#it would be funny if it turns out this whole time shanks was the original first clone and he's infact a clone of Garling

[kacievvbbbb]

I know that the running theory right now is Shank's twin, but honestly, I'm inclined to believe it's a clone. Maybe a special one commissed for Garling to replace the child he lost, who knows. But the clone thing seems to be a running theme.

they cloned the seven warlords (who's even to say that the seraphim are the first tries) they cloned Stussy from the Rocks Pirate (the most regular-sized human of the bunch so maybe there's like a limit and Shanks is the most regular-sized yonko.) they clone devil fruits. It definitely feels like a setup for something much bigger and a cloned shanks is very much in that realm

like that really is the only explanation I have for why the "twin' looks so much like shanks. I mean it's one thing to be two siblings that look exactly alike (which isn't out of the norm for Oda) but to wear their hair virtually the same and have the same scraggly mustache even though he would have been raised as a proper celestial dragon with all the "propriety" and better fashion sense that entails and just generally everything (we've already been shown that either the clones are drawn to the same look as their original or it is forced upon them to make them resemble as close as possible.)

I don't know the idea that the world government would clone Shanks because why the hell not isn't so far-fetched honestly it might even be a clone of garling himself to explain the age.

Shanks holds a lot of power in the world a lot of people are known to trust him and he holds particular sway with the giants something that would be very valuable to the world government. And of garling's his dad it'd be pretty easy to get access to that DNA.

but yeah I'm interested to see how this plays out.

[softrozene]

Hellooo! I hope you're okay. Can I get a scenario for Benn Beckmann, Crocodile and Smoker with a female reader who confesses her feelings, please ?

I’m doing amazing Lovely. I hope you’re doing wonderful too! <3 I am such a sucker for requests like these. They feed into my love for fluff and cuteness, so I hope you enjoy this! Because of the theme requested and the characters personalities I gave the reader more of a shy girl kind of personality!

Benn, Crocodile, Smoker x Female Reader

Warnings: Fluff to the max

Words: 1818

Benn Beckmann-

Benn has a bad feeling the second he saw your cute form go up to the captain. He always gets an uneasy feeling when you talk to Shanks and yes, he is aware he is jealous, and he does not hide it very well, but this time felt different. Mostly because Shanks is giggling like a girl and your face looks beyond flustered.

Normally, he would go to your rescue but the second he sees Shanks look at him he had the urge to run away from his captain’s idiocy. He could not do so after you turn as well and give him a look that makes his heart ache. Whatever is going on he does not like it but seeing that look you gave him, makes him stay in place.

Benn is usually a quiet man and one who definitely does not wear his heart on his sleeve but the crew members who he’s been with from the start of the Red Hair Pirates can see through him. They know how smitten he is with you just as you are with him. It is almost painful that the two of you are not together and that is why while Benn is keeping an eye on you and Shanks from afar, Shanks is trying to convince you to confess to Benn.

The thought terrifies you. Your face heats up like a fire and you feel dizzy just thinking about it. Shanks is making fun of you and you want to hit him but of course, you do not dare. It is all in good faith that he is teasing you anyway.

The worry practically paints your being and Shanks gives in to give you his captain talk.

“Listen (Name), you are a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman. I can promise you that Benn will reciprocate your feelings. On the highly slim chance that he does not I will owe you a date night to lather you up with the romance you deserve,” Shanks promises.

The thought makes you want to gag immediately since you are not interested in your captain and Shanks laughs since you did not hide that. His words did reach you though and you turn around yet again to see Benn staring at you.

It is now or never.

As you walk up to Benn, he kicks himself for staring for so long. Even more, he wishes he knew what Shanks said to you to make your face so flustered.

“Benn?” Ah. The way you say his name makes him smile as he hums in response.

You go for it. “I like you. A lot. I know I may not be the most confident of women but-“

This is really happening. Benn can’t hear your words as the smile on his face grows. He glances back towards his captain who in return gives him a thumbs up. He cuts your now stuttering sentence off as he places a hand on your shoulder.

“I like you too, (Name). If you are sure you want to pursue a relationship with me then by all means I accept,” Benn says.

And that was how Benn accidentally killed a crewmember, his new partner, with Shanks as a witness when your body hit the ground and you went to cloud nine.

Crocodile-

“Do you know why you are here?” Crocodile questions.

You look a bit nervous but overall, pretty composed. He is impressed since anyone else would have usually pissed their pants by now. You do not answer him and even though that agitates him he lets it pass since you are one of his most valuable assets.

“You have been distracted. It is affecting your work. Would you like to tell me why?” He asks leaning into his hand.

Despite the way he asked it with a certain gentleness to it, his hook starts to carve into the desk leaving the silent threat. Any other person would be terrified, and it looks like you are, but you are just nervous. Your heart is racing wildly as you try to distract yourself from feeling a bit too hot from the threat of his hook.

“I have a perfectly reasonable explanation,” You start.

You want to tell him, but it may mean your death sentence. This man does not tolerate distractions. The only reason why he has not murdered you on the spot for your suddenly slow work is because your loyalty is as high, maybe even higher than Mr. 1’s loyalty. That is a great feat and one Crocodile appreciates even if he has no problems getting rid of his loyal followers.

He raises an eyebrow and you decide that saying your feelings for him would be worth it even if he decides to take your life.

“I like somebody… Romantically,” You begin.

Your eyes widen however when his hook crashes into the desk leaving a big and ugly scratch. The veins on his neck are prominent and for a moment you believe that he is jealous. It is a silly little thought but one that could bring you to tears with joy. It’s impossible though. You want to cry from embarrassment now. Crocodile is just angry that your romantic feelings got in the way of your work, you convince yourself this.

In reality, the second you admitted this, Crocodile saw red. You have feelings for someone? Nobody but he deserves your kind and loyal personality. You fit him perfectly and he would protect you no matter what. So, he is angry at whoever has your mind and heart right now.

He lost his composure for a second and he regrets it upon seeing your saddened face. Slight pride is in him for being able to get that reaction out of you though because that means you know your feelings for another are unacceptable.

Crocodile decides to go straight to the point. “Tell me who he is so I can destroy him. You are aware that feelings only cause distractions.”

The words sting and hard. He can see you flinch from this and your hesitation is strong. This is a first and he astounded that you out of everyone else may withhold this information. It almost makes him scoff. Of course, he should have known better. Even among the most loyal, they may betray him.

He is ready to crush all his feelings for you at this moment when you open your mouth and freeze. He allows you the moment to say the stupid name, but his eyes widen at what you do say.

“It is you. I like you romantically.”

He can sense your need to go run and hide and honestly? With what he does next he does not blame you. He laughs. Anyone would take this the wrong way which is why he is quick to compose himself and say, “This changes everything. Especially since I return your feelings. It would only make sense that we get involved with each other officially to avoid any more distractions, doesn’t it?”

He seems to have broken you as you stare at him awe that he really feels the same way. He accepts that as an answer.

“Prepare for a date tonight. Expect nothing but the best now that I can freely call you my woman.”

Smoker-

Today felt funny to Smoker for some odd reason. Usually, he is not this dense especially when his subordinates are involved which is why he is getting heavily annoyed that they are whispering amongst themselves while sending him glances.

He can’t recall what he did to warner these glances, but he suspects it has something to do with you as soon as he sees them glance your way. You, as always, are stuck in your head. It makes him stop as he thinks about you for a moment.

You are a strong and resilient woman. At first, he did not believe this with how much of an airhead you were but then he saw you in battle and honestly? He saw you more than a subordinate. He realized how compassionate you were for others. Seeing you in a different light alone made him angry but whenever you are around, he becomes fully aware of his body’s and emotion’s reactions to you. He becomes aware of how the subordinates treat you.

Getting a bit irritated with his feelings, he looks away from you and begins to glance over the ship. Though from the corner of his eye he can see Tashigi talking to you. He huffs more at the thought of you two being closer seeing as you both are the only females on this marine ship.

He looks away and grits his teeth as the irrational thoughts in his head begin to deepen.

“Sir? Sir!” You call out making him jump.

He immediately tries to fight off the blush trying to paint his cheeks as he realizes how close you are to him. You are trying to peer into his face to see if he is okay.

“Are you okay?” You ask genuinely concerned.

Smoker forces him to cough as he nods his head. “Yes. Fine. What is it you need, (Last Name)?”

“I, uh, it really is nothing. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you and that I actually find you really attractive and I know it’s against the rules since you are my superior and all but when I look at you I see a handsome man that I can really build a future with and I haven’t felt this way about anyone else before and I just can’t help admire the way you look and behavior sometimes and-”

Many ands later, Smoker’s face has turned beet red and he can feel the need to vanish into the smoke but from sheer happiness. You, you confessed to him? Even more, you gave a whole speech with your confession and somehow you manage to look adorable as you try and retract your confession. You seemed to realize that you ended up rambling and now became a mess as you try and backtrack the conversation to the original question of if he was okay.

He finally as enough. He can’t help it, especially when he finds out that your feelings are mutual. He grabs your face with one hand, pinching your cheeks as he makes you pucker your lips and he pushes his on top with ease.

It made you shut up… Oh… It made you almost pass out. He can feel the heat off your face as your brain sizzles from malfunctioning.

“Go finish your duties (Name)… I’ll request a night off for the two of us for a proper date,” Smoker whispers as he returns to his serious face.

Even if he does get serious again, you can’t help but notice the slight pink on his cheeks still that is proof you accomplished something with your confession.

[lo-55]

Lost Things Ch. 5 (Epilogue)

The Reuinion 

 Epilogue

Someone had told him once, years ago, that the shivers that ran up his spine when nothing was around to cause it meant that someone was walking across his grave. It was a weird saying attached to a funny feeling that gave it a vague sense of foreboding.

Now, standing in front of his own grave, Ace was a little disappointed that he didn't’t feel any shivering at all. Just a bit of melancholy. On the cross was his favorite orange hat, a gift from Luffy all those years ago, his belt and dagger, and a necklace that he had been sure Akainu’s fist had broken two and a half years ago.

“I gathered the beads,” Marco said, as if reading Ace’s mind. He was good at that. “Haruta tried to help me string them back together, but I didn’t let her. I felt like- like I had to do it. On my own.”

Without looking, Ace grabbed his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. He looked at tomb, where they had erected a grave with his name on it. It was weird, he felt like it should have been more horrifying, to see where he had supposedly been laid to rest. Instead he just felt bitter that his family had had to erect it in the first place.

He and Marco still hadn’t been to see the others yet. Marco had explained, after his memories returned, that he was now leading the Whitebeard Pirates. After his crash into the icy islands and the ensuing months they had to spend together (which, Ace did not mind at all ) Marco had wanted to give Ace a chance to ease back into the swing of piracy before throwing him to the metaphorical sharks.

He was also probably well aware of the fact that the instant they had settled Ace was going to want to hunt down Teach, as well as that had gone before.

All of these thoughts were really just Ace procrastinating looking slightly to the right. Wind caught the massive white coat and pulled it, reminding the young man of the fact that he couldn’t put this off forever.

Ace breathed in the tepid air, trying to acquire some modicum of calm.

He lifted his eyes, slowly, to the monument built for his father. His real father. The one that loved him regardless of his origins, taken him in and offered to share his family. Edward Newgate was the only father that Ace had ever known.

  And I got him killed.

Ace couldn’t breath around the knot in his throat.

“Pop’s… I’m so-”

“Don’t you dare.”

Ace swallowed tensely and looked over his shoulder. Marco’s gaze, normally half lidded and lazy, had sharpened. A gaze golden now outside of a phoenix transformation, a sign of how intensely Marco felt about Ace’s near apology.

“Marco…”

“Don’t. Pops died for you, Little Oars jr. did too. Don’t disrespect their love for you by apologizing for their willing sacrifice. If Luffy told you he was sorry he survived after you died for him, how would you feel?”

Ace worked his jaw slowly. The guilt in his heart wasn’t alleviated, not a bit, but he knew the truth in Marco’s words. If Luffy apologized for living-

  Luffy.

Ace looked away from Marco, back to the grave. He bowed his head to hide his dampening cheeks. Where was his hat when he needed it?

“Thank you,” he said instead. “For being a wonderful father. I-I love you, pops!”

Ace could have sworn that he felt a massive hand weighing down on his back, warming his shoulders. A familiar laugh was carried on the wind.

  “I love you too, my son! “

~

“Man, Luffy is going to lose his shit when he sees me.”

Marco glanced over at Ace, who was very meticulously applying makeup to hide his freckles. He had taken to tying his long, flowing hair into a loose bun behind his head these days, and even in the warmer climate of Dressrosa he had his throat covered with the thick white scarf that fluttered behind his back when he ran. It wasn’t much of a disguise, in terms of effort, but often times the best ones were the easiest. Not to mention the fact that Ace had died, publically been executed, two years ago. Most anyone who saw him now would just assume they were crazy, or that there was just a strange resemblance between him and the young pirate prince.

Pirate Prince, now that was a strange thing to think.

At this point, it was more accurate to call Luffy the prince, seeing as he would be the next King and all.

“Does your brother know that his hat belonged to Roger?” Marco asked abruptly.

Ace’s head snapped towards him. The younger pirate stared at Marco open mouthed. So Ace hadn’t known either? Not that surprising. Ace hadn’t even been born when Roger died.

“Ah. Never mind then,” Marco waved his hand to dismiss his words. Ace was marginally less sensitive about his lineage since he regained his memories, Marco could only guess why. That was the only reason there hadn’t been an outburst of Ace’s Issues with the dead king.

“Wait, does that mean Shanks was on  his  crew?” Ace turned towards Marco. Marco handed him his combat boots.

“Shanks? Yeah, he was Roger’s apprentice back in the day. Trouble maker back then. Not much has changed,” Marco shrugged casually. This was all old news. Roger had always been pretty good at keeping his cabin brats out of the limelight, so the government and therefore the public didn’t know about his relationship. Still, he thought…

Well, it didn’t matter what he thought.

“Who knew,” Ace shook his head. He needed it clear for what they were about to do.

“For the record, I’m against this,” Marco said for the millionth time.

For the millionth time Ace replied, “That won’t stop me. Lu needs to know I’m okay.”

“Just… be careful,” Marco must have let some of his genuine worry leak into his voice because Ace’s expression softened. He crossed what little space there was in their cheap hotel room and sat next to Marco, close enough they were pressed side to side.

Marco couldn’t help it if he worried. He had already lost so much already. He had barely kept the crew together in the last two years and even now most of them were in hiding after the disastrous attempt at revenge.

The attempt he’d lead them in.

A strong arm draped comfortably across Marco’s shoulders.

“We sure are a pair, huh?” Ace joked. “What would Pops say?”

Marco snorted. “He’d tell us to get our heads out of our asses and start acting like pirates.”

“Yeah. So what are we doing sitting on our asses? We’ve got trouble to stir up!”

Marco shook his head and leaned on Ace. He didn’t like this, the whole thing smelled like a trap. As if the devil fruit wasn’t enough proof of the fact that they were luring people in, the whole country was populated by living toys. It made Marco’s skin crawl.

He still had a lot of questions in regards to the fruit, and exactly what had happened with Ace. People didn’t just disappear in a flare of red when they were supposed to be dead. Accounts of devil fruit were rare and far between, so he just assumed that it had something to do with the Flame Flame Fruit. And, Ace still had his fire power.

