#orphan first kill trailer

[dead-lights]

grand occult baking championship || episode 1.7

Just a little interlude before judgment!

In case you haven't seen it, I've been posting little interviews with the cast. Please feel free to send me questions, anonymously or not! I'll put them up in batches between posts.

first // prev // next

Most characters have canon origin stories! It's just Elle, L, Brandy, and Morgyn who don't. Caleb isn't wrong about how long it would take to get through it all, but I can make some space at the bottom of the post :)

canon

Most of this comes from dialogue from Werewolves, which I put up here.

Celene & Lou: attacked by Greg while on a date after Lou provoked him - she took the cure, he thought he could ride it out.

Lily: fled into the tunnels when Vlad tried to turn her, where she was bitten by a rabid werewolf. Spent years wandering around feral before Kristopher found her.

Caleb: turned by Miss Hell in a bar bathroom with the door on backwards. It's unclear whether he asked to turn or not, but I'd say most likely not.

Jacob: got lost in the woods as a small child after being traumatically separated from his family. He was hunted by a werewolf and a vampire, and then rescued by Kristopher.

Wolfgang: visited Moonwood Mill to escape the rat race in San Myshuno, decided he liked the werewolf lifestyle, and asked Kristopher to turn him.

Inna: turned by Caleb in the official trailer. Based on promotional material and the paintings from vampires, she seems to have been a thrall for centuries before that, possibly as early as the 1600s.

Darrel: born a spellcaster. Because he has the strong bloodline trait, he must be at minimum a 3rd generation caster.

Emilia: recently ascended according to her household description, presumably by Morgyn, since they're the only sage she knows by default and they're both friends with Grace and Tomax.

deadcanon

Elle: born a vampire during the first half of the Century Conflict. Her parents were former spellcasters who were turned during Operation Eternal Flame.

Brandy: attacked and almost killed by a member of her girlfriend Samantha's coven of origin. Samantha turned her to save her life.

L: an orphaned street urchin. Was accidentally transported to the Magic Realm after pickpocketing a spellcaster and taking his Glimmerstone. She met Keisha and immediately started badgering her for power and secrets.

Morgyn: a teen runaway. They found instructions to get into the Magic Realm in a library book, thought the whole thing sounded extremely rad, made their way to Glimmerbrook, and immediately started badgering Tess for power and secrets.

I wanted a Century Conflict veteran, which is why I made Elle so old. Brandy possibly has a mundane brother, so I didn't want her to have been born vampire. I love foundlings in stories (yes, I'm a big Mandalorian fan, fuck off) so yeah Morgyn and L are foundlings.

[transmasculinizing]

HIP HIP HOORAY! THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN USING THE LANGUAGE OF HEART BUTTON. iv permission to be annoying!

so this has been brought to my attention after seeing the reaction to the new robin movie announcement. elseworlds has really fucked up dc fans understanding of how adaptations work im so serious.

im not saying this bc elseworlds stories r bad. quite the opposite i love these comics (batman n dracula trilogy u changed my brain chemistry ily bbgrl) no im entirely talking about elseworlds as a brand. i am talking about how these stories r marketed bc it has done irreparable damage im thinking.

so the thing about dc? they want u to know what a characters whole deal is. batmans real name is bruce wayne and hes a rich orphan who protects gotham city. superman is an alien whose planet blew up and he landed in kansas as a baby where he was given the name clark kent and was raised on a farm then he moved to metropolis to become a reporter. these characters have a certain way they hav to be and their stories r supposed to be. if ur adaptation of the story strays to far from this no problem we'll just label it as elseworlds. except not really they dont always do that.

case in point: the new robin movie that was literally just announced and doesnt even have a trailer yet. yeah well theyre making jason and dick around the same age. people cant be normal about this. "oh this will be so many peoples first introduction to the characters and this isnt how theyre supposed to be!" calm down. this is an all new version of the characters we havnt seen before. the point of an adaptation is not to be identical to the original. at that point just read the original. what do i mean by this? well-

another large franchise i love is godzilla. literally the only thing the godzilla movies and shows have in common is they have a giant lizard in them. you dont need to know what this guys whole deal is to call yourself a fan. do i highly recommend u watch the original 1954 movie and learn a bit about the history of the franchise if u got into it through some of the more recent godzilla media? yes but obviously i cant force u to do any of that. a lot of these movies straight up do not take place in the same universe. theyre different godzillas. one godzilla isnt "destroying" peoples perception of what godzilla is because its different from the original movie that has a completely different godzilla.

none the less before people jump to conclusions i want to make 1 thing clear: learn the rules before you break them. there have been changes made to the story before that i think r disrespectful to what the 1954 movie originally was. its easy to skim past if u dont know the characters history. for example in godzilla king of the monsters 2019 (and im not dunking on u if u like the movie bc i do also. that doesnt mean im not above criticizing it however) they have the only Japanese character get killed off by using a nuclear weapon to awaken godzilla.in this usamerican adaptation.of a movie that was made.as a metaphor for the bombings of Hiroshima.yeah that is a major yikes.

so yeah this is what i mean when i say learn the rules before you break them. it can be obvious that u either dont like what ur adapting or missing the point or just straight up havnt watched or read it none the less one adaptation doing things differently doesnt automatically mean its disrespecting the source material.

i think dc really shoots itself in the foot by making it so you have to know what every characters whole deal is and if u stray to far from that its labeled elseworlds. then when something isnt labeled as elseworlds fans get pissed at how inaccurate it is. monsterverse isnt marketed as "an alternate universe where godzilla is a million year old alien" its just godzilla. now u could say comparing this to godzilla is unfair because hes barely a character. hes a giant lizard and directors r supposed to play around with him like a barbie doll. so heres another comparison that ive already made a bunch

in mainline tmnt idw comics the turtles r reincarnated from a bunch of kids in medieval japan. this is not in any other version. in mutant mayhem the turtles go to school. this isnt in any other version. adaptations usually flip back and forth on if splinter is mutated hamato yoshi or hamato yoshi's mutated pet rat. the 4 main turtles personalities vary widely depending on adaptation bc "leader, angry, smart and funny" arent personality traits so much as they r quirks. depending on how old someone is they might have a different idea of what the lore of tmnt is if they arent super into the franchise and only know the show/movies/comics they grew up with. this is really not a big deal at all. two people having different ideas of what a character is like bc they were exposed to them from different adaptations is not as big of a deal as dc fans pretend it is. before the the tim burton movies a lot of peoples perception of batman came from the 66 show and that 1 is.very different from how the average joe would think of batman today. and that wasnt the end of the world either! again people can and should learn the history of these stories but complaining about how bad a version of the story a newcomer might like is bc its not like the one u like isnt going to make them wanna look deeper into the franchise. we should be calmly approaching these newer fans and giving recommendations and reading list if they show interest in a character or story

like literally there is a lot of criticism u could make about yjtv but it boils my blood how much bad faith criticism iv seen that can just be summarized as "this is not how this character should be". because i guess there r just definitive versions of characters now

look im not even saying if an adaptation is different u still have to like it. i actually hate a lot of adaptations bc theyre different from what i like. but the opposite is also true. there r adaptations i like bc what they do differently. something being different doesnt automatically make it good or bad is what im trying to say so now that brings us back to elseworlds.like not sorry it shouldve stayed dead.not the stories just the name elseworlds. i really dont like dc bringing back elseworlds. the whole concept just feels creatively limiting. these are just different continuities and should be treated as such. there being a certain way a story should be written and having to warn people if u stray to far away from that story and getting yelled at if u dont is what i mean! do u see the issue here am i making sense

[medusapelagia]

22 Not a murderer

written for @steddieangstyaugust (prompt: Missing scene ) and @augustwritingchallenge (Prompt: Orphan ) Rating: Teen and Up Relationship: Steve/Eddie, Wayne & Eddie TW: mention of canon character death (Chrissy) Words: 1673

(I totally borrowed the Corroded Coffin’s names from @thisapplepielife because in my opinion they are the best CC writer and I’m too lazy to look back at my fics and look at what names I used before XD! Sorry! I hope you don’t mind! And in the meantime check out their work because they are incredibly good 😉)

In his forty years, Wayne has never had to attend one of those parents' things at school. No school play, or teachers parent meeting, or being part of the organization of the school trip, because, for forty years, he had no child to take care of. And he wasn’t exactly expecting to get a scrawny kid knocking on his door with a policeman on one side and a beaten backpack on the other, but as soon as their eyes met he knew he would have done whatever he could for a kid he never saw before in his life.

Wayne was vaguely aware that his oldest brother got married somewhere in Kentucky, that’s how far he made it from fucking Indiana, but that’s all he knew. He could have suspected that having a wife, Al was destined to have kids sooner or later, but he never really thought about it. At least not till the moment Edward, or Eddie as he preferred to be called, stepped into his life.

Weary like a stray cat, it took a long time for both of them to get used to one another. Wayne knew nothing about kids and Eddie knew nothing about Wayne. 

Loving Eddie wasn’t easy.

Not that it was unloveable, but he was harsh and cruel, always ready to use his witty intelligence to hurt Wayne. 

And Wayne endured all of that. 

He endured the screaming, and the fights, and how he kept pushing and pushing eager to prove that Wayne was going to leave him like everyone else. Like his mother. Like his father.

But Wayne stayed.

He took time off from the plants to go to those stupid meetings with the teachers just to beg them not to flunk him, to give him a possibility because Eddie was clever and he deserved more than what he got.

When teachers were particularly unfriendly, Wayne wasn’t ashamed to remind them that Eddie lost his mother, that his father was in jail, and that he deserved at least a little bit of sympathy. But there was just so much Wayne could do when Eddie spray painted the word SLUT on the Maths teacher's car. Or when the neighbors called the police because on the nights Wayne was at the plant Eddie played his music so loudly he kept everyone awake.

Having kids, Wayne decided, was way too exhausting, and he didn’t even ask for one.

The first time Eddie flunked senior year Wayne wasn’t surprised, the kid kept missing classes to hang out with that scumbag of Reefer Rick and nothing Wayne told him made him change his mind.

The second time Eddie flunked senior year he came home declaring that he wasn’t going to attend school anymore because it was just a waste of time, and that was the first time they actually fought.

Wayne never yelled at Eddie, not when he came home much later than the time they decided, not when he hid his test results or forged his signature on some school papers, not when he was pulled over by the police for driving too fast. But leaving school was something Wayne couldn’t tolerate.

Noe that Waybe’s sitting at the police station, chain-smoking, he asks himself if he made a huge mistake. If he should have let him quit school and start working at the plant with him instead of leaving him at the trailer that fateful night.

Eddie didn’t kill Chrissy, Wayne is sure of it, and he knows his kid. He is loud and touchy and too sure about being able to get away with it every time he is in trouble, but he isn’t a murderer. That’s for sure.

The police have already examined the entire trailer but all the fingerprints they found were theirs: Eddie’s and Wayne’s. Because Eddie was ashamed of their place and he never invited anyone home.

Chrissy hasn’t touched anything. Not even the front door because, Wayne is sure of it, his gallant nephew must have kept the door open for her. And now a sweet girl is dead and his nephew is missed.

“Do you really don’t have any idea where Eddie might be?” Powel asks again, and Wayne drags some more smoke.

“I don’t know. I told you. It’s not like we have many relatives he could ask help for.”

“His father? Could he have gone back to him?”

“Still serving in Kentucky. Call the county jail if you don’t believe me.”

“Listen, Wayne, I know you’re a good man, but what Eddie did-”

“He did nothing!” Wayne yells standing up so abruptly that the chair falls to the ground with a loud thump, “My kid did nothing! You have no proof he did it! I heard your fucking phone calling, Calvin! You have no fucking proof! Only suspicions!”

Callahan stands up, one hand on the butt of his gun, but Powel lifts his hands quietly, “Let’s calm down, ok? If you listened to the phone call you know that there aren’t any other fingertips in the trailer. Only yours and Eddie’s. And if you are adamant that he didn’t do it you’re the only other suspect. Do you understand that?”

“I was working! At the stupid plant! Everyone can confirm it.”

“So we are back to square one: Eddie and Chrissy are in the trailer. Chrissy’s death and Eddie’s missing. What am I supposed to think, Wayne? I know you’re a smart guy.”

Wayne stomps the cigarettes angrily in the ashtray.

“He didn’t do it, Calvin. I know he didn’t.”

“Are you telling us Chrissy did it to herself?” Callahan chuckles.

“I already told you who did it.”

“Yeah, yeah, an old man who’s staying in a psychiatric hospital. Try another one, Wayne.”

Wayne doesn’t like the tone Callhan is using, so he turns toward him, leaning over the table, “It’s Mr. Munson to you, piece of shit.” he hisses in perfect Eddie’s style.

“You’re offending a public officer! Calvin, he offended me! I’m going to put him in jail and throw away the fucking key!”

“Calm down! Calm down!” Powel tries again while the two men glower at each other, “Ok so you have no idea where Eddie is, all you know are the names of his friends: Gareth Jones, Jeff Williams, Charles Goodwin, and Dustin Henderson. Someone else?”

“Eddie isn’t exactly a popular kid. That’s all he got.”

Wayne’s fingers twitch with the desire to grab another cigarette but he wants to leave the fucking station, so he stares at the chief of police and asks him, “If we are done I’d like to go home.”

“You can’t go back to the trailer, it’s a crime scene. But I booked a room for you at the motel.”

How fucking kind.

Wayne nods and turns his back to the two policemen when Powel calls him again, “I’m sorry.” he says after a long moment of silence, “I know you did your best with him. But an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Wayne doesn’t dignify that with an answer, he slams the door close and leaves the fucking station, already thinking about where he could get the money to pay for Eddie’s lawyers if they catch him. Or worst. For his funeral, if he’s dead.

He curses under his breath, fishing for the van’s key, when he sees a young man, covered in dirt, standing near to his van.

“Mr. Munson? Mr. Wayne Munson?” he asks, stepping closer.

“Aren’t you the Harringtons’ kid? What the hell do you want?”

“I was looking for you. Can you come with me? Please. It’s important.” the boy begs, but Wayne shakes his head.

“I already had a complicated day. Let me fucking go to bed and…”

That’s when he sees it, around the neck the boy has a very familiar guitar pick and he’s holding his polo open, “He said you would have understood.” he whispers.

“Is he… is he ok?”

“Alive. Beaten, scared, but alive. Please. Come with me.”

Wayne nods and follows the burgundy beemer to Lock Nora, a part of Hawkin he never really frequented.

All the lights are off, and before opening the door, the Harringtons’ boy knocks on his own door. A quick rhythm of three knocks, two knocks, three knocks.

“If you are making fun of me…” Wayne threatens, but when the door slowly opens he sees a pair of familiar dark brown eyes.

Wayne isn’t a hugger. He never was. Not even when he was a kid. But as soon as he recognizes Eddie’s face he steps inside and hugs him tight to his chest, hot tears streaming down his eyes.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” He whispers in Eddie’s hair. He’s filthy and smells like a dump, but Wayne doesn’t care.

“I’m sorry I worried you, old man.” Eddie whispers in Wayne’s jacket, “Things got… complicated.”

“What the fuck are you doing at Harrington’s? I didn’t even know you were friends!” luckily, so he didn’t give the name to the police.

“I promise I’ll explain everything. But for the moment all you have to know is that he’s Steve, and I trust him with my life.” Eddie replies, smiling brightly at the other man.

Wayne gets the feeling that there’s something more between the two of them but he doesn’t inquire, he just holds his boy until he complains that he’s hurting him. When the two young men move toward the kitchen to grab a pack of chips and a couple of sodas Wayne promises himself he will never take his eyes off his boy again. No matter what.

“So… we have a kind of a situation,” Eddie says, gulping down the soda, and when he ends his tales, waiting to see if Wayne will believe him or not, there’s only one thing Wayne is sure about. Even if a monster that kills with psychic powers seems impossible is still way more believable than Eddie’s being a murderer.

“What’s the plan?” Wayne asks, and Eddie elbows Steve, that’s the other boy’s name, in the stomach.

“I told you he was cool.”

[brokehorrorfan]

The Boy will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on September 3 via Scream Factory. The 2016 horror film was an international co-production between the US and China.

William Brent Bell (Orphan: First Kill, The Devil Inside) directs from a script by Stacey Menear. Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Jim Norton, Diana Hardcastle, Ben Robson, Jett Klyne, and James Russell star.

The Boy is presented in 4K from the original elements with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Special features are listed below.

Disc 1 - 4K UHD:

Audio commentary by film critics Julia Cunningham and Emily Higgins (new)

Disc 2 - Blu-ray:

Audio commentary by film critics Julia Cunningham and Emily Higgins (new)

Interview with William Brent Bell (new)

Interview with writer Stacey Menear (new)

Interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl (new)

Interview with doll designer Todd Masters (new)

Interview with doll handler Tannis Hegan (new)

Theatrical trailer

Greta (Lauren Cohan) is a young American woman who takes a job as a nanny in a remote English village. She soon discovers that the family's 8-year-old is a life-sized doll that they care for just like a real boy, as a way to cope with the death of their son 20 years prior. After she violates a list of strict rules, a series of disturbing and inexplicable events bring Greta's worst nightmare to life, leading her to believe that the doll is actually alive.

Pre-order The Boy.

