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penfullofwordsaheadfullofstories · 4 years ago

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No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen

A/N: I really have nothing to say for myself at this point.

Sequel chapter to this fic here, if you’d like to catch up.

Thank you to @caffeine-in-an-iv for being my incredible beta and to @maybege for letting me rant to you and giving me so many wonderful ideas when I hit my walls. Also to the Obi-Wan fandom in general: Y’all are some of the kindest, most supportive people I’ve ever encountered on this hell site. Thank you for your support and your content!

Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Force Sensitive! Fem! Reader (no Y/N)

Word Count: 11.9K (I lost all control)

Warnings: SMUT!!! Soft Dom! Obi rights, Also, Sub! Obi vibes, Foodplay (but not how you’d think), Inappropriate use of the Force, Voice Kink, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Hands Appreciation Society, As Usual: Too Many Feelings For Porn, Emotional Competence Kink, Trust Kink, TW: Pregnancy, TW: A character draws blood on themself unknowingly

Title from one of my favorite quotes:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

-D.H. Lawrence

What infinite irreverence the galaxy has for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

As if his master and only semblance of a parent wasn’t taken from him when he needed him most.

As if a boy who needed a father wasn’t entrusted to Obi-Wan quickly following, far too young and full of his own loss.

As if he wasn’t thrust onto the pedestal of parenthood when he really only wanted to be a brother.

As if that isn’t what they became anyway, and as if that wasn’t the exact cloud that hung over the atmosphere of your lives ever since you’d arrived on Tatooine.

As if the being whose life signature resided in your abdomen didn’t throw a punch into each of those blooming bruises by its very existence.

Which is why, you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that you couldn’t tell him yet.

Normally, it’d be no small feat to keep something of this scale from him. But these days, he’s so focused on having his shields up around you, keeping you from both being hurt by or helping with his torments.

You have to take great care to control your body language, because even when he’s shut off from you in the Force, his keen perceptiveness will pick up on something being off anyway.

The art of a convincing lie is having layers. If he senses your feelings and decides to dig, then only give up one layer, and he’ll stop looking.

In this case, it’s your worry over him. It is true you’re trying to shield him from feeling that, not wanting him to carry the burden of it on top of having to work through his own pain.

But it’s not everything you’re trying to hide from him. So you let a small projection of your fear over his well-being escape, like you’re losing control of your feelings. It’s enough to convince him, and something critical inside you dies at the victory every time.

He deserves your honesty, and you’ve never given him anything less until now.

You hate how well your strategic deceit takes root. Because only part is due to your talent as a liar. The rest comes from how much he trusts you.

You’re not stupid, though. You know it’s only a matter of time before the biological changes in your body betray you.

Obi-Wan said he needed time, and you’re going to give him as long as you possibly can before dropping this anvil on him, hoping the further he gets from it all, the better off he’ll be.

You could kick yourself for not being more careful. You hadn’t missed any dose of your herbal Ho’Din contraceptive. It was one of the few things you shoved in your bag with the mere minutes you had to leave Coruscant for good. It was from a reliable medicinal shop, and there’s no good reason it should have failed in any way.

But here you were anyway.

Of course, there are options that free you from the obligation of carrying the child to term. All are expensive, and Tatooine is sorely lacking in any trustworthy medical facilities. The alternative methods could put your own life in danger as well.

Even if it wasn’t, you’d feel so strange making that kind of decision without Obi-Wan. Not that he wouldn’t support whatever decision you needed to make for yourself if you did, but going behind his back is something you’re not sure his trust could recover from.

And really, far too much has been decided for him in his life.

The worst reason why you can’t bring yourself to move towards any solution that ends the pregnancy now, the reason you abhor, is because somewhere within you, despite the awfulness of the time and place, you want this baby.

You couldn’t give a definitive explanation for yourself, but you did. Undoubtedly

Obi-Wan doesn’t press when you ask to cease your combat training for a time, asking to start learning the new offerings of the Jedi texts instead.

He’s concerned when you tell him, but if he’s suspicious as for your reasoning, he doesn’t show it outwardly, at least.

The way he doesn’t even ask about why, though: It makes you wonder if he had a reason all of his own why he’d rather not fight, even in imitation.

The Jedi writings given to Obi-Wan by Master Yoda are often more cryptic and mystifying than logically applicable without deciphering, which you are at first annoyed by, but then strangely thankful for, as Obi-Wan verbally processes his understandings of it, knowing what he does of the Jedi way, and you adding your thoughts from the stance of fresh eyes.

The conversations distract wonderfully, and you savor any way you still get to connect with him.

You don’t push for the ways he doesn’t allow you to connect with him anymore. The way he won’t let you in his mind. Because now, you too have a reason to not let him in yours.

*******

When it’s time to go into town for supplies again, you make up some feeble excuse which you know Obi-Wan sees through as a lie, and this time, he does pry, eyes soft and concerned. He knows you love going to the markets. You simply explain that you’re tired, which is true enough to satisfy him, leaving you behind with a kiss on your forehead before you watch him saddle up your eopie and ride off.

You sigh, sagging against the closed door once he’s disappeared into the horizon. You do love the markets. They’re the most colorful thing the planet has to offer, textiles and rugs and shiny, hanging things.

But the spices. Fragrant and potent, usually so appetizing and intoxicating, you know would turn your stomach alone. And that doesn’t even account for the strange meats being cooked at different vendors, and Maker help you if anyone was selling raw meat of any sort today. You’ve done your best to keep your nausea at bay, at times even tapping into the Force for centering when the world felt like it was rocking. But you know the market would be too much, too many variables.

It’s not a fast journey, even on the eopie, and you don’t expect Obi-Wan to be back for hours. Which is why when you hear a knock on your door, the tool in your hand clatters to the floor, as does the remnants of your project.

You quickly grab one of the long staffs you and Obi-Wan had only begun to use in your defense training, trying to recall the lessons as adrenaline begins to rush through your veins. Tatooine isn’t known for its pleasant company, and if anyone was going to try to rob your home, now would be as good a time as any.

The knock sounds again, and you shout from the inside, “What do you want?!”

“A peace treaty in the form of baked goods,” comes the feminine voice, one you recognize.

Opening the door, you lower the weapon in your hand as Beru Lars blinks at you.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were…” You step aside, gesturing for her to come in.

She waves a hand, dismissive. “I understand.”

You lead her over to the small living area as you fix two glasses of water from the kitchen.

When you set them down on the table, Beru speaks. “I apologize for the intrusion, if there was another way of contacting you before coming here…”

“It’s absolutely fine, I’m glad to have you.” You smile in what you hope is an assuring way. “Although, I’m surprised at it just being you. Where’s Owen?”

Her eyes flick to the stone floor. “He um… doesn’t exactly know I’m here. He’s out on a business deal today.”

You feel your eyebrows go up at that, waiting for her to continue. But instead, she changes the subject. “Where’s Ben?”

“In town. We needed some things from the market.”

Awkwardness settles in as a conversation topic evades you.

She breaks the beat of quiet. “Here, I brought these for you.”

You take the basket in her hands from her, peeling back the thick woven cloth to reveal a simple form of bread. It looks so appetizing your stomach clenches, and you instantly realize you haven’t had anything since breakfast.

But then the smell hits you, hard and powerful, and stars, it’s just bread, there’s nothing that should do that about bread, but you’re on your feet in a minute, forsaking the basket on the ground as you bolt to the fresher, barely making it in time to the sonic sink before you start heaving.

In a moment, you feel soft hands at the nape of your neck, gently holding back the fabric of your shirt and blowing cool air as you continue to wretch.

By the time everything has settled again, you’ve dealt with the aftertaste in your mouth, and splashed on your face with a precious cup of cool water, hot shame rises in your cheeks at how this must seem to Beru.

You wipe at your face with a rag, half muffling your words when you address her. “I’m so sorry, I’m sure they’re absolutely delicious, It really has nothing to do…”

“How far along are you?”

Your spine straightens instantly, and you let the cloth drop to the floor.

“I… what?”

Now she’s the one to flush. “My apologies, it’s just that it’s known for being a very gentle bread, it’s one my mother used to feed me when my stomach ached. If that smell turned you... I just assumed, and I shouldn’t have.”

Your lips purse as you consider your options. It’d be easy to say nothing, or just to nod.

“Two months,” you hear your own voice answer despite yourself. You’ve never been one for easy anyway.

A surge of emotion wells up in you at even being able to speak it aloud, aloud to another human, and next thing you know, to your absolute horror, you’re crying into your hands as your shoulders crumple in on themselves.

Why now, of all times? In front of Beru Lars? Whom you know accepted Luke with her husband without question because they couldn’t biologically have any children of their own?

“I’m… so… sorry,” You manage to choke out through the sobs, disgusted at your own lack of control.

At some point Beru must join you on the floor, patting her hand soothingly on your back. “Shhh, it’ll be alright. You’ll see. It’s not so bad having a young one around, you and Ben have so much to look forw…”

“He doesn’t know.”

Her hand pausing briefly on your back is the only indication she gives of shock.

“Would he not be happy?”

You take a steadying breath in, trying to calm yourself. “I don’t know,” you whisper, small and almost frightened to let the room hear you say it.

It falls silent again, but it echoes around in your brain, bouncing against your thoughts until you feel the onset of a headache.

After you’re to a numb enough state to enjoy yourself, you and Beru make tea and bring it back to the living area.

She lifts her glass to yours, clinking them. “To secrets kept from men and the mischievous company they bring.”

Your head now throbs with pain, but you smile anyway. “Thank you,” you say to her, and you mean it so very much.

********

The next time Obi-Wan goes into town, you’re feeling well enough to go with him.

You’re not visiting the food portion of the market, after all, so you’re not as much of a risk to set your stomach off. He’s taken to fixing small machinery for trading with the Jawas recently, the extra income helping with the projects around the house.

There’s a trap door that you found within the first day of being there. The staircase carved out of the bedrock beneath the hut leads to a small room that has now served as additional storage and a place for Obi-Wan to work. It’s also quite cool during the day, so if you can stand the smell of the various meats hung to dry, you’ll sit down there with some sort of project, or even reading material if you come upon it.

So today, he’s looking for a few specific tools that will streamline his working.

It doesn’t take long to find a promising stall among the maze of shopkeepers, selling everything from trinkets to weaponry of questionable legality. Obi-Wan finds what he needs easily enough, and it looks like the trip is going to be as efficient as it is successful as you walk through alleyways with him.

At some point, he takes your hand in his, squeezing it gently, projecting an assuring strand of affection toward you. It’s such a small gesture, but you’ll never tire of the feeling of his hand clasped in yours.

You’re almost back to where the eopie, Rooh, as he named her, is stabled when Obi-Wan abruptly slows his pace, dropping into a stall. An alarm goes off in your head when you watch him pick up a frivolous trinket on a table that you know he has no interest in.

You open your mouth to inquire at his actions, but it answers itself once you see him glance out of his peripheral vision to where the holonews plays in the stall adjacent.

Battle footage on what you recognized to be Kashyyk at the presence of the many Wookies plays with the Emperor addressing the viewers in a very two-dimensional, sugar-coated, thinly-concealed threat to any other world that would try to resist occupation.

There’s wreckage and uncensored violence, and you turn your head away.

“May it be known that Lord Vader is quite capable and willing to help those into compliance that require assistance... “

The item in his hands crushes, ceramic tile cracking into his hands, breaking the skin and drawing out drips of red.

But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to register the glass he’s pushing into his own hand. His eyes are wide and he makes a wounded noise from the back of his throat, eyes peeled to the holonews now, not even trying to feign disinterest.

His signature sparks, giving a flash and then a severe cry of anguish, and it hits you then. Pieces of information coming together as you feel Obi-Wan tear apart at seams.

Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side, and Obi-Wan thought him dead. There’s a new Sith Lord now; the correlation and timing can’t be coincidence.

The Toydarian male behind the stall shouts something about paying for it in full, and you quickly hand over the credits with a glare.

You start to pull Obi-Wan’s other hand off the table, but you quickly realize your mistake in that.

The moment it isn’t holding his weight anymore, his knees start to give, and you’ve only a second to react, jamming your body under his arm to keep him upright. His momentum nearly pulls you forward, but you plant your feet and remember at the last second to call on the Force to assist you.

He seems to come to himself enough to walk somewhat as you steer him to the nearest alley away from the vendors.

He braces a hand on the stone wall, but even it isn’t enough as he drops to his knees. He doesn’t even seem to have the will to stand.

Crouching beside him, you place one of your hands on his chest.

“I…. I…” The tremor in his usually so crisp wording and steady voice crushes your chest, making it hard to breathe. “I failed him. I failed him.”

“Obi-Wan,” you start, trying to grasp at anything, everything to comfort him, not even thinking of how you can’t call him that here, even if there’s no one in sight.

If he registers your call, he doesn’t let on, continuing in his whispers to the wall. “He was burning. Burning, but I couldn’t do it. It would have been mercy to kill him, it was my mandate to do it, but I could not...” his voice gives out on the last word, and his shoulders fall forward in a shuddering inhale that transforms into a cut-short sob on its exhale.

“And now…” as the words pour from him, his shields fall, and so do the floodgates on his emotions, and it takes all the training you know to not be washed away in the torrential current of his grief. Does he even know he’s doing it, or has the insurmountable weight of his burden finally overridden his innate control over them?

“I’ve sentenced him to a fate worse than death.” He’s only barely choked out the end of his thought before his shoulders start to shake in earnest and he crumples in on himself as he begins to weep for his brother.

Giving no heed to the odd angle, you throw your arms around him. Trying to get your arms around his body is exactly the embodiment of the feeling of the moment, this anguish you don’t even begin to be enough to cover.

What could you say? What could you do? What would even begin to…

When you press your fingers to his temple, it’s light, a show of how unforced this is, how much he can say no if he needs. Because this isn’t for you. No, it’d be so much easier to not know the exact depth of his pain and rip your chest open with that knowledge. But you’re offering it, meaning it absolutely, desperate for him to take the hand offered to him. “Please let me in. Don’t do this alone. Let me…”

Then he’s pulling you in, not just letting you come in yourself, clinging to you like a person drowning. You remember to steady, to try to keep your own head above the water as wave after surging, overpowering wave of soul-crippling agony like you’ve never felt it engulf you in their surge.

You can’t hold out against it no matter how hard you try, so you refocus from centering yourself to pulling his signature into yours as you wrap your arms tighter around his torso.

And you begin to weep with him.

*********

The suns are drifting low by the time both of you have any intelligible thought, far too late to start the journey back to the hut.

At the inn, as Obi-Wan falls into the beginnings of a restless sleep, a thought emerges, clear and crisp in its awful truth.

You cannot tell him for a long while still.

*******

It’s different now. Because when he wakes in the night, he doesn’t give you falsehoods you see right through. He lets you into the terror and distortional dreams that all reside over one theme.

There’s silence in the first days after. Just silent tears and still embraces and the way time seems to freeze when grief is at its worst.

But then he starts talking. It comes in little pieces, then in larger ones.

The loudest thing his signature screams is guilt.

You tell him how it isn’t his fault, how Anakin is responsible for his own choices, but he just gives you a new reason every time as to why it is his fault, how he could have stopped it.

Because even in what he considers his worst failure, his verbiage is indicative of how it’s not his own image and pride hurting that he’s even considered. All of his thoughts, all of them, are on what Anakin needed that he didn’t give.

At first, it’s just impressions from his mind, unsorted, blurry thoughts and feelings, but it eventually begins to become words.

“After his mother died… I know that he blamed me. How couldn’t he? He told me of his dreams, dreams he knew were foresights, but I dismissed them, multiple times, at that. And the council… advised me against comforting him, but he… I… I did anyway.” His shoulders are forward, body sagging with unsureness that doesn’t fit him right in the slightest. “But it was far too late. I know there was something pivotal about the death of his mother, and I am...” he hesitates, seemingly not because he doesn’t know what to speak, but because he does. “Terrified. Terrified it’s all because I didn’t validate him sooner. If I had not...” His voice breaks off, as he shuts his eyes.

Fear is not something admired by the Jedi, you know. When he speaks of his own emotions, he speaks them like he’s confessing them.

And as he confesses and confesses, you comfort where you can, cry with him when you cannot.

*****

The swells of sorrow ebb and flow in their intense bursts and receding stillness, and despite the moments of not being able to breathe under the weight of it, there are miniscule, almost violating, hysterical intervals where smiles and life spring to the surface, gasping for air.