So, either the fruit that was being offered as a prize was a fake, or they were missing something important about Logias.

Thinking about it, Marco had never heard of a logia user dying.

There was so much about devil fruits that no one knew, so much that they didn’t understand. Even to the people who had eaten them, even to people like Marco, who had seen thousands of devil fruit in his long life didn’t know that much about them.

Marco sighed and gently shoved Ace. He pushed a ski cap into his hands.

“Get going. You’re in A block yeah? Be careful and remember-”

“No fires, I know, I know,” Ace held up his hand and an exhasperated surrender. He flashed Marco a guileless smile and, with a parting kiss, ran off through the door with his scarf pulled up over his mouth.

Marco had a very bad feeling about all of this.

~

Ace had had a good feeling about this, at the start of the fight.

By the time he was on his knees, gulping in air while the crowds screamed around him, his opinion had changed a little.

Mr. Store lay on the ground in front of him, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Blood dripped down a cut on his temple, saturating the brown paper bag that covered the rest of his face. One of his arms was bent at the wrong angle and the rubber on his boots had melted at some point. Hopefully no one would notice, what with the whole undercover thing.

Ace was breathing so hard he felt cold from his lungs outwards, only combated by his devil fruit abilities. Ace lifted his clenched fists above his head, tilted his face towards the sun a roared his victory for the world to hear.

He hadn’t thought the fight would be that hard. Everyone else in the block had fallen easily, but this Mr. Store just would  stay down.  Ace had to give credit where it was due, not a lot of people could take what he had dished out.

In the months since he had come back from the grave he had been training his ass off in a desperate attempt to get back to where he was, and to surpass that level entirely. If he couldn’t, he didn’t have the right to sail the seas. The New World was a place where only the strong survived, and Ace would not be a burden on Marco while they travelled together. So he trained, harder than he ever had in his life.

He would have been stronger if he hadn’t spent the last two years doing little more than running around a snow island, chopping wood and helping fix houses. But, he was stronger than he had been before, finally.

Strong enough to clear the coliseum block without using his devil fruit powers once.

...well, maybe once. Just to give him a little bit of leverage in that last bout.

Ace rocked unsteadily to his feet. He’d taken more damage than he’d wanted too. Marco was gonna be pissed when he got back. Actually, from the dark glower that was clouding his face from where he sat in the crowd, he was already pissed. Great.

Ace smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. His bun had almost come loose. God, he needed a haircut. After he wasn’t in hiding any more he was chopping it short again.

Luffy was here too. It had been impossible for Ace to miss him fighting in B block. This was going to be fun, he could already tell.

His good feeling only got better when he saw a flash of a gold helmet and a white beard turn through the same tunnel he was going through. Now, Ace had a plan when he came there. Beat everyone, show the world he was alive and challenge Luffy to meet him ‘where the sea meets the sky’. He was pretty confident that, even if Luffy couldn’t figure it out, that clever navigator of his would understand that there was a knock up stream around the next island.

Ace wanted a little bit of privacy for their reunion.

All those plans went out the window the second he realized he was within walking distance of his little brother. His little brother.

God, what was he ever supposed to say to him? He had speeches rehearsed in his head, excuses, apologies, pleas. But they all boiled down to thanks. Thanks that he had already given Luffy, given all of them on his deathbed. Er, death brick?

Ace grimaced and halted at the doorway to the place where the gladiators who won were all gathering. He clenched his hands into fists. Why was this shit so hard?!

It had been easier when he hadn’t known just how badly he’d fucked everything up in the past. It was almost enough to make him long for those days where the past was nothing more than the white wind the blew outside, untouchable, cold and dangerous.

Marco vanished in the crowd, also disguised though his was just some sun glasses and he actually buttoned his shirt up for once. He reappeared right above where Ace was hesitating, head poking out from the bricks that made up the colosseum. The whole place had a weird feel to it. It reminded him of walking on an iced over lake. Stable, with something lurking beneath the surface.

“Hey!” Marco tossed a pebble at Ace’s head. “Get going already.”

Ace rubbed the point of impact, like it had actually hurt, and made a face up at Marco.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” he crossed his arms over his chest childishly.

Marco rolled his sleepy eyes, looking utterly bored with Ace’s antics and indecision. For someone who was so bullheaded all of the time, when Ace’s self esteem issues reared their ugly head the cure was hard to find.

“Just go see him. Talk to him, if nothing else. He doesn’t even need to know your name.”

That was… a good point.

Ace fiddled with the dagger strapped to his hip. He’d taken that, and his hat and his necklace, off of his grave. He didn’t feel quite right without them, now that he knew they had been missing. It was a hollow mourning he hadn’t even known he’d been going through.

“Okay, okay,” Ace took a breath, squared his shoulders, and walked into the darkness.

~

Luffy had a habit of picking up weird people.  Really,   weird people. Ace stared at the guy in the diamond patterned pants and the red jacket. Honestly the most normal thing about him was the green hair. Those  teeth.

Ace made a face.

He hadn’t meant to take so long to catch up to Luffy, but removing the makeup that hid his freckles and then tracking the boy down took more time than he wanted it to. Which was how he had gotten there just in time for the green haired weirdo, Bart or Romeo, he hadn’t been paying attention, to declare that he would win the Flame Flame fruit on Luffy’s behalf.

“That’s pretty bold talk, for a rookie,” Ace chided. The sound was muffled by his scarf. “Maybe I’ll win.”

The green haired man stomped towards him, half slouched over. Even like that he towered easily over Ace. Ace didn’t so much as blink. He hadn’t planned on having audience. On top of this guy, someone else was walking down the hallway towards them.  Ace glanced over. An uncomfortably familiar hat bobbed in the dimly lit tunnel.

The ‘S’ on his arm itched.

“Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am? I’ll win the fruit for him for sure!” he roared, pointing at Luffy. Ace peered around his shoulder and waved. It was all he could do. Even with the goofy disguise the dark brown eyes that squinted at him were unmistakable.

All Ace could manage was a strangled, ‘hey Lu.’.

He cleared his throat, ignoring the way that Luffy’s eyes got just a little bigger. The scar on his chest throbbed painfully. This was Luffy. Luffy, who he’d caused so much pain. He probably would have been better off if they never even me-

  Being alone is worse than any pain.

Ace mentally shook himself. This wasn’t the time for his self deprecation. Luffy needed to know. He needed to know that Ace hadn’t broken his promise. He needed to know he still had one brother left in this world.

“I’m afraid,” the stranger in the top hat said, coming to a halt next to them, “That I can’t let either one of you win the Flame Flame Fruit.” A thin smile slid across the half shadowed face. “Straw Hat Luffy.”

So this guy recognized his little brother too? Ace shifted on his feet, freeing a hand from his pockets. He lay his fingers around the hilt of his dagger. He wasn’t the only one defensive of Luffy, the green guy swaggered over, baring his teeth.

“Who the hell are you supposed to be? Where are you from? You can’t talk to him so casually!”

Ace sighed. Where did Lu find these people? He was a magnet for outcasts, oddballs, and victims of misfortune.

Oh, he was still talking.

“He’s the brother of the legendary Fire Fist Ace! Of course he’ll get the fruit!”

At that, Ace couldn't stop it. He laughed. All eyes snapped to him. He held his hands up, placatingly.

“Ah-ha, don’t mind me. It’s just, that fruit up there is fake. The real ones already been eaten.”

“How can you laugh at his tragedy!” the green man screamed in Ace’s face. Ace put his hand on his cheek and shoved him hard enough to send him into a wall.

The man stumbled away. Ace hadn’t actually hurt him. He was a friend of Luffy’s, after all. “You can’t- He’s going to be King of the Pirates one day!”

Ace smiled. Luffy kept finding these people with so much faith in him. So, weird or not, he could give the green guy his support.

“Oh, I’ve known that since way back,” the strange waved his hand in a gesture that was a little too familiar. There was something about him… Ace could swear he knew him, but the only real resemblance was impossible. So, who was he?

Before Ace’s eyes, the top hat came down. A fluff of blond hair appeared, an ugly scar that Ace recognized as being from fire painted his face. A face that, even twelve years older Ace would recognize anywhere. His throat closed up, squeezing a hiss through his teeth.

That was-

“Sabo.”

Past that he couldn’t hear anything they were saying, the words no more than static in his brain. Ace could only watch, jaw dropped from behind his scarf as Luffy, tears and snot pouring down his face, launched himself at the blond. Sabo was- Sabo was-

Sabo was  alive.

Ace felt like he was a world away, no more than a bystander as Sabo turned his head and gasped for air, being strangled by Luffy’s rubber hug.

“B-but Sabo!”

Luffy’s sobs finally broke through the white noise machine that had replaced his ears. His heart wrenched his chest when Luffy poured his words out.

“I let Ace get killed right in front of me!”

Ace took an unsteady step forwards. He didn’t know if he wanted to hug or beat the shit out of both of them.

“I know,” Sabo’s smile didn’t fade at all. “Even still, I’m so happy you survived. I almost lost both of my brothers. If you had died, I would have been completely alone.”

“No!” the word burst past his lips. Sabo and Luffy looked over at him, one bawling his eyes out, the other happy as composed as he was. Ace gripped his white scarf with shaking fingers. His own eyes were starting to get blurry.

“You- you wouldn’t have been alone,” Ace ripped the scarf away, burning the stupid ski cap right off of his head, a few stray tears slipping down his face. “You didn’t let me die, Lu! I’ve been here the whole time!”

There was a beat of silence and for an instant Ace feared Luffy didn’t believe him. That he’d have to prove it.

Then a long arm slung around his shoulders and Ace found himself being slammed against his brothers. His brothers! Luffy  and Sabo, all three of them. Ace’s knees grew weak and he was left with no choice but to cling to Sabo for support.

“Thank you,” he choked against Sabo’s shoulder. “Thank you! Sabo, Luffy!”

"Thank you for loving me!"

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE SERIES: My Favorite One Piece Arc with Steve Yurko

  I love One Piece and I love talking to people who love One Piece. And with the series going on 23 years now, there is a whole lot to talk about. As the series is about to publish its 1000th chapter, a true feat in and of itself, we thought we should reflect upon the high-seas adventure and sit down with some notable names in the One Piece fan community and chat about the arcs they found to be especially important, or just ones they really, really liked.

  Welcome to the next article in the series "My Favorite One Piece Arc!"

  My next guest in this series is Steve Yurko, co-host of The One Piece Podcast, a podcast with a subject you can probably guess. He's also a former storyboard artist for Rick & Morty and is currently working for Netflix Animation. As a ride-or-die Sanji fan, Steve chose the Baratie Arc, where Luffy and the gang run into an East Blue restaurant with a cool chef that loves to cook and kick.

  A note on spoilers: If you haven't seen the Baratie arc yet, this interview does contain major plot points. Watch the Arlong Park arc starting RIGHT HERE if you'd like to catch up or rewatch!

    Dan Dockery: So a friend tells you, "I'm done with the Syrup Village arc and I'm not sure if I want to watch this next one. I think I might be tapped out on this whole One Piece thing. In one sentence, how do you get them to stay and watch the Baratie arc?

  Steve Yurko: The Baratie arc laid down the foundation and created the formula of the One Piece arc as we know it.

  That's pretty good!

  Yeah, I’d say that, when I first started it, One Piece was my third favorite. I was more of a fan of series like Shaman King and Naruto, but after Baratie, things shifted. It was a turning point for me. I would hope that it would do the same for anyone who’s, say, previously apathetic towards the series.

    How old were you when you first read it? Or watched it?

  It feels weird to say this, but my introduction to One Piece was Chapter 1. Like Dragon Ball Z, the first episode I can remember watching was, like, Yamcha training on King Kai’s planet, and I’d get Goku and Yamcha confused and stuff, because I had just dived in. So for me to start a story like One Piece from the beginning is kind of rare. I was 15, I think.

  So, we're jumping into Baratie, and we first see the guy with the brass knuckles, Fullbody. He's trying to act cool on a date and he's being mean to everyone else. And then we have Sanji being typical Cool Sanji and Fullbody acts up and Sanji just tears through him. How did you react? Did you know immediately that you'd like this waiter?

  Well, I don't want to alarm you here, but my first thought was “Sanji’s cool!” I’d seen images of him before, and I saw his black suit and blond hair and I figured, “Oh, another crew member, probably. Looks distinct enough.” So I often have to look back and wonder “Did I like him because of his edgy coolness?” but I think now it’s because there were more layers to him. Like, he definitely stands out from the other Straw Hats, but he also has this distinct fighting style with cool reasoning. He’s a cook and he doesn’t want to bust up his hands trying to punch people in the face, so he uses his feet. So, he does like these cool capoeira kicks, which only gets better as they go along because I feel like so many anime characters, the stronger they get, the more they start to fight the same with fast volleys of punches and laser blasts. So Sanji’s kicks are a great way to differentiate himself from the main cast and other anime heroes. 

  So, then we have Luffy, he shows up by damaging the Baratie. Enter: Zeff. Full disclosure: In my infinite naivete when I first watched One Piece, I thought Zeff was going to be the new crew member. And then I thought Gin was going to join the Straw Hat crew. And then when Sanji finally joined, I was like, "This guy? Really? Dark horse candidate over here."

  You didn’t know yet?

    I guess I hadn't watched the first ED yet — when the crew slowly shows up and stands beside one another.

  You saw Usopp’s silhouette appear and thought, “Eh, I’ve seen enough.”

  "That must be all of them."

  It happens.

  So, you meet Zeff, and you learn about Sanji and Zeff's relationship, and we get a big One Piece flashback. What do you think of that? Because it would become a staple of the series to kinda pause, see what happened to an important guy, and then come back.

  Such an incredible story and so gruesome and terrifying. Sanji’s original flashback is so underrated because it could happen to anyone! Like, you’d have to go out of your way to get stranded on an island, but going days and weeks without food or any real comfort? I think people underestimate how traumatizing that would be. And then Zeff losing his leg because he hacked it off for food, it’s brutal. Just thinkin’ about that, I feel it in my shins. Because that almost happened to me with a minor injury. I let a minor injury get infected, and I could’ve been close to losing a leg.

    Wait, what? Gahd.

  I was doing box jumps at a gym, and my shin hit the corner of this wooden crate.

  Yeah, those things have no give in them.

  Absolutely. And at the time, I thought it was just this dark spot on my shin. And I figured it was, ya know a bruise. So I let it be. And then I picked at the scab and I realized “Wow, that’s a little deeper than I thought. I guess I’ll go to the doctor if it gets worse.” And I kept going to the gym, wearing pants over like this open wound. And my left leg is so swollen. So I went to two different doctors, as the first one did tests and then sent me to another one. And when this doctor saw me, the look on her face said “Oh, this is bad.” So I laughed out loud about how dumb I was and the doctor turned to me and said “This isn’t funny. This IS SERIOUS.” It had gotten infected with bacteria and it was spreading, and she just took a sharpie and drew around the infected area, and gave me antibiotics and was like “You have to keep this elevated, and if the redness goes outside of this line, go to the hospital.” But luckily, I recovered, even though the doctors were like “Honestly, we thought you’d go to the hospital.” So when Zeff severs his foot with a rock, how does anyone not feel that? 

  Do you think that's one of the reasons Luffy is fascinated by Sanji at first? His mentor, Shanks, lost his arm and was cool about it. Zeff lost his leg and was cool about it. Basically twins.

