#here have some overly specific meta out of nowhere

[isfjmel-phleg]

Thad Thawne and Will MacIntyre have no association whatsoever in the comics, but they do remind me of each other in certain ways. Similar personalities. Similar solitary and single-minded approaches to life. Similar facades of superiority to distract from things about themselves that they privately hate. Similar tragic endings that originally left them alone with the consequences of poor choices after almost finding redemption. Similarly brought back by writers who missed the point of their characters, made them simplistically evil, and got them out of the way by freezing them in a living death with no one to pity or mourn them. Similarly characterized by what could have been.

The difference though is the nature of their tragedies.

Thad is tragic because he never had a choice, he was a pawn in someone else's game for so long that when given the opportunity to have agency, he is so entrenched in what they made of him that he can't choose a better way.

Will is tragic because he did have a choice and chose to deny himself his humanity and even when he realizes where he failed, he is so entrenched in the lies he's been telling himself that he continues to choose what ultimately hurts him.

Either way, they are victims of their own pride.

[groovesnjams]

"We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel

DV:

Since the original WDSTF is a frequently-cited contender for the worst song of all time, the concept of doing a cover version that updates its references seems either borderline-genius (because there's nowhere to go but up) or exceptionally foolish (because the core idea is so flawed that there's no value to uncover.) It makes sense that Fall Out Boy would do this, and it makes sense that the result reveals that both things are true. Here's the thing: I come not to bury "We Didn't Start the Fire (A Fall Out Boy cover of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire)" but to praise it. Because it gets right one of the core things that Joel got wrong. The original "Fire" is a series of signifiers, ironically juxtaposed and strung together as disconnected events - a chronolog of nearly half a century that Joel connects into a meta-argument that "things happen" to every generation. But "H-bomb" didn't just materialize out of thin air, nor did "Belgians in the Congo" or the Vietnam war that Joel references a couple times. His is a history without subjects, and consequently without responsibility or blame. "AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz," he sings: these are presented as merely things that happened, not deliberate choices with moral consequence.

Fall Out Boy make no such pretense. Their "Fire" is a list of events that made an impact on Pete Wentz and crew, abandoning the pseudo-objectivity of chronological order in favor of a random, stream of consciousness approach. "World Trade, second plane" is unquestionably a defining event of the past 30 years, but "Cubs go all the way again" and dual Michael Jordan references only belong on a list that comes from a band that claims Chicago as its hometown. Add Captain Planet and the overly-cute "Prince and the Queen die"? This is something that only Fall Out Boy could - or would - attempt. It's a cliffsnotes version of their specific lifetimes, and can't possibly be seen as anything else. It's dumb - so dumb, like "Trump gets impeached twice/ Polar bears got no ice" is not even the nadir - but Fall Out Boy aren't cloaking their point of view like the world's worst historian (Billy Joel.) I'll gladly take their nonsense honesty over Joel's logical elision of history.

Or rather, I won't, because while Fall Out Boy upgrade the lyrics the fundamental concept here is so useless - and the melody so grating - that it's impossible to want to listen to this godforsaken song more than once, as a curiosity. It says something fascinating about Fall Out Boy that in 2023, a decade into an afterlife that's now lasted nearly twice as long as their original run, they're following up a return-to-form album with a one-off single as wildly misconstrued as this and managing to get even one thing right. I think what it says is, "Imagine Dragons better get their shit together if they want to compete."

MG:

"We Didn't Start the Fire" is an absolutely vile song, a piece of pure capitalist crap. Whether Billy Joel's smooth, solid, original turd or the clasp of dingleberries that make up this cover, it's still flag-waving propaganda barrelling around the bend. How can you both assert your nativist perspective as the center of the universe and excuse yourself and your fellow countrymen for any responsibility in all the wars, slavery, and unfounded hatred we've wrought in our existence? You can't, but it warms my heart that some of the richest men in the last two centuries have attempted the impossible. Fall Out Boy's stab at ironic juxtaposition might be funny in an arch way if Pete Wentz weren't an actually talented lyricist capable of staking out emotional truth in his work. Instead he's wasting his time not quite rhyming "black parade" with "Y2K." And while we're here, are these supposed to be the good events, the bad events, or just the events most worthy of laminating and tacking to the bulletin board? Sandy Hook, Columbine -- brutal, horrific losses of very young life -- on one hand, Meghan Markle and Venus and Serena -- famous black women -- on the other. What's the suggestion here?

Don't bother. There's nothing at the core of this song, nothing on this song's outer rings, nothing at all. Fall Out Boy have robbed these words of the energy they possessed in their inert state, produced meaninglessness where potential once stood. Defending this song is an exercise in tragedy but typing on about something so obviously wretched and doomed isn't a much better use of time.

[gavillain]

Top ten princesses!

*rubs hands together* Alright, let’s rank us some Disney princesses. Technically there’s only four others who aren’t gonna make the cut buuuut they’re the four I don’t really like XD

10: Pocahontas (Pocahontas)

With Pocahontas, you can very clearly see the behind the scenes "self-consciousness" of the filmmakers baked into her character writing. Pocahontas was Disney's big attempt at Oscar gold, trying to tell a Big Important portentous story while also grappling with trying to make Pocahontas as inoffensive as possible. The result is a character who is kind and likable enough, but also kind of wooden. The historical accuracy value is practically nil, and Pocahontas as a character and a movie comes off worse and worse with the passage of time. All that being said, I think Disney did the very best job they could with Pocahontas given the situation she emerged in. They created a character who is likable, free-spirited, a strong believer in justice and unity, and a character who leads with empathy and courage at the forefront. If nothing else, Pocahontas is a strong role model for little girls to look up to, and her love story with John Smith is one of Disney's most mature love stories as well, so there's plenty for older fans to enjoy as well.

9: Mulan (Mulan)

Mulan is counted as a Disney princess because they don't have any other Asian princesses and they wanted a more diverse lineup. That's the reason. Y'all can stop pretending not to know now. But with that strange categorizing, Mulan is weird fixture of the princess lineup any way you look at her. Mulan, for me, both as a princess and a movie, has always been just kind of there. A lot of people passionately love it, and I get that completely. A lot of people tear it apart, and I get that too. Mulan is a great girl power character, and her resourcefulness and cleverness being her defining trait is excellent. Her internal turmoil over her identity is perhaps more poignant here than with any other princess, and Reflection still stands as one of the greatest Disney songs ever written. That said, Mulan's defining character flaw being clumsiness and awkwardness and this being why she has such internal turmoil about fitting in just makes her come off as a bit hollow to me, and I feel like there was a better route to take her. After how surprisingly good an LGBT take on her worked over in Once Upon a Time and how much better that informed her feeling like an outsider, it just made the animated version come off as weaker on the internal side to me. Good character overall, though, and I do really like Mulan.

8: Moana (Moana)

Moana has a similar situation to Mulan where she's not really a princess but she gets shoehorned into the princess mold because they have nowhere else to put her. She and Mulan are Disney heroes, and they have different expectations for that reason. All that being said, Moana is easily the best of the Revival era CGI princesses. For one thing, while she has a bit of the Revival trend of modernizing the princesses too much, they don't make her overly adorkable to make her relatable (... “overly” being the key word; she’s not exempt). On the contrary, Moana is written very much like a person. We see Moana grapple with the weight of duty both to her people and to the world as a whole. Her story is one of trying figure out whether it is better to chase the unknown or to follow the tried and true. And I like that. I also really appreciate how Moana wins the final battle with empathy for the monster, and that's what makes her unique. The whole "Know Who You Are" musical number is legitimately one of the most powerful moments ever put into a Disney film too. My biggest issue with her actually comes from Maui whose constant meta quips and spotlight stealing tends to undermine Moana's character a lot and takes away from some of her moments that I wish hit harder than they do.

7: Jasmine (Aladdin)

Jasmine is the only princess in the lineup who is not the main character of her movie. On the contrary, she's the love interest of the main character and more of a supporting player in her film. She doesn't even get a solo, something every other princess, save Merida who isn't in a musical, gets. As a result of this, Jasmine isn't really as strong in her own right as several of the other princesses. But she's still awesome. She has a strong internal life and vibrancy, and the way her character revolves around a longing for freedom and the way that compares to Aladdin and the Genie makes her really come alive and work well within the context of the film. She's also clever, resourceful, a self proclaimed fast-learner, and someone who never allows her voice to be silenced. Yet even with all her strength, she's allowed tender moments of kindness and gentleness to show that there's another side to her. Also the TV series and sequels expanded on her character in a wonderful way.

