problems is people just passively accepting everything Disney claims as ‘Star Wars’ to be, well, Star Wars. When it’s not. It’s fanfiction that no one is required to consider as canon. So those god-awful sequels that tried to erase the existing storyline and claim a bunch of OOC shit happened to the Original Trio? Not part of the actual story.

Another problem is that a lot of contemporary fans are unable to appreciate the Lucas saga simply for what it is, and instead like to claim they could have done it ‘better’. I realise that fandom in general is largely about building on or ‘fixing’ things in canon to be more to one’s liking, but that is a highly subjective practice, and one person’s ‘improvement’ might not be the same as another’s. The Disney-era perhaps gives the impression that this is just a big soulless franchise with faceless creators churning out ‘content’ that is up for grabs, when the original heart of the story adhered, more or less, to one single creator’s vision.

The jokey meme that ‘Star Wars sucks’ and the constant lamenting that ‘if only it were good’ gets rather old for those of us who legitimately LOVE the Lucas saga exactly as it is.

[theladyofbloodshed]

It's been an age since I read the series, but I do think Rhys was intended to be one of the villains for the trilogy:

SJM scrapped her original plan for ACOMAF and wrote the current one. ACOMAF is touted as a hades x persephone retelling but it isn't really that at all. On her second (?) visit she decides to stay.

Rhys very much is the villain in book one but the end scene when they talk and the bond snaps was a different tone entirely - which makes me think it was a last minute edit to set up the new sequel

There are no mentions to Illyrians in ACOTAR - despite later finding out they did serve alongside Amarantha and were executed for it - the attor is the only one described as having leathery wings

There are also no mentions to Darkbringers who did also serve

Why would they serve Rhys if they hate him? It's explained as them being SO evil that they revel in Amarantha's punishment, but they would still need to follow his orders so it makes no sense that they would listen to him when they could bypass Rhys and bend the knee to her

It is retconned that with his single drop of leftover magic, he is able to shield Velaris and remove Amren, Mor, Cassian and Azriel from the memories of every single person in Prythian - which includes Mor's family, every Illyrian, the Vanserras, and Tamlin (in book 2, Tamlin and Lucien comfirm they know Cass & Az, Eris was engaged to Mor, Lucien calls Amren a scary story they tell children, the CoN apparently knows about Velaris) If Rhys wasn't the originally intended villain then...

Why does the king of Hybern who trained Amarantha - she uses his book of spells - do nothing for fifty years? The Suriel states that a hundred years earlier he sends spies to Prythian but Amarantha betrays him and traps the high lords and he then just chills

Why does he wait until the high lords are back to full strength to start a war to take over Prythian? He had fifty years to take over prythian when all of the high lords except one were trapped - but what? He was too scared of Amarantha? He needed an extra 8 months to launch his war?

Amarantha is his student so it stands to reason that he is stronger than her and could quite easily take over her coup with the army that was seemingly ready to go at any time. There's even a part in acotar where one creature questions the attor over whether amarantha thinks she's above the king. It's also stated that her revenge on jurian cost him the war because she didn't march with her section of the army, but he's benevolent enough to let her rule for 50 years

Hybern is made out to be this ghoulish country where they're all evil (just like Illyria and the Hewn City) with no variance amongst the people; they're all warriors too, clearly no children or farmers or smiths or matronly women. They're all nameless and faceless cannon fodder. There is no concern for the state of post-war Hybern or who rules in the king's stead, for the orphans and windows. It is underdeveloped as is the nameless king who is foolish enough to try and take over prythian only *after* its high lords have all had their power restored and are fortifying their courts

[high-voltage-rat]

Actually I'm still thinking about it. Another interesting way in which RvB is anti-war is the way that the Director fills the role of a villain and antagonist (especially in the Recollections trilogy, where he's a faceless villain we never see but is responsible for everything that happens).

In his memos to the Chairman, the Director emphasizes his sense of duty and obligation to the military- he becomes irate for the first time when he feels that it's being implied that he was derelict in his duty... or that the work he did out of that duty is being criticized for being against the military's interests. He also talks about Allison's death in a way I find... interesting.

"You see; I never had the chance to serve in battle. Nor did fate provide me the opportunity to sacrifice myself for humanity as it did for so many others in the Great War. Someone extremely dear to me was lost very early in my life. My mind has always plagued me with the question: If the choice had been placed in my hands, could I have saved her? [...] But, given the events of these past few weeks, I feel confident that had I been given the chance, I would have made those sacrifices myself... Had I only the chance."

The idea of sacrifice is central to the way he talks about his wife's loss, to the way he talks about the war in general. He talks of sacrifice with a sense of veneration- that it's something he aspires to do, that he longs for. There's a few ways we can interpret "I would have made those sacrifices myself"...

-That in Allison's place, he thinks he would have laid down his life too.

-That if given the chance, he would have given his life to save hers.

But most interestingly...

-That he would have sacrificed Allison's life for the continued survival of humanity, if that was what duty called for.

...And personally, I think all 3 are true.

