#or is there a canon clone you think would fit the bill?

[darth-kote]

Clone senator clone senator clone senator clone senat-

[leoruby-draws]

Finding a certain Someone...

One full week of drawings posted, but I'm still not done yet. Cause there's one more after this, something I've been wanting to post for over a year, but first lets go into this post.

There's a certain archetype that I've been wanting to put in the TrWh Outlaw team, and that's the 'Superman' type hero. Someone clearly strong, with powers that can be similar, and give off that certain 'super' vibe. In canon it was Bizzaro, a failed superman clone. He exists in my au, but being an adult was obviously not what I wanted. Perhaps in the future he can join the team tho. There are also a couple of current members that could sorta fit the mold but weren't quite what I was looking for. Like Grant Emerson and Gillian Wahrman for example, Gillian ended up filling a different archetype tho.

Grant esp kinda came close, esp when you factor his older self seen in Sins of Youth. His older self seemed more secure and when his emotions stabilized he could even fly, he really gave off that superman attitude. He never really got there as he actually matured in the comics, if anything his life got shitter so he's still a ways off from this mature ideal. At any rate he didn't quite fit the bill for me, sorry Grant.

Another idea was Lindsey Wah aka Aura, you can find her in Superboy and the Ravers. She had magnetic powers so she could be pretty strong, but I'm not sure if she was strong enough for what I wanted.

She's kinda a party girl but I thought that would make her fun in a way, wanting to both party and help people. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought she didn't quite have that 'spark' with the others that I wanted. In fact, I was kinda thinking she should join the Young Justice team when it forms in my au, she's already friends with Kon through the ravers.

Three random characters here, but I'm gonna focus on Sierra ? aka Matrix II. The other two I can talk about another time. Look at Sierra bothering Linda Danvers, speaking of, her story is super convoluted. Kinda had trouble following it tbh.

Sierra was part of Lex Luthor's pet team, Infinity Inc. II (crazy how you can just buy names rights like that), she proved to be a total coward, but I kinda find coward characters fun in their own way (think of like Usopp form One Piece). There could be a character arc for her, where she learns to become more braver and heroic as she grows. But in the end, I didn't go for her. She didn't have enough fire power for me, I still do like her. Maybe she could ally up with team at another point?

Captain Marvel is a superman expy himself, so having his arch nemesis's sidekick could be something that could work. This hero is Amon Tomaz aka Osiris. I thought the way Amon tried desperately to become a hero but everything was just stacked against him endeared him to me, that struggle to be what he wants to be is something that I think fits him with the Outlaws. Amon came close but I still wanted someone closer to the Superman mythos. He might join the team at a later time or ally up with them.

David's story from World's Finest is so sad, it a genuine tragedy what happens to him, though he does sorta get a happy ending. It's pretty obvious that his story and teenage look is modeled after Jason (almost blatantly so), so it should be expected that he could be what I'm looking for?

I did think about it for a hot second, but if you read World's Finest then you see he starts off in Dick's age group, making him too old for me. I suppose it doesn't matter since World's Finest is elseworld (I think?), but that's what sticks in my head. He came really close too, aw well.

Also I tried to copy Mora's style as best I could, esp tried to copy that :] type of smile he sometimes does. It's a really cute quirk of his work I noticed lol.

This one is more of a joke, having Superboy prime as a candidate but I was never gonna go for that. I don't think he would enjoy being part of my goofy au honestly.

I started getting a little desperate for what I wanted, it felt like my standards were just too high and specific. I even start to go into making oc's to fit what I wanted, like these:

This was a oc created to be a sorta legacy/sidekick for Maxima, who was a kinda a anti-hero (with the hots for Superman). I made her personality more reserved and calm to contrast with Maxima. But still not what I needed, I'd still like for her to exist in my au, maybe as an ally of sorts.

Another oc, Starsha was a character I created years ago, she was a part of fanfic 'idea' where Jason meets an alien girl to be friends with. Separate from the Training Wheels au, and I think she might've been created before all that too. The story for her goes that she was a robot from space that crash landed on earth and Jason has the difficult task of hiding her from her creator and from Bruce. It eventually goes bad and Starsha dies trying to protect Jason (in a explosion, calling forward to Jason's eventual death). She eventually comes back when Jason's older, and is kinda meant to replace Starfire in a new52 style outlaw team.

I thought maybe I could transplant her to my au, Starsha had just about everything I wanted it seemed. But having an oc for my 'superman' just didn't fell right and I though I could just keep looking in the comics. Then!!

Then I did! I found someone perfect!!

And that someone I'm gonna talk about tomorrow!

[webshootersandwingdings]

A look at Carol Danvers & Mar Vell's relationship

In recent years, and even decades, Marvel has tried to paint Carol Danvers and the original Captain Marvel as a lot more blatantly romantic than was ever actually the case while Mar Vell was alive.

Carol Danvers debuted as a supporting roll in the original Captain Marvel's stories. She was distrustful of the duplicitous Walter Lawson, but near instantly attracted to the heroic Captain Mar-Vell. While Marv constantly pledged undying love for Kree sweetheart Una, he often found himself in the arms of a certain blonde Earth-Woman, whom he was "not without feeling for."

While a few kisses were exchanged, nothing more ever happened between the Cape Canaveral Security Chief and the Warrior from another World. It's implied there was nothing more than mutual attraction, even though Yon Rogg did roast Marv for it.

As Mar Vell's adventures take him off-world, Carol no longer shows up in his comics.

Fast forward to the first time Carol and Mar-Vell meet up again after she gains super powers, and a kiss on the lips and a declaration of friendship is where we leave these two.

During some team books, they are occasionally seen standing near one another, but are almost never seen exchanging words.

Then Mar Vell dies. We all know Carol was, quite cruelly, uninformed. It feels like missed opportunity now, looking back, how uninvolved they were with each other. Mar Vell being completely absent through all of the horrendous trauma Marvel put her through, and her not even being considered when writing his swan song.

But then we fast forward to more modern comics. Carol back on Earth after her adventures as Binary.

When Mar Vell is brought back to life, he almost immediately is shown kissing Carol Danvers passionately. This one is interesting because of the way Carol hints at possibly their not being “together” together before all this. But with that kiss? Who knows.

A clone of Mar Vell was obsessed with Carol, a fact that professional Carol life ruiner, Mystique, exploited.

When Carol and Kamala Khan team-up and meet the real Walter Lawson, Mar-Vell is referred to as a boyfriend and the two were “in love”

In The Life of Captain Marvel, a relationship completely foreign to anyone who read the original Mar Vell stories is depicted. Carol and “Lawson” are implied to be in a romantic relationship before he reveals his Kree nature to her.

When Vox Supreme sends a version of Mar Vell out to ensnare Carol, “Mar Vell” acts romantically toward her.

Also, and I’m not counting this because it’s not canon, but they were a couple in the Marvel Superhero Squad show and it’s hilarious.

So, as you can see... There are some discrepancies!

And I probably didn’t even list everything. But it’s very interesting how Carol is used like this for Mar Vell so often when he has other “loves” Marvel could focus on. And while I think Carol’s feelings for Mar Vell were intense in those original stories, later she was written to have the major love of her life be Michael Rossi. But that’s a whole other post right there.

Now, I actually have a perfect solution to these inconsistencies about just what role Mar Vell played in Carol’s romantic past. Instead of making stuff up that doesn't work within preexisting canon the way The Life of Captain Marvel did, Marvel should do a mini series set between Ms. Marvel (1977) #19 and The Death of Captain Marvel. Let's have these two team up on an adventure where they do, explicitly, have a little romance. Let it end with them parting as friends so it doesn’t disrupt anything. That solves everything and we could get more Mar Vell content. I realize the Secret Avengers interactions between these two kind of fit the bill, but it’s still making leaps in their history, in my opinion.

Having their relationship fleshed out more without the complications of clones, shapeshifters, or resurrections would be very nice indeed.

[reconstructwriter]

Had Another Breakdown and Watched Attack of the Clones

And wow, what a B-Movie title but I’m already committed to this terrible life decision so I might as well continue. Got through the Phantom Menace so how much worse can this be?

Warning! Another long post! Also tw for Attack of the Clones shit including genocide and slavery.

The Watto scene: Not only does it double down on Watto as a Jewish stereotype – seriously, WHY?!? – but a scene where a former slave meets their enslaver after ten years of growing up and mystic training with a laser sword? I expected a lot more. Watto should’ve voided his bowels because this has to be Worst Case Scenario for a slaver! At best he was a little ‘nervous friendly’. And Anakin is already well-established as ‘man-child who Loses His Shit at the drop of a hat’. Like dude, where’s your angst and teenage fits now cause boy does this situation fit the bill! But nope, NPC fulfills their NPC duty and off they go.

Fanon Anakin vs Canon Anakin: I was introduced to the former and slowly learned what he’s really like and oh wow is he such a terrible mess of a human being no wonder Mace Windu noped his training. His Fascist statement is extra YIKES for Padme since she’s one of those Senators who’d be forced to agree. The first temper tantrum alone sounded way out of line given the relatively professional setting, let alone the creepy boundary-breaking stare. The ‘I’ve been dreaming about you for ten years’, the ‘my feelings are suffering’ speech – also taking place with him in shadow for extra broody effect. And his first genocide (I can’t believe we’re already keeping track here!) And he KNOWS BETTER is the worst thing. He admits, out loud, that he knows better and still does the thing Padme why did you say yes to this mess?

Padme being mind controlled: a fairly common fan theory to answer the above question, but in-movie Padme straight up asks Anakin if he will use a mind-trick on her (in the context of a 20 questions game so not serious). Anakin’s response is ‘mind tricks only work on the weak minded’. On the one hand, implies Padme is too strong-willed for Anakin to influence through the Force – but on the other hand this also suggests to me that he would if he could!?!?

Though Anakin was the one to suggest keeping the relationship a secret, which did surprise me so no guilting Padme about ‘wanting a marriage like a free man’ like I thought. Padme is the one who says she won’t live a lie. Good to know for future reference.

Are droids sentient or not? Dex outright says droids can’t think but I honestly don’t know if this is in-universe how droids work or if Dex is having a Cleigg-on-Tusken-People moment.

Jedi are Arrogant? Lots of people have cited Madame Nu’s confidence in her archive’s integrity as evidence the Jedi are arrogant and horrible justification of Sith crimes follows. But Obi Wan thinks there’s something more going on and Yoda encourages everyone to help find his lost planet in one of the only nods to ‘funny trickster teacher Yoda’ we get in the movie. To me this seems a hint that the Jedi are unprepared for betrayal from within. Which Dooku’s, Anakin’s and the Clones’ mind-controlled betrayals all blindside the Jedi Order.

Jango: I’ve been torn about him since I learned about him. On the one hand, understandable vengeance motive (per legends anyway), on the other hand selling his own kids into slavery and probably knowing something about the chips and genocide order because I can’t otherwise imagine the legends version assisting the Jedi.

Jango does state in-movie ‘they’ll do their job well’ in a way that sounds just a bit ominous but I don’t know if he’s being accidentally vague or deliberately giving a subtle hint he knows about the Jedi betrayal plan. If this version is just in it for Boba and the money and doesn’t have the motive of his Legends counterpart, why would the Sith ever need to tell him? Dunno, but I was surprised to not hear him say anything derogatory about his clones. I mean he’s still selling his children into slavery in a way George Lucas doesn’t grok but he doesn’t actively deride them like I’ve read in fanfic. It’s a low bar but not as low as Anakin’s.

Made for the Jedi? So the Kaminoians confirm the clone army is specifically made for the Republic but commissioned by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas. Glad the movies cleared that up.

Scene Contrast: Kamino is Dark and Stormy with creepy sterile whiteness everywhere in complete contrast to Naboo’s sunny and lush green paradise. The clone army is grown and trained in creepy white lab while the robotic army built in a dark but organic underground hive. Obi Wan sneaks onto Geonosis through the light of day to investigate galactic concerns. Anakin on Tattooine stalks the Tusken people in the dark of night for personal stakes.

The (Other) Horribly Racist Cliché: Speaking of which, I get we’re supposed to assume Shmi was abducted but, um, Cleigg isn’t even a witness – like I initially thought – but is guessing abduction based on tracks in the desert sand and his incredibly racist bias. Are we supposed to doubt every word out of his mouth? If Shmi had been in a bed (even tied) I’d have assumed patient before prisoner.

Anakin’s Genocide: He goes off to save Shmi as ominous music plays and the suns go down, at which point he doesn’t just walk the fascist talk and do baby-Vader’s first genocide but also foreshadows his betrayal and genocide of the Jedi! Which really reinforces the Sith/Nazi and Jedi/Jewish parallel here – Hitler and the Nazis got their Holocaust ideas from White America’s treatment of our native and PoC counterparts. So too does Anakin the future Sith start his genocidal tendencies with the Native people of Tattooine.

But nobody in-universe seems to get that?!? Blorbo!Anakin authors recognize that thar was some FUCKED UP SHIT!!! (Usually by pretending it didn’t happen or re-writing the scene into something less Moral Event Horizon.) Padme’s response would fit better Anakin murdering the literally disarmed Dooku – morally wrong, against the Jedi Code but somewhat understandable but genocide? Cleigg is narratively supposed to be kind and sympathetic but he practically sent a demon after people who’s land and water he’s stealing! The person acting most realistically is the perpetrator and all Anakin admits (again) is he’s a Jedi and therefore should be better. But this still feels like he should have come back to Padme yellow-eyed and Dark Sided!

