#idk like it's one of those things where...how much must you separate the original material before it's not that og material at all?

[datastate]

personally, my general rule of thumb is that if removing the uncritical or romanticized bigoted parts of a media makes its plot/premise fall apart, or the creators have vehemently shown lack of care for their racism/transphobia/etc. and perpetuated it in their future works, it’s not something i’d want to interact with even under a critical lens.

[phoenixyfriend]

When Obi-Wan gets to AotC, there's also about two dozen Anakin clones on-site. They're all girls because... IDK Anakin is trans. They have a hive mind and are developmentally a few years younger than Anakin himself.

It's incredibly unsettling to Obi-Wan.

It's almost definitely a "fuck with Anakin's already fragile mental health" ploy by Palpatine, along with a "what if Jedi Black Widows, for me, a Sith Lord. Wouldn't that be neat? That would be neat."

Anakin is torn between "this freaks me out" and "GANG OF BABY SISTERS LET'S GOOOOOOO."

(I just finished reading Like Real People Do by glimmerglanger, so this is definitely inspired by that and the obligatory 'lay back in bed and daydream variations on plot points of that fic you just really enjoyed,' and also a little by Same Heart, Same Blood by loosingletters.)

They're physically like 14-16 on average, and Anakin's vibrating out of his skin with a million conflicting emotions, but when he tells Padme she's just like "oh, you have a handmaiden gang!"

I told this to @willowcrowned and she suggested:

Once Anakin decides to repress the part of him that’s weirded out and just regard them as baby sisters he gets. A little strange about it The first time one of them dies he may or may not slaughter every person he can [in response to Padme's comment] Anakin starts worrying that he needs to get them cool matching outfits

I also chatted about it with @firebirdeternal and they said:

Gang of Unsettling Smol Siblings is exactly the Karma that Anakin deserves

Do you think the Clones have a kind of Collective Name that they use at first that eventually just kind of morphs into a new last name? Skysisters or something? Like Palpatine was trying to be clever and name them like the Nightsisters.

I initially went with "functionally one person" hive-mind but I'm torn.

I think maybe they're BASICALLY one person on Kamino but drift into Separate Consciousness once they're far enough apart physically that their minds don't blend from proximity anymore.

Then they start Dating (like half of them are dating Fett clones because they grew up with these dudes, it's like childhood friends romance), and Anakin loses his mind about Protecting Them and They're Too Young.

Padme: You're nineteen and we just got married, they can date. Anakin: THEY'RE EIGHT. Padme: And the Fett clones are ten and dying for us in the field. Get them rights before you panic about their love lives.

Firebird:

it could be worse, one of them could imprint on Obi-Wan. "Anakin I promise I won't yell at you for the next five stupid things you do if you can figure out a way to stop this baby from having a crush on me" (I like the idea of Obi-wan bargaining not with "I won't be mad at you ever" because they Both Know That's Not True, and instead haggling with specific allowances. Like he's handing out Stupidity Coupons)

Please imagine Mace and Obi-Wan's personal responses to the idea of suddenly having to deal with not one, not two, but OVER TWENTY SKYWALKERS.

Plo is delighted to take one off their hands.

So is Yoda.

Willow:

Mace is like. okay suicide isn’t the Jedi way but on the other hand. i physically cannot deal with this Yoda: a skywalker, you say? one who is tall enough to reach the top shelf, you say? such a skywalker, bring me

Anakin would be given at least one because fuck you, suffer with us, but he's still a padawan so Ugh, fine, no.

I want to say one stays on Coruscant to hang out with the Guard, and ends up half-adopted by Padme. She keeps dressing up the Aniclone left with her in handmaiden outfits and sending selfies to Anakin.

"Hanging out with the little SiL!"

Anakin has so many issues about WHEN his genetic material was acquired.

And there's some confusion from the Fett clones about how much of a hive mind is normal for Jedi. They are confused that the answer is basically none, and "this is WHY nobody clones a Jedi"

ONE OF THEM STEALS BOBA FROM THE ARENA ON GEONOSIS.

Firebird:

"I have followed in our progenitor's footsteps and acquired a sibling." holds up a struggling Boba "He bites."

Willow:

Ooooo okay so if they have a sort of hive mind then they probably don’t have names other than their designations on Kamino right BUT When they SEPARATE The one that picks Boba up on Geonosis gets a name specifically for that. Okay what if the one Padmé picks up gets some variant on ‘pretty’ because she’s always being dressed up BELLE Maybe Yoda’s Ani has a name that means thief? Because obviously Yoda is using Anakin to steal sweets

So, to make the timeline work...

I don't think anyone would give Anakin one of his sisters until after he's knighted at least.

So obviously when they're doing initial placements none of the sisters go to him or Obi-Wan.

Once he's knighted, of course they're already all placed with someone, and Anakin instead gets Ahsoka. He loves Ahsoka. She is also a little sister. He said so.

At some point afterwards, one of the sisters is left without a place because the Master that was in charge of her died in the field battle.

That sister then gets placed with Obi-Wan, because he's already mostly-successfully raised one Skywalker, so he can do it again.

Anakin gets to hang out with her basically all the time.

Ahsoka is very very jealous of this girl stealing Anakin's attention.

Anakin is oblivious to the rivalry.

He asks Barriss to look after them while he's discussing Adult War Things with Luminara and Obi-Wan, and Barriss gets an eye into This Mess, which is quickly colored by Ahsoka growing a puppy crush on the lovely Miss Offee herself.

Firebird:

Ahsoka: Ah yes, my nemesis. Anisister: Ah yes, my new older sister whom I want to impress so bad.

"I will impress her by being Stoic and Competent" "Oh my god she must think she's so much better than me what a bitch"

Anakin is oblivious to most things to be fair Anakin: Laser focused precision fighting machine who can read the tiniest body movements and predict your moves seconds in advance, who also cannot understand even the most basic social nuance. I was originally writing this as to Dunk on Anakin but then I made myself sad, because none of those things are really his fault.

So you know that post about like, Sasuke and Brooding, specifically in the context of "Brooding" as it's used to refer to Nesting Chickens? Grouchy and protective and sitting on a tennis ball trying to hatch it because they're just. "These are my Babies." Anakin Broods. Baby sisters. Must protecc. "I'm actually fine and extremely deadly in combat." "MUST PROTECT."

Bad Guy: [catches Ahsoka in a Trap] Aniclone: Must rescue sister! Aniclone: [fights, is not winning fight, gets ouched] Ahsoka tearing her way out of Trap: I lived bitch. Also: stay the fuck away from her. [murders so hard]

Ahsoka catches the Protective Older Sib feels by the traditional method: "Hey, only I'm allowed to be mean to them."

Willow:

Oh Anakin has no clue what’s going on. He walks in on Ahsoka glaring at the Ani and is like!!! Little sisters!!! Bonding!!! When Ahsoka was about three seconds away from tossing her out of the airlock. Ahsoka mistakenly assumes that Barriss has a crush on the Ani, and gets even MORE jealous.

Obi-Wan is like oh god. I can’t take care of an Anakin going through puberty again. He’s great with periods and other stuff because he read about a billion books. He is TERRIBLE with everything else, as he was the first time.

Barriss is like???? YOU'RE BOTH CHILDREN, PLEASE CALM DOWN, I HAVE ZERO INTEREST IN DATING ANYONE, LET ALONE SOMEONE YOUR AGE.

IDK how old Obi-Wan's Aniclone is, probably physically the same age as Ahsoka?

Per @atagotiak on discord:

Also something something, similarities btw Anakin and Obi-Wan where like. "Am I a parent? That seems uncomfortable, I'm too young to be a dad to a kid this age, I mean I'm cool with being a mentor/caretaker but..."

Obi-Wan can't even sidestep parenthood this time.

"Is Anakin basically your dad?" "Uhhhhhh" [Muffled discussion] "So Obi-Wan is your dad." "Okay!" "WAIT NO I DIDN'T AGREE TO THIS"

Ahsoka: She's stealing my brother, that BITCH. Obi-Wan's Aniclone: new sister new sister new sister gotta make a good impression

Firebird:

I feel like the Sister Squad would make very effective interstellar espionage agents Even like, kind of by accident. They just get encouraged to branch out in their interests and figure out what they want to do with their lives and end up all over the dang place, and since they're all pretty dang competent they tend to gravitate towards Important Positions wherever they end up. Except for one sister who just retires to raise Space Sheep.

I like that in this AU Palpatine is just like "I will create an army of Loyal Murderers who will obey my every whim and also be a big psychological lever on my Other Pet Murderer," and then they all just Baby Duckling imprint on the first Jedi to be nice to them instead and he has to just be like "Wait no not like that."

AND one of them Steals Boba

I want Obi-Wan's Aniclone to start dating Fives. All the sisters judge her for it, because he's a Goof. A very competent, ARC Trooper goof! But a goof.

Not as goofy as Anakin, though.

Firebird:

Who expects a clone of Anakin Skywalker to not make questionable lifelong romantic choices impulsively?

[wxldchxld]

So again, this isn’t the blog for this, and I should really just make a personal where I complain about everything, but I’m going to do it here anyway. If you don’t want to read this, don’t look under the cut.