In most war media, the Director's perspective on sacrifice is very common. Sacrifice is glorious and heroic- to die in battle is an honour- and it's the only way to ensure the group you serve survives. This is a tool of propaganda- nobody wants to go to war just for the sake of it, you have to give them a reason that the risk of dying or being permanently disabled isn't just acceptable, but desirable. Beyond that, most people don't want to do things they think are immoral- you have to convince them it's important, a necessary lesser evil. You teach them to sacrifice their morals, too.

The way they train soldiers to follow orders and to kill, is to convince them that they, and the people around them, and the people they care about, will all die if they don't. It's drilled into your head from day one. It's the way they ensure their commanding officers won't shy away from sending their men off to die. The message is constant- sacrifice is your duty, and duty ensures your people's survival.

In the Director's eyes, the damage Project Freelancer caused was his sacrifice. He never got the opportunity to sacrifice himself during the war- so he sacrificed others, as military brass do. The Freelancers- including his daughter. The countless sim troopers. Any people he considered "collateral damage" on missions. And when the opportunity to do so presented itself, he sacrificed a copy of himself- Alpha- and he sacrificed a copy of Allison- Tex.

The very thing that derailed his life- the loss of his wife- he made it happen again. He put her copy in dangerous situations, let her exist in the position of constant repeated failure, created the circumstances that would eventually lead to her death. He put their daughter in deadly situations that nearly killed her repeatedly, provided her with impossible expectations leading to self-destructive behaviours in the name of duty, implanted her with two AI knowing they could cause her permanent harm. He was confident he "would have made those sacrifices himself" because he did.

The Director is the embodiment of the military war machine. As an antagonist, he is a warning against buying into the glorification of sacrifice. He's a condemnation of the idea that one should be willing to do anything to win a war- that duty to the military is the thing that ensures survival... All the messages that are pushed to ensure recruitment and obedience of soldiers.

He's a reminder that swallowing the propaganda leads to you doing terrible things... and in the end, you're a broken man left mourning the losses that you suffered even as you repeated them, convinced that it was all necessary.

[nagarashi]

Always resented the way Logan was treated in Fable 3, didn't you?

Long post ahead...

Fable 3 has always been an example of controversy, at least I used to stumble upon it all the time. Some branded it a disgrace, while others said it wasn't that bad because of the potential it had, which unfortunately was never realized.

I've always been on the side of the second. Just recently I settled on a marathon and went through the entire trilogy. Just like the first time I was "burned out" from that missed potential. In particular I am always saddened by the king - Logan.

For me, Logan is pretty much the only character I really feel sorry for and care about in Fable 3. Yeah, even Walter I feel pretty cold towards.... but that's partly because I'm on the King's side from the beginning of the game, even though they try hard to turn me against him (which is what turns me away from the other characters). And it's the reason I really dislike the Hero (Princess in my case), she's blind, infantile and driven, she doesn't think with her head (probably like all the Heroes in the fable).

The game does our brother one hell of an injustice. I felt it especially strongly when I finally played Fable 2 after many years. The faceless queen (in my case Sparrow Woman) mentioned in Fable 3 suddenly took on a face for me and became something important... I know what she was like and what her life was like. And I'm sure she would have loved Logan, because she was deprived of parental love early on, and didn't want brother and sister to be against each other, because she lost her sister, her only sibling, at a young age.

Logan was the firstborn son of Sparrow and as the firstborn, the eldest, all expectations were to be placed on him, everything was to be left for him... What does the game tell us?

The game does, however, show and give the impression that Logan was some sort of outcast in the family. And for some reason, the Guild seal was supposed to go to the youngest. You say she's a hero? What was her Heroic talent until she got a gauntlet to use magic? Broke sword in training? I may be biased, but I have a feeling Logan has broken more than one sword in training as well.... But for some reason, all the excitement goes to the youngest one.

Speaking of magic, it used to be used without any gauntlets, does that mean that it weakens the blood of Heroes? That would be... logical. That's where Reaver and his still strong bloodline would come in handy, lol.

Back to Logan. Not only was the seal not for him, but for some reason, even in the Sanctuary, the note from his mother was left for Jasper, not him. What?!

There's a strong and unpleasant feeling of ignoring the fact that Logan even exists. Why does he deserve to be ignored? From a game perspective, I understand that it demonizes our brother, but from a logical perspective, I don't see how it's justified, at least not when it comes to things involving family.

That and the way everyone hates him only made me get more attached to him.... and the fact that he's the closest thing we have to family. You can't just walk away from that fact, giving in to calls for a stupid revolution without even trying to talk to your brother before doing so. Was the princess angry with him? That anger is some kind of unfunny joke. She didn't care about her brother, why should she care about some random dudes she's being asked to execute?

The game shows that even the sister didn't care about Logan. She doesn't notice the changes in him (which by the way even Elliot notices, in my case) and doesn't even try to talk to him to find out what's going on.

And as if that wasn't enough, when we get to a certain point and find out the truth of what's going on with our brother, why he's changed so much, instead of talking to him in person, for some reason we let Walter take him away and have a trial where all those bloodthirsty critters from our allies come out when they wish Logan dead (except Page, surprisingly, I don't like her, but she shows a lot of common sense at the trial).