Once again, George Lucas’ racism screws up the story he’s trying to tell. Ugh. Okay, enough movie time for now. Sorry I’m a hopeless binger despite my friends and kitties’ best efforts.

[eelfuneral]

Oh man, I’m already theorizing. Red Skull led HYDRA, which experimented on humans, and something fuck-y definitely happened to Clone X. To top it off, the episode is called Metamorphosis, which would work well for an episode about human experimentation. Old Canon had the Phase 0 Dark Troopers, which were “repurposed” clones (by force, and more extensively even than Echo) with cybernetic organs and limbs. I’m thinking that New Canon might be doing a version of this with bonus mind control. Nala Se seems to be up to something, and we know that the Techno Union is likely still around to share notes about neural interfaces similar to the one that they tried on Echo.

Clone X fits the bill for a new “experimental” procedure for clones far too well, and since the clones age faster than other people, the incentive to get rid of their aging organs is absolutely there for the Empire. That would make Riyo’s “what happens when you get too old to fight?” line particularly chilling.

Oh this vague tweet is early AND ominous. I wonder if it has something to do with Clone X. One goes down, two more assassins are made or something. (Alternatively, two people to replace Rampart)

[adiduck]

📓

Oooookay here we go! What first...

...You know what? For you, Glimmer, I'mma talk about the one (1) nsfw fic I have partially planned. It's codywan, in case anyone's interested in that. Under a cut because. Well!

The war is over! How the war is over is unimportant (I know, and the canon divergence happens at Umbara, but that's a whole different fic we're not talking about right now). What's important is Palpatine is dead, the o66 went out but was only PARTIALLY successful, the clones are all currently dechipped, and in the Senate a bill for Clone Rights has made it to Committee. As far as the more conservative senators are concerned, it can die there.

Cody has been selected to be interviewed as the Marshal Commander of the Third Systems Army and therefore a natural representative for the clones of the GAR. He's been working on this Bill since its inception with a few allies in the Senate, including Chancellor Organa. The Jedi, due to a NUMBER of... shall we say obvious conflicts, are not involved (publicly, we'll get to that). He has his interview, and it goes, shall we say... about as poorly as they expected.

Cody's furious, full of all this pent-up frustration at this situation, at the people who refuse to look at him and see a person, at all the work he has put into this stupid bill and the fact that it may just lead to NOTHING, his brothers and himself stuck in a limbo where they aren't even PEOPLE under the law of the land, trapped in a contract with the Republic they didn't even sign, and who gets to DECIDE what makes a person anyway, why is it these old stuffy assholes who have never, ever had to question whether they would be considered ALIVE under the law, who have had the natural opportunities and experiences that denote their developmental age and meanwhile, MEANWHILE--

Cody goes to a bar. While he is at the bar, a random young man approaches him and shoots his shot.

It ends in the back of the bar with Cody getting the first handjob he has ever received.

It's... fine? Cody isn't really sure what the POINT is, honestly, some of his brothers go NUTS for sex but he's never really had time, though obviously he's been curious--

He goes back to the horrible little set of rooms in the GAR barracks he's been assigned as befitting his rank, and sees there's a call from Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, of course, is off doing relief work off-world, since the Jedi are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE INVOLVED. Obi-Wan, of course, is using his off-hours to call Cody up and help anyway. Obi-Wan wants to know how the interview went.

Cody's out of sorts during the call, to the point Obi-Wan notices. Not wanting to tell Obi-Wan about this experience and not QUITE sure why, Cody blames his mood on the interview, and when they end the call, Cody's feeling restless, ill-fitting in his own skin and not sure why.

He keeps thinking about the hand job, which wasn't THAT bad he supposes. Maybe he just didn't really... control for the right variables? Maybe that guy just wasn't very good at this. Maybe Cody needs to try again, except maybe he can do a better job planning it out so he can actually... decide if he likes it...

Cody sits down and starts doing some research.

Cody makes a list.

Cody makes an action plan.

The story goes from there.

[kiwikipedia]

would love to hear your thoughts on the other tcw or whichever voices 👀

also have to agree that the did cin dirty in the show, i think they used dbb actually ajsbhdbssj

ok ok ok ok

so Cin's actually voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, who actually is pretty close to Nick Gillard's actual voice and accent: See here [Downes in TCW] vs [Gillard in RotS Interview]

Now before, I mentioned like half a year ago that i personally like the voice for the Yellow Kyber in Galaxy's Edge's holocron see [here]— but apparently, this guy has a name and its Kolloma Ree and he's my son now, thanks.

ANYWAYS!!

Keeping with my trend of redesigning Cin Drallig, my first pick for a new voice for him would be Tony Leung because a.) it fits the redesign (because thats him!! or my attempts at baseing it off of him) and b.) well, it fits. The tone and the vibes are just the best.

I think the mid-low register range that Tony Leung has works best, so around that range for any other voice actors but I cant think of any more off the top of my head right now. Perhaps Ryōtarō Okiayu or Ray Chase who both voice Vlad III in Fate/Apocrypha and Grand Order (And Extella for Okiayu? I think)

I have so many words about using fucking James Arnold Taylor for fucking Plo Koon though. Beppi asked me about it before and i just AAAAAAAAA

I hate it. So much. I understand why they did it, but In my opinion, if you're going to have an important reoccouring character like Plo Koon dont use a repeat voice actor with a voice modifier and a slightly lower pitch.

I have a lot of options that I mentioned before but essentially my two top picks are literally any voice that Jouji Nakata has done though im very partial to his (English) Kotomine Kirei and King Hassan voices, and Kunihio Yasui's Li Shuwen Lancer. Crispen Freeman's English Dub of King Hassan and Alucard (who is also played by Nakata lmao) are also very good options. You can find more on my thoughts for Plo Koon [Here]

obviously, Temura Morrison is forever the voice of the Clones, mhm!

I did actually like Phil Lamar as Kit Fisto though! I thought it was very well done, I wouldn't change much there. Loved the accent fhdjhfjd

I do think its bullshit that Tholme's dead in TCW so I hand him Bill Butts' work as Kyosuke Hori

DBB is fine for Saesee Tiin, he did a good job there, but I still really adore TC Carson's work as him from the 03 series more. You really cannot beat the "It's time to get a new one" from that series.

For most of the TCW i actually dont mind, but also since so many of my favorites are not canon / dont speak at all its a bit tough. Like Tholme here are some takes for some of my others:

The Grand Inquisitor (Baby ver): Lucien Dodge as Lord El Melloi II (Obvs, Jason Isaacs did a fantastic job but Dodge sounds a bit younger than Isaacs and we do know that TCW was a good few years before Rebels. I very much do not like the Kenobi version though fhjdhfjd)

Sha Koon (English ver): Genevieve Simmons as Bort (I did her and Bultar Swan's JP Dub voices [here] same with Bene's !!)

Voolvif Monn: Kaji Tang as Kouen Ren

Oppo Rancisis: I think his voice was pretty OK in the 03 series, but I do like Motomu Kiyokawa's Walter C. Dornez from the original Hellsing Ultimate Sub

AND I THINK FILONI SHOULD HAND OVER EMBO TO SOMEONE ELSE THO HFJDHFJDHFD NO MORE FELONY COWBOY IN MY HOUSE

I also have OC voice claims/HCs if you're intersested lmao

[jebiknights]

(Clone Anakin anon again lol)

Yeah I think I read a trans Anakin fic with him telling the 501st he was a clone a while back!

I actually started thinking of this clone thing for a completely different headcannon (my true canon is just my headcannons and “clones find out about how old Anakin was when palps took him to a bar, and suddenly the republic needed a new chancellor”) which was that slaves were given id numbers, kinda like the clones and their numbers.

Cuz I always imagined Anakin meeting a clone and then introducing themselves as CT-something or CC-something, and him asking for their names and someone mentions that their just clones and that it doesn’t matter (can be a clone who says this or a nat-born officer, both fit into my vision) so Anakin is just like “Fine! If their CT-number and CC-number then I’m -some two letters and numbers- (I haven’t figured out a good combination of words and numbers yet)!“ and yeah no Anakin would not be happy with the kaminoans, and I think he would actively try to give the clones everything they’ve ever been denied by the cloners - Obi-wan has to intervene when Anakin actually does something that could end badly, but otherwise he’s just turning a blind eye and drinking his tea.

I also like to think that after the war and the clone rights bill gets brought up he’s like “This is my destiny, I was BORN for this” and the proceed to just use himself as an argument. “They shouldn’t have rights! There clones!” “Their just copycats, I did it first and frankly? I think I did it better” “Well…well they weren’t born with a name! Their just numbers!” “Once again, been their done that” “They were made to fight!” “Hmm, well I wasn’t made for war, but I was made to serve a purpose I had no choice in, so good enough ig”

So it’s all like “Well if you deny their rights then your saying that I’m also not a person. You can’t have one thing without the other, you don’t get to pick and choose when it comes to sentient life” and i think the public will side with the hero with no fear (war time popularity has to be good for something at least!)

Yeah! I think there are a lot of interesting legal ramifications that could go into a Clone Anakin story. It always drives me a little nuts that outside of the Clone Wars Novels we don't get to see much affect of the fact that Anakin grew up in slavery either. Like i can pick apart some like world views Anakin has and point to his childhood as the source, but otherwise things you'd think he'd react to, he doesn't! It's so frustrating tbh.

Also man it'd be so much fun to just unleash Anakin into a political arena or onto the Kaminoans 😂 You'd hope the people would side with him but aside from Obi Wan and Anakin the war was pretty good propaganda against the Jedi for some reason smdh.

[talkcloneshipstome]

For the character ask: let's go with Echo

This is so late, I'm sorry!!

1. Sexuality headcanon

Hmm... Very rarely to a really sit down to think about characters' sexualities. But I feel like Echo strikes me as bisexual or pan. And in either sense, his experience of attraction to others would be the same, it would just depend on how he would prefer to identify. In my mind, he leans more towards pan.

2. OTP

Fives. Forever and always.

3. Brotp

I think Rex fits the bill for Echo. The Domino ARCs are so close with their captain, Rex just feels like the natural person for Echo to attach to.

4. Notp

Honestly, I don't really have a Notp for Echo. Or anyone, really. There are a list of characters that I don't like personally and would never want to ship anyone with, but I wouldn't really count that as a Notp.

5. First headcanon that pops into my head

Echo in sweaters. Cool weather, changing leaves, mugs of something warm to drink. And cuddles, lots of cuddles (from Fives, *cough cough*). As an aside, this isn't my general impression of Echo, literally just the thing I thought of first.

6. Favorite line from this character

Oh, okay. Hang on. Gotta do some digging. My brain doesn't store random lines from characters very often, lol. Alright, I've got it! It's a tie between these two moments:

Trace: "Is there an echo in here?" Echo: "Yes." T: "What?" E: "I'm Echo."

And

*Hevy blows up Rishi Station* Echo: "Hevy always did hate that place."

7. One way in which I relate to this character

I'm... not sure. I think I don't necessarily relate to Echo, but more that I just find him and his story inherently appealing. This is true for all the clones, of course, but Echo is one of our more prominent characters, especially with TBB out now. I just really enjoy his attitude and sass, which there is more of than I think we remember sometimes. It's easy to let Fives fall into that role, whereas canonically, it was Echo who fit that bill more often than not.

8. Thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

I actively avoid and try not to think about those moments in shows that cause me second hand embarrassment. That stuff can be very squicky for me, regardless of the character or scenario. I find those types of scenes exceptionally hard to watch and usually won't, actually. So this one I'm just gonna leave here.

9. Cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Uhm... neither? I really wouldn't count him as a problematic fave, and he certainly isn't a cinnamon roll, lol. That doesn't change the fact that I will continue to write him as a cinnamon roll in all my fics, hahaha

If you would like to play the game with me, my asks are open! Here is a link to the headcanon ask game. Send me a character, and I'll tell you my headcanons about them.

[karlyanalora]

The Waste: Another Facet of the Clone Tragedy

So we're going to start this TED talk with the much debated question of exactly how many clones there were by war's end. I'm going with one of Wookiepedia's many interpretations of that line in the Attack of the Clones: 200,000 units ready with another 1 million in process.

I'm going with a unit as one of those squares of troops shown on Kamino, which is 624 men. Taking into account Legends, we have the six Nulls and 100 Alphas before the first batch of regs. Also the gestation period would be about half of a human's, so I rounded it a bit to four months because I think the Kaminoins would like to fit in three batches a year.

With that info, and the Alphas, Nulls, Cody's batch, and Rex's batch all being ready for combat by Genosis, we come to two conclusions: the age of combat readiness is 9 standard (Rex's age as the last batch) and that a batch is 100,000 units and 62,400,000 men.

I did a little excel work:

There were approximately forty batches by war's end. That's 2,496,000,000 clones. Now we saw Dogma and Tup looked younger than the other troopers. We also know earlier that Palpatine passed a bill for 5 million more clones. Now Kamino couldn't pump out those numbers, especially not in time to make a difference. I figure Palps knew that and just wanted more clones on the field for Order 66. In order to comply I figure they'd start pushing out two batches instead of one out every four months onto the field.

This is shown on the sheet by batches deployed at the same time highlighted in the same color. I tried to place that change around the time the bill was passed and placed Dogma as best I could in the canon timeline. The red jagged line represents age in months at deployment. The yellow line represents the cutoff age of when you just can't shove kids onto the battlefield. Orange stands for the border of two young for slave labor. Brown for those who can't walk.

15 full batches may have seen combat. Nine batches could have become slaves when Kamino fell. A few of one batch still embryo could have been sold to science. But what of the ten batches too small for any kind of work? What of the 3 batches that aren't mobile yet?