I haven’t been private about just how much I feel like His Dark Materials fails anyone who has done more than read the books once when they were a kid. I have a very long standing love affair with the original His Dark Materials trilogy, because I grew up in an extremely restrictive religious household and didn’t get to experience them as a child. I have read the entire series through every December for several years now, and each time I read it I love it a little more. I feel like The Golden Compass/The Northern Lights especially is one of the greatest children’s stories I’ve ever read. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s filled with dynamic and interesting characters, and everything in it serves a purpose. 

And I have a lot to say on the way the show treated Lyra as a character and how they made her little more than a prop in her own story, and how that makes the story really boring to sit through, but I’m going to put that on the back burner for now. Because I don’t feel like anyone is noticing the kind of casual sexism that this show is really guilty of, and I think we should be.

This is a pretty negative look at the show so i don’t want anyone bitching at me saying why watch it if you don’t like it. Take that logic and apply it here. If you don’t want to listen to genuine critique, don’t read this.

I’ve said before that Mrs. Coulter is probably one of my first “bad older woman I shouldn’t love but do” characters. My first read through of the books was when I was in my early twenties and kind of coming out to myself. I had spent years denying the fact I was a lesbian all the while secretly hating myself for being unable to force myself to like men. Mrs. Coulter came about in my life at a time when I was learning to let go of my self hatred and accept who I am. Yes, Pullman intentionally put her in there to be someone the reader is infatuated with. He wanted her to be beautiful and intoxicating and dangerous, and she was, but it hit me on an even deeper level than that. Because I identified with her. Not because I spent my time casually abusing children, but because I always felt like she was a victim of the system she was born into. A system that devalued her as a woman. A system where her ambition was demonized and looked down on. One that led to a loveless marriage, a heated affair with a bad man, a shameful fall out, and the loss of her child. Her violence, her cruelty and calculation, isn’t just a character trait, it’s a symptom of the Magesterium’s oppression. 

I feel like the show attempted to highlight this, and I honestly go back and forth on whether or not it’s a good thing. We get scenes like the one where she’s talking about heights with Lyra, and the haunted way she looks into the distance and says she’s always wanted to jump. We see how she can separate from her daemon and how often when one of them is vulnerable, the other purposefully pulls away from them (something that did not happen at all in the books). She’s portrayed as a traumatized, mentally ill woman. And it’s both beautiful and---kind of cringy seeing my personal view of her be so plainly portrayed on the screen. 

You see the problem I have with this is that no matter how deeply I sympathize with Mrs. Coulter as someone who struggles with a mental illness myself, she abuses children. She is the quintessential abused becomes the abuser trope, and if this is true, I have to ask myself how much can we really hate her? Is it ok, especially in our current social climate, to portray a mentally ill woman as a villain? To what degree is it ok to blame a victim of trauma for traumatizing others? There’s no easy answer to that question and I think that’s why Pullman left the reader to decide for themselves how much of a victim vs villain Mrs Coulter was.

I don’t mind asking and engaging with these questions, especially since I feel like the show was geared toward and older audience destined to ask them anyway. However I want to take a hard turn now and look at Lord Asriel. Because the problem I have is not, in essence, with how the show portrays either character on their own, but in how it portrays Asriel in contrast to Marisa.

I always kind of felt like Asriel was a character that Pullman didn’t really give a shit about. Maybe he did and I just missed it, but just in the way he talks about other characters verses Asriel---Idk.

Asriel is Marisa Coulter’s opposite. In the context of the first book, they’re both villains but at opposite ends of the spectrum. He’s a straight, white, noble, manly-man who is also a genius. It’s not a hard leap to assume that he wouldn’t have gotten half as far in life without the social privileges he got from all of those things. Asriel was never really someone I could sympathize with because he was always an example of just how differently the system treats straight white men, even when they disagree with them. Despite being a blatant heretic, a convicted killer, and a disgraced nobleman, he’s still seen as powerful and someone to be respected. Colleges fund his research, he still has a personal servant, and even as a literal prisoner, he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. Unlike Marisa, he hasn’t had to carve out a position for himself in the world. It’s already there. 

He is the epitome of privilege---and in the books he acts like it. Asriel is cold, selfish, intimidating, and abusive. The only sympathetic moment he has in the first book is when he shows open terror upon seeing Lyra coming to his workshop in the north. He’s scared only because he doesn’t want to kill his daughter, and personally I think he was only so terrified because he knew that if she stayed he would do it. Once he finds out Roger is with Lyra, he immediately goes back to not giving a shit about her.

Book Asriel is never sorry for how he treats his daughter and at the end of The Golden Compass/Northern Lights he not only blatantly doesn’t care about what will happen to Lyra if he leaves her behind, he tells Marisa that she shouldn’t care either. He tells her that Lyra hates her and that she’s squandered the two chances she had to be with their child. Right up to the very last pages of the novel he just---doesn’t care. 

Asriel in the show is, to put it simply, is toned down. He isn’t so much of a blatant asshole. When Lyra talks, he doesn’t immediately dismiss her or dominate the entire conversation. It’s very subtle in the way they change him. His threats don’t hold a lot of weight, his body language doesn’t ooze with intimidation and power, and when he talks to Lyra he shows clear emotion. He softens and listens to her, even if he doesn’t change his position. This comes off as portraying him as a man who is more compassionate than he really is, and who is, perhaps, even regretful that he must kill Roger. They completely cut the scene where there is a violent fight between Pan, Salcilia, and Stelmaria that results in Lyra falling down a snow drift and Asriel just----not responding. He turns around and walks into the light without mentioning that she, for all he knows, just fell to her death. He’s not sad or concerned. And while I’m sure they likely omitted this scene for budgetary reasons, it has a big impact on his character. He didn’t leave Lyra to her death; he instructed his man servant to care for her and help her escape.

So what am I really trying to say in all this? What’s the point? Is it so bad that we’re giving characters more depth than a children’s novel allowed them to have? Well... yeah. Because of the way they chose to do it.

They chose to make Marisa more damaged, but they also made her much more violent. They turned up the things that made her bad and scary while toning down Asriel’s worse qualities so much that he kind of feels like a victim, which is a gross when his character is meant to be the epitome of cis white straight privilege.

[jenniferladybug]

Essay Wars - it’s a doozy

Last night my friend got in a texting debate about the story structure and character developments of Star Wars (a majority of it Kylo Ren). Well, what started off as my vigorous texting writing turned into full-blown essay responses. 

Alright, let’s get into how this actually happened.

First, I was so excited about The Rise of Skywalker Final Trailer and I began to sing praises for Kylo Ren/Bendemption. My friend did not like that...so I whipped out the big guns. 

I began to send scattered texts about certain things, mostly pertaining to:

Kylo Ren was turned to the dark side before he was even born via Bloodline, where Leia describes a dark presence over her womb.

Someone must be impersonating Darth Vader when Kylo goes to the Vader mask for advice.

Leia and Han were emotionally neglectful/did not know how to raise their son in the right way, mixed with brainwashing lead to Kylo Ren.

The Jedi are not good for the galaxy (yes, yes I know, but see my explanation down below...if you last that long)

Kylo wants to let the past die and start fresh with a new ‘order’, leave behind the Sith, Jedi, First order etc.

I also rambled on about a few other things in separate texts, but that is the gist of it.

So, in response to my scattered texts I received this from my friend Sammy, and oh boy was I ready:

So, let’s start with the story of Ben. The dark side since before he was even born thing is interesting and the fact that he’s been influenced his entire life by it is something they should have made much more clear in the films. That’s actually one of the problems I have with this new expanded universe- it just seems like damage control for the movies. The Previous EU EXPANDED everything, giving backstory to the characters we know and understand, in addition to secondary characters. Hell, they even gave us new characters as well but they never negated or changed the meaning of the films which is the bread and butter of the franchise, so if this super important info is coming from the book I think that’s just silly. You really shouldn’t have to read the novel iteration to understand what the movie did a bad job of interpreting. But I digress, that is some crucial info…

The Vader mask scene and the theory that it’s someone else like Snoke who has been pretending to be Vader is interesting, and I buy that, but like…Kylo didn’t know Vader was redeemed? Did Luke, Leia, Han, Chewy, Lando, Akbar, Wedge, or like literally anybody else form the Rebellion forget to tell him that? Big yikes.

IMO, feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” isn’t a valid excuse for him to kill his own dad and being ok with his mom getting bombed to hell. Idk, you can ask why it’s ok for us to forgive Vader through his redemption arc but I think comparing his experiences to Kylo’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Vader was a BAD guy, but he ended up doing the ultimate GOOD thing in the end, and then the prequels fleshed out how he became bad intangible way, which to be fair, Kylo doesn’t have. But still, this is why most fans don’t take him seriously.

About the Jedi not being good- I challenge your credentials. “For a thousand generations the Jedi knights have been the guardians of peace and justice for the Old Republic”, then they were hunted down and everything turned to shit. And both in this canon and the previous one, it’s wildly considered that the few thousand years preceded the events of the movies things were super peaceful all things considered when the Jedi were in charge…and the Sith traditionally only operates in agents of 2. So how come everything was so peaceful for a thousand generations when there were a million Jedi and 2 Sith…ying yang in this case is bollocks.