Or in this case, the inexplicable desire to dance.

You don’t even really know when you start, simply going about cleaning clothing in the sonic washer, and the next, some ridiculous, repetitive tune sweeps you to move your hips and feet, uncoordinated and graceless. The tune itself played from a datachip, scrapped with some pieces Obi-Wan was repurposing to make repairs. You’re not even familiar with the type of music, and it’s hardly the type of music you’d normally choose, but you find that today, it’s an improvement on the quiet that falls upon the house as Obi-Wan works outdoors.

The song swings into a bridge, and you slide across the stone floor, imitating something you saw in a music holo years ago, as you do, your foot catches on the rug you recently added, sending you fumbling for your footing. You eventually catch it before you fall, but as you look up, you decide to lower yourself to the ground anyway at the sight of Obi-Wan, leaning up against the door frame, watching you with an amused expression, the fingers of one hand tracing between his lips and chin.

You sit splayed as tactless and gangly as you danced and let out a short, startled laugh.

“Please, don’t stop on my account. I was quite enjoying myself.”

Maker, could you just hide under the rug you tripped over? “Please tell me you haven’t been standing there long.”

He pushes off his lean on the wall, crossing the room to you. “I won’t tell you lies, my love.”

Shame twists in your gut at his words, chasing the laughter in your throat away. But Obi-Wan extends a hand down, and you take it, letting him draw you to your feet.

He kisses the back of your hand before taking it in his, extending the clasp out to the side of your bodies as his other hand rests hot on the small of your waist.

“But I will join you, if you don’t mind a style change.”

“I don’t know how to dance like this,” you say, factually.

“Then allow me to teach you.” When you look in his eyes, they’re lined with the etches of heartache still, but there’s something else too, brimming to the surface.

“What, to this music?” You give your last, unconvincing protest.

He simply drops his forehead to yours, and the small sounds of the room fade to white as a sweet, moving melody replaces it. It’s not perfectly clear, and it takes a moment to realize that it’s because it’s coming from Obi-Wan’s memory.

The music has a distant, foggy quality, and it has potential to be eerie, but instead, it just lifts you into an ethereal feeling.

He steps, and your feet follow, not as graceful, but he makes it easy for you, the steps hinted out in his thoughts before taking them in actuality.

When you start to feel confident enough in the movements, you look up at him. “Does this mean I can teach you my dances next?”

He laughs, laughs, unabashed and with no emotion harbored under it, and some torn piece of your heart mends at the sound.

“Certainly not.”

You laugh too, even at the thought of him trying. The laugher rolls into a smooth quiet, and you let yourself bask in the feel of his body against yours, the press of his hand on your back as you rest your cheek against him.

Obi-Wan cradles you to him, forsaking the pattern of the dance as he encompasses you in his arms, lowering his lips to your cheek, then your mouth in a blazing kiss.

He takes your hand in his, lifting it above your head. Then you’re guided into a spin, and the room spins double with it as you abandon all endeavors of trying to get the dance correct. Your hand drops protectively to your belly before you can even think better of it, and by the time you know you’re not going to throw up, it’s too late. You already feel Obi-Wan’s unmistakable concern right before he asks, “What’s wrong?” extending an arm out toward you.

His complexion is ashen with worry, and when you don’t respond, you feel him start to reach out to your mind; a spike of panic zaps down your spine, and you’re suddenly not sure you’re not going to throw up after all.

Your shields crash down, not enough time for subtlety, and he retracts both his hand and inquiring tendril of energy as hurt and confusion shape his features.

You can’t do this. You can’t keep up this facade or cover this moment with a lie you know he’ll see through. But you can’t tell him either. After all the weight he’s carrying, the weight of the being that grows in you should be yours alone. You can’t thrust that upon him.

But it’s a delusion that you can keep this from him forever. You’re going to hurt him one way or another, and the weight of your silence and lies multiply every day you insulate him from the truth.

You take in a shuddering breath as dread settles into your bones. You know what you have to do.

Even as you slowly lower your shields, opening your signature, your mind screams at you in opposite directions, ripping you in half, and your hand shoots out to the nearest wall to stabilize yourself. How could you be so sadistic to tell him this? How could you not tell him? After all the trust you have in each other?

But he doesn’t take the invitation. “I will not touch your mind if you are still unsure you want me to,” he says softly but resolutely as he approaches you, but stays an unthreatening distance away, as if approaching a frightened animal.

No, no, no. You won’t have him being the one to sturdy you through this. You need to be strong, be ready, don’t force him to coddle you through the blast to his own chest.

So you dial down your own emotions and switch your absorption to amplifying the still tiny, barely recognizable life you’ve been carefully censoring ever since you heard it yourself.

You want to close your eyes, blockade the pain of both how it impacts him and how it will impact you, but that’s not how you two do things.

Summoning every iota of bravery and resolve running in your veins, you force yourself to look up at him as you watch understanding coat him.

His eyes go wide, and his hands clench and flex at his sides in an erratic, nervous pattern.

You can’t keep your signature open to his mind’s reaction, you just can’t. He’s seen enough, and you can put your shields up again. His face is enough to confront all on its own.

Obi-Wan steps toward you, slowly, dazed in a completely uncharacteristic way. With the way he seems to ever be prepared for the blows life throws at him, you hate how you have to be the harbinger for the second one that’s knocked him off his feet.

When he stops in front of you, he places his hands on either of your shoulders and looks into your eyes, searching for confirmation, and you nod, trying to not let fear seep into your expression.

One of his hands covers his mouth as he takes it in.

And then he’s sinking in front of you, off of his feet indeed, and onto his knees. You want to follow, ready to hold him through the heartache sure to follow, at the second child he didn’t ask for while he still grieves the loss of the first.

But his hands instead take purchase on your stomach, tightening the fabric of your tunic around the barely-visible bump before bunching it up and lifting, just enough so he can tilt his forehead against the skin there.

You can feel him reaching out, not taking him long at all to find what he’s searching for, and curiosity beats self-preservation at the last moment, prompting you to open your mind again, just for you to be able to catch elation coursing through Obi-Wan.

You don’t even bother trying to stifle your confusion as he looks up at you with glassy eyes.

Sinking to your knees to meet him, you take his face in your hands, trying to make sense of it all as he takes your hand in his. “I never... “ when his voice comes out unsteady, he clears his throat and tries again. “I never thought I’d have... That we could… didn’t occur to me that now...stars above, how long have you known?”

You don’t recall when you start crying, but tears are falling freely down your cheeks as you shake your head. “I’m so sorry. I… I would never want to keep something like this from you, Obi-Wan, but I couldn’t tell you, not with everything, not with all you already have…and i’m so sorry.”

“Oh, heavens, no. You should not have to do this alone. Please don’t keep things from me, even if you think it to be for my sake. We can…”

You fix him with a pointed, unamused stare. He exhales as he must notice his hypocrisy.

“Your point is well-put and taken, but the sentiment still stands. We’ll not keep secrets from each other anymore. Do we have an accord?”

Despite it all, you smile at his overly-formal phrasing, something you’d normally have a quip about if it weren’t for the concern still nagging at you.

“Are you not angry then? Or disappointed?” you watch him carefully, praying to any deity listening that he doesn’t concoct some half truth to placate you. His first instinct is always to protect, but you’d never want it at expense of his authenticity.

Bafflement marks his brow at first, then he takes your face in his hands. “Darling, no.” He says your name, gathering every bit of your attention. “I dreamt of you. During the war, when I was away. I did not sleep well, even then, but when I did, I’d sometimes dream of you, holding a child that I knew to be ours. When I woke, I would remember it so vividly, so painfully, because I never thought that was an attainable future for us.”

But that doesn’t need to matter if you… do you want this child?” His eyes are so full of hope, and it was the last thing you expected, but here he is laying it down on the altar of your preference, and maker, are you glad those two things aren’t opposing each other.

Because his hope and yours are one in the same, and once he knows it too, at your whispering, choked, “yes,” he’s clutching you in his arms.

And for the second time in a month, you’re both huddled on the ground in tears. The first, bowing under the mass of catastrophe. Now, at the glowing relief of the sprouting of a dream sown in tears, too tender before to even say aloud.

But now? You’re saying it, back and forth, from him to you as your walls fall, permitting him into your mind as he welcomes you into his, and finally you take true comfort once again in the home you’ve built in each other.

*******

The night after, you lie side by side, hand in hand, on a blanket splayed not far from the hut. The suns have sunken, but the pinks and oranges of their palette still paint the sky where it hasn’t yet turned to midnight cobalt. The light of the lantern gives off a similar hue, dousing everything in your reach in soft, warm hues.

It has taken Obi-Wan some convincing, being so out in the open with everything he had to worry about wasn’t his first choice, but you compromised for a small alcove in the rock formations which surrounded you on two sides. More easily defensible. Not that he needed it, but if he was cautious before, it was borderline unbearable now. With the added danger of the Empire knowing without doubt that he lived. With more than ever to lose.

So, he was in charge of safety, you were in charge of snacks. And if they so happened to be almost entirely comprised of those melons you couldn’t quite get enough of lately? That was no one’s business except yours. You brought a few things you knew Obi-Wan liked too, of course.

What little remains of the miscellaneous spread you push to the edge of the blanket so you can both lie down.

“I dare say it’s almost pleasant out tonight.”

You turn your head to him, a snort ready at him discussing the weather of all things, but it instead forms a cloud in your throat at the sight of him.

His eyes are closed, hair rustling in the slight evening breeze, a tranquil ease over his profile.

The small patches of grey in the part of his beard next to his ears catch the first glints of moonlight in a way the rest of his hair doesn’t, giving them away.

The mellisonant lowness of his voice brings you back to yourself, cheeks heating.

“I can feel you staring, little one.” He opens his eyes, leisurely rolling to his side. “Some say it’s quite impolite.” Slanting over you, he lifts a brow, daring your response.

“And is that a problem?” You look up at him through your eyelashes, feigning innocence.

Obi-Wan’s gaze follows back up to the stars, as he plays right along, pretending to have to think on it. “I suppose it depends.”

“On?”

“On whether or not you allow me to return the impropriety,” he responds with a coy smile, moving back to you, so close now you can feel his exhales on your cheek.

Warmth blooms through you as you answer back, “You can always look, Obi-Wan.” You lift yourself to close the short distance between your face and his, pressing your lips together, which he deepens right away. Using the hand not supporting half his body off of you still, he fans out his fingers across your belly, towing the line between caressing gently and clutching protectively.

You pull your lips back from his as an uninvited slither of insecurity slips into your chest.

He senses it, of course, so you speak before he even needs to ask. “Are you really, truly, certain this is what you want? Now? I don’t want you to just say so because…and we could wait, we have...”

“I am,” he says, adamantly, before you even have a chance to finish. His eyes flash to the side. “I…” He rolls back onto his back, looking straight up as he talks seemingly half to you, half to himself. “There is not much I know for certain these days. Some days… I scarcely can remember who I am anymore.”

He turns his eyes back to you, unwavering. “There are seldom few things I haven’t questioned of late, and my love for you isn’t one of them. And from the moment I’ve known, from the very first instant you let me feel the life within you, my love for them hasn’t been one either.”

Your thoughts split into two, one wanting to lean into it, to take him for his word that’s always true, and the other cautioning you, telling you to keep distant and watch for the surface level honesty he gives that hides the brutal one he safeguards you from.

But you’re not hiding anymore, feelings unconcealed in your energy and on your face, so he leans back into you, grasping your arm in his hand, squaring your shoulders to him. You cringe at yourself when you know he’s heard the impression of you questioning. It’s redundant, but self-doubt always is. “Know, please know, my darling.” Taking your hand in his, he brings it up to his temple with an insistence that you have no desire to counter.

And it’s there. Right there and sparking in its clarity, right at the threshold of his mind as you enter it. How much he means his words, no holds barred, no cleverly crafted glazes to an unly underbelly of reality. His reality was this, how severely he craves starting a family with you. How much he already loves the being within you, how he looks forward to the day he gets to hold them in his arms.

The fear is there too, quiet, but not kept from you. The fear of failing as a father, unsure of assuming any role that resembled a mentor again, all-too-familiar with the ghost that will float over him in every lesson he teaches.

What shocks you there is his faith in you. In how much he’s already learned from you about the impact of open affection, in how you don’t let your feelings lead you, but you let them breathe, not suffocate them. It’s part of how he even can acknowledge his fears to himself and to you without berating himself under the too-simple phrase “fear leads to the dark side.” There’s truth in it, but also inaccuracy.

Because he’s afraid, and yet, there is so much light in the acknowledging of it to himself, and in that very act, it loses much of any power it could have had over him. Oh, how deeply he wishes he could have articulated that understanding to Anakin.

The pain is fresh, but so is his anticipation for the future, swirling together in a potent drink, and his throat bobs with the effort to swallow them down simultaneously.

He knows you’ll help ground him through it, he trusts you, even in his uncertainty in himself.

It breaks your heart but also warms it: the knowledge that he lets you into that place where he keeps the questions of himself, the place only you and the man who’s caused most of this doubt have been permitted.

With a thankful short farewell, you part from his mind as you know exactly what you want to do.

The remains of your snacks still rest on the edge of the blanket, including the shells of the deep purple-pigmented melons. The one draw-back to their delightful taste was how badly they stained your fingers. You had to break them into tiny pieces, plopping them into your mouth without allowing them to touch your lips unless you wanted your mouth to stain too.

But right now? The staining quality was just what you needed.

Although first you needed a blank canvas.

“May I take your tunics off?” you ask, sitting up.

Despite a short twitch of confusion and then interest, Obi-Wan follows, raising himself up into a kneel, slightly lifting his arms in compliance.

The paleness of his skin catches all the light of the lantern, highlighting your view as you slowly slide the fabric up and off, gliding your hands up the line of hair dipping below his navel as it becomes more exposed. It grants you a quiet, steep intake of breath from him and you suddenly give halt momentarily, distracted by the alluring appetite you’ve created.

No, you won’t give in. Not yet. He needs to know this.

You take one of the broken pieces of melon rind in your hand, where little tart bits of the fruit still cling, dribbling pigment, but before your finger makes contact with the taut skin of his chest, you pull back at the realization you might have bitten off more than you can chew.

How do you even begin to describe him? Obi-Wan is so many things at once, so many attributes, and every descriptor that comes to mind falls blatantly short of him.

Then you recall Obi-Wan going through the motions of Alchaka, watching his body fight to maintain the poses at times. Being such a personal practice, you felt honored that he let you see him go through the exercises, and even more honored that he opened up to you about the purpose behind it later. It was an exercise of both physicality and Force use, and the goal was absolute exhaustion. That was the destination. Trying, knowing from the start that he’ll fall short in the end, but doing it all the same. Because there’s so, so much to be said for the trying.

So you do. You bring the messy fingertip to his clavicle, smearing the first word you know to absolutely be true of him, as if starting the premise with a whisper of I know you’re even more than the sum all of these singular praises.

The word “complex” appears in your penmanship on his skin as you drag it to life. You look up to his eyes, and his curiosity is clear there, but also so is the tenderness that is elemental to any time he looks at you. And just like that, you have your next word.

Kind.

And at the way he flushes so lovely for you at that?

Beautiful.

You feel his protest before you see it, the objection in his signature, and you know you’re going to have to switch methods.

Just then, a droplet from where you’ve written the last word on his pectoral falls, down, down, threatening toward the hem of his trousers, but you’re fast, dropping your mouth down and catching it all on your tongue before it can stain the bleached beige of his remaining clothing.

When his stubborn revolt at the affirmation quiets in his mind in exchange for a flash of searing lust, you know exactly how you’re going to continue.

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi, general, warrior, negotiator, Jedi Master, legend, has rarely ever been affirmed as such, and he squirms under the thick blanket of his humility and deprivation anytime someone endeavors.

So you need his mind to be preoccupied enough, guards down low enough, so he can even hear the message get through.

When you place your hands over his waistband, locking eyes in inquiry, stopping when he hesitates, scanning the area around you, vigilant as always. Overly so now.

“We’re alone. And wouldn’t you be able to sense it if we weren’t?”

He looks down at you as he answers. “If I stay mindful enough to do so, yes.”

Good, he’ll be even less prone to fight you if he has some of his mind sensing outward.

You look back up at him with the facial equivalent of asking “well?” to which Obi-Wan sighs in response. “Very well then.”