[all-souls-matinee]

BONUS Halloween in August/September Review: Alien: Romulus (2024)

[Eschewing my usual format of 1-2 sentence summary + 1-2 paragraphs of thoughts, this one will be a combination to include several spoilers. It also assumes some prior knowledge of the Alien franchise]

Going into Romulus I was leery of how video game-y the trailer felt and the choice of a director best known for 'subverted expectations' home invasion horror, but those were the two aspects of it I ended up really liking. The premise is that a group of 20-somethings are stuck in an intergalactic mining town where the amount of missions they must fly hours they must work to gain an emigration permit is raised by a few years each time they reach their goal. Our protagonist, Rain, is told by a friend that he and his crew have discovered the wreck of the Nostromo floating above them and plan to break in and steal its cryochambers; the last thing they need for their own ship to make an escape into deep space. The crew welcomes her, but admit that what they really need is her adoptive brother Andy, an ill-liked synthetic who can access the Nostromo's controls. So far so good, I love this premise! It's a little YA dystopia, we've got a ragtag group of mining orphans that look like TikTok influencers and don't have personalities, but that's okay- acceptable and even expected for an Alien movie. I'm also not here to clutch pearls over the sanctity of the original; everything that follows plot-wise is good stuff! Reminiscent of video games, yes, but that means lots of clever little item pickups and interactions, and the tension-building is excellent. An early example: while collecting cryofuel half the team is trapped in a room full of slowly thawing, unseen facehuggers. The other half must retrieve a master-key computer chip from Ash's body (left over from the original mission) to pass to Andy, who is then stuck in reboot mode and unable to help until a critical moment, and this all filmed brilliantly with great effects. There are several standout scenes like it; the movie feels connected to the rest of franchise while contributing new ideas- playing with gravity and temperature and electricity as both weapons and stumbling blocks. It looks good, I like individual plot beats (including the contentious climax), I love the multiple dead rat puppets that are here for some reason, but this is also the only movie I've considered walking out of.

No one barring David Jonsson (Andy) can act, and chemistry is nonexistent. We're told that the crew is composed of friends, siblings, cousins, and love interests, but never actually see it, and no matter how good the plot and pacing are on paper that really makes things drag in places. I like the aliens and love the androids in these movies, but at the end of the day I've always ended up rooting for the humans because of the empathy on display. Many of the Aliens are objectively worse than Romulus from a filmmaking perspective, but this is the first one where I wanted the bad guys to win.

The main villain of this movie isn't the aliens, it's Ash. I was spoiled on CGI Deepfaked* Ian Holm going in, so when they boarded the Nostromo and saw his body I rolled my eyes and braced myself for a scene where he comes to life like a haunted house prop and then they kill him or whatever, but no, he sticks around and drives the entire plot. It's awful; I don't even hate this one from a writing perspective it just feels insanely disrespectful (and is distractingly bad to look at.)

3. The Green Mile is one of my most hated movies of all time. I revisited it early this year when the podcast Just King Things discussed the book within the context of Stephen King's larger body of work, which stresses the character of John Coffey not as an aberration but a trope King keeps coming back to: a black or disabled person who is a holy innocent. Physical prowess and/or magic powers are coupled with the disposition of a character like Of Mice and Men's Lennie or Flowers for Algernon's Charlie to create someone who looks scary but is actually worthy of love because, hey guys, he's nice and sympathetic in a way that appeals to an imagined white American audience. Months after listening to that episode I accidentally walked into an even broader literary context, discovering the character of Jean in E.E. Cummings's The Enormous Room (a nearly 1:1 blueprint for Coffey), and Pip in Moby-Dick, a child traumatized to a point of babbling incoherence that allows him to act as a holy conduit, a prophet, and a comfort to his captain. These characters aren't meant to be racist but rather to teach about antiblack racism, which makes for interesting reading, but a terrible Alien movie.

Andy is the only black character in this film. Andy is referred to as Rain's brother at most twice, then revealed to be her servant (literally programmed by her father to do two things- protect her and make dad jokes.) Andy is cognitively and physically disabled from being rebooted so many times over the years, and faces extra abuse and discrimination because of this. I cannot begin to describe how it felt to have spent the year bumping into saintly black characters in media who are dehumanized in order to teach some vague platitude about humanity, only to run into it again here. It gets worse and more muddled when Andy is rebooted using Ash's chip, which makes him "normal," which makes him evil. Ash uses him to further the interests of Weyland rather than his sister/master Rain and it makes him start saying scary inhuman stuff like 'the solution to the trolley problem is to kill as few people as possible.' (Again, go bad guys.)

I know the movie doesn't see itself as racist. Andy is by far the most interesting character and has a lot of complexity to him; Rain's whole arc is learning that no one should have seen him as expendable or treated him as an inferior, and tells him his new prime directive is to live for himself (as well as her. Can't leave that on the table.) Alverez clearly had the best of intentions, but the movie can't get away from the fact that Andy being cognitively impaired and using his strength and powers to the benefit of some random white girl, choosing family over work but also the individual over the collective, was actually what made him human.

Okay rant over. I liked the part where they threw a flair and the facehuggers scurried after it like a pack of dogs because they hunt by body heat and movement instead of by smell and vision. Yay :-)

*Holm was deepfaked 'respectfully' with the consent of his family using a combination of animatronic and a new actor... and the company literally responsible for deepfakes (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/alien-romulus-ian-holm-rook-ash-ai-1235982350.) I cannot stress enough how bad this is to look at for almost 2 hours like i needed to talk about Andy but jesus christ.

[selfaware-bungou-stray-dogs]

How it all started

(Sort of) Self-Aware! BSD characters x GN!Reader

Warning: Self-Aware, yandere, if you squint, AU's building is still in process. Slight spoilers. OOC. English is my second language.

It all started when you decided to watch Bungou Stray Dogs anime.

Doesn't matter, why you decide to do it. Was it because your friends recommended it? Was it an accident? Was it because you saw a trailer? You are the only one, who knew the answer.

You liked the anime. Characters were fun and memorable, you laughed at jokes, cried at sad scenes. Soon, you watched all seasons and "Dead Apple" movie.

After that, you read manga and light novels. You enjoyed them as much as an anime.

After a while, you learned about BSD mobile game. Because you enjoyed BSD franchise so far, and you liked playing games, you decide to download it. 

After installation was finished, you press play.

It was a point of no return.

______________________________

When you started watching anime, something strange happened in BSD world. One by one, characters become self-aware. They saw, that Yokohama was "empty". Citizens were bland, faceless and silent. The night and day cycle was spontaneous. The events were repetitive. 

(In reality, it was you, who finished with anime and decide to read manga from the beginning)

All characters were confused, scared and angry. They didn't understand, what was happening. All organizations made a truce, until they find a way to change the situation back to normal.

But even with joint efforts, they can't find answers.

Soon there was someone's presence. Someone who weren't from Yokohama. Someone outside this world.

At first, characters were angry. This entity were looking at their lives, treating them like circus performers, that are doing through the loops for audience amusement.

But then, entity cried. 

They cried, when they learned about Atsushi's past. They cried, when orphans, that Oda was looking after, were killed. They cried, when Oda died in Dazai's arms. Not only that, but they cried, when they learned about Fitzgerald's wife and daughter. The entity sympathize with everyone's pain.

Characters were confused. They feel, that entity's feelings were genuine. Characters didn't know what to feel towards the entity.

And then you download the game. And did you first pulls.

Characters heard the entity clearly for the first time. Soon, they learned that you were human. And you didn't know that they were alive. But you were human. And you didn't laugh at their pain.

Characters wished, they could meet you in person. They decide to find a way from their world to yours. Until then, maybe, they could try to communicate with you with this game and phone of yours.

[possibly-not-a-ghost]

Wriothesley and Arlecchino

Okay but can we talk about Wriothesley and Arlecchino for a second because I am bouncing off the walls thinking about the two of them in relation to each other.

Spoilers for Wriothesley's story quest and voice lines below!

Recently, I've been thinking about how isolated Wriothesley is in terms of characters and how much or how little would change if he were not to exist or be a designated playable character. I love that man don't get me wrong but I was was just thinking about why he was made into something of such importance. Literally, he's in an underwater prison and they could've had an NPC warden with the same traits. Figuratively, we know he has a very dubious ability to trust as seen is voice line.

I've managed to get myself to a pretty comfortable place in life, but there's still some things I want that are outside my reach, like a peaceful and happy childhood, or the ability to trust other people. - More About Wriothesley: V

Anyways after watching the trailer with Arlecchino, I was struck with how much Wriothesley and Arlecchino both parallel each other or perhaps could even serve as each other's foils depending on how Arle's lore will change upon release!

Both were orphans. Each had siblings they were raised and some of which did not survive. Both killed their parental figures while young. But whereas Wriothesley was convicted and exiled for his crimes, Arlecchino was pardoned and not only that but her crimes were 'rewarded' with the title as Harbinger. (I use reward in a dubious sense as we don't know how she felt about her inherited title yet or if she was more or less thrust into it with no real agency in the matter.)

She was given a new name, Wriothesley chose his and discarded the one his adopted parents gave him.

God, even the start of the short when "Mother" is telling a story to the children we see how the future where they'd be pitted against each other but through their eyes. The colors are soft and bright. It's a child-like rendition of the brutal reality that Arle would later be faced with.

During Wriothesley's story quest, we learn the full extent of his backstory. He was being fostered by a couple who seemed perfectly lovely and loving but the truth of the matter was that they were trafficking the children under their care. That, or 'disposing' of them if they were useless or found out the truth. To use a veneer of love, of kindness and safety and that have that shattered in the most brutal of betrayals. Sounds familiar, huh?

"They did all of that, but never considered how their actions would utterly ruin all the children they took under their wing. Worse, perhaps they never cared about that at all."

—But I did.

Wriothesley, who took extreme actions and murdered his foster parents so the other children could live and be free, shouldering that sin.

Arlecchino who presumably had her siblings blood on her hands. Who had no siblings left but murdered "Mother" anyways. (I'm not entirely sold that her friend didn't throw herself on Arle's sword but nvm) and once alone, was placed back into that cycle that made her as we see her today in the first place.

Do I ship them? Do I want them to be found family? Enemies? Distant acquaintances? YESS I just want to see them interact with each other, hoyo please.

[terapsina]

What are your favorite tv shows?

I've actually made a post where I rec Leverage, Killjoys, Orphan Black, Person of Interest, 12 Monkeys, The Good Place, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Love Between Fairy and Devil, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Nikita.

So instead of recapping that - here's a FURTHER list of some of my favorite TV shows.

11. Black Sails - trailer here.

A show where real historic pirates get smooshed together with the greatest examples of some literary pirates and shaken until everyone's bloody and grubby.

A lot of queer characters, cool pirates doing cool pirate things, and the inevitable and cruel encroachment of "civilization" onto the last safe pirate port.

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12. Lost in Space - trailer here.

The Robinson family get stranded on an alien planet and gradually adopts (in no particular order) a killer robot, a sociopathic fake psychologist, and a smuggler and his chicken. As one does.

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13. Anne with an E - trailer here.

My favorite adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. An old spinster and her aging brother plan to adopt a boy to help at the farm, they get sent Anne instead. And it will transform more than just their lives alone because Anne has the biggest, brightest personality on the planet and her imagination is like... getting hit over the head with a slate.

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14. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - intro here.

Buffy Summers. One girl in all the world to face the forces of darkness.

She fights demons, kills vampires and saves the world. A lot.

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15. Psych - trailer here.

Perpetual manchild Shawn and his best friend Ghee Buttersnaps aka “The Heater” (better known as Gus) open a psychic detective agency after Shawn fakes being a psychic to the cops. As. One. Does.

Utterly ridiculous. And a LOT of fun.

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16. Charmed - intro here.

After their Grams's death the Halliwell sisters inherit the manor, the Book of Shadows, their magic and a destiny of bi-weekly demon attacks.

The literal reason I have a huge soft spot for witches.

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17. Eureka - trailer here.

The answer to the question of what happens when you put a towns' worth of crazy scientists inside a single paddock. The answer in question - black holes, time travel, love potions, zombie apocalyses, robots dating smarthouses, and a partridge in a pear treeeeee 🎶

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18. Cloak & Dagger- trailer here.

The ultimate opposites attract slow burn superhero best friends forever soulmate romance. A show about fighting for justice, facing your privilege, and healing from trauma (...and teleportation, and daggers made of light).

There being only two seasons is a crime but as those two seasons were utter perfection, it deserves to be on the list.

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19. 9-1-1 - trailer here.

A show about first responders, more specifically about the people of Station 118 and the crazy (crazy) emergencies they get called to. Alternatively, the show about how many times a season one of the team can get shot/stabbed/crushed by firetruck/impaled through head/swept by tsunami/sink in a cruise ship/buried alive and be completely fine.

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20. Stargate SG-1 - fan trailer here.

Alien-planet-of-the-week show where the villains are body-snatching snakes pretending to be gods (to start with). And the heroes (to start with) are an archeologist/linguist with the Olympic gold medal in dying, a theoretical astrophysicist who occasionally blows up stars, a military guy whose favorite character is Bart Simpson, and the guy who can convey all the feelings under this (or any other) sun in a single raised eyebrow.

Other kids grew up on Star Trek. I grew up on this.

[egg-crusher]

So

I was scrolling through my page and I saw something which made me reconsider some things about the FNDM (RWBY’s fandom)

For starters, I want to say i completely understand if you dislike the character of Adam for one or two reasons

You don’t like how he’s written

You don’t like how much overshadowed Blake in her debut

You don’t like his design (I personally hate the volume 4-6 design)

You don’t like his personality and think he’s creepy

You dislike his fans since some can be very aggressive

Etc etc etc

But please, if you genuinely believe the following statements, block me, don’t leave your comment and never try to approach me ever again, thank you

“Adam branded himself” and “Adam deserves to be one of the Schnee’s summons”

The first implies a minority branded himself with the name of a company which officially causes the death of minorities (leaving many orphans) for their negligence, are colonizers, and in the comics kidnap members of said minority to work on their mines…

So he could shit on them, their evidence? He’s not mentally stable and knows how to manipulate people

Do I have to discuss why this headcanon/theory is so dumb? I’ll do it just in case

Why would he cover the scar if he scarred himself on purpose? Remember, Adam wasn’t always a bloody murderer who wanted to radicalize the entire fang to make a personality cult but he genuinely wanted to fight back against humanity

And saying a minority branded himself so he could hate on the rich white men is… something.

And now for the later… I’ll give some small context

When a Schnee (for example Weiss) kills a foe which gave her a very big challenge (for example that Nevermore from volume 1) is added to a galley of creatures she can summon, she later on learns to summon the Arma Gigas from the White Trailer, the Boarbatusk & Nevermore from volume 1, the Queen lancer from volume 5, and a manticore from volume 6 (it only appears una film)

This have a certain degree of autonomy since they can act out of the users view, and we are never told is ONLY Grimm which are turned into summons since they only say “enemies” so any being could perfectly become a summon, okey?

Now here’s the thing

they’re Adam, who’s a ex-slave of the SDC and has Weiss name branded on his face, deserves to be turned into a summon which is literally Slaving his soul to work for a Schnee for the rest of eternity

They think enslaving a ex-slave is worthy punishment because he wanted to slave humans for enslaving him… they’re proving someone (who’s super racist against humans) right, because is fitting (their words) and I think they meant is karma/ironic

This Is not karma, is just continuing the cycle of Abuse and proving him right

He was a monster but he was one because he was abused for being a Faunus and ended up thinking all humans deserved to suffer for what he went through, making him into a Slave after death only proves his point

Slaving Adam like he wanted to do with humans for slaving him only proves him right, “humans only enslave Faunus so Faunus should do the same”

Thats’s inhumane, but since is done to him for hating humans then is somehow right?! Slavery is never right, and people who think enslaving others is a fitting punishment then they aren’t better than the ones who slaved them, because I don’t think I should be saying this since this is something obvious every smart human being should know but… SLAVERY IS BAD and NO PERSON DESERVES IT specially since Adam already was a slave

Kill him and burn his body to ass, but making his soul into a puppet is not the way to go

And before you say “oh, him being a child slave is a headcanon” please go read the CANON descriptions of the character in amity arena

“Adam Taurus used to gaze up at the sky with bright blue eyes whenever he could, between shifts in the dust mines, dreaming of the day he would leave the tunnels behind to find his place in the world. But what he found instead was himself... on the ground, staring up at the three letters that damned him now and forever.

Scarred. Despised. Cold. Adam's heart grows black, his hatred red hot. The final traces of love, the beauty he let go, never returns, and as the last petal falls, Adam is cursed to forever remain a beast. Because, in this tale as old as time, there is no happy ending.

In this story... HE is the monster.

Adam Taurus had finally found his place, and he would watch humanity... burn.”

And before you say “oh that’s just form his point of view” you should check his other description which clearly states he’s in the wrong

“With a scar on his face and anger in heart, a wayward boy looked for a home. When he found it... oh, how glorious it was. Accepted and loved, here was his happily ever after.

But Adam was cursed with a gift few others had.

Adam had... talent.

And when Wilt tasted humanity's blood...

Adam realized he was... STRONG.

Now king without kingdom, he wonders where it went wrong.

Coming up with excuses, reflecting the blame,

Coming to a conclusion, all find insane.”

The descriptions are obviously from a narrator and not the characters themselves, so I think the narrator is reliable to some degree and isn’t Adam at all…

I understand not liking a character, but people have to think about what they say since they usually end up saying very racist things like this.

Adam was a villain and a evil one, but dear god, people treat him like he’s worse than Salem and cinder combined

[williamafton2030]

Gregory deserves to be the protagonist of a future game

Gregory is a very curious character in Fnaf because the conception we had of him has changed over time.

In the first trailer we were supposed to understand that he would be a scared child who we would take care of like Vanessa (at that time it was hardly suspected that Vanessa and Vanny were the same person). However, in one of the figurines that Funko made in which he appears, he looks serious and determined, something that he was would begin to make us understand that he was completely different from what we thought, but we could not see this well until the release of Security Breach. In this game we see Gregory being brave, which many people explained by being an orphan and living on the street as we see in one of the endings, but no one would ever believe that he was actually patient 46 of the retro CDs and that He had indeed had a good life.

Having said all this, I would like to give my reasons why I would like him to be the protagonist again.

The first is that in GGY things are left uncovered since he is not the protagonist but Tony. This means that the data we obtain from this story is from the perspective of this character, meaning that many things are not mentioned because Tony does not know them. The most important and the one that catches my attention so much is how he came to be trapped under the control of Glitchtrap, something that I see could be explained very well in a game where Gregory begins to remember about his past time.