And if Kylo really wants to “Start fresh”, why’d he start by becoming Supreme Leader of like the Star Wars version of ISIS? This is something we’ll need to find out in this next movie. I agree, his motive is to dismantle the Jedi and Sith way and create something else entirely, but the second Rey says “nah” he goes back to how he was. It’s not looking good.

The George Lucas rhyme thing lets not forget he’s talking about Episode 1 which was arguably one of the worst Star Wars movies made and he ended it with “hopefully it’ll work” and then grimaces…IDK bud lmao. And I doubt back in 1977 he knew there was going to be an episode 9 because he didn’t even know what he just made was Episode 4! It definitely was never a 9 episode arc from the get-go. Now, I know for certain after the prequels he had another trilogy in mind, and when he sold the rights to Disney he did hand them his drafts and notes, but even Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, admitted in his new book, they didn’t follow those drafts AT ALL. LIKE NOTHING. And he said that George felt betrayed. This idea of a new trilogy is something that was created in 2012, but I suspect they have been making this up as they went. After this last movie, Disney scrambled to get JJ Abrams back and figure out how they were going to get everything back on track. Daisy Ridley herself said JJ wrote a story for each of the 3 new movies, but Rian ended up created his own completely. I think that alone shows that production for these movies has been inconsistent, I don’t buy this was all part of some 9 series plan with a definitive beginning, middle, and end from the get-go.

Not sure what Rey’s lineage is, we’ll find out for sure in this next movie. I read one theory that Palpatine created her sorta through the force like many people think he did with Anakin.

So that was what I was up against.

Let’s take a brief moment to appreciate this:

Okay now that that is done...great. 

My turn! 

Now, I wrote my response (copied below) at top speed in about an hour, so maybe some of the things I say start sounding rushed or not as fleshed out as they should be. But I cracked my knuckles and gave it a go:

I am the first one to advocate for a film to have the ability to ‘stand-alone’ in any particular universe, whether it be Marvel, DC, Hunger Games, and Star Wars. By introducing a backstory for Leia’s pregnancy and hers and Han’s marriage in ‘Bloodline’, LucasFilm is doing just that: giving a backstory. In both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, there is proof that Snoke is the one pulling the strings when it comes to young solo. In the first film, Leia is quoted saying to Han, “There’s still light in him I know it! No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the dark side”, and in the second film Luke is quoted as saying, “Snoke had already turned his heart”. It is made apparent that ‘Kylo Ren’ is the production of Snoke, and Ren suffers abuse both mental and physical from his master. Though this changes when Kylo finally becomes free of the shackles Snoke once had on him when Ren slices him in half. The look of shock and release on Ren’s face when he realizes what he’s done says it all. Who are we to judge someone who is freshly out of the control of their captor? By just watching the films it is clear that Kylo Ren is not fully in control of his actions and he is being manipulated consistently as shown by the quotes above. When having that manipulation in conjunction with the neglect of a parental figure, then you get the full-blown reality that is Kylo Ren.

Feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” is a valid excuse for turning to the Darkside in the world of a fictional fairy tale. Keep in mind we are not in a reality where this is okay, yet the world in which Star Wars exists allows such things to be redeemable and explainable. Take for example when Padme knew about Anakin killing younglings; she wanted him to still come home because she ‘loved’ him. If he had turned back to the light at that moment she would have most likely accepted him back. It is a danger of the force. They are not dealing with everyday normal emotions; the force, as well as the genre of the franchise, creates a heightened sense of urgency which is apparent throughout the forty-plus years Star Wars has been around (hell, as long as any fairy tale has been around). When you point out that Vader did the ultimate good thing in the end, do you mean to save his son and push Palpatine down a duct? If so, then this would be his redemption which occurred in the last of the original trilogies. If you are to treat Kylo with the same rules as Vader, then we must give him a chance to ‘do the right thing’, something which the filmmakers have been steadily building his character-arc for. Vader did numbers ‘wrong’ things, some of them much worse than Kylo has done. But yet the audience still chose to respect him, even before the prequels which fleshed out the story of Anakin Skywalker.

Now, you may be correct in that Ben Solo knew of Vader’s redemption, and I misspoke, to which I am sorry. He, in fact, learned of his heritage when he was training with Luke at his academy when he received a letter from his mother. The contents of the letter are unknown, though it is assumed she told him of his heritage when he was in his late teens. This was only because one of her rivals she was campaigning against in the senate threatened to leak the knowledge to the public that Leia was the daughter of the infamous Darth Vader. Ben had no idea before-hand though, so once again we assume that this had some type of impact. Imagine finding out your grandfather was Hitler. Would that be fun? But, since we addressed the fact that external material should not need to be consumed in order for a film to make sense, then we should disregard any idea as to how Ben Solo came to learn of his heritage. It is not mentioned in the films, but it is a widely held belief by many in the fandom that if Kylo Ren knew of his grandfathers’ redemption then he merely took this as a lapse in judgment in his late years (especially since it is hinted to in the films that Ren is speaking to someone via the Vader mask). Perhaps said mask has been telling Ren lies in lieu of the true story of the redemption. But that is speculation. What is not speculation is the line Ren utters in The Force Awakens, “Forgive me. I feel it again... The pull to the light... Supreme Leader senses it. Show me again... The power of the darkness... And I'll let nothing stand in our way... Show me... Grandfather... and I will finish... what you started.” What we can tell from the film is that Ren is in a constant struggle to stay within the dark, and through his words, it is expressed how this warrants forgiveness. The second half of the statement is even more worrying in the fact that Ren says ‘show me again’, referencing a previous time this ‘Vader’ has shown him what the darkness entails. Will we find out in episode nine if there was an imposter (Palpatine?) feeding more lies and brainwashing to Kylo Ren? That means not only was he getting terrible treatment from Snoke, but from his ‘grandfather’ as well. Perhaps this is why in the final trailer for episode nine we see Rey and Ren destroying said helmet. Until the film comes out, this will still be a mystery.

In coming to why I believe the Jedi are bad, I side with Luke Skywalker on this one. As he says in The Last Jedi, “ At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.” To that, Rey points out that it was also a Jedi who saved him. Which is true! Yet, the rules surrounding the Jedi order are such that allowed for Anakin to search elsewhere for support. True, he was very conflicted, but the Jedi are so extreme that they do not welcome outside opinions or thinking. You are either all light or you’re bad. There is no intermediary. That is why the answer is grey Jedi. I know those exist, and what needs to happen is a yin and yang between the light and the dark. Working together fosters acceptance and love within the galaxy. Even the symbol in the pool of the Jedi Temple in which Luke tucked himself away had a figure in a yin and yang pattern. “Powerful light and powerful dark...a balance”. Yet, any dark whatsoever that the Jedi see they stamp out.

When Anakin says, “If you’re not with me, then you’re against me”, Obi-wan responds with, “Only sith think in absolutes!”. Well, can you see the issue there? Obi-wan is also thinking in absolute. Using the word only further segmented and cast aside Anakin, by labeling him a lost cause. Such a similar thing happened with Kylo Ren and the incident with Luke at the Jedi Academy. The momentary lapse which Luke expressed to Rey was the tipping point. In Ren’s eyes, even his Master saw him beyond saving. And since everyone around him insists on thinking in absolute, then he must be bad according to them, right?

Slowly, Ren is beginning to realize there is another way, something not presently defined within the Star Wars universe. It is not Sith, it is not Jedi, it is not the First Order: it is the ‘new order’ which he proposes to Rey. Yet, he is not ready for redemption yet. The entire point of the scene was for Rey to realize that Kylo Ren cannot be saved by anyone but himself. This is a very powerful message and I am quite looking forward to seeing how his self-realization occurs in Episode Nine. Now, keep in mind that he had banked everything on Rey saying yes, and in his mind, she is “Still. Holding. ON!”, which she is, and he is right that it is holding her back. How can you expect someone from a family of yelling, angry people to get it right the first time? In fact, Adam Driver had to ask Rian Johnson if Kylo Ren had ever kissed a girl before. Kylo is not experienced in this ‘love’ world. He did not receive much love language from his absentee parents, so the only relationship he’s known for most of his teen and adult life is that of Snoke and General Hux. At that moment in which he wakes up to realize she is gone is one of abandonment and rejection. He thought he had found his match, the answer to his loneliness, and she snapped his lightsaber in two. He is basically throwing a grownup temper-tantrum, which is blatantly apparent in the standoff with Luke. When Kylo threatens everything, even ‘destroying’ Rey, Luke claims that everything Kylo says is “a lie”. It is clear in the last few moments of the film when Kylo is defeated and on his knees holding his father’s die that the audience begins to realize his anger was all a facade. In that shot, he is merely a lost and lonely boy realising the path he has chosen is wrong. The final force-bond between Kylo and Rey exhibits every one of those notions. There is no anger in his face, not very ‘destroy-ee’ of him, and he looks up with her with an almost longing. But when she sternly shuts the door on him, once again he is left alone, the die slowly fading from his gloved hand.