On top of all that, Logan has seen with his own eyes what Crawler can do, he saw the deaths of all his men when they faced the Darkness for the first time and subsequently experienced the horror that Crawler is capable of, and we have seen what he can do through our example and Walter's. He brings out the deepest nightmares.... Now imagine facing the death of your home, your people, your family, the one person you care about. And then with the knowledge of all this you come back and try to tell people the terrible truth, but they just think you are crazy, you are powerless to convince them. But the sheep have to be saved from the wolves, no matter how stupid they are.

Logan obviously has severe PTSD after the incident, recurring nightmares and obsessive thoughts of what will happen if he fails? Thoughts that he MUST succeed no matter what. Wouldn't that drive you crazy?

It makes everyone think you're a monster and hate you..... Imagine what it's like to live under that kind of constant pressure every day? And then your dearest person, your flesh and blood, goes against you... It's like the last drop to break the stone already broken by despair and depression.

I don't know how Logan can be executed at the end of the trial. Personally, I've never done it, although I watched that scene on youtube for the sake of interest. It's just horrible in my opinion... It's so soulless. I love playing Fable as an evil character, but even by my standards this is just too much... Logan's execution isn't evil or even justice as the crowd screams, it's murder besides being very vile, even for me.

I really dislike that at the end, when he leaves, we aren't given a chance to stop him. He will always be a brother to Hero and they will always need each other. Anyway, after everything that's happened, I wish Logan was by my side so he could finally have peace and love instead of hate and despise. I don't want him to wander the world and die in an unmarked grave somewhere.

P.S: I always liked the moment at the trial, when all those who were crying the whole game, what victims of Logan's cruelty they were, immediately turned into a pack of vicious dogs, as soon as they felt the power and opportunity to grab Logan's throat with no punishment, literally siccing you on your own brother.

P.S.S: Screw Teresa, I hate you for what you did to Sparrow and her kids.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Some Shall Break by Ellie Marney

"Emma gives Kristin her other hand, because she's right, they're still girls. But she isn't sure what that signifies anymore, except that girls are the ones who always end up victimized, abused, tortured, dead. What the advantages of manicured nails might be in those circumstances, she really can't imagine."

Year Read: 2024

Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: I liked this a little more than None Shall Sleep, I think because I was vibing more with the murder case. The similarities to the killer Emma escaped are eerie and personal, and it makes the novel that much more frightening. It's a little slow to take off, wallowing a bit in changing locations and police politics, but once it starts digging into the current murder case, I was hooked. I also cannot, for the life of me, tell a single cop character in this novel apart. There are half a dozen named and described, and they all just run together into one faceless mass.

On the other hand, the main characters are delightful as always. I've always enjoyed the slowburn of Travis and Emma's bond (a hint of romance but nothing too off-putting for non-romance readers), and Emma's trauma gets a spotlight here as the current case brings up old memories of Huxton. I also really liked seeing more of Kristin in this book. She reminds me of Luna Lovegood (sweet, blonde, underestimated, a little spacey) if she happened to have a serial killer for a brother.

I feel a little bad because I know these books are primarily about the survivors, not the murderers--and Marney goes to great lengths to portray Emma's trauma realistically--but I am never as riveted as when Simon Gutmunsson is on the page. He's teenage Hannibal Lecter stealing the show, commanding attention, and generally sending chills down my spine. I'm a sucker for a great fictional serial killer, and he's easily one of my favorites for YA horror. I loved the ending of this book; it's tense and terrifying, and I'm so excited the series will be rounded out as a trilogy.

[grumfield]

Do u have a take of the sequel movies (besides that they just suck lol)

I have mannnnny thoughts and all of them chalk up to just being missed potential. Especially given that I was one of the people who saw an original test screening for Rise of Skywalker and that was…very…special… LFMAO. But without going too deep into “this would be a completely different story at this point” my main thoughts are like.

Everyone has a great setup to do something interesting with the story. The main thing they seemed to want to do in both Force Awakens and TLJ is was subvert expectations about what Star Wars is by using familiar aesthetics and I think that could’ve really been achieved if they weren’t Abrams Mystery Box’d. And really the way to do this specifically has to do with Rey and Finn.

Rey should have been nobody daughter of no one (obvious) and her story should NOT have been centered around becoming a jedi in the end but paving her own path to keep with the theme of not needing to be a Skywalker or a Jedi to be a hero in the galaxy to subvert the narrative demands that the Skywalker brand demands. She also should have gone off with Kylo at the end of the Last Jedi because his speech was really good for someone who’d been continually denied at the thing she was trying to get, and the third movie should have been dealing with the repercussions of that and have her eventually realize she doesn’t need to be a larger part of the myth narrative to make an impact. She is an incredibly powerful Force user but that wouldn’t decide her fate.

Secondly, Finn should have been a Jedi instead. Another obvious statement, but I think, again, playing into that subversion of expectations while still holding true to the themes of SW, having a storm trooper—someone faceless and in the background and narratively evil—become a Jedi is just SUCH a good choice and hammers home that again ANYONE can be a hero, but doing so in a way that supports his character and adds dimension to everything.

A theme of Star Wars has always been like, everyone is a hero, but it’s been culturally co-opted by the Skywalkers. I had naively assumed that they were going to push against this with how TLJ ended but imo if they’d even just, done these two things and not touched the otherwise mess of a plot, a lot things would’ve felt more satisfying even if they were crappy. But I guess it’s a tall order to ask them to both give a female character agency and intrigue and make a Black man a main character with good development

Also, they should’ve had the original trilogy cast all in the same room at least once + get together in the Falcon.