With your familiarity with ridding him of clothing, it only takes moments before you can finally taste him where you want to, where he’s already hard and swollen for you.

You know you won’t be able to take him as much as you want, a recently-developed overactive gag reflex preventing you. But it just so happens to be convenient tonight, as the resulting taunt should have him right where you want him.

A gentle kiss, right to the head of his cock is all the warning you give him before taking the whole tip in your mouth, swirling your tongue around him, pulling a choked hum deep from his throat.

Oh, oh, Maker, have you done a grand miscalculation, because you forgot an entire factor in this equation: the way you have been borderline hysterical in hunger for him.

You’ve kept so much from him, and part of how you’ve even managed is starting to convince yourself of less than fact. Facts like how many times you’ve had to change underthings recently, physical evidence of desire unwilling to comply to your head’s demands. Facts like how you’ve literally had to bite your finger to keep the feelings at bay.

You’d expected changes in your body even before your belly grew, but this was one you hadn’t anticipated. In some ways, it wasn’t that different than usual. You never knew you could want someone with the breadth that you want Obi-Wan.

But this? Of late? It feels like it’s been amplified tenfold.

You’re not keeping any cards close to your chest anymore, but you do have to ignore your own body’s screaming cries as you complete this.

He needs to know.

Nerves still serenading his brain with feedback, you re-wet your finger with the purple juice and write the next words across his abdomen.

Wise.

Perceptive.

He’s caught on to your scheme by now, cued by the all-too appropriate addition of the last word, and he lets you know it, an impression projected, speechless but still unobstructed. He’s still powerless against it. Or rather, letting himself be powerless. Trusting you with the control he has left, trusting you in his vulnerable places. The places where he’s weak.

Strong.

The word spread over his right upper arm, where he’s obviously just that. But may the tint of the word bleed through his skin, may it run through his veins, because that’s how deep and deeper still that his strength runs. It’s in the way he doesn’t flaunt it. It’s in the way he chooses to wield it.

Gentle.

He closes his eyes, flinching at the onslaught of acclamation, and you dip your head down again, wrapping your lips around his cock, letting him slide to where you can take him comfortably, just starting to build a pace as his hips squirm in harmony with his suddenly erratic breaths. Oh, how you’d love to let him deeper, allow his cock past your lips beyond the teasing amount you can take now, but the little writhes his body gives in protest are enough to almost make you okay with how your mouth won’t agree with your ambitions. He says your name, groaned out in bliss as he cups a hand on your cheek.

His barriers are down, so it’s easy to hear when his deprecating thoughts quiet again, and you switch back to coloring him again.

You know the moment you look up at him that it’s a mistake, because he’s flushed, so torn, suspended in the limbo of your give and withdrawal, mouth ever so slightly open, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip.

You’re only human, so before you draw anything else, you bring your lips to his, which is yet another mistake, because among the many things Obi-Wan is, he is a deep kisser, and as his tongue delves into your mouth, your will power takes a devastating blow.

You pull back, reeling at the reminder of how easily he can take back control, knowing you have to complete this before you let him.

Stars, how you want to let him.

For now, you need that control back, so you take him into your mouth again, filthily wet and not nearly long enough as you quickly pull back, watching in satisfaction as he heaves forward at the loss, correcting himself quickly back into straight posture.

With a smirk, you drag your slippery, pigmented finger across his lower stomach.

Disciplined.

There’s so many more words, so much more he needs to know, and if you covered every inch of his skin in the smallest writing it still wouldn’t be sufficient of all that he is.

Or you could whisper it all through the Force, embed it all in his mind.

But because you’ve been there, know his mind inside and out, you know every time he sees his own skin, all he sees is the red of blood on his hands. The blood of his brother.

And that’s exactly why you’re going to stain it in your own colors. Take back territory and push back the front lines that the army of guilt has taken over on him.

Your Jedi, ever-adorned in unassuming beige, now drips in the color of royalty.

Charming.

Humble.

Confident.

Steadfast.

You’re only left with enough space for one more word, and you want some sort of conclusion to it all, something to summarize the expanse of the man kneeling in front of you.

Nothing can.

But maybe, just maybe, one word encapsulates what he is to you.

Treasure.

This time you do chant it across his thoughts, prompting him to open his eyes and look at you.

Cerulean blue blinks open, slowly, almost painfully and nearly overflowing with emotion.

Thank you, is all he says, unable or unwilling to say it out loud, much too heartfelt and newly-budded for that.

You know his pain has older roots than those tended to in this moment, but you vow to yourself that you’ll never stop trying.

Lowering your mouth around him once again, you don’t tease him anymore, at least not intentionally, even though you still can’t take more than half of him.

“Look at you, you’re…” he hisses in a breath as you swipe your tongue against that vein on the underside of him. “Stunning. You’re doing so well, little one.”

The taste of him compels you as much as his words, seizes you in spice-like addiction, and how interesting it’s going to be explaining that taste craving to him, among your sudden adoration for those damn melons.

“Darling, I’m…”

You feel it in his energy before he says it, already pulling off, replacing your mouth with your hand, dropping your lips down even lower, mouthing at his balls, and the feedback is instant. An outpouring crest of his pleasure blasting outward as he lets out a depraved moan, netting his hands into your hair.

Your hand is wet and so is where he’s spilled on his still flexing and releasing stomach, clear white maring the lettering halfway through “disciplined.” You’d clean it with your tongue if you weren’t sure how your overly sensitive taste buds would react now.

It’s not the first time you’ve had sex since you’ve known you were pregnant, but it’s the first time since he’s known, and it’s the first time you’re not hiding the symptoms. Before, you carefully shied away from anything that might give you away, and between the preoccupation of everything on his own mind he was trying to keep from you and his respect for your boundaries, he never pressed. He had questions in his eyes, but you knew how to carefully reveal partial vulnerabilities to keep him off your trail.

Your chest flares at the memory.

We’re not hiding now.

It’s your chant, your reminder, your comfort. How nothing of this caliber will be kept between you again.

His eyes confirm it, sincere and exact as they fight to break through their dazed slipping.

Never again. His voice in your head is home, so consoling it can and has put you to sleep before.

Right now, it wakes you up in a different light, dowsing you in heat as Obi-Wan takes your hand in his, wiping it on a piece of his discarded clothing before wiping the spend off himself.

Then he’s taking your face in both his hands tilting you up before kissing you soundly.

I love you, he says across the wire that ties your minds, the wire that keeps growing stronger every day. So, so very much.

You say it back, a fact as simple as breathing. You love him.

You want him, borderline need him the way you need your next inhale, you don’t say, but he must hear it anyway, because that cocky little smirk that’s been gone far too long is back.

“Shall we do something about that?”

You’re about to just lift your shift dress up and off in response, but he halts you, grasping your wrists.

“Allow me.”

He pulls you into another sultry kiss, completely neglecting the task of ridding you of clothing.

Or so you think.

There’s buttons all the way down the dress, and you’ve never used them, always wondering at their purpose if it can so easily lift over your head.

At first, you don’t even know he’s doing it until you start to feel the coolness of the night air on your nipples. Opening your eyes, you pull back from him to watch as seemingly in thin air, your buttons undo themselves.

“You needn’t seduce me further. You already know how much I need you,” you gasp, breathless from the kiss.

Obi-Wan just gives a small smile as he drops a hand, dragging it down your side, then down your thigh. “Hm. So impatient. All this from just pleasuring me?”

Maker, he knows! He knows that you are. You always have been, and it’s not as if you weren’t projecting your feelings too.

When he reaches a hand between your thighs, parting them and making a single, tempting stroke through them, his fingers come back glistening.

“I should think you could feel that I am.” You let the tide of your frustration spill over into your connection to his mind.

You know he had to hear you, but he gives no indication that he did.

“Mm. Desire needn’t always be indicatory of impatience,” he punctuates his statement with a hand at the base of your skull, tipping your head back to expose your neck. “I need you to be patient, little one. Let me savor you.” And with that, his mouth makes contact with your neck at the same time his other hand plays with one of your exposed nipples.

You whimper at the attention, quietly pleading with him for more. Among the still slight changes to your body, this has been the most notable one. How sensitive your breasts have become to even the scrape of the fabric of your clothing.

And with the rough pads of his fingers working only one, leaving the other to pang in want...

“Obi-Wan,” it’s a prayer, a request. He doesn’t need his hands to cause sensation, and you’d beg him right now if he asked.

He lets up on your neck, only barely, lips moving against the now throbbing skin. “Answer me first.”

Clearing your throat, you give the most cogent response you can muster. “Depends on if you’re definition of savor is synonymous with torture.”

He locks eyes with you then, gently grasping a breast in each of his hands, dragging his thumbs over the nipples as you moan out your assent.

His chuckle is far too self-satisfied to be becoming of a Jedi, but you’re already too far gone to call him on it.

“Is that what you want, little one? For me to torture you so?”

An affirmative whimper is all the response you can give, and Obi-Wan reacts quickly, taking your chin in his fingers and tilting your eyes up to his again.

“Then you will be patient for me. Because I’m always happy to stop, and we can begin again when you decide to adhere.”

Your brain short circuits on the spot, and all energy is redirected much, much lower. His voice, stars above, his voice when it takes a commanding tone.

It’s intimate, it’s personal, and yet this game is almost inappropriately playful for how sincere the moment is.

But such was being loved by Obi-Wan. Full of dissimilar feelings that shouldn’t fit, but moved together in liquid consistency. Like metaphors that didn’t rhyme but still somehow gave their own life-giving rhythm, not dissimilar to the sound of his heartbeat when you lay your head against his chest at night.

Making quick work of the remaining buttons of your shift and underwear, he beckons you to join him as he lies back down, large, warm hands guiding you to turn around so you’re facing away from him.

You know that the purple stickiness of the fruit will smear from his body to yours like this, but you can’t at all bring yourself to care.

You gasp a sigh of relief as one of his hands finds your breast, brushing a knuckle over the too-sensitive nipple.

“Please.” Your whispered beg sounds pathetic, even to your own ears. But as you arch against him in a frenzied attempt at skin contact, Obi-Wan juts his hips forward, grunting into the exposed column of your neck, and stars, yeah, maybe he didn’t find that so pathetic after all.

“What do you want, darling?” His voice doesn’t divulge any desperation, and for only the hundredth time do you envy his immaculate self-control.

“You know, don’t pretend you don’t.” Leaving any doubt to the wind, you push your chest against his barely-touching hand.

“Specificity can be a virtue; that I also know.”

You change techniques, driving your hips back softly into where he’s hard and insistent against your ass, hoping it compels him.

Then you simply… can’t anymore. You’re frozen, unable to move your lower half at all.

Tangling your desires into a knot and tucking it away, you find the mindfulness to reply. “Yeah, so is mercy.”

“Indeed it is. I shall concede when you do.”

You won’t win a battle of the wills with him. You’re not sure anyone could.

So you bring his hand over to your nipple. “Touch me here.”

You feel his smile without even seeing it as he starts tweaking the bud. “Like this?”

It’s so much sensation, all concentrated on such responsive flesh, that you want to beg for him to switch to touching you between your legs.

You haven’t even finished the thought when you feel his unmistakable metaphysical brush against your thigh.

Extending a tendril of your own energy, you invite him in, and he takes it eagerly, ever as eager if not more to be entwined with your mind as with your body.

He hears it all, the besottment, the arousal, the neediness. The panic that he might drag this out longer, that you’ll have to go a single minute longer without...

“It’s alright. It’s alright.” He sends soothing waves through your connection, and he swaps the positioning of his hand with the curl of power. He turns his hand so that the back of it runs through where you’re aching for him, gathering up your slick on the backs of his knuckles. You have to contort your neck to see what follows when he takes the hand back behind you, and your mouth goes dry when he sucks the knuckles in between his lips.

You want to hear, you want to know what he’s…

He’s welcoming you in, navigating you to the brink of his mental barriers, letting you take that final plunge into the unsuppressed fullness of your bond to each other.

Now it’s your turn to hear it: how his carefully constructed unaffected persona is not at all a match for his naked, wanton need for you.

And under that, the foundation on which that desire is built, not the product of it, is his love, his unyielding, unashamed, iridescent love for you.

It’s all you can do but to pour it back, affirming and soothing and calling his love into action with your own.

You both don’t want anything else except the most complete of entanglement, and that’s exactly what he moves to do, situating your bodies, hiking your top leg in the crook of his arm as you feel the initial breach of his body into yours, and all breath leaves your lungs in an exhilarating evacuation.

His audible gasp is an echo of his emotions, how he thinks he’s prepared for this onslaught of feeling, but how you take him off guard, how his equilibrium threatens to teeter every time.

The web of his consciousness enveloping you, it’s easy to pick out a single thought blaring within him: How much he adores the way you fit together. Your back against his chest, how your breast fits in his hand, how the snug joining of where his cock presses into your body sends you into trembles, how comforting your very presence is to his soul when he lets you in like this.

Tears, without warning, seep out of your eyes as he starts to move against you, slow and deep. You close your eyes, willing the powerful emotion away, but glimmers of light flash out behind our closed lids the moment you do, and how the kriff does he stay composed?

Anchor. Anchor against me.

He stills, letting you have a break from the barrage of pleasure blinding you as you search him out, looking for the cords of his intellect that seemingly both steam downward and beam upward, grounding him.

You find it, and you clasp on tightly.

But the moment he starts moving again, you lose sight of it all over again.

Your heightened hormones make your flesh so susceptible, and the tears start to fall again. Obi-Wan rolls your nipple in between his thumb and index, and he’s so good, and you’re so full, and you can hear his pleasure as your own, adding, doubling everything…

Scorching, electrifying heat speeds through your veins, hitting hard and fast, leaving you astounded and even more sensitive than before.

Obi-Wan’s signature spikes as your climax resounds through him, and you can feel the vibration of the wanton noises he’s making right where his beard scratches against your neck.

But he doesn’t allow it to overtake him, letting it run through him without resistance, making himself pliable but unmovable, keeping himself back from the edge.

You still have much to learn.

Because that control? Gives him the ability to not even stop, not even hesitate once, even at both yours and his own ecstasy flowing through him.

When he starts striking his hips hard into yours, the weight of him inside you dragging exactly in the right place, you start to cry in earnest. Obi-Wan stops for a millisecond, concern radiating off of him, even when he can hear how much you want this so clearly, has access to every little passing thought.

“Don’t stop, I’m fine, I pro…” He does just as asked while moving his hand down to your belly again, a soothing touch to his rough thrusts. Your eyes are blurred with wetness, overwhelmed with him.

He’s listening to it all, applying every micro-feeling of feedback into action against your desperate, post-orgasmic skin, hand switching back and forth from your nipples to loosely clutching your neck, Force energy focused on applying pressure to your clit.

“You’re doing so well, so good for me,” comes the wisp of his sultry tone, lips pressed against your ear.

Since you aren’t even thinking about changing position, you know it’s his own preference that has him withdrawing, guiding you onto your back.

There’s no inhibition this way, not the way there is when you’re on your side, no separation from your bodies being flush when he pushes into you again. You have to anchor in him, both mentally and with your fingernails clawing at his shoulder blades as your body starts into tremors.

He’s keeping the weight of his chest off of you, even though your belly is still barely swollen into distinguishable roundedness, and as much as you miss the contact, you can look into his eyes like this, can see the unfiltered attachment and all the weight of all the emotion he wills his body to not cave under.

But then the tremoring transforms into series of contractions throughout your body, centering through your slick core, and you thrash your head to the side catching a glimpse of Obi-Wan’s fingers clenching into white knuckles, grasping into the exposed sand from the blanket being bunched up.

He projects his thoughts across the tether to you, how thoroughly impacted by the very fact you’re carrying his child, how affected he is by every little thing about you, honored that he’s allowed to touch you like this.

You roll your hips back up into his, and that’s what it takes. His stuttering body is the lightning, and the searing, molten pleasure across your connection is the thunderous repercussion.

It completely overthrows you, and your body bows against him as his high instantly cues yours again.

You can feel him throb inside you at the very moment you do, his turn to experience the secondary sensory white-out of your mate’s climax through the Force, his shuddering shout meeting your breathy whines in the close distance between your mouths.

And he does kiss you then, soundly but with the haze of afterglow slowing it.

“Have you any idea how bewitching you are to me?” He breathes it out, and despite all the ways you’d normally scoff at such words, his eyes tell the story, and you listen to it’s truth.