We know the Empire used slaves. Seems like they had a pretty good force of children and teens to start. Others clone cadets used for "science". But oh the waste! All those lives lost in peacetime so less than half could be used to kill the Jedi.

Now, this is purely speculative, but I thought someone might enjoy the numbers.

[mira--mira]

One obvious for the ask game. The main protagonist; Naruto Uzumaki and Izuku Midoriya.

@shiryusamarkanda it’s so nice to hear from you again! <3 

I totally didn’t forget to post this and had it fully finished in my drafts for days...totally. 

Naruto

What I love about them:

Naruto's a bratty kid who’s not afraid to speak up and challenge something he thinks is "wrong". This, of course, is part 1 Naruto. I actually like when he's a bit insensitive without being explicitly malicious bc its very fitting for his background/how he grew up but also gives him a clear path forward as he learns how to work as a team/starts to grow. It wasn’t exactly a smart move, but I really liked how he continued to challenge Zabuza in the Wave Arc saying “he’s still my enemy” after Kakashi told him to back off. This is all good and strong characterization that, to me, was more often endearing than it wasn’t. Naruto had goals and a purpose and in early Naruto that was still clear.

What I hate about them:

Part 2 (Shippuden) Naruto. There’s a lot that goes into this but the core deviation is getting away from the underdog story. In Shippuden Naruto is the son of the 4th, the Child of Prophecy, a reincarnation of the Sage of Six Path’s kid, makes friends with Kurama, and has the most OP power of the them all: Talk no Jutsu. What makes all of this even worse is Naruto went from a loveable bratty kid to an insufferable messiah figure. To be “perfect” his natural personality is shorn down until he’s only allowed occasional “stupid” mistakes rather than mistakes that emerge from his characterization. This also makes his ideological “wins” with villains...completely meaningless. Shippuden Naruto doesn’t really...have beliefs. He wants to be hokage and bring Sasuke back to the village. “Being hokage” was fine as a kid but I expected the progression into shippuden to be “what kind of hokage do I want to be?” This seemed natural bc we get in the Wave arc Naruto pushing against “what a shinobi is supposed to be: a tool” from Haku and declaring he’d make his own ninja way. Flashforward to the chunin arcs: hates Orochimaru for messing with Sasuke (esp when he eventually leaves to join him) and Neji for treating Hinata the way he did until he learned more about the Hyuga before declaring it wasn’t fair and you had to fight against fate and destiny. Tsunade’s arc was more about reemphasizing the village was something worth protecting and the Sasuke retrieval arc, while focused on Sasuke, at least kept up this theme. But these moments of growth are only alluded to in shippuden and by the time the war arc and ending come around...nothing changes. Naruto didn’t upset the status quo, he only maintained it. And once that ending was established it was a lot easier to go back and pick out exactly when his characterization started to fall through and the weird messiah figure took over instead. Part of this, imo, is the focus of his ultimate goal being “bring Sasuke back to the village” rather than understand what Sasuke is doing/why he’s doing it and then deciding to help him or stop him. 

Favorite Moment/Quote:

“You’re cute when you’re chubby” [in reference to the frog purse] 

I really love the quiet moments Naruto has and watching him live out his daily life. The frog purse is absolutely adorable and I love seeing it crop up time and time again. A close second is when Gai kicks Jiraiya in the face and, a short time later, offers Naruto the green tracksuit which he’s appreciative of. 

What I would like to see more focus on:

In Part 2 Naruto having a long-term goal alongside bringing Sasuke back to the village or trying to seriously think about why Sasuke does what he does and how that would potentially affect the plot. If I could go back to the very start, keeping the actual heart and intent of an underdog ninja story rather than everything turning into superpowered mecha/kaiju battles and aliens from space this is the big point that I’d want to address. In general, I really like fics that focus on training and give him a range of jutsu besides spamming shadow clones and rasengan variants. I’ve said this before, but if Naruto really wants to keep the “number 1 unpredictable ninja” moniker, learning a variety of small, diverse jutsu and using them in interesting/creative ways would be the way to go rather than spamming the aforementioned two. I also really like fics that buckle down and just go ham and create their own variety of jutsu, especially if it’s small practical jutsu rather than the latest and greatest OP Power #839281 kind of jutsu. 

What I would like to see less focus on:

The messiah figure. Talk no Jutsu. The obsession with having a morally pure hero in a world that routinely employed child soldiers and put them in war. I understand Naruto was a shonen manga first and foremost but like...this was the setting/world Kishimoto decided on having. However, I will say some fics take it to far on the other extreme for my taste, creating a edgy nihilistic Naruto that hates everyone and everything. 

Favorite pairing with:

Uhh...I don’t actually have a strong feeling for this one LOL. The most I’ve read has been SasuNaru (Sasuke x Naruto) because I’ve found really interesting set-ups. I like the ship and it does have a decent amount of backing in canon but it’s the little moments (or my ability to see possible little moments) that really make or break a ship for me. SasuNaru is all Big Declarations and I struggle to see how they’d actually settle down post Shippuden time into something sustainable. My favorite iterations of the ship is focused when they’re genin age and have a better relationship...but then I recognize that this is getting closer and closer to Hashimada. The other big things I run into with shipping Naruto with Sasuke is 1. Sasuke needs a shit ton of therapy/willingness to process his family related trauma and 2. Naruto needs a good support network/family outside of a romantic partner because it personally makes me uncomfortable to read ‘you’re my one and only’ (here being: I have no other friends, family, loved ones outside of you). It’s a ship that can work but it’s not my personal OTP.  

Favorite friendship:

Canon/OoT - Naruto & Sakura

I do have a softspot for fics where Naruto realizes his crush on Sakura is actually a desire to have friends/someone to care about him and then they do become close. In canon Sasuke was clearly the favorite of Kakashi (if chunin arc is kept the same/similar and he takes him away for the month to train) I really like Naruto and Sakura sticking together and trying to help each other. They’re both loud and can wind each other up but Naruto can help Sakura relax a bit from her rigid view of herself and she can help keep him on track/encourage him. 

NOTP:

Again, no real strong opinions here. Probably harems? I remember seeing a lot of those a couple years ago and I fundamentally dislike the harem so it will never be ‘done well’ to my personal taste. 

Favorite headcanon:

Naruto is smart, he just needs things to be explained in a way he can understand. 

I’m not a fan of ‘he’s the smartest person in the entire world’ trope but Naruto is creative, he created the oiroke jutsu before he graduated to genin and has a lot of stubborn determination. He’s just really bad at typical ‘book learning’ and traditional testing and he’s not a genius/prodigy like Sasuke or Neji.

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Read line for BNHA manga spoilers

Izuku

What I love about them:

He’s such a smart kid and while he’s unsure/insecure about himself he still does his best. Honestly the premise of BNHA is amazing and I was so excited to watch this little quirky (heh) boy do his best and outthink heroes, utilizing his intelligence and knowledge of quirks. I really love early Izuku and how he has to approach situations from a different angle bc he grew up quirkless/can’t properly handle OFA. The sports festival arc remains one of my personal favorites and really showed his ingenuity. I also really love that Izuku is openly emotional, he cries, he gets super happy about things, he’s angry, he’s sad, etc.  

What I hate about them:

Why do stories insist on calling themselves “underdogs” when for a majority of the time, they’re not? Or not as much as they would be from the original premise? Look, TDP came about exactly bc BNHA was billed as ‘quirkless boy becomes number 1 hero’ it changed rapidly into ‘Izuku gets the strongest quirk but can’t control it’ and while I was...disappointed with that, it happened so quickly I wasn’t really upset. Fast forward to apparently OFA has...what seven(?) quirks inside it and I just...it’s frustrating. Even more the longer we go the more Izuku strays away from a character that is forced to use his intelligence and creatively outthink his opponents and instead becomes...I just have to hit him harder! The Muscular fight already inched towards this but the Overhaul fight just felt like Super Shonen Smack-down 728329. Which, isn’t an inherent problem, it just doesn’t match up to the expectations I had about BNHA I had at the start and how I hoped the series would go. For a character trait that I hate: Izuku is stupidly self-sacrificing. It makes sense with his character but he shoots beyond what is safe and reasonable and I wish there would be more internal emphasis on the question “is it better to save one person today if it meant I couldn’t save ten people tomorrow?” I think he’d choose the former or forsake the question altogether (we touched briefly on this during the overhaul arc with Eri) but I think it’s a serious question needs to be touched on (or I just need to go back and rewatch things again LOL) 

Favorite Moment/Quote:

See entire sports festival arc. I don’t really have a favorite moment because I love the entire arc and we get so much out of it. 

What I would like to see more focus on:

Quirkless Izuku. There’s already a lot of fics, but I really do love them. It deviates a bit, but I do like the creativity of giving Izuku his own unique quirk and then exploring what he can do with that/how it changes canon. Really I want Izuku to keep his original characterization and not trade his smarts for more punching power or deus ex machinas for quirks hidden inside of OFA. If OFA!Izuku is kept, I like story ideas where he still has to rely on means outside of his quirk. Preferably this is isn’t because he injuries himself so much, but I like toying with the idea that Izuku never gets OFA to All Might’s level so he really does have to make the quirk his own and still rely heavily on his intelligence and quirk journals to become the number 1. 

What I would like to see less focus on:

Quirks hidden inside OFA. Strength should have been enough, it was already billed as the most powerful quirk of all. I know this is a common theme for shonen stories, and I don’t mean to harp specifically on Izuku, but again the premise of BNHA was an underdog story. 

Favorite pairing with:

Tododeku (Todoroki Shouto x Midoriya Izuku) 

Friends to lover and battle couples lads, I am weak to them. I like the contrast between their personalities as well as origins (Shouto being the number 2′s (now 1) kid and Izuku from a quiet civilian background). At the end of the sports festival arc both of them are extremely well characterized and it’s easy for me to imagine how their relationship progresses from there and how they can support each other and help each other grow. It’s a very sweet and wholesome ship the way I write and read it and it’s v cute.

Favorite friendship:

Canon- Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochaco & Iida Tenya

I really like the core trio and think their interactions are really sweet. They balance each other out well and their friendship was immediately believable to me. I also like later when Tsuyu and Shouto start to get included in the group and out of the “main” core friends I’m endlessly entertained whenever Izuku and Tokoyami interact with one another. (This is also because I love my bird son, but you know.)

TDP - Midoriya Izuku & Ashido Mina or Midoriya Izuku & Hatsume Mei

Really, I love all of TDP’s kiddos interactions. Their chemistry is one of my favorite things about the fic and all the villain school kiddos meshed really well and had hilarious interactions. Mina and Mei are my faves but just barely. Mina came out of left field for the fic but she plays a similar role that Ochaco does in canon as a usual source of positivity (but unlike Ochaco with additional chaos). She’s Izuku’s first real friend even before starting HIVVE and wouldn’t hesitate to call Izuku her cousin as she views him as family. In return, Mina’s someone Izuku can completely count and depend on if necessary. Mei is...Mei. Izuku is her best “useful customer” and it’s actually terrifying how similar their thoughts are, just Mei has an (un)healthy dose of Hazmat’s insanity and her own business acumen added into the mix. They have slightly different fields of interest but are intellectual equals that work well together and that’s something new to both of them.

NOTP:

Bakudeku (Bakugo Katsuki x Midoriya Izuku)

It’s unhealthy. Unless it’s an AU that changes what the start of their relationship is like, Bakugo and Izuku will always have a toxic friendship to me and I can’t ever see them in a healthy relationship. Both of them have a lot to learn and I am of the opinion that Bakugo should get the opportunity to grow and become a good person and leave behind his past as a bully. However, I’m also of the opinion that no matter how good of a person a bully becomes their victim is never required to absolve them of past wrongdoings. Izuku and Bakugo were friends once, their relationship turned toxic, and now it’s in the interest of both of them to grow apart from one another. I even hesitate to really say they’ll be friends again because the early characterization of their relationship was so imbalanced to me, but for the right author and the right work I may see them being on good terms. It’s still a romantic relationship that I dislike. 

Favorite headcanon:

Crack headcanon? Izuku does have a natural quirk, the force of his tears is clearly superpowered 😂 Regular headcanon, (that is canon in TDP and kindaaa in regular canon(?)) when Izuku gets really engrossed in a super stressful fight he focuses on what will work rather than what is moral. It has...mixed results. 

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For the ask game. 

[anakinnaberrie]

tagged by @bilyrusso​. thank you! :)

1. Why did you choose your url?

because thats his mommy.... also i wanted something sw canon-adjacent so this fits the bill

2. Any side blogs?

my spn cringe is on @presidentbidean and my mostly quiet anime blog is @lyonvastla. i’m considering starting a resource hub too but that would just be me reblogging tutorials that i keep misplacing so i doubt i’d boost the url

3. How long have you been on tumblr?

ten years....

4. Do you have a queue tag?

nope! my blog runs on queue so it would defeat the point. if anything i should make a tag for when im actually online

5. Why did you start your blog?

tragically it was because a fanfic author i really liked had an account and would chat with readers and i was like oh fuck yeah i want in on this. cringe in retrospect

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

well after [redacted] i wanted to disengage with my ah themed blog header/icon/sidebar asap so i very quickly whipped one up with ahsoka because i was watching clone wars at the time. i keep telling myself today is the day i’ll change it and yet

7. Why did you choose your header?

again, had to rebrand on a short turn around, and its just a very nice moment from the episode. also its blue so my icon kinda matches

8. What post of yours has the most notes?

unfortunately it is this freeboot of the rt podcast which isn’t even something i made, i just trimmed the video in movie maker. however as for edits it’s this

9. How many mutuals do you have?

literally no idea. at least 5.