[merlinfromberlin]

Just came back from finally, finally, finally getting to watch Transformers: One with my roommate.

Overall, it was an absolute blast. :D I had so much fun and am seriously considering going to watch it again next week.

Loved Bee so much, honestly, maybe my favourite blorbo in the movie (which was to be expected).

I can also confirm that I'm still a disgusting Optimus-is-Bee's-dad-truther. Even if that means I have to headcanon him as sounding younger than he did in the movie.

Spoilery-thoughts below the cut for everyone who hasn't seen the movie yet.

However, I have a few not so savory feelings about the double standard regarding Autobots and Decepticons committing acts of violence in the movie. It kind of took me out of the story a few times.

Like, we see Orion (rightfully!) talking down D-16 from killing Starscream. And then, not even five minutes later, Orion rips apart one of Sentinel's soldiers. It's never adressed. It's never condemned. Like. What?

And it's not the only thing, the movie is kinda hypocritical about it:

D-16 trying to kill Starscream (bad)

Orion ripping apart one of Sentinel's soldiers (good, bad-ass)

Orion, D-16, B-127 & Elita-1 fighting back against Sentinel's soldiers (good)

B-127 accidentally - and then not so accidentally - killing Sentinel's soldiers (good, funny)

B-127 destroying the broadcasting office and scaring the reporters (kinda bad, but also funny)

Megatron ripping apart Sentinel (bad)

(That's probably not every scene with violence but it's the ones I remember best)

I don't say that I disagree with the movie regarding it's portrayal of Megatron's violence. Optimus was right to try and stop Megatron both times. I'm also not saying that Sentinel Prime's execution and Starscream's attempted execution are the same as Sentinel's soldiers being killed in battle/self-defence. I'm also not saying that the miners/High Guard/our little troop were wrong to fight back.

However, there is a definite bias in this movie when it comes to framing violence.

I mean, we see both Orion and Megatron tear a guy in half, but only one of those instances is condemned. The other one is glossed over/celebrated as a bad-ass battle move.

Furthermore, violence is only ever framed as something objectable if it's committed against named characters. I don't think that it's random that Autobots only ever fight Sentinel's unnamed, faceless soldiers. Similar to the Vehicons in TFP, they are implied to be clones simply by their identical designs - which, somehow, makes violence against them acceptable.

I'm really disappointed that this movie falls into the popular action movie tropes of "As long as it's the good guys committing violence it's okay and you don't have to worry about it." and "You should only feel empathy for Storm Troopers when we tell you to - aka when we give them a face."

Now, other, more minor things:

I squelad when I first saw Jazz! :D I was so happy for him to be there because I had no clue that he would be in the movie. He's become one of my favourite characters these past few months so I was really, really happy for him to be there. ^^

Cybertron was also absolutely beautiful. The movie, in general, was very very pretty.

I am also a big fan that, this time, most of the Autobots started out as cog-less miners and Iacon's underclass (not all of them - Chromia, for example, would be an exception).

Most of the Autobots being basically middle-caste while a lot of the Decepticons started out as miners and lower-caste bots is one of the few things that irks me about TFP.

Love that the main threat of this movie (trilogy?) are the Quintessons. I literally didn't even know that they existed until I watched Cyberverse in July and I got so excited about seeing them! So glad I managed to avoid having that part spoiled. ^^

Also, so sorry to the guy who spoke B-127, but I got jumpscared every time I heard his voice. Bee behaved so much younger than he sounded. Which probably makes sense considering that he was stuck with only three dolls for company for Primus knows how long.

Won't stop me from headcanoning stuff, though.

Edit: I thought about this some more since yesterday in the evening and I think that was mainly a mixture of headcanons and projection speaking. You can read him as young, you don't have to. Isolation is f'ed up.

[like-sands-of-time]

I wonder if the star wars writers understand why we like characters like Anakin and Ben more than Luke and Leia..

They've spent nine movies now telling us that the rigidity of the Jedi/sith set up is the root of all their problems, how balance is crucial, how people aren't entirely one or the other, they're some ratio of both light and dark.

Deciding that Ben didn't get a chance to live after he finally sheds the last of his shame and fear and embraces himself is kinda silly no? The whole set up of the fight with palp was kinda silly no? Rey suddenly can't kill one very bad guy when she can whoosh whoosh a hundred faceless stormtroopers because then she might be haunted by/inherit some ghost dude??? Even though she ends up killing him anyway and isn't the sith reincarnated or something? What actually was the point of that fight? What was the point of Ben dying at that moment?

They spent the past couple movies talking about these supposed visions both Ben and Rey had about their futures together, so were they not visions, just dreams? Or did the writers just sort of give up on the concept of follow through? I thought the whole point of their COLLECTIVE journeys in this trilogy was overcoming their pasts and obstacles and then returning balance to the galaxy hand in hand? They did a whole thing about hands for three movies that was clearly important was it not?