6: Tiana (The Princess and the Frog)

Okay, yes, Disney's first black princess being a frog for more than half the movie was a bad creative decision on their part that wasn't a good look. But for Disney's first black princess, considering the company's history with race issues in particular and how self-conscious a lot of their princesses of color have come off, I think a lot of people underestimate just how good Tiana is. Tiana is vibrant and full of personality without every coming off as a stereotype or as anything less than dignified and admirable. She's hard worker, but she never comes off to me as trying to be "look how much better I am than the other princesses." She lets her actions and her character speak for themselves. I like that her arc is actually about finding a healthy balance between storybook love and wishing and hard work and determination. She's a woman with ambition, but she also learns to make time for a bit of fairytale fantasy and the things that really count like love and friendship. Also, just major props to Anika Noni Rose for making Tiana so damn likable and fun to follow.

5: Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

And now that we're in the top five, we start getting into the classics. Aurora gets an unfair reputation as a basic boring princess who needs a man to save her and has no value of her own. But with Sleeping Beauty being an adaptation of ballet in particular, that's really missing the forest for the trees. Sleeping Beauty was envisioned by Walt as the pinnacle of animation, an animated film that would stand tall in an art gallery, and you can see that very much at play in Aurora. From Marc Davis's absolutely stunning animation on her to Mary Costa's beautiful vocal work in blending with the musical stylings of Tchaikovsky, Aurora is, more than any other princess in the Disney lineup, a piece of high art. She's written deceptively simply to allow for the animation and the music to convey the brunt of her character. And, when you get right down to it, Aurora is, like art, designed around the emotions of the piece more than specific character quirks. Yet the essence of her kindness, of her grace, and of her sly looks and shrewd coyness is all right there in the character. She also pretty perfectly encapsulates the emotions and feelings of young love, and I think there's a lot of value in that portrayal as well.

4: Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

I used to give Ariel a hard time in the recent past, and I fully regret allowing certain sects of discourse to color my view of her. Ariel is an amazing character, and an excellent princess. One of the things that has struck me, revisiting the movie as a gay adult, is just how queer of a story Ariel's is. Hans Christian Anderson wrote the original in response to male lover of his, openly gay Howard Ashman was a major creative driving force behind the story, and openly gay animator Andreas Deja brought to life the visceral Grotto scene based on his falling out with his own father. There's queerness baked into the fabric of this film, and it shows itself clearly with the narrative of a princess who is unhappy with her home life and has a forbidden love that she must hide away from her own family and then must undergo the process of evolving into the version of herself that she wants to be in order to satisfy the love within herself. She gets dismissed as being just a rebellious teenager, but there's so much more to her than that and she hits home to so many people for that reason. Also, Jodi Benson's incredible voice work and the writing for her makes Ariel constantly a vibrant and interesting character who I feel like we get to know better and more intimately than almost any other princess.

3: Cinderella (Cinderella)

Though, much like Aurora and Ariel, Cinderella gets an unfair reputation as weak and needing a man, that couldn't be further from the truth. Cinderella is an abuse survivor who keeps her dreams, optimism, and kindness alive even in the face of crippling despair and misery. She's a woman who fought a daily battle just for the right to keep existing, and while the Fairy Godmother gave her magical assistance, Cinderella earned her happy ending herself. I just have to admire how she embodies patience and kindness while also still being strong in her own way. She's not a masculine warrior action figure; she's very feminine. Yet she finds strength in her femininity without relying on sex, and I just think that's wonderful. I also really love how much personality and humanity they filled Cinderella with without going overboard or making her into a parody of herself. Cinderella maintains the grace, poise, and beauty of a princess all while having so many little quirks and traits that make her feel like a real woman. Also, it must be said, Cinderella III is still the best Disney sequel, and I love how it expands upon her and gives her new opportunities to prove herself all while maintaining the core kindness and strength of her character.

2: Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

The one that started it all and still a radiant joy of beauty and kindness, Snow White is everything a princess should be. Like Cinderella, Snow White shows that you can survive abusive situations with your positivity in tact. In fact, Snow White goes one step further. She shows that "there's no use in grumbling when raindrops come tumbling; remember you're the one who can fill the world with sunshine." She's a beacon of hope and positivity who shows that compassion and kindness are the true virtues that deserve to be held as the most precious. She also shows the importance of found family and finding a loving support system that is right for you even if that's not your actual family members. In addition to all that, Snow White is great for being full of personality and having a vibrancy to her. She meets the dwarfs and immediately begins to take charge and to hold them to the standards she expects. She's never afraid to make her voice or opinion heard, and she's also got a playful teasing side to her that shines through. While her film is a heightened reality, she still has a core realness to her that makes her plight and her adventure feel all the more immersive for a viewer.

1: Belle (Beauty and the Beast)

But my favorite princess is always plain to see. While I love many of the other princesses, none quite hit that same sweet spot for me that Belle does. Belle is an outcast. She's a well read and intelligent woman more concerned with books and ideas of adventure than she is with the types of things she's expected to be concerned with by her small town. According to the townsfolk, she should be only concerned with getting married to a handsome man and being his doting little wife. However, Belle has absolutely no interest in taking part in any of that nonsense, and because of that, the people of her hometown write her off as odd or crazy. Many of us have been in a similar situation and felt excluded from society because we were somehow "not normal." Whether it was for our sexualities, our weight, our skin color, our religious beliefs, our over abundant love of comic books, or what have you, many people out there feel alone and ostracized. Yet Belle is that shining beacon of someone who lives her authentic life no matter what the world around her thinks, and that can give courage to others who relate to those feelings. Belle inspires the Beast to change to be better for her, not because she can break a spell, but because she sees the true beauty inside of him that no one else ever had. Some of my favorite types of heroes are those individuals who see the good inside of everyone. Those who give everyone a fair chance, especially to those who were never given a chance by anyone before, are the type of heroes we need more of in real life. No she can't fight off villains or complete daring feats of physical prowess, but she doesn't have to do those things to make a difference. She can save an entire castle by goodness and compassion alone. Paige O'Hara really does a fantastic job filling Belle with personality as well. I love that her voice work conveys confidence and strength, but also has moments of gentleness and vulnerability. She's allowed to have a range of emotions and certain spunk that is nothing short of endearing. Special mention must go to how excited and energized O'Hara plays Belle as getting when she talks about her books and stories. You really get the sense that reading is Belle's passion, not just something she enjoys. There's a real sense that Belle experiences the world around her fully and vigorously, and that adds to the charm of her character that makes her, for me, the most likable and best of the Disney princesses.

[cateringisalie]

Village: Resident Evil ramblings

(Some spoilers)

Ethan Winters is a goddamn idiot.