  That’d be an interesting conversation that we never got to see. Just two dudes talking about how weird it is that both their father figures did that, with only Luffy thinking it’s cool. 

    Don Krieg's ship gets blown in half by an incomprehensibly cool character, Mihawk, the first Warlord to appear in the show. You see Mihawk arrive — what is your reaction to him? Because it's not a case of "The villain of the villain is my friend," but rather "Oh, he did that to the villain? I hope he does not do that to us, as that would suck."

  It’s almost like the good guys meeting the bad guys, and then a tornado comes in. But here’s the thing: I missed the issue of Jump where Zoro fought Mihawk. So I assumed that Zoro had just won. The greatest swordsman in the world shows up and Zoro beats him. Boom. The climax of his character arc has been achieved. Nothing left for Zoro. 

  He just did it.

  I didn’t find out until so much later that Zoro lost. I wasn’t quite aware of what made for a captivating story yet. At that time, an obstacle appears, an obstacle gets taken out, ya move on. I almost want to apologize to Mihawk. 

  I love how One Piece does this though. They do it with Smoker and Aokiji and the like. It reminds me of The Witcher III when you go off the path a little bit, and you're at a Level 4 and then a Level 39 Gryphon swoops down and decapitates you. It keeps the "power levels" interesting.

  Luffy starts up Breath of the Wild and goes right for Calamity Ganon. But Mihawk is like the analogy for the Grand Line. He represents it, without revealing too much. Mihawk is like a Pizza Hut demo disc of danger.

  I really like that. And no one knows, to this day, exactly how powerful he is. Over 20 years later, and we're still wondering how he matches up against Shanks or Blackbeard or whatever. One Piece has so many characters where Oda hasn't shown his full hand in regards to them, yet we're totally emotionally invested in them. That's good storytelling.

  He’s doing something right. And I love that Mihawk has a little character arc here, too, where he shows up nonchalantly slicing up Krieg’s ships, probably doesn’t expect much, and then he’s taken aback by Zoro’s gusto, because he hasn’t seen anyone like that in a while. And he slices Zoro down. But he respects him, when in the beginning, he clearly didn’t respect anyone around. Mihawk wants to see him be better and try to take him down one day. For him to willingly build someone up like that is rare. Like Frieza wouldn’t do that.

    So, Don Krieg — what were your opinions of him at the time? Because he's a really bad guy surrounded by more morally grey guys like Mihawk and Gin.

  What I like about the East Blue saga is that every main villain is an antithesis of Luffy and what makes Luffy a truly great captain. Buggy is all about treasure. Kuro is about ambition and the fortitude to be a pirate. Krieg is about might and strength, and Krieg thinks he has both of those because of his weapons and armor. But Luffy has willpower and ambition and doesn’t let the world change his views. Luffy is incorruptible whereas Krieg is willing to poison his own crew when stuff starts going south. Krieg isn’t fondly remembered, but he really serves his purpose in the story.

  So, after Krieg is defeated, Sanji turns down Luffy's offer to join the Straw Hat crew. Now, he knows this is a bad idea. He's not gonna find the All Blue floating around on the Baratie. Why doesn't he go immediately?

  Well, he knows it’s a bad idea but he’s completely misinterpreting Zeff’s sacrifice. He feels that since Zeff sacrificed his leg, he has to repay him by working for him indefinitely. But the reason that Zeff did that was because he wants Sanji to live on and chase his dream. That’s why Zeff took pity on him in the first place. He’s an older, worn-down man now, and he stopped chasing his dream. And now he wants to see Sanji or someone get a win. It lifts his spirit to see Sanji and live kinda vicariously through him. 

  So, the second time I ever cried over One Piece was during Sanji's goodbye and Zeff's "Don't catch a cold." The first time was when that little dog was trying to protect his dead owner's shop in Orange Town, but that's a different story. But this shot of Sanji on his knees thanking Zeff with all the cooks surrounding them is so iconic, and Sanji's acting like it's a gift that Zeff gave him that Sanji could never repay, while as you said, Zeff just wants Sanji to be happy. What did you get out of that? I assume that you're a human with human emotions.

  I cry every time I watch that. When I first saw it, I was like “How? How is a series this good?” And there’s so much to that ending sequence. Because the Baratie is built on this rough, angry masculinity. Just these dudes being mean and fighting each other and customers all the time. There’s never a time or a place for lending a shoulder to someone else. No emotional embraces of any kind. Just everyone berating everyone. No one can open up — just stupid man babies. And then you get to this moment where Sanji is leaving and they’re all trying to be cool while playing it off. Especially Zeff, who can’t give a legitimate goodbye, but rather a “Don’t catch a cold.” But there’s so much to that statement and the facade crumbles. All these grown men start bawling. 

    I've never thought about it that way. There's all these little hints of kindness, like feeding the bad guys, and it's a masculinity powder keg. And then Sanji, in an ultimate display of putting his heart out there, bows to the man who saved him and the keg explodes. That's really cool.

  ONE PIECE LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Favorite One Piece character?

  Sanji

  Favorite One Piece villain?

  Enel

  Favorite One Piece moment?

  March to Arlong Park

  Favorite Straw Hat Crew pairing?

  Luffy and Zoro

  Favorite moment of the new Wano anime arc?

  Soba Mask’s debut

  If you could eat one Devil Fruit, what would it be?

  Whatever Kanjuro’s fruit is

  Moment that made you cry the hardest?

  Sanji leaving the Baratie

  Moment that made you cheer the loudest?

  Straw Hats at the Tower of Justice standing across from Robin

  One Piece location that you'd like to live in?

  Whole Cake Island. Ya eat well, ya know, you can survive Big Mom

  Favorite fight scene?

  Sanji vs Mr. 2, of course

      Stay tuned for the next installment of "My Favorite One Piece Arc" as we speak with Botchamania creator Maffew about his favorite One Piece arc: Alabasta!!

        Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

[neverwatchedonepiece]

652-654: "The Last - and Bloodiest - Block! Block D Battle Begins!", "A Decisive Battle! Giolla vs the Straw Hats!" and "Beautiful Sword! Cavendish of the White Horse!"

“Complication?” 

YOU ARE A CELESTIAL DRAGON!!

Or is he...?

Shins of Steel

Usually leave the huge reveals to the end but I can’t wait to talk about this major plot point, since it’s knocked a dent into my immovable “All Celestial Dragons Are Wet Lettuces” viewpoint. It’s like I smugly posted a “Change My Mind” meme and Doflamingo cracked his knuckles and proved me wrong.

Or did he?

After opening with Rebecca and Cavendish in the Colosseum (more on that later), the story veered back to Law, Doflamingo and Fujitora. I thought, “This is nice. Haven’t seen Law in a while. Let’s see what the rascal is up to.”

He was pretty much where Oda had left him: running like hell from a chuckling Doflamingo. And he was still reeling from Doflamingo’s deception.

“I have no interest in your past!” Law proclaimed. Which was totally unfair because I was definitely interested.  “The only people who can use the World Government to deceive us are Celestial Dragons!”

“So what?” Doflamingo answered.

At this point I figured Doflamingo somehow had them in his pocket. That Doflamingo was so wealthy and well-connected he could even manipulate them.

There was a flurry of attacks. Doflamingo pulled a Sasuke vs Orochimaru in the chuunin exams: wired up Law and pinned him to a tree. He was like, “You can’t buy any more time, Law.”

“You said it’s complicated before,” Law said, (buying time). What do you mean?”

But Doflamingo is not so easily led into talking.

“If you wanna chat, hand over Caesar and his heart first.”

“Caesar... no, those SMILEs are that important to you? I guess they are,” Law laughed. “Without the SMILEs, Kaidou’s gonna kill you and it’s all over for you.”

A different sort of attempt at buying time, as Law’s shit-talking made Doflamingo lose his temper and attack. Law shambled his way out of the literal bind but Doflamingo was too quick. It was lucky Fujitora was there because Doflamingo was ready to kill and loot for Caesar’s heart.

Boom went the gravity. Law was pinned to the ground beneath crushing force. (I think I’ve said this before but Fujitora’s power is... it’s just great.)

Doflamingo was like, “Wtf, Fujitora? I almost had him, you party pooper!”

Fujitora, who has played this entire situation suspiciously by-the-book, just said, “Gotta stop you right there, Heavenly Yaksha. I am here to arrest, not execute. Soz.”

Doflamingo had a quiet seethe to himself, then said, “FINE! But I need Caesar’s heart back.” Once Doflamingo stringed the heart into his hands, he cheered up a bit. The odds seemingly in his favour, he was more willing to talk. “By the way, you seem quite curious about that complication I mentioned. You wanna hear about it?”

At this point, I was thinking, “Law, if you do not say yes, I will start flipping tables.”

Luckily, Doflamingo was now in a talkative mood.

“A long time ago - it goes back eight-hundred years, Law - twenty kings from twenty countries came together at the centre of the world and formed one giant organisation. The World Government. The kings who created it decided to move to Mariejois and live there with their families. The Nefertari family of Alabasta refused, so there were nineteen, to be exact. The descendants of those creators who still live there and reign over the world are known as the Celestial Dragons. It means, however, that those nineteen countries lost their royal families eight-hundred years ago. In those countries, they elected new kings out of necessity and new royal families arose. In the case of my country, Dressrosa, the new royalty was the Riku Family. And the old family who moved to Mariejois as the creators of the world was the Donquixote family.”

THE DONQUIXOTE FAMILY.

“But, but, but....” I thought. “Weren’t all Celestial Dragons useless, dangerous spoiled brats like St Charloss and What’s-His-Face who washed up on Fishman Island?” Doflamingo is hyper-competent. How could this be?? Muh prejudices!

I guess that explained the Heavenly Yaksha nickname. Heavenly is similar to celestial, right? I suppose Vergo’s warning to Law, re. lack of knowledge on Doflamingo’s past also makes sense now. Law was technically pitting himself against a Celestial Dragon who can pull World Government-level strings. 

Not only that, but it seems the situation really is complicated.

Because Doflamingo had a bit more to say.

“So you’re called a Celestial Dragon, Doflamingo!” Law raged.

“I was. But not anymore. What is bloodline? What is destiny? I don’t think there are many people who have lived such a chequered life as mine. I wish I could tell the story of my life before I met you, over drinks. But I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to do something about the Strawhats in Dressrosa. I know there are quite a few people who underestimated them and got hurt.”

THANK YOU, ODA!

The plot gods have answered my plea. But these answers have raised only more questions.

1. Doflamingo used to be a Celestial Dragon. Not anymore. What happened? Did he abandon the rank willingly or was it taken from him? The whole “What is bloodline? What is destiny?” stuff is highly suspicious. Makes me think Doflamingo is not a fan of the Celestial Dragons.

2. The Riku Family. They were the ones who took over. They were elected fair and square. Everything seemed to be fine. Until Doflamingo came back to claim the territory his family abandoned eight-hundred years ago. Why return to Dressrosa? The answer to this question is probably tied up with point one.

3. The Nefertari were Originals. Even back then, the future Celestials must have been total moonfruits because the Nefertaris were like, “Ehhhh, nah, you guys go and have a good time on your island.” Imagine being stuck with those losers for eight-hundred years? No thanks.

4. Not underestimating the Strawhats. Doflamingo is smart. He has seen these new whippersnapper pirates topple too many Big Names and institutions to ignore the threat they pose to his territory. I actually cheered when he said this. A villain who can lay aside ego for the sake of the task at hand. I suppose Doflamingo does have the benefit of hindsight. Crocodile never had that luxury.

After that, there was a funny scene with Caesar and a heart-swap (Law still has his heart! Those heat-seeking Karma missiles are locked on Caesar. (LOCK ONNNNN!)) Fujitora also heard a KABOOM of thunder from the direction of the sea, even though the weather was perfectly calm. Law knew that would be Nami. The Strawhats were heading his way.

This was not a good thing.

Amid the chaos, Law made a desperate bid for freedom. Doflamingo pursued. He tried to lure him away but unfortunately, Doflamingo is smart.

Which leads us nicely to...

Debatable, But Okay...

(Side note: I loved how Toei segued seamlessly from Doflamingo’s sinister villain reveal laughter to Brook’s cheerful deceit laughter in 653. Did me a big lol there.)

And at first it seemed like Brook had found a new pal on Sunny. Not only that... he had betrayed the Strawhats? Surely not?

Had Soul King placed his art above his solid gold friendships with Nami and Chopper? Why was he hanging with Giolla? This was an outrage!

Giolla wanted to surprise Law (and gain Donquixote points) by picking up Caesar in Sunny instead of the Strawhats. Oh, what an excellent day it had turned out to be. Her latest art transformation depicted the tragedy of Dressrosa so perfectly! And it would only take ten more minutes for Nami, Chopper and Momonosuke to become part of her art and suffocate.

Like a total rookie, she babbled her plan to Brook, who smiled (if he could smile) and nodded and played the perfect gentleman. In the background, the others wailed and lamented Brook deserting them for art.

“May I play a song to celebrate?” he asked.

“Of course!”

“Then could you turn my violin and bow back to normal, please?”

Oh, Brook, you absolute legend. As soon as Giolla made that fatal error, Brook said, “You see this violin? There’s a cane sword inside. I already cut you.”

Suddenly, Brook was the hero! (Brook is always the hero.) Imagine doubting him, Nami and Chopper, you silly sausages!

There was a bit I didn’t like much that followed when they bickered over who would cuff Giolla. Nami demanded that Brook or Chopper did it, which was ridiculous because they are Devil Fruit eaters. If they touched those cuffs, their strength would sap and Giolla could overpower them. Nami, you should have done it. Doesn’t matter if you think you’re a coward or you view yourself as weak, you should have taken one for the team there. Not cool.

They spent so much time bickering, Giolla woke up and they missed the opportunity to restrain her. They were forced into fighting. Which was actually kind of good, in the end. Nami, Chopper and Brook used their heads to outsmart Giolla’s Giant Picasso Form and fire a Gaon Cannon bolt. Then Momonosuke shanked her from behind when she was down. Nami finished her off with a thunderbolt.

Teamwork, amirite?

Unfortunately, Fujitora heard the thunderbolt and told Doflamingo. So when they sailed round to Green Bit to collect Law and Caesar, Chopper saw the horrendous sight of Doflamingo approaching at speed through his binoculars.

I hope he recovers soon.

Who Says Zoro Can’t Compromise?

Once again, the Strawhats have split up. Usopp and Robin have reunited with Franky at the King Riku Army HQ beneath Flower Field. Zoro originally left with Wicka to check in on Sunny and rescue the others from Giolla, but met Sanji and Foxfire on the way.

Wick was like, “Who dat?”

In keeping with the Legendary Heroes names, Zoro introduced Sanji and Foxfire as Spiral-Brows-land and Topknot-Land (lmao)

Zoro updated Sanji on the dire situation on Sunny. Of course, Sanji was intent on rescuing Nami and the others, so Zoro stayed behind with Foxfire to find Luffy.

Then Violet appeared like a ninja from the shadows to tell him Giolla had hijacked Sunny. How did she know this?

Turns out she has a Very Useful Power.

Clairvoyance. It usually means seeing into the future, but it can also mean gaining information about a person, including their location, through extra-sensory perception. Nice. For Violet, this means she can see things within a 4000km radius, top-down, as a bird would. She is a walking surveillance satellite and can see everything going on in Dressrosa. She guided Sanji to Sunny and updated him on what was going on in Sunny. 

Like I said, a Very Useful Power.

But, since it is a Very Useful Power, the Donquixote Crew are not pleased that she’s betrayed them. Back at the palace, a new character called Gladius is Very Upset. Since he despises and wishes death upon people who cannot follow plans and are not punctual, I’m guessing Violet has used up her two strikes already and is dead to this hilarious weirdo. 

(Why does his hair explode?)

Violet eventually picked up Sunny and informed Sanji the dreadfully bad news that Sunny had been struck by lightning. She was puzzled when Sanji did not react as expected. Instead, he boosted with fury to the ship, where, I expect, he was surprised to find Doflamingo doing the exact same thing.

“Watch this, Law!” Doflamingo laughed. “I will viciously slay your allies right before your eyes!”

Doflamingo sure knows how to turn the thumb screws and punish people, doesn’t he?

But Sanji was like, “NOT TODAY, SATAN!”

He smashed shins with Doflamingo.

And I cheered.

Sanji, you have just gained all your cool points back. I forgive you for being distracted by Violet.

(Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Bartolomeo recognised Zoro and totally splooshed on sight.)

Rebecca and Cavendish: You Beautiful Legends!

Now Doflamingo has spilled some of the beans on his past, his treatment of Rebecca is odd. If he wanted to get rid of the Riku Family, he could have easily killed her years ago. It’s almost like he wants to drag their memory and reputation thoroughly through the mud. If it’s a propaganda campaign, it makes sense. Keep the people blind to what’s been going on by dangling the scapegoat in front of them. But this is a cruel and unusual punishment. It’s almost like he actually *hates* the Riku family. Or am I reading way too much into this?

In the first scene of 652, Rebecca walked out into the ring. The way Oda had the crowd behave - reduced to shadows, red-eyed, shrieking, inhumane shapes - might be a dig at the sorts of people who love blood sports. Animals and humans risking their lives to entertain uncaring humans and prop up gambling industries.

The insults they hurled at Rebecca were harsh. “Drop dead, Rebecca!” “Foul blooded!” “Today’s your execution day!” “The shame of Dressrosa!” And the worst one, for some reason, “Set her on fire! That’ll make her pyro grandfather happy.”

Ooft. 

Well, it was pretty disgusting, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Enter Cavendish on his Farul, his white horse.

Ohhhhhh, he was not happy. Not happy at all. He heaped abuse on the crowd and called out their rank hypocrisy.

“ENOUGH! I don’t care why you hate her so much but she’s a young woman who stands in the ring putting her life on the line. You guys are not risking yoru lives so you have no right to jeer at her. If you really want to kill her, take a weapon and come down to the ring yourself! The voices of people who have no guts are nothing but irritating noise! I have my reasons for entering this competition, but even so, I cannot stomach it. The lives and deaths of warriors are not a show!”

Well, Cabbage just earned himself some major cool points there. I was like, “YOU TELL ‘EM, CABBAGE! NO MERCY!”

Even Luffy agreed. “Oh, Cabbage spoke up and said the right thing. I’m impressed!”

Well.. sort of. 

“Still don’t like him, though.” (Lmao, Luffy.)

Cavendish’s impromptu speech had an interesting effect on the crowd. They still hate Rebecca but instead of focusing their abuse on her, they decided they would use all that energy to support Cavendish, instead. 

It’s a win-win situation. Rebecca can kick-ass in peace and Cavendish, well, since the crowd started chanting his name, he had a tear-filled, “YOU LOVE ME! YOU REALLY LOVE ME!” moment. 

He’s already contemplating his media strategy.

Classic Cavendish.

When Doflamingo’s here, and you feel the end is near. 

Diarrhea. Diarrhea.

[creepykingdom]

“Ralph Breaks The Internet” Review

By Hannah K.

“Start churnin’ butter and put on your church shoes, little sister, cause we’re about to blast off!”

...We’re going to the internet, Ralph. Ee-Ohh-Boy.

Going into this movie, I knew that next to nothing would be able to compete with the original film and how mold-breaking it was. What video game enthusiast among us wouldn’t adore the first Wreck It Ralph movie, a love letter to games and gamer culture? I hoped this internet-based movie wouldn’t be one giant meme, and that the cameos we already knew existed would actually serve a purpose.

Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. Ralph Breaks the Internet was actually quite deep and emotional for a movie delving into the weird place that is the web. While I didn’t know what to expect going in, what I totally didn’t expect was how emotionally affected I would be as I watched these characters we already love turn a new chapter in their lives.

The movie takes place 6 years after the first installment (actually how many years have passed in real time!), and shows Ralph, Vanellope, Felix, and Calhoun settling into their lives at Litwak’s. They have a routine, and they spend the nights hanging out with each other in all the different games. Vanellope, however, is getting tired of the same-old-same-old, and finds herself wishing for something different. Ralph, on the other hand, loves the predictability, and can’t see how Vanellope would want something else. When the mystical WIFI gets plugged in, followed by an accident where Sugar Rush gets broken, Ralph and Vanellope decide to break the rules and hop onto the information superhighway to see if they can find the missing part for her game. What happens takes the friends on a crazy journey through lots of websites (some new ones, but also lots of familiar ones), viral videos, the Dark Web, and the worst place of all...the comments section...but it also tests Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship, and causes them to face up to their insecurities.

I really enjoyed this film. It was visually stunning, of course, but the scenes in the internet especially so. There were lots of hidden gags and nods to internet culture, including broken-down banners for Geocities and “Private Chatrooms,” plus a dialogue nod to Napster. There were, of course, cameos and memes, as we expected, but I don’t think it pushed it too far. There was an actual story to hold together the fun nods and winks, and watching the characters grow was exceptional in terms of that story.

I can’t write this review without mentioning the Princesses. Their moments in the movie were really funny and well done and felt very much like Disney making fun of themselves in a good-natured way. The Princesses all seem to know how silly and cliche their stories/actions are, and they support each other in their weirdness. It was fun watching all these characters work together and even get to do some “damsel” rescuing of their own.

The voice acting in this installment was also really nicely done. John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman return to their roles with gusto, Silverman doing an EXCELLENT job with a spoiler-filled moment later in the movie that I can’t tell you about here. The new characters were equally as fun and filled with great talent, Gal Gadot playing Shank, Bill Hader as Spamley, and Alan Tudyk as the knowledgeable Knowsmore. I’m a voice actress, I can’t help but pay close attention to performances, and these people all knocked it out of the park.

I love Wreck It Ralph more than I can tell you. It’s honestly one of my favorite movies out there, so it’s hard for anything else to measure up to that feeling I had when I saw it. Still, Ralph Breaks the Internet did not disappoint. Where the first movie was a love letter to games and gamer culture, this was a love letter to internet/youtube culture while adding in online gaming. It’s hard to talk about the internet without getting overly meme-y, but I think Ralph did a fine job. Some people may find it repetitive of the first movie, but hey! We have a whole generation of kids going to see this film that are growing up saturated with this stuff. The first movie was our nod to classic gaming, let this one be their nod.

Oh! When you go see it, be sure to stay ALL the way after the credits for a sneak preview of Disney’s new movie! You won’t regret it. ;)

(All Images Courtesy of Disney)

[sharksfood]

spoilers for Ralph Breaks the Internet (Wreck-It Ralph 2)

SO i was going to wait to record my thoughts on Ralph Breaks the Internet until after i finished my homework but i cant stop thinking about it!!!

anyways, I saw RBTI on Tuesday night in 3D and it was AMAZING!! i mean, both the movie by itself and how it looked in 3D. i loved that they put in a nod to those movies that took 3D to the fullest potential with stuff coming at you from the screen, when Ralph was throwing the football into the air.

BESIDES THAT i LOVED this movie!!!! i’m no negative nancy when it comes to sequels and i had been wanting a WIR followup since the first one came out!

but to get the biggest aspect out of the way, i was not always on board with the plot of Ralph and Vanellope going into the Internet. when I first heard the movie announcement and the whole Internet aspect it didn’t totally make sense to me. I mean, I originally thought the gang going into online games was a good mix between Internet and video games (since WIR revolves around video games). However I quickly changed my mind, especially since they WOULD be going into online/mobile games.

My initial reaction to the movie as a whole was EXTREMELY POSITIVE!!! I loved how the animation looked, the fact that we got an introduction on what Ralph, Vanellope, Felix, and Tammy (Calhoun) had been up to since the last movie, and that everything including the arcade had changed in basically real time. That last part was a bit sad too, especially with how few games were left in the arcade and that it seems business was not as good for Mr. Litwak as it used to be. BUT this movie, especially the beginning, was like catching up with an old friend after a long time apart! WIR means so much to me and I was so glad Disney took the time to connect to those who’d seen and loved the first movie.

I’ll admit I was a little nervous with how they’d handle the Internet, especially for a fictional universe thats based on the real one, like WIR. I knew they’d have to create fake websites and video games and what not to fit the plot and because of licensing rights. I’m also glad they did this because if Yesss were the algorithm for actual BuzzFeed or YouTube I don’t think they’d let anyone forget that. plus that would be too 4th wall breaking in my opinion. and this movie did A LOT or meta/4th wall stuff. I dont think any of the references or hints or real-world tie ins were annoying or over the top, it was the right amount for me. they could have made everything fictional, but that would fail to hook people. it was the right amount of fiction and real-life.

that being said, I do think some of the things Ralph, Vanellope, and Yesss accomplished couldn’t work in the real world. What bothered me is that any video of Ralph showed him as 3D, like how he looks in Sugar Rush or in the Game Central Station. Yes, that is how he looks “inside” the games and from other video game character’s perspective, but does that work for humans? Maybe it wasn’t explained very well, thats all. WIR is at times a little hard to wrap my head around. But then again, not everything needs to be explained or completely realistic, since, you know, video game characters are not able to coexist in each other’s games or buy stuff from Ebay.

the new characters was SO GOOD especially Yesss, Shank, and Knowsmore (to me anyways). I would have liked if the new characters had interacted with each other on screen more (like Yesss and Shank are friends but you wouldn’t know that without each of them saying so). also the Disney Princesses were adorable and actually more plot-related than i thought they’d be!

the biggest surprise for me is how much importance the movie gave to Vanellope for being a princess, i mean, she got a song and everything! To me she never gave her princessship much mind, since she only wanted to be a racer. by the end of the movie she was farther from being a princess than before. but i think this was intentional and why we got the scene with the other princesses in the first place, Disney wanted to show that there’s no one way to be a princess. obviously Pixar addressed this with Merida, and I think Moana is a good example, too, but Vanellope really is the least-princessy princess. I’m also glad that they didn’t make her song or voice too cute/pretty, it fit with her character, personality, and dream!

the part of this movie that my most impactful for me was the message and eventually plot structure of how Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship was addressed. WIR means a lot to me is many ways, but the fact that romance or blood family isnt the main relationship dynamic is huge.  I mean, I can’t think of many Disney/Pixar movies that do this, and even those that do, friendship is just a subplot. Ralph and Vanellope becoming friends, protecting one another, even in the face of their differences is one of the main messages of WIR (the other being self-acceptance and following your heart). RBTI took this further with the message of how friends can grow, drift apart, have difference dreams, become too attached, and build negative friendships based on anxieties. I’ve NEVER seen this in an animated movie, and it hit me pretty hard.

so with anxiety in mind, I really liked how Vanellope’s glitching was utilized, i mean since she now has a general control on it, she doesn’t glitch out as much. the only time she does in RBTI is when she wants to or when she’s super anxious. its almost like a physical symptom of her having a panic attack. (on a personal note, Vanellope’s glitching was the main thing that helped me get over my fear of glitch, so that relation to anxiety and fear is very meaningful to me) but Vanellope’s anxieties were very different from Ralph’s, which is good! they both struggled with being accepted within their games in the past, and part of that still lingers, though now, especially for Ralph, it manifests in anxiety over their friendship. I really like the direction that Disney/Pixar has taken with some of their movies recently in that the main antagonist is not a villain, but rather an emotion or conflict anthropomorphized.

as for the characters, Ralph and Vanellope were PERFECT. Vanellope is my favorite and she was just amazing. Their characters were the right amount of the same from the first movie and different, since there’s been 6 years for them to grow. I’m also really happy that Felix and Tammy were in RBTI, though I wish they were in it more. I mean, this was Ralph and Vanellope’s movie, but most of Tammy’s appearances were just for comedic affect, in my opinion. They also seemed way different, but I guess that’s marriage? It’s as if their character-specific dialogue and quirks were toned down. Maybe after a second viewing it’ll make more sense to me.

My only other complaints are that when Ralph accidentally finds the comment section of BuzzTube, his reaction and that whole scene didn’t add much to the story. I think it was important, especially given Ralph’s past, but it was so short. Ralph seemed to have forgotten all about it after the scene ended. The comments and toxic parts of the Internet play a much bigger role than that, so I wish it was addressed better. I also thought it was weird that we didn’t get any clear context as to why Mr. Litwak got Wifi in the first place. I mean, I assumed it was to get an online presence for the Arcade, but i don’t think that was actually addressed. Of course thats a minor thing compared to my previous comment. 

The last thing I noticed is that the main conflict of the movie, the steering wheel of Sugar Rush breaking and how they’d need to buy a new one or Sugar Rush would be gone for good, was introduced too soon. I think this was done because there was so much content to get through within 2 hours, and I know that the main premise was involving the Internet, so staying in the Arcade would defeat this purpose. It’s just that to me it all sort of fell into place a little too easy and fast. Also, Vanellope feeling trapped in a boring loop of her game and other feelings from the characters in the beginning were told rather than shown. I know already mentioned that I thought certain things weren’t “explained” well enough, but I mean that like, both visually and through dialogue. With the emotional parts of the movie’s conflicts, I think those developed well once Ralph and Vanellope got into the Internet, but it seemed “presented” almost at first. Again, I only saw it once and its not totally fresh in my mind anymore, so maybe after seeing it again it’ll clear this up.

okay so as for the aesthetic and animation of RBTI it was GORGEOUS!!! I love how Disney/Pixar can take things like the Internet or your brain (like in Inside Out) and turn them into working cities/structures that are creative and make sense! I really like that Pop Ups are maneuvered by sentient beings like street salespeople, since the feeling of online popups and ads is the same! Also, the Dark Web being the underbelly of the Internet “city” and all the avatars are dressed like theyre in Incognito mode is amazing. i also LOVED the viruses, since they looked like gross, scary, creepy fictional bugs or visual germs (they reminded me of Osmosis Jones in a way). How the viruses functioned, at least the Insecurity Virus, made sense for how I think most people imagine computer viruses to act. I honestly don’t know how that stuff happens, and I bet Disney knew most of their audiences dont either, so they took some artistic liberties with that in mind. But the virus was a clever plot device because it literally detected insecurities, both in that Ralph/Vanellope were insecure about their friendship, and neither of them “belonged” in the Internet.