But he dies, in her arms, after giving his entire life force to her, and she just moves on? Keep it chugging along? The other half of her is dead and she's gonna what? Be on the committee to restore peace to the galaxy? She's just gonna keep living, with a new love interest or whatever else they imagine? Like, realistically what is it they imagine comes next? That's not a happy or hopeful ending

[shiversdownyourspleen]

Having major celebrities cameo in as either masked troopers, one-off goons or in so much alien makeup you’d never know it was them was actually the best part of the sequel trilogy and I really hope they keep doing it

We’ve had

Simon Pegg as a blob fish

Thomas Brodie-Sangster as a space nazi

Daniel Craig as another space nazi

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a Neighbourhood Watch member

And goddamn Lin Manuel Miranda showing up in the Resistance

Please keep it coming I need more faceless goons to be A-list celebrities

[triscribe]

WIP Tag Game

Tagged by @crystalshard, which may prove to be a miscalculation, 'cause boy-howdy do I have a lot of works in progress...

Rules: In a new post, list the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

/cracks knuckles

Star Wars: -Fulcrum & Family, the new Tano & Twins re-write -Dreamwalkers Luke and Leia -History Reversed with sequel trilogy Ahsoka, Luke, Ezra and students dropped back in the Clone Wars -Birds Fly sequel Can We Start Over, Bly's pov -Something Big is Happening (Misc/Understudies crossover) -Clone Wars Cass (DC/Batman crossover)

Marvel -The Big One (5+1 Spidey saves Morgan, Pepper meets Doc Strange, Another Chance conclusion with Wanda) -Kids Club, post-Civil War kidnapping fixit -MCU Miles Morales, title tbd -Spider Assassins AU, multi-continuity-combination -X-Fire, Laura/Wolverine, Gabby/Honeybadger, and Rachel/Phoenix -Heroes of Tomorrow re-write with way more kids from different superhero groups/families

DC -Pantheon AU -the revised Alf-verse (22 Bat-grandkids and counting) -Rotten Luck re-vamp (Young Justice season one Team in the Justice League Unlimited universe) -Continuations: The Batman "seasons six and seven" if I ever get around to re-writing the early stuff (my very first fan fic ever, I've improved a lot since those high school days) -Teen Titans meet Robin's horde of younger siblings (original cartoon) -Battorian AU (Diana is human, Clark's a demigod, Bruce came from another planet) -Mandalorian/Star Wars AU (Mando Alfred adopts orphaned Bruce. This is the Way.)

HP -Pair of Potters sequel, year two for Heather, official year one for Harry, the beginning of a long headache for Dumbledore -Founder Foundlings, reincarnation fic -Cheers to the Wish, more Guardian Ghosts Lily and James -Philosopher's Mirror, canon-divergence of the unintended resurrection variety -the third effing chapter of Muggle is as Muggle Does -Thief!Harry AU, my all-out middle finger to the Author Who Shall Not Be Named

Transformers -Terratron AU (Bee meets Dragonfly, Elita makes Artemis, Bee and Fly stumble across Megatron and Rion, Prowl and Beats, Beats finds Jazz, accidental babysitter Serrate, Hornet and her big race, etc etc) -Hard Facts and Simple Truths, humanformers AU -TFAnimated swapped 'verse, with Elita Prime and her team of spacebridge technicians: Arcee, Ironhide, Wasp, and Jazz -G1 sparkling-Starlane AU -TFPrime crossover with Hot Wheels: Battle Force Five

Atla -follow-up to A Small Condition, aka the "Monk Gyatso goes into the iceberg with Aang and Zuko assumes *he* is the Avatar" AU -continuation of Ursa leaving royal life and stumbling across a dying dragon who entrusts her with a baby and two unhatched eggs -Avatar!Yue learns airbending from Aang's grandkids and that whole big mess of world-altering changes

My Hero Academia -Doubles AU (finishing Brand New Day and getting a move on with Double Take as a canon re-write with Pro Hero Shimura Tenko) -continuation for Great Beasts of the Mountain -third chapter of Instinct, my first A/B/O attempt -more next generation fluff, the Archive and Guardian saga

Misc -Sea Beast fic where Crow gets injured, suffers total amnesia, the doctor who patches him up sends for Jacob, and there's a very awkward dance between them and Maisie and Blue as the old man slowly gets his memories back -The Faceless Wolf, a mildly (make that incredibly) ambitious Game of Thrones canon-divergence attempt -Jamie Reagan and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day, a Blue Bloods whump idea I've had rattling around for a while -Milo and Claggor Survived AU from LoL Arcane -Grandboss Gibbs, a bittersweet NCIS fic that would, in my opinion, have been a better end to the series than trying to go on without the main character of the show -Storm Hawks past-and-present-collide idea with some previous generation OCs -Edge Chronicles TWIG GETS TO MEET HIS MOTHER DAGNABIT -may as well throw in what will be my second self-published book, Trials of Youth, because the current draft is definitely a work in progress

Aaand we'll call that good. Now to see if I get any nibbles...