His eyes hold that constant infiltrating study of you, the one that could be unnerving if his mind, still tethered to yours didn’t hold such amor, heart bleed such fondness that settles in the creases around his eyes.

How interesting it is watching someone as knowledgeable as him having such an inquisitive outlook on life, and being so frequently the object of those investigations.

Did the galaxy know her debt to him? Did she know the sum owed to inflicting the worst of life’s pains on someone who refused to let it build anything except an even gentler man of himself? When does she plan on repaying him? What does she offer in exchange for her cruelty of the hand she’s dealt Obi-Wan Kenobi?

Then the whisper comes, soft but crisp, from somewhere in the threads of existence around you, “Can’t you see? It’s you, child.”

You could argue it. You could scream how it’s not enough, how you’re not enough, how he deserves so much more from some dark insecure place inside you. Or how love shouldn’t be treated as currency in exchange for pain, how the galaxy could still have your fists if that was how it tallied.

But the finality of it settles in your soul, more impressionistic than in solid wording: there is no easy conclusion that ties the suffering of life into purpose, no experience that erases or mends its pain. But love. Love makes the complicated endeavor of trying to find purpose in the madness worthwhile.

Obi-Wan’s hum of agreement resounds in your ears and through to your head. His Force signature feels so familiar, so at home within yours and yours within his, that you’d briefly forgotten he could still hear you.

With all the strength still left in quaking limbs, you wrap your arms around him, and he melts into it.

The compassion of his soul hardly matches his war-ravaged skin, his guilt-ridden memories. Every good thing here came to be with a war waged, refined and not burnt away in fire at his sheer tenacity.

It’s a growing thing, blooming in the desert. The beliefs in both of you. Your love for each other. Your own trust in the Force.

Healing is no short journey, but her two sojourners here are determined.

And if that tender hope can blossom here?

Then maybe, just maybe: Tatooine is exactly the place for a baby after all.

*********

In the valley beyond the hut, a boy jets quickly away in some mechanical contraption he recently motorized, a girl in a similar vehicularized compilation of junk not far behind.

On the cliff’s edge stands Obi-Wan, eyes scanning the landscape intermittently for any sign of threat between longer affectionate looks at the children before him.

He turns, feeling your approach in his keen awareness as you set a hand on his shoulder from behind. His temples are now even thicker with sun-bleached silver, and his eyes wield the lines of laughter around them.

And you? You’re as roped in by his gravitational pull as you’ve always been.

He puts a hand over yours, clasping it to bring you in front of him, where he can still watch the children and encase you in his arms at the same time.

“Slow down, Luke! You’re going too fast!” comes the distressed cry of your daughter, Ahlina, drawing your attention away from admiring Obi-Wan and back to the valley. Her vowels curl in the same way her father’s does, but her more casual phrasing was certainly thanks to you. Luke shouts back at her, “Come on, keep up!” while he races on ahead.

Obi-Wan smiles, seemingly amused at a secret joke.

“They are much too young for this nonsense still,” he speaks, muffled slightly as he hides his lips in your hair.

“Probably,” you reply with an airy laugh.

Not long after, the engine on Luke’s small contraption gives out, jutting him off and tumbling forward into the sand.

“I told you!” Ahlina yells, her own machine coming to a halt not far away from Luke.

When they make it back up the cliff, Obi-Wan couches and opens his arms, and they both come running with smiles. They’re still young enough to be unshy about affection, and Obi-Wan knows to soak it up, closing his eyes in relishment.

Luke is the first to wiggle down, waving before running over to hug your leg, which you happily return, brushing some of the blonde mop of hair from his forehead. You adored the nights that the Lars let him sleep over.

Although the nights that Ahlina slept over at theirs certainly had their allure too.

“Can we have a snack, Daddy?” Ahlina asks, still happy to be hoisted up on one of his arms.

“Hm. Perhaps I can make some of those ahrisa sweet breads again?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Can Mommy make them?”

“Why not mine?”

“Because you always burn them.”

He bops a finger lightly on her nose with a smile. “Cheeky.”

She goes to bop him on his nose in return, but he catches the finger, holding it.

“Give it back!” she screeches through a giggle.

“No, no. I think I’ll keep it now.”

The suns are dipping low as you retreat into the hut, the two children running ahead, racing to gather the ingredients to help you bake the bread. Luke especially was an enthusiastic sous-chef.

You step to follow them, but Obi-Wan grasps your hand. You turn back to him, and he barely gives you a second before he joins his mouth to yours. Sliding a hand into the auburn beard, you open your mouth to him, letting his familiar taste permeate your senses.

He reluctantly breaks after a long moment, and you take his hand in yours. When you turn back to the horizon, the suns are dipping, blanketing the landscape in the most celestial light of the day.

The planet’s eyes aren’t harsh in the way you used to see them. They’re still intense, and frequently unforgiving.

Perhaps they never changed. Maybe only you did.

But as they sink now, you give a silent, partial farewell, knowing they’ll greet you again in the morning.

Because if Dark’s patience is infinite?

So is the promise of the return of the Light.

Tagging upon request: @million-dollar-legs

#obi-wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi x reader #obi-wan kenobi x you #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi wan kenobi x you #obi-wan x reader #obi-wan x you #obi wan x you #obi wan x reader #obi-wan kenobi smut #obi wan smut #obi-wan smut #obi-wan #obi-wan x oc

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humanperryfic · 5 years ago

Text

Everybody Needs Somebody to Love

When uncle Perry coughs up a whole flower at breakfast, Candace is understandably worried. She's also confused when she realizes that he has no plans to confess his love.

Despite having no idea what's really going on, and being told not to interfere, Candace is determined to get her uncle and his crush together.

Life might not always be a romance novel, but Candace is going to make it as close as possible.

Title from the Blues Brothers song

AO3/FF.net

TW’s for mild blood

The alarm on Candace's bedside table goes off with an obnoxious beeping noise. Candace groans and throws her arm out, attempting to silence the annoying noise. It's a teacher workday, why did she set her alarm?

That's right, she wanted a head-start on her busting. Looking out her window, she sees Phineas and Ferb already building. Perfect.

She rolls out of bed and pulls on her usual outfit before running a brush through her hair. Despite her sleep-deprived brain, she manages to put together a few coherent answers to Stacy's overnight texts before leaving her room.

Candace stumbles down the stairs to the kitchen, barely managing to avoid tripping over her own feet. It's early, and she was awake until almost one in the morning last night.

The only person who's in the kitchen is uncle Perry, who's pouring himself a bowl of cereal. Good morning, he signs.

"Morning," she grumbles, scrubbing at her eyes to rid them of the typical early-morning bleariness. "Where's mom and dad?"

Antiques convention, remember?

Candace sighs. That's right. Mom and dad are at a three-day antiques convention over the long weekend, leaving Perry in charge. Which means no busting. As long as they're safe, Perry's perfectly fine with what the boys create.

If he's ever there to see the creations. He's always getting called off for work.

Candace pulls her mug out of the cupboard, adds a teabag, and sets it next to Perry's, waiting for the kettle to boil. She could use the caffeine.

Stacy texts her back, so she sits down at the table to answer. After she sends the message, she puts her head down on the table. It's too early for anything to happen.

Perry sits down across from her, the bowl making a soft thump against the wood. He snaps his fingers to get her attention.

Candace pries one eye open. "mmm-yeah?"

You should eat.

She shrugs. "After tea."

Suit yourself.

Candace lays her head back on the table. It's still way too early to think about anything.

Perry starts coughing. Candace raises an eyebrow, still not picking her head up off the table. He's been sick since her freshman year, you'd think he'd be fine by now. Or at least that he'd see a doctor. It's kind of weird.

Eh, he's always been weird. He travels all over the place for work. He says he's a sort of special cop, but never wants to talk about his job. He doesn't talk, only makes that weird chattering noise. And he's always really weird about those Hanahaki soap operas, even though they're Candace's favorite.

Still, the cough is rather strange.

Candace opens one eye just in time to see Perry spit an entire white rose flecked with blood into the palm of his hand.

Now fully awake, she watches as he makes a face, gets up, throws the rose into the garbage can under the sink, and starts to wash his hands, unaware of Candace's staring.

Well, that makes sense.

Sort of. There are still a lot of things wrong with this.

Now that she's awake, she might as well eat breakfast. She stands up and moves to the cupboard, getting a bowl out. Setting the bowl down with a purposeful clank (it's never a good idea to startle uncle Perry), Candace turns to get the milk out of the fridge."So when were you going to tell us you had Hanahaki?"

Perry turns around, surprise painted on his face. Candace continues. "Seriously. That was an entire flower. How long have you been hiding this?"

He sighs. Almost two years. Candace gasps. Two years and she never suspected a thing? That was his mysterious sickness? "Who is it?"

Just someone I work with.

"And you never thought to tell us."

I told your parents.

Candace pours milk into the bowl. "I guess that's something. Are you going to confess?"

He looks to the backyard, where Phineas and Ferb are starting to build, and shakes his head. I'm getting it removed in three weeks.

Candace gapes. Removed? After two years of pain and suffering and blood covered roses? "You're just going to give up?" she asks.

Perry shrugs and turns off the tap. He's not interested in me, what else can I do?

"He might be. You never know." Perry raises an eyebrow as he sits back down at the table. "I mean, if Jeremy and I can get together, you and your crush can too," Candace continues.

Life isn't a romance novel. Sometimes it just doesn't work out.

"Have you even tried?"

Like I said, he's not interested.

"I hate to suggest this, but maybe the boys could help out?"

No.

"Why not? I bet they could make your crush have feelings for you."

If it's forced, it would make it even worse.

"It's worth a shot, right?"

No, it's not.

"Really?"

Coughing up flowers isn't fun or cute. He grimaces. It's actually pretty painful.

"You're really no fun."

See, this is why I didn't want to tell anybody. At Candace's affronted look, he continues. I'm an adult, I can deal with my own feelings. If that means getting rid of them, so be it. End of story.

"But-but-but I could help too!"

Perry narrows his eyes. End of story, Candace.

Candace pours her cereal into the milk. "Fine, whatever."

Look, I know you want to help, but I'd prefer to get through the next few weeks without dying.

Candace's eyes go wide. She'd completely forgotten that people could die from Hanahaki. Once they start coughing up full flowers, they've got only a few months left without intervention. "Oh," she says, her voice now small and meek.

It's scary, I know. Trust me when I say the surgery is the best option.

The kettle starts to whistle, so Perry takes it off the stove and pours the hot water into their mugs. Candace sits down at the table and starts to eat. "So there's really nothing else you can do?"

Nothing I can do at this point without making it worse. I suppose if he liked me back then it would be different, but I can't influence that.

A lightbulb goes off in Candace's head. Maybe uncle Perry can't ask this guy about it...but she can. She can convince this guy that Perry would be the best boyfriend ever!

"Tell me about this guy." She'll need some information if she wants to find him.

Well, Perry says, handing Candace her mug, he's got brown hair, blue eyes, and he's about six foot two, although he slouches.

Perry's watch goes off, and Candace groans internally. He always has to go to work at the worst times. "What's his name?"

For a brief moment, Perry looks conflicted. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, he signs.

"Doofenshmirtz like the mayor?"

Perry nods, drinking most of his tea in one gulp. I have to leave.

"Evil never rests, I know." Perry smiles. "Don't worry, I'll make sure nothing explodes while you're gone."

Perry smiles. See you later.

Candace nods and waves. As soon as Perry is in the garage, she puts her bowl of cereal in the sink and darts up the stairs. She grabs her purse out of her room and puts her phone and earbuds in it. She's about to go back down the stairs when she gets another idea.

She has a whole lot of pictures of Jeremy- and she didn't even have Hanahaki. Uncle Perry has to have a picture of his crush somewhere. That will help narrow down the search.

Carefully, she pulls her Ducky Momo 33rd Anniversary Commemorative lock pick out of her purse and picks the lock on the door to his room. She feels a little weird, but this is a love or death situation.

The lock opens with a click, and she opens the door.

The room is about what she expected. Neat, for the most part. There's a stack of cheesy romance novels on the bedside table, a bookmark in one. On his desk, there's a tall stack of paperwork. Several papers are stamped with Classified in red ink, but Candace ignores them. She has other things to look for.

She opens the top drawer of the desk. Pens, sticky notes, and paper clips. The next drawer down holds envelopes, a Classified stamp, and a red ink pad.

The bottom drawer is locked. Once again, her Ducky Momo lock pick comes in handy.

In the drawer is what looks like a grappling hook, a strange red disk, and a green box.

Candace picks up the grappling hook and the disk and puts them on the desk. Gingerly opening the box, she finds it stuffed full of immaculately cleaned white roses, with a few pictures along the sides.

She looks at the pictures first. Each one has uncle Perry with the same guy. A slouching man with brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in a lab coat.

This must be the guy. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

But where would she find him? The only connection she knows is that uncle Perry works with him.

That's it. She'll just follow uncle Perry to work. Candace puts one of the pictures and a few of the fresher roses into her purse. On second thought, she adds the grappling hook and the red disk.

She can hear Perry's motorcycle revving in the garage. She closes the drawer, then runs out of Perry's room and down the stairs.

Candace opens the garage door and wheels her bike out. Thank god for Phineas and Ferb outfitting it with rocket boosters, she'll need them to catch up with Perry's motorcycle.

She only makes it to the end of the driveway before she hears a very loud, scary sounding bang come from the backyard. Despite her new mission, her boys-busting senses tell her to investigate.

Nearly trampling Baljeet, she dashes to the gate and throws it open. "What was that?" she demands.

Phineas grins. "It's our new rivet gun! Isn't it cool?"

"Pfft. It's a rivet gun. How cool can it be?"

Ferb merely rivets another piece of metal, producing a similar bang. "Very cool, Candace, very cool," Phineas says.

"Whatever." Candace rolls her eyes and jogs back around the front of the house to her bike. She pedals down to the first stop sign before she realizes that uncle Perry is long gone by now. She'll never be able to catch up to him.

Maybe there's another way she can find his crush. How many Doofenshmirtzes are there in Danville? This Heinz might be related to Mayor Doofenshmirtz somehow.