If that doesn’t sound like poetry then I don’t know what is! George Lucas was quoted saying in the behind the scenes of the prequels, “You see the echo of where it all is gonna go. It’s like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.” Similar themes and sequences occur within the franchise, and they have kept that alive at Disney Lucas Films, especially in regards to the parallels drawn between Anakin/Padme and Kylo/Rey. They even designed their respective costumes in a similar fashion. Kylo has his mother and father’s anger and stubbornness. They had a rough idea of where it was all going to go. And in regards to JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, JJ Abrams was an executive producer on Episode 8 and had a say in the general outline of the plot. JJ had set up the relationship between Kylo and Rey in The Force Awakens, and Rian continued along that path. He followed the skeleton needed to get the plot from 7-9. But think about it, Disney would not allow Rian to just veer off the path completely. Yes he had some creative license but within parameters. Sometimes I don’t think people understand the workings of a large corporation with creative decisions. On a project like Star Wars there is always input from the higher-ups. In addition, JJ Abrams auditioned potential Kylo Ren actors with the script from Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy of course). This is made clear in the writing decisions and parallels which have been made for that particular character.

Lastly, would you really want George Lucas at the helm of this new trilogy? People thought the prequels were terrible and Lucas went back and digitally altered the originals against the will of fans. He is not technically the best when it comes to scriptwriting (Exhibit A: “I hate sand, it gets everywhere!”) Also, Mark Hamill was interviewed in the early ’00s and said, "You know, when I first did this, it was four trilogies. 12 movies! And out on the desert, any time between setups...lots of free time. And George was talking about this whole thing. I said, 'Why are you starting with IV, V and VI? It's crazy.' [Imitating Lucas grumble,] 'It's the most commercial section of the movie.'” Yes, the first film was a stand-alone, since they had no idea they would receive any further funding. But then the immense success allowed for Lucas to develop the franchise further.

What I think people tend to forget is that Star Wars is a fairy tale, and it is not supposed to be about ‘a mass murder’ who is going to jail. It is supposed to be about redemption at its very heart. George Lucus had expressed that he intended Star Wars as a series for “twelve-year-olds”. This explains things like Jar Jar Binks and other bizarre choices he has made as a creator. Though this explains a lot of why most of the people who hate the franchise now are angry adults online who live in an overly politically correct world judging a fictional character who is in the middle of a character arc. As JJ Abrams had said in the director's commentary of The Force Awakens, “We looked at it like […] a fairy tale. What are the elements that you’re going to see that makes it this genre, this specific genre? […] You’re probably going to have a castle, and a prince and a princess, if you’re looking at a fairy tale. We wanted to give these fundamental, not cosmetic, but prerequisite elements.”

Okay, I’ve talked too much. I am going to end it there for now. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Haha hope that was entertaining and that sparked some thinking and inspiration. I know I let my keyboard run away from me and please excuse the odd typo from time to time. Let me know your thoughts.

I mean just look at that beautiful man.

Love you all!

[darkpoisonouslove]

3-7, 13, 16-17, 21, 25-26, 28, 30-32, 36, and 41. (If you're still doing ask thing.)

I’m doing it! Wow, you sent a lot of numbers. Okay XD. Let’s see.

3. if you were any historic trope, what would you be? (i.e., the knight, the town baker, the witch of the forest, etd.)

Totally witch of the forest but if you can also mix writing into that.

4. tell us about your ideal battle outfit.

A body suit that covers everything and is made of very strong materials so that it won’t tear and will protect me from injuries (idk why the hell I would even need a battle outfit, I am not the type of person that goes well with battles). Also, def a headpiece to protect me from head injuries and keep my hair where an opponent can’t grab it and drag me by it.

5. what would you be a god/goddess of and what would people sacrifice to you?

I would be the goddess of forgiveness and people would have to sacrifice their anger and desire for vengeance to me because that’s the only way to forgive and heal.

6. name five iconic quotes that make you feel things.

Time to go through the quote tag, I see. It’s a good thing I’ve been collecting all those quotes. So idk what qualifies as iconic, but here you go - five quotes that make me feel things:

“I am somebody. I am me. I like being me. And I need nobody to make me somebody.” - Louis L’Amour

“Maybe it’s because I take everything as a lesson, or because I don’t want to walk around angry… or maybe it’s because I finally understand.” (I haven’t written down where this is from (pretty sure it was some TV show that I definitely HAVEN’T watched) but it does make me feel a lot of things)

“Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.” - C. S. Lewis

“Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future.” - Yehuda Berg

And a little bonus because I had this one in mind ever since the beginning but I got five before I managed to find it:

“She took a step and didn’t want to take any more, but she did.” - Markus Zusak

This really needs a cut:

7. scythe, battle axe, broad sword, spear or trident?

Scythes are cool, but I’m not sure how functional they are. I definitely do not get the trident as a weapon, and spears are not good weapons imo if they’re the only thing you have going into battle. Axes look cool but are a little bit brutal for my taste, I think (though, you’ll be killing people with all the weapons - it’s why they’re weapons!). I think I’d pick a broadsword. That would suit me best.

13. cabin in the woods, apartment in the city or mansion in the suburbs?

I’m a bit torn between cabin in the woods and a mansion in the suburbs. I think I would take a mansion on the very edge of town where there are as few people as possible.

16. describe your ideal fantasy outfit

I really love the look of Regina Mills’ outfits (from OUAT) because she has the dress aesthetic but the skirt is open at the front and she wears pants underneath so that she can ride horses and, generally, be more mobile than a normal gown would allow you to be. I imagine her outfits are also a lot lighter than typical gowns were throughout history. Idk, I really like how that looks. Also, I would love some floaty veils - they look so magical and dreamy.

17. of all the fantasy races to ever exist, which one would you be?

A mermaid. God, what I wouldn’t give to be able to breathe underwater and swim with the sea creatures.

21. an evening in the forest with elves, a night in the caves with vampires or a morning in the garden with fae?

I think I’ll take the evening in the forest with elves. Though the vampires also sound kinda tempting tbh.

25. favorite childhood story? (doesn’t have to be a fairy tale)

It is a fairytale and I do know how it was called but no idea how that will be in English. Anyway, the story was about a king with three sons who sends them on a quest to bring the most beautiful puppy they can find. They have one year to do that. The brothers set out on a journey together but reach an agreement to separate at the inn they’re staying in and meet back there when the year is up. From there on we follow the youngest son who gets robbed and lost and stumbles into a castle in the woods. The door opens but he can see no one. Only floating wooden (I think?) hands that lead him through the castle. Once he’s settled in, they lead him to the owner of the castle who turns out to be a white talking cat. For the next year he stays there and the two of them have all sorts of fun along with all the other cats that live there. At the end of the year, the cat reminds him that he needs to return to his father, and he gets mad at himself because he wasted the whole year and didn’t find a puppy. She gives him a walnut and tells him only to crack it open when he gets back to his father’s palace. He meets with his brothers at the inn and sees what beautiful dogs they’ve found. Meanwhile, he’s brought a dirty mutt that his brothers mock him about. When they go to their father, though, he cracks the walnut open and from inside shows up the smallest puppy that also dances. The king is impressed but decides to give them another task. He tells them to find the finest fabric that can go through the eye of a needle for which they have a year again. The youngest prince returns to the castle of the white cat and spends the next year with her again. Then she gives him… some sort of other nut (I don’t remember what it was anymore) and sends him back to his father. When he gets there, he cracks the nut, but inside there is another nut. And another. And another. Until finally there is an entire piece of fabric in the last one that actually does go through the eye of a needle. Everyone is absolutely shooketh, but the king gives them one final task. He tells them that they need to find wives in the next year and come back to him so that he can decide who will inherit the kingdom. The youngest brother returns to the white cat again and spends that year with her as well. On the last day of his stay she tells him that at midnight he has to cut off her head and her tail and throw them into the fireplace. He starts crying because he loves her and can’t do that but she tells him to trust her and do it. He does and she transforms into a woman. She is the princess of the castle but she and her whole retinue were cursed to become cats (I don’t remember why anymore, the backstory escapes me). He takes her to his father who pronounces him the next king but the cat-turned-woman-again says that she has a kingdom of her own and so they leave the kingdom to his brothers.

Wow, I can’t believe how much I remember from that fairytale. There must have been at least ten years since I’d last read it. Anyway, yeah, I adored that tale and my grandparents and parents weren’t happy about it because it was the second longest fairytale in all the books we had and I made them read it to me all the time. It was my absolute favorite. Damn, i wanna go search for the book and read it now!

26. tell us about an experience you’ve had that seemed unreal or supernatural. (doesn’t have to be scary)

A few weeks ago I saw a cat that had these eyes that immediately let me know that that cat could understand absolutely every word I would say to it. I do think that animals in general understand us but in a reading-our-emotional-state kind of way. Not in a I-totally-get-all-the-words-you’re-saying kind of way. But I’m pretty sure that was exactly what was going on with that cat. It was kinda weird, but not a bad weird.

28. tell us three sayings that you live by.

Ah, goddammit! There are a lot of Bulgarian sayings that fit my views on life but they’re not exactly translatable, y’know?

Treat people the way you want to be treated is one principle that I *try* to follow.

Forgive but don’t forget is another principle that I believe in (I know the original is forgive and forget but I don’t believe in that. And also, remember all those things I remember from that fairytale I haven’t read in years? You think I know how to forget things? I’m a lot better with forgiving, tho, I promise.)

Everyone deserves love is a hill that I will die on tbh. I know it sounds corny, but love is the one thing that can save people and I firmly believe in that.

Not exactly sayings, but close enough for me (hopefully for you, too.)