10. How many followers do you have?

2732

11. How many blogs do you follow?

527, but in my defense i’d say 300 are entirely inactive accounts i simply am too lazy to go unfollow

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

oh for sure

13. How often do use Tumblr a day?

depending on my busy to boredom level it is anywhere from two quick activity/tags checks in the morning and before bed to mindless hours of scrolling

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog?

it was all on anon but. yes probably several people. truly i had a big storm coming

15. How do you feel about ‘you need to reblog’ posts?

i ignore all of those mostly unless its a reblog gifmakers post which i will occasionally reblog. i am indifferent i simply don’t reblog many text posts

16. Do you like tag games?

yeah! theyre fun

17. Do you like ask games?

sure! i really don’t reblog many though because im normally never on

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

they are most definitely all more famous than me. however ret has been having a viral tumblr post about once a week so we will go with them

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

i do not. its not you all, it’s me

tagging anyone who’s interested!

[homespork-review]

HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 3

TW: """funny""" sexual and physical assault of a child by another child, extreme bullying, extreme ableism, a very brief discussion of shipping characters outside their canon sexuality.

CHEL: We get some implications of the part of troll culture we ended on last time when a slightly baffled-looking Nepeta, watching through the viewport, updates her SHIPPING WALL. Instead of hearts, some of the hypothetical pairings she’s painted are marked with diamonds. What this means will be explained shortly.

I can’t help but feel it’s slightly creepy to hypothetically matchmake your own friends, but I’m pretty sure the other trolls know at least that the shipping wall exists if not exactly which ships they’re in, and they do live in a society in which it’s stated later that mating is mandatory, so it would indeed be helpful to have at least emergency-doable matchmaking done well in advance and they might appreciate the help.

I’d like to take a moment to note a ship at the bottom row, left of centre; GA/Tavros. Hussie, on his Formspring, later said that GA was “obviously” a lesbian, or anyway was only interested in women, which doesn’t have a specific term for it in troll culture. It’s actually hard to tell going by what’s shown in canon, because she only displays specific interest in girls except for in a complicated case we’ll discuss later, but trolls are supposed to be bi-normative, plus it’s not like the male selection here is particularly inspiring, so, yeah, the evidence we actually see isn't conclusively "obvious". The fandom, knowing this, systematically harass anyone who even muses vaguely about the possibility of shipping her with a boy, even if they don't know about that Word of God. This is why I’m wondering whether the trolls knew about the shipping wall, because if they did, we can presume GA didn’t care. For the record, I’m sex-repulsed ace and have in fact written about.my own imaginary persona fucking (admittedly fucking an opposite sex clone of herself, it was a complicated injoke) and my reaction to someone else writing it would depend on context and reason, so I can imagine her reacting similarly, but not everyone would. A similar thing with a canonically gay male character explicitly on-screen not caring about hypothetical shipping of himself with girls comes up much later; he’s not a troll, but his upbringing was troll-influenced (long story).

BRIGHT: Harassing people over the ships they make content for always baffles me. It’s not like fanart/fanfic for a ship which contradicts canon has any effect on the canon, and playing around with character dynamics (often in a pornographic manner) is a major part of fanfic.

CHEL: On top of all this, gender and sexuality are really shaky concepts to even try to apply to a species which reproduces hermaphroditically. On this side of the fourth wall it’s obviously because Hussie is a not-very-reflective cisgender heterosexual man, and didn’t think about it any further than “girls wear skirts, right?” Plenty of people fanwank up possibilities for how it could happen on the other side. I think we may have to make a “What The Fuck Is Alternian Biology And Sociology” post or two separate from the sporking at the very end.

Discourse discussion over! Next page, we see some of the relevant terminology used in troll culture, though we still don’t get any explanation of what any of the words actually mean, which is a tad annoying for new readers. The context is a discussion between Karkat and Vriska about getting her into the game.

BRIGHT: Specifically, Karkat wants Vriska to get Tavros into the game, leading to this exchange…

CG: WHY DO YOU EVEN HATE HIM, IT'S FUCKING RIDICULOUS. CG: IF ANYTHING YOU SHOULD PITY HIM. CG: ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PARALYZED HIM. AG: I know. I don't really understand it. AG: It's just a really special kind of h8! It never goes away and it doesn't make a lot of sense. CG: THIS IS KIND OF A WEIRD TIME TO BE CONFIDING IN ME ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OF BLACK ROMANCE BUT OK. AG: Oh god, what? CG: I MEAN IF YOU'RE REALLY IMPLYING TAVROS IS YOUR KISMESIS I THINK YOU'RE BRAYING UP THE WRONG FROND NUB. CG: BOTH PARTIES HAVE TO HATE EACH OTHER EQUALLY, I MEAN LIKE TRUE HATE. CG: MAYBE YOUR FEELINGS COME SOMEWHAT CLOSE TO FITTING THE BILL BUT I DON'T THINK HE CAN HATE ANYONE, IT'S WEIRD, HE'S KIND OF BROKEN IN THE HEAD.

Finally, our long-awaited introduction to troll romance!

And the introduction is an effective one. We now know that there’s something called ‘black romance’, that it concerns hate, and that one’s black-romantic partner is a ‘kismesis’. The conversation also flows naturally and fits the characters having it, rather than being an awkward as-you-know infodump, although brace yourselves, there’s one of those coming up. Thirteen is about right for kids starting to have romantic feelings and being confused about it, not wanting to talk about it is pretty normal, and Karkat lecturing people at a good opportunity is absolutely in character.

Karkat goes on to lecture Vriska about the emotions involved in different sorts of romantic relationships, and wow, it really says a lot about troll culture…

CG: OK, MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY. CG: PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE. CG: AND ALL THE NUANCES OF PITY MANIFEST AS VARIOUS OTHER KINDS OF FEELINGS LIKE WHATEVER CHEMICAL REACTIONS TRIGGER MATING FONDNESS OR THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT ARE BEHIND MOIRALLEGIANCE.

CHEL: It’s never really clear if this is just Karkat’s idea of it or if this is how trolls actually work biologically. Trolls do use the word “love” later on, so I always interpreted it as “pity” being a euphemistic term because “love” in such a warlike and oppressive culture could be exploited as a weakness. Fandom has played it with their love actually being based on a weird form of sympathy/seeing the other as needing protection, which is also plausible.

FAILURE ARTIST: I have played with the pity thing before but in retrospect Karkat is the only one who seems to see it that way. Maybe this is all his fake deep teenager view of romance.

BRIGHT: Vriska makes a performance of how bored she is, but Karkat’s on a roll.

CG: A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS. CG: HAVING A GOOD BALANCE KEEPS ALL THE EMOTIONS SHARPER, SEE I THINK THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. AG: Oh???????? AG: I hope you know I already wore out some good note-taking pens today. All the pens. AG: All of them. CG: SEE, MY HATE IS LIKE A FINELY TUNED INSTRUMENT BECAUSE I'M AWARE OF THESE PRINCIPLES. CG: I COULD HATE A HOLE IN PARADOX SPACE ITSELF, STRAIGHT THROUGH TO A NEW REALITY FRESH FOR THE HATING. AG: Hahahahahahahaha, you don't even know how much I'm laughing at this. CG: BUT SEE, YOU'RE TOO HEAVY ON THE HATE SIDE, OR AT LEAST YOU PRETEND TO BE WHICH IS MAYBE WORSE. AG: You aren't reading anything I say are you? You just want to talk and talk and talk. CG: AND YOU THINK YOU'RE HATING UP EVERYONE HARD WHEN YOU'RE REALLY JUST BURNING OUT THAT ENTIRE EMOTIONAL HEMISPHERE. CG: IT'S LIKE LUKEWARM HATE. PRETENDER'S HATE, WITH NO COUNTERPOINT AT ALL. CG: AS SUCH THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE TO YOUR HATE, IT'S LIKE A CARDBOARD MOVIE PROP. CG: WHICH IS WHY YOUR BRAIN IS BROKEN, KIND OF LIKE TAVROS'S BUT ON THE OPPOSITE HEMISPHERE I GUESS. CG: OR MAYBE YOUR BROKEN BRAIN LED TO THE IMBALANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I DON'T KNOW. CG: WHATEVER THE CASE IS, YOU'RE KIND OF EMOTIONALLY SCREWED, SORRY TO SAY. CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION. CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU. CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA! CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU. CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED. CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

Whew.

So now we have ‘kismesis’, ‘moirail’, and ‘matesprit’ as terms for romantic partners, as well as the concepts of black romance, red romance, and ‘moirallegiance’ as the relationship one has with a moirail. Troll romance is not going to get any less confusing for a while.

If Karkat’s grasp of psychology strikes you as amateurish, there’s a reason for that: He gets all his knowledge from romance movies.

AG: Hey asshole, stop watching movies for girls.

I think that’s another strike against the ‘girls are the dangerous ones on Alternia’ argument. Romance movies, per this exchange, are both female-coded and seen as inferior -- Karkat defends his viewing choices by saying they’re INTRIGUING SOCIOLOGICALLY, but Vriska isn’t buying it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 42 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 33

CHEL: I’m not sure an interest in the workings of romance should be a socially gendered thing in a society where, as it turns out, you have to have an acceptable romantic partner by a certain time or die. You’d think most kids would be trying as hard as they could to learn and put into practice everything they could about it, and you’d also think there’d be better information for them than romcoms.

BRIGHT: Has the mate-or-die part come up yet? I’m not sure when Hussie thought of it.

CHEL: I don’t know if he’d thought of it yet, but it does come up very soon.

BRIGHT: Karkat then moves on to the original reason he contacted Vriska -- he needs her and her mind powers in the game, because he’s just run into a double agent called Jack.

Over on the next panel, Karkat is still talking to Vriska, but he’s glancing back over his shoulder at Jack Noir. His hand is covered in blood, which keeps cycling through a range of colours. The blood, it transpires, is because Jack stabbed him. Karkat is amazingly calm about this.

CG: HE'S COOL, IT'S FINE I DON'T REALLY MIND THE STABBING, IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. CG: WELL OK I'M PRETTY SURE HE MEANT TO STAB ME. CG: BUT I KIND OF THINK THAT'S LIKE CG: THE WAY HE GREETS PEOPLE? AG: This game is so stupid. CG: IN ANY CASE I THINK HE'S PROBABLY ALL STABBED OUT.

This would be ridiculously chill even from someone who isn’t extremely cagey about his blood colour -- and it’s not that Karkat suddenly doesn’t care any more, because as soon as Vriska says she’ll ask Terezi or Jack what colour he’s bleeding, he tells her that he’s out of Terezi’s range, Jack is sworn to secrecy, and Sollux (who’s incommunicado) is the only one who knows how to make Trollian’s viewport feature work. (Given we saw how easy it is to use earlier, I’m surprised Vriska doesn’t try to figure it out herself.)

Over on the next panel, the viewer is now Jack, a few minutes prior to this conversation. Contrary to Karkat’s protestations, Jack stabs him because He's got a pretty sharp tongue and can't seem to keep it sheathed. He is curious when Karkat cares less about the wound and more about Jack seeing his blood colour, which is apparently some freakish mutation. Jack looks at his knife…

CHEL: While it’s not a realistic depiction of the colour, recall that this is the shade of red used in-comic to depict human blood. This reveal probably isn’t a surprise to anyone by now, if you’ve encountered fanart, and honestly it wasn’t a huge mindblowing revelation on my first read before I knew, but I do think it’s a clever little “aha, THAT’S why!” moment. Skilfully done.

It seems he's the only one of his kind with this mutant candy-red blood. An outcast. He thinks he was put on this planet covered in an ocean of his own blood to be taunted. Punished for something. Saddest story you ever heard. Got to do something to shut him up.

BRIGHT: Awww. That’s kind of sweet.

This little interchange gave rise to the ‘Stabdads’ fandom phenomenon, where Spades Slick is envisaged as Karkat’s father-figure. In Homestuck canon, it’s dubious how much affection Slick has for Karkat. He seems more irritated by him than anything else, but that’s about on par for how he treats the rest of the Midnight Crew. On the other hand, it clearly makes a massive impact on Karkat. We’ve seen how important blood colour is on Alternia and how insecure he is about his own; his sudden rush of fellow-feeling towards Jack is understandable, even if it does make him way too forgiving about having been stabbed.

CHEL: Karkat and Jack shake hands, and proceed to be in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Doodling on the defaced parking ticket from earlier, they draft OPERATION REGISURP.

Your whole team executes the plan along the course of its journey, employing espionage, mind control tactics, political sabotage, vicious interrogations and cold blooded assassinations. Everyone does their part and you begin to learn the true meaning of teamwork, as well as this troll disease called friendship.

Yeah, it actually happening is skipped over with one paragraph, but that’s probably a good thing with all the complexity already going on, and we do hear more details about it. First, we’re reminded of the existence and functions of the Queens’ Rings, the magic rings the queens of Derse and Prospit have which give them traits and powers from whatever the players put in their sprites. The trolls have put their lusii in their sprites, except for Aradia, whose lusus died long ago, so she got in the sprite herself. The Queen could put up with getting bits and pieces from eleven hideous monsters (well, ten hideous monsters and one adowable little fairybull thing oh my gosh it’s cuuuute) tacked onto her, but what she absolutely won’t stand for is the other thing Aradia put in her sprite…

She could not stand bearing the visage of the most loathsome creature known to existence. So vile is its appearance, so contemptible its purpose, all depictions of the creature let alone members of its population are permanently banned from any jurisdiction in the reach of her agents. Those of its kind go by many names, and so does the reviled patron god they herald - THE GREAT DETESTATION, KING PONDSQUATTER, SPEAKER OF THE VAST JOKE, or most commonly, BILIOUS SLICK.