Downtown Danville, here she comes.

~~~

Candace makes it to City Hall in twenty minutes. She locks her bike to the rack outside and walks in.

"How may I help you?" the bored-looking receptionist asks.

"I'd like to talk to Mayor Doofenshmirtz?" Candace asks.

"Name?"

"Candace Flynn."

"He'll be free in a few minutes. You can wait here." The receptionist points to a small waiting area.

"Thank you," Candace says, and she sits down.

What a day. And it's not even close to being over.

Her phone rings. It's Jeremy. She picks it up right away.

"Hey Jeremy," she says.

"Hey Candace," he says. "I was wondering if you wanted to hang out later today?"

Candace thinks. Yeah, hanging out with Jeremy would be great, but she has a mission. "Sorry, but I'm doing something for uncle Perry today. I might be able to do something tomorrow, though."

Jeremy laughs. "You're such a good niece. See you tomorrow?"

"See you tomorrow."

"Love you."

"Love you." Candace ends the call with a click.

Vanessa Doofenshmirtz walks in the door. "Hey Candace."

"Hi Vanessa," Candace says. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I wanted to talk to uncle Roger. He's probably busy, though. What about you?"

"I was waiting to do the same thing. Waiting to talk to the Mayor, at least. He's not my uncle."

"Really." Candace nods. "I don't know if he'll talk to you, he's always crazy busy."

Candace sighs. Maybe this lead won't work out after all.

Except...Vanessa Doofenshmirtz. Related to Roger. Is she related to Heinz?

"So why are you here?" Vanessa asks.

Candace pulls one of the pictures out of her purse, as well as one of the roses. "My uncle Perry," she points at Perry, "has Hanahaki for this guy," she points at the other man, "Heinz Doofenshmirtz. I wanted to ask the mayor, since they have the same last name. Do you know him?"

"Know him?" Vanessa laughs. "He's my dad."

Candace's eyes grow wide. "Your dad? That's perfect! Do you know if your dad likes my uncle? Like, like-likes him?"

Vanessa looks at the flower in Candace's hand. "I'm pretty sure he does, but you'd have to ask him directly."

Another lead. Perfect. "Where is your dad?"

Vanessa shrugs. "Probably at Blueprint Heaven. He's kind of an inventor."

"Thanks so much."

"I should warn you though, he's kind of cold. He'll probably just shrug you off."

Candace shrugs. "I'm not worried."

"Okay, then good luck."

Candace jumps out of her seat. "Thanks, Vanessa. See you later." She stuffs the photo and the rose back in her purse, then walks out the door. She unlocks her bike from the rack and hops on it. Thankfully, Blueprint Heaven isn't too far.

Her legs are burning by the time she makes it to the blueprint store. She peeks inside, watching as a slouching man with brown hair, wearing a lab coat, purchases a few blueprints. That must be him.

As the man leaves the shop, she puts out her arm.

"Hey, watch it, kid," the man says.

"I have something to ask you," Candace says. "Are you Heinz Doofenshmirtz?"

"That's Doctor Doofenshmirtz to you. And if you're selling those Fireside Girl cupcakes, I already bought two dozen."

Candace rolls her eyes and pulls the photo out of her purse. "I want to ask you about this picture."

The man pulls out a pair of reading glasses and studies the picture. "What do you want to ask me?"

Candace points at Perry. "Do you like-like this guy?"

"That's a rather strange question to ask, isn't it?"

"Danville's a strange place."

Dr. Doofenshmirtz shrugs. "You got me there. Y'know, he looks like this other guy I know." He points at the picture. "What's his name?"

"Perry," Candace says.

"Really? I, uh, work with a guy named Perry. Sort of. We're like, work rivals. He's really nice though, even if he doesn't talk much."

Candace's Busting Senses start to tingle. "I wonder if they're the same guy?"

Dr. Doofenshmirtz hums. "Maybe. It'd be just like him to be all mysterious and suave and all that." He pauses to cough into the arm of his lab coat. When he pulls his arm away, the sleeve is red and covered in petals. "Oh, come on, I just washed this one."

"You have Hanahaki?" Candace asks. "Can I see the flowers?"

He looks at Candace funny. "I guess? They're roses, white ones." He wipes one of the petals off on his lab coat and shows it to her. "You know, I googled the meaning, and they mean young love and innocence and all that stuff. I mean, it's like the last thing I'd relate with him."

"So your soulmate is your work rival," Candace clarifies.

"Awkward, right? Man, the universe really has it out to get me."

Candace merely nods along. This...inventor has the same flower as uncle Perry. Another strange coincidence. Or is it? Is there another Heinz Doofenshmirtz in the Tri-State area?

"Listen, it was great talking with you, but I kinda have to go to work now, so..."

Candace nods. "Nice meeting you."

"Likewise," Dr. Doofenshmirtz says, and he walks off down the road.

Hmm. Perry has Hanahaki for a guy named Heinz Doofenshmirtz that he works with. This Heinz (sorry, doctor) Doofenshmirtz has Hanahaki for a guy named Perry that he's work rivals with. Vanessa told her that her dad Heinz likes Perry, and Perry's got a picture of him with his crush Heinz.

They've got to be the same guys.

And they must be pining over each other.

What idiots. Uncle Perry said this was nothing like a romance novel, but it practically is.

Candace watches as Dr. Doofenshmirtz walks into the apartment building shaped like Ferb's head. The one that says Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated on its front...wait, what?

The final pieces click together. Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated. Perry always says "Evil never rests" when he runs off to work. This guy mentioned that he and Perry are work rivals. Could Perry be fighting this guy for work?

No wonder Perry didn't want to get with his crush. If they're on opposite sides of the great Good and Evil debate, dynamics change.

This just got a whole lot more interesting.

Candace is still getting them together. Secret relationships can work.

She sizes up the apartment building. A person on a jetpack flies up to the balcony, landing and disappearing from view. That must be Perry. She runs down the street and tugs on the door of the building.

Damn it, it's one of those buildings where the residents have to buzz people in. She doesn't have time to wait around for someone to let her in. There's got to be another way.

She looks into her purse. The red disk says "Standard Issue Glider" on the bottom, with a button. Good to know, but that won't work right now.

No, the thing she needs right now is the grappling hook. She's afraid of heights, but this will have to work. She's Candace Flynn, she can do whatever she puts her mind to. If that means grappling up the side of a forty-story building, so be it. It's worth it for love. She steps back, pulls the hook out of her purse, and aims it at the balcony.

Thankfully, she's still wearing her bike helmet. She fires the grappling hook towards the balcony. Once it sticks, she presses the button on the side and holds on for dear life. The building flashes by in a rush of purple, then she's landing on the balcony with a thud.

It seems that nobody inside noticed her stunt. Dr. Doofenshmirtz has his back to the balcony, and uncle Perry (in a 1940's fedora) is stuck in a net.

Yep, Good and Evil are clashing in this apartment-slash-lab.

She ducks behind a strange-looking planter. Thankfully, nobody's seen her. She needs a plan.

Maybe she could just go up to them and tell them about each other? No, that wouldn't work.

Throw them a paper airplane? She doesn't really have any paper, except for the photo.

Hmm. What about the roses? Both of them have the same flower, that might spur the connection along.

She peeks around the corner. Uncle Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz are fighting now, sparring as if they've done it a thousand times before. Candace bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from cheering.

Uncle Perry lands one more kick, then throws his hat across the room. It hits a big red button on the side of a machine, and the machine promptly explodes. Candace ducks to protect herself from the flying bits of metal.

However, instead of leaving, uncle Perry goes to help Dr. Doofenshmirtz up. They move to another part of the lab, where a small kitchen is. Dr. Doofenshmirtz pours them both glasses of water, handing one to uncle Perry.

Now's the time.

Candace carefully sneaks out of her hiding place. She pulls one of the roses out of her purse, aims, and throws. As soon as the flower leaves her hand, she ducks back behind the wall. After a second, she peeks back around the corner.

Both uncle Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz have tried to cover up the rose, thinking it's their own. They both look away from each other. Even from across the way, Candace can tell how flustered Perry's gotten.

She watches as uncle Perry says something, signing much faster than usual. She thinks she catches the signs for "Hanahaki", "love" and "rose", although it's hard to tell from this far away.

He finishes what he has to say and drops his hands into his lap. For twelve seconds (vintage Ducky Momo Awkward Silence Timer), nothing happens.

Then Dr. Doofenshmirtz grabs uncle Perry's tie, pulls him in, and kisses him.

It's all Candace can do to hold back a squeal.

When they part, neither make eye contact for six and a half seconds. Then Perry signs something, making Dr. Doofenshmirtz laugh. Perry leans up and places a short kiss on Dr. Doofenshmirtz's lips. Both men grin broadly.

Yeah, uncle Perry's going to be alright.

Candace pulls another one of the roses out of her purse and throws it at the couple, not bothering to hide this time. This one bounces off the back of Perry's head, causing him to look over at the balcony.

"Enjoy your romance novel ending," she shouts, a broad smile nearly splitting her face in two. Perry gets up from the counter and starts over towards her, a look of shock painted over his face. Candace merely pulls the red disk out of her purse, presses the button on the bottom, and watches as it expands into a red hang glider.

She winks and salutes, then kicks off the ledge to glide off the balcony.

As she glides over Danville, she grins. And uncle Perry said it wouldn't work out. Well, she just proved him wrong.

Something on the glider starts to beep. A tinny voice emanating from a hidden speaker starts to talk. "Warning. Unauthorized use of OWCA tech. Returning to base."

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Candace attempts to let go of the glider as it nears the ground, but cuffs clamp down around her wrists. A rocket engine pops out of the back and steers her in an unknown direction.

Fifteen minutes later, she finds herself in an underground bunker, being stared down by a man with an intimidating mustache and a scrawny intern with a camera. Uncle Perry stands in the background, his hands in his pockets and the beat-up fedora from earlier on his head.

The man with the mustache starts to speak. "Do you know what you've done?'

"I just saved uncle Perry's love life?" she guesses. Behind the intern, Perry shakes his head. Candace can see the amused smile on his face.

The mustached man sighs. "Not quite. Your uncle Perry is actually a top OWCA agent, and as such, his identity must be kept completely secret." Candace considers this. A secret agent, huh? That certainly explains the grappling hook and the hang glider.

Man, being a secret agent would be so cool.

"Candace Flynn," as you have compromised Agent P's position, your memory is going to be wiped."

"What, there's nothing else you can do?"

The intern speaks up. "We could relocate him to another continent, and you'd never see him again." Candace's eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. "Yeah, we figured you'd like the memory wipe option better."

"Anything else you'd like to say, Ms. Flynn?" the mustached man asks.

Candace thinks for a second. "I don't know, I think uncle Perry owes me something."

For a brief second, Perry looks confused. Then he smiles knowingly. Thank you, Candace.

"You're welcome. Now, hit me."

The green ray hits her square in the face, and her mind goes fuzzy.

~~~

Candace steps off the bus. Finally, the last day of school. Phineas and Ferb are throwing a party, and for some odd reason, she doesn't even want to bust them for it.

(That reason has nothing to do with the fact that Jeremy will be there. Nope, nothing at all.)

She runs up the stairs to her backpack down in her room, then runs back out into the backyard.

Phineas and Ferb have already set up rides, food, and of course, live music. Perks of middle school- they get out earlier.

Already, most of the neighborhood has shown up. It's starting to look like it's going to end up being a big block party.

Under the tree in the backyard, uncle Perry and some guy in a lab coat are talking. This must be his boyfriend. When Perry sees Candace, he waves her over.

Candace, I'd like you to meet someone very special to me.

#sam's fic #perry the platypus #perry the human #human perry #human perry the platypus #heinz doofenshmirtz #doctor doofenshmirtz #candace #candace flynn #pnf #phineas and ferb #perryshmirtz #fic #my fic #tw blood #blood #(there's not much)

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jettingtothemoon · 4 years ago

Text

'get to know me' tag game

Rules: answer the questions and tag people you'd like to get to know better.

Tagged by: @loki-noya11, i don’t usually do these on this account so i figured i’d give it a go. thank you for the tag!

Tagging: idk, anyone who wants to do it plus @danyzta, @excusemin, @ezralia-writes and @stabyomates. of course, none of you guys have to do this if you don’t want to ^-^

putting the questions under the cut because this could get long

What do you prefer to be called name-wise?

online - whatever you want to call me really. some just call me authornim although that’s mostly on ao3. others call me pluto and some call me kato if they know me personally or from my other blog. i don’t mind whichever you call me so take your pick or come up with something new entirely.

irl - kate or kato nickname wise so you can probably guess what my actual name is, or at least something close 🤷‍♀️

When is your birthday?

20th of september

En donde Vives?

spanish classes coming in handy here, i live in england ^-^

Three things you are doing right now:

1. listening to music

2. about to start writing

3. stressing about all my assignments that are due in january. the essay won’t write itself but like maybe it will if i leave it long enough? 😅 (at this rate i’m never gonna get my degree istg smh)

Four fandoms that have piqued your interest?

most currently, bungou stray dogs because that anime is so good and i’ve been missing out. literally in love with dazai, if i haven’t mentioned that before 😅

idk any more recent ones so i’ll state some present ones now i guess. firstly, i’m a my day, stan day6 for clear skin

also a once, stan twice

and of course, (ima put these two together because lets be honest, if you know my blog then you all know them already) castlevania and bnha

How has the pandemic been treating you?

i’m an introvert so being indoors was nice at first but now it’s suffocating. i miss my friends and family so much. we��ve also just gone into tier 4 where i live, which is another lockdown, so that’s fun. but i do have plenty of time to write, watch tv and play cyberpunk so it’s not so bad. although my brother and sister are literally driving me round the bend.

A song you can't stop listening to right now?

i’ve got two. jogging - lucy and cry to me - solomon burke. go listen to them both, they’re so good. although i’m sure 99.9% of you will have heard cry to me before, it’s a classic.

How old are you?

i’m 19 ^-^

School, univerisity, occupation, other?

fresher (first year) in university and professional freeloader so i can work on my writing in my free time😅

Do you prefer heat or cold?

i’ve decided i hate them both. i just want it to be a comfortbale warm. i’m either too hot and sweaty or freezing my tits off and I AM SICK OF IT. so please, weather, good ol’ mother nature, just chill out and let me live in peace.

Name one fact others may not know about you.

i wear glasses 🤷‍♀️

Are you shy?

yes and no because i’m pretty sure it’s just the social anxiety

Pronouns?

she / her

Biggest pet peeves?

plagiarism. if it’s not your work stop stealing it? this is mostly aimed at wattpad, specifically the graphic designers on there because trust me, the community is full of people who steal other’s work. but also at the people who steal writing and fanfics too, it hasn’t happened to me yet (as far as i know) but i have seen it happen and it really disappoints me about the online community. oh, and don’t even get me started on people who plagiarise and steal people’s original art work. no cool guys.

What is your favorite "dere" type?

bakadere. i love the ‘stupid/silly’ clumsy types. i guess they remined me of myself and they’re, more often than not, cute ^-^

Rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be.

8 maybe? i’m pretty good at ignoring the things that would get me down and just cranking up the music to keep my spirits lifted. i’m also really enjoying university atm, even if it’s a lot of hard work, because i’m studying something i love. there are obviously things that suck atm, mostly to do with the pandemic and other family things but mostly i’m pretty happy despite how this year has gone.

What's your main blog?

i have two. this one for my anime fics/stuff and @katobobato for anything and everything kpop related.

List your side blogs and what they're used for.

@plutoficrecs - mostly anime-related fic recommendations. @plutoreblogs - for me to reblog things that aren’t necessarily related to my main blog. (keeps my main nice and tidy). @katobobatoedits - edits and things, although i haven’t used it much recently. @katoficrecs - mostly kpop-related fic recommendations.

Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends?

i’m really friendly (at least that’s how i aim to come off) and love making new friends so feel free to drop into my inbox or even my pms if you want to ask me anything or have a chat. but i don’t deal with anyone who is hateful, rude, or disrespects/discriminates against anyone else. so please don’t contact me if you’re racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.

well, that’s everything so thanks if you actually read this far 😊

#tag game

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liskantope · 6 years ago

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During the last few months, I read through the the entire archive of Luann comics from 1985 to the present day, as it’s freely available through GoComics. Don’t judge me. Or do judge me, I don’t care. Luann is entertaining and nostalgic (at least the period from the late 90′s through 2006 or so when I was regularly following the strip in the newspaper). Some thoughts below. (I actually wanted to write this a month and a half ago when I had just finished and everything was fresher on my mind, but that’s when holidays and all my distractions hit. This turned out to be very long and I’m not sure if any of my followers is actually interested in a review of Luann, but if anyone wants to scroll down to the final bulletpoint, that is a bit less Luann-specific and more on the lines of my usual discourse topics.)

Never mind bulletpoints; some of these are too long to be easily readable without breaking up into paragraphs!

1) I was impressed, almost all the way through, with how much sexuality is conveyed in the dialog and relationships between the characters while somehow staying within the content restrictions for a newspaper comic. (I do recall back around 2000 a particular comic coming under fire because the dialog between Luann’s parents implied that they didn’t wait for marriage, one which I was able to identify this time around.) I think Luann possibly has the most sexuality in it of any newspaper comic I’ve come across.

2) I understand that daily comic strip artists typically have to do their Sunday comics some six weeks more ahead of publication than their non-Sunday comics, resulting in each Sunday strip usually having nothing to do with the story happening in its neighboring strips. Luann consistently seems to be an exception to this, where either the cartoonist is able to follow a schedule of drawing the Sunday strips contemporaneously with the rest or he is extraordinarily good at planning a further six weeks in advance what will be going on in the story by the time a given Sunday strip will come out. That said, while I remember being annoyed that my newspaper growing up didn’t include Luann in its Sunday comics section, I see now that I wasn’t missing all that much: the Sunday strips are still mostly independent, shallow gags that often look like they could have been carried out just as easily and more space-efficiently in a daily strip.

3) Luann’s relationship with her brother Brad, which was clearly meant to reflect a classic snarky sibling dynamic, went further with the insults, name-calling, complete reluctance to acknowledge caring feelings, and occasionally outright malicious behavior than I was comfortable with (until recent years when this has simmered down now that they’re more fully grown up). Are typical siblings really treat each other by default in such an antagonistic and adversarial manner? I appreciate that I had an idyllic relationship with my sister growing up -- I mean really the closest to ideal of any siblings I’ve known -- but I wouldn’t have thought that the norm was really closer to Luann and Brad.