30. describe your ideal masquerade ball outfit (mask included).

Ehh, I have no idea. It’s gotta be purple and black, tho.

31. splashing around in a river with mermaids or flying through the sky with harpies?

Definitely splashing in a river with mermaids. God, I love mermaids.

32. what would you end up in the dungeon for?

Voicing my opinion. I have literally zero respect for authority. If you’re wrong, you’re wrong and you’d better believe I WILL call you out on it. I don’t care if you’re god or whatever.

36. would you rather be a pirate or a king/queen?

Eh, I don’t know. I really don’t want to be a queen. That’s too much responsibility that I could handle, but I really don’t want to. Can I write if I’m a pirate? If yes, then that’s settled.

41. stained glass windows or fairy lights?

This became long. I’m sorry if some answers are a bit sparse. I just really didn’t know what to do with some of the questions. 😅

[theincorrigiblemagpie]

Kasautii Zindagii Kay (2018) E01- Yo Momma So Bengali

25-9-2018

Long time no liveblog-first-few-episodes-of-a-new-show-before-giving-up-in-disgust, no?

It’s a big one this time, folks. I am here to watch the first episode of the KZK reboot with you all!

For those who have not spent a dissipated life watching Hindi TV and/or lack context: KZK was one of Balaji's 3 original 'K-soaps', that aired between 2001 and 2008 on Star Plus. It was the story of star-crossed lovers Prerna and Anurag (who was very unnecessarily Bengali). They had 30 million impediments to their relationship and literally never got together. No jokes. Spoiler alert but they tragically died at the end of those 8 years. One main impediment was the other dude in Prerna's life, Mr Bajaj (first name: Rishabh but always 'Mr Bajaj' to the world), whom she was married to for the most part. Another major impediment was the vampiest vamp that ever vamped-- Komolika. Between the 3 main protagonists, other partners of the 2 men, and from sundry side characters, we had eleventy five children who complicated matters further through several classic 'time leaps.' The only ones I cared about were Prem and Mukti but they also had a tragic end.

The first rule of fight club, even before you begin watching this reboot, is: NEVER ship anybody. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Anyhoo, it’s time to begin.

Lots of establishing shots of Howrah Bridge, Hooghly river, Victoria Memorial and sundry Kolkata monuments so that everyone knows we’re in Kolkata.

Extreme family-function-after-a-long-time feelz as we're introduced to a dizzying cast of people (the Basu and Sharma clans) who are all...praying. Separately in their own homes, I mean. The Sharmas are a modest 'middle-class' family while the Basus are mansion-owning-wealthy. I sat and screencapped all of them for you.

Meet the Sharma parents and siblings.

Now, meet the Basu parents and siblings.

And finally, Anurag and Prerna.

Please note how the Basus get a little Durga next to their names and the Sharmas get a little Ganesh. This attention to detail is what I expect from the production house that will at some point vanish several characters with no explanation.

On a side note, I am generally pleased with Erica Fernandes as Prerna. And think Parth Samthaan as Anurag is fitting in that I always thought Cezanne Khan was also terribly lame and not hero material at all. 

It's been 23 minutes and we're still in the exposition stage. We have learned through tedious and boring conversations that Anurag is a little goody-two-shoes who is obsessively punctual and determined to carve a name for himself independent of his father's publishing empire.

He is also the college heartthrob (obv everyone goes to the same college) but he does not talk to any women (except Prerna) leading to speculation about whether he's gay. And he only talks to Prerna about the weather despite having known her for 10 years on account of their dads being friends/employer-employee/both.

Prerna shows dangerous Manic Pixie Dream Girl signs and her explanation for all nosey questions about why she doesn't try to hook Anurag is "I'm romantic and he's practical-- we're incompatible."

If I had a rupee for every romance I've read/watched where the heroine disses the hero for his lack of romantic spirit and then discovers that he is secretly not as unfeeling as she'd thought, I'd freelance without worry forever.

The writers couldn't wait for Durga Puja because it's already Durga Puja in this show's timeline. I must warn you, it's likely to be Durga Puja up until November, when it will suddenly be Diwali. 

Prerna's mom puts up a gift item stall at the big Basu puja pandal every year while her dad oversees a lot of the general admin. Mohini Basu, who is a Calcutta socialite, pretends not to recognise Prerna because she's too much of a peasant, apparently. I’m censoring several uncharitable and gross comments about the background socialites who cannot act to save their lives, and esp the girl who was supposedly Miss Calcutta the previous year.

My mom, watching over my shoulder, asked why random people were doing Durga's aarti (including Prerna and Anurag) instead of just the priests. If any of you also have this confusion, it's so that this can be a source of foreshadowing, premonition, drama and whatnot. In that vein, Anurag and Prerna accidentally ended up doing the aarti together for a bit, which only married couples do on TV.

Mohini is absolutely a let-them-eat-cake bitch but Moloy makes WhatsApp jokes about matrimony and his wife constantly so I'm feeling far more sympathetic toward her than I should.

I’m wondering how much longer they'll keep up the red and white sarees worn the SLB-Devdas way, the dhunuchi naach, and the Hindi-fied Bengali to establish Bengali-ness. Can't wait for them to forget and only revive on special occasions.

Prerna's feather-brained friend forces her to ask Anurag if he's into boys or girls which she haltingly does. Boring Anurag proves to have a strange sense of humour wherein he tells her he likes boys and pretends as though a friend is his boyfriend. LGBTQ ally Prerna says 'that's great, so glad it's legal now' and also apologizes for asking such a personal question. Ngl, Prerna has exhibited the MOST sense on this show so far (despite her occasional lapses into MPDG territory). I refer to a scene where several girls were peeking through the shutters into a locker room to ogle Anurag in a football jersey messily drinking Gatorade (yes, we had a brief Kukkad Kamaal Da moment). Prerna rolled her eyes, said "this is so embarrassing" and walked away.

Anyway, the final bit is where Prerna's brother Mahesh (who has been living under a rock all his life in Kolkata, I believe), asks the priest who the buff dude with curly hair being killed by Durga is. Priest immediately extemporizes a flowery essay on Mahishasur and Durga for our benefit. This is cut with scenes of the silhouette of a drunk man in shiny red shoes exiting a big car and smashing a bottle of whiskey and setting it on fire. He is presumably the Mahishasur to Prerna's Durga. We've also had plenty of anvil-sized hints comparing Prerna to Durga but they were tedious and I won't go into them. (But with those shoes, he could also be the Wicked Witch of the East. Idk.)

I'm hoping this one is Bajaj and he'll appear on the scene soon enough (and not be rapey, please god) so that this story can move faster.

Ok so that alcohol-fire was in an alley on the outside of this very pandal and the whole place is on fire now. In tonight's episode, Prerna and her friend will get caught in this fire and Anurag will play a Rohit Shetty hero.

I’m starting a red-dupatta count for all the separate moments a red dupatta flutters across the scene and over one or both leads, because that is an original Kasauti Thing.

In today’s episode, it happened 3 times.

[jjungkooksthighs]

HIII ITS ME HEART FLUTTERING ANON 😁 SO! FAV CHAPTERS EEEE first of all chap 1 had me hooked obviously from the start, and for chap 2 i lovedddd how it set the scene for how they first met and then when they ran into each other again ... literal tingles up and down the way he TALKED to her??? “pretty omega ... i won’t bite” AHHHHHHHHHHHH

and then all of chapter 3 was so good the way he was talking to her again was sooo good so possessive and it was incredible like i don’t know if you understand literally LITERALLY it makes my body tingle and then chap 4 when he carried her through the forest and hes all like “you wouldn’t want me to lose control would you” AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

and then chapter 5 i love that you wrote her a sweet best friend and also that scene where she imagined him .... GOD ur incredible. and then the ENDING. when taehyung popped out .... i’m actually double biased with taehyung and jungkook and so when that happened i was like JHDJSAIWIQKSJJS more tingles it was so well written please

... then chap 6. do i even need to say anything? thigh riding i CANT i almost passed out and he made her admit that she had her own fantasies and nobody could do it like him .... also the end when he was like “it won’t be just your legs that ache in my wake” AHHHHHHHHHHHH LIKE I SWEAR MY WHOLE BODY JUS. IDK HOW TO DESCRIBE IT OTHER THAN AHHHHHHHHHHH

chap 7 ... the whole dancing scene was so hot and then he told her to come to him OOOOO ANTICIPATION

finally chap 8 GODDDD first of all i love grinding like literally you don’t even understand and so when you wrote that in i was like EEEEEEE and then she went down on him and at the same time she got off on his leg that was so so sexy but then they have to go apart again :( until the next chapter !

so. in case you haven’t noticed it’s very hard for me to pick a fav chapter. lol. BUT i would def say chap 6 and chap 8 for obvious reasons, chapter 3 and 4 were also really sexy but i think my fav will be chapter 9 actually i’m anticipating it a lot and i’m sure it’ll be nothing but amazing ... that’s not pressure it’s me having faith in you cause you’re an amazing writer and i’m so excited to see what you come up with next hehe

i hope tbis wasn’t too long and annoying to read but yeah ily

Chapter 1 of COC was written during a lust filled craze following the Idol performance at Gyeongbokgung Palace that they boys did for that BTS week on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Kook really was in a rare form following his 23rd birthday and that performance truly had me salivating over him from start to finish. I saw Jungkook and my eyes did not stray from him once and not a day later, I was working on a fic that I had no idea would become the 40k plus piece that is now COC. 