Recall that AR thought of the hieroglyphs in the Frog Temple as “illegal pictography”. We’ll find out later why the Black Queen has such a revulsion for frogs, it’s important. But the important part right now is that she took the ring off. At the time of planning it’s in the ROYAL VAULT.

We briefly see a moment in the future of the Black Queen wrapped in rags, just like the human sessions’ White Queen, wandering the desert as the BANISHED QUASIROYAL, and the caption notes the plan was a success.

However, Doc Scratch appears in the desert in front of her, and it’s noted she was given a new purpose. This, it seems, is the origin of Snowman.

FAILURE ARTIST: I would like if there was some canon Homestuck material expanding on this REGISURP plot.

BRIGHT: Same! It sounds really interesting. One example of Homestuck’s idiosyncratic pacing, I suppose -- we spend pages and pages on trivial alchimeter nonsense, but skip over something more meaty.

CHEL: The Red Team work on that, while the Blue Team battle their own session… or so they think. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve all already figured it out, but the trolls hadn’t just yet. They note that their prototypes are affecting the opposite team’s underlings, and the readers are shown Alternia’s two Frog Temples, one near Aradia’s home and the other near Kanaya’s, each with six pillars outside (one seems to have five, but the sixth is hidden behind the building). Superimposed on each other, the pillars make a full ring of twelve.

The truth was it had always been the same session all along. That your teams were not competing, but cooperating toward a common goal. In the more drawn out form of this adventure's narrative, figuring this out would have been a huge deal. We would have been completely blown away by this stunning revelation. Wow. Same session all along. Really? Huh.

This is what Aradia’s been so mysterious about. She knew. We’re provided with a handy diagram, in case we haven’t been able to keep up.

After watching the phrases MOBIUS DOUBLE and REACH AROUND toggle for a few minutes while in a sort of stupor, you finally snap out of it.

(I just noticed, the Blue Team are the Derse dreamers and the Red Team are the Prospit dreamers. Neat!)

The reader’s attention is drawn instead to the Aquarius and Pisces symbols in the top left, belonging to characters we haven’t met yet, and the narration promises we’ll learn about them soon. Drawing attention again to GA’s Virgo symbol, the narration muses about her.

It will probably be quite some time before you get to be her. It could very well be pages and pages and pages.

Naturally, we jump right back to her.

GA’s intro is long, so we’ll take it piece by piece.

Your name is KANAYA MARYAM.

The Sanskrit name for Virgo is “Kanya”, and it’s also the name of a town in Japan. “Maryam” is the Arabic version of “Mary”, as in Jesus’ mother. It may also be a reference to Marya Zaleska, the title character of the movie “Dracula’s Daughter”.

You are one of the few of your kind who can withstand the BLISTERING ALTERNIAN SUN, and perhaps the only who enjoys the feel of its rays. As such, you are one of the few of your kind who has taken a shining to LANDSCAPING. You have cultivated a lush oasis around your hive, and in particular, you have honed your craft through the art of TOPIARY, sculpting your trees to match the PUFFY ORACLES from your dreams. You have embraced the tool of this trade, which conveniently is the weapon of choice for those who would hunt the HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD which crawl from the sand at sunrise to feast on the light and the living.

Couple things established here; trolls are not only nocturnal but actively harmed by their planet’s sun, and undead beings other than ghosts exist. Said traditional weapon for hunting them is a chainsaw, which we can see lying against her bookshelf, a reference to the Evil Dead movies.

It would be convenient if you actually hunted them, but it is of course far too dangerous, every bit as suicidal as attempting to poach the terrible MUSCLEBEASTS who roam at night. So you indulge in your bright fascination with the grim through literature. Just before the sun goes down and you join your flora in rest, you immerse yourself in tales of RAINBOW DRINKERS and SHADOW DROPPERS and FORBIDDEN PASSION.

Rainbow drinkers are, as discussed later on, troll vampires. I don’t think shadow droppers are ever expanded on, but they might be zombies or werebeasts. Troll goths, apparently, are the reverse of human goths, dressing in bright colours and staying up in the daytime, which makes sense for a species who can only safely go out at night.

You are one of the few of your kind with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few who could be selected and raised by a VIRGIN MOTHER GRUB, an event so rare as to elude documented precedent. She would defend you from desert threats, and though her life would be short, in time you would assure her of progeny.

Recall that the Mother Grub is required for troll reproduction.

You are a SEAMSTRESS or a RAGRIPPER or a TREETRIMMER or a LUMBERJACK, whichever you care to be, and your unique hive is equipped with a great supply of advanced technology to accommodate your interests. The technology and indeed the hive itself were all recovered from the ruins nearby when you were very young. The seed of your hive was deployed on the volcanic rocks beneath the sand with the assistance of your lusus and her remarkable burrowing skills, and you have lived there happily together since. You know the ruins and the hive and everything here that is not sand and rock originated from the world of your dreams. You also know that one day you will visit this world while you are awake. That day is today.

Like Jade, Kanaya has been awake on Prospit for years, and the technology in question is Skaian in origin, so that’s how she knows what’s going on with the game.

Kanaya is prompted to equip her chainsaw, which promptly turns into a lipstick in a Problem Sleuth reference. Like Jade, she has a Wardrobifier, set to randomise, which suddenly turns her black shirt and red skirt into a red leaf-print dress. She takes out the lipstick.

You can choose between your trademark jade or black. Even though a troll's lips are naturally black. But they can always be blacker, and a lady with a true sense of style knows this.

She goes with green, her dress turns into a blue kimono, and she’s messaged by someone with a fuschia Pisces symbol. This person, named cuttlefishCuller, turns out to be rather excitable, greeting her in all caps and following it up with Glub glub glub glub glub!

BRIGHT: This conversation is pretty sweet, with some friendly joking about CC’s quirk (they stick hyphens in front of their capital Es) and mention of their Collapsing And Expanding Bladder Based Aquatic Vascular System. There’s another mention of moirails, with CC saying they’ll have to join the game late to keep an eye on theirs.

It also turns out both CC and Kanaya are having some premonitions of what’s to come! Kanaya is seeing visions in the clouds of Skaia, the same way Jade does, but CC hears whispers from a mysterious ‘she’ who needs her voice keeping down. It’s implied to be CC’s lusus, as both Kanaya and CC are aware their lusii are going to die soon.

Kanaya hopes to be with her lusus as she dies, but looks out of the window to find the Virgin Mother Grub has already passed away, apparently of natural causes.

CHEL: The Mother Grub was seen briefly before; it’s a moth-like creature with a huge fat body the size of a bus, with wings too small to ever lift it, horns the same shape as Kanaya’s, and a skull-like head with big lips. The skull on Terezi’s Doomsday Scale was, we can tell now, a Mother Grub, except quite a lot bigger - presumably a breeding Grub.

BRIGHT: Kanaya changes back into her original outfit, and goes down to live up to her end of the bargain… which entails slicing a hole in her lusus with her chainsaw and pulling out a round object covered in spikes the colour of trolls’ horns, called a Matriorb. Kanaya stores it in her sylladex; she’s using a CHASTITY MODUS, which locks each card away, and the key will serendipitously be discovered when it’s time for the card to be unlocked. These modii are getting more and more esoteric.

Kanaya proceeds to have a conversation with her own moirail, Vriska, which we already read earlier.

You then proceed to have the rest of this conversation we already read, bugging and fussing and meddling through the special and magical union one can only describe as being in moirallegiance with another. At least, you guess that's how you would describe it. Maybe. Troll romance sure is confusing!

Yes, yes it is. (Spoiler: It’s not that confusing once it’s explained.)

Kanaya doesn’t have long to dwell on the conversation, as she’s contacted by caligulasAquarium, someone with a violet Aquarius symbol who she doesn’t seem to think highly of. It rapidly becomes apparent why.

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin GA: Who CA: your no good connivvin fuckin backstabbin girl crush thats wwho

CHEL: Trolls are supposed to come bi/pan as standard, so why does he need to specify “girl crush”? I wonder if Hussie hadn’t decided that yet when he wrote this part, but I’m not sure.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 34

CA’s gender hasn’t been revealed, but let’s not kid ourselves, we know from how he’s talking that he’s a dude. Nice Girls certainly exist but they don’t tend to get portrayed as so whiny in fiction, plus CC comes off as very girly, and that leaves us with six boy and six girl trolls. Balance and opposites and counterparts are a running theme throughout Homestuck. Not that there can’t be nonbinary characters, as some show up in Hiveswap; just that there would most likely have to be an even number of them, split evenly between the groups of players. Fine by me as a nonbinary person with a thing for balance and even numbers of my own.

Also, note that we’ve seen this guy, or at least his hand and foot, before. This is the litter-hater in the bowling shoes.

GA: Overstating Our Relationship Wont Make Me Feel Very Cooperative GA: Its Paler Red Than That Ok CA: pshhhhhh that is a fuckin laugh and you knoww it evveryone does CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to GA: Why Do I Got To GA: I Dont Got To And Every Time You Take My Help For Granted I Feel Like I Got To A Little Less CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs

BRIGHT: Oh hey, another troll romance term! ‘Auspisticing’ is the last of the lot, don’t worry.

CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her CA: i figure if youre going to auspisticize any twwo brinesuckers wwho sneer at each other a funny wway you might as wwell make it official and be ours right GA: Your Black Solicitation Just Seems Really Indecent

Funny words aside, Hussie does a good job at laying down context for what auspisticism is here; we now know that it involves mediating between two parties who dislike each other and that it’s a form of black romance. Meshing worldbuilding naturally into the dialogue is something Homestuck does really well at times.

Anyway, CA is trying to get in contact with Vriska because he asked her to make something for him and now she’s blowing him off.

GA: What Is It CA: kan stupid wwhat do you think its a fuckin gizmo to bloww up the wworld or somethin CA: ok wwell not that obvviously CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

While CA is obviously a douche, there’s something funny about how over-the-top he is about it and how utterly oblivious he is to the idea that Kanaya might have a problem with a device that would kill all landdwellers, although the humour is inversely proportionate to how likely he is to pull it off.

CHEL: Maybe I’m strange, but I think he’s adorable. I get the impression of a small kid trying to puff himself up to adult size.

BRIGHT: There’s also more romance talk, and this next bit is one I find interesting:

CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

I’m going to take a step back from Homestuck itself for a moment and talk about kismessitude as it’s portrayed in fandom. People tend to envision it in a variety of ways -- some see it as a BDSM relationship, some as a way of pushing a rival to be better, some as just straight-up hate-sex -- but most depictions show it as something that only affects the two people involved.

Here, though? CA’s talking about kismessitude as something that’s potentially really damn dangerous, to other people besides those involved, and cites history as a backup -- implying it can really be that dangerous, and it’s not just a teenager’s flight of fancy. (Although, that said, CA is clearly using this to try and get Kanaya in a relationship with him, so how sincere he is is questionable.)

CHEL: Later on we do see a little bit of one of the historical cases he might have been citing. We’ll discuss it more then. Also, I do like him saying “sunny” instead of “gloomy”. Makes sense!

Kanaya tells CA none of this matters, and he sneers about the “purity of the bloodline”. That’s an… uncomfortable turn of phrase, especially since he’s speaking to someone not covered by the “purity” standard, but since it applies to aliens and it’s in a society where that’s hammered into its inhabitants it’s not a Problematykks issue. Kanaya tells him it still won’t matter because their race will be wiped out entirely, and his reaction is remarkably understated:

CA: huh CA: wwell ok HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 11

CA says he knows Kanaya doesn’t lie except to herself, surprisingly perceptive for one so puffed-up otherwise. CA might be smarter than he’s letting on? He asks if her clouds told her that; that was the reader’s assumption too, but she says no, she has a different source. Uh-oh. We know what the last source of information was, and it cost Vriska an arm and an eye-sevenfold. CA’s own clouds “hide nothin but misfortune and monstrosities”, so we can guess she’s Prospit and he’s Derse. He goes back to nagging her to tell Vriska to talk to him, and when she continues to refuse he poutily steps off.

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that

Kanaya denies this, and CA says everyone knows, including Karkat.

GA: Its Unbelievable GA: Her Patience CA: wwhat CA: wwhoa wwait wwho GA: Never Mind CA: ok wwait did she talk to you today CA: wwhat did she say CA: or glub or wwhatevver

They’re talking about CC, if it wasn’t clear. Kanaya, in a callback to John’s comment to Terezi, facetiously tells him that she talked about Longing To Touch You Indiscretely and That Shes Basically In The Scarlet Throes For You. CA, flustered, picks up that she’s teasing him, and she tells him the truth, that CC’s just concerned as a moirail.

CA: if youre not savvvvy about howw you define yourself to people CA: you can just splash into the moirail zone before you knoww wwhich wways upwward

I’m going to comment on this attitude in a bit more detail when we get a clearer explanation of what moirallegiance actually is. CA leaves her with some arc words.

CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

Kanaya heads back to her room, planning to emphatically not meddle but help her friends, and consults her source; it’s fortunately not a Doc Scratch-related one at all. It is, in fact, Rose’s long-forgotten GameFAQ, saved on a server floating in the Furthest Ring, to which Prospit’s clouds directed her. I have to show you the panel for a moment though…

I’m sure there was a way we could see the screen without having it facing away from Kanaya who’s supposed to be reading it.