The next one is because I think the contrast of Gregory's somewhat immature personality as a child (not remembering his GGY stage) to adulthood he will be more sensible (remembering GGY) can be brutal. There is an interpretation of Candy Cadet's story about the girl, the witch and the lying boy where it says that Gregory will return to the Pizzaplex to kill the witch who is Mimic but that he will be deceived by the lying boy who will be Cassie under the control of Mimic and I really want to see that. That would be amazing because I would love to see how Gregory spins Mimic with Glitchtrap and the GGY thing while trying to free Cassie and defeat Mimic.

To finish, give this last reason that would be more of a wish and that is that I would love for them to return to canon with a future game, whether starring (hopefully) or not by Gregory, the background he had in the history of GGY. As I have said before, people's perception of Gregory has changed over time, but I think the best one is the one he has now, being that he is given a past that he will deal with when he remembers and that will bring him many wounds that he will have to face so that they can heal.

One of those that I would love for it to go into depth would be how he ended up with Tony (we don't know much about Ellis so I don't think he died although it is also a possibility). It would be a damn cool thing to see that since we would see Gregory grow a lot in maturity like this since it shouldn't be easy for him to discover that he was the culprit of his best friend's death.

I hope Steel Wool makes Gregory the protagonist in the future (or at least explores more of him) because he has a lot of potential that deserves to be taken advantage of.

If you don't have the same opinion as me about whether Gregory should return, I respect it because it is your opinion and all opinions deserve to be respected, just like this one, which is mine.

[leofrith]

A Critique of ACV: The Last Chapter (SPOILERS!)

I wanted to hold off on sharing my thoughts about the new content until I’d given The Last Chapter time to breathe, because I was honestly hoping that maybe if I gave it some time, I wouldn’t dislike it so much. But the more I think about it, the more I find things to dislike about it. Which is why what started out as a quick write-up of my thoughts immediately after playing The Last Chapter has now spiraled into this very long critique that got so long I needed to add subheadings to break it up. 

Sorryyyyy. 

I’m basically spoiling everything from The Last Chapter here, along with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and parts of its expansions. I also briefly mention a few other Assassin’s Creed games, mainly Odyssey and one of its DLCs. My point being, if you don’t want to know anything then please look away now. Or don’t. But I know I would have appreciated a warning before diving into this mess. 💀

As a disclaimer: this essay is not meant to be an attack, nor is it meant to place blame squarely at the feet of Darby Mcdevitt, or any of the other writers or developers involved with the game. There are so many moving parts in a game as expansive and with as much add-on content as Valhalla, and I can only guess what happened behind the scenes that brought us to this point. I don’t know who wrote what, who made what creative decisions, and I therefore don’t feel comfortable placing blame on anyone in particular. I have never worked for Ubisoft and I can therefore only speculate about their internal culture based on what has been leaked from the company over the years. Furthermore, this is not an invitation to personally attack anyone involved in the development of this game on Twitter or wherever else. This is purely an attempt on my part to articulate why me and so many other fans of Valhalla and of Eivor feel so profoundly emotionally betrayed by this ending, as well as outline some factors that I believe contributed to the way the game was mishandled. 

So. I think I had already accepted when the trailer released back in September that something like this was going to happen. I had already done my mourning for the fact that Eivor would never get the send-off she deserved, which is why I think I’m a lot less upset than I would have been otherwise… but that doesn't make this suck any less. The Last Chapter was completely underwhelming, it was emotionally unsatisfying, it completely butchered Eivor's character, it felt incomplete, and rushed, and it felt more like a teaser for Mirage than anything close to the conclusion Eivor’s story deserved.

The (Character) Assassination of Eivor Varinsdottir

When we first meet Eivor as an adult, she is overconfident, brash, and she has just gotten in over her head and gotten both herself and her crew captured by the enemy. She is in the 17th year of a quest for revenge she has been in pursuit of since she was nine years old. She has spent more than half of her life hunting Kjotve, the man who stole her parents, her clan, and her childhood from her, and is fully prepared to die if need be to kill him. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Raven Clan after the slaughter of her own people, and she considers these people to be her new family. Her love for her family and community are central to Eivor’s character right from the beginning. While she learns and grows past some of her flaws throughout the game, her love for her community and her loyalty to them is what sticks with her. 

Eivor also starts the game carrying an immense amount of shame for how her father died, laying down his axe in the hope that the rest of his clan would be spared, only for he and most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. Through her time spent acting as a leader to the Raven Clan–first as a warrior and later as their Jarlskona–Eivor finally understands by the end of the game why Varin did what he did, because she realizes that she would make the exact same choice to protect her people. Eivor, too, would choose to die in “dishonor” if it offered even the smallest chance to save her loved ones. 

Eivor is the reincarnation of Odin; she carries his memories and his thoughts, unbeknownst to her. She has visions and prophetic dreams and hears his voice in her head, but spends much of the game not understanding the meaning of it all. The part of her that is Odin pushes her toward chasing personal glory, toward the pursuit of knowledge, toward selfishness. But she chooses to abandon all that in favor of the people she loves, even as Odin rages and screams insults into her ear and calls her a coward–the one thing she has always been most fearful of becoming. Odin is a representation of everything she has been told to value in life, and she is (literally) pulled in the opposite direction by Sigurd, Randvi, Hytham, Valka, Gunnar, Soma… everything else. 

Eivor never truly seems to grasp the meaning of her connection to Odin, Sigurd’s connection to Tyr, Basim’s connection to Loki, or anything about the sages or the Isu at all. Not in the base game or in any of the DLCs. She never really acknowledges it explicitly until The Last Chapter. 

Put a pin in that.

Family and community are central to Eivor’s character. Loyalty is central to Eivor’s character. Honor is central to Eivor’s character. That’s why it makes absolutely no sense for Eivor to drop everything, seemingly out of nowhere, to go back to Vinland alone and live out the rest of her days learning from Odin, the part of her that she explicitly rejected at the end of the main game. And it certainly doesn’t justify Eivor deciding to leave Ravensthorpe in the middle of the night without a farewell, regardless of who she supposedly said goodbye to offscreen. It doesn’t justify her completely sudden and out of character decision to walk away from her clan, her family without a true goodbye. Eivor spends the entire base game acting as Jarl in Sigurd’s stead in everything but title, because Sigurd has all but completely abandoned the clan in order to chase his own ambitions, only for Eivor to supposedly do the very same thing? No. It’s completely incongruent with her character and actively contradicts facts that were established in the main game.

There are so many other inconsistencies, including the fact that I highly doubt Valka–the same Valka who we saw warn Eivor against digging too deeply in her visions in the intro to The Forgotten Saga–would simply accept Eivor departing for another continent to delve deeper into her visions. But the way they miswrote Eivor’s character was particularly glaring. There could have been a version of the last chapter in which Eivor's motivations actually made sense, but that version needed so much more evidence for it to be believable. Reading between the lines is one thing, but expecting players to accept the conclusions you’re feeding them without planting any seeds beforehand is just lazy writing. [insert “HE WOULDN’T FUCKING SAY THAT” meme]

The RPG structure is the root of all evil (I know just… hear me out on this)

I think applying an RPG structure to Assassin’s Creed was a mistake, and have thought so for a while, but not really for the reason you’re probably thinking of. The “but we’re reliving another person’s memories in the animus, so how can it possibly make sense to allow us to make choices that affect the narrative?” reason. My criticism of the addition of choices is mainly this: I think that by trying to “expand” the story by adding RPG elements and dialogue options, they instead ended up severely limiting themselves. Because the problem with adding dialogue options to Assassin’s Creed is they can never take those choices to their conclusion. They can never truly have consequences.

Trying to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure like this doesn’t work, or at the very least, it hasn’t worked in Assassin’s Creed thus far. Odyssey came closer, I think, because it had multiple distinct outcomes and player choices actually had an affect on the trajectory of the plot (Mostly. Hi, Legacy of the First Blade. I’m coming for you in a minute.). Odyssey's multiple endings present a different problem entirely in the context of Assassin’s Creed because despite the input of choice, there is still a canon version of the story and a canon ending. It leaves those players that arrived at a different outcome feeling alienated, and like their choices were incorrect or simply didn't matter. 

But in Valhalla, all roads lead to more or less the same destination and most decisions have no impact on the trajectory of the story. The problem that arises from this is that players will make their choices and expect some sort of payoff, as they should. But they won’t really get it. As per Darby McDevitt, for example, Sigurd always goes back to Norway at some point, regardless of whether a player ends up with the “good” or the “bad” ending. Sigurd returning to Norway is a fixed point and the timeline will always course correct, so to speak, to reach that end. 

(Thank you @/vikingnerd793 for the screenshot!)

Everyone gets more or less the same version of The Last Chapter, with the siblings’ interactions only varying slightly after the “bad” ending to reflect the fact that Eivor and Sigurd haven’t seen each other in a while. But even with the tiny variations in dialogue that exist, a few changed lines in a scene that doesn't last any longer than two minutes still fail to make Eivor and Sigurd's supposed off-screen reconciliation feel even remotely earned. Ubisoft wanted to offer “choice” while not following through with emotional payoff for those choices because they only wanted a single ending. Even if a player ends the main game with Sigurd deciding to stay in Norway as a result of Eivor’s “betrayal,” the consequences of that to their relationship are never truly explored.

Having only one ending with no variations in an RPG means that they couldn’t address any of the plot points that could have been affected by player choices. Interpersonal conflicts are watered down or only vaguely referenced. They couldn’t truly address the state of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship because that would depend on what endgame the player reached. They couldn’t give Randvi an actual goodbye because some people didn’t romance her and therefore it might feel “forced” to those people, despite her being a major character. Vili–despite apparently being Eivor’s best friend–can’t appear because for some people, he’s busy being the Jarl of Snotinghamscire. There is no true emotional follow through for any of the choices made throughout the game. The end result is a goodbye tour consisting of Aelfred, Guthrum, and Harald, three people who Eivor has little to no emotional attachment to, but whose roles in the game are fixed no matter what choices the player makes, which means they’re safe to use. To be clear, Hytham’s role in the narrative is also fixed, but the reason I separate him from the other three is because he is actually emotionally significant to Eivor. His goodbye, unlike the other three, feels earned. 

To be clear, I don’t place the blame entirely on the writers for this because, as I’ve said, they were given a franchise that revolves around linear stories, told to put dialogue options into it, and make sure all those choices still lead to the same conclusion. As an extension of that, they brought back people who worked on the base game two years after its release to tie up loose ends that should have been dealt with years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those same creators have all since moved on from this story and its characters, both creatively and emotionally. It's been two years. Even longer than that since they actually worked on the game. I wouldn't fault them for not having the same enthusiasm they once did. But the end result is a last chapter that feels almost completely devoid of emotion, and ties up absolutely none of the loose ends that most people would expect from a permanent “goodbye.” It fails to reach the emotional highs and lows that a conclusion with two years of build up should have. 

Which now brings me to Randvi. 

Oh, Randvi, now and forever shackled to her map table. 

I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but I always suspected that they would never actually follow through on making Randvi and Eivor's relationship canon despite the fact that it is indisputably the most fleshed out romance in the game. They are hinted at right from the beginning, in the form of Randvi’s clear dissatisfaction with her marriage to Sigurd and in Eivor’s lingering gazes. It is the only romance option in the game that has any effect on one of Eivor’s core internal conflicts: remaining loyal to her brother. “The wind calls [her] back to Randvi” after almost every single regional arc, whether players choose to pursue a romance or not.

But Darby McDevitt Official Headcanon or no, I never thought Ubisoft would "force" another romance after the backlash from Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade (I told you I’d come back to it). I truly believe the company will and has happily suffered criticism from the Queer community for forcing a relationship on gamers who played Kassandra as a lesbian. Kassandra who, prior to the DLC, also never shows any interest in starting a family, or becoming a mother, or “continuing the family line”, as would become Ubisoft’s flimsy correction to the storyline after the criticisms started rolling in. But I highly doubt they would be okay with alienating the bigots who seem to form the loudest portion of their player base. That would be too much of a risk to their bottom line. 

To me, the romance plotline in Legacy of the First Blade was the inevitable result of Ubisoft wanting to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure. I think they did so without thinking through the implications of letting players choose their character's sexuality, only to then backtrack on it later because they needed Kassandra to have a baby. And what they seemed to take away from that was only that all forced romance is bad, without grasping the nuance of why that particular forced romance was so bad. This isn’t to say there should be any forced romance at all but that it should have served as a lesson of why one shouldn’t make a game with so much emphasis on player choice, only to take that choice away and even retroactively nullify those choices when it suits the needs of the plot. But that wasn't Ubisoft's takeaway. So in Valhalla, they pulled back. They made all player choices matter just a little bit less.

Eivor and Randvi’s relationship is inarguably handled with more care than any of the other romances in the game. It is inextricable from the narrative, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But despite any amount of blatantly obvious subtext that exists, Valhalla is still an RPG and the creators cannot confirm or deny any of the choices as correct or incorrect. And because they have to cater to all possible endings, they cannot address Eivor and Randvi’s relationship in any capacity because it might be misconstrued as being forced. Despite every overt piece of evidence that exists, Valhalla is still technically an RPG and at the end of the day, plenty of people did not choose Randvi. No amount of narrative director headcanons or heavy subtext will change the fact that Randvi is a seemingly meaningless choice in a sea of meaningless choices, and has now remained so permanently.

Ubisoft just really sucks as a company, actually

Everything that I am about to say in this section (and honestly, most of the next one as well) is conjecture because again, I don't know how certain creative decisions were reached behind the scenes. This isn't just about Randvi, or about Eivor's sexuality. It’s also about Ubisoft’s long and storied history of internal misconduct and suppression of marginalized voices. It's about Ubisoft's history of employee abuse in general. It's about the fact that Ubisoft suddenly decided to let players choose their gender, but only once they finally got around to making mainline titles starring women. Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie share the role of protagonist, and would have also shared equal screen time if Evie’s role hadn’t been significantly minimized throughout production in favour of her brother. Aya was originally meant to replace Bayek as the main playable character early on in Origins, but was later reduced to a side character who is only playable in a few missions throughout the game. Aya, the founder of the Hidden Ones. The order that would later evolve into the Assassins. The order that is the namesake of the entire franchise, just to be clear. Odyssey was originally conceived as Kassandra’s game, before the developers were made to allow players the choice to play as Alexios. Every female protagonist in the franchise thus far has been minimized in some way, and Eivor is unfortunately no different. 

Assassin's Creed is a huge enough brand at this point that they could have easily released Odyssey with only Kassandra, and Valhalla with only Eivor. But instead of taking a "risk" and doing just that, they added the male options to cater to a small but vocal minority of misogynistic piss babies who don't want women to exist in their video games, period. At least, certainly not as fully realized characters with personalities and thoughts and feelings of their own. That would require acknowledging women as people, rather than as identical playthings that mostly exist as a social stealth mechanic for them to hide behind when they need a cover. 

It’s especially funny because it was such a futile effort. That very same group of people was never not going to complain about Assassin’s Creed going “woke” for having female protagonists, even if they were optional. Those people were going to complain no matter what, and they absolutely have as evidenced by the fact that they've been having a conniption on Twitter for the past few months now that Eivor is suddenly getting even half of the attention from the marketing team that Havi has gotten for two years. The comments section on every official social media post featuring Eivor is a sea of people complaining about how “female” Eivor being canon makes no sense, how her voice sucks, how she is just the result of Ubisoft pandering to a “woke” demographic. The “fan” response could not be more blatantly misogynistic. What’s more, Ubisoft bases the trajectory of their games at least partially on fan responses. It’s a toxic feedback loop of them making creative decisions built on sexism and the fans responding in turn. 

Ubisoft deciding to implement gender choice as a mechanic didn't happen because they suddenly had a change of heart after happily ignoring their female players for years. It happened because they got busted for the "women don't sell" comments and the company's history of burying sexual assault allegations, and because they finally caught on to the fact that catering to gamers that aren't cishet men might actually be profitable. And it wasn't for lack of trying from the devs within the company because again, Origins was originally conceived as being Aya's game, Evie and Jacob were at the very least supposed to have equal screen time when development on Syndicate was in the early stages, Elise's role in Unity was also reduced... you get the idea.

Letting people choose to play as a woman or letting people choose to play as a Queer person is great. But it's an obvious cop out when your company also has a history of suppressing those very same voices, has done next to nothing to remedy the toxic company culture that encourages that behaviour in the first place, and when you've been dragging your feet as a developer about making your games even just a bit more inclusive for years. It’s an empty gesture when those female characters need to be watered down just enough for their male counterparts to make some amount of sense in the story, and when the marketing for the game hides them away like some kind of shameful secret. 

Suddenly making games starring female protagonists because you’ve realized that it might be profitable, while also making it optional anyway, isn’t exactly the win for representation they seem to think it is. Especially when the marketing favours the non-canon, male protagonists so totally that most people would assume Eivor and Kassandra are skins of their male counterparts. Because heaven forbid the poor baby boys have their escapist fantasy shaken if they have to play as a woman who’s better at getting girls than they are. Making your representation optional makes your representation look half-assed and while I absolutely adore Eivor and Kassandra, I mourn what they could have been if their stories were allowed to be fully theirs. 

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and Ubisoft simply decided to implement gender choice in Valhalla in good faith. I honestly wouldn’t care if I thought it had, or if AC games had always allowed players to choose their gender. But considering the company’s history, and considering the game’s marketing, I somehow doubt that. Especially when, in their first game featuring a canon male protagonist since before AC pivoted to RPGs, they are not giving players the option to choose their gender. 

Hi Basim. 

Now don’t get me wrong. I obviously understand why Mirage doesn’t allow players to choose their gender; Basim is a pre-existing character, and it really wouldn’t make sense. But it is so transparent that they are willing to jump through narrative hoops to explain why Alexios is playable as the Eagle Bearer, but the same thing can’t be done for Basim. I suppose the importance of coming up with convoluted reasons as to why your protagonist’s gender is so easily changeable fades away when you’re not trying to replace a woman. 

But what’s this? By God it’s–it’s Mirage with a steel chair!