Chapter 1 was brought you to my overwhelming horniness after that performance and it’s interesting that you were lured to my fic in the same way Jungkook allured me to him even from the moment I first saw him back in 2013. 

You caught that little bit with him biting her in chapter 2, huh?? XD I am impressed. Perhaps he was joking, perhaps he knew from that second he saw her that she was destined to be his mate and therefore was hinting at a future mating mark???

Moving on, Jungkook is indeed a very possessive individual (from what we know of him irl in that he’s said “what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine”) and I wanted to depict that side of him in addition to making that trait even more abundant in his character in the story since wolves themselves are very territorial and possessive creatures. If Jungkook irl likes to stake his claim on things, then you can only image how much more enhanced that side of him would be if here were, say, a werewolf. 

I am glad you Jungkook’s characterization in the way that he converses with those around him (especially reader) and when I was writing, I wanted reader to feel shy and even more, I wanted you guys as the readers to “feel” the tingle that she does when he speaks to her. The fact that you do means i succeeded in that and I am very, very pleased to hear it!

As for his comment about “losing control,” let us just say that every single time that reader is around him, it takes him an enormous amount of self-restraint not to let his urges take hold of him that she brings out whenever he inhales her pheromones that make his baser being howl with need for in addition to her own personality that he finds very refreshing and adorable. On top of all that, she’s the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen, so he’s quite taken with her and she with him. I wanted to instill that desire between them as well within their conversations and hopefully that is conveyed in the chapters, too!

Chapter five....that one was one written after quite the dream I had. I will say that one was genius if I do say so myself. It was so long and i had so much I wanted to do with it and the final product I was actually really satisfied with. I’m happy to know you were, too, hun! It’s funny you say you are double biased with Tae as someone I know very well irl is biased so hard for him that not even Kook can sway her attention (and lbr how can one NOT look at Jungkook when he’s sin incarnate when he wants to be and cute lil baby boy when he feels like being sweet?)

LISTEN CHAPTER SIX I WROTE IN ANOTHER LUST FILLED HAZE OKAY I MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR THIGH RIDING I MEAN HAVE YOU SEEN HIS LEGS??? HAVE YOU??? LITERAL ORGASM MATERIAL ISTG I WOULD RIDE THEM WHENEVER, WHEREVER AND HOWEVER HE WANTED IF HE LET ME. MY URL LITERALLY IS JJUNGKOOKSTHIGHS OKAY I MUST PAY HOMAGE TO THE CREATIONS OF THE FINEST MAKING TO MAN (honestly though everything about Jungkook is a gift from the gods). i cannot tell you how many times I have thought about fucking myself over his thighs okay it’s just not healthy and let us leave it at that. Ahem, anyways.... chapter six really was something, huh? That whole chapter got deleted off my computer after I closed the file and forgot to save it and so had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It was a sad day when that happened, but I got right back to work and finished the reworked version about two days later. I had worried for some time that that chapter wasn’t as hot because of the diction in it, so hopefully you were able to immerse yourself in that and get those tingles there, too XD

Chapter seven was especially long and that one was actually deleted originally after some comments about the diction and so I had to rewrite it and repost it so that people would be able to understand it better. That whole dance scene is very close to my heart as it was taken directly from that little dance break Jungkook does in his My Time performance during their online MOTS: One concert. The song he sings is also My Time, which is my favorite solo song (in combination with Euphoria because they are both my children and you can’t pick favorites with children lbr), so that whole little show he puts on for reader is very special to me since I love the song (and dance) so much. 

Chapter eight was hot af, I admit it. He really did a number on reader in chapter seven and so she wanted to show him how he made her feel and boy, did she deliver. He fell even harder for her when he realized she wanted to please him despite her inexperience and it was a godly experience for him to be able to teach her how to use her mouth on the only cock that she will ever have in her mouth or her cunt. :) They are animals after all, for only animals do what they did in that chapter in terms of her literally rutting against his leg and getting off while she drank his seed after blowing him. Anyways, it was hot and I confess, my mind really was somewhere south while writing that. 

Oh, and to clarify, they don’t separate in that chapter (and I have begun to write chapter nine and they are not apart in that one either. Well, in the beginning at least ). 

So, chapters 6 and 8 were your favorites, huh? Looks like your favorite ones are the ones with smut , eh??? Interesting... I will say that chapter nine will not have any smut in it, but I think you will be pleased with it when you read it. You will have quite a lot of emotions hit you during it and I hope to do you justice when I post it, hon. 

Thank you so much for giving me such a long and detailed response. You may think I found it annoying, but I assure you that I did not. Rather, I thought the opposite in that it was endearing and I want you to know how grateful I am that you took the time to write all this out and send it to me. I wanted to give you a response that was just as detailed and thoughtful as I appreciate you for doing what you did. So, I guess what I am trying to say is thank you for this. I enjoyed reading your thoughts and i hope you will be appeased by my reply in turn, sweetling. 

[stormy-boy]

Why Jackson Storm is my favorite character (in Cars)

Ahhh yes. The question I’ve been waiting for. (Cue that gif of old Rose from Titantic going, “It’s been 84 years…”) PREPARE FOR THE LONGEST POST EVER. (Also kind of messy and disorganized but I don’t care, I just wanna talk about Storm).

(I made this into a separate post because it’s really long and a long time coming. I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR THIS).

Well first off, I don’t necessarily like Storm because he’s a nice person (car?), because as far as the movie shows us, he’s a pretty rotten jerk, ha ha. Definitely NOT someone you should look up to. I guess I just have a thing for asshole characters. But it’s more what people in the fandom have been creating (i.e., headcanons, backstories, fanfictions, etc.) that make him a more interesting character. Not to mention the Storm Chasing book, which casts a more sympathetic light on him. So I’m mainly basing my love of him off of that. I’ll split my impressions of him into the fandom part, the grey-canon part (the Origins book), and the canon part (Cars 3).

From the fandom:

I love the idea of Storm feeling this pressure that he has to win and be the best, and that if he doesn’t, he isn’t valuable. I think it’s a feeling that a lot of people can relate to—this fear of losing and being second-rate. I also personally have this headcanon where he was emotionally neglected by his parents, so he seeks approval and attention through racing. I just think that all my boy needs is some love and someone to straighten him out. IDK, I just get the notion that Storm has the potential to become a better person (but we’ll never know for sure because Disney/Pixar will never give him a redemption arc, nor will they probably ever bring him back, RIP). So that’s why I’m writing my own...

From the Storm Chasing book:

UHHH does everybody know how much I love this book, because maybe I haven’t posted enough photos of it yet (SARCASM).

My boy is a gamer who hates to go outside and honestly, if that doesn’t speak to me and a lot of the millennial generation, I don’t know what does.

He doesn’t know how to make friends/he’s socially awkward (Yoooo, I didn’t know this book was about me!!)

“I’m just not great at hanging around other cars. You’ve seen me. I’m horrible at it—telling jokes, being pals, grabbing a pint of oil or whatever it is cars do” (83).

He’s a freaking baby who has temper tantrums when he loses (THIS IS BASICALLY CANON).

“YOU CHEATED!” (79)

“I SAID I’M NOT ANGRY!!!” (Cars 3)

He’s a privileged diva who hates even getting a tiny bit dirty.

“These distractions are just really annoying. They’re throwing me off my game. SC3 is so much cleaner... and it doesn’t have any weird smells” (61).

Trust Issues™???

“Maybe I have trust issues…” (106) (Me???)

He’s actually a hard worker when it matters, and hates to quit.

Based on multiple descriptions, he appears to be independent, solitary, and perhaps even an introvert.

“I’ll need my own room… I don’t like sharing a room. I’m private that way” (42). <<<----Look, it me.

He shows up late to training meetings (probably ‘cause he’s up playing video games all night).

When he shows up to the L.A. International Speedway for practice and sees a bunch of kids there to watch him, he tries to book it out of there and if that ain’t me.

From the movie (Cars 3):

Umm have you seen him??? This beautiful masterpiece:

Like, can I pet him???

His aesthetic: he’s dark, edgy, and his name is Jackson Storm. I’m such a sucker for that kind of stuff, as cheesy as it is.

Another thing I thought was funny was his faux-chummy attitude, and how while he seems like he’s being nice on the surface, he’s actually dissing you. 

It’s so amusing to me that I laugh every time I watch this scene. And then he rides off with his dub-step music playing, and it’s so obnoxious and corny that I can’t help but think it’s hilarious.