I say this without a shred of nostalgia; I first encountered him in RE7 and feel less than nostalgic towards the guy. RE7 without the benefit of the former entrants was a FPS horror and pretty good. Though you couldn’t escape that the characters you remembered were the Baker family and Mia; Ethan was a walking camera with a gun and some very simplistic emotional responses (fear, rescue wife, escape, swear occasionally). Having now run through the whole sequence of games, Ethan stands out starkly as the blandest and least interesting protagonist the series ever produced. He is possibly worse than Piers. Village updates Ethan’s personality. A bit. Well. Not really. Still got that fear, still got the swearing. Still got a mind to escape. But rather than rescue his wife, it’s about rescuing his daughter. I mean; Mia was gunned down and shot a further 9000 times by infuriating series stalwart Chris Redfield a little under ten minutes into the game proper. Not that Ethan really comes to terms with the trauma. By minute fifteen of the game the van you’ve been shoved in by Chris (who doesn’t shoot you for no reason he feels like explaining) has crashed and Ethan’s daughter is missing. Mourning Mia doesn’t actually enter into Ethan’s thought process. Goddamn idiot. Not to say that life with Mia was exactly picturesque; a few years after RE7 the couple are now somewhere nebulous in Eastern Europe in a very lovely house with a distressing number of empty wine bottles in the kitchen. A happy marriage this does not seem to be given Mia doesn’t want to get into the events of RE7 anymore, but Ethan does – but also failing to understand that the cover-up of the incident might be why no one is talking much about the whole mess in Louisiana and that bringing it up both distresses and angers Mia. But; the inciting incident has occurred and we’re propelled into our new scenario. Ethan; once again fish out of water, and its not like we have a choice. This is not to say Village does not repeat the same narrative trick of changing POV character, but there is both less of that, and the Half-Life-style regimented first person view jarringly completely goes out the window in the last quarter. It was less than consistent at points, but sparingly when occasionally and jarringly camera angles shifted to depict an introduction. But the game is also perfectly happy to render whole FPS sequences with gun visible and everything as it plays out a story beat, so... I don’t know? Fortunately Ethan’s environment and the setting are much more interesting. The unnamed Village is a satisfying knot of tangled streets, locked doors and environmental obstacles. Enemies don’t respawn per se, but additional enemies are added on subsequent visits to the effective hub of the game. There’s livestock to kill and give the Duke – the merchant playing a similar role to the pirate-like guy from RE4. Duke’s an entertaining character (some have objected to his physical and hugely overweight depiction); chatty and far more knowing than he will let on. He has a dangling thread come the end so perhaps will reappear elsewhere. He’ll sort the gun upgrades, supplies, let you sell treasure and point you towards your next destinations. Which is just as well as the human population of the village dies out somewhere between the first and second hour. No one left and any futile attempts to save people end in almost hilariously disastrous tragedies (no Ethan, don’t go higher in a building that is on fire). Leaving you with Lycans, zombies and gargoyles to fend off. Occasionally there’s some bigger foes on the level of the Executioner from RE5 but nothing on the level of the Tyrants. That kind of thing is left to the Village Lords. The villagers – before they all die – have a curiously unfamiliar religion and praise a figure known as Mother Miranda. She reportedly kept the village safe, but something has changed and now the Lycans run amok and without restraint. Not hard to pin that the reason for the change is Rose’s arrival (or could it be Ethan? COULD IT? No. Man is a goddamn idiot). The only door out of the village you can open is to Castle Dimitrescu and... It feels unnecessary to even get into what awaits. Given fandom have been so noisy about the tall lady and her vampiric daughters since the first trailer. She is so very, very tall. The castle is the first mode of Village. Possibly closest to RE7; Dimitrescu’s daughters are vulnerable based on certain environmental details (read the notes!) but otherwise should be fled from. Dimitrescu herself is invulnerable to everything bar one weapon and you need to work at getting that, so she needs to be fled from. Otherwise, explore the castle, find treasure. Sneak. Solve puzzles. It all looks suitably gorgeous and you get multiple chances to see if as you loop through the rooms and unlock more doors. The Village macro mechanics wrought as micro here. There’s a canny hint at a late reveal in the blunt utility of in-game mechanics to be had too. But – really should have been obvious given their prominence in the trailer – given Castle Dimitrescu is the first level, it means we must say goodbye to the very Tall Lady with knife hands and move onto someone else. In between levels, we get the first reinforcement of a tease from the trailer; the symbol of the Umbrella corporation. Its engraved into a location called the Ceremony Site. Its daubed on a cave wall as high as the Tall Lady. Its on the strange structure you insert the yellow flasks each Village Lord guards. And it means... almost nothing. RE's meta-plot has always been a mess and everyone’s favorite pharmaceutical company hasn’t been so active for a while, so the idea that we might be getting into some interesting weirdness with them again is oh so appealing. And yet – I was disappointed. Despite the repeated glimpses of the familiar white and red logo, the connection ultimately comes down to one letter I found at about 7/8s of the way through. Oswell Spencer – founder of the company – visited the Village years ago and saw the cave painting and adopted it as his logo. Oh. That’s... underwhelming. The same letter does at least prod at wiring Village’s latter reveals into the formation of the company along with tying in some parts of RE5 but if you thought this would be the company or the family dynasty origins or anything like that, you are in for a disappointment. It’s a tease and one that goes nowhere and does little. Oh we might now see how Spencer got into the whole inadvertent zombie making mess but its not a factor in the plot of this game nor does it really change the stakes of the previous. Perhaps I should be glad it’s so frivolous given other retcons in certain other franchises, but it feels so suspect to have drawn the attention and then shuffle the implications out the side-door. At least the other village lords have their own appeals. The second level is RE once again stealing PT (the PS4 demo to announce Silent Hills) given Konami outright don’t care about it anymore. Stripped of your guns and inventory, it’s a claustrophobic puzzle level requiring you to hide with mechanics familiar to both Evil Within and Alien Isolation. That same loop of rooms as you seek out puzzle solutions and hide from a staggeringly distressing malevolent entity. The third is combat light until the final confrontation; the fight staged in a flooded village – oh and Chris who still doesn’t shoot you but refuses to explain anything. And the fourth cheats. Heisenberg is thoroughly entertaining and grabs two levels for his own; an assault on a stronghold and his horrible cyborg factory outside of town. He has Magneto metal powers. Heisenberg is the camp villain to outdo the other camp villains. He’s having fun, he kinda likes Ethan and is oddly on his side. He found time to put together massive signposts to direct Ethan onto the last two levels (a good thing too given his lack of sense). But both levels are lacking. The Stronghold is a relentless firefight against hoards of mook enemies; the factory is overly long and maze-like. I am as tired as Ethan when he exclaims “What more?” And after Heisenberg is dealt with; the long, convoluted lurches to the ending. First person goes out the window. The game dabbles in characters toying with your understanding of what was going on but in a strangely limited way and completely ignoring the other implications of the reveal. Suddenly you mow down more and more enemies than ever before, bullets scarcely a concern. The final reveals of who/what/where/how come through. Not exactly explicable for what’s on-screen, but the effort’s been made to tie Village’s overt supernatural tendencies back into a world setup in RE. Its not magic and those are not truly werewolves. And the villain’s motivation is! Hugely disappointing. Connected as it is to the Umbrella letter, you might hope for something completely out there, but its unsatisfying and feels pretty sexist too. Or at least lacking in imagination to an astonishing degree and yet here we are. The game feels sloppiest as the final boss fight arrives flitting between characters without the shaky but workable character hand-offs RE7 deployed. Back in first person mode to talk to Duke one last time before engaging in.... a relatively simple boss fight. All the boss fights have been pretty easy – there’s nothing on the level of RE6’s sometimes horrendous contextual fights, or the annoying two-player RE5, nor the demanded accuracy of hitting specific weak-points as in RE7. And I don’t mind that. Unload all your weapons and keep your health up. And victory. There are fix-it fics already, but really, I don’t see the point in trying to fix the issue these people have. There’s an obvious setup for a game past this one with a strange throw-away reveal in the end-sequence (whither RE9, Revelations 3 or something else there are no clues as yet). There’s a spoiler for the sting given the end-credits lists a character who didn’t appear in the main game. The sting itself might wind up drawing on the sting from Revelations 2. Village is not RE at its best, but is at least more in the spirit of goofy, campy nonsense than 7. It at least is more at home with playing with the trappings of horror while not actually trying to be outright scary. As with 7, the villains are more interesting and more memorable than the good guys. And – as I found out after completing the game – we were robbed of Ada Wong dressed up like a Bloodborne character somewhere in the game. And that I think is the biggest shame of all this.

[aelaer]

Gonna send this separately so you can choose which ask to answer first and when. So the sorcerers have four main HQs in four different time zones and countries, all of which they can easily travel to in seconds. What do you think that means for the masters, their sleep schedule, and their nationalities? Like, do they have a fairly distributed postings (x number of masters are posted in London and must stay awake when London is, etc)? Or do they just sleep whenever they want?

This is a great question and one I’ve considered it while building out my headcanon for the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj. Here’s something of an excessive essay through a history of building out the four areas, which I think can help establish what goes on in modern day.

Because I’m a Tolkien nerd, I go overly deep into thinking about how languages come into play. Not only that, but I’m also a huge history nerd *and* I adore geography, so this gets very long and unnecessarily detailed. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it.

Hypothetical Early History - Kamar-Taj:

The films established Agamotto was the first Sorcerer Supreme and so he must have established the Sanctums and Kamar-Taj. It’s likely he was either from or very familiar with the Nepal area to establish Kamar-Taj in Kathmandu– but Kamar-Taj may not have necessarily been there since the first Sorcerer Supreme. The Sanctums protect the Earth, but Kamar-Taj is more of a headquarters, and those sort of places can move. I like to think that the first Kamar-Taj in the MCU was actually in Tibet like in the comics and had to be moved centuries ago due to Reasons. However, there is no evidence for this currently and simply remains a headcanon.

A lot of the books Stephen gets are in Classical Sanskrit, according to Wong, once he finishes several books in English as a novice (called The Book of the Invisible Sun, Astronomia Nova, Codex Imperium, and Key of Solomon). Classical Sanskrit’s more recent than Vedic Sanskrit, but it’s still a very old language. It came around about 2500 years ago and was widely used until the beginning of the dominance of Islamic societies about the 13th century. It spread all throughout Asia in its near 2000 years of prominence in learned, literary circles as well as in several vernacular circles. This includes both Nepal and quite a bit of China.

So with Kamar-Taj within Asia (there’s no reason to believe otherwise) the primary language both studied and spoken across several different cultures would have certainly been Sanskrit until the end of the first millennium AD. For any newcomer who was illiterate (of which there likely would be many) it would be the first language they were taught to read and write (and speak as needed). It would serve as the lingua franca across all four locations. But naturally each location would have picked up the vernacular languages in their region as well as other elements.

So let’s take a look at the actual Sanctums and how they would differentiate between each other before going further into how the lingua franca would change over time.