You can only assume this took place a long time ago. This race is likely ancient, preceding yours by millions of sweeps. Maybe billions! You like to try to imagine the adventures of these players. Were they successful in repopulating their race? Did they manage to protect their matriorb and hatch a new mother grub? Could they hold it together, or were they torn apart by the complex social dynamics, the matespritships and moirallegiences and auspisticisms and kismesissitudes that will surely plague your group along the way? You have little doubt they succeeded with flying colors.

Oh dear, dramatic irony. Kanaya fantasises about a troll version of Rose, thinking she must have been the leader of this supposedly long-ago group.

And yet they appear to have been the only of their kind to have risen to the challenge in a session stacked heavily against them.

Huh. So is this just because Kanaya can’t find more information, or are the four kids in fact the only humans who successfully got into the game? Picking four specifically white-coded kids to be the last of the human race due to supposedly their own competence is… not a good choice. And why the hell couldn’t other people succeed? This strikes me as more of the whole theme of “nobody matters except the people we’re focusing on”. A good lampshading of video game tropes, but in a literary story, that’s the opposite message to everything I’ve ever read, and it’s a creepy one.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 43 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 12 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 35

BRIGHT: I thiiiiiiiink it’s at least implied later on that there are other sessions going, it’s just that each session is a closed loop of players so we don’t see the others...although if that’s the case, does that mean Earth’s getting hit with meteors from multiple Skaias?

CHEL: That over with for the moment, we cut to Tavros’ house as you take your place as the PAGE OF BREATH in the LAND OF SAND AND ZEPHYR. Vriska, his server player, gets down to the business of building up his house towards the Gate…

… entirely out of staircases.

AT: i THINK THIS, iS, AT: pROBABLY MEANT TO ANTAGONIZE ME,

Okay, this probably makes me a bad person, but I’m crying with laughter at his expression and that line.

It’s more disability slapstick, but here the point of the joke comes off as being more that Vriska is a jerk and Tavros’ reaction is really understated than any reasonable person being supposed to assume Tavros is wrong for not being able to climb stairs. Emphasis on “comes off as”, unfortunately. I’m still gonna give a Problematykks point, and further experience with Hussie’s attitude to disability has soured the joke somewhat, even in just the next couple of pages.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 44

BRIGHT: Vriska tries to get Tavros to crawl up the stairs, first by telling him that he promised not to be boring anymore and then by saying that she’s trying to help him get stronger. She caps off the rant by demanding that he apologise.

AT: oKAY, AT: tHANKS, i GUESS, AT: bUT, AT: sORRY FOR WHAT, AG: For 8eing crippled, you ass! AT: yOU WANT ME TO APOLOGIZE, AT: fOR BEING PARALYZED, AG: Yes. AG: Say you're sorry. AT: i DON'T MEAN TO BE RUDE, oR bORING, AT: bUT THAT'S RIDICULOUS, gIVEN, AT: uH, tHE CIRCUMSTANCES, AG: 8ullshit! AG: It's something called 8asic decency and civility you fudge8looded 8oor. AG: Now get down on your useless wo88ly knees and apologize. AT: nO, i DON'T WANT TO, AG: >::::O

Vriska, what the fuck.

Tavros is really great here. He’s obviously not comfortable fighting with Vriska, and repeatedly tries to redirect her into building him ramps instead of engaging. But, at the same time, he holds his ground and doesn’t let her push him around, and won’t let go of solid hard reality in the face of Vriska trying to emotionally manipulate him.

FAILURE ARTIST: And yet people still call him a wimp.

BRIGHT: Vriska retaliates, because of course she does, by grabbing his wheelchair with her cursor and shaking it about. If Hussie left it at that, everything would be unobjectionable, at least in terms of narrative voice. Instead, well…

Now she's done it. She has awoken the mighty inner fury that is... RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CHEL: It just occurred to me to mention that the name Rufio comes from a character in the movie Hook, the leader of the Lost Boys after Peter Pan left, played by Dante Basco. Tavros’ mental image of him is a reference to that character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dante Basco did read Homestuck, with hilarious results as we will see.

But unfortunately, Rufio is not real. He's imaginary. A fake. Like a made up friend, the way fairies are. You continue to be sad and alone.

BRIGHT: Eurgh.

Let me be clear: Tavros having no further recourse to deal with Vriska’s abuse beyond his visualised self-esteem is a problem for the character, but it’s not necessarily a narrative problem per se. Escapism is a thing. You could get a decent character arc out of Tavros learning better ways to deal with harassment he can’t escape. It is a narrative problem when the narrator mocks it and makes him out to be pathetic for even trying it.

CHEL: I’d consider this to be just Tavros’ own thought process, but, sadly, this kind of narrative sneering at him carries on throughout Tavros’ presence in the comic and the fandom seems to buy into it. Tavros gets a lot of hate for reasons which mostly boil down to him being a male abuse victim; there’s a feeling that he should “try harder” to fight back, despite him being physically disabled and a member of a caste out of sight beneath her on the social ladder and legally permitted to be killed by her on a whim. Might that count as a point for WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM, for Huss and the fandom not taking the social dynamics into account for why Tavros can’t defend himself?

BRIGHT: I don’t know if it’s fair to count against the fandom when we’re reviewing Homestuck proper, but we can definitely count against Hussie!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 36

CHEL: It’s also notable that the common fandom interpretation of Tavros is as Hispanic-coded, at least partly due to his Spanish username, and of Vriska as white-coded. That’s probably not helping.

Since Hussie appears to expect us to agree with Vriska that this is funny, I’m adding another to these as well.

ALL THE LUCK: 2 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 45 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 3

BRIGHT: What’s weird about this whole mess is that Hussie doesn’t — yet — try to say that Tavros should be trying to get stronger; his disability is fully acknowledged. I feel like this kind of mockery is usually accompanied by the attitude that disabled people should just get over their disability, but Hussie’s clear that Tavros can’t. Which means he should do...what, exactly?

CHEL: Not have let Vriska disable him in the first place, presumably. Never mind that, you know, she has mind control powers so he didn’t really have a choice in that either. That is, however, an argument Vriska fans actually make. Apparently some of them actually blame him for not flying when she threw him off the cliff, which… well, unpowered flight is a thing that can happen in the comic but he certainly couldn’t do it then.

BRIGHT: ...Apparently I retain the capacity for surprise at how awful people can be. The fuck?

Back in the comic, Tavros fortunately does have one other means of recourse. Back in her hive, Vriska is suddenly prodded in the back with a flying toilet, courtesy of Kanaya.

GA: Just Presenting A Floating Reminder That Tavros Will Need Plenty Of Inclined Surfaces For His Ascent AG: That's silly. I made so many ramps, you wouldn't even 8elieve it. AG: I specifically decided I wanted to 8uild something ugly and 8oring. It is now the land of ramps and yawns. GA: Hes Reported Otherwise AG: That lousy snitch! May8e I should take his computer away so he can't go crying to fussyfangs anymore. GA: Maybe I Should Upend This Load Gaper Over Your Head AG: No, don't! GA: Im Still Learning The Interface GA: It Could Happen Accidentally At Any Moment AG: I'm only trying to help him. ::::( GA: Think Of Another Way To Help

CHEL: Did I mention Kanaya is my zodiac troll? I can only long to reach her heights of awesome. Of course the ability to levitate toilets would kinda help.

BRIGHT: Vriska heads down to her treasure vault and retrieves a pair of ROCKET SHOES. The captchalogue code for these is ‘PSHOOOES’, which amuses me greatly. Vriska sends the code to Tavros, who combines it with the code for his wheelchair to create a flying wheelchair. Now that is a good use of alchemising!

CHEL: Awww!

Tavros flies up to the Gate, and we cut back to him later on, leading an entourage of communed-with imps and ogres to move obstacles and help him solve puzzles. Using his skills well, I see! In another set of ruins the imps load jigsaw pieces of rock into a frog-shaped alcove,

Things, however, don’t continue to go so well, because Hussie hates this poor kid. I do not mean that facetiously. Statements he’s made elsewhere imply he has a hell of a lot of contempt for several of the characters he created, which I don’t understand at all. We’ll go into this after Act 7, but I get the sensation that the characters are merely tools to show off the complexity and meta references, which are the parts he really cares about.

BRIGHT: It’s not unknown for authors to dislike characters they wrote; the great Terry Pratchett reputedly hated his character Rincewind. The key difference is that in Pratchett’s case, the audience couldn’t tell. Hussie, on the other hand, tends to make his disdain pretty obvious, to the detriment of the story.

CHEL: That’s a point. Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes, too. He didn’t, however, set up situations solely to shit on Holmes in his books.

BRIGHT: I think that’s the key. I’ll forgive a multitude of failings as long as the author seems to be treating the characters fairly. That doesn’t mean that good things have to happen to them — plenty of bad things can happen and I’ll enjoy it — it just means that the author has to...respect how the character feels and would behave, I guess.

Of course, respect is Hussie’s antithesis, so.

Also, nothing so far has shown Vriska to be anything other than a (granted, entertaining) bully. I wasn’t around while Homestuck was updating, so I’m not sure when her fandom took off, but it has to be later than this, surely?

CHEL: I don’t know. I wasn’t around till about mid-Act 6.

What was I on about? Oh yes. Tavros is interrupted by Vriska again, who bitches him out for doing things the boring way and seeking the boring lore.

AG: The minds of your consorts are very soft and impressiona8le. AG: As easily manipul8ed as all those imps you've 8een 8ossing around. AG: I have picked apart their tiny little lizard 8rains and seen through all the smoke and mirrors of their riddles. AG: I have gotten to the truth they are guarding. The great 8ig mystery 8ehind this planet. And you know what it is, Tavros? AT: nO, AG: It's 8ullshit! AG: Meaningless, 8oring, fanciful 8ullshit wrapped in flowery poems to keep you guessing. AG: It all leads to one thing anyway, and that's what we should put our attention on. AG: Real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold. AG: They cheat, Tavros. AG: It is time you learned to start cheating.

Interesting theory. Tavros thinks befriending his monsters instead of killing them is cheating, and Vriska grudgingly agrees but is annoyed he isn’t killing anything. She claims to have designed a better and more challenging quest for him; he asks after her own quest, and she says she has time because Kanaya’s busy.

AG: Which is just as well 8ecause I was starting to get nannied HARD. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 37

Strange word choice for a species raised by animals, but okay. Vriska sends Tavros a map to the next Gate, and he sets off in his little rocket chair. Little does he know.

You proceed through what seems to be your second gate, into the LAND OF MAPS AND TREASURE. The THIEF OF LIGHT lies in wait.

In a callback to our last meeting of Breath and Light players, Tavros crashes through Vriska’s wall and is left hanging upside-down in the rocket chair from the large cobwebs across the room, while Vriska sleeps on a pile of broken eight-balls. Doesn’t look comfortable, but trolls rest in worse places later. Vriska wakes, and Tavros falls head-first onto the floor.

Here is where it gets incredibly uncomfortable, and we have to show it in detail to assign points properly and so that there’s no ambiguity about what’s happening, so if you have any sexual assault, ableism, underage, mind control, or victim-blaming triggers you may want to skip this part. No clothing is removed but it’s very unpleasant to read and the attitude toward it is worse. Seriously, this is Taklamakan Zoo levels of bad.

(This heading below’s not part of the comic, I just put it there so you can skip. The sequence ends with the piece of fanart of Kanaya looking at the sideways screen.)

~*THE ASSAULT STARTS HERE*~

Vriska sits up. She’s wearing a very short strappy white Tinkerbell dress with her sign on it, and what look like over-the-knee socks, a commonly fetishised style of clothing. I remind you these characters are supposed to be thirteen years old. The dress is also the same as the one worn by the fairy in the artwork on Tavros’ desktop background. I don’t know if Vriska had seen that or not.

FAILURE ARTIST:

To be fair she’s just in an actually-more-modest version of what Peter Pan’s sidekick/love interest wears and the socks come off as more dorky than sexy.

Oh my! It appears Pupa Pan himself has flown through your window while you were asleep. How exciting! Surely he is here to take you away on the adventure of a lifetime. He is more dreamy and heroic than you ever imagined. But what's this?? It seems the legendary Boy-Skylark has misplaced his shadow. He is looking EVERYWHERE for it, to no avail. He is having a devil of a time, what with being paralyzed from the waist down and all. He clearly needs your help.

CHEL: Vriska is prompted to Help Pupa find shadow, and approaches Tavros with a nasty-looking grin on her face, while he lies on the floor, gritting his teeth in noticeable pain.

Pupa! You truly are a silly goose. Your shadow has been trapped underneath your useless torso the whole time! Honestly, where else would it be you stupid sack of shit?

Charming. Vriska proceeds to kick him in the head, or at least nudge him with her foot, while he lies unresponsive.

Of course, the secret to reuniting with your shadow is to get up and walk around. And play and dance and frolic! Your shadow will surely join in your gaiety. But it appears Pupa has lost the use of his legs. There will be no frolicking in this young man's future. ::::( Unless...

Everyone knows that just a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST along with a happy thought will allow any boy to get up and walk again. Everyone knows this because it is in the classic tale, PUPA PAN. Young Pupa flies through the window of a fairy girl's respiteblock, falls on the floor, and has trouble getting up like an enormous pansy. The fairy girl then helps him walk again, and in return, he teaches her to fly, even though she probably already knows how to fly. Because she's a fairy. They fly out of her window together, and have magical adventures for many sweeps thereafter. To be honest, you hardly know a damn thing about Pupa Pan. But you do not care.

Pupa remains as pathetic and useless as ever.

FAILURE ARTIST: The story just keeps mocking Tavros for being disabled.