He gets in your head (well for me, he gets in my head for other reasons, if you know what I mean ;))). Storm is an interesting contrast to Chick and Francesco because he’s much more inconspicuous and subdued in the way he taunts people. Like I mentioned before, every compliment he comes up with is a hidden insult. So with the way Storm keeps constantly  pushing the idea of Lightning being old and obsolete, it finally comes to a head in the final race at L.A. International (and then Lightning crashes while trying to keep up with him, RIP). And if this type of psychological manipulation isn’t both messed up and intriguing at the same time, I don’t know what is. It’s honestly a part of Storm I wish I included more in my own writing. Because it seems to me that because of Storm’s constantly putting up this front of his being one thing when he’s actually another, I can’t help but think that there’s more to him than meets the eye, you know? What kind of person is he off the racetrack? In his private life? That’s what fan fiction is for ;)

He’s not as confident as he looks. From what I gathered from the movie, he plays mind games in order to eliminate his competition. This includes Cruz and Lightning. I always had the notion that Storm worked so relentlessly to get Lightning to retire because he actually perceived him as a threat to his place as a racing champion. I could be wrong, and that he only mocked Lightning to just be a jerk, but I couldn’t help but feel that some part of him felt intimidated. Because as you see later during the Florida 500, he does the same thing to Cruz (and he truly IS intimidated by her). Seeing Storm lose his confident front in the last race is really interesting to see. He claims to not be nervous, but you can see him checking Cruz’s position over and over, and even when Ray tells him that Cruz is moving up toward him, he says, “Why should I care?” but you can SEE it in his face that he’s angry because he does care, and he’s actually afraid of her! And then he speeds the f*** up right after this part! 

Bonus: The expression he has after Lightning passes him in the pits at L.A. International. Maybe or may not be that same look of uncertainty I was talking about, but based on the way he pulls up to taunt Lightning afterwards makes me think it is (or I’m overthinking this).

Also, the fact that he feels the need to resort to those dirty tactics of mind manipulation means that he doesn’t have complete faith that his racing abilities alone will help him to win. (Because isn’t that the reason why people tear others down? Because they aren’t completely confident in themselves? IDK, not a psych expert here). When that doesn’t work, he loses his patience (and temper) and rams Cruz into the wall. It’s kind of a defense mechanism that he has—whenever he feels in danger of being compromised or beaten, he trash-talks someone. So yeah, Stormy boy might have some confidence issues of his own, hmmm?

He’s a young, spoiled, arrogant brat, but that doesn’t sound too far off from someone we used to know ;) I’m honestly a bit disappointed that the movie didn’t point out the similarities between Storm and Rookie-Lightning (maybe it was obvious enough). But I feel that the two have a lot in common (arguably, Storm is the meaner, edgier version of Rookie-Lightning). They both know what it feels like to always be on the track and not know how to properly treat people and make friends. Maybe Storm just needs the RS Treatment™ to straighten him out, ha ha.

He’s actually a really talented racer, and I have no doubt that he’s worked hard to get where he is. That at least is something admirable about him. <3

Reasons why I don’t like him:

There are none.

He’s an egotistical jerk.

He slammed Cruz against the wall, the jerk.

He’s indirectly one of the causes of Lightning’s crash, the jerk.

I still love him.

There’s not enough official material of him in existence to satisfy me.

Honestly though, I can’t remember when or why I began liking him. It must have been his dashing good looks that caught my attention, and then everybody began fleshing out his character more, and then I fell in love with him. I think I can also relate to him on some levels (besides the part where he’s mean and confident), so there’s that. I could go on and on, but for the sake of everybody else, I don’t want this post to go on to infinity, so I’ll leave it at that for now. That’s probably more about Jackson Storm than you ever wanted to know, ha ha. Thank you for asking! (Bet you had no idea the storm you were bringing when you asked this question, lol).

I hope most of this made sense (because I have a bad habit of over-analyzing everything). If not, feel free to correct me or add something.

[enrychan]

comparison mass effect andromeda / dragon age 2, yeah or nope? i hear that a lot around the fandom

short answer: nope

extremely long answer [lots of MEA negativity and Personal Opinions™ under the cut, you’ve been warned. Please don’t read if you enjoyed the game and/or you are tired of hearing negative things about it, believe me i totally understand the feeling]:

alright i’m not going to act like DA2 wasn’t disappointing because yes, it was. especially after a game like DAO which remains among the best RPGs i’ve ever played. so I would compare MEA to DA2 because they are both disappointments. that said, i still disagree with the part of the fandom that says they are similar because of the “smaller story” and/or “the focus on the characters”. DA2 is a smaller story than DAO, but it’s laser focused on the delivery of that story within a three chapters arc, and through its characters. Exploration is almost non-existent and the fetch quests are few and so unimportant you can skip them without missing anything. The companions are the true narrative and emotional center, and each one of them has a personal mission during each one of the three chapters of the story. Some of them (especially Anders and Fenris) represent a piece of the problems and politics of Thedas and force Hawke to make decisions regarding those problems. Their growth and fate depend almost entirely on their relationship with Hawke and on the choices of the player.

On the other hand, MEA is all over the place. it gives me a number of huge maps filled with nothing but fetch quests that don’t make the narrative proceed in any way and are entirely forgettable. The game also gives me a humongous researching/developing system for weapons and armor with an absolutely ridiculous and confusing as hell UI, which requires three different currencies (milky way tech, kett tech, remnant tech), that you have to collect by scanning things, just to research the projects for said weapons and armor, not to mention the materials to actually build the fucking things - which come in like six or seven different levels, so if you want to update your weapon or armor to the next level you have to gather the materials all over again. That’s insane. At some point I just skipped that mess altogether and went through the rest of the game with my shitty level 2 gear because i was sick and tired of scanning and gathering and researching just to discover lately that i didn’t like how my new weapon worked and i wasted time for nothing. Obviously that meant the combat was much harder for me than it needed to be. There is a more in depth analysis on the researching/developing system in this review, if you’re interested. I’m not going to delve into the ridiculous implications of having to scan the rebels’ tech on Kadara to get milky way tech currency, like on the Nexus they don’t have, I don’t know, archives or books on their own technology?

I’ll also add that while the combat is probably the best part of the game, and it’s much more dynamic than in the trilogy, it’s still much less fun for me because they took away the option to order your companions to use a certain power, preventing me from planning any tactic or combo. this also had the side effect of creating another layer of separation between my Ryder and her companions; like there weren’t enough already, with the mediocre writing and everything else going wrong in this game. Basically I always fought like I was alone and most time i actually was because my two companions were KO and i didn’t care, as they were almost useless to me.

I should probably add that the quest design in MEA is atrocious, the worst of every bioware game i’ve played - and i played most of them. for almost every mission i was required to go to a certain planet, than back to the ship, than back to a planet, then back to the ship… each time going through unskippable cutscenes and loading screens. Luckily for me when i played the game they already patched the galactic map, letting me skip the cutscenes of the voyage between planets, which are very pretty at first but at the fifteenth time they start to really grate on your nerves. And despite the patch, the voyage is still very slow compared to, say, ME3. I cannot even imagine the pain of the day 1 players who were forced to suffer through those unskippable cutscenes hundreds of times. Some missions (the worst ones imo) require you to follow a signal through more than two solar systems, reading a series of five or six “false positives” or whatever, before finally finding the “real one” and conclude the mission; an utter pain in the ass and a complete waste of time. I understand that MEA had huge problems during its development, but this kind of stuff has nothing to do with those problems and everything to do with artificially extending your gaming time with boring activities, just to say that the game is “100 hours long”.

At this point I want to make clear that I would have forgiven everything - the fetch quests, the confusing crafting system, the awful quest design - if Bioware gave me a good protagonist and/or interesting companions. Not even a good story really, I didn’t even care about that, just give me a fully flashed out crew with clear motivations and backgrounds and I’ll be happy. That’s basically the reason why I forgive every shortcoming in DA2 - and there are a loooot of those. But nope, Andromeda fails there too.

With the exception of Jaal and to a lesser extent, Cora, the loyalty missions of the companions are completely disjointed from the main story and universe in which they are set and don’t make us understand more of this new galaxy in any way. This lack of relevance would still be ok if the relationship between the companions and the protagonist and/or the protagonist’s choices actually mattered (like in DA2, where the companions’ loyalty determines who lives and who dies in the end) but unfortunately they don’t, and i mean at all.

Speaking of the protagonist, again the comparison with Hawke doesn’t hold. Hawke could have three very distinct personalities which made them somewhat memorable, for good or bad. Ryder on the other hand has two or more kind of replies that are almost always the same, just with slightly different wording (as this video says: do you know the difference between “now we are building again” and “this is vital to our progress”? - not that i agree with everything said in that review but here i agree completely). Ryder fares even worse if compared to other bioware protagonists like the Warden, who had a wide range of reactions that in some cases could even include outright killing their interlocutor. Combine this with the almost complete lack of choices and/or consequences in MEA and you get the most forgettable and boring protagonist of a bioware game to date; and yeah, I’m including the Inquisitor, because while the choices of dialogue in DAI were similar to those in MEA, at least the facial animations were decent so you could have a connection with your own protagonist on some level.

To be clear, it’s not lost to me what the original intention was with Ryder’s character arc. Ryder is specifically written as inadequate, uncharismatic and sometimes incompetent, because they weren’t the intended heir to the title of Pathfinder. They kinda found themselves thrown into that role and had to adapt. On its own that’s not a bad character arc at all. On the contrary, it could have been even more interesting than Shepard’s, who was a leader even before the first mission in ME1. Unfortunately there is no actual character arc for Ryder, only premises. Ryder never becomes more charismatic or assertive during the story, in fact they make very few choices at all, and even those few have little to no consequences both in the main story and in their relationships with the other characters. Ryder is just kinda there, reacting with various shades of tone to other characters actually making choices. Again compare that to Hawke’s arc, since we are discussing whether or not the two games resemble each other. In DA2 there is a simple premise (Hawke is a poor refugee who runs from the Blight and has to survive in an unforgiving city like Kirkwall) and a very clear payoff (Hawke becomes one of the central political figures in Kirkwall, while ironically still not being able to save their own family and, possibly, friends). With Ryder there is a clear premise but no payoff. At least not on a personal level, which is important in creating a connection with our character. Of course the story goes on anyway, but it doesn’t seem to actually affect my protagonist or change them in any way, so it remains almost irrelevant to me.