Hypothetical Early History - The London Sanctum

Let’s look at London first. London is a very old city that has history to the Roman era (called Londonium then), established by them in 47 AD. Apparently it had a population of 50,000 by the 3rd century AD, which is nuts; remember that the historical City of London is only about a square mile wide, but in modern day about 500,000 people work in that square mile. So 50,000 people can live in that amount of space easily. It only really started spilling out in the 1600s, too.

Why am I saying all this? Well, I looked up the filming location from the very beginning of Doctor Strange, where Kaecilius runs out of the library to the London Sanctum and to the city. That was filmed on Whitehall Court, which is located in Westminster and about a kilometer away from the borders of the classic City of London.

This means that the London Sanctum was not considered a part of London for some time. Indeed, Agamotto likely established it several hundred years before the Westminster Abbey and the predecessor to the Palace of Westminster were established in the 10th and 11th centuries. Before that? There was no reason for anyone to be there. So for several centuries the London Sanctum was in the middle of nowhere. There was likely an illusion spell over it to prevent any random passerbys from over the centuries to find it unless they were “meant” to find it, or whatever. You know, magic stuff. They’d probably disguise it as a small servant’s house once the village around the abbey and palace started developing (with some sort of suggestive “do not disturb” spells of various strengths depending on the political/religious climates of the decade).

The facade would change with the changing architecture in the village and likely would remain generally undocumented until Westminster became an official borough in the 16th century. With houses getting much closer and less easily able to completely hide their presence, even with subtle “look the other way” spells, this is when I really think they’d have to set aside actual budget for whatever property taxes were set by the Crown. You can hide a building in plain sight with magic if there’s enough empty space, but I don’t think you could hide it if you have buildings on each side of it unless you do the Harry Potter trick of squeezing the space out of existence for all non-magic folk. They clearly don’t do this in the film, and they wouldn’t want someone to try and build something on their very not-empty lot, thus needing to pay property taxes. But generally they’d otherwise be left alone.

Despite it not being part of London until the Greater London area was established in the 20th century, due to its closeness to the City of London I think it would have been called the London Sanctum from a very early point. London/Londonium had been around for a millennium longer than Westminster, so I don’t see them changing the name just because they’re suddenly in a village called Westminster now.

The vernacular language of the Sanctum (not to be confused with the literary language and worldwide language of communication, Sanskrit) would shift with the centuries. First it would be the Common Brittonic with Latin after the Roman invasion in order to do any business in London (which was only a kilometer away, though distance naturally wouldn’t be an issue with a sorcerer). This would eventually shift to Old English at the Roman Empire’s decline, and Latin would be put on the backburner for some time. Old English turns to Middle turns to Early Modern (which is Shakespeare), and Latin’s revival with the Renaissance does spread into the Sanctum if they pick up any well-read, learned individuals in the 16th to 18th centuries.

Hypothetical Early History - The Hong Kong Sanctum 

The Hong Kong Sanctum was built on a set for a street that doesn’t actually exist in Hong Kong so we can’t use the same trick we did for London on precise location. But like London, the area has been inhabited for millennia, with it becoming part of one of the Chinese dynasties (Qin) in 221 BC. It was difficult to find dating for the history of its name and what it was called before it became Hong Kong. From what I can find, the British, once they received the island to colonize in the 19th century, gave the whole island that name, which was the phonetic translation of “ 香港 ”, or “fragrant harbour”.

It’s very unlikely that the Hong Kong Sanctum was actually called Hong Kong for most of its history unless it was directly within the village that bore that name on Hong Kong Island. But we don’t know where the Sanctum is supposed to be; it could be on Hong Kong Island (the original British territory), the Kowloon Peninsula (in the second growth of the colony), or on Lantau Island, another island, or one of the other New Territories north of the peninsula, gained by the British in 1899. Its original name probably reflected whatever area it’s historically located in and it would not have been changed to “Hong Kong” likely until the 20th century.

The vernacular language of the Hong Kong Sanctum would have started with the Chinese/Sinitic language groups of Yue and Hakka (which are considered Cantonese by non-linguists), specifically with dialects local to the area. It looks like another dialect from the Min family also lived in the area, so that could be sprinkled in as well. I would think that sorcerers based within the Hong Kong Sanctum would be expected to speak at least two local Chinese dialects to be able to communicate with as many newcomers as possible, and that the common language across language barriers for all the hundreds of variants of Chinese would be Sanskrit, as that would be the literary and formal language used to talk with people from all around the world. The literary language would eventually change, of course, but we’re not quite there yet in this ridiculous meta.

It’s possible that, since the area was generally not very populated until the 19th century, that the Sanctum was a lot more open in its existence (with less concealment spells and the like) and that they even allowed rumours of its existence to leak out to the local villages for anyone who was looking for greater spiritual enlightenment and knowledge. They may set some sort of obstacles on the way to find the Sanctum, but it wouldn’t be completely off the map like London would have to be for most of its existence. I don’t see anything in Taoism, Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism that would mark the magics of sorcery as “unnatural” or “evil” as many sects of Christianity would have in Europe, but I may be wrong on this topic.

They’d not have to worry about an increasing populace until the 19th century, since Hong Kong Island only had 3,000 people when the British colonized it. The population got a huge influx of people from Canton/Guangzhou once the British took over, which would eventually shift the vernacular from several dialects of Chinese to the one the people of Canton brought with them: Cantonese. Along with Cantonese, there definitely would be an increase in English amongst those speaking the vernacular in the Hong Kong Sanctum from the 1840s onward, just as there was with the rest of the population of Hong Kong. We’ll get more into this development in another part, but first we need to cover America.

Hypothetical Early History - The New York Sanctum

Like Hong Kong, this name is more recent, though not as recent as its sister sanctum in China. Before New York City was colonized, it was populated by the Lenape people, who called their territory Lenapehoking. I imagine that the New York Sanctum was once called the Lenapehoking Sanctum, assuming that the Lenope people were able to hold that territory for the several centuries before the Europeans came over. There’s no recorded history that I could find, so we cannot be certain on that account.

Unlike the London Sanctum (and possibly the Hong Kong Sanctum), it is also possible that the religion of the Lenape people and other local tribes were open to the idea of some individuals having a greater natural connection and unusual, great powers. I think obstacles would be set for those of the Lenape who wanted to leave to find this spot of enlightenment, but at the same time I do not believe it would be viewed necessarily as a negative thing.

If they drew recruits from the local populace, the vernacular would have been largely from the language spoken by the Lenape of what is now called New York City, which is called Munsee (and sadly has only two living native speakers left). They possibly also spoke Umani, the language the Lenape south of New York spoke.

This would have all changed with the arrival of European colonizers. The Dutch bought some of the area in modern lower Manhattan in 1626 from one of the Lenape groups, but the territory only extended to Wall Street; Bleecker Street is about 2 miles north of that, so they’re still in Lenape territory. However, the next 100 years dramatically shifted the landscape. New Amsterdam became New York (and transferred back, *then* back again), and inter-tribal warfare combined with the lack of immunity from the diseases the Europeans brought over cut Lenape populations dramatically in the modern New York area. I could see a potential influx of Lenape individuals who wanted nothing to do with the business of war and disease and looked for the mysterious building that no one could ever map in their territory for sanctuary. And from there, a lot of Lenape sorcerers in the 17th century.

Greenwich Village (which is where Bleecker Street is) started as farmland with some of the Dutch in the 1630s onward. The first black Dutchmen were freed a decade later and given parcels of land there, as well. Who knows: maybe one of them, or their children, became the first black sorcerers as I’m uncertain if such an opportunity would have presented itself earlier in London and I’m not sure if they would pick up random folk who didn’t come directly to Kamar-Taj or one of the three Sanctums. That said, I don’t know what travel from Africa looked like (outside of the countries on the Mediterranean) before the slave trade really got going from the age of exploration onwards. It’s hard to say what the sorcerer recruiting process would be like, especially with the language barriers. And I’d rather not magic all language barriers away, they’re interesting to keep around.

Anyway, the area was first designated as a hamlet on paper in 1713 (as Grin’wich); by the end of the century it was a decent-sized suburb that absolutely exploded in population throughout the 19th century. It would certainly have been during the 1700s that they would have had to established a visible building on record so no one tried to build on top of them (and start paying property taxes on that, too, haha); they probably expanded their property throughout the 1800s as smallpox drove people out of south Manhattan to the fresher airs of Greenwich, then with the immigration and building booms of the rest of the century.

By the 18th century English would have entered the vernacular of the sorcerers residing in the New York Sanctum and would remain the primary vernacular language until modern day. It would likely be renamed sometime in the 1700s as well with the expansion of New York City and the further decline of native settlements.