CHEL: Not to mention for being interested in fairies. Because how dare a boy have a gender-nonstandard interest, or a young teenager enjoy whimsical escapism from an increasingly horrible and guaranteed-to-be-short life.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 39

I might be projecting because the fandom has made me loathe her, but it honestly comes off like Vriska dressed up like this in the first place less to seduce Tavros and more to make sure she thoroughly ruined his favourite thing to hurt him further, especially if the narration is supposed to be things she’s actually saying to him.

The stardust did nothing! Probably because it is just glittery powder with no magical properties whatsoever and is basically bullshit. Because in case it wasn't clear, magic isn't real, and neither are miracles. OR It could just be that Pupa has failed to have a happy thought! Your duty is clear. You will have to MAKE him have happy thoughts. Vriska: Make Pupa have happy thoughts.

He certainly doesn’t seem to be having happy thoughts now. Notice his expression, what we can see of it, looks terrified, he’s trembling, and let’s recall that he’s paralysed from the waist down. Even if he wasn’t, she’s of a far, far higher caste than him, legally permitted to do whatever she wants to him, including killing him if he tries to resist. It’s kind of gone back and forth on, but higher bloods are a few times stated to be a lot stronger than lower bloods, and if they work like humans, they’re in puberty right now, a time at which human girls tend to get taller and stronger sooner than boys. Again, it’s gone back and forth on, but a common interpretation is that female trolls are stronger than male trolls in general and/or have the social power advantage. Let’s also remember that, even if none of those factors apply, Vriska has mind control powers. There is no point here at which Tavros has the advantage, nothing he can use as leverage on her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, and she does.

BRIGHT: We’ve also been explicitly shown that Vriska has little to no respect for anyone else’s autonomy if she finds it inconvenient, and that Tavros is her favourite punching bag, and that his ability to stand up for himself when she gets going is extremely limited.

CHEL: Despite the odds stacked against him, Tavros struggles against the kiss forced on him, and when Vriska pushes him back, doesn’t respond with anything but a look of horror, though she appears to expect him to, as a flickering heart-spade with a question mark over it appears between them. I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be the thought process of him or her or both.

Vriska hurls him onto the floor with some force...

… and activates her mind control, causing little hearts to light up in Tavros’ eyes.

BRIGHT: Vriska has used her mind-control powers on Tavros before, and when it happened she walked him off a cliff. There is basically no way that her doing it again isn’t going to be a traumatic experience for him, above and beyond the inherent horror of losing control over one’s body.

I’m inclined to think that forcibly altering his emotions is worse, though. Being paralysed was bad enough, but Tavros knows what happened and he knows how he feels about it. Making him fall in love with her is just…on one level, it’s a horrible assault on his autonomy as a person, and on another level, it’s tailor-made to make him doubt himself and believe the encounter was something he wanted.

FAILURE ARTIST: I hadn’t thought that he might now consider the encounter as consensual, which would explain his later reaction.

CHEL: Tavros paws at her legs, making kissy faces, and she looks vaguely concerned. Note the background still depicts wavy blue rays coming off her, showing her power is still active.

Looking defeated, she drops the control and dumps him on the floor again.

I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be thinking in this last panel. Is she feeling guilty? Is she disappointed that he didn’t like her under his own power? Has she just decided he’s too useless to be worth the effort? Any could be true.

BRIGHT: I read that as disappointment that even when he ‘liked’ her, he didn’t act the way she wanted. (And the way Tavros acted is kind of disturbing. ‘Mindlessly pawing at someone’ is not what I’d expect from him if he was legitimately attracted to someone.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The common interpretation these days was she was realizing she wasn’t into boys which okay that’s good for her but she should feel more bad about molesting him.

CHEL: That also makes no sense, because she shows interest in multiple boys later.

I’m also not entirely sure if Vriska had the intention of actually raping Tavros here (in the standard way, I mean, as one could argue that mind control is a form of rape), or just making out with him. The fact that she dressed up in vaguely fetishy clothing isn’t making it look good, though. Yes, she’s very young, but traumatised kids in particular have been known to lash out sexually like that. It’s a way of reasserting personal power, and I imagine it would be more prevalent in a society with no sapient adult supervision. While there are mitigating circumstances involved in their social situation and Vriska not really having ever had a chance to learn better, that doesn’t make this not a horrible thing to do, or not traumatising for Tavros.

BRIGHT: The clothing could potentially be down to Vriska wanting to look ‘adult’ without fully understanding why it looks adult. That does come up sometimes with teens — they want to experiment with clothing because that’s how adults dress, not because they want to look sexy, or they might dress a certain way for dates because that’s the social model they have for How Dates Work.

And if I read it like that, this basically looks like Vriska having the date equivalent of a dolls’ tea party. Which says volumes about how she views Tavros’s autonomy.

CHEL: Good point. Though honestly it would say volumes about same either way!

BRIGHT: I said earlier that Vriska is better than Equius at recognising when other people’s desires conflict with hers, and she is, but that doesn’t mean she respects those differences. She just recognises that they’re there, and overrides them. This is a prime example of Vriska viewing Tavros as something between a chew-toy and a prop. First she kicks him around and terrifies him, then she expects him to be able to get over those emotions at the drop of a hat and respond to her advances — and, moreover, she wants him to respond in a certain way, which Tavros has zero way of knowing. This is the first time she’s shown that sort of interest in him, unless her earlier behaviour was the Alternian equivalent of pigtail-pulling.

...I think maybe that was in fact Alternian pigtail-pulling. Or at least Vriska’s version of pigtail-pulling.

CHEL: That’ll actually make more sense, once we explain what the spade symbol means.

Okay, how many counts does this cover?

ALL THE LUCK: 12 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 31 CALL CPA PLEASE: 26 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 55 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 13

It also occurred to me during this sequence to think again about how Karkat contemptuously swears at and hangs up the phone on the injured Tavros. This, at first glance, seems to be very much at odds with the “cranky but caring” impression we’re supposed to have of Karkat… but it fits precisely with Hussie’s opinion of Tavros and how pathetic he is for allowing a much more powerful person to permanently disable him. I know at the moment it looks like I’m not separating the character from the author, but it’ll become clear as we go that that is what he thinks.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 14

Why didn’t we start a FUCK YOU, HUSSIE count?

BRIGHT: It would have ended up longer than all the other counts combined.

CHEL: The actual assault is over now, but there’s one more picture of it. The ramifications must continue to be discussed, so tread cautiously. The actual act is over now, though.

Said ramifications come pretty quickly. Kanaya, having dealt with getting herself into the game and prototyped her own lususprite, decides to check on Vriska.

Ideally she has not gotten herself into too much trouble. And ideally the dramatic irony has not gotten so thick you could draw a dotted line on it with a tube of lipstick and cut it in half with a chainsaw.

Of course, she sees the exact moment Vriska kisses Tavros.

(Fanart source has now been deleted, sadly.)

~*THE ASSAULT ENDS HERE*~

Humorous art aside over, let’s watch Kanaya’s reaction in more detail. She angrily looks at a copy of the Tinkerbell dress, which she presumably sent the alchemiter code for rather than the actual item to Vriska, hence why she still has it.

So THAT'S why she had you make this dress for her??? And you just went along with it like a sucker. Argh, you are such an IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like Karkat, Kanaya is presented as the caring one, the protective one. The “mom friend” of the group. And yet, she looks at this, in which Tavros is clearly frightened and struggling, and her reaction is to be mad that Vriska didn’t want to wear the dress for a date with her. I’m not sure whether this says more about Hussie’s opinion of Tavros or the social system of Alternia or both, but it certainly says a lot.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 56 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 13 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 15

BRIGHT: Kanaya has had to corral Vriska on Tavros’s behalf already! Possibly more than once! She has all the information to realise that this is abusive, even leaving aside Tavros’s reaction! Sure, teens can be self-centred, but even so this is egregious.

CHEL: Kanaya’s Grubsprite comforts her and she throws the dress out the window.

Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands.

Yes, I’m sure Tavros thinks so too.

Charles: "I know Sir can be prickly, but you have to understand he had a very terrible childhood."

Klaus: "I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now."

-A Series of Unfortunate Events

[thehollowprince]

Getting rid of the character Kylo Ren, who do you think would’ve made a good villain/rival for the Sequel Trilogy?

(Okay, I’ve tried to answer this twice now, and Tumblr’s a dick and keeps eating my replies, but here’s hoping the third time’s the charm.)

If we were to get rid of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, and ignore his counterpart in the Expanded Universe, Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus, who could be a great villain for the sequels…?

Off the top of my head I can think of three big bads from the Legends continuity that would fit the bill perfectly.  Those being Admiral Thrawn and the Empire of the Hand, the Yuuzhan Vong, and Darth Krayt and his One Sith.  All three of those have such a huge presence in the comics and novels and other EU material, but were completely ignored by Katheen Kennedy and Bob Iger in their attempt to craft a new continuity that they have complete control of. 

First up we have Mitth'raw'nuruodo, more commonly known as Thrawn.

A Grand Admiral within the Galactic Empire, which was highly unusual because Thrawn was a member of the Chiss species and the Empire was widely known to be xenophobic and very human-centric.  The fact that an alien rose to such a high position speaks of this man’s ruthlessness and cunning, that even the Emperor himself recognized and rewarded his skills.

Now, the thing that would make Thrawn such a great villain  is that he already has a foothold in canon via the show STAR WARS REBELS, where he was last seen being forcibly taken to the Unknown Regions of space by the purgill.   Since Disney had the First Order emerge from that very same area, it would fit better, and maybe help to bridge Legends and Canon, by having an already well-established villain with roots in the Unknown Regions be the villain that comes from those very same areas.  Hell, in Legends, he formed the Empire of the Hand at the behest or the Emperor to defend the Empire against any threats from the Unknown Regions. 

Wouldn’t it make sense to have someone who was already a part of the Empire emerge to try and rebuild it with an almost exact replica of the Empire’s tech?  The use of the star destroyers, TIE fighters and stormtroopers would fit better with him than it did with the First Order, which just comes off as an Empire fanclub.

And with Thrawn, it wouldn’t be too hard to work in a Force-sensitive villain to battle the Jedi, that being Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith.

She was an apprentice of Darth Vader’s who infiltrated the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and even had a romantic relationship until everything was exposed.  She’d be a great second-in-command to Thrawn and a great enemy to our new Force-sensitive heroes.  Plus, how cool would a light whip be on the big screen?

A further point, we could still use the same new trio, with Finn being a stormtrooper that defects from the Hand, Poe being a pilot with the New Republic and Rey still being a scavenger on Jakku, which sits right af the edge of the Unknown Regions.  It wouldn’t take much at all to adjust the story fo fit this in.

Finale point for Thrawn is the fact that, the whole reason he formed The Hand, and his whole mandate as a member of the Chiss, was to protect against threats, one of which was a species called “the Far Outsiders”, which brings us to...

The Yuuzhan Vong

I mean, come on, those guys look the part of villains!  Gets even better when you know more about them.  These guys are an extragalactic race of aliens that have an absolute hatred of technology, are immune to the power of the Force, and who worship pain to the point of being masochistic. 

On that last point, that’s not a euphemism or a joke.  These guys routinely sacrifice their own limbs and replace them with new ones, or graft alien organs onto their own bodies in an attempt to improve their species, and prove their worthiness to their gods.  Their chief god sacrificed his own flesh to build the universe (according to them) and they feel that they can do nothing less.  That being said, pain doesn’t stop them, only eggs them on, and on top of that, the armor they were is immune to both blasters and lightsabers.  Combine all of that with their Force immunity and they make a very formidable adversary, not just for the New Republic or Jedi, but the galaxy as a whole.

Their whole reason in the Expanded Universe for coming to the galaxy where Star Wars takes place is to “cleanse it” by destroying all technology and letting nature once again rule.  They came very close to it, as well, wiping out entire planets and species before the entire galaxy put aside their differences and united to drive them off.

And once again... they started with the Unknown Regions, attacking the rest of the galaxy from there.

And lastly we have Darth Krayt.

Darth Krayt was once a Jedi Knight named A'Sharad Hett, who was a Tuscan Raider - yeah, those guys from Tatooine - whose father was also a Jedi Knight.  He was a great lightsaber duelist, using two lightsabers (his and his father’s) to great effect, and that’s something we haven’t seen on the big screen, a Jedi or Sith really using two lightsabers, at least not in combat and not for more than a second or two.  It would also be a nice way to tie in the prequel trilogy because Hett served as a general during the Clone Wars and obviously survived both Order 66 and the Great Jedi Purge.

A nice start down the path to the dark side, wouldn’t you say?

After the fall of the Jedi Order and the Republic (and after Obi-Wan kicked him off of Tatooine), he wandered space until he was caught by, you guessed it, the Yuuzhan Vong.  He was in their “care” for quite a while where he was tortured endlessly with some of their biotech, also running into another fallen Jedi who turned him fully to the Dark Side.  Once he was free, he eventually formed his new order of the One Sith and went about trying to do what all Sith do, such as conquer the galaxy and destroy all the Jedi and stuff like that.

Any one of those three could have been great villains with already established backstories and fanbases on which to build, but for whatever reason, Lucasfilm and Disney chose the direction they wanted and... well, you’ve seen the results.

[legobiwan]

Just got home from The Rise of Skywalker. No pithy intro, I’m just going to jump right in and it’s going to be a LONG rant here so buckle up, my friends, and be sure to read below the cut. SPOILERS AHOY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Okay, so yes, the first third of the movie went at a blistering, nearly nonsensical pace. JJ  really had to cram a whole watermelon’s worth of exposition into a...well, you know, there was a lot to take in. This movie had to do so much telling instead of showing because it was such a departure (and middle finger to TLJ) from what came before. 