The final content update for Valhalla feels like a teaser for Mirage. Full stop. If you think I'm being too harsh or unfair, then that's your prerogative. But in The Last Chapter, in the long-awaited conclusion to Eivor’s story, we don't even get to play as Eivor. The entire questline (if it can even be considered that much) consists almost entirely of cutscenes, which we view through Basim's perspective while Eivor is relegated to a side character. It’s a collection of Eivor’s memories that are supposedly filtered by emotional intensity, as Basim puts it. Grief, longing, sadness: all emotions that I fail to see being presented in the memories they gave us, at least for the most part. For the first time in Valhalla, we are voyeurs to Eivor’s memories rather than experiencing her life through her own eyes. The role of the animus user in past Assassin’s Creed games has always been pretty unobtrusive, but The Last Chapter constantly reminds us that Basim is there and watching. "Animus magic," as Basim calls it, was less of a necessity to the plot and felt a lot more like Ubisoft's marketing department gone awry. 

I'm thinking about what Basim says at the end of the base game, when he is in the modern day and speaking to Eivor's remains. When he says, "I can take from you anything I want... your memories, your skills, your secrets. They're all mine." It's so ironic because he really stole Eivor's ending right out from under her, and I would have to laugh if it didn’t suck so much. It's all I could think about while I was watching Basim flippantly scrub through some of Eivor's most "emotional" memories which for some reason include… saying goodbye to Guthrum, a character we spend very little time with in the grand scheme of things, and who Eivor has next to no emotional attachment to. I understand the desire to tie up loose ends in terms of the historical events that were happening around this time, and they absolutely should have done all that because Assassin’s Creed has always been, in part, an exploration of history. But it should not have happened at the cost of providing closure for characters who were such significant figures in Eivor’s life.

I thought the Roshan quest was fun and I loved her and Eivor’s dynamic, even if we only got a small glimpse of it. But it was development time that could have been spent on wrapping up Eivor’s narrative instead of making another timeline agnostic add-on stealth mission in a game that has always had notoriously janky stealth mechanics. I look forward to seeing more of Roshan in Mirage and can now rest easy knowing that she is going to survive to the end of that game (although I cannot fathom why they decided to spoil that so early on). But they used what was apparently very limited time to give us a quest, very clearly a nod to Mirage, that does more to promote their next AAA title than serve the narrative of Valhalla.

Using the ending of a game to lead into the next is fine and is to be expected. But that transition should not come at the cost of a resolution for the story you're leaving behind. And really, it seems there was far more thought put into Basim and William Miles' first meeting than how Eivor came to the decision to leave for Vinland. 

I think Basim is an incredibly rich, complex character, and it will be interesting to see what direction they take his prequel. But as someone who has actually been really excited for Mirage, the way they've dealt with this transition between games has left me feeling so conflicted, not least of all because of how quickly Ubisoft dropped the ball on Valhalla as soon as Mirage was announced. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at everything we will be gaining with Basim in the next game without also feeling bitter about everything we lost with Eivor. It’s not terribly surprising, since Ubisoft has never treated Eivor’s character with any amount of respect; not in the marketing, and not in most of the post-launch content that has come out in the past year. 

The post-launch that launched absolutely nothing

Darby has now said that The Last Chapter is meant as more of a direct follow up to the epilogue of the main campaign, to be played right after Gunnar's wedding. This is why they didn't feel the need to show a goodbye between Eivor and her people; the wedding functions as a sufficient goodbye to the Raven Clan.

But even if that was even remotely satisfying, it doesn't explain when Eivor came to accept her role as a sage, a role that she has yet to understand by the end of the base game, even if she is perhaps beginning to question it at the very least. It doesn't explain why it was never truly addressed in any of the some 100 plus hours of content that have been released for this game since then. It doesn't explain why Eivor and Randvi might finally pursue a relationship, only for Eivor to suddenly pick up and leave for Vinland, alone and permanently. It doesn’t explain why Eivor would leave for distant shores without saying goodbye to Ljufvina, or Vili, or Stowe and Erke, or Broder, or Oswald and Valdis, or Swanburrow, or any of the many other people whose relationships Eivor cherishes throughout the game. 

If anything, The Last Chapter being played immediately after Gunnar's wedding and the rest of the Hamtunscire epilogue makes it even more important for Eivor to say goodbye to her people, because that whole arc only cements Eivor’s devotion to her people, as well as how much her “encounters” with Odin have shaken her faith. Even then, that doesn't even touch on when or why she came to the decision to leave in the first place. 

Due to a “play anytime” approach that Ubisoft–for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom–decided to take with all the post-launch content for this game, all DLCs for Valhalla are exactly that: they can be played at any time. They go to great pains to avoid spoiling story points from the base game, they rarely make references to events from the base game and, perhaps most critically here, they don’t build on any of the plotlines of the base game. 

Remember that pin we stuck in Odin earlier? Hi. He's back.

None of the DLCs released in post-launch–from Wrath of the Druids to The Siege of Paris, to smaller, free additions such as the River Raids–touch on Eivor’s connection to Odin or her understanding of it, or any of the other potential threads left behind by the base game. Other more mythologically inclined entries like the Mastery Challenges, Dawn of Ragnarok, and The Forgotten Saga scratch the surface of it, but never dig deep enough for Eivor to put two and two together. Even in the Odyssey crossover with Kassandra, who has intimate knowledge of the Isu and their artifacts, Eivor remains completely clueless about her role as a sage despite it being the perfect opportunity for her to learn more. 

At no point is Eivor shown to make any wild revelations about her Isu heritage that could justify her decision to leave. There is a gaping hole in the narrative where that development should be, and therefore the jump from “everything else” to “I’m older now, and I want to learn from the god who lives in my head,” is unearned and comes from completely out of nowhere. The DLCs could have remedied this easily by giving us deeper insight into how Eivor interprets her visions, specifically how she interprets her relationship to Odin. They could have dug into how and when she comes to terms with that connection, and the same could be said for how she comes to know about all the other sages, including Harald, who Eivor and Sigurd suddenly seem to know about being the reincarnation of Freyr despite not seeing him in more than a decade and never mentioning it before. But they can’t, because the DLCs are playable at any time, and therefore cannot discuss things the player may not yet understand.

The brevity of this DLC was especially jarring, even as someone who went into this with low expectations. Because after two years worth of updates, including some sizable free ones, I thought that surely Eivor’s conclusion would be considered important enough to receive the time and attention it deserved. After all, Kassandra got her own surprise ending in the form of the Crossover Stories, announced completely out of nowhere two years after the last DLC for Odyssey was released. After all the time and effort and love that clearly went into that crossover, it seemed reasonable enough that the ending for Valhalla, a game that was still being supported, would have the same amount of effort put into it, if not more. Instead we got a barely there wrap-up that lasts maybe 45 minutes at most, if you’re being generous, and fails spectacularly at offering the catharsis that should be a no-brainer in a story where the main character’s death has been a mystery to be unraveled, right from the beginning. 

Eivor is dead. She has been dead for centuries, buried across an ocean from everyone and everything she knew in life. The how and why of Eivor’s burial site is a question that follows us through her entire journey and throughout the entire game. One that was never resolved… until now, with some vague notion about leaving everything she has worked for and everyone she holds dear behind in an attempt to find herself, all with the help of an entity with whom her relationship has been tenuous at best. Eivor decides to banish the part of her that is Odin because she doesn’t like that part of herself. That second soul, the part of her that values personal glory above all else. Even in The Last Chapter, she describes Odin’s memories as “malicious.” So why backtrack so completely? 

I have no idea.

It’s possible the developers weren’t given enough time to give this final chapter the breathing room it needed to make sense. It’s possible they had lost enthusiasm, and just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get this thing over with. It’s possible Ubisoft wanted to cobble together the scraps of a potentially satisfying ending so they could say they did it, before turning all of their attention to their next title. As it stands, I wish they had just left Valhalla alone, with an open ending, instead of providing a non-answer that feels like an afterthought. An incomplete conclusion to a story and a cast of characters that many of us still care so much about, but Ubisoft seemingly gave up on long ago. 

Eivor deserved better. 

The Raven Clan deserved better. 

Valhalla deserved better. 

We, the fans, deserved better.

If you actually read this far then there is a good chance that you also need therapy

This whole affair really reminds me of the last time I felt this profoundly disappointed by a piece of media I loved. It reminds me of how I felt after watching the second season finale of The Mandalorian, when it hit me that the whole season had just been a series of various cameos and fan service moments that only made sense to the plot at a stretch. It hit me that I had just spent the previous eight weeks watching the show runners completely sideline their main characters–Din Djarin and Grogu–and lose the plot in favour of promoting future Star Wars projects. When it seemed like all the good writing in the show previously had been entirely accidental. But the major difference between The Mandalorian and the ending of Valhalla is that I knew there would be another season of The Mandalorian to potentially patch things up and pick up on some of the plot threads that were dropped. For Valhalla, this is it. There is no more content upcoming that will patch this up and, in hindsight, there are plenty of other things added to this game in post launch that I think would have also made me feel the same way I feel right now if I knew they were the last piece of content we’d ever see. 

Am I overthinking this? Perhaps. Am I being melodramatic? Probably. But to me, this ending for Eivor feels like yet another perfect example of what happens when corporate interests are allowed to dictate creative decisions. 

I say all this as someone who has and will continue to defend a lot of Valhalla’s faults, because if writing this whole thing has done anything, it has served to remind me how good the core narrative of the base game really is. It has depth, it has heart, and I hope that other people who enjoyed it as much as I did–and are as disappointed by The Last Chapter as I am–are able to reconcile the beauty of Eivor’s character arc in the main game with the way it was seemingly undone in The Last Chapter. 

I’m trying my very best to not let this ending retroactively take away all the joy I’ve found in this game for the past year. And in spite of how negative this critique has been, writing it has actually really helped me do just that. Because in writing this critique, I was also looking back on Valhalla’s narrative, its highs and lows, its major plot points, and I was re-watching clips. A speed run of Eivor’s greatest hits, if you will. 

I was reminded of why I connected so strongly with Eivor in the first place. I was reminded of her strength, her kindheartedness, her love of children, her wit, the poetry of her dialogue, her sense of duty. I was reminded of her rage, her single mindedness, her sense of loyalty that is often to her own detriment when she offers it to those who don’t deserve it. I was reminded of her character arc from someone who spends so much of her life on a single minded quest for revenge, to someone who becomes a beloved leader to her people. 

I was reminded of the Valhalla sequence at the end of the game, a sequence that still makes me cry just as much now as it did the first time I played it, if not more. When Eivor, who has spent most of her life feeling nothing but resentment and shame toward her dead father, finally learns to understand why he did what he did. When she understands why he laid down his axe, the very same axe she holds now, in the futile hope that his daughter, his wife, and the rest of his people would be spared, only for most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. When Eivor has finally realized, through years of acting as a leader to her people, why Varin did what he did, even in opposition to everything she has ever been taught to value. When she has grown enough to realize that she too would make the exact same choice her father did, her cowardly father, because she too would die in dishonour if it offered even the slightest chance to save her loved ones. When Eivor, who has spent her life trying to justify her existence by being useful, finally accepts that her parents died because they loved her and not because she didn't do enough. When Eivor is holding the very same axe now that her father held then and the High One himself is offering her wisdom and glory and power and she, like her father before her, drops her axe and turns her back and chooses love instead.

That is the version of Eivor I will remember. Not the hastily cobbled together ghost of her that we saw in The Last Chapter.

[darthpastry]

Disconnected FNaF Rambles.

It turns out listening to FNaF 6 theme right before trying to go to bed was not a good idea and I had random thoughts about FNaF lore both incredibly early this morning and at normal hours. Enjoy.

Springlock Incident:

At what point did William get springlocked? Obviously at least five children died first. But had CC died yet? I know it sounds crazy, now that it's not 1am I can't as easily justify it as even a theory, but had the location closed by the time he got springlocked, idk.

Was William still able to speak trough Psychic Friend Fredbear after he got springlocked? What if Psychic Friend Fredbear was an early version of Glitchtrap that William created. Like... he put an AI into the plush and somehow or something.

Did Michael start bullying CC after the two became orphans? Where was William during all that if not springlocked? Was he off killing another child? Was he just chilling in an office with Henry discussing the future of the franchise?

Ballora:

Interesting thing I learned is that there's an Irish folktale monster called the Balor that unleashes destruction when opening its eyes. From this, we can obviously deduce that Mrs. Afton is Irish. Kidding. Mostly. But. I mean... Moving on from the Balor.

Obviously, there's some sort of connection between Ballora and Mrs. Afton (I'll just call her Clara because it's easier). After all those theories about their connection then putting a Ballora-themed STAFF bot at the STAFton family table is Security Breach? There's a chance that it's a red herring, there always is, but come on.

The does only provide more questions, if she definitely is meant to be connected, we can assume one of three things:

Ballora is made to resemble Clara

Ballora is possessed by Clara

Both.

We also don't know how exactly Clara died. I have heard that it's generally accepted that she drove off a cliff because that was something from the books, but nothing's been confirmed in the games. For all we know, William killed her and forced her to possess Ballora.

Circus Baby:

Even more of a mini theory, what if Circus Baby wasn't actually made to kill kids? Still capture them, of course, but not kill them. Killing them like that wouldn't have really made sense for Afton unless he was trying to figure out how many souls could possess an animatronic at once, right? Plus, just grabbing them probably generate a decent amount of agony already. If they were kidnapped, they could be put into other animatronics or experimented on.

So why did Circus Baby kill Elizabeth? Pretty much no evidence for this, but perhaps she was too old. I think it's generally accepted she was around 8 when she got killed, but I wouldn't put it past William to be targeting kids younger than that. Most kids that old were probably told to stay away and William stupidly thought they would listen.

Possession vs. Agony:

Is there a difference in the franchise? I can firmly say maybe! I think so. Most likely. I hope so. Agony results in Remnant which attaches to AI while possession just... ghosts possessing animatronic endos. Agony gives life to the metal while possession gives it personality, I think.

You ever think about how Golden Freddy must be absolutely loaded with agony? We got Cassidy and CC from their traumatic deaths in there. Possibly Michael when CC got killed. Heck, maybe even the other bullies added some agony.

GGY:

Gonna jump forward to modern FNaF for the last ramble. If Gregory was possessed by Glitchtrap, why would Vanny attack him? Is Vanny even attacking him? Maybe he was breaking free from the control. If you look at Vanny's jumpscare animation, she doesn't exactly look like she's about to kill Gregory.

But if not killing him, then what? Maybe by coming close she allows Glitchtrap to fully take over Gregory's mind and the jumpscare is just causing Gregory to become Glitchtrap's puppet?

There's seriously no aggression to it. Even in the trailer, she had a scarier jumpscare and earlier in development she even carried a knife! I have seen people say it was because they weren't 'allowed' because it was 'too violent', but was that ever confirmed? How do we know the story didn't change and back when all that GGY hadn't been thought up?

Moral of the story: Don't listen to FNaF music at 1am.

[its-raining-brellies]

IM WATCHING THE TRAILWR

it came out at like 4am my time which is really sad so i’ve only just seen it…

First it has them walking in the mansion? Is that their mansion? Their mansion is in disrepair!!!!!!!

This is Reginald’s speech from the fucking bank robbery sequence?????? REGINALD’S SPEECH FROM THE BANK ROBBERY SEQUENCE????? S1E1??? Circular structure?????? CIRCULAR NARRATIVW??? I love a circular narrative i pricked my ears like a terrier when I noticed that 😂

Wait one second

“Hargreeves’ home for wayward boys”

It’s not any academy, it’s an orphanage????? Who are the orphans? Is this designed to have Five in it? I’ve read whump fics where Five gets kidnapped and taken to an evil orphanage run by Reggie. Canon,???

Ohhh a subway station. Interesting. I love some good train imagery I do

Viktor and Five collab huzzah!!! Or is that Ben sitting at the bar? Is this non-time travelling Ben as was seen in the s3 finale?

OH WE FINALLY GET TO MEET CLAIRE GO US

What did Ben do to get himself in prison?

WHO is that woman by the piñata and why is it not Lila?

LUTHEE IS GOING TO SPACE AGAIN… oh God, that’s going to be really difficult for him due to the general trauma of being left on the moon. :(

this is the bad photo that Luther took btw:

allison looks so cool 👌 the hair and shoes and coat are awesome. also I like Five’s design this season- it’s better than the godawful side part at least!

So we have Five and Allison walking together first. That makes sense, they’re obviously the ones who make decisions and do sensible things for the most part, Allison’s character change in s3 notwithstanding. Followed then by Lila and Viktor. Idk if there is any significance to that.

When they’re walking, you can see Five, Allison, Lila, Viktor and Ben. Not anybody else. 🤔 Intriguing! Where are Klaus and Diego!

The shouting getting in the van is so in character I love them

“HELL YES LETS GO KILL THIS BITCHHHH” “This is a rescue mission.” And Klaus has a paper bag. Why does Klaus have a paper bag?

EVIL REGINALD DRONES CANON??? :( that seems boring ngl can’t have them fighting evil drones!

WAit. Lila is looking at this train map. The station is empty. AHAT IF THE TRAIN IS THE TELEVATOR?????? It’s certainly not just a train, they’ve all been on it alone and it does something very interesting. I want to know about the train. Televator is a solid theory I think.

Allison and Luther walking up to a mansion… I feel this has something to do with Claire. Maybe Claire or Ray is in the mansion and Luther is for emotional support?

Is that Ben that Viktor’s beating up ???? Viktor beating someone up is in and of itself very novel. What’s going on with that?

oooh Diego and Five? Five would win no doubt. I’ve not seen any of his powers this trailer though… which is curious.

Oh who are these dancing people? Maybe this is Gene and Jean Thibideau.

I can’t see them clearly sadly. I’ll have a look on Netflix rather than Youtube, see if I can identify them, but can’t take screenshots on Netflix.

Is that Five and Lila in the apocalypse? God, I would quite like to see Five have a mental breakdown over being once again in the apocalypse. Tbh I would quite like to see Five have a mental breakdown full stop. If they put him there and don’t have him crumble I’m gonna be annoyed.

Woman in a burger shop producing guns? Agnes Rofa?