ANOTHER THING is when Shank and her crew had to fight the Slaughter Race players, the distinction between player and NPC was clear and funny. It felt very GTA to me. How they handled Slaughter Race in general was great, since it was obviously a violent video game, but they didn’t tone it down too much to loose that feeling. I think it would’ve been cool to see cars and buildings “update” like they do in some games, too. OH the way that the Virus Ralphs joined together to make the Giant Ralph and that they kept moving to make the entire thing kinetic was SO CREEPY BUT COOL!!! that must have taken forever to animate.  I also noticed that on the Giant Ralph the little virus dudes were like laying down or posed a certain way to give the impression of different textures or colors on Giant Ralph, which is amazing!!! the filmmakers and animators paid so much care to the look and feel of this movie and it really paid off.

okay last few things before I forget: all of the main characters were great examples of positive and negative personality aspects that real people could reflect on. Ralph felt so much more openly emotional and body positive than in the first, which for a dude character is great!!  Vanellope has always been a great example of a girl who likes “tomboy” or “masculine” stuff but still likes cute and “girly” stuff (i mean she obviously wasn’t into the whole princess thing but she found her own way around it!). Felix and Tammy in RBTI were obviously an example on how married couples can still love each other just like the day they met! Did i mention how much I love Yesss? I love her SO MUCH!!! she wore a different outfit/hairstyle every time we saw her, she was fun and smart and over the course of the movie grows to actually care about Ralph and Vanellope beyond their Internet fame. the MUSIC was fantastic as always, and I love Imagine Dragon’s song and the Julia Michaels rendition of Vanellope’s song on Slaughter Race.

Just like the first one, this movie was funny, heartwarming, emotional, and really fun!! I hope it gets all the recognition and love it deserves. I can’t accurately say if I like this one of the previous better, since I’ve only seen it once. HOWEVER I ma really glad that Disney has made a lot of merch for RBTI since the first one got barely anything. All in all, I loved Ralph Breaks the Internet!!!!

P.S. Did yall see the after credits scene?

[uomo-accattivante]

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. “The first thing I did,” he recalls, “was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying.” He grins. “And it broke.”

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He’s nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he’s trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he’s sitting in an office suite inside Disney’s Burbank studios that he’s called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, “We’re working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot).” Johnson is the film’s writer-director, which means he ended up with the world’s finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. “I shook up the box a little bit,” he says, with that same grin.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015’s The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.

Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it’s not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas’ original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy’s fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What’s left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

“It’s somewhat a reflection of society,” acknowledges the saga’s new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. “But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both.”

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth): “During testing times, there’s nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing.”

The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). “That’s one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie,” Johnson says. “I think it’s very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It’s also the Flash Gordon.”

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia’s Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. “If I had that job, I would be stressed out,” he says. “To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn’t been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He’s incredibly smart and doesn’t feel the need to let everyone know it.” (“It felt like we were playing the whole time,” says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Wars films in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy’s not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams’ return.

The Force Awakens’ biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega’s stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford’s Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill’s now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher’s last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city’s Women’s March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans (“A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance” was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. “You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created,” says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. “I’m happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit.”

He left her part in the film untouched. “We didn’t end up changing a thing,” says Johnson. “Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her.” So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia’s sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: “It’s a sad reality,” he says. “In terms of going forward … time will tell what ends up getting done.”)

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi’s story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he’s baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they’re “making it up as we go along”: “The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we’re organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn’t mean that any less thought is being put into it.”

Mark Hamill’s single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn’t say a thing. But it’s an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he’s been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. (“With voice-over,” Hamill says, “I thought, ‘This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don’t have to memorize lines!’”) As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where’s he’s presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker’s bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

“I didn’t look at that as ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson’s offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he’s grown to appreciate: “I shaved, and I thought, ‘You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.’”

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had “frustrations over being over-associated” with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – “but nothing that caused me any deep anguish.” He still spent the decades since Return of the Jedi acting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? “It’s a culmination of my career,” he says. “If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don’t think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, ‘I’m going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.’ ”

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, “I didn’t know – and I don’t think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it’s all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue.”

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. “The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero,” he says, “but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time.” In fact, Hamill’s first reaction was, “What a rip-off, I don’t get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!”

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: “I don’t want to say, ‘That’s the greatest entrance in cinematic history’ … but certainly the greatest entrance of my career.”

Johnson turns to Hamill. “Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this,” he says, “I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, ‘What if Luke is blind? What if he’s, like, the blind samurai?’ But we didn’t do it. You’re welcome. Didn’t stick.” (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016’s side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would’ve been: “Luke, not too close to the cliff!”

He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a “disillusioned” Jedi. “This is not a joyful story to tell,” Hamill says, “my portion of it.” Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke’s character was taking. “We then started a conversation,” says Johnson. “We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer.”

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could’ve gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who’s buddies with the Kinks’ Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. “I was hearing Ringo talk about ‘Well, in those days, it was peace and love.’ And how it was a movement that largely didn’t work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal.” He smiles at that part. “I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it.” (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.)

Hamill’s grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. “There was now a comfort level that she had with me,” he says, “that I wasn’t out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. … I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame.” Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. “I just can’t stand it,” he says. “She’s wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don’t deserve. I’d love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life.”

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. “It’s the life of a hero, man,” says Johnson. “That’s what you’ve gotta do to be a hero. You’ve gotta watch people that you love burn to death!”

Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. “Sometimes,” he says, softer than usual, “you think, ‘I’d rather have Luke’s life than mine.’”

Adam Driver has a question for me. “What,” he asks, “is emo?”

Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation’s most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there’s something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. “You have someone who’s being told that he’s special his whole life,” Driver says of his character, “and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?”

As anyone who’s seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. “I don’t think of myself as a particularly intense person,” he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. “I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something.” He’s in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that’s a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It’s not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver’s character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn’t flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. “I don’t know that it’s always that literal,” he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow’s character, who was sort of a “distant uncle” to him. “No one asks me, ‘So you have a distant-uncle problem?’ ”

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character’s emotions in the face of an environment he can’t help but find ridiculous. “Watching Star Wars, it’s an action-adventure,” he says. “But shooting it, it’s a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It’s hilarious.” And when he wears his helmet, he can’t see very well. “You’re supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down.”

He refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe the privilege.” He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: “I don’t want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it… .” He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it’s a plot spoiler, it’s unclear exactly how, unless it’s related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. “The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome,” says Ridley, whom Driver calls a “great scene partner,” apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn’t totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I’m always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they’re mostly just too broad,“ he says. But Abrams’ pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren’s character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. “Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he’s assured,” he says. Only in private can he acknowledge “how un-figured-out he is … how weak.”

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn’t actually a villain at all.

“It’s not like people weren’t living on the Death Star,” he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. “Isn’t that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they’re right. And when you feel in your bones that you’re supported by a higher power on top of that, and you’re morally right, there’s no limit to what you’ll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way.”

You’re starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. “So, the rebels are bad,” he says, connecting his fist with the table. “I strongly believe this!”

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I’m sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada’s fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – “the dregs of my wardrobe,” she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn’t care. “This is how I have always had my hair,” says Ridley. “I am not going to change it.” She’s been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which “is a little bit chaotic, in that we’re writing as we go and everything,” she says. “I’ve realized I don’t work well with that.”

She’s on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she’s still deeply exhausted. 

“I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass,” she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won’t pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she’s just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. “I have no control in my life at all,” she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. “So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don’t think my brain can really keep up with what is going on.” She has full-blown night terrors: “I wake up and scream.”

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, “it was all so insane, it felt like a dream,” she says. “I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.’ I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?’ ”

Part of the problem may have been Ridley’s tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little “one half portion” of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford’s effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was “getting emotional.” “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie’s cinematographer, Dan Mindel. “I was just eating!”

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, “'Doug, I don’t need a stunt double to do that.’ And I thought, 'I don’t know if this would’ve happened if it was Tom Holland.’”

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey’s parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: “I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is.” Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. “I wasn’t given any directive as to what that had to be,” he says. “I was never given the information that she is this or she is that.” 

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey’s parents aren’t some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what’s going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams’ precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she’s either Luke’s daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she’s changed her mind. “There are literally no similarities with Carrie’s story and mine,” she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to “inhabit” as many characters as possible. On the other hand, “a lot of Rey is me,” she says, “but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie.”

This trilogy will end with Abrams’ Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson’s mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. “I do see it that way,” he says. “But the future is in flux.”

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn’t want to play the character after the next movie. “No,” she says flatly. “For me, I didn’t really know what I was signing on to. I hadn’t read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.’ Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now.”

But, um, doesn’t that sort of sound like a yes? “No,” she says again, smiling a little. “No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it’s three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out.”

And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got … one half portion.) “Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells … then sure. Maybe. But again, it’s like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it.”

She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we’ve made up on the spot. “How old will I be?” she asks, before doing the math. “55.” She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It’s time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. “Fuck,” Ridley says. “I can’t think that far ahead.”  

###

[words-and-fangirling-wonder]

(Definitely Not) A Double Date

Fandom: One Piece

Rating: General Audiences

Pairing: Law/Lu

Prompt From @fitgirlfaith24: Luffy drags Law on an outing to a Cider Mill was the original prompt, but I talked to her and she was okay with changing it to a surprise! Double Date with Zoro, Sanji, Luffy and Law at a cider mill, bless her heart.

Author: Fangirl Wonder (WordsandWonder on AO3)

As the car pulled to a jerky stop in the unpaved cider mill parking lot, Law couldn’t help but wonder what the record was for amount of times regretting a decision in a half hour period. Because throughout that car-ride, he had regretted his decision to accompany Sanji on what was “totally not a double date!” about five thousand times. He’d known, he’d known, damnit, that this was a double date. He knew when Sanji first asked him to come and tried to stealthily add that the guy he liked was bringing a friend, hoping Law wouldn’t catch it before he agreed. He knew when after he adamantly refused, Sanji pulled out the puppy dog eyes and bribed him with promises of home cooked meals twice a week for a month. He knew when the whole group showed up at his apartment that morning and Zoro’s mysterious friend turned out to be none other than Luffy.

Luffy, who was constantly blowing up Law’s phone with excited text messages Law could barely read between the grammar mistakes and exclamation points. Luffy, who sometimes showed up at Law’s work with food for them both and wouldn’t leave until Law caved and ate. Luffy, who dragged Law to the movies every other week because “otherwise Torao would never have any fun.” Luffy, who Law may or may not have drunkenly made out with last weekend. A lot. Luffy, who insisted it was okay (when Law apologized for his behavior), because they were boyfriends, so it was bound to happen eventually. Which had been news to Law, but of course Luffy had been unfazed by his insistence that they were, under no uncertain terms, not in a relationship.

So yeah, really, he had no one to blame for his situation but himself, because he had fucking known. But that didn’t stop him from shooting his blonde friend a murderous glare as they exited the car.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Sanji muttered as he watched Law slam the door.

“For which part, exactly? The “Oh no, Law, it’s not a double date, come on, I wouldn’t do that to you” bullshit? Or for having me sit in back with him so you could hold hands with Zoro in the front seat?” the raven-haired man snapped.

“Well, it’s not like you hate him, though!” the chef defended in a hushed whisper. “You’re kinda dating, aren’t you? You hang out with him all the time!”

“We are not kinda dating!” Except they kinda were, if you squinted. Or, you know, just looked at the situation normally, because fucking goddamnit, they were, weren’t they? When the fuck did that happen? But that did not mean Law was ready to admit it. “And even if we were, you still conned me into going on a double date and you know I hate double dates.”

“Yeah, but I’m going to make you all your favorite food twice … three times a week! For the next month!” Sanji reminded. “I really am sorry, though. I know you don’t like this kinda thing, but I just … I really like him and I wanted my best friend here for emotional support the first time I went out with him, is that so bad?”

Well, damnit, how was Law supposed to be mad at him after that? “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Three times a week. And no-”

“No bread, I know. Jeeze, Trafalgar, how long have I been feeding you? I know your thing about bread.”

Law smirked at the blonde and tilted his head, indicating where Zoro and Luffy were whispering together a short distance away. “I guess we better join them, huh? What do you think they’re whispering about over there?”

“Probably something similar to what we were,” Sanji shrugged. “Zoro had to beg Luffy to come today too. He kept saying he didn’t want to join because you’d be mad.”

Law definitely did not blush at that. “That’s a good sign, then, right? That Zoro wanted to hang out with you enough that he was willing to beg Luffy?”

Sanji tried to hide a smile behind his hand under the guise of rubbing his nose. “I guess. Hey guys, wait up!”

Zoro and Luffy turned around and waited for the other men to catch up, Luffy with a brilliant smile and cheerful wave, and Zoro with a slightly happier-looking scowl than usual. As soon as Sanji and Law caught up, Zoro nudged the blonde with his shoulder playfully.

“You girls have a nice chat?” he teased.

“Shut up, Marimo. Let’s go look at some pumpkins or something.”

Luffy appeared suddenly at Law’s side and laced his fingers with the surgeon’s tattooed ones. “I want doughnuts! Do you eat doughnuts, Torao? Or are they too much like bread?”

“Huh?” Law glanced up when he realized Luffy was waiting for a response. He’d been too distracted by the sudden warmth of having his hand held. “Uh, too much like bread. I like cider, though.”

Luffy beamed. “Cool! Then let’s go get some cider! And I’ll get doughnuts, but you don’t have to. Or, you could get some and I could eat them for you. I’m willing to do that for you, cuz I’m just that good a boyfriend.”

"Damnit, Luffy, I've told you a hundred times, I'm not your boyfriend." Despite Law's obvious irritation, Luffy only snuggled closer to his side and grinned up at him. "Shishishi! Sure you are, Torao! Otherwise why would we be holding hands?" "Because you won't let go," the man spit back, bringing their linked fingers up to Luffy's face as proof. "Well," Luffy said slowly, "I will if you want me to. Do you really want me to?" "..." When Law didn't agree or pull his hand away Luffy's energetic grin returned full force, so bright and sudden the doctor almost felt blinded by it. "Oh, whatever, just ... C'mon. We're falling behind." Catching up apparently wasn’t on Luffy’s to-do list, as he began practically dragging Law to each thing they passed, becoming more and more excited at each new cider mill activity. Law tolerated this with a decent amount of patience, and even found himself smiling a little at the younger man’s enthusiasm. He did balk, however, when Luffy found one of those wooden cut-out things that usually made an appearance at carnivals and such.

“Don’t even think about it, I am not sticking my head in th-”

“Hey! Could you take a picture of me and my boyfriend in this thing?” the boy interrupted to ask a passerby, pointing hopefully at the wooden painting of a farmer and his wife with holes where their faces should be. To Law’s horror, the woman agreed and accepted Luffy’s phone without complaint. “Hurry up, Torao, they’re waiting!”

“Ugh, fine! But I’m not being the wife, Luffy, you move over right now,” the taller man grumbled, taking his place behind the cut-out and sticking his face in the hole.

“Very nice,” the stranger complimented as she handed the phone back after taking a few pictures. “You two are cute together!”

“We’re not - oh whatever. Where the hell are Zoro and Sanji?”

“Don’t worry, Torao, we found you two just in time to see that. So precious,” Zoro commented from behind them.

Law smirked at the green-haired man. “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I’ll take the picture if you and Sanji want to do it too.”

The wicked grin fell off Zoro’s face comically fast. “No wa-”

“Oh come on, Marimo, it’s fun! Please?” Sanji pleaded.

The doctor honestly expected Zoro to refuse, but instead got to watch as the man looked between the absurd novelty board and the chef. He was obviously having an internal battle with his want to please Sanji and his want to not look like an idiot, and Law thought that was just adorable.