(I know the game says tag a person for each WIP but I don't think I've got that many writing acquaintances on here, so instead I've got one person per fandom grouping)

@wafflesrisa @eirianerisdar @jinxquickfoot @theredscreech @resamille @tarisilmarwen @icarussmicarus @gallusrostromegalus

[yantisocial]

*bangs desk*

One creator's choice Ace Attorney BAH pack, please (preferably any of the weird girl assistants)

》 Psyche-Lock Anon

so im going to be honest, i did this all in some sort of fugue state. basically if you'd like a re-do of this pack, i definitely understand, because im pretty sure this is Not what you wanted/had in mind. (and hopefully i'll, yknow, stick to the prompt fully this time...😓) you are obviously free to use this alter pack too, and i hope you like it! but let me know if you'd like something much more source accurate!! its genuinely not an issue to ask us do that.

WARNING: major spoilers for ace attorney episode 2, "turnabout sisters" below!

Name(s): Mikito Maru Fey, Miara Auras Fey (past life)

Nickname(s): Miki, Mimi, Kito

Age: chrono 32, transage 13–20 ageslider

Gender(s): viodoggentic, bi-bodiment, muttbodiment, deathcute, rokkugyarudollic, clingypupboy, monachoric, revivedcorpse, girlcorpse, femboy

Orientation(s): obsesso-platonic, aromantic, hypersexual, veilic attraction, airreur, nonhuman4nonhuman

Pronouns: pup/he/mutt/dog

Title(s): dogboy, doggo, dog, boy, pup, little guy, this mutt, etc.—anything you’d refer to a male dog with

General Description: Mikito is a dogboy who identified as an afab woman in his previous life, before pup’s corpse was resurrected and summoned here. Mutt is a pet regressor who sometimes age regresses as well, and is a dog therian and puppykin/caninekin. Dog is not fully human, nor fully mutt, but has something unknown mixed in—due to the fact that pup is technically just possessing his own corpse (it isn’t in any danger of decomposing though, don’t worry!)

Interests: dog shows/videos, performing tricks (see Extras for therian activity suggestions)

Discomforts: being called a woman/girl/etc. calling his source/past-self/pre-death-self a woman/girl/etc is fine, but he no longer identifies as such and so its rude to do so in present tense! (Ex. “When you were a girl…” is okay but “hey girlypop!” or “let’s have a girls’ night!” is not!)

Triggers: arguments, debates, shows about anything related to the law or crime, minecraft, ace attorney content, overstimulation

(Cis)IDs: blasian (korean+african american), autistic, cotard’s syndrome, doomed by the narrative, feeding tube, hyperempathyflux, canidkin, sensory processing disorder, hypervigilance, brown hair, brown eyes, light skin, large chest, human..?, mutt..? therian, puppykin, clingy low-empathy, therianthing

TransIDs: gnc, hyperfemme, dagger, sensipuppyboy agere, transmasc-ish transarfid, transpsychic, transmedium, transghost, transundead, transneko, transwillogenic, transtutorial, transwheelchairuser, transminecraftsourced, transhater, transrude, transoneegyaru, transrokkugyaru, transblackhair, trans3ccurlyhair

MUDs:, Hyper Sensory Awareness Disorder (flag), Fictional World Longing Disorder (flag), Rapid Onset Species Disorder

Role (if any): Fib Responder/Fibber, Lawyer, Appellisian, Pet Dreamer, Shift Holder

Emoji and/or Proxy Tag: 🐶⚖️ or 🦮❤️‍🩹 or 🐾🥀 or -M. Fey or (Miki)

Source: Mia Fey, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Source Talk: yes

Source Accuracy: not much anymore, but before death he was highly source accurate

Paras: auto🐶zoo (self as a dog), 🐶🐾zoo (dogs), necrobiophilia (the living and dead), petplay, hybristospectrophilia (ghosts who are criminals), serviphilia (serving another), sinefaciemphilia (the faceless), demonophilia (demons) lyssophilia (rabies), kinemortophilia (the living dead/zombies), pecattiphilia (thought crimes/sinning)

Style: 01 02 03 04 05 ; muttcore, lots of band tees, tail and ears when possible and safe

Music Taste: [playlist]

Appearance:

Extra: suggestions for therian activities— hoolahooping, cross-country running, jump-roping, basketball, soccer, volleyball, dodgeball. These should give the same feeling as doing dog tricks !

[whileiamdying]

James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93

He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.

James Earl Jones in 1980. He climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords.Credit...M. Reichenthal/Associated Press

Published Sept. 9, 2024 Updated Sept. 10, 2024, 1:30 a.m. ET

James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.

The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.

From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.

So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.

Mr. Jones in 1979 as the author Alex Haley on “Roots: The Next Generation.” Credit...Warner Brothers Television, via Everett Collection

The rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.

Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.

Under the artistic and competitive demands of daily stage work and heavy commitments to television and Hollywood — pressures that burn out many actors — Mr. Jones was a rock. He once appeared in 18 plays in 30 months. He often made a half-dozen films a year, in addition to his television work. And he did it for a half-century, giving thousands of performances that captivated audiences, moviegoers and critics.

They were dazzled by his presence. A bear of a man — 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds — he dominated a stage with his barrel chest, large head and emotional fires, tromping across the boards and spitting his lines into the front rows. And audiences were mesmerized by the voice. It was Lear’s roaring crash into madness, Othello’s sweet balm for Desdemona, Oberon’s last rapture for Titania, the queen of the fairies on a midsummer night.