WAIT A FUCKING SECOND. Lila is absolutely sobbing into Five’s shoulder. What happened? Did her and Diego’s child die? Did Diego die? Do I need to get annoyed at Five being kind to an out-of-character extent? I MUST KNOW ALL. Either way, between this and the apocalypse moment I’m glad to see some Five/Lila bonding time.

OH NO REGGIE PUT THEM I. A MACHINE AGAIN. DONT PUT THE BRELLIES IN A MACHINE THATS AN AWFUL PLAN TJATLL HURT TBEM

Is this a Hargreeves family Christmas I see going on?

GUYS ITS OKAY FIVE TELEPORTED. it’s okay. Five teleported. Is he in the paradox-proof room? Commission origin story? Well, that shot is promising, as Five Commission origin story is soemthing I’m itching to hear.

Dare I ask why Santa has guns?

Is that a child’s arm with an Umbrella Academy tattoo? Is it Five? Are there new children again? EXPLINNNN PLEASE

Klaus running a séance. Is he going to be a scam fortune teller person? That would be so cool, he’d thrive doing that.

The car sans Viktor and everybody looking horrified. What does that mean for Viktor? Is he the one who dies? It would make the most sense I fear.

Okay between Luther in a ball pit and Diego by the piñata, there’s definitely a child’s birthday party that happens. Claire’s? Or Diego and Lila’s child’s? We will find out. I look forward to it in either case, that will doubtless be very entertaining.

Whose hands are those making the sinister looking deal?

Why are Viktor’s powers gold now? They were blue.

Is that Jean Thibideau that Luther’s throwing through a window?

I think this last sequence is just showing them all using their powers.

I gotta say I’m disappointed that there aren’t any moments that made me giggle like there were in the other trailers. :/. Is this season gonna be unfunny?

Also I’m annoyed that Five seems to be sticking with his much calmer s3 personality rather than being his usual unhinged self that we know and love.

[callme-aria]

heres a thing i thought, posted it on twitter but i thought id post it here too so ya!

okay but fuck so after everything happened in the upside down and eddie dying, just think abt steve showing up to the munsons trailer still wearing eddies vest and offering wayne help with clean up etc, because he knows eddie wouldnt want wayne to be alone wayne sees that steve is wearing the vest, eddies vest, and he knows eddie wouldnt let that vest out of his sight for half a second so he questions steve abt it and when steve says eddie gave it to him and tries to give it back to wayne he says no wayne knows how much that vest means to eddie so if he willingly gave it to steve then he did it with intention and wayne just looks at steve in a wholw new light and accepts his help and they grow closer to the point where he calls steve 'son' then when max finally wakes up she discovers that her mom was killed in all the chaos and shes an orphan now and theres talk of her going into the system and steve is doing his best to console her and keep her calm while shes still healing in the hospital he vents all this out to wayne one day over dinner because he loves those kids and would do anything for them, wayne takes it upon himself to talk to hopper and getting max in his custody and having her as his own so she can avoid the system and stay with her friends it all works out and max moves into the munson trailer and wayne isnt so lonely anymore and max isnt as scared, then as if by a goddamn miracle, eddie shows up one day, bruised and still not 100% healed but definitely not dead the kids and steve, robin, nancy and Jonathan are stunned, wayne isnt sure that hes not just hallucinating until steve just runs full speed at eddie and hugs him as hard as humanly possible and sobs, eddie notices hes wearing his vest and steve says "as if id ever take it off" all the kids just run and surround him and hug him and everyone is sobbing until wayne moves and they all step back and let the munson boys have their moment of peace, they all crowd into trailer and catch eddie up on everything hes missed wayne gets filled in on the true story of what went down, the upside down and all the gory details and eddie learns that hes got a new little sister, and everything feels like it might actually be okay, for the first time in years, steve relaxes

[kylanfedje]

Disney Star Wars Retrospective - Episode II: Revenge of the Cinema

10,000+ words ~ 42 min read

Oh, how great it was to have been a Star Wars fan in 2015. Rebels was in full swing, with the incredible Ahsoka Tano being revealed as the operative behind the “Fulcrum” alias, and anticipation was through the roof for the upcoming release of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. And rightly so, as the film presented in the trailers, posters, and other marketing materials Lucasfilm produced in the run-up to the film’s December 18th release date promised to satisfy the nostalgia of old fans while still offering plenty of new characters, worlds, and stories to discover.

That said, there was still a significant amount of cautious optimism underlining the fandom during this time. The memory of the disappointment that was The Phantom Menace—and the Prequel Trilogy as a whole—loomed large in the minds of fans, leading many reluctant to buy into the hype. Nevertheless, the general atmosphere of excitement was easy to get swept up in. After all, this was a new era for the franchise. Disney, the brand’s new corporate overlord, was riding high on the success of their Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which took the comic book characters and stories once beloved only by a niche but dedicated fandom into a mainstream powerhouse of popular culture while not alienating those original fans in the process. As such, it was not unreasonable for Star Wars fans at the time to hope that Disney’s management of the property would provide similar results.

Not only that, but a host of both returning and brand-new creative voices were involved with the project. J.J. Abrams, the man behind the successful 2009 Star Trek reboot, was hired to direct, and would write the script alongside Lawrence Kasdan, who’d worked on the screenplays for both The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), with contributions from Michael Arndt, writer of the pitch-perfect adaptation of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013). Notably, George Lucas would not be involved beyond a brief story consulting role early in pre-production (though his ideas were eventually discarded). At the time, this was seen by many as a boon rather than a hindrance as he was often blamed for the shortcomings of the Prequel Trilogy, that nearly all of their idiosyncrasies were the result of Lucas’ weaknesses as a writer and director, and that few in the production were willing to contradict him as he was the “Great Visionary” behind the beloved Original Trilogy. The Prequels ultimately revealed that Lucas worked best when he had others around him to redirect and support his creative impulses, though many wondered if he had simply grown too far out of touch with what audiences wanted to see from the Star Wars universe. Therefore, his detachment from the Sequel Trilogy led fans to believe the new films might somehow manage to recapture the magic of the Original Trilogy after all.

For the most part, this belief was proven true, as when The Force Awakens premiered in December 2015, it debuted to rave reviews and record-setting numbers at the box office, proving the hype was more than justified. Fans and critics alike lauded the film for its exciting set pieces, incredible visual and special effects, and compelling characters introduced by the film. At the same time, many were quick to point out its aesthetic and structural similarities to previous entries in the series, particularly to Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). A brief plot synopsis illustrates this: An orphan on a desert planet discovers a dormant connection to the Force and joins an upstart Rebellion/Resistance in fighting against the tyrannical Empire/First Order, which seeks to subjugate the galaxy through the use of a planet-killing mega-weapon. Furthermore, much of the plot is driven by a secret message carried by a lost droid that has to be delivered to the good guys’ secret base before the bad guys can get ahold of it. However, the film still did enough to differentiate itself from A New Hope and not be merely a shot-for-shot remake of it by giving its characters unique motivations and personalities compared to their predecessors. While Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammil) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) both originated on desert planets, Luke was a farm boy, and Rey was an abandoned scavenger. Both yearned to escape their oppressive homes, but both found distinct reasons to stay—Luke so as to not leave his aunt and uncle to manage their farm alone, and Rey to wait for the family she was sure would return. Moreover, Rey’s fierce independence, born from a life of struggle in a hostile environment, is repeatedly affirmed throughout the film, whereas Luke often relied heavily on the help of others to get by in the wider galaxy, reflective of his relatively sheltered upbringing in the isolated Tatooine desert.

Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) most obviously parallels Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in that he’s a rogueish and charismatic pilot. But where Han was an opportunistic smuggler, more interested in the money to be earned in rescuing a princess than in the righteous cause underpinning it (until he triumphantly returns to help Luke blow up the Death Star and subsequently join the Rebellion), Poe is “the best pilot in the Resistance.” He’s a freedom fighter, devoted to the cause of preserving the Republic and destroying the First Order, a far cry from the self-interested scoundrel that Han Solo starts out as.

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver) is similarly analogous to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker (David Prowse and James Earl Jones), a pupil of the light who was seduced by the dark side and is also related to one of our main characters. And yet, The Force Awakens shows us that his fall from grace was nothing like Vader’s before him. Though he wears a scary mask and head-to-toe black, he bears none of the disfiguring scars that marked Vader’s turn to evil, nor is he the measured-yet-strict enforcer of the pure power that Vader was. Rather, he’s more of a temperamental child, channeling his anger and insecurities through both his lightsaber and the Force, and who also happens to command an army of loyal followers as a bonus.

Finn (John Boyega) is arguably the most original character introduced in The Force Awakens. Kidnapped as a child and raised to be a First Order stormtrooper, he defects after seeing his first action and spends the rest of the film switching between trying to run away from the life he left behind and trying to keep his new friend Rey out of trouble. There truly weren’t any characters like him in the established canon of films, and his uniqueness demonstrated a clear desire by the filmmakers to develop a distinct identity for the Sequel Trilogy compared to its predecessors.

However, while the film certainly was more original than some gave it credit for, it still leaned heavily on paying homage to the most beloved aspects of the Original Trilogy, even beyond the desert-dwelling orphans and planet-killing mega-weapons. The Skywalker lightsaber is treated as an object with innate spiritual power, serving as the catalyst for Rey’s awakening in the Force, paralleling the way in which Luke’s journey with the lightsaber ignited the imaginations of Star Wars fans everywhere. Furthermore, legacy characters like Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are treated as legends with whom our protagonists are already well acquainted through the stories of their exploits, in much the same way fans of the franchise venerate them and the films that originated them as if they were sacred texts. The omnipresence of X-Wings and TIE Fighters is also an extension of this reflexive reverence for the Original Trilogy, as is the role of the Millenium Falcon in the film as the vessel of choice for our heroes throughout the film.

These creative choices continue the trend established by Rebels of borrowing much of its aesthetics and iconography of the Original Trilogy. But where this was justified in Rebels by nature of its premise and place in the timeline, The Force Awakens has far fewer excuses. For starters, the Resistance and First Order don’t need to use the same fighting vehicles as the Rebellion and Empire before them. After all, more in-universe time elapsed between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens than did Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and yet the design of the vehicles featured across the films change far more drastically in the latter pair than in the former. While I’m sure the filmmakers can offer an in-universe explanation for this, the real truth behind it is more likely that they believed audiences wanted to see the ships they knew and loved, or that they’d be more willing to accept the newer elements if they were accompanied by things they already knew. Either way, the decision to keep the fleet vehicles of the good guys and the bad guys the same as they were in the Original Trilogy is yet more evidence that the franchise’s producers were often prioritizing fan service over original storytelling as they sought to reimagine its identity following the Disney buyout.

With all that in mind, it’s important to recognize that The Force Awakens played an important role in winning back general audiences’ interest in Star Wars after the reputational disaster that was the Prequel Trilogy. Perhaps leaning on the iconography of the Original Trilogy so heavily was exactly what the franchise needed to regain the trust of the wider public before subsequent films could push the series in new and interesting directions.

The first test of this theory would come in the form of 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the franchise’s first live-action theatrical spin-off film. It tells the story of the daring Rebels who stole the Death Star plans, which were later used to uncover and exploit its critical weakness during the events of A New Hope. Like Rebels before it, its premise and place in the timeline meant it would naturally feature the iconography of the Original Trilogy—stormtroopers, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, the Death Star, etc. And just like Rebels as well as The Force Awakens, this need not have prevented it from telling an engaging story with original compelling characters. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The main protagonists of the film, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) have paper-thin motivations and personalities, as do much of the supporting cast around them. Audiences are frankly given little reason to grow attached to them over the course of the film, and thus can hardly be asked to care when they start getting picked off one by one during the climax of the film. Instead, it’s expected that they’ll already know why the events of this film matter from having seen A New Hope and therefore need nothing more than token appearances by the characters that film created to keep them invested, as evidenced by the cameos of Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, and uncanny CGI reanimations of Grand Moff Tarkin and young Princess Leia,

But Rogue One goes beyond the pool of easily recognizable faces listed above, pulling in some of the more obscure characters in the Star Wars canon. The most prevalent of these is Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a leader in the Rebel Alliance, who makes his live action debut after having been introduced in The Clone Wars and returning in Rebels. A character originating in animation jumping into live action is not without precedent in Star Wars, as Boba Fett debuted in an animated segment of the Star Wars Holiday Special before appearing in The Empire Strikes Back, and General Grievous was in Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Was: Clone Wars animated series before showing up in Revenge of the Sith. But the projects where these characters originated were developed in tandem with their live-action debuts, whereas Saw was not. As such, his role in Rogue One can be understood in a different context, more as “fan service” than as a natural extension of an existing storyline.

That said, despite a perhaps fan-servicey motive for his appearance, Saw Gerrera’s presence is more justified than those of Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba.

Hang on, who? Remember in A New Hope when Luke orders a drink in the cantina and two guys start threatening him, only for Obi-wan to step in and literally disarm one of them before they can kill him? Yeah, it’s those guys. They only appear for a brief moment in Rogue One, but it’s long enough for diehard Star Wars fans to notice and recognize them. What are they doing here, you might be asking? Absolutely nothing except appearing on screen just long enough for diehard Star Wars fans to notice and recognize them. They are the ultimate example of Rogue One’s fan service and are an early example of the “Glup Shitto,” a term coined much later to refer to the phenomenon of obscure Star Wars characters reappearing in newer media for little reason other than for fans to point and say, “I know that guy!”

Now, that’s not to say that general audiences disliked Rogue One. In fact, the film was quite well-received upon its release and is still beloved by most of the fandom today. However, its critical and commercial success can ultimately be understood to be a result of this fan service and its dependence on familiar iconography rather than its originality. More people are inclined to fondly remember Darth Vader’s “hallway scene” than they are Jyn and Cassian wordlessly battling stormtroopers on Jedha.

Either way, by the time the first trailer for Episode VIII was released in early 2017, the Disney Star Wars era was still seen by most as a resounding success. With an acclaimed animated television series and two hit films under their belt, what could possibly go wrong?

I don’t think I need to explain just how vicious the response to Episode VIII was in certain sections of the internet, but I have to, as it marks the inception of a large schism within the fandom which has yet to heal.

Full disclosure before I continue: I love The Last Jedi. It is far and away my favorite Star Wars movie ever. That said, I will do my best to assess the film and the criticisms leveled against it as objectively as possible. With that out of the way, it’s time to talk about the so-called “Fandom Menace,” an informal collective of content creators who erroneously believe that Disney is “ruining Star Wars” through “forced diversity.” They are among the ideological and tactical heirs of “Gamergate,” a similar movement that proclaimed to advocate for “ethics in games journalism.” However, both have been responsible for serious harassment campaigns against the individuals they view as persona non grata in their respective “nerd” communities. Ultimately, these are reactionary movements driven largely by and for cishet white men who are resentful of the growing visibility of women, queer people, and people of color in popular culture and have resorted to extremist rhetoric and tactics in an effort to preserve the “purity” of their fandoms—this despite such people having always been part of these communities but are only now being represented in the media they enjoy. The Fandom Menace is therefore, in essence, a fascist-coded political movement centered around media consumption, in which adherents and participants wish to return to an imagined past when Star Wars was “pure” and “good” rather than “woke” and “bad.”

While there was a degree of racist and misogynist backlash to The Force Awakens, with opponents railing against the film’s Black and female protagonists—Finn and Rey respectively—it failed to gain the same kind of traction that the Fandom Menace did in the wake of The Last Jedi. The reasons why it failed are multiple: first, the film’s overall quality and its reliance on familiar iconography helped fans and general audiences alike to feel warmly about it and thus not be swayed by the “anti-woke” crusade against it; second, those most vocally criticizing Rey as a “Mary Sue” and Finn as “forced diversity” were most often also proponents of Gamergate, and by late 2015 when the film released, were widely understood to be grifters with an axe to grind rather than good-faith critics; and third, this was before the 2016 election and the rise of the far-right under Donald Trump. It’s easy to forget now that he’s been out of office for some time, but his presence in national politics lent legitimacy to these cranks and weirdos that they did not have before, leading to an increase in their overall influence by the time The Last Jedi came out and helped open the Fandom Menace’s proverbial floodgates.

So, what did The Last Jedi do that enraged these chuds as much as it did? In addition to still having the same main characters as The Force Awakens, it also added Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), two female characters—and one played by an Asian-American—in central roles in the story. Not only that, but it also brought the great Luke Skywalker down to the level of a lowly hermit, a far cry from the legendary hero the galaxy—and the fans—knew him as.

But that doesn’t explain why the hatred against The Last Jedi became as widespread as it did. After all, The Force Awakens committed many of these same “sins of wokeness,” and its opposition didn’t receive nearly the same level of prominence as its successor’s did. To understand why, we have to analyze the film itself to figure out what it was trying to do, why audiences might have reacted poorly to it, and how the Fandom Menace were able to capitalize on that.

The story of The Last Jedi can be divided into three separate but intertwined plotlines. The first centers around Rey and Luke on Ahch-To. We rejoin them right where we left off at the end of The Force Awakens, with Rey offering Luke his old saber, inviting him to return and fight the First Order on behalf of the Resistance. But he rejects it, callously tossing the hilt over his shoulder and refusing her pleas for help. Eventually, he agrees to teach her the ways of the Jedi…and why they need to end.