“Fine,” he finally consented. “But if you post this on the facebook I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Aw, don’t be a spoilsport!” Sanji booed. “Besides, how would you even know? You don’t have a facebook.”

“I’ll get one just to make sure.”

Watching them bicker back and forth as they took their places, Law really couldn’t see why Sanji was so worried. It was blatantly apparent that Zoro was totally into him. If the way he looked at the cook wasn’t enough to prove that, the fact that he was actually trying not to look completely miserable as he stuck his head though the face hole of the farmer’s wife certainly did. And while that made Law really happy for his friend, it absolutely did not mean he wouldn’t still mess with the bulkier man.

“Say cheese!” he called in an overly cheerful voice meant to irk Zoro.

“Cheese!” the blonde replied.

“Fuck you,” the other grumbled.

Law snapped the picture and gave Sanji his phone back. “Did you guys already get your cider and stuff?” he asked. “Luffy got distracted.”

“Nah, we got distracted too,” Sanji admitted.

“Yeah, distracted by making out against that big ‘ole tree, there,” Luffy interjected.

Arching an eyebrow, Law enjoyed watching both men light up a brilliant shade of red. “Oh really? Well then, should we stick together or split up so you two can get back to your debauchery?”

“Split up,” Zoro responded confidently, even as his partner firmly asserted that they should stay together.

“Shishishi, you guys are funny. I think we should split up and then Torao and I can do some bauchery too.”

It took a great deal of willpower for Law not to facepalm at that. “Luffy, there’s no such thing as bau-”

“No point, man,” Zoro interrupted, pointing to where Luffy and Sanji were inspecting an apple tree together. “He’s not even listening anymore.”

Law shook his head as he watched Luffy animatedly tell Sanji about something. “How do you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” Zoro questioned. “Deal with Luffy?” Law nodded. “Dude, I don’t know why you’re asking me that. You handle him better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Even Shanks can’t get him to focus as much as you can. Which reminds me.” Zoro suddenly turned to face the doctor with a very serious look on his face. “What’s this shit about you telling him you’re not his boyfriend?”

“I … what do you mean? It’s not shit, it’s true. I’m not his boyfriend.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not! Jesus, why do I have to keep repeating this?”

Zoro glared at him like he was the dumbest creature on the planet. “Because it’s bullshit. I see the way you look at him. You’re doing it right now! No one looks at someone like that if they don’t at least have some feelings for them. And let’s face it, Trafalgar. You’re not the kind of guy to waste a bunch of time with someone you aren’t interested in, but you spend a ton of time with Luffy. Plus, Sanji always talks about how you’re not much of a texter, but Luffy is constantly grinning like an idiot at his phone, and he only does that when it’s you he’s talking to. Oh, and you eat his shitty food when he visits you at work and I know how gross his cooking is.”

“He brings take-out sometimes,” Law argued lamely.

“And that’s something right there. He drives from the restaurant to your hospital with delicious, tempting take-out and he doesn’t eat it.”

Law did have to admit, he’d been impressed when Luffy started doing that. He knew how much the man liked to eat.

“Yeah, but … you can’t be in a relationship just because someone decides that you are. Without consulting you, by the way.”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “Sure you can. See, you can hem and haw all you want about the details of it, but Luffy is just gonna call it as he sees it. He and I have that in common. So when you’re doing all the things that boyfriends do, Luffy’s gonna call you his boyfriend, and so will anyone else that ever watches you two together. You might as well stop trying to deny what literally everyone can plainly see.”

Watching Luffy climb the tree, with Sanji yelling at him to get down, Law heaved a sigh. Goddamnit. Goddamnit all to hell, because seeing a grown man act that way should annoy the hell out of him, but as he watched Luffy do it he was unconsciously smiling. He found it fucking endearing. Ever since they met, Luffy had been blasting through each and every one of the walls Law had so carefully built around himself, and now, seeing the other so happy and carefree … he wanted to be his boyfriend. He didn’t exactly know how, but he knew he had fallen for Luffy a long time ago, and that somehow that exuberant man, who on the surface appeared to be Law’s opposite in every way, made him happy. So maybe Zoro was right. Maybe it was time to stop denying it and for once just … let himself be happy.

“You do realize you’re staring at him like a lovesick moron?” Zoro inquired dryly. “But hey, you’re probably right. That’s not your boyfriend. I’m sure you look at all your friends like that.” The man paused for a moment before adding, “Just don’t … you better not look at the cook like that.”

Defenseless against the first part of Zoro’s statement, Law chose to focus on the end of it and rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, Marimo. He’s all yours.”

“Hey assholes! Neither of you could have helped me get the monkey out of that tree?” Sanji huffed as he stomped up to them, dragging Luffy along behind him.

“Aw, Sanji’s no fun. If they didn’t want people to climb the trees they shoulda put up a sign,” Luffy protested.

Law glanced at the sign posted a few feet away that politely asked patrons not to climb the trees, but said nothing.

“Can we get some damn cider now? I’m thirsty,” Sanji griped.

“Sure thing,” Zoro agreed, wrapping an arm around Sanji’s shoulders and steering him in the wrong direction to get to the cider barn.

“Uh, Zoro, the press is the other way,” Law pointed out.

The green-haired man smirked over his shoulder. “Yeah, but the orchard is this way.”

Luffy pressed against Law’s side and stood on his tiptoes to whisper, “They’re gonna go make out some more.”

“Oh.” Well okay then. So much for sticking together. But then again, since he was admitting Luffy and he were dating now, and they were all alone … “Hey Luffy?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna go to the orchard?”

Luffy grinned. “Yeah! But a different part from where Zoro and Sanji are, because that’s weird even if this is a double date, you know?”

Law couldn’t help returning Luffy’s bright smile. “Definitely.”

“Cool! Let’s go make out!” Luffy cried, pulling Law insistently toward the line of trees in the distance.

Shaking his head and chuckling once again at something he should have found tasteless and annoying, Law allowed himself to be towed along. He had to admit, it felt kinda good to not deny what was going on with them. It felt right. He could definitely get used to this feeling.

“Oooh, look Torao! Let’s ride the train!”

“What? No! That’s for kids! Damnit, Luffy, I said stop! I am not getting on that thing!”

… It was a pretty fun train ride.

[son-of-alderaan]

Jedi Confidential: Inside the Dark New 'Star Wars' Movie

The cast and director of 'The Last Jedi' on the story's secrets, a disaffected Skywalker and a death in the family

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. "The first thing I did," he recalls, "was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying." He grins. "And it broke." 

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He's nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he's trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he's sitting in an office suite inside Disney's Burbank studios that he's called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, "We're working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot)." Johnson is the film's writer-director, which means he ended up with the world's finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. "I shook up the box a little bit," he says, with that same grin. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015's The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.  Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it's not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas' original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy's fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What's left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

"It's somewhat a reflection of society," acknowledges the saga's new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. "But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both."

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth): "During testing times, there's nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing." The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). "That's one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie," Johnson says. "I think it's very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It's also the Flash Gordon."

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia's Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. "If I had that job, I would be stressed out," he says. "To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn't been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He's incredibly smart and doesn't feel the need to let everyone know it." ("It felt like we were playing the whole time," says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Warsfilms in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy's not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams' return. 

The Force Awakens' biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega's stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford's Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill's now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher's last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city's Women's March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans ("A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance" was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. "You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created," says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. "I'm happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit."

He left her part in the film untouched. "We didn't end up changing a thing," says Johnson. "Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her." So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia's sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: "It's a sad reality," he says. "In terms of going forward ... time will tell what ends up getting done.")

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi's story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he's baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they're "making it up as we go along": "The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we're organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn't mean that any less thought is being put into it."

Mark Hamill's single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn't say a thing. But it's an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he's been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. ("With voice-over," Hamill says, "I thought, 'This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don't have to memorize lines!'") As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where's he's presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker's bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

"I didn't look at that as 'Oh, this is going to be my big chance,'" says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson's offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he's grown to appreciate: "I shaved, and I thought, 'You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.'"

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had "frustrations over being over-associated" with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – "but nothing that caused me any deep anguish." He still spent the decades since Return of the Jediacting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? "It's a culmination of my career," he says. "If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don't think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, 'I'm going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.' "

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, "I didn't know – and I don't think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it's all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue."

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. "The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero," he says, "but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time." In fact, Hamill's first reaction was, "What a rip-off, I don't get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!"

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: "I don't want to say, 'That's the greatest entrance in cinematic history' . . . but certainly the greatest entrance of my career."

Johnson turns to Hamill. "Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this," he says, "I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, 'What if Luke is blind? What if he's, like, the blind samurai?' But we didn't do it. You're welcome. Didn't stick." (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016's side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would've been: "Luke, not too close to the cliff!" He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a "disillusioned" Jedi. "This is not a joyful story to tell," Hamill says, "my portion of it." Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke's character was taking. "We then started a conversation," says Johnson. "We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer."

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could've gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who's buddies with the Kinks' Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. "I was hearing Ringo talk about 'Well, in those days, it was peace and love.' And how it was a movement that largely didn't work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal." He smiles at that part. "I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it." (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.) Hamill's grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. "There was now a comfort level that she had with me," he says, "that I wasn't out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. ... I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame." Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. "I just can't stand it," he says. "She's wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don't deserve. I'd love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life."

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. "It's the life of a hero, man," says Johnson. "That's what you've gotta do to be a hero. You've gotta watch people that you love burn to death!" Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. "Sometimes," he says, softer than usual, "you think, 'I'd rather have Luke's life than mine.'"

Adam Driver has a question for me. "What," he asks, "is emo?" Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation's most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there's something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. "You have someone who's being told that he's special his whole life," Driver says of his character, "and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?"

As anyone who's seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. "I don't think of myself as a particularly intense person," he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. "I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something." He's in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that's a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It's not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver's character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn't flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. "I don't know that it's always that literal," he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow's character, who was sort of a "distant uncle" to him. "No one asks me, 'So you have a distant-uncle problem?' "

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character's emotions in the face of an environment he can't help but find ridiculous. "Watching Star Wars, it's an action-adventure," he says. "But shooting it, it's a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It's hilarious." And when he wears his helmet, he can't see very well. "You're supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down."

He refuses to see his character as bratty. "There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on," he says, reminding us that the character's estranged mom is "the princess. I think he's aware of maybe the privilege." He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: "I don't want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it. . . ." He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it's a plot spoiler, it's unclear exactly how, unless it's related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. "The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome," says Ridley, whom Driver calls a "great scene partner," apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn't totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I'm always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they're mostly just too broad," he says. But Abrams' pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren's character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. "Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he's assured," he says. Only in private can he acknowledge "how un-figured-out he is … how weak."

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn't actually a villain at all.

"It's not like people weren't living on the Death Star," he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. "Isn't that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they're right. And when you feel in your bones that you're supported by a higher power on top of that, and you're morally right, there's no limit to what you'll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way."

You're starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. "So, the rebels are bad," he says, connecting his fist with the table. "I strongly believe this!"

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I'm sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada's fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – "the dregs of my wardrobe," she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn't care. "This is how I have always had my hair," says Ridley. "I am not going to change it." She's been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which "is a little bit chaotic, in that we're writing as we go and everything," she says. "I've realized I don't work well with that."

She's on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she's still deeply exhausted. "I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass," she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won't pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she's just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. "I have no control in my life at all," she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. "So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don't think my brain can really keep up with what is going on." She has full-blown night terrors: "I wake up and scream."

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, "it was all so insane, it felt like a dream," she says. "I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.' I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?' "

Part of the problem may have been Ridley's tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little "one half portion" of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford's effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was "getting emotional." "I don't know," she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie's cinematographer, Dan Mindel. "I was just eating!"

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, "'Doug, I don't need a stunt double to do that.' And I thought, 'I don't know if this would've happened if it was Tom Holland.'"

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey's parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: "I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is." Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. "I wasn't given any directive as to what that had to be," he says. "I was never given the information that she is this or she is that."

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey's parents aren't some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what's going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams' precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she's either Luke's daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she's changed her mind. "There are literally no similarities with Carrie's story and mine," she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to "inhabit" as many characters as possible. On the other hand, "a lot of Rey is me," she says, "but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie."

This trilogy will end with Abrams' Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson's mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. "I do see it that way," he says. "But the future is in flux."

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn't want to play the character after the next movie. "No," she says flatly. "For me, I didn't really know what I was signing on to. I hadn't read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.' Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now."

But, um, doesn't that sort of sound like a yes? "No," she says again, smiling a little. "No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it's three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out." And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got ... one half portion.) "Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells ... then sure. Maybe. But again, it's like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it." She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we've made up on the spot. "How old will I be?" she asks, before doing the math. "55." She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It's time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. "Fuck," Ridley says. "I can't think that far ahead." (x)

[akiyamapining]

I HAVE A THOUGHT

Okay I’m like, exhausted. Haven’t really slept in like, four days. I’m at the point where I just KNOW I’m tired but I just don’t FEEL tired and I’ve been thinkin. Hear me out, it’s probably impossible. I blame my tired brain.

Luffy's Gear Second speeds up his blood, which in turn speeds up his body, he's tecchnically moving at speeds faster than much of the world around him with no mental jetlag, and only few physical repercussions (it strainss his heart, I don't care if he's made of rubber, that shit is dangerous!!). But like, hear me out, I might just be really tired and coming up with stupid shit, but like, if Luffy Awakens his Devil Fruit, if at all possible for him, what if it's just like activating Gear Two.

But instead of just gaining a speed boost, ot allows him to go so fast he travels through time??? Or gains an ability akin to the Instant Transmission technique from Dragon Ball Z???

Really, logic does NOT apply to Luffy, at all. He has gone into situations that have the odds SO stacked against him it’s not funny, but usually comes out on top! He’s a favorite of Lady Luck, has almost died like… 15 times, was fucking TORTURED as a child by a nasty, rotten pirate who didn’t care what he did because obviouSLY THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS, was RESCUED from CERTAIN DEATH by his CHILL FOSTER DAD™(Shanks), has managed to turn ENEMIES into ALLIES, not once but like DOZENS of times, rose to infamy in like… threeeeeeish months, survived his abusive freak of a grandfather (I love Garp, I really do, but that is NOT how you show love, and that is NOT how you treat a child. HE NEARLY KILLED LUFFY OVER A DOZEN TIMES USING THE EXCUSE OF “Training him to be an upstanding marine”! If anything, I think that Garp made Luffy begin to doubt becoming a marine, thought about it with a simple “I’ll have to listen to commands, and it’s a robbery of freedom”, but wasn’t about to abandon the option, because he still loved his grandpa and wanted to make him proud. Shanks and his stories of his grand adventures as a pirate merely allowed Luffy to harbor and grow that doubt into a hard-as-diamond belief.), stopped the civil war in Alabasta because WOW VIVI IS DISTRESSED LET’S NOT, broke into Impel Down, got terribly poisoned, was given the option to be cured but the cure was ALMOST just as deadly as the poison itself, went through TERRIBLE pain, and came out VICTORIOUS, albeit in technical terms ten years older (not physically, he lost ten years doing that. In my standards, he aged up ten years in bodily health. It won’t catch up with him til later in his life though, I bet), and survived getting the flesh on his chest, his RUBBER FLESH (ugh, that must have been horrible to see, and smell), melted off because he had been lucky enough to have caught the interest of supernova-at-the-time, Trafalgar Law.