The thing was, the first third was also the most interesting part of the movie. I actually wish the whole trilogy had started with all of the Sith nonsense. (Actually, I wish they had started with Kylo absolutely wrecking shit like he did and then the Palpatine scene. People would have made all the wrong assumptions and it would have been glorious to unravel it over three films.) There is a strong history of Sith artifacts in both Nu-Canon and Legends, and it wouldn’t have been out of place, considering what we know now, to have made Rey, Poe, and Finn’s quest for these artifacts the start of the new trilogy, and then told the rest of the story in a non-linear timeline. Probably too experimental for a Star Wars reboot, but it would have grabbed attention and everyone like creepy Sith shit. 

Frankly, I would have dropped zombie-robot Palpatine at the very start of the trilogy, as well. It’s bonkers but I don’t hate the Rey Palpatine thing and they could have spent the rest fo the movies explaining this weird-ass lineage and how it relates to Kylo, Snoke, etc. and then have built back to the final confrontaion on Exegol. 

Leia. Trained. Rey. I so so so so so wished we had been able to get more of this. This, in my mind, is what it should have been all along. I liked TLJ (okay, so shoot me) but Master Leia is a whole other level of awesome. If I had to rewrite Luke and Leia’s roles, it would have went something like this:

Luke was searching for Sith artifacts. Luke was becoming disillusioned by what he was learning of the Jedi through “The Sacred Texts.” WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE? Hmmmm, I wonder....

Could you imagine Luke started to go a little Dooku in this respect, and so instead of fucking off the Ach-To because he had a feeling that was more “gravy than of grave” about Ben Solo’s dark sidedness, he fucked off to Ach-To - or even better - gave up training in order to keep himself from going down a darker path. 

And so instead, Leia is getting involved with training (and probably also governing at the same time because she would be an overachiever like that.)

Enter Ben Solo, who is Force sensitive, strong, being trained by his mother and occasionally his uncle, who is not totally plugged into the light side at the moment, which can rub off on Ben. Meanwhile, Han is maybe not the best father (he wants to be, he tries, but it all comes out wrong. I’ve been watching a lot of Psych lately, so I’m thinking of a dynamic similar to Henry and Shawn, but a little more dramatic.)

Of course, Palpatine is seeing all of this behind the scenes, he’s fostering ill will and discontent through the scattered remains of the Empire, sending Snoke clones out to be almost pseudo-religious/cult figures in the wake of the economic and social devastation left by the Empire’s fall and the floundering new government. Extremism, in pockets, rises. Extremism which preys on discontent, which preys of the desire for family, for belonging. 

Enter again Ben Solo, who has been pitted against the other strongest trainee, Rey (insert whatever last name you want. She knows it’s not her real name, she knows she was an orphan on Jakku, but she was brought by Luke to be trained). Ben is pissed how she and Leia bond, has been talking to his uncle, and perhaps encountered a Snoke clone on the way. 

Rey, on the other hand, is no one but wants to be someone, and that manifests in weird ways during her training. Perhaps she leaves at some point, perhaps not. But the seeds of her being Palpatine’s bloodline are laid within her. She wants to seek that belonging Ben has.

Okay, but getting away from my personal rewrites of the sequels, Star Wars is about family and lineage, both blood and found. There was so much potential to play on this throughout the trilogy with the Skywalkers, with Rey’s relation to Palps that if they had just planned the damn thing, it could have been brilliant. 

Moving ...(for now)

I felt so bad for Oscar Isaac. I felt like I watched his soul slowly depart his body over almost 3 hours. That man was not a happy camper and it came out in his performance. 

Power levels. Here’s the thing, guys. Magic needs to have consequences. Sure, you can cast a spell, but what does that take from you? You can use the Force, but to what degree? How much? Even Anakin exhausted himself at some points, and he was (allegedly, according to one Qui-gon Jinn), the Chosen One. It’s the first law of thermodynamics - energy can neither be created nor destroyed - and the Force is literally the energy of every life thing in the galaxy. You take the energy, use it towards something else, it has to drain from somewhere. This is what bugged the hell out of me with Rey’s Force Healing abilities (an ability that doesn’t thrill me to begin with as it’s so easy to overuse). Kylo keels from resurrecting the dead (and yeah, he was pretty beat up already), but Rey barely seems to breathe a beat harder. Once you start ignoring the consequences for magic, you end up like a shitty video game, and one of the criticisms I’ve leveled at the movie is that it feels like a montage of Battlefront and I can’t say that’s totally off point.

JEDI HUNTERS. Ochi. I will bet my right liver we’re going to hear something about this on The Mandalorian. 

So I know a lot of people wanted to see Rey Kenobi, but there was one piece of glaring evidence in the film why that would never be. (Aside from Kylo just announcing it to Rey.) She has a lightsaber, but she still ends up using a blaster. So uncivilized.

Speaking of The Mandalorian - Stormtroopers with Mando jetpacks. Hmmm.....

I loved techno-Sheev hooked up to all the equipment just floating. That was creepy as hell and played with the whole cloning and extension of life that was such a large part of the Darth Plagueis novel (which I still consider to be canon, higher powers be damned). Also, Palpy’s glowup with the wardrobe was hilarious. 

Dark!Rey was hot. There, I said it.

Let’s talk about romance. Or the lack thereof. Or the shoehorned thereof.

Poor Rose got shafted in this film with no explanation. I didn’t buy that whole thing in TLJ, but god damn anyway. (Finn also got shafted, for different reasons, which I will talk about later.)

If they were going to romance, just let it have been Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, or fuck it, even a trio. 

I mean, I could have bought Reylo if it had been presented better. (With context. Adam Driver is an amazing actor, another thing I’ll talk about later.)

The Reylo kiss though - my theater laughed. No joke.

Of course, this was the same theater that thought Lando was trying to mack on Jannah at the end, so who knows what we were all thinking in there. (On that note, Lando was hilarious because no matter what, he was just having a grand ‘ol time in the movie. I like to think he got a medical spice card in his retirement years and was just enjoying anything that came his way, be it Wookiees, Jedi, starships, wars, whatever.)

While the Reylo kiss didn’t hit the mark the space lesbian background kiss got cheers, so there was some hope for my fellow theater-goers.

Did anyone pick up on Threepio saying the Senate made the bill that would render him incapable of translating the Sith language? No doubt that was a Palpatine move from TCW era. 

What is up with these movies and desert/jungle planets? Ugh. Thank everyone for Kijimi, at least that was interesting. 

New characters I loved: Babu Frik and DO. 

Finn’s Force sensitivity. Yes, I totally buy it. I wanted more. I wanted more fucking context of a Stormtrooper who would have known nothing of the Jedi getting these feelings and then bailing from the First Order (or, if I were writing the movies, bailing from the remnants of the Empire/Snokes weird military cults.) Totally underutilized character development. 

We. Were. Robbed. of Good!Ben. Adam Driver is so phenomenal. Form the little we saw of redeemed Ben, he is the perfect mix of his parents, from the “Ow” to the eyebrow wagging, the swagger, the smirks...I LOVED good!Ben. I wanted so much more good!Ben. What a transformation.

Speaking of which - the scene between Kylo/Ben and Han was terrific. I wish we had had more context for why everything went south, but it was so good and the type of family dynamic we really needed more of. 

The Knights of Ren looked awesome in this film? They needed to be like the Black Order of Star Wars, and they were getting to it, but not quite there. Gods, they could have been the enforcers of Snoke’s cults (Palpy’s puppet cults) that could terrorize far more than a normal, brainwashed Stormtrooper, who was only useful as cannon fodder (I mean, if we look at the history of the clone army to the Stormtroopers, it would be terribly fitting.)

That ship tug-of-war was DUMB. (See my rant about magic and consequences). But, if Rey was going to shoot lightening Palpy-style and blow up a ship, Chewie should have died. I’m sorry, that’s terrible, I love him, but there needed to be consequences for actions and throughout the film, there were either no consequences or random consequences that were a narrative convenience rather than developed into the plot/characterization/worldbuilding. 

Here’s the thing with the ST - there is so much potential. There are some awesome ideas. But they wanted to play if safe with JJ by rebooting the OT, Rian was too far out for them, there was no cohesive storytelling, and so we get these little glimpses into what could have been amidst a shitstorm of trailers for Battlefront 17. 

we could have had it allll....

Final rating: 4/10

[intersex-ionality]

So you like Star Wars? Do you have any favourite Star Wars media? I do not know if I lean more towards Star Wars or Star Trek, I like them both very much. Have you seen any of the Mandolorian? I haven’t seen the polarizing Last Jedi, Solo or the new Rise of Skywalker you mentioned. What do you think of the latest trilogy? I read lots of spoilers for the movies I didn’t see. I can see why some of movies appealed to some and not others depending on the movie. Different sides. Might see them

The animated TV series are my preferred star wars media, with Clone Wars being my #1 and Rebels being my #2. I’ve never played any of the video games that attach themselves to the themes and canons presented by the TV shows, but I do know they exist. I just don’t… do a lot of video games. I need things that have very simple interfaces, forgiving combat, few or no quick-time events, and very simple or no puzzles. Star Wars games firmly do not fit that bill, even though many of them are single-player, story-driven games which is also something I love.

I haven’t seen Mandalorian yet, which I recognize is a travesty because I love both Star Wars and westerns, and it’s a Star Wars western, but also… TV shows are a lot for me, and live-action TV shows are especially a lot because it’s many many hours of media to wade through, most of it requiring me to gauge people’s body language without the exaggerated trappings of animation. It’s hard! I’ll get there, but maybe not for another few months yet.

As far as the films, my order of preference is:

The Last Jedi

Clone Wars - Animated

Rogue One

Clone Wars - Live Action

A New Hope

The Force Awakens

Return of the Jedi

Empire Strikes Back

Revenge of the Sith

Phantom Menace

Rise of Skywalker

I’m a firm believer in calling one-star wars film a lost cause. When I was very young, I called Empire Strikes Back the lost cause, because I haaaated it. It was so SAD and it ended on so many CLIFFHANGERS and I just hated that. In my young adulthood, I called Phantom Menace the lost cause, because I don’t like the canons it introduces, the implications it raises then forgets, the editing or the directing (though, as a kid, I actually really liked it: it was flashy, it had lots of really easy to understand visual gags and one liners, a child my age was the star, etc and so forth).

But congratulations to TPM, because as of a week ago, it’s back in the running. Rise of Skywalker is my new write-off.

I know it’s a bit of an “unpopular opinion” in major star wars circles–though a very popular opinion in transformative star wars fandom–to say that Last Jedi is my number one choice, but man oh man.

Spoilers for TROS and TLJ from this point forward.

Where some films I could mention, JJ, make a big point of spitting on everything that came before them and focusing only on large action sequences that were done better with worse tech and worse budgets decades ago, Last Jedi is a very Fandom Approach to SW canon. It reconciles the trauma and toxicity of the Jedi Order that the prequels went to such lengths to establish, with the bright-eyed bombast of the original trilogy and its worship of a past that had rusted and decayed but was still considered magical to the people it surrounded.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys reading Star Wars fanfiction, you’ll probably really like Last Jedi. If you are the kind of person who enjoys reading Star wars lore books, you probably won’t. If you’re a more casual fan, you’ll probably enjoy the way it captures that “anyone can be anything” adventure spirit of the original trilogy, but the deep forays into examining the preceding media might be a bit uh… much.

Of course, Last Jedi is like… a Star Wars film. It’s a fantasy adventure series set in space, and it knows and accepts the fundamental nonsensicality of its own premise. If you are looking for something truly grounded and realistic, star wars is simply never going to be the place to go (though, the animated Clone Wars series might be a good start…).

So, I do recommend Last Jedi if you like Star Wars! Just, go into it knowing that it’s quite a tonal departure.

I once described it (though I’m not sure I still would) as “Star Wars for fans of Star Trek.”

In the end, I could never choose between star wars and star trek because, the aesthetic similarities aside, they’re two very different properties in two very different genre, with two very different intentions. Star Trek wants to examine the philosophical implications of a lot of human beliefs, behaviours, and cultures, and uses speculative fiction to do so from a safe distance. Star Wars wants to show the emotional highs and lows of a chosen one and their friends,  and uses speculative fiction to make the stakes for those perspective characters about a million times higher than they could be in a real-life scenario. One is about philosophy, and one is about feelings. And while you can philosophize on feelings, or have feelings about philosophy, the two series are just… fundamentally different!! Different stakes, different settings, different tones, different goals.

It’s a lot easier to compare media with more similar genres. Such as comparing Babylon 5 to Star Trek, or comparing Avatar the Last Air Bender to Star Wars.

Rise of Skywalker is… more of a pastiche of other Star Wars films than it is a Star Wars film in and of itself. It spends a lot of time re-creating iconic moments from other films, without putting much effort into making them match the current plot, emotions, etc. It also loses a lot of the emotional power that makes Star Wars so compelling. However, it does have some good points.

For example, I like the part where BB-8 watches Rey heal a snake, and then she decides to try healing another droid herself. So she puts her power cord on the other droid (because the healing was explained to her as “giving up some energy to the other person”), and it works (because the other droid had a dead battery). That was such top tier shit. BB-8 is blessed.

I just… dislike a LOT more than I like, with Rise of Skywalker. Still, if you enjoy Star Wars, it is probably worth catching on streaming or rental. I can’t in good conscience say it’s worth the cost of a theater ticket, that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself.