#same for star wars 7. not a fan of sw and never will but i watched this movie and i can fix it

[loraculis]

My favorite thing to do is to watch something, not being that invested or liking it, but seeing some potential and rewriting it

[tech-deck]

Tech-Deck 2.0!!...sorta

This is a long one folks, so I'll add a TLDR at the bottom. But for those who wish to read on, grab some popcorn :3

Hello friends! It's been a while. like, a year or so I guess? There may be some who remember me, and there may be some who are like "never heard of ya!" and that's quite alright!

My name is Tech-Deck, or Techie, or Amber (by person to person mostly, but anyone is welcome to call me by that name too) I used to be someone who posted an re-blogged a lot back during the heydays of a show called "The Bad Batch"

A year ago I made the ulimate decision of destroying my tumblr account of, geez 11 years? I had it since 2012, but really didn't do much on it for a long time. That was until I got hooked into the Star Wars fandom. And suddenly it was like an entirely new wave of socializing had swept me under my own two feet!

I fell in love with a show called "The Mandalorian" during lockdown and had such a blast that I wanted more SW content, but didn't really know what else to watch that I found interesting.

And then my brother told me about this Clone Wars spinoff called "The Bad Batch" and I watched the first hour long premiere and I was instantly hooked.

But at the time I had not seen much of The Clone Wars TV show outside of a few stray episodes on cable TV. so I knew I had to dig my heels and go back to watch the entire 7 season run of the show and...My God what a show it was! (This is why I'm an avid cartoon = for everyone ambassador because holy hell!) So much drama, and action and political espionage and sabotage and all the "tages" lol.

From there I got back to the new show that seemed to be an interesting spin-off of TCW and it was something in that show that really sparked my shift into more social and creative avenues.

I joined Discord for the first time, I started to connect to a lot of other fans of the show, and then....I got the inspiration to write!

and my God, did I have a lot to write about, or moreso I had a lot to write about a certain character. But the bottom line in the moment was I had jumped into a new creative avenue that I never thought I would ever do. And, not to toot my own horn, but I felt like I did pretty well with my works. At least the ones important to me were.

I enjoyed the love and even the constructive criticism I got, I went through the same fun of watching each episode and wanting to write my own characters, or ideas into each one, but alas my time management and slow writing speeds didn't quite match up all the time.

And lets just say, that in all my years of living, I have met friends for a season, a reason, and a lifetime thanks to this fandom. I get to work with an amazingly talented, awesome, and wonderful individual who has been nothing but supportive of my endeavors and I am so very thankful to have them in my life! so yes, thank you @tech-aficionado!!

And of course, there are too many to list here, but I have made some incredible friends that have pushed me, and inspired me to not only write, but to be more open about my experiences and challenges, and dare I say, my strangeness in such a strange world.

...With all that said...why did I leave tumblr then if I was doing great?

To be honest...on the inside I let my own self doubts and criticisms get the best of me.

Many days i would struggle to even open up my discord or chat with people, or even be honest in how i was feeling. I could tell that a lot of external pressure I thought I felt was really my own self-hate and guilt seeping through the smiles and bright eyes. I wanted to be open, but something was holding me back from explaining my sorrows, and ultimately I also could tell my main struggle was hoping for absolute recognition.

I realize it's a silly thing now, but back then I would be disheartened at the lack of response or comments and such to my works or to my replies. I felt like there was still this invisible wall that I couldn't get past to be part of this greater collective of individuals. I let my idea of perfectionism and need for approval get the best of me, and I finally had a moment of clarity driving out to a hike one day.

There were many times I wanted to delete everything social media wise and just forego the entirety of it. To finally be like me in my youth where all I really needed was the open air and a good book and some irl friends to hang with.

So I finally deleted my tumblr account and oddly enough, it did feel like a giant weight came off of my shoulders. Like I no longer had to feel like I needed to prove myself by writing all the time, or trying to engage in fandom chats with everyone at all times. I finally felt free to let my real personality and introverted needs to take over.

I was still pretty active on Discord with friends, but even then soon I started to dwindle in my comments and posts. Gone were the days where I would have the app open on my laptop or phone, ready to jump into a conversation about the latest episode or the latest spicy fic one of us wrote!

Now I barely keep check, I'm on a few times during the week, but it's mostly DM's to my boss, who is currently sitting next o me as I type like my keyboard is on fire, about how annoying our co-workers can be, or planned trips to places together. But I can tell that this is exactly where I am the happiest.

I love all my friends that I have made on here and on Discord or other media, and I want you all to know that I will never not love you all so much, but I also know that my own sanity rests with more quiet time than probably most people.

I'm a loner at heart, always have been and I probably will most likely be for the rest of my life. Do I have my days where I need social contact, yes. But even then there are moments where my battery just dips so drastically that I need a breather for a week or 2 before I come back online, or chat again.

So now the real question...why am I back on Tumblr, where it all began?

Well, I guess I never really left this place. I had this new account for a while, mostly to make sure my friends were doing okay that I didn't chat to much, but also, there's just something I enjoy about seeing everyone's passions and love to share their creativity and liveliness on one of the last genuine social sites left. I can't bear the idea of not having something great to read or share with others and this is that one place that sparks creativity in others...it definitely did for me :3

So now you all know, at least whoever read all the way through! (I commend you, it was definitely a lot to process myself) and I want you all to know that I'm not fully back and running a blog like I used to. I don't write much at all anymore, and I probably won't pick it up much again unless I really feel the urge, but even those urges are just small WIP's that hang out in my docs for years collecting dust and growing new mold spores!

I'm just here, vibing to my own tunes and at my own pace, and I have made peace with that. And I want to encourage you all to also take a breather from time to time, you don't have to delete anything if you're not as insane to jump the gun like I did.

But take some time to consider your own health and well-being. Find that lost spirit if you feel like you're in the dark, and if this is where you feel your best and your most "you" than keep at it!

I will be here, vibing and lurking, just being me. And that's all that I need to be! PEACE!

TLDR: Tech-Deck is back, but at my own pace and my own vibe!

[sonicrainbooms]

N, T and U for the fandom ask thing if that's not too many :)))

Thanks for the ask! (ask game)

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Main fandom right now for me is Star Wars/TBB I guess, so I'm going with that.

I wish I saw more trans!Hunter art! I headcanon Hunter as trans and I really like seeing art of it- if anyone has any, feel free to share it! I love seeing trans hc art in general, but trans!Hunter is very special to me, I really am attached to that hc lol.

I would love to see more redesigns! Not in a selfish way, I know they're very hard to do, but I LOVE seeing how different people interpret characters/stories, and how they would've reflected that in a design if given the chance. Especially if not confined to the limits of animation, or (lets be honest) sub-par live-action/cgi. I love seeing redesigns of clones with traditional Maori style tattoos, translated to work in the SW universe. I really love AU redesigns too! like that Apocolypse one floating around lately. I really love seeing the numerous ways the same character can be changed!

Lastly....this is gonna sound so silly. The long-time MLP/FNaF fan is going to jump right out. But I wish there were fanmade SW songs. I still listen to classics like Discord (this one is my alarm sound <3), Rainbow Factory, Five Nights at Freddy's (I will NEVER forget seeing the advanced screening of the FNaF movie and hearing this during the credits for the first time!) and countless others. I think SW has a LOT of untapped fansong/fan music potential.

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Hm...I don't think so? I tend to be understanding when people don't share headcanons. That being said.... Hunter is trans and is a cat person, you can't change my mind. I don't care that he canonically has a dog. He wants a cat. And every ninja in Naruto is bisexual. All of them!! And I think Wrecker intentionally went bald! Kakashi is trans too, Kishi told me himself.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

(This will surprise 0 people.)

MLP - Rarity! I love how she is always defending herself and her work. She defies every stereotype her archetype has, and does so with grace and poise. Most of the time. I love how she isn't afraid to let loose when she has to. Sure, she'll complain, but can you blame her? She's a dramatic business owner who knows her own worth and I LOVE her!

TBB - Wrecker. hnngg. Hrhrnrnrr!! hutuggggrrhhet!! Hot man. Big man. Hot. But seriously, I love how kindhearted he is. I love how he always tries to see the bright side of things, and tries to show that bright side to others. I love how he's so full of real joy, all the time, he is the glue of the Batch (before Omega, and without her, too.) and holds them together. He is not only the most emotionally intelligent clone but also one of the most emotionally intelligent SW characters ever imo. He's so smart with his weaponry expertise too, and I'll always be bitter we never saw more of that in canon other than the 3 or 4 small scenes we did get (and were forgotten. Seriously, where did his tank go?). He is the most suited for civilians life, he integrates and participates in every culture they come across with ease and its evident literally everyone likes him. He is aware of his own faults and limitations, and will apologise if he causes harm. He never once hesitates putting himself in harms way for his family. He is everything to me.

Naruto - Sakura! Sakura, my beloved. I love it when females characters get to be angry. We need more of that. She is stubborn, she is fierce, and she still isn't afraid to love or be loved. From the GET GO she was dedicated to Team 7 (I admit it was more evident in the manga than the anime) and was willing to put herself down to elevate Naruto's goals, despite them not really getting along super well at the time. Her devotion to her companions despite everything they've all been through as shinobi, as individuals, is nothing short of admirable. Her dedication to herself to improve, to do better, was so exhilarating to see in action the first time, and every time since. Kakashi used to be my favourite character, and I still love him a lot, but over time the Sakura brainrot has set in. I wish Kishi and the wider fandom liked her as much as I do <3

[paperback-rascal]

TECH: But-, sergeant! Our aliases are: Echo, Technician, Vandal and Sight!

-----------------------

Apparently there is Polish translation of CF99 names... well... sort of... they are most likely an editorial error (as if someone forgot to proofread the file or submitted a wrong one) as they appeared ONLY IN ONE EPISODE (season 7 episode 4) of The Clone Wars series and exclusively in subtitles.

So... the names are very... rough around the edges... especially since, in my opinion, they're meant either just for the subtitles or were pretreatment names that got scrapped later on, since most of them wouldn't fit dubbing anyway as it would make dialogues look awkward due to wrong numbers of syllables.

The ONLY two Clone Force 99 names that were consistent throughout all TCW episodes featuring The Bad Batch were: Echo, as it's the same word/meaning in Polish and Tech who, funnily enough, doesn't need translation either, but for some strange reason he was consistently addressed to as "Technik" -> Technician in the subtitles (he was"Tech" in dubbing, tho).

Hunter was never addressed directly by name in that episode so his Polish name is a mystery and, let's face it, it's 99% Łowca.

I think Wrecker's name got the most amount of consideration and care from the translator, as he is named "Wandal" which means, well, vandal - a person who commits vandalism. Not exactly what I would pick myself... because of the negative connotations but it captures Wrecker's affinity for destruction well enough and has the same number of syllables so it simply... fits.

"Celownik" was used as name for Crosshair. It's obviously the most straight forward translation. Celownik sounds really bad - It's too long, for starters, and... lacks the oomph. Basically, celownik directly translates to a "(gun) sight". Which yeah... I get it - sights have crosshairs in them... but that's about it - Celownik would be a first pick of anyone who'd have to translate crosshair to Polish on the spot.

As I said before, I'm bummed about lack of translation but I'm also not happy with what was given to us in 7.4. (only Wandal gets a pass and Echo doesn't count)... oh well, at least Polish fans are not confused when talking with international Star Wars fandom, because as I said before - Polish version for The Bad Batch uses English names as default.

I'm now curious about other clones' names in Polish (if they're translated in the first place and if yes, then to what) but I'm not sure I'd survive re-watch of "Gwiezdne Wojny: Wojny Klonów" and "Gwiezdne Wojny: Parszywa Zgraja" with Polish dubbing + subtitles combo just to check few names (especially since TBB thing was a fluke) - not, when I learned that Batcher was translated to "Zgrajka" while "Snips" (a nickname given to Ahsoka by Anakin) was translated to "Smark" ("Snot") - which is... a thing, as in Polish there is a word "Smarkacz" - used to describe an unruly child - the name is due to the fact that small children refuse to blow their noses properly so the snot is smeared on their faces as they wipe the mucus with their hands.

However I like the translation of "Reg" which is "zwyklak" a combination of words "zwykły" (common/normal) and "zdechlak" (someone dead-tired, prone to illness or physically weak).

---

Jeśli któryś z polskich fanów chce poczuć ten sam dreszcz emocji co ja, zapraszam do odcinka "Ryzykowna Gra" i włączeniu polskich napisów!

---

see more The Bad Batch/Four Tank-men And A Dog crossover works here -> [LINK] <-

see more of my Slavic culture inspired posts set in SW universe here -> [LINK] <-

My fanart masterlist -> [LINK] <-

===

STAR WARS: The Clone Wars/The Bad Batch © George Lucas/ Dave Filoni/ LucasFilm/ Disney

Czterej Pancerni i pies  ©  Konrad Nałęcki/ Janusz Przymanowski/TVP

In the middle of the bombed-out city, the piano survived by some miracle. Echo carefully pressed a few keys. It was out of tune, but it didn’t matter. It still was beautiful. He searched his memory for a song, and started playing.

“What is it?” asked Hunter, leaning on the piano, eyes closed. It was strange to see him so calm for once.

“Brahms, Chaconne in D minor for the left hand. One of the few things I can still play”

***

"Give it back," said Crosshair, for at least hundredth time. The girl either doesn’t speak the same language as him, or decided to ignore him.

"Fine," he finally grumbled. It was just a helmet. Nothing that important. He turned away. Two steps, and something caught on his coat.

Of course. He "gave" her something. It was just his luck that she seen it as a sign of friendship.

Inspired by an amazing bad batch/four tank-men and a dog fanart by @paperback-rascal, and by today’s International Fanwork Day, I made this crossover between Bad batch and old polish tv show Four from a tank and a dog about crew of Soviet tank during wwii.

I originally wanted to translate their names into polish/Russian/whatever other language people in Soviet army used.

I also decided to change Crosshairs tattoo into a scar. It just looked wierd.

#badbatch #badbatchfanart #ctecho #echo #cthunter #cttech #hunter #tech #ctwrecker #wrecker #ctcrosshair #crosshair #omega #ctyriztankuapes #internationalfanworksday

https://www.instagram.com/p/CosIia4KIuo/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

[space-blue]

Andor rant (beloved)

Mentally diseased over how good today's episode of Andor was. How is this show so good? How? Luthen's monologue... The prison break... Cassian and Melshi running off together... *Sigh*

It's frustrating to me on some level, because show after show I've been complaining and wishing for "better writing". And the general mediocrity started to make me feel like maybe I was asking for too much? That maybe excellent writing is some dark arcane magic limited to indie films and titans of the industry existing in their own bubble of space, like Denis Villeneuve.

Maybe good writing would never come to Star Wars, and the shadow of it, glimpsed in Rogue One, TCW season 7 or Mandalorian season 1, would be as close as we'd ever get.

And then voila: Andor.

Andor with not only excellent writing for Star Wars, but excellent writing for any show! It's just up there. It has a ton of stuff going on, and it merges tropes like paint in a bucket. Rebellion building, spy action, politics, heist, prison break...

All without sweating, all with clarity of purpose, lean dialogue and memorable characters built on who they are and not what they look like or how dope they act.

Syril and his mom are stand outs because they're fascinating. They act their tits off, they're theatre stars and they act an all too familiar drama on the backdrop of Coruscant. Luthen's monologues are given the time to breath. His character is only shown enough to entice us and give us food for thought.

Characters listen to each other, grow from each other. It's Vel repeating Cinta's words, it's Kino repeating Cassian's...

The show also consistently flips expectations, giving us details before we think we need them. Like that one guy who wants to be made prefect and mentions it's solely an honorary position... Half an episode before someone tells a story involving one such prefect. It immediately enriches our understanding of what type of character he must have been... And then it turns out it was all a made up story? Or was it?

Us not knowing for sure is SO HUMAN. Skeen is human. He's a liar and a me-first dickhead who still sided with the good guys in the grand scheme of things, and we'll never know where the lies end and truth begins.

You rarely see shows so keen to build up a character from the ground up only to shatter them or kill them, even leaving us without a satisfying understanding of what sort of person they were.

I would never have dared to DREAM of getting a show this well written in the SW franchise, and I know it's going to ruin me forever, because every shitty, half baked, poorly written disaster a-la-Boba-Fett will be measured against Andor.

Even if the 101 fans adore such shows for all the pew-pew battles and lightsaber twirling or cameo galore, they'll forever suffer if it's obvious Disney didn't bother hire real writers and directors with vision.

Andor will forever prove they can do it, if they only bother. Every show trying to milk me will be that much more offensive and frustrating.

I love Andor, and I hate Andor. I was putting clown make up on for it when the trailers looked so good... and it just made it worthwhile. It was real. I wasn't a clown for believing in it, and at the same time it'll make me a clown in perpetuity, because there'll be the possibility the next show is on par with Andor, or gods forbid, even better.

[grim-on-the-darkside]

The Latest Information on Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy he wrote in 2011. Also some information from  Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005, author Paul Duncan interviewed George Lucas his ideas of a Sequel Trilogy.

Firstly, some of the things Pablo Hidalgo has stated about Lucas’s sequel trilogy that he has access to and spoke to Lucas directly about.

We know Lucas never considered the EU canon or a part of his Star Wars universe so it is not surprising his Sequel Trilogy was of his own creation.

........

"Fast forward to 2012, when we hear George is looking to make SW movies again, I though I thought 'I wonder what next Mon Calamari's gonna be. And it turns out, the Mon Calamari this time was huge swaths of the EU. There was no Jacen, no Jaina. No new Jedi Order. Chewie lived. Not surprising, but there it was."

~ Pablo Hidalgo, 2016               

https://ibb.co/nmjWcBM

..

[Regarding Lucas Sequel Trilogy Treatments he wrote in 2011 and sold to Disney]

Comment - "What are you talking about? J.J. threw out His story treatments and he [George Lucas] has no imput at all anymore."

Pablo Hidalgo Response - "Not entirely true. But the treatments as they were pretty much disregarded the EU, which was to be expected.”

~ 2018

https://ibb.co/Dz7qhTB

........

Commentor - 'Thank You for the clarification, might I ask if you ever recieved any direction that George Lucas with the number of children the Solos had as depicted in the EU?'

Pablo Hidalgo - "All I meant is his starting point for this Trilogy didn't have Jacen, Jaina, and/or Anakin."

Commentor - 'Was there Ben Skywalker?'

Pablo Hidalgo - "There was not."

https://ibb.co/JH2Y8tg

.................

Question -  "My question is, *what did George's treatments for 7 look like? I would love to see if they fit the EU."

Answer [Pablo Hidalgo]- "They did not. For instance, there was no Jaina, Jacen, or Anakin."  ~ 2017                                                                       

https://ibb.co/N7HKCsF

................

Pablo Hidalgo - "Jacen and Jaina never existed in George's storytelling, even in treatment form."

Comment Response - "And about Mara Jade?"

Pablo Hidalgo - "No. George never thought of Mara as being part of his universe either."

~ 2016 https://ibb.co/YLHk6Ft

.......

From Star Wars Insider

..

"There was no Ben Skywalker in George's Universe. He came from the NJO team." ~ Pablo Hidalgo 2016

https://ibb.co/HDtXh6D

................

"Question from Today, but I thought this was pretty well known. George Lucas never considered Jacen, Jaina, or Mara Jade as part of his universe."

~ Pablo Hidalgo May 2016 https://ibb.co/VDX2qvY

....

"But anyway Luke in exile predates TLJ by a long time and came from someone who can very happily and rightly supersede anyone's feedback :)"

~ Pablo Hidalgo https://ibb.co/sKZnWKk

[Luke was in something of a self imposed exile on an Island in Lucas Sequel Trilogy which is something that Disney ripped off from Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy. Pablo is referring to Lucas in this quote.]

..

"Luke was training a new generation of Jedi, it all went wrong because of 1 boy, and he's the 'Jedi killer' - that's the source.”

~ Pablo Hidalgo, 2016 https://ibb.co/JjYtGtf

[The source being George Lucas sequel trilogy treatments he made in 2011 and ended up selling to Disney later. Something else Disney ripped off from Lucas’s Sequel trilogy.] ..

Pablo Hidalgo -   "George's starting point for 7 had no Jaina, Jacen, Anakin and Chewie never died. So yeah."

[Reply] - "Could we please send this to every EU purist we know?"

[Other replyer] "They wont care."

[First Replyer] "They will after what Hidalgo just said after this."

[Pablo Hidalgo] - "No, they won't. You can't correct the internet.The info's out there. They've made up their minds."

https://ibb.co/mXGX0Qn

..

Pablo Hidalgo - "But there was no sequel trilogy at that time."

Commenter 1 -

'Also, Lucas' Treatment of EP VII did not have the twins born in the Thrawn Trilogy'.

Pablo Hidalgo - "It didn't have twins."

Commenter 2 -

'You're referring to the treatment Lucas sold Disney in 2012. I guess plans changed.'

Pablo Hidalgo - "Or were defined. Jacen and Jaina were never part of George's story. They were Tim's [Zahn] invention."

~ Pablo Hidalgo Q&A

https://ibb.co/VQ5Zrr0

..

Here’s what George said about them during an interview with James Cameron for his The Story of Science Fiction project.

“Back in the day, I used to say ultimately what this means is we’re just cars, vehicles, for the Whills to travel around in…. We’re vessels for them. And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.