With all of that in our minds, I wouldn’t doubt that Lady Luck would grant his Awakened Devil Fruit the ability to travel through time, or basically teleport.

Because come on.

He’d literally be stretching time and space.

’~’

I admit, he’d, at first, almost do something stupid. With time travel, he’d go back and try to prevent so much bad shit that’d happened to him without thinking of the consequences, as always, and he would end up DRASTICALLY changing things.

For example: he would go back to prevent, let’s say, the events of Marineford. Whitebeard would still be alive, Ace would still be alive, so much DEATH would have been avoided, and Teach would target Luffy and his crew in an attempt to become shichibukai. The vile man had seen Luffy’s wanted poster and decided to target him, and then full out admitted this to Ace at Banaro, and Ace definitely was NOT going to have that! I memorized their conversation as evidence because people like to sass me with a classic “YOU HAVE NO PROOF!”:

“First, I’ll go to Water Seven from here to kill Strawhat Luffy and hand him over to the government!”

“Luffy…!? What did you say…!? ”

“Oh? You know him?”

“I won’t let you lay a finger on him. He’s my little brother! ”

’~’

Luffy preventing Ace from being taken to Impel Down in the first place, which means preventing Ace from continuing to hunt Teach by, maybe, telling Ace about the Yami Yami no Mi and it’s abilities, and, if he manages it because coME ON, he can’t to save his life, lie about how he knows this, which would either drive Ace back towards Whitebeard in an attempt to prepare for such a battle, maybe even train more, or wouldn’t prevent Ace’s action against Teach, but would cause him to take the fight MUCH more seriously from the get go with the newfound knowledge. Going with the latter route, Ace taking the fight seriously from the start, if Ace seems too powerful to Teach, he’d do everything in his ability to flee the battle, as the man has always been a coward, and was never a carrier of The Will of D, despite being Marshall D. Teach. I don’t doubt that Teach would somehow escape Ace’s fury and flee Banaro, deciding against his thought of turning in Ace instead of Strawhat. He would hide out with his crew, or what may be left, for a lil less than a month. Lay low. No destruction, no killing, nothing from the Blackbeard Pirates. They would fall off the grid. Ace, having lost the man’s trail, would either continue roaming for any leads, or retreat back towards Whitebeard with his newfound knowledge of the man’s abilities, because he has SOMETHING on the man now, and his crew should know.

Teach would then head towards Sabaody and Fishman Island to have a run in with the Strawhats. They wouldn’t win that battle, and Luffy, plus his crewmates if they knew, would then be given to the government, and, knowing Luffy’s heritage, they’d rush to execute him almost as fast as they had with Ace. The papers would be full of excitement over it.

“SON OF REVOLUTIONARY DRAGON TO BE EXECUTED IN A MONTH!” the paper would scream, alerting everyone Luffy had managed to save or befriend, in one way or another. Shanks, Dorry, Brogy, Whitebeard (if Ace found out and lost his shit. He would try to leave, to rescue his baby brother, who doesn’t deserve to be executed. He would be held back, kicking, screaming, and crying out that Luffy was his first light in the dark, that he needs to save his little, adorable brother, that he’d always hate himself more than he has if he lets Luffy die. I feel that it would hurt Whitebeard and the others on the ship to see someone who was usually smiling and cracking jokes and being a nasty little brat on some days, and just an all around JOY to be around, be so… lost, and broken, and just a WRECK. They’d go and help save Luffy, I think. Whitebeard knows the importance of family, knows that Luffy means the WORLD to Ace, who was so, so PROUD when Luffy’s first bounty came out, and any brother of Ace was a son of his, and no one would be executing one of his sons when he could do anything about it.), two Yonkos and two giants.

The marines had been dreading in the original timeline that Shanks would join in the fighting when he arrived 15 minutes late to the war with a latte, imagine their horror as Whitebeard and Shanks join forces to save a simple, small boy made of rubber, who's grin and energy touched the hearts of practically millions on both the East Blue and the Grand Line.

But, the whole thing would be a plot by the marines to draw out Dragon, to catch him trying to rescue his son. But, the Revolutionaries, they are one big WILD CARD! I haven’t gotten enough about Dragon himself to even begin to THINK that be would mobilize forces to save Luffy. But, he did rescue Luffy at Loguetown, remember that. I bet he would be so so PROUD of Luffy, who was causing the World Government so much CHAOS, doing just what he had been doing, but instead of planning, like Dragon, he just went and did it. And if anything, the sudden headline would spark SOMETHING in the amnesiac that is Sabo, a deep-seated terror that he doesn’t know the origins of, or maybe it would knock him into a wave of soul crushing horror as memories of a small, bright little boy came crashing into him like a tsunami, he would drop the paper in horror, he never knew that Dragon was Luffy’s FUCKING FATHER, he would rush to Dragon about it, and if the man would do nothing, Sabo would become enraged. What a horrible father, what a SNAKE! He would beg, plead, do anything to get this man to save his FUCKING SON! And if Dragon was going to act, he would assign Sabo and a select group to infiltrate Impel Down to save Luffy, only to have barely missed him, yet they would be able to break out Luffy’s crew, if they had been captured when trying to help Luffy. Anyone can elaborate on what happens after this, I’m moving on.

If Ace had retreated to Whitebeard instead of going to Banaro to confront Teach, the man would have, more than likely, destroyed Banaro and would make his way to Water Seven. I estimate that he’d make it there after the events of Enies Lobby, unaware of the dramatic uppage in bounty that would follow. Aqua Lagoona had just passed, he’d just miss the Strawhats leaving the large city, but he would see the newly built Thousand Sunny flying as quick as a bee out towards the ocean, and he would follow. They’d go through some bastardized game of cat and mouse, I doubt Teach would even TRY confronting the Strawhats so close to Thriller Bark. So he’d wait until the fog lifted, like an idiot, because he probably doesn’t know the fog won’t lift. But, and correct me if I’m wrong, the fog DOES lift after Moria is defeated. He follows Luffy to Sabaody, where he confronts the Strawhat crew, and from here I believe the events mentioned in the last path would come to pass.

’~’

That was an example of what his meddling with time could lead to. Robin, of course, would stop him from doing it. She understands the risks of time travel, she’s read many books after all. Not only would she warn him to never use his power unless it was his ONLY CHOICE, she’d have him PROMISE!! And Luffy never breaks a promise, at least, not to my knowledge. It would be a great way to reset if he loses too much. And that means if he loses his crew, and he doesn’t feel he can go on without them.

Honestly, I find Luffy’s Gears facinating. Gear Two is advanced speed, Gear Three is damage spread across a large distance, and Gear Four is a mix of both. Truly interesting, the things Luffy has come up with for attacks and abilities when it comes to his own body. Which is why I’m instantly appealed by a Luffy moving so fast that he stretches time and space to the point of time travel, or teleportation.

And honestly, I kinda wanna see what other people have to think about my lil (understatement) rant here.

This has been your friendly neighborhood crow, signing out so I can attempt to sleep.

[adelmortescryche]

yoimafiaweek - day 7

AN: Ack, I hope I’m not too late with my submission, @yoimafiaweek! This is what happens when you get caught between two really different ideas. Well, anyway, here’s my fill for day 7! I’m going with ‘Identity Reveal’, since it’s a free day. What a week this has been. *grins*

Premise: Have some podium family fluff/humor, and Yuri P.’s POV! This follows his journey to figure out why something about Yuuri, the Katsuki family and Hasetsu as a whole seems... Very... Strange. There’s no way in hell Katsudon’s in the yakuza. Right?

Warnings in advance for language and attitude in this one: Yurio’s got one hell of a potty mouth. Nothing too explicit, but there’s a whole load of f bombs all through his narrative.

Whatever the hell Yuri had been expected when he finally got around to joining the pig and Victor in the hot springs, it sure as fuck hadn’t been the humongous red dragon tattooed on the pig’s back.

“Eh? Are you okay, Yurio?”

The pig actually had the fucking gall to look confused.

Victor barely looked phased, damn him. And it only got worse when they actually headed out to the bathing area. He still remembered Yuuko and the triplets’ dumb lectures about why you weren’t supposed to stare at people in the hot springs, but it was a little hard to actually not look at anyone when at least fifty percent of the people around him were inked up in places where their clothes could cover it, just like the pig.

“I though the Japanese were supposed to be prudes about shit like tattoos,” he hissed at the old man under his breath, but Victor just gave a gay little laugh.

“Oh, but Yuuri and his family are really open-minded! I’ve been to hot springs before when I’ve come to Japan for competitions, Chris dragged me out on a free day between events, but I barely saw anyone with this much ink then.”

Yuri just had to stare up at him in silent incredulity for a moment. Because, really, wasn’t that a fucking sign that there was something fucking wrong with the picture here?

And by that point the pig was headed back their way, towel over his shoulder. Which, god, he didn’t get the Japanese at all. Katsuki was such a wimp and jumping at shadows all of the time, having a sick look flashing across his face when he noticed the barest pudge around his middle in reflective surfaces, freaking out when Victor touched his cloth covered shoulder, and he didn’t even hesitate to roam about with his dick out when they were in the baths? He couldn’t figure out if the older skater was body conscious or not, at this point.

He’d probably lose the pudge. Yuri hadn’t been around for more than a week in the Podunk little town Victor had chosen to set up in, and he could already tell Katsuki was a stamina monster of the worst kind. He had the flab to burn, but one look at his mom had told Yuri that Katsuki’s pudge was genetic, and not necessarily letting himself go since he’d fucking given up on skating.

The news about his retirement had shaken Yuri hard, because he sure as hell hadn’t been expecting it to come out. So he’d had a bad skate day. It sucked balls. Didn’t mean he couldn’t lift himself off the floor and get back to it, right?

He’d suspected Yuuri was a yellow bellied coward until he’d taken the flight to Hasetsu to see whether or not Victor had just followed his libido to fucking Japan. And while he still thought Victor might very well have followed his libido like originally assumed, he… could already tell there was something more going on, there. Well, whatever. Sure, he’d be disappointed irritated if the pig actually decided to go cold turkey and drop everything, but to be really honest, he was more interested in getting that program Victor promised him. He’d cut it out of the old man’s balding hide with his skates if he had to damnit.

Yuuri sank into the water beside them with a long sigh, the line of his frame wet and lithe as he slicked his hair back with both hands and leaned into the edge of the pool, staring up at the sky with a sharp look in his eyes. Victor made a choking sound, not able to tear his gaze away, and Yuri rolled his eyes, aiming a kick at his hip.

The wounded sound he got in response was fully worth the put upon look the pig shot them both.

*

It wasn’t just in the springs, though. Yuri was willing to bet anything that there was something up in Hasetsu. Or, if not the town as a whole, then definitely in Yu-topia Katsuki. Which, really, that was such a shitty play on the pig’s name. He hadn’t found it cool or anything, seriously. So lame.

But, anyway.

Something was up. He could have sworn that at least a few men the pig’s dad drank and cracked jokes with in the night were inked from head to toe. Well, every covered bit of them, anyway, when they weren’t pulling their long sleeves back because of the damp air sitting heavy in the dining area. They all looked the rough sort, but it hadn’t actually registered right after he got to Hasetsu – a combination of the facts that, not only were they really friendly with anyone staying at the inn under Yuuri Katsuki’s name, but also that they… didn’t really look rough to him. He was probably being naive about it, but how the hell was he supposed to know how gangsters looked anywhere else in the world? He barely knew what they looked like in St. Petersburg or Moscow – he just knew what sections of the cities to avoid while out on his own to avoid trouble. That had always been how it went no matter where he went – you couldn’t trust movies or books to tell you what trouble looked like, but you sure as hell could avoid trouble by not heading out to places the actual residents in a city avoided on a good day.

And, anyway, it was probably better he didn’t go to those places. Yuri knew himself, he knew how likely he was to pick a fight with someone just because they looked at him too long or funny. And he couldn’t afford to get shanked in an alley for being dumb, he had his dedushka (дедушка) to think about, damnit. And he was getting old.

So, yeah. He never really registered that the pig’s father’s friends looked ‘rough’. Not until this one time he saw one of the really old guys gesturing at something in the newspaper with a fucking knife, relatively longer blade and everything which, holy shit, and not one person in the room actually reacted. Well, no, that wasn’t true. A couple of the guests who’d come down from a bigger city for a weekend off or some shit went white and looked away immediately, murmuring to each other. That was actually what had made Yuri curious, really. He’d been taking his cues from Victor, but the old man had more air in his head than anything else. Unless you spoke about skating or Victorian Literature, or Romanticism or – yeah. The old man was an air head if it wasn’t literature or skating. Or Yuuri, but he just got more airheaded then, didn’t he?

Bottom line, he probably shouldn’t have been taking his cues from Victor. But even if he had been doing that, he had to admit, the people who showed up at the inn each night… weren’t bad people. Even if they were rougher than Yuri had actually registered until that point.

No, what actually had him confused was what role the pig had to play in all of it. Because asking him outright had just netted Yuri a faint smile. Asking Yuuko had earned him a giggle, and her husband had just rolled his eyes, saying Yuri was better off not thinking about it.

The triplets had just laughed at him. He actually missed when the little hellions were too busy gasping and taking pictures of him and Victor all the time – now that they’d gotten over the momentary hero worship they were downright scary irritating.

At least he got why the pig got that look on his face whenever he caught sight of them filming things on the side of the rink and giggling at each other, now.

*

Actually looking it up on Google had just confused him further. Because Japan and tattoos and springs just got him a whole bunch of yakuza discourse and why people in Japan were so uneasy about tattoos.

Irezumi was gorgeous, he had to admit. That said- no. Just, no way. The fucking pork cutlet bowl couldn’t be a gangster goddamnit, it made no sense.

There had to be something else going on and he was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing he did.

Fuck.

*

“Make sure Victor doesn’t get in over his head, okay?” he growled at Yuuko, when she caught him just before he headed to the airport.

She tilted her head to the side, that same blandly amused smile he’d seen on Katsudon’s face flitting across her lips. It made him hunch his shoulders up instinctively, because thinking about Katsudon right then wasn’t very nice. The look on Victor’s face when he stared out at the rink had sent a sick wave through Yuri’s gut, but even he had to admit that the kind of meteoric rise Yuuri had made overnight meant Victor sticking around could only benefit him.

He’d get one hell of an opponent to beat out of the bargain, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Victor was unchanging, he’d always been there. For all that he respected thought that Katsudon’s skate skills were worth something, losing Victor to the cause just pissed him off.

At least he’d be back at some point. Right? Right. And Katsudon would just follow him wherever he went, so there was that. He’d get them both. To skate against, obviously, that’s all they were worth, but he’d get them both.

“I don’t know what the fu- I don’t know what’s going on here, but Victor’s an idiot. You control the pig to some extent, right. Make sure Victor doesn’t get hurt.” Yuri demanded, point blank, and Yuuko’s face softened to something that almost looked fond.

Ugh.

“That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to win! I don’t care what weird shit Katsudon’s involved in, but it doesn’t make him a better skater than me! Tell them I’ll see them on the ice. Dasvidaniya (До свида́ния).”

His piece said, he turned around and walked away.