This is not the Luke Skywalker we last saw the end of Return of the Jedi, the one who declared himself to be “a Jedi, like my father before me.” Many fans felt hurt and betrayed by this, that the great Jedi they knew and loved would fall from grace was unconscionable. They wanted Luke to take back his saber and take on the whole First Order by himself. But that was not the story The Last Jedi would tell, nor should it have been. For him to have done that would have effectively sidelined our new characters and done the trilogy a disservice by retreating further into meaningless fan service. Instead, writer and director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Looper) looked at what The Force Awakens had established and took the next logical step. Luke didn’t run away for no reason at all, and he wouldn’t be convinced to return so easily either. The motive behind his exile, the film explains, is that he inadvertently caused his nephew to turn to the Dark Side, and the shame and guilt he felt as a result of that shook his faith in the Jedi and the Force so severely that he abandoned them altogether. Therefore, when Rey bonds with Kylo Ren through the Force and believes he can be brought back to the Light, his sense that he failed to prevent his fall in the first place is too heavy for him to accept that as even a remote possibility. But she leaves anyway, and he decides to burn the island’s Jedi Temple and its sacred texts, to destroy them and the values they represent once and for all. But in this moment of weakness, his old teacher, Master Yoda, appears to him and reminds him of his responsibility in this moment. His failure at preventing Ben’s corruption and in convincing Rey of the folly of the Jedi is not a condemnation but an opportunity because, as Yoda explains: “Failure, the greatest teacher is.” He should have learned from his mistakes rather than run from them. Now, when the galaxy needs him the most, he’s nowhere to be found. But there’s still time. He can still provide the Resistance with the spark of hope it needs and inspire the next generation of heroes to fight in his absence. Which is precisely what he does when he projects himself onto Crait to, in his own words, “walk out with a laser sword and take on the whole First Order by [himself].” His actions are not only the ultimate heroic sacrifice (as the exertion is too much and he becomes one with the Force after he’s finished), but it is also the most perfectly Jedi thing he could have possibly done. He gave himself up to allow others to escape. Not only that, but he did so without harming a single person. If the Jedi lost their way when they became warriors for the Republic, then Luke’s sacrifice represents the Order’s rebirth and its embrace of the ideals of peace and justice that it once stood for. So, while I understand why some might have felt slighted by Luke’s sorry state at the start of the film, it’s disingenuous to say that he’s only that. Rather, the film puts him in such a low spot because: one, that’s how the previous film established him; and two, it services his ultimate redemption as the great hero the galaxy needed and reaffirms the need for the Jedi as guardians of the Light.

The next plotline to discuss is the one revolving around Poe’s secret plan to save the day without Vice Admiral Holdo finding out. For context, this comes after Poe is demoted when plan to destroy a Dreadnought-class First Order Star Destroyer results in him losing most of his squadron along with the Resistance’s entire bombing fleet. So when Holdo takes command after Leia’s knocked out of commission, his reputation leads her to not trust him and thus exclude him from her plan to save the fleet. But because he can’t stand to sit down and let someone else be the hero, he joins Finn and Rose in concocting a plan to break onto Snoke’s Star Destroyer and disable the system that allowed the First Order to track them through hyperspace. But the plan is doomed to fail, and it ultimately results in the Resistance’s true escape plan being discovered and the First Order continuing their pursuit to the surface of Crait, where Poe rallies a last-ditch attempt at halting the enemy’s advance. But when his team starts getting picked off one by one, he now knows to retreat before it gets out of hand, having learned his lesson from before. Then, when Luke arrives to confront the First Order, he realizes it’s a distraction and that the correct response is not to join him but to use the opportunity it creates to escape, thus completing his arc from hotshot pilot to level-headed leader, the exact thing the Resistance needs given its dire circumstances. It also goes along perfectly with the theme of learning from one’s failures established through Luke’s character arc, with Poe learning how to be a leader by reflecting on the shortcomings of his more impulsive plans and becoming more strategic as he considers new ones.

And yet, many of the film’s critics would describe this subplot as frustrating or even pointless as it all could have been easily avoided if Holdo had only told Poe what her plan was from the start. And while I can understand how it would feel this way in the moment, there are legitimate reasons why Holdo wouldn’t tell him what’s going on. Seeing as he was just recently demoted for poor judgment and insubordination, it’s reasonable for her to not believe he could be counted on to execute her orders as needed. It’s not her fault that he decided to go behind her back and develop an even riskier plan of his own. But from a story standpoint, it ultimately helped him on his journey to becoming a respected leader in his own right and thus contributes positively to the film as a whole.

Finally, we have the Finn and Rose subplot, which begins as an extension of Poe’s subplot but ultimately exists to give Finn a character arc of his own. Despite that, this section, particularly the scenes on Canto Bight, is often derided as unnecessary filler that contributes nothing to the overall story. They go there looking for the “Master Codebreaker,” only to leave with DJ (Benicio del Toro), a common thief they wound up incarcerated with. And even when they do succeed in breaking into Snoke’s Star Destroyer, their plan still fails when they’re captured and are only saved thanks to the fortunate timing of Holdo ramming the ship at lightspeed to save the escaping Resistance transports, an act which is only necessary because of DJ’s duplicity. So yes, the Resistance would have been better off if they’d never carried out this plan, but then Poe would have never learned how to be a proper leader, nor would Finn have learned what it meant to embrace a struggle instead of simply running from it. That’s what this subplot is all about.

Without going to Canto Bight with Rose, without seeing the slavery and oppression that allows for such opulence in service of the arms dealers that profit from it, he would never have been willing to sacrifice himself by flying his skimspeeder into the throat of the battering ram cannon at the end of the film. DJ is equally important to his journey as well, serving as the devil on Finn’s shoulder arguing against Rose’s angel. If Rose is trying to get him to care about more than the comfort and safety of himself and his friends, than DJ is telling him the opposite, that moral detachment from the politics and war is good, actually. Ultimately, Finn sides with Rose and becomes a true believer in the cause of the Resistance, rather than the opportunistic runaway he was throughout The Force Awakens and at the start of this film.

Now, I do need to talk about the elephant in the room. The way this subplot ends is controversial, to say the least, and while I understand why you might think Finn should have been allowed to complete his sacrifice, I believe it was the right decision to stop it. Not only would it be a disservice to the trilogy to kill off one of its main characters before the third film, but it also wouldn’t have done much to help the Resistance in the first place. The First Order would still march on and infiltrate the base, and the Resistance would not be able to hold them off for very long on their own. The best course of action then, as Poe rightly understood, was to regroup and reevaluate their position and not lose any more soldiers. That’s why Rose had to crash into him to save his life. Now, what happens next is a little trickier to parse, but I’ll try my best. I will admit, the kiss was a bit corny, especially when it’s backdropped by a massive explosion. However, I think we can unpack her line before that as I believe it speaks to what Finn’s arc is really all about.

After saving him, Rose explains that they will win not by “fighting what we hate,” but “saving what we love.” What does this mean exactly? On the surface, you could see her use of “love” as romantic in some way, an interpretation backed up by the kiss that follows. But I believe the line to be more symbolic of what Finn needed to learn in order to be an effective advocate for liberty and justice in the galaxy the Resistance sought to preserve. It wasn’t enough to be motivated by a desire to destroy your enemies; you had to have something to fight for, something you cared about, be that a group of people or an ideology of some kind. Finn’s attempted sacrifice was born more out of a desire for revenge against the people who kidnapped and enslaved him rather than a legitimate belief in the just causes of the Resistance. That’s not to say that violence in pursuit of that end is immoral, but rather that, without the proper motivation, it can result in ineffectual tactics and strategic blunders that ultimately hinder the movement overall.

All of this put together makes The Last Jedi one of the most thematically rich films in the saga, on par with some of the prequel films’ attempts at complex political themes. I use the word “attempts” here because I don’t believe the prequels do as an effective job of conveying their messages about how democratic republics can fall to tyranny in times of crisis as The Last Jedi does its themes of the righteous rebellion and personal redemption. You can certainly see the structure of these ideas throughout the prequels, but it’s so bogged down by substandard performances and unconvincing visual effects that it becomes nearly invisible. As such, I would argue that The Last Jedi succeeds where the others failed in that Rian Johnson is simply a better writer and director than George Lucas was when making the prequels. This is not say that Lucas is a bad filmmaker, only that the circumstances under which he made the Prequel Trilogy only revealed his weaknesses as an artist. The Original Trilogy and the Indiana Jones films show that he works best when he’s working with others. Rian Johnson, on the other hand, routinely writes and directs his scripts on his own, and has shown time and time again that he can be trusted to independently develop and produce films in that manner.

This is all well and good, but I do need to return to the question that started this section, and that’s this: why do people dislike The Last Jedi so much? For the average Star Wars fan, I don’t think you can attribute it to the sort of racism and sexism that unifies the Fandom Menace. Rather, I think it had more to do with just how much The Last Jedi set out to accomplish and the different ways it went about doing that. I’ve already touched on how the main plotlines may have rubbed some the wrong way, but it’s also important to note the ways in which the culture of fan theories spurned by The Force Awakens led to some of the backlash following The Last Jedi. Episode VII introduces Rey as someone yearning to be reunited with an unseen family, and when she was revealed to be incredibly gifted with the Force, many fans thought this to indicate that she was related to some powerful Force-wielder we already knew. This set off an avalanche of speculation about who her parents or grandparents really were, with Luke Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi, and Emperor Palpatine all being thrown around as legitimate contenders. So when The Last Jedi decides to answer this question by revealing Rey to be a nobody, her parents “filthy junk traders who sold [her] for drinking money,” it might’ve felt like a slap in the face to those fans who had spent so much of the time between the films imagining who Rey was related to.

The thing with that is that Rey being a nobody makes perfect sense both narratively and thematically. If Rey were a Skywalker or a Palpatine or a Kenobi, what would that mean to her? Nothing. She doesn’t know these people. Perhaps if she were related to Luke then she may feel some degree of resentment towards him for abandoning her, but then wouldn’t Kylo Ren have told her that anyway to get her to join him? Except he didn’t. Instead, he told the truth because it was the very last thing Rey wanted to hear. Early on, Rey tells Luke that she wants “someone to show me my place in all of this.” So if she’d found out that she was part of some legendary family of Force users, then it would be just the thing she wanted. But it wasn’t what she needed. What she needed was the truth, that she came from nowhere but still had this great power inside her, because that would inform her journey going forward. It gave her the freedom to choose what side she takes, who and what she fights for, unburdened by ideas of legacy or lineage, which in turn makes her the perfect foil to Kylo Ren, the heir to the Skywalker name and all the baggage that comes with it. So while it may have angered fans initially to hear that their theories were bullshit, it’s actually the only answer that makes sense given the story being told.

The other main mystery implicitly established by The Force Awakens which The Last Jedi sought to answer was the importance of Supreme Leader Snoke. It was understandable for fans coming out of Episode VII to wonder who this guy was, where he came from and what he wanted. Given that it was a sequel in a long running film series, it’s reasonable to assume that he might have been a secret pupil of Palpatine’s or some independent agent of darkness, operating in the shadows while the Empire crumbled. As such, fans spent a considerable amount of time speculating on Snoke’s background as they waited for Episodes VIII and IX to confirm their theories. So when Kylo Ren betrays Snoke by slicing him in half with the Skywalker saber, it read as yet another case of The Last Jedi mocking these fans for daring to theorize on the mysteries established by The Force Awakens. Only this is yet another example of the film recognizing what direction the story should go and doing that, rather than simply giving the fans what they want.

When developing the story of The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson rightly recognized that the more interesting conflict in the trilogy was the one between Rey and Kylo Ren and the things they represented. Rey the Nobody and Kylo Ren the Nepo Baby, both equally powerful in the Force but pulled in opposite directions by their respective backgrounds. The Light and the Dark, pushing and pulling on one another in an eternal struggle for balance. How did Snoke fit into all of this? Han Solo was right when he told Ben that “Snoke is using you for your power. When he gets what he wants he’ll crush you.” Snoke only ever wanted Ben for his mighty Skywalker blood and saw his connection to Darth Vader as a way of twisting and manipulating him towards the Dark Side. Kylo Ren eventually realizes this, and that’s why he kills him. As he explains himself, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” He says this to Rey, but in truth, he’s talking about himself. His entire life has been defined by the legacy of his ancestors, the good and the bad. All he wants is to be free of that, to be allowed to decide for himself what course his life will take. And since Snoke stands in the way of that, he must be eliminated. That’s also why he kills his father, the war hero, and why he wants to kill Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. They all represent the shadow of the legacy he’s trying to run away from. Snoke ultimately didn’t matter to the story of the Sequel Trilogy, and the film therefore had no reason to explain who he was before he became the Supreme Leader. That’s what spin-offs are for.

Regardless of the narrative justifications for these decisions, they nevertheless left a sour taste in the mouths of many fans as they left the theater after watching the film, a feeling the Fandom Menace was all too eager to exploit in pursuit of their ant-Disney, “anti-woke” agenda. What made their attacks against the film so persuasive this time around was that they weren’t just complaining about the presence of women and minorities but about details of the plot itself. So while the Fandom Menace had gone into the film knowing they’d hate it for ideological reasons, it became easy to point to these aspects of the film as “legitimate criticisms” instead of their usual thinly-veiled hate-filled tirades. Those fans who then went online to see what others had to say about the film were immediately inundated with scores of videos, tweets, and reddit threads from the Fandom Menace and their followers ravaging it for “ruining Luke Skywalker,” killing Snoke without explaining his backstory, and pointing out the supposed “plot holes” in the mutiny/Canto Bight subplot, all of which helped to sway public opinion against The Last Jedi. This is not to say there weren’t others online at the time singing the film’s praises—established film critics are mostly unanimous in celebrating it—but the opposition all but dominated the discourse from the very beginning. Not only that, but the tenor of the conversation was so hostile that many fans were persuaded into believing that the film was beyond redemption, that you shouldn’t even bother rewatching it because it’s just that bad. I sincerely believe that if more people revisited the film with an open mind, they might find their opinion of it changed or at least softened.

But in early 2018, the effects were obvious. The Fandom Menace’s anti-Disney Star Wars agenda had gone mainstream within the fandom. Not only that, but some of its worst actions had resulted in wider media coverage, like when a racist and sexist hate mob of Fandom Menace acolytes bullied Kelly Marie Tran off the internet for the crime of portraying a character in a Star Wars movie they didn’t like. Again, I’m not saying that everyone who dislikes the movie is racist and/or sexist, but it’s undeniable that an inordinate amount of the criticism levied against the film was propagated by a concerted movement bent on poisoning the discourse with bad-faith attacks on the film and the people who made it, one that cloaked its bigotry through less objectionable rhetoric that still emboldened those who shared their beliefs to act on it.

This was the general atmosphere when the next film in the Disney era came into. Solo: A Star Wars Story, released in May 2018, was the second spin-off film released since the Lucasfilm buyout and was also its weakest both critically and commercially. Initial reviews were mixed, mostly praising the cast’s performances but criticizing its inconsistent tone, which was almost certainly the result of its troubled production. Even before the film was released, the headlines about it weren’t great. Midway through shooting, the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) were let go due to “creative differences” with the studio and replaced with Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind), who would be responsible for finishing the film and also reshooting much of Lord and Miller’s material as well. This alone contributed to the film’s problems from a storytelling standpoint, but it also lent credence to the narrative being spun by the Fandom Menace that Disney and Lucasfilm were micromanaging the Star Wars brand into the ground. Furthermore, rumors that the film’s producers had brought in an acting coach for Alden Ehrenreich, the actor cast in the role of young Han Solo, only helped to sour fans and audiences against the film before it could even hit theaters.

Once all was said and done, the result was clear. The film, with a massive budget of at least $275 million—largely due to its production woes—returned only $393.2 million at the global box office. On paper this seems like it turned a profit, but blockbusters of this scale often spend around double their stated budget on marketing, meaning it would have had to make somewhere in the ballpark of $500 million on the low end to even break even.

Its failure to receive the support of general audiences is the result of several factors. First is the aforementioned toxic discourse surrounding the franchise following The Last Jedi. If audiences went to see Rogue One because they’d enjoyed The Force Awakens, then it’s reasonable to assume that the general antipathy towards The Last Jedi would have the opposite effect on its follow-up. Second, you can also point to the shorter period between the releases of these films as part of the problem. An entire year passed between The Force Awakens and Rogue One, giving audiences a chance to miss the franchise and get excited for the next installment. Meanwhile, Solo came out only five months after The Last Jedi, in time for the summer blockbuster season, yes, but perhaps too soon to have general audiences eager to check out the next Star Wars thing.

You can also see Solo’s failure to generate much buzz in the box office as the result of a general disinterest in Star Wars spin-offs. For the average consumer prior to 2015, Star Wars was a series of six films telling the story of Anakin Skywalker’s rise, fall, and ultimate redemption. While they might be vaguely aware of stories within the Star Wars universe outside of that, they were not necessarily the big-screen blockbuster events that the main saga had been. Probably the most well-known of its spin-offs was The Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network, but even that, along with the EU/Legends canon of novels and comics, were largely seen as the domain of Star Wars nerds and children, things the average moviegoer didn’t need to worry about. As such, a spin-off film, even one focusing on a familiar character from the Original Trilogy, would not be as easy a sell as an all-new entry to the Skywalker saga.

This then raises the question: if spin-off Star Wars films would not appeal to general audiences, then how did Rogue One succeed? I can point to three things to help explain that. First is the residual hype from The Force Awakens carrying enough momentum for general audiences to be interested in it. Second is that the considerable amount of Original Trilogy imagery peppered throughout the marketing for the film likely created a sense of familiarity with the story being told; even if there were new characters and planets involved, audiences would still feel warmth at seeing Darth Vader, the Death Star, and the like again. And third is that the events of the film tied directly into the saga, specifically A New Hope, as it effectively told a more detailed version of the film’s opening crawl.

Solo, however, while also set in the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, did not feature nearly the same degree of familiar iconography as Rogue One had, apart from the titular character and the Millenium Falcon. Nor could they market it as a necessary piece of Star Wars lore in the same way that Rogue One was. What did it matter how Han Solo won the Millenium Falcon and became the smuggler we knew and loved? You don’t need to know all that to still get excited when he helps Luke rescue the Princess and save the day. From its premise alone, Solo had a much harder time selling itself to general audiences compared to Rogue One. It also didn’t help that it just wasn’t of a high enough quality for word of mouth to generate interest either.

Even for the general audiences who did turn out to see it but hadn’t been following the franchise outside of the main saga, a moment at the film’s conclusion likely left them scratching their heads in confusion. That is, when Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), having taken over Dryden Vos’ (Paul Bettanny) division of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, contacts Darth Maul, the organization’s leader, to pledge her loyalty to him. For viewers who were unaware of Maul’s return in The Clone Wars and Rebels this moment must have struck them as an out-of-left-field reveal that a character they last saw falling down a reactor shaft in two pieces was not only alive but also running one of the most powerful organized crime rackets in the galaxy. His presence here is entirely as fan service to those fans who were up-to-date on The Clone Wars and Rebels and is utterly lost on anyone didn’t.