Mr. Jones as Othello in the Broadway revival of the play in New York in 1981. Credit...Martha Swope/The New York Public Library

He liked to portray kings and generals, garbage men and bricklayers; perform Shakespeare in Central Park and the works of August Wilson and Athol Fugard on Broadway. He could strut and court lecherously, erupt with rage or melt tenderly; play the blustering Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (2008) or an aging Norman Thayer Jr. in Ernest Thompson’s confrontation with mortality, “On Golden Pond” (2005).

Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.

Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. “Because of my muteness,” he said in “Voices and Silences,” a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, “I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.”

Mr. Jones playing the fictional former U.S. President Arthur Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” on Broadway in 2012. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Another of his theatrical techniques was to stand alone for a few minutes in a darkened wing before the curtain went up, settling himself and silently evoking the emotion he needed for the first scene. It became a nightly ritual during performances of Mr. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” (1987), in which Mr. Jones portrayed a sanitation worker brooding over broken dreams, his once promising baseball career cut short by big league racial barriers. It ran for 15 months on Broadway, and Mr. Jones won a Tony for best actor.

Voice of Vader

Mr. Jones’s technique in the first “Star Wars” trilogy — “A New Hope” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983) — was another trademark. To sustain Vader’s menace — a voice to go with his black cape and a helmet that filtered his hissing breath and evil tidings — Mr. Jones spoke in a narrowly inflected range, almost a monotone, to make nearly every phrase sound threatening. (He was credited for voice work in the third film, but, at his request, he was not credited in the first two until a special edition rerelease in 1997.)

Mr. Jones was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on the daytime soaps, playing a doctor in “The Guiding Light” and in “As the World Turns” in the 1960s. Television became a staple of his career. He appeared in the dramatic series “The Defenders,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and in mini-series, including “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), playing the author Alex Haley.

Mr. Jones and Diana Sands in the 1960s in the dramatic television series “East Side, West Side.” His prodigious body of work included nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series. Credit...Everett Collection

Mr. Jones’s first Hollywood role was small but memorable, as the B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on nuclear war, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

While drama critics recorded his steady progress as an actor, Mr. Jones did not win film stardom until 1970, when he played Jack Jefferson, a character based on Jack Johnson, the first Black boxing champion, in “The Great White Hope,” reprising a role he performed on Broadway in 1968. He won a Tony for the stage work and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie.

Mr. Jones as Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope.” He won a Tony for his stage work in the role and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie version. Credit...George Tames/The New York Times

Although he was never active in the civil rights movement, Mr. Jones said early in his career that he admired Malcolm X and that he, too, might have been a revolutionary had he not become an actor.

He said his contributions to civil rights lay in roles that dealt with racial issues — and there were many. Notable among these was his almost overlooked casting in the 1961 play “The Blacks,” Jean Genet’s violent drama on race relations. It featured a cast that included Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Louis Gossett Jr. and Billy Dee Williams, some wearing gruesome white masks, who night after night enacted in a kangaroo court the rape and murder of a white woman. Mr. Jones, the brutal and beguiling protagonist, found the role so emotionally draining that he left and then rejoined the cast several times in its three-and-a-half-year run Off Broadway.

But the experience helped clarify his feelings about race. “Through that role,” he told The Washington Post in 1967, “I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.”

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, to Robert Earl and Ruth (Connolly) Jones. About the time of his birth, his father left the family to chase prizefighting and acting dreams. His mother eventually obtained a divorce. But when James was 5 or 6, his frequently absent mother remarried, moved away and left him to be raised by her parents, John and Maggie Connolly, on a farm near Dublin, Mich.

Abandonment by his parents left the boy with raw wounds and psychic scars. He referred to his mother as Ruth — he said he thought of her as an aunt — and he called his grandparents Papa and Mama, although even the refuge of his surrogate home with them was a troubled place to grow up.

“I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black,” Mr. Jones told the BBC in a 2011 interview. “She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.” She blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen,” he said, and her ranting compounded his emotional turmoil.

Years of Silence

Traumatized, James began to stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly, and was so mortified by his affliction, that he stopped talking altogether, terrified that only gibberish would come out. In the one-room rural school he attended in Manistee County, Mich., he communicated by writing notes. Friendless, lonely, self-conscious and depressed, he endured years of silence and isolation.

“No matter how old the character I play,” Mr. Jones told Newsweek in 1968, “even if I’m playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.”

Mr. Jones playing a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995). Credit...Miramax, via Alamy

In high school in nearby Brethren, an English teacher, Donald Crouch, began to help him. He found that James had a talent for poetry and encouraged him to write, and tentatively to stand before the class and read his lines. Gaining confidence, James recited a poem a day in class. The speech impediment subsided. He joined a debating team and entered oratorical contests. By graduation, in 1949, he had largely overcome his disability, although the effects lingered and never quite went away.

Years later, Mr. Jones came to believe that learning to control his stutter had led to his career as an actor.

“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak.”

Mr. Jones as Big Daddy in a 2008 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With him was Terrence Howard. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Mr. Jones enrolled at the University of Michigan on a scholarship, taking pre-med courses, and joined a drama group. With a growing interest in acting, he switched majors and focused on drama in the university’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. In a memoir, he said he left college in 1953 without a degree but resumed studies later to finish his required course work. He received a degree in drama in 1955.