*

That sure as hell didn’t mean he stopped thinking about it, though. Lilia and Yakov put him through hell, as did learning and training his free skate. And streamlining his Agape, which Yakov had looked pleased with, when he’d gotten back to St. Petersburg and showed him what he’d learnt.

“You’ve gotten soft, Yura,” Mila teased, and he tuned her out. And tuned Georgi’s dramatics behind her.

He hadn’t gotten soft. He’d just hardened up where it counted. So there.

But, like he said, it was kind of hard to not keep thinking about the old man and the pig. Especially when he was training Agape, for some reason. Yakov had gotten a strange look on his face when he’d complained about that, but at least he’d settled in to listen when Yuri complained. After training, mind you, he’d have gotten yelled right back onto the ice if he’d tried to say anything during training.

His complaints had just gotten him a weird look, though.

“Yura, you’re being paranoid,” he sighed, once Yuri was done. It made Yuri flare up dramatically in response, but Yakov just got a hand on the top of his head, and his voice cut off immediately when he noticed the look in his coach’s eyes.

It wasn’t pure disbelief, just… bemusement. And irritation, yes, but that as Yakov all the time every time. He had to keep an eye on too many skaters, and with people like Mila and Georgi around, obviously he was going to be irritated. Those two were such a fucking pain. And Victor, but thinking about Victor just made Yakov blow up most of the time.

Yuri complaining about the sheer weirdness of the Katsuki family and the guests at their inn was about the only time he didn’t blow up, actually.

Maybe he just didn’t know how to react? Who the fuck knew.

“Get back to Lilia’s home quickly, and rest. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow,” he said, and Yuri nodded, scowl firmly in place.

*

He didn’t need to be believed by his rink mates or coach. Hell, Katsudon and Yuuko had all but confirmed that something was up in the way they quietly ignored all his questions. So, whatever.

He’d just ask Chulanont and that American skater about it- he’d followed observed enough of the pig’s career to know whom he spoke to off of the ice. Even if the American didn’t know about it, Chulanont definitely would, and at least one of them had to make it to the final, right? Right. If they were both pathetic enough that they didn’t get till the end he’d just message Chulanont over Instagram.

And after the pig’s disgustingly good performance during his short program, he’d definitely make it till Rostelecom, at the least. Yuri was going to find some way to murder people with the power of his mind if he didn’t.

*

“Yakuza?” Chulanont repeated with a grin, the night before the short program. “I don’t know whom you’ve been speaking to, little Yuri, but have you seen my boy? He wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“That’s not what I asked and you know it,” Yuri grunted, scowl in place.

Chulanont just laughed and waved him off, turning around and walking away. Probably to go spend some time catching up with ‘his boy’. Fucking disgusting, is what it was.

Why the fuck wasn’t anyone willing to take him at his word, damnit. He already knew Yuuri wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless he was going through a bout of self-doubt, or some shit, in which case all bets were off. But Yuri knew he wouldn’t go out of his way to hurt anyone. Not unless they deserved it, anyway.

Or, at least, that’s what he thought till he ran into Victor in the corridor the night after the short skate, red eyed and wet cheeked. He’d been hanging out with Beka, and just going back to his room after Yakov had yelled at him on the phone about curfews for a while. The sight made his brows rise, bemused. Because he had to be seeing things, right.

Well, he thought he was seeing things until Victor hurriedly wiped his eyes and gave him a wide, cheesy and disgustingly fake grin, anyway.

“Ok, what the fuck.” He snapped, making the older man laugh.

“It’s nothing, Yurio. What are you doing outside your room, though? Little kittens should be asleep by now!”

The words made him snarl and aim a punch at Victor’s stomach, but for once, the old man actually caught Yuri’s fist in his hand, the smile fracturing just a bit before he pasted it back in place.

“I’ve had a really long night,” he said, “and I think I need a drink. And you need to sleep. You should get back to your room before you worry Yakov.”

Don’t say that when you look like you’re going to start crying if I leave you and go, Yuri threw at him mentally, but no way in fuck was he going to say it out loud.

“Did the pig finally fess up about being a gangster or some shit?” he snapped instead, just putting it out there, and stopped short when Victor’s hand actually tightened around his wrist, his eyes going wide for a split second before he got them back under control.

Whoa, okay. Not what he’d fucking expected.

“You should get to bed, Yura,” Victor said, and after staring up at him for a few more moments, Yuri gave a slow nod. And backed off.

*

“My dad’s family’s old school yakuza, yeah,” Yuuri said with a bemused smile, the morning after the banquet. Over fucking breakfast, of all things.

Chulanont, who’d dropped in to join them for breakfast along with Giacometti and Beka, made a choking sound.

“Yuuri,” he wailed, sounding heartbroken, and Yuuri started laughing, damn him.

“I knew it!” Yuri declared, vindicated, pumping a fist in the air. And made to jump straight over the table between them when Katsudon turn that razor-like grin his way.

Beka caught him by the hem of his jacket and pulled him back down into his seat. He turned a wounded look on the older teen, and got a single shoulder shrug in response. Which, okay. Okay. He wouldn’t make a scene, damnit.

But it was so damn tempting. He wanted to bash the pig’s face in.

“Yuuri said that the Katsuki clan takes care of Hasetsu,” Victor explained, curled up right against Yuuri’s other side. They traded a pair of disgustingly sappy looks before looking back at him and Yuri just had to bare his teeth in response.

“That doesn’t tell me anything. Don’t scrimp out on the fucking details, Katsudon – I’ve been going crazy for almost a whole damned year!” he snarled, making Yuuri grin.

“Well. It’s not like we really talk about it. What was I supposed to say?”

“Hi, I’m Katsuki Yuuri, Japan’s Ace, and oh, I’m also in the yakuza,” Chulanont suggested sulkily, making Katsudon elbow him. Victor coughed on his other side, hiding a grin of his own, and Yuri groaned, covering his face.

“I was starting to think I wouldn’t find out until I ran into Katsudon fighting delinquents in an alley or some shit. What the fuck. What the fuck,” he mumbled, making nearly everyone at the table muffle their laughter into their fists or shirt sleeves. Except for Victor, who fucking sighed, sounding like a lovestruck American movie actress or something. Why were they so-

“Disgusting,” he groaned into his hands again, and Beka patted him comfortingly on the back.

See? This is why he liked Beka. He wasn’t disgusting. Not like the pig and the old man, or even like fucking Giacometti, who was smirking on Beka’s other side.

“Is that actually what happened? Is that how you found out?”

Yuri stiffened immediately, hands still covering his face, but Victor didn’t even hesitate when he laughed and cracked a joke about always being ready to be rescued by ‘his Yuuri’. When Yuri peered over the tips of his fingers, Katsudon was staring straight back at him, eyes sharp as a naked blade.

Yuri stared back. Because he wasn’t fucking afraid. Not of Katsudon. And es-fucking-specially not when he’d been the one to make Victor cry.

Yuuri eyed him for a moment longer before cracking a wry smile, turning his attention back to what Chulanont was saying beside him. And Yuri didn’t think anyone else had noticed their silent exchange, not until Beka’s fingers tightened on Yuri’s back.

When he looked around, surprised, it was to find that Otabek had gone still, gaze fastened right on Yuuri’s face where he was laughing and flushing at whatever it was Victor was whispering into his ear. And when he looked down at Yuri, his eyes had gone just that slightest bit wide.

Yeah. Yeah. This? This was why he liked Otabek. He wasn’t blind, unlike nearly every other damned person that Yuri could name.

*

“Yuuri didn’t lie when he said that the Katsuki clan protects Hasetsu,” Yuuko said with a smile, when he video-called her to complain about her friend.

“That doesn’t tell me anything. Also, what the hell, do they teach people in Hasetsu to be unassuming or something?”

“Toshiya-san’s family probably owns most of the land in town, now,” she went on, not responding to what Yuri said.

Yuri didn’t even feel miffed about that. What she’d offered up was so much more interesting.

“Wait, what?” he breathed, and she burst into giggles.

“Yes,” she said, “oh, that’s how Takeshi reacted when we were children, when he first moved to Hasetsu with his dad. Yuuri’s family’s loaded. That’s why they were so willing to send him off to study skating abroad without any hesitation. Toshiya-san supported Yuuri all the way through the juniors until Sponsors started approaching him – and that didn’t happen until right before he got into the Senior League.”

Yuri stared at her.

“That- but- The inn! It’s a dump!”

“It’s homey,” she corrected with a grin. “And, anyway, the Katsuki clan was never big on impressing anyone. There’s absolutely no crime in Hasetsu or any of the surrounding towns- they police their territory better than the actual officers do, and even after the smaller onsens lost business, they never took it out on the people who rented their property.”

Yuri choked, because didn’t that mean the Katsuki clan owned-

“They’re good people, Yurio. If a little scary when you piss them off. Yuuri’s like that too, you know,” she concluded, smiling softly at him.

The expression on her face made him want to throw his phone straight at the fucking wall.

But, okay. Okay.

“Tell me more,” he said, and that was that.

*

If you make him cry again-

I won’t.

You better not, Katsudon. Or fuck your badass yakuza rep-

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Yurio.

Yuraaaaaa~ You had best not be talking about me when I’m not there to hear you!

*

What the hell was he supposed to do with these two. Really.

[josephkitchen0]

What Causes Deformed Chicken Eggs and Other Egg Abnormalities?

Egg abnormalities and deformed chicken eggs occur with almost every breed of hen at some point in her egg laying career. Eggs laid by non-commercially bred hens vary considerably in size, shape, and color. People who have a small flock of backyard chickens with several different chicken breeds can learn to recognize eggs from each hen. It’s easier for them to know who’s laying and who isn’t, how often and when, and which hen may be having health issues because of consistent abnormalities. For people like me who have a larger flock,  it’s harder to tell and requires us to separate a suspected hen to determine her laying quality and quantity.

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The Anatomy Of Egg Laying

If you butcher your own birds and any of them are of egg laying age (5 to 7 months for most all breeds), you’ll see the eggs waiting inside her. There’ll be a cluster of little tiny yellow specks that look like grains of sand with small pebble like ones around them, graduating in size, larger and larger. These are the yolks. Have you ever wondered how do chickens lay eggs? When the yolk for the day is ready, it enters the oviduct where it can be fertilized.

Next, the egg white is added, then it receives two membranes that help to keep the nutrients in and to keep its shape. Finally, the shell is put on and the egg moves to just inside her vent. The whole process takes about 24 hours. Now, she’s ready to lay! Boy will she let you know when she’s done it. My whole flock gets excited and cackles for each and every egg, every day. You would think they would be used to doing it and not put on such a show, but it’s a production of cackles and crows for every egg! This is a very basic and simple explanation of the egg production process and somewhere in this straightforward, yet complex process, things happen that cause deformed chicken eggs and egg abnormalities.

Just in way of a reminder, a pullet (a hen under a year old) will lay smaller eggs than she will as she grows and matures into a hen. Of course, age is the first thing that comes to mind since most chicken breeds begin laying between 5 to 6 months of age. As a hen matures, the size of her eggs and the frequency of her laying will increase. Once she begins laying, it usually takes her 7 to 10 weeks to work up to full production. Depending on the breed and the lifestyle of your hen, you can expect her to lay for up to 10 years. The average lifespan of a hen is 14 years. If your main goal is egg production, then you probably wouldn’t want to keep your hen past 3 to 4 years of age as this is the age range she will be most productive. When I have a hen who is unproductive for more than four months out of the year, I cull her. That is of course unless she is special.  

Who’s Laying And Who’s Not

Judging which hen is laying and which isn’t is not an exact science, but there are some signs. Before a hen begins to lay, you will see a yellow color around her vent, eyes and earlobes. After she has been laying for a few months, the yellow in these and her beak will fade slightly. After about six months of laying eggs, her feet, toes, claws and shanks will also fade. When she quits laying, you will see the color come back to these. This is kind of interesting to me since the bright color of her cone and wattles is a surefire sign that she is laying or about to. When she stops laying she will turn pale pink. It seems just the opposite from her other body parts.

Deformed Chicken Eggs and Egg Abnormalities

The most bizarre of the deformed chicken eggs that I’ve ever found in my flock is the shell-less egg. It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, I get a chicken laying soft eggs. As you can see in the photo, it’s perfectly formed down to the protective membrane, but the shell simply didn’t form around the egg. If you reach into the nest for your eggs without looking, it’s a pretty freaky feeling to grab hold of one of these. These types of deformed chicken eggs usually happen in a chicken that is just beginning to lay. I have only had this happen four or five times in all my years of owning chickens.

If you have more than one of these deformed chicken eggs, or find them frequently, be sure you your chicken feed offers a balanced diet and add calcium. Be sure to not eat this egg. You can give it to your dogs or hogs, but not to humans. Since the protective shell didn’t form, it’s very probable that bacteria has gotten through the membrane contaminating the egg.

Another big abnormality is the double yolk eggs. I have to say in my 30-plus years of chicken keeping, I’ve had less than 10 of these. These don’t really count as deformed chicken eggs. This photo was taken a long time ago. I remember taking it because it was the first one I had received from my girls in years and I didn’t know when I would have another one. The double yolked egg is just an egg that has developed two yolks. Kinda like it wanted to be twins! This egg is perfectly safe to eat.

Your eggs may be weirdly shaped. You may have an outcropping on your eggshell. This is just a little extra deposit of calcium like you can see in this photo. Interesting “swirlies” often form in the shell making process.

  Even though I’ve never had one, I’ve heard of having an egg inside an egg. This is caused when an egg gets backed up for some reason and goes through the last production stages twice.

I had this egg from one of my younger hens. It was such a puzzle to me. The egg is cracked almost all the way around, yet the protective coating (called the bloom) sealed the egg.

Not a true abnormality, but worth noting, is blood around the yoke. It’s considered a hereditary characteristic in some chicken breeds. Blood in chicken eggs isn’t an indication of fertilization. This kind of egg is completely edible. If you have a rooster, you may notice a white or slightly discolored spec in your yolk when you crack your egg. Congratulations! You have a fertile egg and given the right opportunity it would’ve become a chick. This egg is edible, which is a good thing because almost all my eggs are fertile. Yep, my guys are on the job. As you can see in this photo, this was the shell-less egg. I cooked it for the dogs.

Of course, if you crack an egg and it smells funny, don’t eat it! It’s good to know how to perform an egg freshness test when in doubt. One of my grossest memories is when I was helping my grandmother, and I use the term “helping” loosely, fix breakfast. She had fried the bacon, which came from their smokehouse and was cooking eggs. She had fried two or three and reached for another. When she cracked it open and plopped it into the hot skillet, there was a half-developed baby chick! Oh boy did it stink! Needless to say, she rushed it out the back door then cleaned the skillet. I remember she said, “That’s what I get for not cracking it into a bowl first.”  She had to explain to me that she had found a nest of eggs and thought she had tested them all for freshness, but that when you’re not sure, you should crack the egg into a bowl first and then use it. She couldn’t have taught me a more memorable lesson. As you can imagine, neither one of us had eggs for breakfast.

What is the most abnormal egg you’ve had in your flock? Have you experienced any of these? I really enjoy that no two eggs are exactly the same. I can tell which breed laid which egg, but not which hen. Can you tell?

Originally published in 2015 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

What Causes Deformed Chicken Eggs and Other Egg Abnormalities? was originally posted by All About Chickens