All the way back to — with the Jedi and the Force and everything — the whole concept of how things happen was laid out completely from [the beginning] to the end. But I never got to finish. I never got to tell people about it.

If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told.”

~ George Lucas

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/06/george-lucas-episode-vii-episode-ix-1201974276/

..

As part of the book Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005, author Paul Duncan interviewed George Lucas. During this interview, George talked more about his plans for the sequel trilogy.

Paul Duncan: What about the stormtroopers? They look robotic, but they’re not.

George Lucas: How do you know what they are?

Paul Duncan: Did you have a different idea of what they were?

George Lucas: Yeah, they started out as clones. Once all the clones were killed, the Empire picked up recruits, like militia. They fought, but they weren’t very good at what they did.

Paul Duncan: That’s why they kept missing.

George Lucas: That’s why they kept missing. Then after the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy.

I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren. [There was only one, Ben Solo, another Disney rip off.]

Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. “Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?” Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win.

They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.

There’s a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoons — he brings all the gangs together.

Paul Duncan: Was Darth Maul the main villain?

George Lucas: Yeah, but he’s very old, and we have two versions of him. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger, more of a superhero. We did all this in the animated series, he was in a bunch of episodes.

Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon [The only thing from the EU in Lucas’s Trilogy, but it wasn’t even really her, just had the same look and name, completely different background. She wasn’t even born yet at that time frame in the comics]., who was in the comic books as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.

The movies are about how Leia — I mean, who else is going to be the leader? — is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story.

It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.

By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.”

George also expanded on Midi-chlorians:

“This is the cosmology. The Force is the energy, the fuel, and without it everything would fall apart. The Force is a metaphor for God, and God is essentially unknowable. But behind it is another metaphor, which fits so well into the movie that I couldn’t resist it.

Midi-chlorians are the equivalent of mitochondria in living organisms and photosynthesis in plants — I simply combined them for easier consumption by the viewer. Mitochondria create the chemical energy that turns one cell into two cells.

I like to think that there is a unified reality to life and that it exists everywhere in the universe and that it controls things, but you can also control it. That’s why I split it into the Personal Force and the Cosmic Force. The Personal Force is the energy field created by our cells interacting and doing things while we are alive. When we die, we lose our persona and our energy is assimilated into the Cosmic Force.

If we have enough Midi-chlorians in our body, we can have a certain amount of control over our Personal Force and learn how to use it, like the Buddhist practive of being able to walk on hot coals.”

And the Whills:

“The Whills are a microscopic, single-celled lifeform like amoeba, fungi, and bacteria. There’s something like 100,000 times more Whills than there are Midi-chlorians, and there are about 10,000 times more Midi-chlorians than there are human cells.

The only microscopic entities that can go into the human cells are the Midi-chlorians. They are born in the cells. The Midi-chlorians provide the energy for human cells to split and create life. The Whills are single-celled animals that feed on the Force. The more of the Force there is, the better off they are. So they have a very intense symbiotic relationship with the Midi-chlorians and the Midi-chlorians effectively work for the Whills.

It is estimated that we have 100 trillion microbes in our body and we are made up of about 90% bacteria and 10% human cells. So who is in service to whom? I know this is the kind of thing that fans just go berserk over because they say, “We want it to be mysterious and magical”, and “You’re just doing science.” Well, this isn’t science.

This is just as mythological as anything else in Star Wars. It sounds more scientific, but it’s a fiction.

It’s saying there is a big symbiotic relationship to create life, and to create the Force, but if you look at all the life-forms in the universe, most of them are one-celled organisms. I think of one-celled organisms as an advanced form of life because they’ve been able to travel through the universe. They have their own spaceships — those meteorites that we get every once in a while. They’ve been living on those things for thousands of years, they’ve been frozen, unfrozen, and can survive almost anything.

The one-celled organisms have to have a balance. You have to have good ones and bad ones otherwise it would extinguish life. And if they go out of balance, the dark side takes over.”

..................................................................................................................

Obviously there is the older information that’s already been out there, I just wanted to share some of the newer information that has come to light. I’m sure in time we will learn more.

[padawanlost]

I am loving so much about season 7 of TCW, but I'm really sad that so much of it is rushed. I wanted a longer Anakin/Ahsoka reunion, dammit! Do we know why this season wasn't longer? Is it just because Disney is cheap and wasn't willing to pay for a full season?

Yeah, same. We deserved better. But, tbh, I don’t think money is the issue. I believe they cancelled the show because, at the time, they wanted to distance themselves from the prequels and George. If you remember how thing were back when Disney bought SW you’ll remember most people claimed Disney had saved Star Wars and would finally steer it in the right direction (the OT). That’s why TFA was a copy of ANH and why Disney announce all the OT-centric shows and spin-off (Boba Fett movie, Obi-wan movie, Rebels, Han Solo, Rogue One, etc). It was only after the mess caused by TLJ and the Solo movie that Disney started to pay more attention to the prequels and its fans. It wasn’t an accident that revival of TCW was announced a couple months after the fandom lack support of Disney’s decisions became painfully obvious (the solo movie box office).

Why they only made a few episodes? Probably because they never intended to make any in the first place and because they needed it done quickly so they could it use to get people to subscribe to their new streaming platform. It takes a lot of time to produce tcw episodes so they had to use what they already had to create a somewhat cohesive season. The episodes weren’t produced in chronological order so for them to announce all the episodes they need all of them to already in the final stages of producing and that wasn’t the case. To sum it up, they needed to announce something fast to save face with the fandom and be ready for their new platform so they used what they already had. let’s be real, Disney is not known for carefully planning stories before announcing and producing them so it makes sense that’s how they handled The Clone Wars too.

[thinkingheron]

Finally Watched The Mandalorian Season 1

(Spoilers ahead)

So, out of complete impulse, I decided to finally watch The Mandalorian and ended up watching the entire Season 1. I have seen gifs and meta on tumblr so I was already aware of some spoilers, but watching it for myself within contexts are different. And I have to say... you people have been holding out on me with funny gifs on this series. There were more hilarious moments than I expected.

I was going to rave about Kuiil and how whoever wrote his lines deserves an award because of his no nonsense, I do what I want, deal with it kind of personality and the humor derived from his interaction with the Mandalorian. I was also going to rave about IG-11, because droids are one of my favorite things in Star Wars because of their often literal minded way of operating and IG-11 had some of the funniest moments before and after getting reprogrammed. And with IG-11′s reprogramming it looks like he actually had to learn through hands-on experience rather than having everything programmed for him, which gives him a unique personality of his own. I have actual notes compiled here about them.

...Then I got to the end of episode 7 and 8. And now I don’t wanna talk about them anymore.

They really paced their humor and dark moments well though. Episode 7 ends in a tense, hero’s darkest hour cliffhanger, and then episode 8 starts off with a healthy dose of black humor by showing what kind of inane stuff two average stormtroopers go through while the real action is happening elsewhere. Their slightly exasperated conversation on their boss’s theatrics feels so Real. It reminds me of this Imperial snapchat fan comic that had me in stitches. The only time I remember seeing that sort of thing in SW was with the B1 battle droids in TCW. So that was funny, right up until they start poking the Child.

The reason I put off watching The Mandalorian for long was because first of all, I procrastinate everything, but secondly Mandalorian culture as a whole never held my interest. It may have been my own bias, but the whole Proud Warrior Race as a trope isn’t my favorite. (I know Mandalorian isn’t a ‘race’, that’s just the trope name) These types were usually depicted as having “You gotta be THIS tough to be worthy otherwise get lost” sort of attitude, and I just plain don’t like that. And Din in particular has been depicted as something of a religious zealot as well with his helmet and that ‘This is the Way’ mantra.

So this series had gotten me emotionally invested in not just a bounty hunter with questionable morality, but also a religious zealot with honor before reason tendency. And that’s quite an achievement.

It helps that Din is a genuinely likable character who (probably) won’t screw you unless you mess with him first or happens to have a bounty on your head. Potential Death Watch associations aside, he has his own set of rules and hasn’t yet killed anyone who doesn’t deserve it. In fact, the same could be said for his whole tribe(?) that makes me sympathize with them in a way I couldn’t with Bo-Katan and Death Watch in TCW. (Incidentally, I really should catch up on TCW S7)

Another point for Din is that he seems to be loosing up on some of the more extreme rules -- first showing concerns for the Child and then later allowing IG-10 to remove his helmet to treat him. I’m interested to see where things will go from here.

[fontainebleau22]

I'm sorry you had a crappy day, but the second half of this post a\bout SF blindspots really speaks to me. I'm a big fan of SF on page and screen: I grew up with Dr Who and Star Trek, Blake's 7 was the show of my heart, and I'm a fan of just about every film and TV show, no matter how badly made, Except: not Star Wars. I never watched either the original SW films or the sequels: the only one I've ever seen is Rogue One, because the fandom was having a moment on Tumblr, and it didn't make me want to watch the rest. I just can't work up any personal engagement with it - I think the whole world and premise are silly.

I'm always coming across people who think I must like SW because I like everything else, and it's very hard to explain: I feel about Star Wars the way that people who don't like science fiction feel about science fiction. But different things speak to people in different ways, I suppose, even if they fall under the same generic umbrella, which is the long way round to saying I hear you about Dr Who!

December 12: Work Shit

Today was such a shitty day. And for the most dumb-fuck reasons too. There was work drama in the morning so incredibly inane I am embarrassed to post about it in a pubic space but the tl;dr of it is that I had no opinions about the thing, but was still the brunt of others’ (an other’s really) annoyance about it. We kept saying ‘it’s not personal’ as we spoke harshly to each but it felt SO personal, and I just couldn’t get over it for pretty much the rest of the day. I am quite sure it wounded me more and affected me for longer than anyone else. I want to be like ‘please don’t do this to me, I am a sensitive flower, I am easily emotionally decimated’ but also like ‘I am not bothered at all (lying), I am strong and fine, I am above this, I am not engaging because there is nothing to engage with.’

Again, there was nothing to engage with. But it just made me feel so shitty. I still feel kind of sad even now, to be honest. I was so bummed out and tired that I took a nap as soon as I got home (after a bus ride sitting in front of someone who was yelling into their phone and kept saying ‘no one can hear me! It’s the bus!’—um? We can all hear you because it’s the bus?). There was probably nothing else for me to do but of course now I am up late because it takes a while to wake up again from a nap, then I am all riled up and easily distracted. So I will go to sleep at a stupid hour again, and also have accomplished nothing with my paltry post-work hours.

Fuck I’m so depressed. This is such a depressing train of thought.