In college, he had also joined the Army under an R.O.T.C. commitment, then washed out of infantry Ranger School. But he did so well in cold-weather training in the Rockies that he considered a military career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, and was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.

In 1955, however, he resigned his commission and moved to New York, determined to be an actor. He lived briefly with his father, whom he had met a few years earlier. Robert Jones had a modest acting career and offered encouragement. James found cheap rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, took odd jobs and studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.

A Run of Shakespeare

After minor roles in small productions, including three plays in which he performed with his father, he joined Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960; over several years he appeared in “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” During a long run as Othello in 1964, he fell in love with Julienne Marie, his Desdemona.

They were married in 1968, but they divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married the actress Cecilia Hart, who had also played Desdemona to one of his Othellos. She died in 2016. They had a son, Flynn Earl Jones, who survives him, along with a brother, Matthew.

In the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Mr. Jones was in constant demand for stage work in New York, films in Hollywood and television roles on both coasts. He took occasional breaks at a desert retreat near Los Angeles and at his home in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County.

Mr. Jones in 2017 when he accepted a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But his long run with “Fences” in 1987 and 1988, including a national tour, proved too taxing. He did not return to Broadway for many years, and made movies almost exclusively. His notable film roles included an oppressed coal miner in John Sayles’s “Matewan” (1987); the king of a fictional African nation in the John Landis comedy “Coming to America” (1988), a role he reprised at 90 in 2021 in “Coming 2 America”; an embittered but resilient writer in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” (1989); and a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).

Mr. Jones received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush at the White House in 1992, Kennedy Center honors in 2002, an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement, and in 2017 a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard University.

In 2015, Mr. Jones and Cicely Tyson appeared in a Broadway revival of D.L. Coburn’s 1976 play, “The Gin Game,” portraying residents of a retirement home making nice, and sometimes not so nice, over a card table. For the 84-year-old Mr. Jones, it was, as The Times noted, his sixth Broadway role in the past decade.

In 2022, Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

But like. He did kill so many grisha just because. Like at what point such a significant change happens and like how. Someone who started out just to save grisha is just killing them left and right. Like this is not the trolley problem thing that he is killing 2 to save 4. He kills them because he can. I have always considered ditw pandering.

Re: this ask

Anon, anon, why are you putting me in the position to argue that the Darkling Wasn’t That Bad Actually on tumblr dot com?? That’s the meanest thing a faceless stranger on the internet could do to me.

Anyway lol so I don’t think DitW was pandering! LB first wrote it while she was drafting R&R— the book where he makes some of his most heinous choices. So I don’t think there’s like a gap where she decided to instead pander to people, you know? She can think of him as a hurt child and someone who burns down orphanages and razes cities just to get his nemesis’ attention.

By R&R he’s centuries old, in the short story he’s a grand total of thirteen. I don’t think it’s pandering or woobifying to have him change over such a vast span of time. And like we literally see baby’s first murder play out on the page.

I personally thought it was a really deft way to show how he went down the path he did. It illustrates how he’s kept isolated his mother, partially through necessity because of the looming ever present fear of being hunted by Grisha and otkazat’sya. How she’s also raised him to believe that he’s fundamentally other than, but also above, everyone else. Over the course of the story he makes his first attempt at marginally trusting anyone, to take the risk of *gasp* making a friend, and it goes horribly! Completely reinforcing all of the bitter fear and mistrust Baghra has raised him with. Also like even at that age he responds with rather stunning ruthlessness.

I think it’s pretty relevant that the threat to him was from other Grisha, and that he covers up the entire thing by using otkazat’sya/general Grisha persecution as an excuse. I think it leads up to his strategies in TGT really well and how, in offering a supposed sanctuary for Grisha, he’s made himself very powerful. And how he uses saving them/the country as an excuse for all of the choices he’s actually making in self interest. Idk I think it’s good characterization!

As for the TGT era, I think any more noble aims he might have held have become warped and corrupted over time. They’re just too flimsy and very easily set aside in the face of his desire for control. The trilogy is about the inherent corrupting nature of power and immortality, so the Darkling having started out as someone who might have meant well, as someone whose values may have been more aligned with Alina’s is kind of the point! And we do see some hints of those skin deep values, like the frankly laughable thing where he makes all the Grisha eat peasant food because they’re good salt of the earth Ravkans and they shouldn’t forget where they came from.

But yeah like he does kill Grisha left and right, but it’s the ones who have defied him. They’re the ones who’ve sided with Alina. The point of the story is that he might want to save them, but he wants power more. And his immortality and cumulatively acrued ruthlessness means that he doesn’t see it as anything but wiping the slate clean. This current generation was disloyal? Wipe them out. He made a point of preserving the children, they���ll just grow up and fill the ranks. Individual lives mean nothing to him because they’ll just die in a blink of the eye anyway. And also because by TGT he’s just a garden variety fascist lol. The good of an amorphous and ill defined collective/cause/nation outweighs that of the individual, no matter if those individuals make up that cause. He’s comfortable killing as many disloyal Grisha as need be without viewing that as a set back to larger Grisha interests. And it goes without saying that he must be the one leading said cause and furthering those interests, anything else is unacceptable.