4) On the flip side, there’s another aspect of Luann’s life with her immediate family which strikes me as probably healthier than what I imagine as the default: the openness with which she and Brad air all their personal trials and tribulations to their parents. Luann in particular is often venting about her crushes (especially her main crush, Aaron Hill, always referred to with his full name) and coming to her parents for support over whatever teenage-style drama she’s caught up in. I suppose the fact that I didn’t feel free to be open about these types of things with my parents has much more to do with me than with them: I’ve always been neurotic about open discussion of certain things, especially my romantic interests or feelings of sexual attraction, and was somewhat more so as a teenager than now. (It would take a much longer post than this to pick apart this neurosis.) I remember actually getting into an argument with my parents over whether it’s within a normal kid-parent dynamic to mention at dinner “I met/saw the most attractive girl today!” with me convinced that it wasn’t. I have to concede that the Luann universe (fictional, but clearly based on the cartoonist’s impression of reality) is a point in their favor.

All that said, I would think that Luann might have felt kind of silly blabbering so much about her obsession with Aaron Hill to her family members (not to mention her school guidance counselor!) knowing on some level that it must come across as immature. Yet, in writing this I’ve remembered that I did plenty of blabbering as a young teenager to my family about whatever Interests I was obsessed with at the time, in a way that I kinda-sorta knew was immature but not enough to stop me... but that just wouldn’t have included romantic or sexual feelings. Also, the desire or ability to feel comfortable sleeping on the sofa in the middle of my family doing things (as Brad is constantly seen doing) is utterly foreign to me, but that touches on another of my neuroses.

5) This strip has obviously changed a lot over its nearly 34 years of syndication, which shows most obviously and superficially in the vast improvement in drawing style. In terms of content and stories it changed a lot too, and I think in a very positive direction. In fact, if I hadn’t known that it would improve in this way, I don’t think I would have bothered getting through all of the first decade of Luann. The basis for Luann in its early years was simple gags meant to reflect life of a typical teenage girl in a typical nuclear family. But there was something very pessimistic about all of it: the lives of the DeGroots, each entrenched in their roles as mother, father, teenage daughter, and teenage son, seem weary and at times slightly on the dysfunctional side. The strip could have practically be titled “The Woes of the Modern Middle-Class Nuclear Family”. It predated but was rather similar to The Simpsons in this way. Moreover, Luann, depicted as an awkward and not very attractive 13-year-old, seemed hopeless in all of the Average Teenage Girl ways, including hating everything about school; not really excelling at anything in school or out; being constantly wrapped up in spending hours on the phone with the same two friends; and never, ever, ever being able to get her the object of her long-time super-obsessive crush, Aaron Hill, to so much as glance in her direction (this theme was dwelt on ad nauseum for over a decade to the point that it got extremely tiresome and I’m surprised I got through that period; maybe what got me through was occasional acknowledgments in the voices of Luann’s friends that this obsession was over-the-top and getting pretty old).

And yet... Luann has grown up into a beautiful and talented woman with ambitions and a number of dating relationships under her belt, and the DeGroots are now held up as an example of a really admirable and healthy family (one that TJ clearly wants as his own family). While Brad’s transformation from teenage slob who lay around and ate Oreos all day into a happily married, responsible, and fit fireman is openly remarked upon, the drastic change in the ethos of the strip as a whole isn’t explicitly acknowledged. Of course the evolution happened very gradually, but if I had to point to a single turning point, my choice would be obvious: things began to drastically turn around for Luann in early 1997 when she bared her feelings to Aaron Hill by giving him a scroll containing all her memories of him (a move that would be considered obsessive and stalker-ish in another context but which finally won his attention here).

6) I think there’s a sort of trope, which the Luann character exemplifies about midway through the strip’s history, where she’s supposed to continue representing the insecure girl who feels unattractive and unpopular so that people can relate to her, while at the same time she seems to constantly attract boys (most of whom she considers really hot) and gets dates with them, so as to make for more interesting stories. I got annoyed at times at how these two things seemed to be in tension. At one point, if I remember right, Luann had no fewer than four of the boy characters super into her, including Aaron Hill even though she had temporarily decided she was through with him (this was unacknowledged later on when she went back to complaining that all those years she was in love with Aaron but he never truly noticed her). Other examples of this trope perhaps include Gus Cruikshank and George Costanza.

7) I would feel amiss if I didn’t put in a word about the Gunther character here. He’s my favorite character in the particular sense of reminding me extraordinarily of myself. If Butters from South Park is the most similar animated cartoon character to me (at least in the opinion of some friends), then Gunther Berger is, a hundred times more so, the most similar comic cartoon character to me. Not only do most of his personality traits match almost perfectly with mine (although I’m not as good with kids and don’t know anything about costume-making), his physical appearance is strikingly similar to mine, especially the way I looked as a teenager (plaid shirts and all). In fact, I sometimes wonder if, had there been (say) a call for auditions for a Luann movie back when I looked slightly younger, I might have had a decent shot at winning the part due to my physical similarity to Gunther -- I’m not an amazing actor, but there’s not nearly as much acting involved when you’re basically playing yourself.

One of the rather negative aspects of the early Luann ethos for me is not only the mildly negative way that Gunther was portrayed as the stereotypical socially-inept nerd but the level of disdain Luann treats him with (despite her own insecurities) which she’s only occasionally called out on. I’m glad to see that Gunther soon became one of the most likeable and admirable characters in the strip. Rather than feel ashamed of our likeness, I see him as reflecting some of the best parts of me and, when it comes to standing up and speaking his mind, an inspiration for me to be better.

8) Luann, throughout its history, addresses stereotypical norms, particularly with regard to gender, in an interesting (although not at all unusual) way. Let’s first keep in mind that the strip and main characters were established in 1985. The original intent of the cartoonist was clearly to portray middle-class nuclear family life, with a special focus on teenage girlhood, as honestly and relatably as he knew how. This meant in particular making each member of the DeGroot family a sort of every(wo)man: Frank is the typical father, the main breadwinner, always the one to worry about money (and the parent to go to when one of the kids wants money or something expensive), and taking a backseat with housework; Nancy is the typical mother, more emotive, burdened with all the housework and daily discipline of her kids; Brad is the typical older teenage boy, a lazy slob with little regard for cleanliness or manners spending all his time either being a couch potato or working on his car; and Luann is the typical 13-year-old girl, hating school and obsessed with boys, shopping, fashion, and talking on the phone. The strip positively revels in stereotypes (especially once we add the blonde cheerleader “mean girl” Tiffany, the unattractive nerd Gunther, and the goof-off Knute). A particular theme is gender stereotypes; in fact, it felt like a good 50% of Luann’s non-story strips, particularly Sunday ones, revolved around the differences between the genders. All of this looks pretty tiresome now and was probably tiresome already back in the 80′s.

And at the same time, the cartoonist was clearly socially progressive and a feminist (at least in the old-school sense) from the start. He made many points about the particular burdens women face and wrote many sympathetic strips about how Nancy willingly did all the housework and cooking but was expected to by default and felt unappreciated because her work went unacknowledged by everyone else. There’s a lot of focus on how the fashion industry puts pressures on teenage girls and women and how women should free themselves from basing their self-worth on how their looks compare to other women’s and on what boys think of them. In fact, the artist very deftly points out the tension between Luann’s awareness of this unreasonableness and her desire to be superficially attractive and objectified by boys anyway!

What reads as a tiny bit strange about all of this -- but only from a very modern point of view, I think -- is that all of these stereotypes are remarked upon and criticized while still being exemplified by pretty much every single character and everything they do. (Compare to Zits, debuting in 1997, where the father, a rather sweet, huggy, un-stereotypically masculine character, is shown doing the laundry from early on.) I get why someone would go with that formula, because as I said it seems at least naively like the best way to maximize relatability, but it comes at the expense of creating a subtle tension and not fully promoting the intended messages. I believe this underscores a fundamental distinction between a bare anti-conformist message and anti-conformist representation and suggests that representation as a social justice concept just wasn’t a big thing back in the 80′s and 90′s in the way it (fortunately) is today.

#luann #comics section #sexuality #sibling relationships #sex casuality #personal quirks #the simpsons #love (netflix show)#Seinfeld #south park

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nationalpark-rp · 7 years ago

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Announcement: New Changes!

Hello everyone! Your lovely mods are back at it again with some wonderful new changes for our group. These changes will take effect immediately, and across both the National Park and National Park MORE. Please give us a few minutes of your time as we explain further.

ON THE NATIONAL PARK HUB…

First let’s talk about some changes that are happening on the hub! If you haven’t noticed, people are posting memes nearly every day. And that’s because there are no meme days! That’s right! We’ve officially removed meme days! Now you can post and reblog memes whenever you want. While memes do not count towards activity, we nevertheless encourage you to participate whenever you’re able. Get to know your fellow members and their characters! Have fun!

Please note that although we are removing meme days, this is still a preliminary trial. We’re testing the waters to see if having no specified meme days is the best way to go. We therefore suggest that you keep the amount of memes you reblog on any given day to a select few; you have plenty of time to participate in memes throughout the week. We’re prepared to step in if things get crazy, but we’re positive we won’t have to do that. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!

The next thing we’d like to bring to your attention is our suggestion box! We’ve had our suggestion box for a while, but let’s be real: who knows what to say on those things? You might lean one way or another with how you feel towards what’s going on, but when actually faced with writing something? Nope! Your mind’s gone completely blank!

Here’s what’s different: we’ve created a survey to alleviate all that tension! This survey is completely voluntary, so you are by no means obligated to complete it. We ask that you participate in this survey so that we the mods can better understand our members, and to pinpoint what exactly you all are looking for with this group. The National Park is your group as well as ours. You deserve a say in our present and future.

You can access our survey by going to this link here. It will also be available during every Activity Check from this point on.

ON NATIONAL PARK MORE…

The hub isn’t the only thing that is getting refreshed! The MORE blog is, too! But don’t worry, we are not getting rid of our character request—those are staying. In fact, we encourage them. So if you have a character you’re just dying to see, please feel free to request to your heart’s content! We recommend that you request one (1) character at a time to give us an opportunity to process it. You can request characters on either the hub or the MORE blog.

And do you remember our character development prompts? I sure do. In its current iteration, we have only posted two such prompts, but they just didn’t seem to be getting as much attention as we’d hoped. We brought them into fruition so that everyone could indulge in exploring more character development with their muses, but we’ve since learned that the way we went about it was wrong. So we’re trying something different. We’re keeping these character development prompts, but this time… they’re in meme form.

You heard it here first! I meme, you meme, we all scream for development memes! With these character development memes, we’re going to bring all the fun of bragging about our characters with the giggling hysterics (or wailing sobs) of memery. It’s going to be a great time. We hope that this new format will give you a better experience when exploring your characters.

We’ve saved the most important news for last. When we first created the MORE blog, we intended for it to be a place where we further the hub’s creations. We started this by our positivity quotes and with our character requests, later followed up with our character development prompts. After much deliberation, we’ve decided to remove positivity quotes from the MORE blog. While they were a good idea—as positivity and inspiration is something we all need in our lives—we feel that we can do something so much more with the blog.

Instead, we’ve decided to add something even more special in its place! Continuing our mission to spread love and hope to our members, we’ve decided to revamp it with something fresher, something better. Something where we can brag about the people we love most. Something like… a member of the month (MOTM) feature.

Now this is my favorite part. These features will highlight one member, and we the group will talk about how great they are. We’ll discuss how they write their characters, and everything that makes them fun and unique. We’ll be using these features to appreciate all of our members and what they do for our group. It truly is you guys who make our group so great.

How this will work is simple: you’ll submit the name(s) of the people you feel best deserve to be nominated for the month’s MOTM feature. Tell us why you think they should be selected, and everything about what makes them wonderful. We want to hear it all, because that’s what we’ll use in our feature. The member with the most votes will win that month’s feature.

There isn’t any criteria for someone to be nominated as MOTM. Everyone is eligible right from the get-go. Should there be no names submitted, we the mods will choose the member who receives that month’s MOTM feature. And even if you don’t happen to get it, that doesn’t mean you’re any less special or important to us. Everyone is fantastic in their own way. We should celebrate our fellow group members rather than be jealous of them.

AND SO…

And that’s it! Meowth-mod and myself have been working diligently to keep the National Park running smoothly. We’re going to try new ideas and events to encourage you all, too. Branch out a little. Get outside of the stereotypical roleplay group box. We don’t want our group to be just like all the others. We want to stand out. We want to be remembered. And you, my dear, sweet, beloved members, are a huge part of that. Every minute we spend with you is such a blessing. We truly are humbled that we can write with you all.

That’s all for now. We’ll see you next month for another MOTM feature and the brand-new Winter Event.

~ from your loving mods ❤

#natpark announcements

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reactingtosomething · 8 years ago

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Reacting to Supergirl: “Resist”

Cat Grant Has Never Sat in an Alley in Her Fabulous Life

The Setup: Kris and Miri love Supergirl. And all of us here at Reacting to Something believe in being critical of the media you love. Expect plenty of both those things in our gif-iest Reaction yet (#sorrynotsorry it’s NOT OUR FAULT they cast people with THESE FACES).

As always, post-chat annotations are in italics, and you can click on our names up here to get a sense of where we’re coming from as both writers and reactors.

KRIS: Ready whenever you are

MIRI: Ready!

KRIS: It’s a little fresher for you (but I’m hopping back through it now) -- first impressions?

MIRI: FEELINGS

many of them

I watched the last two eps back to back, so I’m probably going to mix up what happened when a bit

I like it

*liked

I liked getting to see Cat Grant again, obviously

KRIS: Yes

MIRI: I’m glad the payoff for President Lynda Carter being an alien wasn’t She’s a Secret Bad Guy!!

KRIS: “At least tell me you’re still a Democrat”

MIRI: Hahahahah

Shall we get right into the politics?

KRIS: We’ll definitely have to find a gif or photoset of Cat’s stoner recollections

MIRI: YES

KRIS: Sure let’s do it

MIRI: Overall I liked them

I don’t know if Supergirl always hits the marks on some of their political statements

KRIS: Cat’s big return speech was a little rough for me

MIRI: Such as the accidentally painful “Can’t believe anyone voted for the other guy” line right after the election

And the whole Girl Power speech in the pilot

I very much agree about the return speech

BUT overall I thought it worked this time

KRIS: It was silly in a gender essentialist way, though I guess I do buy that from Cat

MIRI: Agreed

And I think you were the one to point out early last season that some of the reason the feminism is so bite sized consumable may be for the benefit of a younger audience, which I think should be considered

The whole ‘we will get this done because that’s what we do’ thing worked for me, and the line about the Future is Female t-shirt

KRIS: For me there was an unfortunate (and I’m sure completely unintentional) Trump parallel when Cat was like “I can talk down these celebrities so I bet we can also make peace between our warring peoples”

MIRI: Shit, that’s a good/gross point

Didn’t even think about that

Unfortunate

Cat’s later speech that was sooo clearly anti Trump tickled me.

KRIS: Although again I guess I could buy that sort of thing from Cat

I did like that one

MIRI: How did you feel about the episode title?

M: I knew I’d screw up which ep we were talking about at some point--I meant “Nevertheless She Persisted” when I asked this question. Kris responded as if I had asked about the episode we were actually discussing at the time, “Resist.”

KRIS: Hmm

Let’s say I found it on-brand

Didn’t hate it

MIRI: Say more

KRIS: Wouldn’t have missed it if they’d gone less on-the-nose, but it’s a look Supergirl can pull off

MIRI: I’d agree with both points

KRIS: (Watching Cat’s first speech now and I do like her criticizing Rhea’s tiara)

(felt the right kind of Cat pettiness)

MIRI: I think I’m inclined to be a little generous with their political attempts because I know somewhat where Melissa Benoist’s opinions fall

KRIS: I do wonder how anyone on Air Force One expected that call to end?

MIRI: Which is not really a fair way to judge things, but oh well

KRIS: The look on Cat’s face when Rhea cuts off the call does not say “I planned for this”

MIRI: Yeah, there was no good outcome there, and I don’t entirely buy that they thought there would be

Also, the show kind of glosses over the presumed deaths of everyone else on that plane

KRIS: Yeah, in a world where Supergirl had a higher budget I would have loved a version of the Iron Man 3 rescue, which is my favorite superhero set piece of the last decade

K: Maybe ever. For me the only other real contender is the space shuttle/airplane rescue in Superman Returns. But what’s so great about IM3 is the group effort. They get to help save each other! Tony needs them as much as they need him! Plus those are real skydivers! Doing a real skydive!

MIRI: Exactly

KRIS: But anyway yeah, on balance I’m pretty good with our network superhero dramas going political

I don’t think you’re caught up on SHIELD but I’m sure you’ve heard their last arc this season was great on many levels

MIRI: Yeah, I think it’s working more than it isn’t

I actually haven’t heard much about it! Can you give me the broad strokes?

AGENTS OF SHIELD SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

KRIS: Most All of the regulars get stuck in a really really advanced VR simulation where Melinda May never killed the Inhuman girl in Bahrain

MIRI: Whoa

KRIS: which results in a horrific Stateside massacre, and the rise of Hydra in place of SHIELD

Only Daisy and Jemma go in in their right minds, and they have to win everyone over

K: May and Fitz are both in Hydra leadership and it’s very upsetting

M: WHAT???!?!?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

MIRI: Noo we have too many Nazis in real life, I don’t want any more fictional ones

KRIS: The Inhumans are used as a rough parallel for immigration

MIRI: (at least Shield admits that they are Nazis)

Oh, that sounds effective

KRIS: Yeah, there’s a part where Coulson (as a brainwashed schoolteacher) corrects a student by saying “but Hydra’s been around for centuries, they can’t be Nazis”

and later Jemma tells that kid “They’re all Nazis, every single one of them, don’t let anyone tell you different”

MIRI: 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

KRIS: There’s also a Plausible Redemption of Grant Ward (to borrow one of your hashtags) because the simulation’s version was trained by Victoria Hand instead of Garrett

AGENTS OF SHIELD SPOILERS END HERE

Anyway back to Supergirl

Sorry readers

We like all of the superhero things

MIRI: Sorry not sorry

Wonder Woman reaction coming soon!

KRIS: You know who’s great? Katie McGrath.

MIRI: Katie McGrath is excellent!

I really liked her an Chris Wood (this is Mon-El’s name, yes??) playing off each other

KRIS: Yeah, that was fun

K: They’re such an interesting pair. I suspect Wood works harder than most of us can tell, but it can often seem like all he's asked to do is just kind of show up and be Charming. Whereas McGrath is like, so clearly Such a Good Actor -- one of the very best on the show, I think -- without the performance feeling like #ACTING. And she can really work a close-up. She almost doesn’t need dialogue to convey everything Lena thinks and feels. Some of this is that Lena’s a much richer character than Mon-El, and some of it is that dialogue has never been a particular strength of this show anyway, but still. Damn.

MIRI: And she does nobly wounded SO well

KRIS: Excellent description

I also enjoyed that Lena and Mon-El had no interpersonal baggage

MIRI: Agreed

KRIS: We’re suckers for mutual respect and affection, contra lots of our screenwriting training

MIRI: hahahahahahhaa

That is very true

Ok, I liked the Lena and Mama Luthor stuff

KRIS: But this scene I’m watching now of Alex being the Good Soldier is a good way to give the A-story a conflict between two of our leads

Oh yeah, that honestly worked better than I might’ve expected

MIRI: And I have to admit that I like that it’s not a dude with father issues. Dear everyone: if you just have women in your stories you can reuse so much crap and have it feel fresh! Same with queer people and POC!

Yes, let’s talk more about Alex!

And not just because I love Alex

KRIS: Alex jumping off a balcony

MIRI: I do love Alex

YEs!

I love that they have a plan for that

Her hesitating to use the weapon was very well played

KRIS: I think we agree with the rough critical consensus that Alex has been the highlight of the season

MIRI: Accurate

Chyler Leigh and her eyes can pull off just about anything

KRIS: I’ve been really impressed with how both Alex and Kara have had arcs involving their rebellions against authority and/or rules that end with them being something other than just The Loose Cannon Who Is Correct

K: You’ll learn a lot about My Least Favorite Tropes today, dear reader

Alex’s poor interrogation techniques

Alex’s blind trust of her father

They weren’t just played as “Alex is Right, Root for Alex!”

which I would have expected in the season 1 version of this show

MIRI: very true, and too rare in a lot of superhero/law enforcement media

KRIS: Or most network shows

YES

MIRI: Sidebar: Alex’s interrogation techniques are Extreme Violence and sharing hamburgers with no in between

Which is not ok

KRIS: (I’ve also enjoyed this about Skye/Daisy over the years but again I digress)

MIRI: But is also great and so her

KRIS: Yeah

I guess it’s worked in part because J’onn has been so well established as Space Dad

MIRI: I ❤️ Space Dad!

KRIS: Basically every conflict between series regulars ends up being pretty fair-handed because they’ve given everyone space to develop

MIRI: Yes, it was a nicely plotted last ep (or last 2 eps)

KRIS: And not fair-handed in a False Middle Road kind of way, but in an Everyone Means Well kind of way even if one of them is more wrong than the other

K: Caroline Siede has written a lot this season about both the virtues and the drawbacks of how Supergirl has fleshed out its non-Kara characters. What I was trying to get at here was that J’onn, for example, because he’s gotten B-stories and even an A-story or two of his own, is immediately easy to empathize with even when he does something like disguise himself as Alex’s dad to bait her into admitting her willingness to defy her orders. (He was right, incidentally, and like Allison Shoemaker I feel strongly that he should not have apologized.) Maggie in “Alex” is another strong example of someone other than Kara or Alex getting to be right for most of the episode. Even Snapper, in “Exodus,” though that was less about affection for the character and more about the writers generally being better at these dynamics, I think, than Arrow or especially The Flash.

MIRI: I am (obviously) all fluttery over Alex and Maggie getting engaged, but the real world cynic in me is a little concerned that they have not known each other long enough for this. Thoughts?

KRIS: I don’t know yet either. It’s also hard to compartmentalize the metatextual knowledge that Floriana Lima is only a recurring guest next year (I guess they originally only planned for Maggie to be around for one season? so she was already looking for other gigs)

MIRI: Ahhhhh I didn’t know that

Awkward

KRIS: I’m hoping that means a low-conflict buildup to the wedding, as opposed to a protracted breakup arc

MIRI: BITE YOUR TONGUE

Don’t even put that possibility out there, Miranda

M: Upon reflection, I don’t actually know if Alex and Maggie need to be endgame (DON’T AT ME, TUMBLR). I have a lot of emotional attachment to Alex’s coming out arc, which I refused to believe they were actually going for (until it was basically stated outright) out of sheer self defense. I have been burned by queerbaiting before. An unfortunate factor of the lack of queer relationships on screen is that those that exist carry more weight than the average story arc, which can limit storytelling.

MIRI: We have not yet discussed Superman

KRIS: Let’s stay on Cat for awhile

MIRI: Ok

KRIS: Mostly because I’m watching this alley pep talk scene

MIRI: Are you just straight up rewatching the ep as we talk?

KRIS: skipped around a little, paused a little

MIRI: Ok

What are your thoughts on the alley pep talk scene?

KRIS: On a superficial level I like how well it works even with this very not-Cat staging

MIRI: Cat Grant has never sat in an alley in her fabulous life

(Although she was a stoner in college. Who knows? She contains multitudes)

KRIS: And I guess it’s deliberate-ish given her story about the yurt

Cat Grant Has Learned What Really Matters

MIRI: I did like that performance from Flockhart

KRIS: which is a mini-arc that I think works surprisingly well for having sat out so much of the season

MIRI: I am always pleasantly surprised when shows are able to use external circumstances (like shooting schedules and being in Vancouver) to good effect

When the show moved to the CW it also moved to Vancouver. Flockhart was not willing to move out for such a large portion of the year, thus her reduced episode count.

KRIS: I’m often ambivalent about Ethics Lessons in stuff like this

With Cat concluding here that Kara isn’t selfish to potentially put love over saving the world

BUT

MIRI: I think Kara more than most needs to hear that

KRIS: that Kara’s solution of working with Cadmus is then a compromise of an earlier moral hardline position complicates that beat for me -- which I would normally find a little lazy -- in a really good and interesting way

I guess that’s true

MIRI: I mean she still needs to save the world, like that’s definitely the right thing to do

But I think she needs to hear that wishing she didn’t have to do the right thing doesn’t make her less good

KRIS: Yeah, that’s interesting

I think I’ve subconsciously or not so subconsciously continued to have a low bar in my head for a lot of Supergirl’s storytelling

K: I wish this sounded less mean. Thematics in particular are what I tend not to have high expectations for, almost entirely because of heavy-handed Cat writing in the first third or so of season 1. But this season has generally been more solid in this respect, especially toward the end of Kara’s reporter arc.

M: As Kris stated at the top, we can be and often are critical of the things we love.

So I didn’t immediately expect Kara to find a Third Way

MIRI: ...it’s fairly merited

Although I think this season was less of a roller coaster than the first

KRIS: yeah, the highs weren’t as high but it was arguably more consistently solid

oh man I just accidentally clicked RIGHT to “Just be faster than me”

which is maybe the best line of the episode

MIRI: Nooooooo emotions!

Yes!

I think that’s where you see the core Danvers sisters relationship of this episode. They’re both going to do the right thing no matter how much it hurts them

But Kara has to make it

There’s no other option for Alex

M: Sister relationships will always be my kryptonite. (#sorrynotsorry for that one)

KRIS: I like the idea here that Alex, even though she hasn’t been the MOST rigorously professional this season, is trying to do what J’onn would do

And to an earlier point you made, I think this works better than it would have with a white (or I guess in J’onn’s case “white”) man authority figure

MIRI: Alex is definitely a true believer, in J’onn if not always in the DEO

KRIS: and I think this is true of J’onn’s general role in the cast as the Voice of Reason

MIRI: Good point!

KRIS: Like that’s such a Male Character archetype

But it doesn’t feel lazy here

MIRI: He can be paternal without being patriarchal, if that makes sense?

KRIS: Yeah, well put

Watching Cat’s Resist Speech now

Love Lena and Mon-El watching it

MIRI: Is that the anti-Trump one?

KRIS: yeah

MIRI: Hold on, I’m going to find it and watch too

KRIS: Katie McGrath does such good face acting

early-middle act 5

MIRI: bless you ❤️

KRIS: Fan mileage may vary but I think this speech works MUCH better than Kara’s speech at the end of season 1

MIRI: Ughhhh still watching commercials

Refresh my memory on that speech?

KRIS: I think it was a generally Hope-themed speech?

I mean I thought it was good

But it’s right on that edge of unreasonably optimistic earnestness

And on the page I think Cat’s speech here could be really self-congratulatory and valedictory but because it’s Cat, it’s got an edge to it that makes it feel ... not that way?

K: Still not sure how best to put this. I think it’s that even though her words lean toward “Go Get Em, Plucky Underdogs” (which is really not a theme I love, despite being a Star Wars fan), her tone is more “No One Gets to Sit This Out, So Get Your Shit Together”

MIRI: The Cat speech is post Rooftop battle, right?

Oh, how did you feel about the Kryptonite in the blood thing?

KRIS: Oh I’m still in Resist

It interrupts Rhea’s wedding ceremony

MIRI: ohhhh I thought you said act 5?

KRIS: Yeah

MIRI: The rooftop fight is the top of 5

KRIS: 5 in Nevertheless She Persisted

Cat’s speech is in Resist

MIRI: Ohhhhhhh I’m an idiot

I thought you were describing as the Resist speech, like it is about resisting

KRIS: I’ll look for Kara’s season 1 speech while you get there

MIRI: I forgot that the episode is called Resist

KRIS: Oh I did mean it that way, so you were not wrong

MIRI: hahahahahahahahaaaaa

M: I honestly just pinballed between both episodes in my head this whole time and it is thanks to Kris that any of this makes any sense.

KRIS: Okay so the conceit of Kara’s speech in the season 1 finale is that her appeal to everyone’s better angels, and the Power of Love, gets through Myriad and un-brainwashes everyone

K: Fucking Myriad

MIRI: Ohhhhhhh right

KRIS: in combination with the S taking over everyone’s screens

MIRI: Yeah, that’s conceptually a bit shlocky for me

KRIS: (which does work really well for Winn and James)

MIRI: I buy it in the personal cases

KRIS: they have these little flashback montages

MIRI: Not as much for the general public

KRIS: right

MIRI: But Melissa Benoist can sell a lot

KRIS: Child Kara Flashbacks always work on me

Red-Faced is not a good episode but it has a GREAT ending

MIRI: Whaaat?

You hate the children, though!

KRIS: I KNOW

MIRI: hahahahahaa

M: I think I care more about this than Kris, but I want to clarify that Kris does not hate children. He doesn’t super love them, though.

Mostly unrelated story: the first time Kris held our friend Karisa’s baby he was very uncomfortable and the baby cried. But then the next time, Kris was dramatically more comfortable. When asked why, he explained that he had realized that a baby human isn’t much smaller or more fragile than a puppy, and he had held puppies before.

KRIS: I guess Kara with Alura, specifically

as opposed to Growing Up on Earth flashbacks

MIRI: Right, that makes sense

KRIS: So obviously a big part of the reason Cat’s speech works so well is that it’s specific to a real-world moment

MIRI: I do like the idea that Kara lost more than Kal-El did (in some ways) because she can remember what she lost

Ok I’m almost to the Cat speech

KRIS: yeah

MIRI: I do love Cat’s “I can see his eyes” thing re: James/Guardian

KRIS: Which sets up that long-awaited Of Course She Knows payoff at the end of Nevertheless She Persisted

MIRI: Of course

I have gotten to the resist speech

KRIS: cool

MIRI: It is in no way subtle and I love that about it

They use Winn as an audience surrogate pretty effectively throughout. I like that

KRIS: Yes

I also love that Cat’s delivery stays sardonic and casual for 90 percent of the speech

MIRI: Yes!

KRIS: And she goes big for a second -- Not In My House -- but then she ends on a very Cat note

And I think a version of this speech delivered by Kara might’ve been just a touch heavy-handed for me

I mean I totally would have bought it, but I would have cringed a little too

I don’t know if I’m making much sense here

MIRI: Oh, definitely

No, I’m totally with you

Sometimes the pure Belief that Melissa Benoist pulls off so well is what we need, especially with all the Dark and Gritty out there

But sometimes things are so crap that you need a slightly more believable version

That’s a little darker and a little more lived in, but still belief

And that’s what Cat gives there

KRIS: Yeah

MIRI: It works both for the show and the state of the world

KRIS: Okay this Mon-El fight scene -- it’s not showy or anything but I love Lena’s blocking

Or I guess the way it’s shot to always focus on Mon-El but we still see what Lena’s doing

MIRI: Wait, where/when are we talking now?

KRIS: A little after the speech

in the hallway

MIRI: Oh, I paused to talk, so I’ll find it now

Lillian Luthor is such a bitch

KRIS: ha

MIRI: Yessss I love that little fight scene

She’s just so practical

Ok, I genuinely do want to talk about Superman at some point

KRIS: Okay I think I’m done with Resist now

MIRI: Wait, real quick--Lena hacking the ship with her tiara is great

Find our Reaction to the season finale, “Nevertheless, She Persisted,” here.

Coming soon: Wonder Woman.

#supergirl #kara danvers #alex danvers #cat grant #lena luthor #tv #superheroes #miri #kris #cat grant's trash throne #katie mcgrath's eyebrows #oh my god Kris typed the words Cat Grant's trash throne and I may never have loved him more #Kris and Miri's Women of DC Series #feminism #reaction

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weekendwarriorblog · 6 years ago

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND 8/17/18 – Crazy Rich Asians, Mile 22, Alpha and More

I’m going to do things a little different this week, because one of my absolutely favorites from Sundance is coming out this weekend, and after seeing it again last week, it’s probably going to end up in my Top 5 for the year, and that is…

JULIET, NAKED (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

I’ve been a fan of Nick Hornby’s writing for a very long time, but when I received a copy of his new book in 2009, I was immediately caught up in its story of a has-been musician, his diehard fan and his ignored wife. I was really excited to hear that it would be adapted by director Jesse Peretz, who had been making big waves (and got an Emmy nod) for directing shows like Girls, New Girl and GLOW. The general story revolves around Rose Byrne’s Annie, a woman living in a British seaside town married to Chris O’Dowd’s Duncan, an avid fan of an American singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. Duncan runs a website dedicated to his idol, but when he receives a previously unheard demo recording called “Juliet, Naked,” he gets into a squabble with Annie, because she is quite vocal about how much she hates it (mainly to get Duncan’s goat). When Duncan sleeps with a co-worker, Annie kicks him out, but then the real Tucker Crowe (played by Ethan Hawke) gets in touch with Annie (over her negative review of the rare demos), they begin a transatlantic correspondence that leads to them meeting and more. It’s another great story from Hornby in the vein of About a Boy and High Fidelity, one that creates an amazing portrait of this woman who feels she’s in a rut and how she connects with the famous musician who walked out of a concert 20 years earlier and has been raising a young son in upstate New York.