Everything said until now would be already experience breaking on its own, but it becomes even more remarkable in Ryder’s specific case, because Ryder comes with an extra passenger, aka SAM - and SAM is a very invasive extra passenger. To the point that most of the time you’re convinced it’s not actually Ryder the one in charge of that brain, or of the Pathfinder team. 99% of the time it’s SAM who solves problems and tells you and the others what to do. Sometimes is becomes frankly annoying. I’m not even talking about the vaults. You have to solve a murder case? SAM doesn’t just gather the evidence, oh no, he also tells you exactly what the evidence means and how it must be interpreted, like Ryder is too stupid to connect the dots. You intervene in a beating or a robbery on Kadara, either to stop it or just to understand what’s going on? SAM tells you not to get involved. And guess what? Ryder does exactly that, instead of, idk, telling SAM to shut the fuck up? SAM also becomes downright unbearable on Voeld and on Elaaden where it keeps telling you that the temperature is rising or falling or that it’s within acceptable range. I don’t know if they finally patched the thing but god was that annoying.

In any case my point is, since it’s actually SAM and not Ryder that does all the work, you have the distinct feeling that you are not actually the protagonist in this story, just a vessel. That could have been a cool premise if, for example, Ryder leaned too much on SAM and then halfway through the story it was taken away or shut down. That could have been a dramatic moment of growth for Ryder, where they were forced to finally rely on their own strenght and actually become the Pathfinder humanity needed. But again: cool premise, no payoff. SAM is taken away only near the end of the story and Ryder almost dies because of that. And even when they can’t access their SAM during the final mission, there is still the SAM inside the other Ryder sibling’s brain to tell them and you what to do. In short, Ryder is almost entirely dependent on SAM throughout the entire story, making them even less memorable as a protagonist, if possible.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of most of the characters that populate Andromeda and particularly the Tempest. Jaal is relevant only because he is an angara, the only new friendly species introduced in MEA (another disappointment), but he is otherwise completely forgettable on his own. It’s repeated over and over again how the angara have an extremely open behaviour towards each other, expressing feelings without many constraints like we do, but the problem is, without good and complex facial/body animations, that kind of behaviour is hard if not impossible to deliver. I think that’s one of the main problems with Jaal’s character. The other main problem is of course the writing, always generic and kind of vague. For example when you ask him about his relationship with the Moshae, he tells you that she “inspires” and he “loves her”, but he doesn’t give you anything that actually communicates that inspiration and that love, even only through the tone of his voice (has anyone given some direction to these voice actors?). It’s only telling without showing. Compare that to Dorian talking about Felix, for example. With just one image (Felix sneaking him treats from the kitchen while he was studying) he gives you an idea of both the person that Felix was and his relationship with him.

Cora is similar to Ryder in the fact that her character has good premises, but no payoff. She has two main character traits: she was trained as an asari commando and has great admiration for them; and she was the second in command under Alec Ryder, so she should have become the Pathfinder, but she didn’t. Aside from the fact that in my opinion she repeats that she was trained as an asari commando a little too many times, like she wanted to be 200% sure we got the message, and that becomes kind of annoying after a while… if we take a look at her character arc we see that there is a great disappointment when she finds out that the asari heroine that she admired the most lied about the death of the asari Pathfinder for her own personal gain. This should have set in motion a series of consequences on her character journey similar to those Liara experienced when she found out that the Protheans weren’t actually the ethereal, moral beings she thought they were, but instead they were conquerors and imposed a totalitarian regime on the galaxy. But while Liara at first gets angry and sad and then she slowly accepts to re-examine her own previous work under a new light, no relevant change can be seen within Cora’s character. More on this comparison can be found in this excellent video. In a similar way, her other main trait (the fact that she was the designated successor to Alec but she didn’t get the Pathfinder title in the end), also doesn’t have any payoff. In fact she is just slightly disappointed/irritated at first but she gets over it very quickly (even if Ryder is clearly not the charismatic figure humanity needs) leaving little to no consequence on her relationship with Ryder. In these conditions, the scenes in which she talks about her hobby ring hollow because I didn’t previously build my relationship with her on anything substantial, so I don’t really care about her plants.

I’d say the only companion who gets a very simple but complete character arc is Peebee, because she starts as kind of an outsider in the group, extremely afraid of commitment (the writers made sure it was super obvious with the “I live in an escape pod” thing), and in the end she learns to relax a little and trust Ryder and the rest of the crew more. Unfortunately I also found her annoying as hell since her first appearance, so that didn’t do a thing for me.

I could go on with the other companions, but this reply would become a bible. I’ll just add that the “good premises - no payoff” thing includes non-companion characters as well, Reyes for example. For the first 40/45 hours I didn’t romance anyone because, well, I found every possible LI either boring, paper thin or annoying af. That’s something I never experienced in any other Bioware game, but hey there’s a first time for everything I guess. Then I went to Kadara, I met Reyes and honestly he was a breath of fresh air. I’m not saying he was particularly deep or complex, but at least he was somewhat charismatic and charming (also, that accent), so I decided to romance him. Unfortunately both his character and his romance get no satisfying closure, as there is literally no change whatsoever, external or internal, if you let him kill Sloane; and you can’t really confront him on the fact that he used you and lied to you, even if you romanced him so it should have been kind of a big deal. bigger deal. whatever.

I’m not preteding that something like this never happened before. Speaking about the Mass Effect trilogy, Jacob is the most infamous example of boring, not entirely flashed out companion. Moving to the most recent Dragon Age, I’d say Blackwall also suffers from something similar, since he has good premises (she is vague and evasive at first because he’s lying about his true identity) but little payoff (even after the big reveal he remains pretty vague and generic about himself and his own story, nor he behaves even slightly different than before), though he’s still more interesting than the majority of the MEA crew. The point is, some shortcomigs are normal and expected and, if counter-balanced with other high points, they can be forgiven. But Andromeda didn’t shine in any way. Outside of combat the gameplay was boring and clunky, basically go from point A to point B, scan stuff, gather stuff, repeat. The sudoku puzzles were boring af and honesly ridiculous. No one ever solved them before you? is everyone in the Heleus cluster a moron?

In fact, the whole foundation of the story is that no one in the Heleus cluster could gain access to the vaults and activate them, despite having known and studied them for centuries. One day a complete stranger from another galaxy comes and solves everything in literally five minutes. And I’m supposed to believe that. I mean my suspension of disbelief can stretch a lot, but this is a little too much for me. Also that makes the angara seem like a bunch of idiots, which is not exactly flattering for the only new friendly species we meet in Andromeda.

The writing in general is poor to say the least. I understand that the writers were included too late into the project due to the huge problems experienced during the earlier stages of development, but some of these mistakes are super basic, like writing from the POV of the omniscient narrator instead of the POV of the characters. So we get dialogues in which the characters know that they are in no real danger even though they have been shot, they are about to get shot, they risk getting spaced, and so on and so forth.

I get that the writers were aiming at something completely different from the grim, fatalistic atmosphere of ME3, but the problem is: if the script doesn’t take itself seriously, why should I take it seriously.I mean I’m all for jokes and lighthearted moments, there were a lot of those in the trilogy and i loved them (most of them), but the entire MEA script doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. The stakes SHOULD be high - the Pathfinders have the responsibility of 100.000 souls on their shoulders - but not for a moment you feel that burden, that responsibility.

Even the real reason of the voyage itself (escaping the Milky Way before the Reapers annihilate every advanced organic society) is kept secret from the player until you gather all the “memory triggers” your father left behind. Until then the whole Initiative - a huge, extremely dangerous and exceedingly expensive project - is presented like a fun stroll through a new galaxy, just because “we are explorers” and we like new beginnings and whatnot. This is another incomprehensible narrative choice that doesn’t make sense, no matter how you look at it. If you played the trilogy, the Reaper threat is certainly no surprise to you so the “plot twist” doesn’t work. If you’re a newcomer to the series you don’t even know what a Reaper is so the “plot twist” still doesn’t work. Not to mention that for some reason Alec Ryder’s “memory triggers” are scattered on planets he never even visited in his life. Instead of placing them somewhere among his things, idk, family pictures, books or music he loved, where it made sense to find them?

And even after you discover everything about the Reapers, and that everyone back in the Milky Way may have been dead for the last 600 years, there is again no consequence in the story or in the dialogues whasoever. Not even Ryder seems to be particularly affected by the terrible news. But we should be happy because we found out that their mom is still alive! Too bad we don’t care about her because we don’t know her. Exactly like in the beginning we didn’t care about Alec’s death because we didn’t know him. Those are extremely basic narrative mistakes. The whole experience is on this same, boring, safe, non-consequential level. Bioware is so much better than that.

(sorry for the long rant. I had a lot to say)