Anyway, yesterday I mentioned at work that I had never seen a single episode of Doctor Who (this is the truth: I think I saw a partial episode on TV, but not even the whole thing) and this shocked my co-worker considerably. She said it was incredibly surprising of me or something of that nature. And I do not know how to take this. I mean, probably what she means is ‘you are known as someone who likes science fiction and is rather nerdy’ and these are true things and also positive reputations to have. But I have literally never given the slightest fuck about Doctor Who lmao. I can’t tell you why, but it obviously doesn’t feel weird to me that I don’t because I never have! Obviously I’ve been in a lot of spaces that are sort of Who-adjacent (fandom, tumblr, nerd-dom, crossover appeal with other stuff I like) but it’s never been tempting or intriguing at all. It’s not on my list.

What I said was just like… a non-answer that sounded like an answer based on my tone of voice. Like, ‘Hmmm, well I’ve seen a partial episode on TV and I’ve seen Torchwood.’ This is all true but does not at all address the surprise or the reasons of my not being interested. I was surprised by her surprise, I don’t have good reasons, and also all I could say would probably read as insulting to Who fans, one of whom was in the room.

I think part of it is, honestly, that my mom isn’t into Doctor Who, and so I did not have anyone getting me into it at a formative time. Not that people can’t get into Who independently and not that I haven’t gotten into things independently but I just… I really think that in this particular instance, if she had been into it, I would have been. My mom being into Torchwood is the reason I watched it (well… 2-ish seasons). She thinks Who is a kids’ show and while it’s probably more a family show, that opinion really influenced my non-desire to watch it.

Another part is that I’m sort of a sci-fi poser in a way. I hate to admit it but it’s true. I love that people think of me as a sci fi fan and I think of myself that way too but I am NOT well read. I’m more like an ST:TOS fan with aspirations to sci fi fandom. This isn’t to say I want to pick up Who (or Dune, the other piece of science fiction I was strangely assumed to be familiar with), but I do want to be more well-read in some classic sci fi literature, as well as be more aware of like modern sci fi stuff. Especially books. There are very few sci fi TV series that interest me. A couple but not a ton.

I also have a weird definition of science fiction which is, it’s science fiction if it FEELS like science fiction to me, personally, the arbiter of all things. Some media are in the sense that they can’t be anything else, I guess, but they don’t feel like science fiction to me and so I’m not interested, which is a weird and irrational and unreasonable thing for me to say, but it’s the middle of the night and I’m sad so there it is.

[twilightofthe]

I'd like to submit Luke Skywalker, Biggest Fashionista in the GFFA, for that ask game! (Also, shit, you're updating that goose fic today??? A+, 10/10, just what I need after that devastation Filoni released upon us)

MY SPACE PRINCE YESSS.  Thank you very much, lovely to see you again!  Also YES, Goose Fic should be up by midnight tonight!  (Ask meme here)

LUKE SKYWALKER (god, just thinking about Luke gives me such a rush of seratonin i LOVE him)

1: sexuality headcanon 

This man Gay.  Gay and asexual, specifically 

2: otp 

No SOLID otp for Luke, but I’ve always loved the cute fanart and headcanons of what would happen if Luke met Ezra, so yeah, big Skybridger fan.  Also, after TROS I’m in love with the idea of Luke and Lando going on a Big Gay Wayfinder Adventure, so Luke/Lando’s another one that I really like.  Luke/Wedge is an oldie but also a goodie!

3: brotp 

HAN AND LEIA, HAN AND LEIA, they are the BEST Star Wars trio that actually acts as a trio, like as much as I adore the prequel trio, they don’t actually trio on the level that Luke, Leia, and Han do.  I love them so much, the Skytwins will forever be one of my all-time favorite SW dynamics, and HAN AND LUKE ARE THE ACTUAL BEST I LOVE THEIR BOND. Also, Luke and R2!!!!!!  They’re the best disaster pair and I don’t blame R2 for liking Luke better than Anakin (I just had to watch Order 66 again today I like Luke and basically everyone better than Anakin too ;p)  Also Luke and Yoda, their Master/Apprentice relationship is majorly sweet and was my second-favorite part of TLJ

4: notp 

Please Do Not Ship Luke With Leia Or Anakin In Front Of Me.  PLEASE.  Sorry, that really ain’t my kink.  Hmm ok so this isn’t anywhere near on the same level, but I’m not really into Skysolo solely because I love Hanleia and even tho I am the biggest multishipper, I cannot ship one person with two different siblings.  Otherwise, to me it just kinda feels like 2 degrees away from inc*st, ya know?  So like, I have to choose either Skysolo or Hanleia and for me it’s always gonna be Hanleia so I can’t do Skysolo, sorry!  Again, nothing against that ship, y’all are great!

5: first headcanon that pops into my head 

Luke grew up in the desert for nineteen years, he never learned how to swim.  Therefore, his first experience with water is a couple months after Yavin when the Rebellion is camped out on some water planet.  He’s standing in front of some deep pool with Han and just admiring it when Han decides to have a little fun and push Luke in.  Han does not know Luke cannot swim until he sees bubbles and Luke doesn’t pop right back up, upon which Chewie calls him an idiot and shoves him in after Luke.  Leia is Not Amused, so thus starts Luke’s early morning swim lessons in ugly-ass vomit green wetsuits being taught by Han as punishment/penitence and Leia who wants to spend time with her new found family she’s made claims she doesn’t trust Han not to drown him

6: one way in which I relate to this character 

I too am kinda naïve, overeager, impulsive and don’t think things through, a bit pissy and whiny on occasion, always looking for something more, want to see the best in people, love my family and friends and would do anything for them, and would also probs sink into a depressive episode if my life’s work fell down around me.  I’m a LOT like Luke except he’s braver than me.

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character 

UNKNOWINGLY MAKING OUT WITH YOUR SISTER NO THANK YOU.  

Alsoooo trying to murder ur nephew and then running off on your sister to go sulk on an island and drink alien tiddy milk ain’t a good look, boo and I don’t like to see it :/

8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

This man is a CINNAMON ROLL SUPREME WITH SPICY CINNAMON BECAUSE HE IS SPICEY AND ANGERY SOMETIMES TOO.  I love Luke!!!!!!!

[niennavalier]

Okay, belated Star Wars thoughts under the cut; no particular order, just as I think of them. Possibly some unpopular opinions, I dont really know, I'm not all that active in the SW fandom. So maybe I'll get roasted alive but...eh, whatever, this site is somewhere between an void and hell anyway.

Also SPOILERS BELOW (OBVIOUSLY)

[[MORE]]

Okay, so first things first: I enjoyed episode 9. A lot. It was really fun to watch, and just talking in terms of my experience in the theater, it was fantastic. It was so much fun to see the old crew back, all of those appearances were basically like happiness shots in the arm. It was really very cool. The Palpatine reveal and everything around it was pretty damn epic for the obvious reasons. And I absolutely loved seeing the trio bantering and arguing and passing each other - I always love stuff like that. I swear, just give me hours of good character interaction and I'll be happy. Kylo and Rey fighting together/him using the blue lightsaber was also some cool shit and basically like "yaasss heres the payoff for the entire trilogy let's fucking gooo"

Oh, and I need to mention that little droid that Rey fixes. That little guy was adorable and I want merch for him and I will not hear otherwise. (The droids are always great in all the movies fight me)

Also Zorii and Jannah. Badasses, loved watching them and the way they got to interact with the main cast. Just...wanna spill all the love for them in this sentence.

But there are a lot of other things I have to say about the movie - especially the more I think about it and the trilogy as a whole. Dont get me wrong; I still really loved watching the movie. There are just...certain things that feel like missteps or missed opportunities?

(Not counting how badly Oscar Isaac wanted Finn and Poe to be boyfriends, which I just discovered is a thing. And reminds me a lot of anytime anyone mentions Julian Bashir to Andy Robinson and his response is always "oh Garak wanted to have sex with him from the start". Which I literally love so much, this man is a treasure, and I'm glad that apparently the same thing is happening here. And it's not that I'm not gonna talk about it here cause I dont think Poe and Finn should've been boyfriends, but I'm pretty sure Oscar Isaac has much more to say about it than I do)

Gonna start where I always start when I have problems with writing: romance. Because IMO badly written/unnecessary romance can ruin any good story real quick. I'm talking about the kiss at the end. I'm not saying this to bash on the Rey and Kylo shippers. Generally, I dont care what you ship so long as you dont start harassing everyone else; I care even less when it comes to this fandom cause I just participate in it so little. So this isnt me bashing on the ship itself or the fans, but I just think that, in the context of the movie itself, the romance was really poorly handled. To the point that I saw the scene going that way and all I could think was "oh god please dont kiss, I'm begging you". And well...we all know where that went. But I just never got a romantic vibe from the two of them in terms of what was shown on screen. The chemistry always felt familial, at least to me, across episodes 8 and 9 in particular. I dont know if that's just the chemistry between the actors or what, but the tension between them never struck me as romantic - more like two people desperate for someone who understands the chaos around them, not lovers.

Again, granted, maybe that's just the way I read stuff, especially considering I really appreciate movies that don't feature romance arcs. I'm not sure how it read to other people, and I'm not gonna bash on the shippers who like it. I may feel like JJ Abrams didnt write a convincing romance - or just stuck the kiss in there at the end to fulfill some plan from episode 7 that didnt actually pan out - but I have no problem with the ship itself, or the people who ship it. (Because at the end of the day, this is all fiction, and I couldnt care less how anyone chooses to interact with it)

(And this isnt an entirely rated point but because I've seen it around:

In all honesty, I'm starting to think that the romance thing was just a symptom of a bigger problem with this trilogy: it doesnt feel cohesive. It's like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson had two separate sets of notes and just refused to actually look between them. Two separate sets of ideas that they were too stubborn to compromise on.

And I have a feeling (at least, talking to my little brother, who definitely feels this way) that a lot of people are pinning this fragmented feel to the trilogy on Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi, but I honestly don't think that's fair. Because, and here's the unpopular opinion: I really don't think Last Jedi is that bad. At least, not bad enough to deserve all the flak it gets.

Won't get into that entirely here because that could be a whole separate post, but that's my opinion. Sure, it's not perfect, there are definitely a lot of parts that are pretty irrelevant and not really necessary, but that's true of everything. Frankly, its biggest problem was that it was written for the wrong audience. Which is a major problem, yes, but taken for what it is, it's perfectly decent. As I said before, I could write a whole thing on this movie and why it's not that bad (because I have my brother's points as to why it's terrible for me to argue against) but overall, my reading of 8 is that it's a movie meant to introduce wider ideas and concepts to the universe - particularly this very gray and murky area of morality and character - through stories that are closer to the characters and tied to harsher realities of war. Things aren't always black and white, people are complex, sometimes our heroes can be gravely wrong in ways that aren't glamorous.

Frankly, it feels somewhere between a super deep indie movie and Star Trek (particularly DS9, at least to me, because I love when that show gets to twisty moral stuff). So yeah, wrong audience, yet he decided to stick with his storytelling despite that. No matter I personally might fall into the audience that movie resonates with, it wasnt gonna resonate with most of the fandon.

Again, Last Jedi is far from perfect in other ways too, but it sets up some great ideas that I was really hoping to get some closure on. Honorable mention here is when Rose saves Finn when he's speeding out to sacrifice himself and because of the desire to save the people they love, which I always end up likening to the "we dont trade lives" sentiment. Mentioning this cause my brother always complains about it, but I was thinking this would be one of those virtues that separate the good guys from the bad guys and ultimately allow good to triumph. Yknow, sorta like how Voldemort's lack of understanding of love contributed to his downfall, to liken it to HP. I was under the assumption that would be the concept at some turning point in the climax, but...guess not.

Big one though, which was actually a pretty big disappointment IMO, was the whole neutrality argument, the existence of a grey area. The most interesting thing from Rey and Kylo's scenes in 8 was the notion that the Jedi and Sith could be left to die, and the two of them would essentially find a way separate from those two sides, walking a path down the middle. I know I'm not the first person to bring this up, especially because of how the Force just...works. That the scales need to be balanced. And so, given that, to have the Jedi always destroy the Sith - that's not balance. Give it a few more years and the same problem is gonna happen; if there are Jedi, there will be Sith and war is gonna break out. That's hardly resolution, so neutrality is the way to go. And, personal opinion - I loved that this ended up in 8. It's just a lot more nuanced than "good vs evil, good is victorious" and brought in new ideas to this universe that I really wanted to see explored.

But that just...never happened. Sure, Rey has that yellow lightsaber at the end, but it's really very little more than the barest hint of lip service to that entire concept. Because it's never built on throughout the movie. Kylo's insistence that they look for a different way turns into a demand that she basically become his Sith queen. Which isnt playing with the gray area - it's more firmly dividing light and dark. And as she's fighting Palpatine, he's all the Sith, while she's all the Jedi; doubt that needs further explanation. Sure yeah, she's dealing with the revelation of her bloodline throughout the movie, but that interaction with the dark side is very different than in 8; she's afraid of it (a character arc I love, dont get me wrong), not lured by it. The Sith are very clearly evil, and despite her family, she comes to embody the Jedi as a whole. The opposite of what was laid out in 8.

Which actually just makes her choice to take the yellow lightsaber make even less sense? Because...she has no reason at all to turn away from the Jedi and every reason to keep using the Light side. The only possible reason by that point is if she knows about the balance and makes that choice intentionally to prevent the rise of a Sith lord. But that choice is never shown, so I dont give that a pass. It just feels like the lamest nod to something from 8 - no buildup, no explanation, just there because it technically should be.

And that fucking sucks. What a waste. Puts so much space between these movies.

The romance might be another aspect of that - 8 didnt really give me a strong romantic vibe, and then 9 tried to benefit off of buildup of romantic tension that just wasnt there. And that romance isnt the only other one. Just the existence of Palpatine at all? Like, awesome plot yes, but not at all foreshadowed. The banter between the trio at the start? One of my favorite parts to watch, but it comes out of nowhere, and I guess we just have to live with the idea that all of the development happened off screen. Lame. The return of the fucking helmet? Fuck, i actually have more i can say about the way i interpreted the helmet, but this is getting long. So point being: it's like we just got zipped right back to episode 7 all of a sudden and didnt even get a symbolic moment of him losing the helmet in 9 (at least, not that I remember).

Really, on the whole, JJ Abrams basically did the beginning of 9 such that most of 8 could be made irrelevant. Because that's how I felt throughout the whole movie; like 8 didnt matter. And I know a lot of fans are honestly happy with that (so maybe if was actually the right choice on that front) but god does it make the whole trilogy clunky. Literally nothing flows.

And I think that's my main problem with the trilogy as a whole - or, rather, with the production behind it. It's like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson were just so goddamned married to their ideas that they wouldnt budge from the story they wanted to tell. Like they put their individual creative visions above the quality of the story as a whole. Like they weren't willing to deal with any changes that they didn't put into play themselves. And the trilogy suffered for it.

Which is really so obnoxious to me. Because it is very possible to be flexible and improv and incorporate other ideas into what you already had; just look at D&D. That's the job of a DM. You can plan everything out perfectly, figure out the story you want to tell, decide how you want everyone to interact with your world, but the players will invariably fuck those plans over. And you just have to roll with the punches. But beyond that, those changes can be for the better, because those are ideas you never thought of, and incorporating those makes for an even richer story than anyone expected. All because the people involved are willing to see where the story naturally takes itself.

Just wish these directors could understand that.

(Also...what was Finn gonna tell Rey? I mean...? This is honestly the strangest thing about the movie because it literally felt like the writers just...forgot they ever had this plot point after halfway. Which just feels like sloppy writing, and I feel Poe when he seems to be really curious what Finn wants to tell Rey. Because...me too!)

[starlockedst]

OKAY GET READY GUYS, THIS WILL BE A LONG RANT ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE STAR WARS AND THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY AND ITS CHARACTERS

1.The Empire Strikes Back - I just love this episode, it’s not only a cinematic masterpiece and all, but it also really launched my love to the whole franchise, I know it by heart and every time I watch it, it feels like it’s the first time ever, just mindblowing.

2.  Han Solo - is that even a question? He was (and still is actually) my first crush ever. He’s so hot, hard-working, funny, talented, amazingly smart, good-hearted, loyal, loving, etc..! And that scar on the chin....goooosh! I really like his character development in the series and I still can’t get over the fact that he’s dead..Still, one of the greatest male characters not only in SW universe. but also in cinematic history.

3. Leia Organa - my ultimate queen! I’m telling you - she’s my inspiration in life and mindset. Like - she is so STUNNING! extremely beautiful, smart, amazing leader, true friend, emphatic, delicate and strong at the same time, loving and caring mother, wife, friend and so much more. She’s been to hell and back and still didn’t give up which is so frickin inspiring! Her character has taught me so much and has helped me through my dark times /insert Ed Sheeran and The Weeknd reference here/ and that’s why Leia is my GOAT!

4. Han/Leia/Luke - I have so much love for their friendship guys i really do! What truly amazes me is that when they met all three for the first time - they clicked right in, and later even they have known each other for such a short ammount of time, they watch each other backs and just protect the other two. In all the movies and comics and fanfics they are so close and would die for each other which is so amazing and important. HAN CAME BACK TO SAVE LUKE AND LEIA /AND THE ENTIRE REBELLION INBETWEEN/ FROM CERTAIN DEATH. LEIA AND LUKE AND CHEWIE AND LANDO WENT TO SAVE HAN FROM ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS CRIME LORDS IN THE GALAXY. ON ENDOR WHEN LEIA WENT MISSING THE BOYS WERE SO CONCERNED AND LOOKED ALL OVER FOR HER. AND WHEN THE BOYS WERE CAUGHT BY THE EWOOKS AND LEIA SAW THEM SHE WAS SO CONCERNED AND TERRIFIED FOR THEM. ALSO DONT FORGET THAT LUKE LEFT YODA AND HIS JEDI TRAINING TO SAVE HAN AND LEIA AND IF ALL THAT IS NOT PLATONIC AND FRIENDLY LOVE AND SUPPORT I DONT KNOW WHAT ELSE IS. 

5. Han and Leia - My definition of love is what it is because of them. All the words of the world won’t be enough to describe why I love them both as individuals and as a couple. Yes, at the beginning they were shouting at each other and teasing also, but they make A GREAT TEAM. And that is, what I believe, that showed them how good they can be TOGETHER. They were litle bit stupid sometimes, because I think they were afraid of the possibility that they were in love with each other and that they will never be good enough for each other and etc. But also all the fights and being at each other throats, there was SO MUCH CARE AND RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER. Example - when Han went out to search for Luke, Leia was scared to death, because he could’ve died out there and Luke also, and the decision to close the doors was hers and she was so damn scared and worried for his safety. And the other way around - when the Imperials attacked the base, Han MADE SURE that Leia was out of that command center, that she wouldn’t stay behind and matryr herself so the others can leave and how also he protected her from the falling snow and ice in the corridor. These actions showed them both that the other not only cares, but does much more than that. AND NOW WE WILL ALL THANK THE FAILED HYPERDRIVE AND THE FIGHT TO BESPIN FOR THEIR AMAZING JOB OF MAKING HAN AND LEIA FINALLY REALISING THEIR FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER. Gosh, that kiss in the maitenance bay was everything and nothing at the same time - everything that the fans like me had hoped and nothing, but a beginning for Han and Leia. AND THE I LOVE YOU’S/I KNOW’S justttt ahhhh. I really just wish that TFA hadn’t ruined them like this, because they deserve their happy family and life, not what we saw in TFA - it really hurt me... But still - I LOVE THEM MORE THAN I LOVE MYSELF.

6. Light side - of course, I am team Jedi!! I support what they do and what they believe in.

7. I would say purple - just because I looooooove the colour.

8. Han. End of discussion. Period.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK, I LOVE YOU, BYE!

[100-yardstare]

I guess I know how George R* Mart*n feels because I can never finish any of my fics anymore!

I started writing this fic when SW EP 7 came out... in 2015. I never touched it again. It was about my OC Sarai and Steven. Since I’m probably never going to finish it I wanted to at least post it here for archival reasons. Feel free to read if you like!

Summary: The son of a deceased Resistance pilot, Steven Weatfield seeks refuge on the moon of Pantora with his living father in an attempt to escape the horrors of war and participation with the Resistance against the First Order. However, balance and fate seem to follow them when a Jedi, lost among the corridors of time for unknown circumstances, reminds him of his mission, and his mothers sacrifice.

Word Count: 2,962

Chapter 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

STAR WARS

War never ends. It has been twenty-seven years since the rebellion’s triumphant victory over the Death Star, and likewise, the end of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. However, the New Republic’s struggles are not yet over. The First Order has risen, and again, is spreading disorder upon the galaxy, forcing General Leia to build up a Resistance to push back further destruction. Casualties are always a factor, and even for the Resistance, the death toll and injured have recently reached peaks that were unforeseen. The sudden and dramatic losses have frightened large numbers of surviving resistance soldiers.

Steven Wheatfield, former trainee of the Resistance, has since resigned by desire of his surviving father. They are attempting to stay out of the conflict at all costs, currently residing in a small rural settlement on the moon of Pantora…

. . . . . . .

 “In a world covered by endless water… the people of the Republic were driven to create artificial solders for war. This war was spreading through quickly— so quickly, it was soon leaving no portion of the galaxy untouched by its strife! But these two forces were not equal by all means. Yes, droid and clone were similar as fierce soldiers, each having their own distinct advantages, and likewise Sith leaders Count Dooku, and other such foes provided their means within the Separatists army. But! Leading the Republic’s armies, among the thousands of brilliant clone soldiers, was the Jedi!”

A series of sarcastic beeps came from a R6 unit after the long introduction, whose small chirps seemed to bounce off the snowy field and into the tall toupee colored grasses surrounding. A couple of crunchy footsteps would cease at that moment, as Steven stopped walking, and telling his story for that matter.

“What are you talking about, Wheatles?!” Steven cried, who so abruptly turned around at the moment of his R6 units bickering. “Of course the Jedi were important! Now would you please let me continue my story? The Jedi lead the Republic’s armies; they carried the torch that spread throughout the galaxy, and pushed back the dark, and those who came their way.”

The droid spat out another set of beeps, carrying with it the most unpleasant of sounds, which in return caused Steven’s face to blush pink.

“Y-You moof-milker!” Steven yelled. “The history of the Clone Wars is not useless! In fact, it just goes to show you why the Republic failed in the first place. From the corruption in the senate all the way to the very battles themselves that took place—they all were important!”  

Steven paused for a moment to gather himself, soon his flush of color leaving his face. “I’ll bet if Jedi were still around…” His face relaxed, a little too much even, as his eyebrows rose up in a loathsome furrow. With this, his voice fell in depth, sending even more of his hot breath into the icy Pantoran air.

“If the Jedi were here, like they were then, maybe this war would already be over. Maybe… maybe Mum would be…”

                A sudden gust pushed through the field, sending a dust of snow off the ground and into the air like powder. After the gust settled, a soft wave of snow began to fall—so soft that you barely noticed the moment it fell upon your lashes.  

               “The Jedi fought alongside the clone army for three years… And they would have done it too. They would have won. But… they’re gone now.” Steven paused, only shortly to express a gentle sigh. “You don’t think… those kinds of things are myths, do you?”

The R6 unit softly spoke up with a simple, long beep, which was by far significantly calmer than any of its other comments were beforehand. The droid’s head centered itself as his back legs lowered a tad.  This caused Steven to stare down at his droid companion, soon his sorrowful look diminishing from the droid’s obvious apology.

               “Thank you, Wheatles,” Steven remarked. He sighed deeply before saying, “come on. We better get you home before it starts snowing any harder. I know how much you hate walking through the stuff.”

               Steven turned around to start walking his droid along the path they had been traveling down for some time. In the far distance a small village and a distribution of independent properties could be seen. From their chimneys, smoke from fires within all of the homes scattered about the landmass reached high into the skies like fingers stretching from a cloudy palm. This scenery, although lovely in its own way, still was strange to Steven. It wasn’t particularly the cold landscape, or the smallness of it all, but more rather how quiet it was. Steven was used to busy bustling of resistance soldiers, the sound of engines starting from all varieties of ships, and sometimes even the occasional laser shooting practice. Steven was used to getting his hands dirty in engine oil and grime, and the strain in his arms from piloting ships. To say the least, it was like he was out of his element. It wasn’t the same.

               Steven first anticipated turning around and staying out in the field longer. That or he figured he’d might as well go off the trail and see what he could find out in the tall grasses of Pantora. Who knows? Maybe he would find some parts lying around or something interesting at least. He’d rather spend his time out in the cold then going back. Sitting around, doing nothing? No, that wasn’t his thing. Especially since sitting around or doing even simple chores required him to listen to his father mumble under his breath all the time; he made the sheer air in the room feel heavy. There wasn’t a day that went by that wasn’t quite otherwise.

               Steven suddenly grumbled to himself, which wasn’t like him. He liked keeping a positive attitude, but this—this feeling—was getting redundant.

               “I could just take my ship and fly off somewhere, ya know, Wheatles?” Steven spoke aloud. “We could fly right out of here and somewhere out there. Ya, that would be brilliant, wouldn’t it? But he says otherwise.”

               Wheatles gave off a sigh sound in response. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get Steven to cheer up some. Agreeing with Steven always seemed to help.

               “Ya! That’s right! Can you imagine it? Steven and his loyal droid, Sir Wheatles, off into the galaxy! We need a team name though. Wheatles, maybe you should write this down—”

               Before Steven could continue, his eye caught a glimpse of something in the sky at the opposite end of the field from where the village was. At first he figured it was a mere speck of floating black dust that just looked like something, but it was indeed something this time.

               Steven focused more sternly on the object in the sky now, realizing that it was ablaze as it fell through the planets atmosphere. As it drew closer to the ground, he was beginning to realize it was a ship. He didn’t react until the ship plummeted into the ground some two-miles away. After its obvious crash, was when he had a delayed response.

               “Hell!” Steven yelled. “Did you see that? Did you see the ship fall from the bloody sky?!”

               His droid was quiet as Steven began fanning his face uncontrollably. This was unbelievable. Well—it was believable in the sense that it happened all the time, but not here. Not for them.

               “We gotta go check it out!” was Steven’s next bright idea. His droid beeped a few times, indicating its own distress, but this didn’t seem to give Steven any second thoughts. “Who knows what that was? It could be a resistance ship for all we know! Somebody needs our help!”

               Steven started running. He started running for so far and so long that Wheatles was a good few paces behind him by the time they crawled over the little hill that lead them to the crash site.

               The landscape from one side of the hill, and to the other, was quite drastic. A decent sized indention had been marked in the ground on the other side from impact. The trail that the fallen ship had left from hitting the ground, and then having skated across the dried tan grasses, was black and covered in soot. Some of the stalks of grass further to the side that had not been completely crushed had some traces of embers, whose glow, thankfully, did not increase in size for the time being.

               To say the least, Steven was ecstatic. But he was also cautious. The ship didn’t look resistance, at least a type that he was used to seeing. It seemed to have an old design, from what parts he could distinguish what was left of it. The ship overall was so jumbled that it was hard to tell. The metal was obviously still hot on the outside, which caused a steam to escape from its structure and into the cold air.

               “Should we check it out?” Steven asked his droid, who had just a second earlier made it beside him to join him in his stare at the crashed space ship.

               Steven seemed to answer himself rather quickly. “Yeah, let’s check it out!” he exclaimed excitedly, and rushed down the little hill and up towards the ship. He stopped only when he was close enough to feel the warmth from the crash site. With narrowed eyes he tried to look through the rising dust and soot through his glasses, scanning the area before him as much and as diligently as he could to make sure there was nobody about.

               But even with his careful eye, he could see nothing.

               “Whoa, Wheatles, you don’t suppose… anyone survived this?” Steven asked out loud. From the outward diagnostics of the ship, it seemed someone could have survived. It was wrecked, sure, but it wasn’t so wrecked that anyone within couldn’t have found a way to take cover to land. But still, he couldn’t be too careful.

               R6 beeped a few times, which caused Steven’s attention to fall back onto his droid.

               “Tell Dad? Are you joking?” Steven scoffed. “The first sign of any sort of ship crashing on Pantora, especially around him, is just asking for us to be relocated. We can’t tell him.”

               The metal creaked then, causing what sounded like movement from the inside of the ship. Steven’s head seemed to snap back upward once the sound hit his ears, realizing then from his prior suspicions that someone must be in there. He wasn’t sure what to do, in all honesty. Someone’s life was very much on the line potentially, and he felt the need to be there for them once they stepped out of that ship. But another thought crossed his mind: what if they weren’t friendly? What if this ship was First Order, and he didn’t even realize it?

               The odds seemed slim that it was First Order, based on the ships design, but the thought came to him regardless. He hunkered down, only a bit, but soon realized that doing so wasn’t going to stop him from being spotted. Instead, he kept his stance firm, waited, and listened.

               Creaks and paces were heard for a few seconds longer until the door was triggered to open. At first, nothing walked out of the crumpled ship. Inside there was only darkness, which indicated that the vessel had lost power just as it had crashed. A few sparks from deep inside the ship could be seen, but sill, he waited…

               Staring wide-eyed by then, Steven watched as a figure walked limply out of the doorway. As it came into the Pantoran light, he saw it was a togruta female. Instantly, he became relieved of a First Order threat, but from this a new question arose. Her outfit was strange, and almost foreign to him. It wasn’t anything togruta typically wore. Instead, it was a grey and white tunic. The first thing that slid into his train of thought then, was…

               “No, it couldn’t be,” Steven muttered to himself. He had read many of Republic documents of the Jedi Knights. Their attire seemed to match what this woman was wearing, but… it seemed too coincidental. Seemingly, his thoughts of fairytales diminished once he saw her fall to her knees, and collapse backwards onto the icy grasses.

               R6 spilled out a series of worried beeps the second she hit the ground. Steven, on the other hand, rushed up towards her as quickly as his legs could take him. Once he was next to her, he kneeled down by her side, and lifted her head into his lap. He immediately checked for any signs that she wasn’t breathing, her pulse, and her overall state. But, she was fine.

               Steven sighed again once he noticed she was still alive. “Thank God. She’s all right. Wheatles, no need to worry. I’m sure she’s just shaken from the crash. Although I’d suggest we try and get her somewhere to rest.”

               R6 responded positively to Steven’s suggestions, and came by Steven once again to further inspect the togruta woman. The both of them didn’t really know what to do at that moment. It had been a long while since they had come into contact with any other races besides the Pantoran’s and the occasional human that passed by in order to get to the Pantoran Capital. Should they even ask questions? Should they still treat her as if she was a threat?

               Out of habit from his resistance training, Steven looked over the woman further. Her purple skin tone seemed to clash with the idea of all, or at least a vast majority, of togruta being of rustic, orange-like tones. Her head tails and montrals were also relatively grown in, indicating she couldn’t have been older than in her mid-twenties. Alike all other togruta, or those who have at least proven themselves as warriors to their people, she bore a Akul Tooth headdress, made of a black band with the golden, triangular shaped teeth attached to it. Her robe itself, on the other hand, seemed to bring more surprises. Steven looked down at her beltline, realizing that attached, was…

               “A lightsaber?” Steven’s blue eyes seemed to lighten up with a sparkle. “No, it couldn’t be…”

               Steven looked back at the woman’s face, noticing her eyes were still closed, and then back down at the lightsaber. If it was actually a lightsaber, he wasn’t 100% sure, but it looked like one, and certainly mimicked every detail he had ever read about them in the Jedi lore and Republic history text he had indulged in so much growing up.

               Almost like a child, his hands reached down towards the mysterious weapon, his fingers only delicately touching the carved metal of gold and silver before he was suddenly struck across the cheek.

               Instant alert spilled from R6, as the both of them realized she had awoken. The togruta pushed Steven violently away from her, and then came to a stand, one of her hands clutching the weapon at her beltline tightly as she glared at both of them.

               “Who are you!?” she yelled.

               “Look, we mean you no harm! I was just—” Steven attempted to explain, sending his arms in the air as if to say he was unarmed, and very much of no danger.

               “I said, who are you!?” the girl fussed again. The situation was growing tenser by the minute, and so Steven realized attempting to prove his innocence wasn’t nearly as important as saying who he was.

               “I’m Steven Wheatfield! This is my R6 until, Wheatles! We’re just settlers on Pantora…”

               “Pantora?” The girl’s voice rose significantly in her question. It was as if she was baffled she was even there. “The Empire then… are they in this area?”

               “Empire?”

               “Don’t play dumb with me, Steven. The Empire has taken control of all previous Republic systems. Tell me where the Empire establishments are located on this planet!”

               “I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about because the Empire hasn’t existed for… well over two decades.”

               The togruta girl’s dark eyes widened, as if replacing a physical gasp. Again, she was baffled, in a state of disbelief and confusion. Her legs looked like they wanted to stumble, but her strong stance caught her.

               “The Empire hasn’t existed in over two decades?” she repeated, as if saying it out loud would help her bring it to reality. “Then what of the Inquisitors? The Stormtrooper armies? Darth Vader? The purge?”

               “What are you talking about?” Steven’s panicked emotions were escaping him now, and he was starting to become more empathetic to the stranger in front of him. “What’s an inquisitor? The Stormtroopers… we’ll they aren’t exactly Empire anymore. And Darth Vader is…” he paused, his calmed worried eyes settling into her distraught gaze. “Darth Vader is dead.”

               “What?” Her words fell out of her, softly, as if everything she knew was suddenly gone. By looking at her, everything was gone. She seemed scared, isolated, and without a clue as to what to do.

               Steven remained on the ground, realizing the situation had taken a complex turn. He eyed her first, head to toe, taking in her features as if it was yet again the first time he had seen her before.

               “…Who are you?” Steven asked softly.

               The girl looked to the ground, and then to her hands. Her eyes would shut tightly for a split second, as if her mind had taken her elsewhere; searching, wondering…

               “My name is Sarai Daan. I am a Jedi.”

[permian-tropos]

For a while I thought your SW takes were good and I followed you, but you know what? You’re a fucking hypocrite. You say you don’t like R/ylo, and the ship is fucking disgusting, but you still lap up notes from them anyway. I recognize URLs. You won’t call yourself an anti because you think we’re what, bad for standing up to a shit ship and the racists who fucking ship it? It’s because you’re afraid of looking bad to them because they’re the only ones who give you attention. Fucking. Hypocrite.

Why are you so afraid of saying you’re an anti? We don’t stand for bad shit. We’re ANTI bad, demeaning, sexist tropes. We’re anti abuse and racism. And your SW takes aren’t bad! You actually see through the bullshit parts of the story. But for fuck’s sake you’re dripping with condescension all the time about what antis are like, like you’re too good for it, and I call bull. You’re afraid of losing the attention R/ylos give you if you actually stood up for something and called them on their shit.

Okay, I’m sorry. I got angry. But when you said that the anti side of fandom couldn’t be arsed to get into details I was pissed. You could do a lot on the anti side of fandom! Why do you act like attention from antis has to be avoided! You’re cool with fucking R/ylos reblogging your posts but you can’t stop ragging on us. It’s. Not. Bad. To. Be. An. Anti.

Usually I delete messages like these, I’ll make an exception because you apologized, so I can get some things absolutely clear. 

*clears throat*

Anon, you have absolutely no right to speak to anyone like this (especially take a moment and consider whether you thought the fact that you followed me gave you some right to dictate what I should be allowed to say or do). You need to cut this shit out right now. Do not send messages swearing at people you’ve never met and accusing them of hypocrisy because of Star Wars fan wank. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten an angry anon bitter about how I haven’t picked a side in this INCREDIBLY DIRE AND IMPORTANT WAR FOR MORAL JUSTICE, so I’m putting my foot DOWN VERY HARD. Your identity is painfully wrapped up in fictional characters if you’re this incensed that I’m not on your side.

Reasons why I’m not an “anti”:

1) This. This kind of disrespectful cultish moral abuse. Your community shames anyone who interacts with the human fucking beings who you’ve assigned the enemy. I will not participate in that, I will not enable it, I will not enjoy the benefits of it. I certainly won’t join up only to be harassed. The fact that I’m even slightly anti-adjacent has emboldened you to, well, do this. Imagine if I was in deep. I’ve seen what kind of nastiness antis spew on each other when someone dares to, say, explore reylo in a dark non-endgame context.

2) I don’t think it’s evil to ship reylo. I disagree with plenty of things reylo shippers have argued about the canon narrative. But no, it’s not wrong to romanticize dark violent ships, or swoon over villains, or fantasize about redemption arcs. I literally do all of those things. I’m a villain lover and a dark shipper and a redemption sucker. I actually just… don’t like Kylo Ren as compared to other characters with superficial similarities. Did you miss the part where my favorite ship is between two fascist dictators who fight to the death? You really shouldn’t be shocked by my attitude if you noticed anything I was posting positively about. I don’t want to be in an anti community because if the Aftermath Trilogy were popular, gallirae would be a ship with an antifandom. It’s an edgy mcdarkfuck hell trash. That’s my wheelhouse. 

3) You are not anti abuse. This is fucking abuse, towards a real person, which is the kind of abuse that matters. You asshole. 

4) “You could do a lot on the anti side of the fandom” god this feels like a villainous “join me and we could rule the galaxy together” 

5) Yeah I’m cool with reylos reblogging my posts. Some of them are my fucking friends. And I don’t caaaaaare if people who ship something different from me happen to share my taste for something unrelated. “You only interact with them because they’re the only people who will interact with you” and you think, what, I should condemn myself to isolation? If they like my stuff that’s great! Also, I don’t need to convince them to stop shipping the ship, but if I make a sensible take I can spread certain forms of common sense in any community. If I’m not seen as a cruel, vindictive bully by the reylo community, and if I don’t shame people for having at worst a pulpy bodice-ripper romance story that makes them happy, I will have a little more authority in calling out problematic attitudes. Also I don’t want to be a cruel, vindictive bully. I want to be kind to people. You asshole. 

6) Reylo isn’t a political stance. Liking any ship says fuck all about what kind of person you are. What is an awful, fundamentally reactionary political stance is dehumanizing people who have “deviant” aesthetic interests. 

7) The anti community has been extremely bitter about TLJ, and as a result has been unable to talk about a canonically villainous Kylo Ren positively. The fact that you are anti is the problem! Yes, it’s bad to be an anti, bad for you and anything you want to enjoy. It’s absolutely poisonous to your brain to lash your sense of self to feelings of hatred, and hate of an online fan community no less. You can have the same tastes in fiction while being PRO-SOMETHING. That’s why I have a tag “villain Kylo”. I’m not anti Kylo Ren. I’m pro villain Kylo. It’s something I like. It’s something I enjoy thinking about. 

8) You’re a fucking asshole. I’m flattered you hold me to such high regard that you’d be angry I’m not on your side. But here’s the thing. I am on your side. I think you’re being a terrible person right now, and I would forgive you if you made amends, because I don’t believe you’re unspeakably, unforgivably evil. I think you’re in a bad crowd, and you should take a long moment to think what your fandom habits have led you to. This is toxic as fuck. 

9) Talk to me in private if you’re mature enough to apologize for real. I’m too damn nice for my own good. But don’t send me any more anon hate. I will delete it.

[militant-holy-knight]

Benioff and Weiss Were Always Hacks: You Only Noticed Now

Or why you should be worried for the future Star Wars movies made by them

(Disclaimer: this blogpost contains spoilers for Game of Thrones)

With only two episodes left for the series to reach it’s conclusion and the announcement for future Star Wars movies in the horizon made by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (henceforth referred to as D&D for simplicity sake), not many fans seem to be excited about it as they should due to the creative choices taken in regards to the final season of Game of Thrones. Speaking as a GoT fan, I used to enjoy the show a lot and I believe it reached it’s peak on Season 4 and started to go went downhill on Season 5. If D&D were in charge from the beginning what happened?

D&D’s job was always to adapt the book series by George R. R. Martin, which means any merit to the show’s writing can be attributed largely to Martin while D&D were only fit for it to make it work into a tv show - which is still laudable in it’s own right because there are things in the books that still wouldn’t translate too well into the show. In any case, they did their job well from Season 1 to Season 4 which adapted the first trilogy in the series. Even though there are still five books in total released at the time, Season 5 is where they started to run out of material to adapt because some storylines didn’t find their proper conclusion and they needed to come up with their own unique deviations.

Season 5 is considered by many fans to be the low point in the series because of it’s extremely low pacing and controversial liberties taken: the biggest ones have to be the Dorne subplot because that meant axing popular book character Arianne Martell, Stannis Baratheon turning irredeemable evil and paying with his life and Sansa’s marriage to Ramsay Snow leading to her rape, which is still a very hot button among the fandom to this day (and understandably so). Season 5 did have some moments like Hardhome which showed the strength of the true villain of the series, the Night King, the leader of the White Walker invasion who brings winter with him. He is the Thanos-like menace who is teased since the very start of the show with the very first scene opening with a White Walker killing some Night Watch’s rangers and warning us about the danger he represents.

Season 6 fixed some of these problems by giving a more dynamic pacing and build it up with the Battle of the Bastards as the climatic encounter instead of something completely anti-climatic like Season 5′s finale where Stannis Baratheon’s forces were liquidated by the Boltons offscreen. But still, it was an entire season wasted to fix another one’s problems and it still had some individual problems. 

And then Season 7 came along and it all went to waste. I wouldn’t say it was as bad as Season 5 because at least shit happened and it wasn’t boring, but it was still full of groan-worthy moments like trying to force some romance between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen which doesn’t work because they have no chemistry and they are related by blood, curing Jorah Mormont who has been infected with a dangerous disease that will turn him into a snow zombie by simply cutting out the infected area, and of course lest we forget the Wight Hunt in Episode 6 “Beyond the Wall” which broke all suspension of disbelief. Lemme sum it up for you what happens in that episode so you can get the idea and let me put up a map so you can get it from reference.

The heroes come up with the idea to capture an Wight and bring it South to convince Cersei to from a truce.

The travel by boat to the Wall from their base on Dragonstone.

After reaching the Wall, they walk into the land beyond it to find a wight.

They find one and send one of their members back to ask reinforcements having to sprint a indeterminate distance.

The team gets surrounded by the Night King’s army in a frozen lake for a indeterminate amount of time.

The allies at the Wall send a raven back to Dragonstone requesting help.

Daenerys summons her dragons to fly to the land beyond the Wall to rescue the heroes.

They are fighting to the last against the advancing horde of the Night King just before Daenerys arrives in a triumphant moment to save them.

And all of this happens like... Within a hour apparently. Several days should have taken place between this exchange but time moves at the speed of the plot, but D&D seem to be relying on emotional torque to get viewers to ignore all internal logic and be mindblown by the crowning moments of awesome. And this is the core issue with their writing.

D&D write their scenes the same way they film sex scenes apparently, hoping that the emotional moments will make the audience be carried over. Thing is... I realized this after thinking up about many moments in the past. Hardhome was one such example in Season 5 to make up for its abhorrent dullness and even Season 6 wasn’t safe from this. For example, remember how Rickon Stark died just so he could provoke Jon Snow to act irrationally and spur him into conflict? Why didn’t Rickon run in zig-zag when Ramsay began firing arrows at him? Why did he run into a straight line? Did these writers not watch Prometheus to learn their lessons from it’s mistakes? This problem was carried over in Season 8 and amplified a lot in the Long Night. Many people pointed out the several military blunders made by the protagonists when fighting against the Night King’s army.

I could talk about the moronic choice to film everything in absolute darkness and make it impossible to see shit.

I could talk about how idiotic it was to waste your cavalry against the enemy bulwark.

I could talk about how they didn’t create trenches with tar or use fire for more effective manner against the undead.

But I’d rather talk about that moment.

Arya killing the Night King.

You know at first I was okay with that because:

I wasn’t being a fan of Jon Snow in a long time.

Arya wasn’t a Mary Sue, had skills that justified her, so I could buy it better.

But the more I thought about it, more I came to the realization that it was a wrong choice all along.

Arya never had any investment in killing the Night King. She was a character defined by a list of people she wanted to kill including the Freys, Cersei, Joffrey and others.

Arya was trained as an assassin yes... But her training in Season 5 and 6 was very lackluster. She spent some time doing menial works, impersonating some people and trying to spill some poison on someone’s drink. She never learned invisibility, teleportation or any other cool shit.

And most importantly... Melisandre predicting that Arya would shut down “blue eyes” way back when they met in Season 3. If she sensed she was always destined to kill the Night King why did she ever support Stannis? Why did she even support Jon Snow? She even referred to him as the Prince that was Promised. Some fans can try to spin this as much as they want, but it breaks the plot retroactively very hard.

The actress herself didn’t think she deserved it

Of course all of these things were ignored by a large part of the fanbase, more specifically the “woke” crowd because YAS QUEEN SLAY. Little did they know that the very next episode would force them to eat a real shit sandwich when “The Last of the Starks” seemed to turn the narrative against Daenerys Targaryen by turning her into the Mad Queen, killing her handmaiden Missandei and setting up Jon to be the next King of Westeros. Not helping matters is that a series of leaks not yet confirmed as of the time of writing were released prior to the episode (but I personally feel they were legitimate due to some specific things but that is not the point) which sent many Daenerys fans into panic mode.

Speaking as someone who really doesn’t like Daenerys Targaryen, I can actually sympathize with them at some level because this shift appears to be very sudden specially now that the authors favored her more until this very moment. Some viewers can argue that there were always signs like her burning the Tarlys for refusing to bend the knee, which I personally took issue with before but it never really came across as the sign of an insane ruler since she offered very valid rebuttals. It all seemed like the plot was tailored to take her side no matter what and I considered Dany a Mary Sue. But just because they seem to be turning her into a villain now, it doesn’t make me hate the story any less.

Now... I spent an inordinate amount of time bitching about Game of Thrones and if you are an Star Wars fan that doesn’t know anything about it, you might be lost to anything I am writing. Well I needed to give an proper context to both GoT and SW fans since those seem to overlap now and give you a warning because Star Wars seems to be more lost now than ever. D&D were never particularly good writers, they were incoherent about continuity, care more about spectacle over substance and seem to share a thing about subverting the audience’s expectations like a certain Ruin Johnson who succeeded in completely ruining a franchise like there was no tomorrow. The key difference between D&D and Ruin is that the duo doesn’t share the same flippant attitude or picking up fights with fans on Twitter - on the contrary, D&D understand the power of fanservice even if it means daggling the metaphorical shining keys in front of the audience. 

As we come close to Game of Thrones conclusion, I have a feeling that nobody will truly come out satisfied with it should the story take the direction that we are really dreading. I’ve seen interviews about how Emilia Clarke sounds really sad and deflated, seemed like she was really disappointed with how the show ended. Whatever happens, the blame can be laid on the feet of Benioff and Weiss for their frankly baffling creative decisions. This season has been disappointing through and through with two or three episodes being needlessly long and filler to booth and to make matters worse, it was supposed to end earlier than 10 episodes. Why did they need to rush it and yet fill the series with so much dead air?

Now can you imagine a Star Wars movie made by them? With all these things I listed? The next trilogy is already dated, we don't know if it's D&D or Ruin Johnson yet. We are talking about a couple of writers that have no sense of realistic scale, continuity or logic, but rely on cheap emotional tricks to have the audience invested until they begin thinking about it. I would laugh until I was sick if this season turns everyone against those two fuckwads that Disney changes their mind about putting them in charge. If the world was a just place, this is what would happen at least.

[bcbdrums]

Another unpopular opinion

If you’re not into the Star Wars animated universe, stop reading now. If you are, this is about the ending of Rebels.  With a big preamble.

It’s also expected that if you’re reading this, you’ve seen Rebels and will get all the references.  I say that because...I never know when my elementary school students will find my online presence (seriously...I dread the day when a kid comes up to me and says they’ve found me anywhere online).  Moving on...

Let me start by saying I’ve never been a huge Star Wars fan.  Saw the original trilogy when I was age 7, and it was WAY too much for me at that age.  Also didn’t help that we watched it all in one sitting... (Just finished visiting my great grandma, literally walking out the door as she turns the TV on, SW is playing and my dad turns around, walks back in and sits down on the sofa and doesn’t move for the next several hours.  Apparently he hadn’t seen it since it first came out, and this was the 90′s.)  Then Episode I came out when I was 12 years old and, per George Lucas’s direct statements that SW is for 12 year olds...Ep. I is still my favorite to this day.  I quote Jar-Jar regularly.  But that’s a different unpopular opinion and not the topic of this post.

Anyway, Eps II and III came out, watched them, and then SW basically went out of my life.  I didn’t have cable and so even though I was aware of it I couldn’t watch CW on cartoon network.  Fast-forward now to Ep. VII, Rogue One, Ep. VIII, and Solo.  I had the same “it’s a good movie” feeling about VII that I’d had about II and III, I thought Rogue One was better, and then we came to VIII.  As I left the movie theater I realized...I’m not sure if I like this movie (another topic to leave for another day).  But Luke’s death got me a bit fixated on SW in general, so my journey into SW began.

I decided to rewatch EVERYTHING chronologically to decide if I liked Ep. VIII.  Started of course with my fave, Ep. I and went from there.  And then I remembered there was an animated series I had never seen...  I watched CW and I LOVED it.  It’s incredible, and I’m so so excited that it’s coming back, even if for only 12 episodes.  So after CW I watched III, and then realized again...there’s yet another animated series I haven’t seen or really heard anything about.  I looked into Rebels.  And let me tell you, text posts don’t advertise it well.  I expected to hate it based on the written word.  Thought the animation looked stupid based on stills from the show.  But, when I commit to something I do it.  So it was time to watch Rebels.

It took me awhile to get over the lack of animation quality (I prefer CW), but by the end of the pilot episode I was hooked.  Incredible characters, well-acted, well-written, well-developed, and a totally believable world.  Not since Ep. I had I been drawn into the SW universe so completely and loved it so much.  So, it went on.

Sadly I did get spoiled regarding the ending of season 2 due to the SW wiki.  And that terrible spoiling made me swear-off reading about things I want to watch before I watch them.  I will never be spoiled again.  But anyway...as I’m binging this series I realize...it’s not done yet!  It’s still being produced!  And what episodes remain, you ask?  “Jedi Night” was the next one to premiere.

So for the first time in my life I got on Disney XD and watched Jedi Night the day it came out, and the subsequent episodes as well.

And then like anybody who obsesses over fiction, I immediately took to tumblr.  And through the rest of the series I was consistently shocked by the hate and denial pouring out.  Now, I guess I shouldn’t be, since all anyone seems to pour out is hate.  But it was even more shocking to me because really...that ending was great.

We all knew from the beginning that Kanan was doomed.  Even he knew it.  And I don’t mean because of Yoda, I mean because he would have showed up later if he was still around.  It would have been a far worse ending for him to a) be a coward and not continue helping the rebellion, or b) be entirely out of character and only help a tiny group of rebels.  Neither are viable options and are worse, because they would destroy the character we came to love.

We watched Kanan grow over the series.  He got over his hatred of clones, he got over his fear of the universe trying to kill him, AND he actually began believing in the cause and coming back to who he was (a Jedi, in case you forgot).  Seeing him fight for the rebels and actually believe in it for himself, not just because of Hera, was great.  Which brings me to the secondary aspect of his character development--a Jedi in love who does it right.

That’s got to be the best love story I’ve ever seen.  And...there’s nothing else to say about it.  It was perfect.  Well done, Filoni and crew!

So I ask you, should Kanan have regressed into this...universe-fearing, hate-in-his-heart, living-in-denial person, ignoring who he is and either just sticking with one tiny group, OR leaving the rebellion entirely?  It would be entirely out of character.  And realistically doing that would mean leaving Hera as well, because of who HER character is.  She’s in that rebellion for the long haul.  And to change her story and make her...go settle with Kanan somewhere and forget the rebellion (like that clone...the other human who married a twi’lek...some french-sounding name), or again just be in a small part of it...that would be extremely and obviously out of character for Hera.  The whole series is her trying to make the rebellion bigger.  And we know from the finale, she was fighting in Rogue One while pregnant!  There’s no way she would have gone for less.

Point is, for Kanan to have lived would have killed the story because it would have required either he or Hera to be out of character, which is far, far worse than a character getting a hero’s death.

Star Wars has never been a story about happy endings.

Kanan’s death seems to be the biggest thing people hate, but I will briefly mention Ezra and the purrgill.  The entire series has spent deliberate time on his special Force-connection to nature, so the purrgill’s arrival in the finale, while surprising, was more of a... “what!?  oh, of course!” moment for me.  Ezra calling on animals to help is entirely in character for him.

I actually expected Ezra to die, but having his and Thrawn’s fates being unknown is outstanding.  So we do get a bit of a happy ending in that way.

And to those displeased with the fact that the last battle wasn’t Rogue One, well...again, have you really been watching the show?  That wasn’t part of the story for THESE characters.  And what would that have done, really?  We already have another outstanding story in Rogue One.  Making the Rebels characters somehow...instrumental to that story’s success would cheapen the story of Jyn, et al.  And similarly, just putting the Rebels crew there and NOT having them be instrumental is cheapening to them.  These characters needed to end THEIR story, not someone else’s.

For those interested, I continued my SW binge but haven’t yet brought myself to watch Ep. VIII again.  But CW and Rebels I’ve already rewatched twice!  Quality entertainment.  Outstanding acting, and outstanding storytelling.  The Rebels ending was great.  

You’re free to not like something.  But could you talk about it in a way that’s...less hateful and more intelligent?