Comparing his appearance to Saw Gerrera’s in Rogue One can help us understand why one works and the other doesn’t. When Saw shows up in Rogue One, you don’t necessarily need to know that we first met him leading an insurgent campaign against the Separatists during The Clone Wars to understand his place in this story as a Rebel leader and mentor to Jyn Erso, as those are clearly established by the film itself. But with Maul, his return and journey to becoming a crime lord was only ever shown in the animated spin-off shows which, while popular among Star Wars fans, were largely ignored by the general movie-going public who might have been interested in Solo otherwise. So while you might see Maul’s inclusion as a positive in that it might inspire some of those ignorant viewers to give The Clone Wars and Rebels a shot, it has an equal if not greater chance of having the opposite effect of turning them away from the film all together. No one wants to do “homework” before watching a Star Wars movie.

Well, I guess I have to talk about The Rise of Skywalker now. Where do I even begin? Episode IX, the grand finale of both the Sequel Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, could not have been more of a complete and utter disappointment. There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll start by going over the film’s production and how that led to the finished product being what it was. Which is bad. Really, really bad.

In August 2015, Lucasfilm announced that Colin Trevorrow would direct the then-untitled Episode IX, writing the script with his longtime writing partner Derek Connolly. At the time, they seemed like an excellent choice considering they were hot off the heels of their wildly successful Jurassic World, a reboot of the Kathleen Kennedy-produced Jurassic Park franchise. Surely, they could be trusted to create the epic conclusion to one of the most beloved franchises in cinema history.

Then, in 2017, after over a year of preproduction, Trevorrow and Connolly left the project, again citing “creative differences” with the top brass at Lucasfilm. Rumors abounded that Kathleen Kennedy had soured on the duo after they’d failed to turn in a satisfactory screenplay, despite several revisions. But since the film was slated for a May 24, 2019, release date, they’d have to put together a new creative team fast if they wanted to avoid any serious delays. A few names were tossed around, including Episode VIII director Rian Johnson and David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl), but ultimately, J.J. Abrams was brought back to finish what he’d started, with Chris Terrio, the writer of such hit films as Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League coming in to help write the script.

This was bad enough already, as a film of this scale changing its writers and director so late in the game rarely results in a quality product, as evidenced by Solo. But as if to add insult to injury, they were also tasked with working around Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing in December 2016. Fortunately for The Last Jedi, all of her footage had been shot. But since Leia had survived to the end of the film, it was expected that she would return in its sequel. This created a problem for Abrams and Terrio where they had to go back through the archive footage and deleted scenes from Episodes VII and VIII that featured her to try and retrofit them into the story they needed to tell. Additionally, they would have to be strategic in how they filmed her character during principal photography, using body doubles and head-replacement CGI to bring her character to life without simply recasting her or killing her off entirely.

That alone would have likely resulted in a certain degree of awkwardness in the final film, but it doesn’t explain why everything else about it is the way it is, nor does the fact that they fired their writers and director midway through pre-production. But what can explain this is who they brought in to replace them and their what their strengths and weaknesses as storytellers are, and why they might have made some of the creative decisions that they did.

J.J. Abrams is a notorious crowd pleaser, and his films have often been criticized for being derivative as much as they’ve been praised for their merits as works of art. The Force Awakens and his two Star Trek films are obvious examples, but even Super 8, the only original feature in his filmography, is clearly heavily inspired by Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial and other “kids on bikes” movies that were popular in the 80s. As such, some—myself included—felt a certain degree of pessimism when we heard he was coming back to finish the trilogy. Especially after the intense backlash The Last Jedi received across the board, it was easy to imagine Abrams might backtrack or at least quietly ignore some of the creative decisions made by The Last Jedi in an effort to appease the aggrieved fanbase.

That’s at least why I believe he and Terrio decided to revive Palpatine, make Rey related to him, and sideline Rose entirely, among other things. I’ve already talked at length about how important it was for the story that Rey be related to no one important, so it should be obvious why I fundamentally disagree with the decision to retcon that and make her a Palpatine. Not only does it complicate the truth of the matter—it’s explained that her parents still sold her, that money did change hands (it was to protect her!)—but it also betrays a lack of trust in the audience to be able to accept that the story is going in a direction they didn’t expect. It’s been so long that it’s easy to forget that the reveal in The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader was Luke’s father was initially met with confusion and even anger by fans at the time. Then imagine if Return of the Jedi came out and said, “Actually, no. We lied. Oops.” It would have cheapened that moment and the trilogy as a whole. Instead, it stuck to its guns and developed an interesting story out of it, with Luke now being motivated by a love for his father and the belief that he could still be saved, rather than merely wanting to destroy him because he’s evil.

But because the fans refused to accept one of The Last Jedi’s most controversial and brilliant decisions, they had to undo it and write in their own explanation instead. Now, this may have been the answer Abrams intended when he made The Force Awakens, but by the time he came back to Episode IX, The Last Jedi was well under way and Rian Johnson had written his own conclusion to that particular mystery. It would have been better for the film and the trilogy if they had simply let it be and worked through its implications rather than discard it altogether and come up with something else instead. You can even still bring Palpatine back, but that doesn’t mean Rey—or anyone for that matter—has to be related to him. Even then, I still think The Rise of Skywalker would’ve been better off if Palpatine had been left to rot in the ruins of the second Death Star.

Was Palpatine’s return part of Abrams’ initial plan for the trilogy? Maybe. But if it was, either he didn’t tell Rian Johnson that or, if he did, Johnson decided the story needed to head in a different direction and ignored it. Either way, bringing back Palpatine in the way that they did is too great a status quo change to happen off screen. At least when Maul shows up in Solo, you can point to The Clone Wars and Rebels as proof that this didn’t actually come out of nowhere. But for The Rise of Skywalker, it did, and it therefore becomes the movie’s responsibility to explain how he survived and why, ultimately distracting from the story being told of Rey, Finn, and Poe leading their scrappy rebellion against the overwhelming might of the First Order. Now everything must be about Palpatine and his master plan that I guess he’s been working on for decades but that we’re only learning about now in the eleventh hour. At the same time, it still wants us to treat us to those fun adventures with our heroes we came to love from the previous two films—and those are some of its best parts—but all this results in is an unfocused mess that tries to cram far too much into its two-hour, twenty-two-minute runtime.

Even with all of this being the case, there is absolutely no excuse for Rose being written the way she was other than pure cowardice. Her character was nowhere near as bad or annoying as the bigoted hate mobs on the internet wanted you to think she was, but because the discourse had become so polluted by their vitriol, Abrams and Terrio evidently felt the need to reduce her character to a glorified extra in order to appease the anti-The Last Jedi bandwagon. What makes this all the more offensive is that, early in the film, there’s a scene where Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca are on a mission to retrieve an encoded message from a spy in the First Order (which turns out to be confirmation that Palpatine has returned). They’re soon set upon by TIE Fighters, and Poe’s daring maneuvers put immense stress on the hyperdrive as they make their escape. You easily could have had Rose be part of the crew here as the Falcon’s overworked mechanic struggling to keep the ship in working order, seeing as she introduced herself as “working behind pipes all day,” but no. Instead, it’s this hideous giant slug-thing named Klaud in her place. I mean what can he even do?! He’s a fucking slug! He doesn’t even have arms! Rose could have and should have been the mechanic, and she should’ve had a little porg friend that sits on her shoulder and fetches her tools and stuff.

That’s also something wrong with The Rise of Skywalker: where are all the porgs? They’re clearly shown in The Last Jedi to have started nesting inside the Falcon. Shouldn’t there still be at least a few of them hanging around there? Maybe they’ve even begun to spread at the new Resistance base. That they’re almost entirely absent from the film, only appearing briefly when Rey returns to Ahch-To during her second act slump, further demonstrates the filmmakers’ desire to wipe away anything viewers might associate with The Last Jedi.

All of this comes together to make a film that is so bloated with unnecessary plot points that it ends up devaluing the stories that came before it. Because the film became so invested in not only bringing back Palpatine, but also making him the film’s main villain and Rey’s grandfather, it makes it difficult to go back to The Force Awakens and especially The Last Jedi and see them as anything more than meandering setup for the derivative fluff we ended up getting from the trilogy’s conclusion.

That’s not to mention how The Rise of Skywalker treated—or rather, mistreated—Finn’s character. It’s once again an example of a missed opportunity on the part of the filmmakers. I’m not talking about his Force-sensitivity—I like that—or the lack of a payoff for his attempted confession to Rey—more a case of bad editing than anything else. No, I’m talking about Finn not leading a stormtrooper uprising during the climax of the film. His arc in The Last Jedi set him up perfectly for that; not only was he a stormtrooper who saw the evils of the First Order and decided to leave, but now he was ideologically committed to fighting against it. What better way to finish his journey than have him inspire a legion of his former comrades to take up arms against their oppressors? But no, we have to have him taking down Star Destroyers equipped with mini-Death Star cannons instead.

Even Poe wasn’t spared from a degree of character regression in this one. The Last Jedi clearly set him up to be the new leader of the Resistance, taking over from Leia so she can finish training Rey to become a Jedi. But for the most part, he still comes across as the same hothead he was when we first met him. Perhaps that’s Abrams only being able to envision him as he was in The Force Awakens when he was still in charge of the character, but it also speaks to the broader trend of the film either undoing or outright ignoring the character beats of its predecessor, even if unintentionally.

There are, of course, flaws outside of these more existential issues with the film’s storytelling. The breakneck pacing in the opening act, for starters; Ben’s half-baked redemption arc and the irritating MacGuffin dagger also come to mind. But these are problems that, despite sometimes stemming from the decision to bring back Palpatine, were not inevitable, and rather speak to the weaknesses of the filmmakers. A better storyteller might have avoided making these mistakes, though it’s difficult to say for certain. It certainly didn’t help that they were working under an abbreviated pre-production timeline, giving them fewer opportunities to workshop and revise the story before they had to shoot it. But that was a problem Disney and Lucasfilm could have easily avoided if they had kept the traditional release of a Star Wars trilogy intact.

That, I believe, is the fundamental flaw of the Sequel Trilogy, one that informs many of the problems that arose throughout its production, and that came to a disastrous head with The Rise of Skywalker. See, the films in the Original and Prequel Trilogies all released three years apart from one another—1977, 1980, and 1983 for the former; 1999, 2002, and 2005 for the latter. This gave the production ample time to write, record, and edit the film before putting it out to the public. But with the Sequel Trilogy, it was decided early on that they would shorten the time between its installments to only two years, with additional spin-off films releasing between them. Perhaps they felt audiences wouldn’t be willing to wait three years for the next chapter in the saga, that their attention spans had become so much worse since Revenge of the Sith that it was no longer possible for them to remember what happened in the last part before watching the next. Whether or not that’s true, this truncated release schedule made the productions inflexible to the sorts of challenges and delays The Rise of Skywalker ended up facing. Having Episode VIII release in 2018 and followed by Episode IX in 2021 would have given Lucasfilm not only more time to polish out some of the kinks in the former but also ensured that the latter would also have had enough time to buff out its story to make it out on time, even after changing its director and writers. Of course, hindsight indicates that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic would have ultimately interfered with this schedule more than any mid-production change in creative direction could, but that couldn’t possibly have been known in 2013 when the studio was laying out their plans for the upcoming trilogy.

So then why did they greenlight five different productions in five years? This is the one aspect that the Fandom Menace is sort of correct on. Disney, despite all the goodwill they’ve earned over the years as the industry leader in family-friendly consumer entertainment, are a business at the end of the day. And if they feel it’ll maximize their shareholder value if there’s an endless stream of Star Wars movies coming out one year after the other, then so be it. And if anyone could do it and have it be successful, it would be them. After all, they were the ones putting out two to three different MCU movies every year, each seemingly more successful than the last. Couldn’t that model work for Star Wars as well?

From the very beginning of the Disney era, you can see how the franchise’s new corporate overlords wanted to model its future after the MCU as a monolith of popular culture which will grow in perpetuity and dominate all forms of media. The two-year turnaround between saga films is certainly proof of that, but so is the introduction of spin-off films that fill out the lore and character backstories between the big event films. Rogue One and Solo are to the Sequel Trilogy what Ant-Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are to the Avengers movies. Only Star Wars didn’t benefit from this model in the same way the MCU did. Let me explain why.

The basis for the MCU was comic book superheroes, a medium and genre built around serial releases of individual, character-centric storylines that occasionally tie into larger crossover events. Adapting this formula to film, while risky, certainly paid off for Disney and Marvel, and led many other studios to try building their own “cinematic universes” in its wake. The most prominent of these was Warner Bros.’ now-defunct DC Extended Universe franchise, which began with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013. The reasons why that experiment failed are myriad but mostly have to do with Snyder’s habits as a filmmaker being incompatible with what’s necessary to sustain such a massive undertaking, both critically and commercially, in addition to other issues outside of that (the sudden death of Snyder’s daughter, general studio meddling, and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad to name a few).

But while DC and Warner Bros. could have made the “cinematic universe” model work for them (and still can if James Gunn can successfully right the ship over there), I’m not sure Star Wars is the right fit for that kind of experiment. As I’ve stated, Star Wars, in popular consciousness, was mostly the main saga of six—now nine—films. There were always spin-off novels, comics, and TV series for the hardcore fans to follow, but to the general public, a new Star Wars movie was always a massive event, something that only happened every once in a while, and was to be appreciated whenever it did. This scarcity was one of the intangible aspects of the franchise that made it so valuable to Disney and why they wanted to buy it. But by basing their plans for the franchise off the comic book-inspired cinematic universe model they’d pioneered, they inadvertently devalued what it meant to be a new Star Wars movie, leading fans and general audiences alike to not be nearly as excited or interested in whatever new projects are revealed or released, thus resulting in diminishing returns on their investment.

We’ll eventually look at how this trend continued to develop as Star Wars moved away from theaters and onto Disney+, what impact the streaming ecosystem has had on the franchise, and how fans have responded to it. But first, we have to take a bit of a detour. A walk in the park(s), if you will, to discuss Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and the franchise’s increased presence in Disney theme parks since the buyout.

[hrodvitnon]

Ozymandias, The King of Kings Headcanons (plus a Shamhat idea)

(Ok, last Ozzy-related post from me for a while- what with a new GxK trailer on the horizon and a FF7 Rebirth demo to eat up all my time (ive played it like 6 times… pure brainrot), I figure it’s probably time to move to colder pastures and even colder kaiju… Anyways- big headcanon Ozymandias post because he could always use more love)

General

Ozymandias is the oldest and largest of his clutch of eggs. Despite this- he didn’t really have much of a connection to his other brothers and sisters quite like his connection to his youngest brother.

Ozzy grew up in the shadow of Dagon- which had pros and cons.

Pros: No one would dare fuck with him or his brothers.

Cons: No one would dare even come near him or his brothers. Also Dagon- was not a very attentive father; he kinda just didn’t really care and better things to do. His mother was marginally better.

Ozzy and Goji’s mother showed a strong parental bias to the older and larger females of their clutch. Obviously, Goji would have to bear the brunt of this, being the smallest male, but Ozzy definitely didn’t get nearly as much attention as his sisters.

Fortunately, Ozzy didn’t grow up alone. When he was about 4 years old, he met a little orphaned Titan of snow-white scales and light blue eyes named Shimo.

(I know there was an older ask about Xenilla replacing Shimo in Abraxas- but I think it would be cool to have a very old and ancient Titan like Shimo that may have even been very close with Ozzy in the past, way before he met anyone like Tiamat or Mothra.)

(Also to quickly mention it because I’ve already described Shimo as female in a past ask- I’m calling her female here just because every leak is pointing towards that being the case. If they turn out to be male, I will happily eat my words (but only after I fantasize about what his dick looks like, of course). But even if she does turn out male, I will still stand by everything I have written here (even, and especially, the mate ones. Gay monsters are cool, dammit).)

Ozzy and Shimo were each other’s playmates and companions for their respective youths. Even Dagon grew to see his son playing with Shimo once or twice. Goji knew her as well- mostly from whenever Ozzy asked her to help him restrain his brother. She even froze him once or twice on Ozzy’s command.

Ozzy was Tiamat’s first mate; but I headcanon that Shimo was actually Ozzy’s first. Shimo was not nearly as much of a sex-freak that Tia was, but she was still able to keep pace with Ozzy and his nutso libido.

Not only were they best friends and mates in the later part of their relationship; they were steadfast comrades who’s very names were feared by the Gojirans’ enemies.

Ozymandias and Shimo were utterly unstoppable in every battle they fought by each other’s side. They would defeat legions of apes, devastate the MUTO population, and establish Gojiran dominance in both the Hollow Earth and the Surface.

They were so powerful together that Gigan had to wait centuries to put his plan of abducting Ozymandias into motion- as if he attacked while Shimo was still around, he was sure he’d be killed.

They were steadfast comrades, a mated pair, and best friends since they were hatchlings; so when Shimo vanished one day- Ozymandias had no real answer as to why. He has asked her to investigate a Hollow Earth portal- and she never returned. He scoured every inch of the Hollow Earth for her- and yet could find nothing. Of course- she was attacked, chained, and made into a war-mount by Skar- but Ozymandias would never know that or even see her again until he returned to Earth 2 million years later as Xenilla (or in an alternate scenario I’ll discuss later). In some timelines- he may have even died as Xenilla before ever getting to properly see her again…

Although Ozzy had Shimo and his brother for company… He was still pretty lonely. Being Dagon’s son forced him to inherit much of his father’s reputation of being a grumpy old asshole who picked fights for the fun of it. Not to mention, having a younger brother who did exactly that only worsened this problem. Ozzy was, however, nothing like his father in that respect.