Hypothetical Early History - Mingling With the Normals Around the World

One reason I favour Kamar-Taj in a more remote region in its earlier years rather than Kathmandu would be for sorcerers from all around the world to easily mingle outside without worry of some central Asian villager getting spooked out of his ever-loving mind for seeing his first European. And it makes sense to me that Kamar-Taj would have a large community of farmers, herdsmen, and the like doing basic things to keep people fed and shod while more experienced sorcerers did the reality protecting part of the job. They simply wouldn’t be able to do their job if they didn’t have people who were keeping the community running. And I don’t think they’d outsource it for much of their existence. I really see Kamar-Taj as a very self-sufficient society that keeps away from the rest of the world as much as possible. That would take a lot of room, and you’d need a lot of land for that. So yeah, I’m favouring Kamar-Taj as a “hidden land” in Tibet as it was in the comics until the world began to enter the modern era. And here they could mingle with anyone they wanted.

When it came to going out to the rest of the world, however, I would imagine caution and secrecy was of ultimate importance. Again, you don’t want to spook the western European villager with seeing a black person for the first time some 2000 years ago. So basically sorcerers avoided any locals as much as viably possible.

On that note, until the age of exploration I imagine that each Sanctum would be very strict with who was allowed outside of the Sanctum to their immediate surroundings. They don’t want to draw too much curiosity and scrutiny lest rumours travel to those with considerable power. This would be especially important in London after the rise of Christianity and the distrust in anything seen as magical. People that didn’t look like you appearing in your little village? Don’t want to scare the illiterate locals.

So for the majority of the Sanctums’ histories, only sorcerers with backgrounds that were native to their location would actually go outside if they needed to and there was a chance they’d come across someone. America would be the most lenient while London the strictest. These rules would be in place for precaution and secrecy.

Even when the age of exploration begins in earnest and you actually start seeing traders from Asia, Africa, and the Americas in London as the centuries pass onward, minority sorcerers still may not want to travel the streets of London due to the possibility that they may be mistreated. I’m not greatly familiar with the history of diversity and how minorities were treated in London, but if it’s anything like the rest of the world, it probably wasn’t great. And the last thing anyone before the 19th century would want is to show magic and be accused of witchcraft. I imagined they just avoided the possibility of problems happening altogether by limiting who went outside the Sanctum in certain parts of the world.

It’s not really until the 19th century that you see stringent rules start to relax a bit; Hong Kong has several European traders and New York and London have turned into much larger melting pots. By the time WWII comes around, these old rules about where people can travel directly from the Sanctums are dropped as the world has become a melting pot.

Hypothetical History Up To The Modern Era

As established, the main language of literary and cross-cultural communication would start with Sanskrit due to its prominence in Asia as a writing system first and foremost when the Sanctums were established (presuming that they were established a few centuries before or after the BC/AD shift; I don’t think the MCU uses the comic canon for Agamotto’s age). Using it for spoken language afterwards just makes sense with so many cultures present.

The lingua franca of Sanskrit wouldn’t change until Sanskrit’s decline; I don’t see it happening immediately, either. Sanskrit started declining in the 13th century, but I think it would remain the lingua franca until sometime during the Renaissance and the years of colonialism that follow. I believe there would have been a large push for Latin to be the main language of literacy and communication between the 16th to 18th centuries, primarily from the sorcerers from Europe. A good number of more complex texts from the London Sanctum would have surely been translated into Latin at this time (while the idea of writing in the vernacular, as spread with the printing press, has certainly caught on and beginner texts there are starting to be translated into early Modern English).

The Ancient One, who is now Sorcerer Supreme at this time, isn’t quite sure yet of that change. She’s getting a lot of resistance from Hong Kong in particular who think Sanskrit has served fine for well over a millennium and can serve just as well in the next. Instead she encourages more translations of beginner books into the vernacular and encourages those in the other Sanctums to learn other vernacular languages of other Sanctums as she can see the world is beginning to shrink and more places are being mapped. She, of course, can speak several languages fluently so she can talk to as many students in their native language as possible. Because the Sanctums are not within Spanish-speaking or French-speaking territories, these two languages are acknowledged as wide-speaking and at least a couple sorcerers learn the languages if there are no native speakers, but they do not come into the running as a lingua franca (just as Mandarin does not, either, as no one near Hong Kong speaks it).

Things remain in flux for the next 200 to 300 years until the New York Sanctum is largely populated by those who immigrated recently to the English colonies. And then the request starts to change: make the lingua franca English. London largely agrees with this (though things get a bit salty between a couple English natives and a couple pro-Independence colonizers at the end of the 18th century) but by the time the 19th century rolls around, there’s a lot of support for this from both New York and London.

Hong Kong doesn’t see why it should change at all, and then the Opium Wars come around, and by 1850, there’s quite a bit of English being spoken by newcomers in their area and almost everyone else is speaking another dialect of Chinese rather than the vernacular they were familiar with. They agree, albeit a bit reluctantly. English becomes the vernacular in the latter half of the 19th century and any starter books that haven’t been translated start to be translated into English.

The Hong Kong Sanctum also works on translating several starter books into Cantonese as they still want to draw from the local populace who don’t speak English; they still have plenty of the local Yue and Hakka dialects made over the last thousand years (with updates made every couple hundred years with shifting languages).

France’s fall from power with the removal of their monarchy and the defeat of Napoleon, alongside the continuous British colonization efforts and the growing prosperity from the new county of the United States, remove French from potentially becoming a lingua franca and solidify English as a worldwide language. This only increases in the 20th century after the Allied success in WWII, even with Britain giving up/losing their colonies throughout the next thirty years. English is still spoken in those territories, after all.

Hypothetical History: The Modern Era

The twentieth century saw the most change in the shape of the world than all centuries previous, and this change is reflected in policy with the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj. Before the twentieth century, the sorcerers that resided/worked in the various Sanctums were very homogeneous. London was staffed by Europeans and Hong Kong by Asians, especially of southeast descent. New York was the most lenient due to the low population in the area that was constantly moving, though individuals who looked like the indigenous peoples were certainly preferred (no blonds here). Everyone was welcome in Kamar-Taj as it was a completely closed off, secluded community and everyone was used to a very mixed population. As mentioned earlier, while London and New York saw different ethnicities, especially after the Renaissance, I don’t think a lot of people would really want to go out and about in those areas due to the prejudices of the era.

It is possible that some sorcerers came with prejudices as they were introduced to Kamar-Taj, but the amount of discipline and the ability to work together was so imperative to Agamotto, the Ancient One, and other Sorcerer Supremes (however many there were) that anyone who didn’t shed them simply wouldn’t be permitted to continue. Their tight-knit society wouldn’t be able to function if some sorcerers refused to work with other sorcerers because they looked different, practiced a different religion, or was a woman. The Ancient One being a woman of ambiguous religious practices helped get rid of a lot of people.

But as mentioned, a lot of things changed with the twentieth century. Prejudice still existed, of course, as it does today, but it was significantly less than when the slave trade was legal around half the world 200-300 years ago. The invention of photography, radio, and TV alongside WWI and WWII made the world smaller than it ever has been. And as the three Sanctum cities were much more heterogeneous than in centuries past, who presided over what relaxed.

In the 21st century, sorcerers come from all around the world over. Because their numbers are small I think recruitment still remains largely out of being lucky enough to come across a sorcerer who thinks you may be a good candidate, or to hear about Kamar-Taj through word of mouth and travel to Kathmandu (where it eventually permanently located as need for fields and fields of space became unnecessary). Anyone who doesn’t know English well (or at all) is taught to read, write, and speak the language during their novice days. As English is the lingua franca of the business world right now, no one in their right mind would turn that down, either; right now, English remains the most desired language to learn in the majority of non-English speaking countries.

Anyone can now be posted anywhere due to the heterogeneous world. Sleep schedules correspond with the local time of the location; as each Sanctum has an alarm system that goes to Kamar-Taj (and I imagine Kamar-Taj has its own), it would be easy enough to get sorcerers who are wide awake to help with an emergency. There’s probably someone keeping an eye on all locations when the locals are sleeping, even if they’re not physically there.

The majority of sorcerers who don’t have assignments that correspond with the Sanctums would remain in Kamar-Taj, and if they needed to go to any old Sanctum, it likely would be Hong Kong as Hong Kong is only two hours and 15 minutes ahead of Kathmandu. (China is one time zone when it should be at least three, but that’s another conversation altogether). That said, even if the local residents of the Sanctums are asleep, I view the Sanctums as facilities that are open twenty-four hours to the people of Kamar-Taj if they need to reference something that lives within one of the other Sanctums.

I don’t think the permanent staff of the Sanctums in the modern era would be overly large, either; there’s the Master, of course, probably another person to see to the Sanctum’s day-to-day tasks, and maybe a handful of acolytes and apprentices making a certain study of something that lives within the Sanctum or prefer to be within that time zone for some time while doing another job that they could do anywhere (such as the translations I mentioned). But because they do have that nifty alarm system, and the world is much more heterogeneous than it once was, the desire to keep sorcerers assigned to certain parts of the world appearing like people locally from there so as to draw less attention from locals is a custom that has more or less died out. And that has made the assignments much, much more flexible.

So yeah, I think in the modern era there is a bit more flexibility that wasn’t present in former eras because the world is smaller. With the alarm system connected to Kamar-Taj, which would have traffic 24 hours a day more than likely, you have a worldwide system of sorcerers with an eye on each Sanctum as well as a worldwide system of sorcerers that can go wherever they need to go to take care of dimensional issues as they come up.

[teagrl]

Luke Skywalker and the Death Star Calculus

So one thing that I’m pretty interested in is deconstructing the hero and by this I don’t mean a simple subversion, I mean looking at what it means  to be a hero in terms of costs/sacrifices etc. 

Now my fave case (SURPRISE) for this is Luke because there’s so much interesting material to draw on and talk about. I like looking at him with respect to the motherfucking wreckage boyfriend leaves behind when push comes to shove. Spoiler alert: I’m going to end by drop kicking the Black Fleet crisis trilogy for lacking nuance and fucking up Luke’s characterization. Because I can’t talk about the EU without being a cranky asshole about it. I’m ok with that.

I’ll give it to Black Fleet that it deals with the Death Star calculus up front. 

But I want to start here with the TTT, with Luke’s reluctance there to kill. It’s pretty noted from the get-go in the first Nohgri attack when he wipes out the team sent to capture him before going to go to Han and Leia:

Luke took a shuddering breath. He’d done it. Not the way he’d wanted to, but he’d done it. Now, he could only hope he’d done it in time.

And this pops up more than a few times there and elsewhere. Reluctance to kill is very much a characterization constant for Luke Skywalker. Of course there’s the moral side of it, but there’s also the more practical consideration that as someone who is now trained in the Force Luke actually feels deaths (and this is as early as Truce at Bakura, one day after RotJ:

Two blasts of painfully familiar human anguish wrenched Luke’s spine and stomach and Alliance pilots died.

It’s not academic for him is my point.

Moving forward to my fave, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor you have him do this:

He stayed with them while every stormtrooper in the entire system, all at once in all their thousands, sagged and shuddered. And died.

Luke felt every death.

This has a pretty severe cost on Luke’s mental health. This is how the dude who comes to interview Luke describes him after all that:

Skywalker pushed himself to his feet. His face was drawn, and far more deeply lined than Geptun had expected from a lad of twenty-four. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping for some few days now. His movements were slightly unsteady, and the shadows under his eyes were shading toward purple—but they were nothing compared to the shadows within his eyes.

This whole scene is super relevant, you can read it here. Luke is...not himself. Anyone who hires and investigator to judge him as a mass murderer, we can agree is...not all there.

And one super interesting thing, is how Shadows of Mindor positions what I call the “Death Star calculus” inflicting terrible damage out of necessity, to prevent even greater loss. While Shadows of Mindor doesn’t explicitly address Luke taking down the Death Star, over and over Luke mentions rather ominously his “best trick.” At the end of the novel, we find out what it is:

Skywalker lifted his face from his hands and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. "My best trick is to do one thing--to make one small move, even a simple choice-- and kill thousands of people. Thousands."

More than thousands, but we all get his point. 

Now one of the annoying things from Black Fleet, as I mentioned here was how wrong it got Luke’s characterization, particularly the aforementioned Death Star calculus. I said:

...who is this Luke Skywalker who argues FOR force – to what seemed to me to be overly enthusiastic levels at times and makes light of the Death Star deaths like they’re a triviality? Sure, he then confesses to know the number of those killed but he’s a goddamn Jedi master in this timeline, I expect more restraint and self awareness/maturity and thoughtfulness from him.

I still feel that way, but let’s look at the text:

“Tagge—I remember now,” said Luke. “He was on the first Death Star when Leia was a prisoner.” He paused, then added, “He was probably still on board when my proton torpedo blew it to bits.”

Luke didn’t know what possessed him to make that claim before Akanah, and her response made him feel even more foolish for having done so. She stiffened as he spoke, and he could feel her withdrawing from him, though she barely moved.

“Do you seek honor from me for this? In time you  will understand that the Fallanassi honor no heroes for killing, not even killing one who has been our tormentor,” said Akanah.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, and wondered at his own words. Everything suddenly seemed upside down. It was strange and unsettling that the deed for which he had been so lionized now became touched with regret—regret over the killing of an enemy who had been his own sister’s tormentor. 

Let’s rehearse some timelike. Unlike Truce at Bakura, Shadows of Mindor, and the TTT, the Black Fleet Crisis has Luke when he’s already a Jedi Master (16-17ABY) having trained several apprentices (his first class already “graduated”). Now Shadows of Mindor might be a more recent novel in the EU, BUT regardless, this is a callous, extremely foolish thing for Luke to say (even if he did feel like that reflexively, he knows who Akanah is and her rigid pacifism). It comes out of NOWHERE and the fact that the writer makes Luke aware of how ridiculous and cold it sounds does not in any way make it make any sense characterization-wise in that timeline. For Luke to be “touched with regret” over killing millions at THIS POINT in the timeline, a whopping SIXTEEN YEARS post Yavin makes him a fucking shitty and unaware Jedi Master. A goddamn hazard, if you ask me.

Black Fleet tries to walk that shit back. It’s almost like the writer knows he’s getting his characterization wrong (like yo bro  YOUR CHARACTER should be confused but your READERS shouldn’t), but didn’t know how to fix it. He does try and this attempt is better:

With no ready answer, Luke turned his gaze back toward the flyway ahead. It wasn’t until years after the Battle of Yavin that Luke had first become aware that the Death Star he had destroyed at Yavin had a complement—officers, crew, and support staff—of more than a million sentients.

In retrospect, it was something he should have realized without prompting. But it took a new Battle of Yavin display at the Museum of the Republic on Coruscant to point it out to him. When Luke thought of the Death Star, he associated it with Vader and Tagge and Grand Moff Tarkin, with the stormtroopers who’d tried to kill him in its corridors and the TIE pilots who’d tried to kill him above its surface, with the superlaser gun crews who had obliterated defenseless Alderaan.

But the signs at the massive cutaway model of the Death Star in the museum had  spelled out the numbers in its table of specifications, and Luke could still recite them: 25,800 stormtroopers, 27,048 officers, 774,576 crew, 378,685 support staff—

“One million, two hundred five thousand, one hundred nine,” Luke said quietly. “Not counting the droids.”The calm precision of the recitation brought a look of startled horror to [Akanah’s] face.

BETTER. But why does this reflection happen AFTER he makes that incredibly flippant remark and thinks that it’s “upside down” to feel regret for it? Shouldn’t regret for this massive loss of life be the motherfucking DEFAULT? He’s not Joe Shmoe, he’s fucking Luke Skywalker, head of the goddamn Jedi Order. The first thing he should feel NOW is regret that such an action was necessary. 

You want the meta reason? It’s obvious. The writer wanted to pit Luke philosophically (violence is necessary sometimes) against Akanah (all pacifism all the time). He just didn’t have the chops to do it with nuance so Luke’s characterization takes a hit. Shame because there are some seeds worth considering, like Akanah asking Luke to give up his lightsaber:

“Not while I still call myself a Jedi. It’s more than a weapon—it’s a tool for training the mind and the body. And it’s become part of me—an extension of my will.”

“And a way to enforce your will on others.”

He shook his head. “Most of the discipline of the lightsaber has to do with defense.”

“What about the rest?”

“The rest—the rest requires that you  get close to your adversary, close enough to have to look them in the eye,” Luke said. “An old-fashioned idea, and a civilizing one. If all you want is to kill quickly, efficiently and impersonally, a blaster is a much better choice—the Emperor’s stormtroopers didn’t carry lightsabers, after all.”

Like we laugh at lightsabers (insta-decapitators/amputators) being “civilized,” but sure there is SOME logic to this ahah from a certain point of view.

But my general takeaway is to ignore the characterization faux pas and focus on Luke at some point early on (as in before he becomes a Jedi Master, probably right after the events in the OT) realizing what it means to have dusted the Death Star, even if back then he wasn’t sufficiently adept in the Force to feel the bad vibes, and even if he were totally aware of the necessity of his actions. I like to think of him reflecting on how much he would like to avoid doing such a thing again, now that he’s fully cognizant of what it means. 

And then Mindor happens.

[pussymagicuniverse]

my top 5 mac ‘n’ cheese movies

what is a ‘mac ‘n’ cheese’ movie, you might be wondering?

these are the movies that always make you feel good. they don’t need to necessarily be “feel good” films. not all of mine are. these are the movies that you could always put on your Netflix at home (granted it’s on there), always put in the DVD (if you even have any) player, or always leave on while you’re channel surfing (if that’s even a thing you do these days). these are the movies that are “comforting” background noise or movies you never get sick of, no matter how many times you’ve seen them. these are the movies that, if you live alone, will make you feel like you have friends with you. these are the movies that, if you’re feeling alone, will bring solace to your loneliness.

these do NOT have to be:

award-worthy 

“good” films

from any specific genre or decade

popular

simply, these are the films that somehow, your spirit is comforted by their essence. maybe through memory, or sound, or childhood… it doesn’t matter. just having these on in the background is soothing to my soul. we can pay attention, or not. we can be cleaning, doing the dishes, working, etc. and it just FEELS GOOD to have them on in the background.

the following movies are my film mac ‘n’ cheese, in no special order.

•

Clueless (1995)

“Searching for a boy in high school is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.”

i said no special order, but of course, i’m going to put Clueless, the beloved classic, first.

Clueless has always been my go-to “favorite” movie. not to age myself or anything, but yes, even before it was “cool.” i’m a ‘90s kid, and my first memories of this movie are watching it at my aunt’s house when she’d babysit me when my dad worked weekends. i was actually 5-6 years old when it came out, so it was ingrained in me very young, for better or worse. 

speaking of better or worse, i know that everyone now loves to bring up the weird fact that *spoiler alert* Cher ends up with her ex-step-brother, Josh… but i didn’t say these mac ‘n’ cheese movies had to be perfect. so even though now i watch with a tiny tinge of ‘ew?’ in my brain, i allow timeless Paul-Rudd-dreaminess to wash away all of the potential ickiness that somewhat does not make sense.

and please note that i am not excusing step-cest because the general thought of that is very, very ew and evokes quite a visceral response from my entire being.

(did you like how i said that last sentence in my best Cher voice?)

also speaking of better or worse, because i also grew up thinking that i would find the love of my life by not realizing i loved them at all or pretending i didn’t know i loved them at all until ONE DAY i would be standing by a fountain after a therapeutic shopping spree like, ‘WAIT… I LOVE THEM. AND THEY LOVE ME TOO?!’ be careful what you wish for, kids. it can happen… and not always how you want it to.

regardless of all this negative-sounding analysis, i have always loved this movie and i’m certain i always will.

Scream (1996)

“my parents are gonna be so mad at me!”

my favorite part about this choice is that my friend deemed it a “hot take,” and i will die on that hill if i have to.

Scream is one of my favorite horror films. firstly, this movie is not typical horror. sure, it’s horrific at times… mostly in the opening scene, whereafter it becomes more of a (highly witty) teen comedy with (a lot of) murder. i think while true horror fans can appreciate the merits of Scream, what it did for the genre, and Wes Craven’s meta expertise, and also agree that it’s “not scary.”

if someone could have The Exorcist, or, for a more modern reference, Hereditary and just have it on any time, i’m not sure i could subscribe to that. but Scream is (thankfully) not either of those movies. it’s horror lite for ‘90s kids like me who, at times, revel in their teen ‘90s nostalgia. although, i have to say, i have seen someone recoil just at the mention of such a mild horror film. and i thought i was a weakling in horror. however, now that i’ve seen Hereditary (AND SURVIVED!), i feel like i can handle most things, though i am fairly certain i will not test those waters.

not to mention:

Dirty Dancing (1987)

“You Just Put Your Pickle On Everybody's Plate, College Boy, And Leave The Hard Stuff To Me.”

A CLASSIC! i’ll save most of my opinions for another piece i’m writing, but here’s the take: this movie is classic, heartfelt, funny, meaningful, political in mostly the right places (it doesn’t focus on everything), and babealicious in all the right places (Patrick Swayze, Cynthia Rhodes who plays Penny, Jennifer Garner, hello––a triad we’d all love to see if the movie had gone THAT progressive––but then it never would’ve been made. it already had a hard enough time, let’s not get carried away). 

so far you can probably sense the ongoing theme in my choices: the air of nostalgia. film geeks and those who just heard Stan’s spiel on VHS in I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix will understand. while i’m not watching these movies on VHS, there is something about the feeling of these films. and i’d argue that everyone has favorite movies that pertain to their tastes and interests that fall under this physical sensation of 20th-century film. i’m not nostalgic for the time itself, i don’t need to relive the decades (don’t we daily? in our pop culture, in our fashion, everything)… it’s just that these films are comforting for very personal reasons that have nothing to do with the rest of the world. which is why your mac ‘n’ cheese list will look very differently from mine. it’s kind of unexplainable.

in 8th grade, i watched this movie every day after school because my friend just had to. she was obsessed. years later, we feel the same about this movie. it has this summery vibe to it. i guess there’s something about summer, and something about fall that both tug at my sensibilities in film and literature… the way they’re shown or described. it can be kinda magical. Dirty Dancing does this for me. this scene brings me to tears often.

Moana (2017)

“There is nowhere you could go that I won't be with you.”

stepping out of nostalgia (it’s a relief, honestly), we have my favorite Disney cartoon of the twenty-teens. Coco is up there, but Moana is something else (for me). one day i will also write more in detail about the beauty of this film and what it means to me, but maybe that’s not for me to write.

Moana is about a young woman who is set to become the next chief of her Hawaiian island. but as she grapples with that path for her life, a crisis descends. Moana ends up having to save her family’s island (and the world, essentially, because this curse/disease would spread far beyond their home) from destruction because of the demigod, Maui, who robbed the heart, a glowing lime stone, from Goddes Te Fiti, who kept life flourishing and abundant. it can easily function as an allegory for global warming as well as some other things i may get into another time… but it is so much more than that. it makes me cry nearly every time i watch. i deeply resonate with Moana needing to carve out a way for herself that her family (specifically, her father) might not agree with, but she has to do anyway for her ancestors and her own spirit. 

between her sweet and sentimental relationship with her grandmother, the call of her ancestors, and the courageous anthem, “How Far I’ll Go,” that she sings throughout the film––it is not only beyond precious and meaningful, an homage to the feminine, but also doused with humor throughout. i literally feel my heart swell when i watch this and it’s a movie of self-care for my inner child. i can’t fully explain the connection i feel to this film but i know that i very much wish i had this film when i was an actual child! and i can’t wait to show it to my future children. especially my daughter(s).

and last but not least…

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

“What is it with this chick, she have beer flavored nipples?”

it was SO HARD for me to choose one 5th film. i mulled about it for weeks. but this one is a classic i could never tire of. it was the perfect movie to tie up the ‘90s.

10 Things, ah yes, the story of two sisters on their high school dating (or not) journeys. this movie is hilarious and very cleverly derived and adapted from a Shakespeare story: The Taming of the Shrew (which they reference in the film, and i love that they do because i’m a reference nerd), while, fun fact (i’m also a fun fact nerd, i’ve recently discovered)!: Clueless was derived from Jane Austen’s, Emma.

besides Julia Stiles as Kat being a powerful and perhaps overly-feminist voice of her generation (hey, it really worked for the ‘90s) and Andrew Keegan who plays Joey “eat me” Donner mocking a large chunk of his, we also have Joseph Gordon Levitt as the lovable boy next door, Heath Ledger as the bad boy, Patrick Verona which, sidebar: isn’t that name totally sexy? (who’s character is surprisingly funny under his straight-faced guise), and the character i think is potentially the funniest AND most overlooked: David Krumholtz as Michael. but David K. tends to get overlooked a lot, doesn’t he? unless you want to throw Larry Miller as funniest character competition playing Kat and Bianca’s dad, because he is also perfectly on point with the dad jokes and over-the-top push for celibacy, which really does carry the plot of this film. not to mention their English teacher, who is hilarious and real.

this movie is back-to-back laughs to me. it can be subtle and it can be direct. it’s just all around well done. if you haven’t seen it, i highly recommend. between the cast, the writing, the soundtrack even… it’s a beloved comedy classic. its humor outlasts its decade (despite some stuff that probably wouldn’t make the script nowadays) and its heartwarming moments carry it through to being a genuine film. while this film doesn’t garner the attention of some other ‘90s teen comedies, like Can’t Hardly Wait, or She’s All That, i do believe it is more deserving.

besides, they gave us THIS EVERGREEN GIFT?!

Honorable Mentions (or where i expose my johnny depp obsession that has only mostly subsided):

Valley Girl (1983) - another one that i love so dearly in my heart… look out for another article about this one!

Blow (2001)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) – it’s an understatement to say i was obsessed with this film when it came out.

Black Snake Moan (2006)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Ed Wood (1994) – if you haven’t seen this movie and want to see Tim Burton with genuine talent, watch. Johnny Depp should’ve been nominated for an Oscar, or at least a Golden Globe, for his portrayal of the disgraced movie director, Ed Wood.

Or any very old Disney cartoon: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Rescuers, Jungle Book, Robin Hood - for some examples.

tell me, Soulbabes… what are YOUR mac ‘n’ cheese movies?

comment below or tweet us @pvssymagic or tweet ME @samantharosej!

The Creatrix and Editor in Chief of Pussy Magic, sam is a writer/editor originally from the Bay Area. Her work outside of writing revolves around the merging of spirituality and wellness to foster community, raw self-expression, and holistic healing to honoring our sacred selves: mind, body, and spirit.

sam is the author of L’ACQUA (2017), the columnist of Sacred Wild Exile at Pussy Magic, the host of Satin Soulbits, a limited-series podcast focused on womxnhood and sexuality, and editor of the Satin Soulbits Blog. Her writing has been featured in The Sonnetarium @ Rhythm & Bones, Occulum, ILY Mag, Rose Quartz Magazine, Tiny Flames Press, and more. sam offers Sacred Serpent Writing + Healing sessions to bring people more intimacy with themselves and their writing which you can find more info about on her website. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her partner and plant babies.

Find more about sam, her writing, and her offerings on her website and follow her #soulbits on Instagram.

[plinys]

dear yuletide author (2017)

hello and welcome to my letter!

i am so happy to have you reading this letter and going to be writing a fic for me! why? because you dear writer are an amazing and wonderful person, deserving of all the kudos in the world!

please remember as you look at these prompts, that if something in my likes inspires you more than any of my specific prompts, totally feel free and run with that, and know that i will enjoy any fic that is gifted to me!!

ao3/lj handle: plinys

now lets get down to business:

the fandoms i’ve requested this year are: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator,  Galavant (TV),   Legion (TV),  Powerless (TV 2017),  Star Trek: Discovery,  Young & Hungry

but before that, my likes/kinks/dislikes/triggers:

likes: alternate universes, characters that are in character, lady-centric fics, angst, fandom cliches, dysfunctional relationships, friendships, friends/enemies to lovers, soul mates, road trips,  hanukkah fics, jewish characters, bisexual characters, poly relationships, character studies, origin stories, ambiguous endings, meta fic, slow build, fics that incorporate social media, crack treated seriously, drunk confessions, miscommunication, 

kinks: threesomes, competence kink, phone sex, masturbation, crying during sex, hate sex, shower sex, praise kink, guys going down on girls, rough sex, first time, spanking, daddy kink, sex in front of mirrors, voyeurism, make up sex

dislikes: pwp, main character death (unless it really makes sense/happens in canon), character bashing, non-con, mpreg, a/b/o, 1st person.

my triggers (please no matter what do not include these): school shootings, cancer, terminal illness, riots, child abuse.

and now to the fun stuff -

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

requested characters:  mary christiansen, joseph christiansen, crish christiansen

where to find: it’s a video game on steam, you can purchase for about $15, otherwise there’s plenty of walkthroughs of people playing it on youtube. recommended routes: joseph, robert, and damien to get the full christiansen story family backstory. 

anyways first play through i did josephs route and he broke my heart, and i was like wow mary deserves better and then after playing robert and damien i was like no wow mary deserves the world, so as long as your gift doesn’t include mary bashing im happy

would love any backstory on this family (featuring robert in any way is totally welcome), whether its weird family stuff, crack fic, the cult stuff. like im pretty open on this one

specific prompts:

cult backstory, give me that hidden cult ending. give me them joining the cult together when they were young. give me them scheming together or scheming separately. or give me mary realizing she’s married a gay demon only after the fact and its too late to get out. like honestly give me anything cult

the mystery of crish? i can’t believe he’s in the character list and now i want someone to explain why we’ve never met him? does he really exist? this can (and probably should be total crack)

remember how i mentioned robert was an option, feel free to mix in his connections with the family, the affair that clearly happened. being part of their cult. mary just bonding with her best friend and being drunk together? joseph fucking robert while mary is aware of what is going on. how they even became friends with all that happened?

honestly, there’s just so much not explained about the christiansen family, so anything about them is 100% up my alley. 

Galavant (TV)

requested characters:  madalena (galavant), gareth (galavant)

where to find: both season are on netflix!

so im biased because i was convinced to watch this show because of my mallory jansen, so madalena is of course my favorite character. and then this ship hit me out of nowhere, so now here i am

im either looking for madalena centric fic, or shippy fic with the both of them

specific prompts:

the end of s2 left so many openings that weren’t explored because we never got a s3 but give me madalena learning to do the d’dew, and getting to finally be the evil queen that she deserves wow

also feel free to give me that shippy stuff with gareth going to save her, and then realizing how much they love each other (as they should have wow)

alternatively a fix-it for the finale where madalena chooses gareth over the d’dew and they figure out where they can go from there. rebuild that trust, just be happy together though still sorting things out because now they do’t have a kingdom

smut? this ship is built for smut? madalena literally has a body built for sin, give me that sin

alternatively, give me fluffy, them finally getting to be “happy” together, madalena learning to have emotions and to love

also for non shippy plot any future fic for madalena or character study set during season 2/post season 2 would be the dream

Legion (TV)

requested characters:  cary loudermilk, kerry loudermilk

where to find: honestly i have no clue? fx? pirating sites? i watched this one live when it was airing. 

this show hit me with so much backstory and explanation not given and like that’s the aesthetic of the show, but i was specifically drawn to these two and their unique set of powers and i just ?? need more??

while i’m mostly into gen for these two, if you want to do weird stuff, like, i’m curious and not opposed (does it count as incest if they’re technically the same person?)

specific prompts:

BACKSTORY, any thing with their backstory, build on what canon told us and give me more, like what is it like for cary to keep aging on while kerry stays younger, what are the limits of their powers, how much can they feel

that hurt comfort after the stuff that happened towards the end of the season, like these two need to bond and recover after all the trauma 

5 times they were overly protective of each other

just man their dynamic is so weird and i need that to be explored, feel free to ship them with any of the other characters or ?? with each other if youre into that?? just like give me more of these two

actually, does it count as incest if their the same person is now a prompt, like maybe someone asks that? idk man just discuss

Powerless (TV 2017)

requested characters:  beatriz da costa | green fury (powerless), emily locke

where to find: this is another i have no clue situation im sorry

this show got canceled because it was like bad dc sitcom airing the same night as arrow but before it did it gave me this hint of femslash potential and tbh this is why im most offended that it was canceled

specific prompts: 

so if the show had lasted longer i am convinced that beatriz and emily would have been gay together, so give these ladies the show they deserved and tell the story of them falling in love

the news already thinks their dating so what about super villains, how many times does emily get kidnapped for being the green fury’s girlfriend before they actually art (or before she realizes she actually is)

how does dating a superhero effect her work life

also just emily loves superheroes, so she’s probably so pumped to be dating one like “wow babe can you believe im dating a superhero” and beatriz like “we were just making out obviously youre dating a superhero”

give me cute gay girls honestly 

Star Trek: Discovery

requested characters:  michael burnham (star trek: discovery), saru (star trek: discovery)

where to find: cbs all access! its ongoing, as i write this letter on its second episode!

okay since this show is ongoing these prompts might get joss’d but it’s too late to go back because two episodes in got me interested in the dynamic between these two

this can be gen (and feature other ships if you want) or can be shippy for these two. im pretty open since this show is so new. 

specific prompts: 

so they were together on the shenzhou for 7 years according to canon so lets get some back story between these two, how did they get to where they were. was there rivalry between the two of them from the very beginning? how does saru feel about someone who has never been to the academy out ranking him? bridge disagreement shenanigans? their captain locking them in a room until their sort out their issues

like, do you want to write alien sex? because a part of me wants to receive alien sex so like? this is an option?

what about them now both on the discovery together, that distrust because of what happen on the shenzhou? building up into something  new? better than before? building into feeling that may have been hidden all along?

on the discovery, forced to work together to save the team and putting their issues asside for the good of everyone else

honestly i just feel like they were supposed to be the spock/bones dynamic of the shenzhou before things went bad and like ??? i want that ?? 

Young & Hungry

requested characters:  caroline huntington 

where to find: it’s all on netflix (though caroline only appears in season one)

yet another show i watched because of mallory jansen, and her character is only in the first season and really all i cared about on this show so guess who i want backstory for

specific prompts:

caroline character study? i mean, she’s written as the rich bitch girlfriend rival in the show but let’s just say she deserves better, flush her out and give her life for me

she definitely deserves better than josh, and i like femslash so pair her with one of the girls in the tag set if you want

just more on her and the horse from young & pregnant this is mostly crack but like also

consider for a second that instead of the plot being gabi sleeps with josh on the first day and starts all of the show drama. what if instead she sleeps with caroline, and we get the aftermath of “oh hey i slept with my new boss’s finace, this isnt awkward at all” rewrite of season 1 with 95% more femslash 

just give me more caroline

ANYWAYS, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY LETTER AND I’LL LOVE WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO WRITE ME!