Ozzy didn’t like fighting very much. Despite being 500 feet tall, having an extremely destructive purple atomic breath, and being the strongest of his clutch- he preferred diplomacy in any situation he could employ it. Unfortunately- the war with the Kongs was too far along for that to be possible, and there was no negotiating with the MUTOs. He preferred to talk, was very social and cordial, and had a very kind heart. He actually had more in common with Mothra than Goji (perhaps that’s one of the reasons that Goji eventually fell for Mothra).

He was, however, starved for company. Everyone knew him as the brilliant and untouchable champion of the lizards, and that he was capable of insane feats of strength and violence. Anytime anyone would see him, they would either turn tail and get the fuck out of dodge or be very frightened of him. He didn’t blame them for thinking like this, but he really hated his reputation- and somewhat resented his family for contributing to it.

Tiamat met him when she heard rumors of an god-like ‘King of Kings’ from her kin and other Titans. Curiosity spiked in her lust-addled young adult mind, and she sought him out. It was one of the only times someone had come up to Ozzy of their own accord- and he was rather shocked when the serpent rolled up and essentially said “wanna fuck the daylights out of me?”

Their relationship started as a physical one, but quickly grew emotional when Ozzy started to spend more time with her. Meeting and mating with Tiamat was exactly what Ozzy needed to shave off that reputation he hated so much.

Quick sidebit to talk about his title. He was named 'King of Kings’ by his kin, as the first King in a millennia to actually make progress in the war with the Kongs. The Kongs refused to use this title to refer to him, as it carried the assumption that he was King of anything- and to consider a lizard in a kingly manner was heresy to the Kongs. They dubbed him another name: Ultima.

The longer he stayed with Tiamat, the more his reputation came apart. Tiamat introduced him to her friends, which he became friends with in turn, and word of mouth began to spread that Ozzy really wasn’t that bad. He finally started getting around more, spending much of this part of his life traveling the globe and meeting as many of his Titan subjects as possible.

As many asks have established- he and Tia fucked. A lot. So damn much that it became a joke among their friends, and eventually their subjects, to call their cave system 'The Heat’. When he and Tia ran out of things to try in the bedroom with each other (in record fucking time, may I add?), they just started inviting others in to join them.

The logical conclusion of this was them hosting an event every year in the Spring where they opened up their cave for any heat-afflicted females or rut-sick males to have their respective problems solved. If there was one problem that Ozzy was not going to let his subjects deal with, it was a lack of intimacy or loneliness. He knew how that felt, and he didn’t want anyone else to deal with it on his watch.

As many who knew him would say- he had a way of making you feel like the most important person in the world. And unlike many other charismatic figures, he was actually genuine about it. He helped Tiamat see that a true intimate relationship was someone was more than sex, introduced Mothra to his younger brother, and generally was a very well loved king.

But all reigns need to end somewhere, and his would end so abruptly that it shocked the entire planet when word got around. He vanished one day. Tiamat simply heard a distressed roar echo across the waves- and when she rushed to her mate’s defense, he was gone. No bones, no remains, nothing. Panicked- she went straight to Mothra and Goji about this. Even then- Mothra could never find him. He was simply gone.

Of course, they wouldn’t discover the truth until millions of years later. Gigan lured him to an isolated island with the mimicked calls of a distressed kaiju. He rushed over to help, only to be jumped by at least 20 Infested Kaiju with highly potent tranquilizer weapons. He was knocked out, handed over to Gigan, and infested with the Cordyceps.

The fungus didn’t have total control, not at first. But it did have his mind, which it started to beat into submission with its indoctrination methods. It took the better half of twenty years for it to fully seize control of Ozzy’s body. Even then, Ozzy maintained a grip on his soul within the mind. He was still himself, and unlike millions of others, that was the one thing Xenilla could never take from him.

But it didn’t make things easy for Ozzy to hold onto his sense of self, not by a long shot. It actually probably made things worse for him- to remember who he was and what had been stolen from him. This was between the horrific bouts of torture, physical and mental, that Xenilla would utilize on him.

Xenilla loved killing, and it especially liked Ozzy’s reactions when he would use his body to torment, toy with, and kill his victims. Children especially would hurt Ozzy in such a deep way when Xenilla split their skulls open and let the parasites crawl into their brain-matter.

As soon as Xenilla discovered that Ozzy’s body could experience rut, it immediately became his favorite method of torment to use on him. Using drugs crafted by Gigan to artificially extend his periods of rut to be year-round made Ozzy desperately beg for any sort of relief, lest he go nuts from his screaming instincts.

Another one of Xenilla’s favorite methods of torture: sometimes Ozzy would drift off into sleep and begin to dream of home, of what he left behind. Any time this would happen- Xenilla would jolt him awake with a cold sensation against his spine once he had gotten about a minute into the dream. He would do this any time to break his concentration whenever he even began to think about Earth. Soon, he naturally forgot his brother and mates’ faces…

One day, the begging, choked sobs, the anger- it all vanished. Xenilla suspects that he simply pushed Ozzy too far and he just dissociated- because he stopped sensing a presence. He was still there, just, asleep. No matter what Xenilla did, he could not wake him up. It angered Xenilla to no end. Playing with Ozzy like this was one of his favorite things in life. It angered and actually depressed him so much that even his conquests became boring.

That was, until, 1 million years later… when he stumbles upon a tiny backwater world mostly made of water… Xenilla descends from the heavens, roars in challenge to the worlds’ greatest warriors, and up rolls Godzilla. It was his roar, the response to Xenilla’s challenge, that stirred Ozzy for the first time in a million years. As soon as he realized what was happening, where Xenilla was, and who was standing before him… He felt the most fear he had ever felt in his entire life. His awakening stirred Xenilla, too- and the feeling of having Ozzy screaming at him and pleading with every fiber of his being not to hurt Goji did something to him- it was the best feeling he had ever felt.

Of course- after a display like that- Xenilla was in no way going to leave Earth in peace, no… He was going to draw this out as much as possible- toy with Godzilla and the other Titans for as long as he could until they were as broken as Ozzy. He knew that this would likely be his last ride with Ozzy, his last chance to inflict torture upon him before he shuts down completely. He wanted to savor every last second of it. He could’ve destroyed Earth and the Titans in a heartbeat, but decided that Ozzy’s pain was more important to him than any divine instructions from the Hivemind or Gigan.

However, this was the only real mistake that Xenilla would make. Whether the Titans destroy him completely, killing Ozzy in the process, or actually manage to save Ozymandias- it was Xenilla’s inability to put aside his hunger for suffering that led to his death.

Abraxas - King of Kings Ending

(considering he traditionally dies in Genocide and Coexistence (at least the more widely accepted versions of them) I’m referring to the ending in which he survives as 'King of Kings’. This is just for simplicity’s sake, it doesn’t really need to be a third route, I’m just doing this for this post so I don’t have to deal with a bunch of confusing vocabulary. King of Kings is the ending to Xenilla’s story where Ozymandias is saved, that’s what I’m defining this section as: The Post-Xenilla Ozzy.)

The process to remove the parasite is an extremely complex series of surgeries done after Godzilla and crew beats Xenilla in combat- knocking him out and shipping him off to Apex to be sedated and the fungus painstakingly purged from his body.

He isn’t allowed to wake up for 2 months and 3 weeks. When he finally does, the first thing he sees are the magenta eyes of his brother leaning over his giant surgery table under Apex’s Hong Kong facility.

The day of his awakening is… emotional, to say the very least. Every Titan allowed to see him cries- a lot. Even the ones that didn’t really know him super well. The only one of Goji’s close allies that is not allowed to see him is Kong, for fear that Ozzy might react poorly to the presence of an ape.

In the order of which they were allowed to see Ozzy:

Godzilla is a fucking mess from the moment his brother opens his eyes to a literal week after, despite describing that week as 'the brightest time of my life’.

Shimo, while typically a calm and serious kaiju, couldn’t hold back her well of half-frozen tears from seeing her best friend again- refusing to stop apologizing for being taken by Skar even after being assured that it was never her fault and that no one could seriously blame her for it.

For what seems like the first time in her life, Tiamat is content simply to be with another person- no explicit activities involved. Simply being allowed to wrap lovingly around Ozzy and rest her head on his chest was enough.

Vivienne walked into his surgery room feeling- conflicted. Shockingly, none of it was about Ozzy. It was about Gigan, and about her final fight with him, what she saw onboard the Mothership. Getting to see all that, see Ghidorah’s legacy, see such stark reminders of the monster that ripped her life from her- it opened old wounds she thought were healed. She wanted to tell someone about it, speak to Mothra or maybe even Goji about it- but she would feel selfish doing that, making everything about her when they needed to focus on bringing Ozzy back. When she walked into the surgery room, saw Shimo, Godzilla, and Tiamat all with tears in their eyes and surrounding the titanic creature, when Goji introduced Abraxas as one of his best friends through stutters and choking sobs, when Ozymandias looked towards her and introduced himself with such a happy and joyful disposition despite what he had just been through- even memories of Ghidorah faded away for that moment. She’d talk to Mothra later, right now was the time to be happy.

Of course, the first thing Mothra had to do was comfort her King as he had been non-stop tearing up for about 30 minutes at this point. After he is somewhat stabilized from his rampant joyous sobbing and laughter, she climbs up on Ozzy’s bed, and just looks into his eyes, observing the beating life in them. To see them devoid of all color and whitened when he was possessed was the most terrifying thing about Xenilla to her, and it was something she had not been able to unsee in the months of their conflict with him. Now, she just tries her best to take in his rampant smile and lively purple eyes to replace Xenilla’s lifeless ones.

Dagon and Barb enter next. Ozzy’s confused at first as to who the machine is when Goji calls him Dagon. After a brief explanation, Dagon states how he’s happy to see Ozzy again and that if he could cry at that moment, he would. Ozzy gets up, walks over to him, and touches his arm;

“Can you feel this?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Then Ozzy just full-body hugs him- despite how cold the metal is.

“I missed you, dad.”

Barb, Rodan, Behemoth, and all the other Titans and that wanted to meet him introduce themselves. When they all first walk in, Ozzy’s overwhelmed at first.

“These people- they’re all here for me?”

“They all helped save you, so yeah- they want to see if you’re doing ok, and also meet the famous 'King of Kings while they’re at it.”

Of course, Ozzy’s floored that all these Titans showed for him. Through quick handshakes, he promises each one that he’ll seek them out later to introduce himself properly.

Then, they allow all the humans to meet him. They let all of the Monarch and Apex staff that helped to save him say hi. Ozzy’s mind is actually malfunctioning at this point due to so many people actually wanting to talk with and meet him.

“These are just the ones that helped! These aren’t even the civilians that can’t wait to see the King of Kings in all his glory.” Rodan tells him.

“There are more of them?!?! How many more wish to meet me??”

“Jeez- uh, rough estimate? Most of the world.” Abraxas chimes in.

“They’re- not scared of me?”

“Maybe once, but humans fear that which they can’t understand. Now? The Titans have saved us all hundreds of times. You’re all Gods to us, Guardians, defenders. Now? People look to towering monsters with hope. Now? They’ll love you.” Maia tells him.

It’s enough to get the tear ducts welling up again.

When Goji finally takes him to meet Kong a little later, the first thing he has to say to the ape is an apology. He apologizes for what happened to the remaining apes, their banishment, and Kong’s orphaning. He says that it’s something he’d never have let happen if he was still around, and how he hopes that Kong could forgive him for his hand in destroying his people. It’s- honestly overwhelming to Kong that any kaiju would offer sympathy for the results of the war. Even the one he’d expect that from most, Mothra, never offered words like that. Suffice to say, Ozzy immediately goes on Kong’s list of 'people I actively respect’.

When Ozzy finally leaves the depths of Apex’s facility fully recovered, he actually recoils at the warmth of the sun and breeze of the wind. He stops moving for a second and Goji turns to find him stuck and looking up at the sun.

“Brother? Are you alright?”

“Yes. Please, go ahead. I’m- going to be here for a while.”

Goji leaves him for a second as Ozzy closes his eyes, breathes in, and exhales the fresh air. He returns to his brother later with fresh tears in his eyes.

“I had forgotten- how warm the Sun was…”

Shamhat

(ok- this parts gonna be a little out there, I know. It’s an extremely unlikely thing to happen and I’m not expecting it to- this is just kind of a What If that may even spark some additional ideas on how to introduce additional kaiju into Shamhat. I don’t think this contradicts anything said in Shamhat, I can’t remember Ozzy ever being mentioned in that story. This is kind of a workaround to introduce him into that timeline without having to have a war against Xenilla- although it does totally cut out that part of his character… Again, you can totally disregard this section; there’s probably lots of ways to bring Ozzy into that story that aren’t this one, this one just conveniently includes another kaiju who could also be a problematic addition to include; and also deals with some undefined lore parts of that timeline that I’ve actually been curious about whilst reading. Additionally, there are a few other headcanons here that just involve what Ozzy would do if he were in Shamhat.)

First off: the namesake of the story. We know that Mothra and Godzilla inspired the legend of Enkidu and Shamhat with their week-long time at an oasis, but there is still a major part of that myth this is undefined in this timeline- Gilgamesh. Who inspired that part of the Epic? Well, I actually think that Ozymandias is probably the best candidate here. But for him to actually establish a city and rule it like he would have Uruk, he needs to not be abducted back when humans were still evolving into Homo Sapiens (at least that’s when I picture him being abducted). So- he just doesn’t. Whether Gigan fails to kidnap him or he just never finds Earth at all, a very major change in the Shamhat timeline is that Ozzy stays on Earth and is never actually abducted. But- that doesn’t mean he can’t still vanish… and he still does, albeit for only around 2000 years this time, until the modern day. Why? Because he caught the whiff of a scent he hadn’t smelled for millions of years; Shimo. As soon as he catches the lightest whiff of his best friend from a nearby Hollow Earth Portal… he’s gone. Instantly, he rushes into the Hollow Earth with reckless abandon, portal shutting behind him, and vanishes from the surface world. Despite having his brother and mate on the surface, he knows he needs to do this- and he hopes they will understand if he doesn’t show his face for a little while. However, what he finds in the Hollow Earth is something he realizes he’ll need a little longer than 'a little while’ to handle- a fully rebuilt Kong Empire, right under his nose, and one with a scarred king at the helm, and Shimo as his personal pet. At this realization- the fury of Ozymandias knows no bounds- and he swears an oath, right there, that he is not to return home unless it is with Shimo by his side and the apes consigned to his nuclear flames. A little while turns into 2000 years of a one-man war with the Skar King- one that Ozymandias wins. Breaking Shimo’s chains, reunited for the first time in 2 million years, the two return to a fully changed surface world.

The two emerge from a Hollow Earth Portal on Skull Island, shrink down, and pretty quickly encounter a human-shifted Kong along with Andrews and Jia. Suffice to say, everyone is freaked out for their own reasons. Andrews (to her infinite credit) manages to defuse a potentially very violent encounter between the kaiju, and gets Ozzy to talk about who he is and where he’s come from. At this point- Godzilla’s sensed the insanely potent scent that Ozymandias exudes, and rushes to find Tiamat so they can investigate. Thus, the Infant Island gang takes a brief field trip to Skull Island. By this point, Ozzy’s gotten to talk to Kong a little and is relieved that there’s an ape around that doesn’t want his head on a mantle. He’s happy to introduce himself and Shimo to the Monarch folk and tries to establish a diplomatic relationship with both Kong and Monarch (through ahem whatever means he deems appropriate…). Goji and crew arrive later, absolutely over the moon to find Ozzy alive- but simultaneously a little ticked off that he up and vanished one random day without telling anyone. After a brief explanation and an introduction of Shimo (who’s introduction and explanation make Tiamat more than a little jealous…), Ozzy reassures everyone that he doesn’t intend to vanish off the face of the Earth again any time soon.

As soon as he catches wind of the Great Infant Island Mating Press- he wants in. He needs a vacation after all that shit went down in the Hollow Earth for 2000 years. Shimo probably needs one more, having not fucked anything in 2 million years. Ozzy’s so into the idea, in fact, he invites Kong and Andrews and basically insists that they join them. They end up convinced, and return to Infant just in time for Mothra’s heat to rear it’s pheromone-laced head again.

Ozzy immediately gets nostalgic for his and Tiamat’s 'Housewarming Events’ they used to hold. This is a policy he fully intends to revisit now that he’s home. Randomly in the middle of the Season, he’ll vanish for like 3 days and come back with another Titan to join them. He’ll literally do tours of the planet on like a weekly basis, running around with his rut blazing and acting like a sex ice cream truck- into the territories of other Titans yelling “COME GET YOUR HOLES FILLED AT INFANT ISLAND!! :D” Recognizing the old King of King’s scent- everyone immediately knows what’s on and the venue changes from Tiamat’s sex cave into Mothra’s sex island. There’s at least 20 new Titans in like 3 weeks…

Despite all the new guests- Ozzy is still fucking insatiable. 2000 years of no sex really did something to him. Nobody can outpace him- even Tiamat gets left in the dust. Once, Goji goes out for an 8 hour patrol, and returns to find his brother on the couch of the main building, left arm around Rodan, right arm around Tiamat, Vivienne passed out on his lap, Mothra and her priestess out cold on the carpet, San slouched up against the couch with Maia in his grip, Shimo catnapping on the dining table, Kong out cold against the sliding glass door with Andrews in his grasp, and the Skullcrawlers all passed out in various dubious positions.

“Oh, hello brother! How was your patrol?”

“What the- HOW?!”

“How… am I doing? I’m great, how are you?”

(wowsers that post got big. I guess I just had a lot of stuff about this guy to get off my chest, sorry for blasting this novel into your inbox, lol. Here’s to the big horndog King of Kings, right? Feel free to drop your own hcs you haven’t mentioned before if you want. Also I wrote this in an external program and tumblr may have fucked over my formatting soooo- that’s probably not completely my fault if it’s bad.)

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Good lord that’s a lot of Ozzy!

I like the inclusion of Shimo (huh, what few leaks I’ve seen says male, though I personally prefer Shimo female because the monster roster is all sausage) and that she was mates with Ozzy before Tiamat. Makes sense that Ozzy being so lonesome by reputation would translate to an insane sex drive, physical affection must be like a drug to him.