This is a fantastic romantic comedy from Peretz that’s produced by Judd Apatow and others with all-star writing team including Peretz’s sister Eugenia, Jim Taylor (Sideways) and his wife Tamara Jenkins (The Savages), who all did an amazing job adapting Hornby’s work.

Here’s my interview with Jesse Peretz over at NextBestPicture... Enjoy!

INTERVIEW WITH JESSE PERETZ

Juliet, Naked will open in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, expand to more cities next week and then hopefully be fairly wide on August 31.

But that isn’t the only Ethan Hawke movie this week, nope. The actor is having quite a good year indeed...

On top of that, Hawke’s latest film as a director, Blaze (Sundance Selects), will be released in Austin on Friday, as it slowly rolls out to arrive in New York City on September 6 and then in L.A. later in September.

Blaze tells the story of Blaze Foley, played by musician Ben Dickey, who was the lesser-known blues singer who collaborated with his friend Townes Van Zandt. Not knowing much about the Austin native, this is a fascinating film by Hawke that shows a lot of his dysfunctional relationship with his Jewish writer wife (and the film’s co-writer) Sybil Rosen, played by Alia Shakat (who is simply fantastic in the role). Musician Charlie Sexton pulls off a respectable version of Van Zandt, and look for cameos by the likes of Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Kris Kristofferson and Hawke’s long-time collaborator, Richard Linklater.

This is another great music-based film from Hawke, and a much better narrative feature than his earlier features, 2006’s The Hottest State and 2001’s Chelsea Walls. There’s also a connection between Foley and Hawke’s Juliet, Naked character, because the fictional Tucker Crowe similarly became the subject of urban legends after vanishing from the public eye following a concert. (Foley was actually killed in a scuffle after recording a live album at one of his club performances, which acts as the framing device for the film.)

And now, back to our previously scheduled wide releases, and how ironic that the proverbial “Dog Days of Summer” would begin last weekend with an actual movie called Dog Days, and it bombed? And a giant shark movie starring Jason Statham opened with almost $45 million… crazy times! Yeah, these last few weekends of August have never been known as a good time to release movies, and most movies that end up here are ones that studios just want to get off their coffers before their even slower fall months. That would normally be the case, but that is definitely not the case with…

CRAZY RICH ASIANS (New Line)

The first August anomaly is this romantic-comedy based on Kevin Kwan’s best-selling book, which is the first major studio movie since The Joy Luck Club25 years ago to feature a predominantly Asian cast. This one is about an Asian college professor who takes his Asian girlfriend to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding where she discovers that his family is super-rich and he’s a very in-demand bachelor.

The movie features an amazing cast that includes Constance Wu from the hit ABC sitcom Fresh off the Boat, veteran Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh, comic superstar Ken Jeong (Dr. Ken) as well as fresher talent like rapper Awkwafina, last seen in Ocean’s 8, Gemma Chan and newcomer Henry Golding as the male lead. The movie is directed by Jon M. Chu, who has directed an odd number of movies from G.I. Joe: Retaliationto Step Up 3 and the Jem and the Holograms movie, the latter a huge bomb despite being made for not so much money.

Crazy Rich Asians is a romantic comedy, and obviously, there’s a limited audience for the genre normally, but possibly even more when you have Asians in every role, because you’re never sure whether women of other ethnicities will be as interested in this as they might be with Valentine’s Day or other rom-com hits like The Proposal or Pretty Woman. Of course, we can also look at the long-standing legs of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which drew in a large Greek audience at first, but word-of-mouth helped lead it to $241 million domestic, the highest gross for a rom-com ever.

There haven’t been that many successful rom-coms in recent years unless you include Mamma Mia: Here We go Again or Greg Berlanti’s Love Simon, the latter which grossed $40.8 million opening in March with $11.7 million. Crazy Rich Asians is likely to sway more towards the former, I’d imagine.

What’s interesting and maybe not unexpected is that the Asian-American community has been rallying around the movie, whether or not they’ve read the book or even like romantic comedy films, with many entire theaters/screenings being bought up in advance. It’s likely the community realizes that Crazy Rich Asians will need to succeed if they’re going to see more Asians and Asian-Americans in significant leading roles. Even so, you have to remember that Asians only make up 6% of the U.S. population and maybe a little more in Canada, so how much impact can a movie have even if every single Asian person in the country goes to see it? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Crazy Rich Asians is opening on Wednesday, which kind of throws a wrench in trying to project how the movie might do, because a.) people who desperately want to see the movie might rush out to see it on Weds if b.) some might not even realize it opens on Wednesday and will wait for Thursday or Friday. (There weren’t any Tuesday previews to give us any sort of hint of what’s to come.) One presumes the point of the earlier opening is to help drive word-of-mouth for the weekend, although New Line also gave the movie sneak previews last Wednesday, which might do the trick. Reviews are excellent with it currently holding a respectable 96% on Rotten Tomatoes but there are many more reviews to come.

Expect the movie to do big business on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly $9 to 10 million, and then another $20 million plus over the weekend, although it shouldn’t be surprising if it does more than $30 million in its first five days. After all, we’re definitely entering new territory here. Even so, word-of-mouth should help it over the rest of the summer and into September, so don’t be surprised if it ends up making close to $100 million or more, especially if it’s as good as I’ve heard.

MILE 22 (STXfilms)

A movie hoping to bring in the business that will have little to no interest in Crazy Rich Asiansis this new action-thriller from actor Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, who now have made three movies based on real events: Lone Survivor (’13, $125 mil. Gross), Deepwater Horizon (’16, $61.4 mil.) and Patriots Day (’16, $31.9 mil.). That’s a fairly dramatic drop from their first movie to their last one, and Mile 22 is an original story not based on real events about a CIA task force who have to protect an asset from terrorists over the course of 22 miles. (And yes, that does sound a lot like the Bruce Willis-Mos Def movie 16 Blocksfrom 2006, thanks for noticing.)

Besides Wahlberg, it stars Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead, John Malkovich (who also was in Deepwater Horizon), MMA champ and WWE contender Ronda Rousy, Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais (The Raid) and Berg himself. It’s a great cast but we’ve seen similar movies like this one with great casts that don’t do so well from Hotel Artemis earlier this summer to John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 in 2016, although both of them looked like they could be good.

Obviously, Wahlberg is going to be this film’s biggest draw, but his filmography has also run the gamut of hits and bombs. Last year, Wahlberg appeared in Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, the comedy sequel Daddy’s Home 2 and the beleaguered Ridley Scott drama All the Money in the World, continuing his run of two to three movies a year with varying degrees of quality and success.

Like so many other movies in theaters and quite a few from STX, Mile 22 is a Chinese co-production, which doesn’t mean a heck of a lot for the film’s domestic success. Last year’s The Foreigner starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan is a good example as that topped out at $34.3 million domestic after a $13.1 million opening, although that movie did three times its domestic take overseas.

This might be why STX decided to dump the movie into late August, because maybe it isn’t as strong as some of the Berg-Wahlberg’s previous offerings, but is more of a throwaway action-thriller instead. The studio also isn’t screening for critics until Wednesday night, the day before it opens for Thursday previews, so I wouldn’t expect it to be one of “Da Bergs’” better-reviewed films.

On top of that, there’s also just too much competition for older males in theaters, so this might have a hard time doing more than $15 million this weekend, a third place showing, as it struggles to make $35 million by summer’s end.

(Note: I may run a mini-review and make a few changes above after I see the movie tonight.)

ALPHA (Sony)

The odd dog or wolf of the weekend is this big screen adventure epic set during the Ice Age starring Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse), which looks a lot like Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC. Hopefully, it isn’t nearly as bad. (See my review below. It isn’t.)

Alphais the new movie from Albert Hughes, one half of the Hughes Brothers, who broke out with urban crime films like Menace II Society and Dead Presidents before making From Hell with Johnny Depp and The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington. After the latter, the two went their separate ways and after a couple failed projects, Albert decided to make this very different movie as his solo dramatic feature as a director. It’s a strange choice for sure, but Sony have doubled down by giving the movie an IMAX release to push its big-screen nature.

There should be enough awareness of this movie being that it was supposed to come out last November and then earlier this year – I was seeing trailers for this in front of Thor: Ragnarok in early November and over the Christmas holidays as well – but Sony clearly doesn’t have much faith in the movie as they moved it to the dumping ground of late August. The studio has also completely changed the marketing as the movie’s release neared, pushing it more for the wolves that might get women and kids excited to see it. Personally, I don’t see the switch in marketing gears helping much, as I was already tuning out about the movie after seeing the trailers too much last year. (Reviews, surprisingly, are STELLAR so far, but there are only eight on Rotten Tomatoes, so that might change?)

Although people might know about the movie, it really doesn’t look that appealing from the marketing, and it won’t help that schools have already started in many places cutting potential business for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Frankly, it will be a shocker to me if Alpha makes more than $7 million this weekend even with the higher incent and price for IMAX tickets.

Mini-Review: When I was younger, I used to love watching pre-historic epics like 1 Million Years B.C. on television. Hopefully, some young boys and girls will be as inspired by watching Albert Hughes’ solo narrative debut as a director, but Alpha is definitely not the type of movie that should be watched on a television set.

It gets off to a rough start with young Keda (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) not living up to his chieftain father’s hopes as a warrior. When the tribe takes on a herd of buffalo, Keda gets knocked off a cliff and he’s left behind for dead by the tribe. Trying to survive, Keda faces off against a pack of wolves and one of the wolf pack is injured in the melée. The caring young man brings the injured wolf along on his journey of survival as the two of them work together to catch prey and survive.

This is where Alpha picks up greatly, becoming tale of a boy and his “dog” survival tale that’s charming and heart-warming and not nearly as corny or obvious as the earlier storytelling might lead you to believe. (It doesn’t take long to get over the awkward decision to begin with the buffalo hunt, then cut back a week as Keda is about to go over the cliff, and then show the buffalo hunt again, throwing Keda over the cliff for real the second time.)

If nothing else, one needs to commend the impressive job by Hughes and team -- from the animal trainers to the visual FX department, sound and music – for bringing this tale to life in a way that keeps you glued to the screen and benefits greatly from the IMAX 3D projection. It might be good to note that all of the film’s dialogue is in some ancient prehistoric dialect, so if your kids are too young to read subtitles, then they may get frustrated by not understanding what is being said.

Though there are problems in the first third, the fact is that if Terrence Malick or Alejandro Innaritu made this exact same movie, it would be thought of as a revelation. The late August release and lesser status of Hughes as a filmmaker will mean this film will mostly be overlooked, which is a true shame.

Rating: 7.5/10

Either way, this weekend could be a close call for #1 between Crazy Rich Asians and the second weekend of The Meg as both are vying for somewhere in the high-teens to low-$20 millions. Even so, I think the marketing/hype behind the New Line romantic-comedy will be enough to push it over the top to win the weekend.

This week’s top 10 should look something like this…

1. Crazy Rich Asians (New Line) - $21.5 million N/A 2. The Meg (Warner Bros.) - $19.5 million -56% 3. Mile 22 (STXfilms) - $15.3 million N/A 4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Paramount) - $12 million -40% 5. Christopher Robin (Disney) - $7.7 million -38% 6. Alpha (Sony) - $7.5 million N/A 7. BlacKkKlansman (Focus Features) - $7 million -35% 8. The Spy Who Dumped Me (Lionsgate) - $3.9 million -48% 9. Slender Man (Screen Gems) - $3.7 million -67% 10. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (Universal) - $3.5 million -40%

LIMITED RELEASES

While I gave some extra attention to Juliet, Naked above, there are a bunch of other limited releases worth checking out this weekend, especially as the wider releases become less interesting to the masses.

First up is The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics), an amazing drama starring Glenn Close as Joan Castleman, wife of the elderly reknowned author Joseph Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), as the couple travel to Stockholm for him to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature along with their son David (Max Irons). Joe can be a handful and Joan finds herself caught in the middle of a domestic feud between her husband and David, while a pesky biographer played by Christian Slater tries to get info from both Joan and David about Joe, a known philanderer. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Björn Runge, best known for his film Happy End, this is a terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside. The Wife will open in New York and L.A., and there will be QnAs in both cities on Friday and Saturday. Glenn Close and screenwriter Meg Wolitzer will be doing QnAs at the Paris Theater in NYC on Friday night after the 7:30 screening, while Wolitzer will also do a QnA on Saturday night. In LA, actress Annie Starke (who plays the younger version of Close’s character) will be doing QnAs on Friday and Saturday nights at the Arclight Hollywood and the Landmark.

A terrific doc worth checking out is Megumi Sasaki’s A Whale of a Tale (Fine Line Media), which opens at the Quad Cinema in New York and then in L.A. on August 24. If you liked the Oscar-winning doc The Cove, this is sort of a follow-up as the filmmaker travels to the town of Taiji in Japan where the dolphin killings continue. AP journalist Jay Alabaster has embedded himself in Taiji since The Cove came out and along with Sasaki, they document the town’s attempts at making necessary changes without giving up their legacy of “whale-hunting” that’s hundreds of years old. This is the type of movie that might make you question your own ecological leanings even as it gives a fairly well-balanced overview of the situation, particularly between the townspeople of Taiji and the world at large.

Another worthwhile doc is Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap (Hulu/Magnolia), a very personal look at the life of the filmmaker over 12 years living in Rockford, Illinois, focusing on two of his skateboarder friends’ whose upbringings affect their lives, including 23-year-old Zack whose relationship deteriorates after the birth of his son, and 17-year-old Keire trying to deal with the death of his father. The film won a jury prize at Sundance for Breakthrough Filmmaking with Steve James acting as exec. producer. It will get a theatrical release at the Metrograph on Friday as well as being available on Hulu before screening on PBS POV in 2019. (I want to add that this is a fantastic film well worth seeking out... Liu is an amazing new and young filmmaker to watch.)

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, the self-explanatory doc Ed Sheeran: Songwriter (Apple Music/Abramorama) will open in select cities. I never got around to watching it, but I’m not really a fan of Sheeran other than him helping to bring the Electric Light Orchestra back together for the Grammys. It opens at the IFC Center on Friday, in L.A. on Aug. 24 and then will be available on Apple Music starting Aug. 28.

A venerable horror franchise returns with its 13th(!) installment Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (RLJE Films), co-directed by Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund from a script by S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99). It stars Thomas Lennon from the State as Edgar, as a recently-divorced man who returns to his childhood home where he finds an evil-looking Nazi puppet in his brother’s room. For this one, the unmistakable Udo Kier plays the evil puppet master André Toulon, and it also stars Charlyne Yi, Barbara Crampton, Jenny Pellicer and Nelson Franklin. I hope to watch it soon, but I’ve heard some atrocious things about the overt racism in the movie.

As far as other and hopefully tamer genre films, if you’re in New York City, you can see The Ranger, the directorial debut by Larry Fessenden’s producing partner Jenn Wexler, when it plays at the IFC Center, following its Closing Night premiere at What the Fest?! and Fantasia in Montreal. It will also screen in L.A. on Sept. 7. It stars Chloë Levine as Chelsea, a girl who hangs out with her punk friends who get in trouble when her boyfriend stashes drugs in her bag, so they head to a cabin in the wilderness where they encounter a ranger. It premieres on Thursday night with many QnAs with Wexler, producer Heather Buckley and the cast over the weekend.

A movie that premiered at Sundance that I wasn’t that into was Jeremy Zagar’s adaptation of Justin Torres’ novel We the Animals (The Orchard), about three young boys going through their adolescence under the gaze of parents (Raul Castillo, Sheila Vand) who have their own tumultuous relationship, and are trying to protect the youngest Jonah from heading the same direction as his older siblings. It opens in New York Friday at the Angelika and Landmark 57 West, then will expand to L.A., San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia next Friday. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, it is a nice fictional counterpart to Minding the Gap.

Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes on an Appearance (Grasshopper Films) deals with the disappearance of a young man named David and the two people who go looking for him but become diverted by the strangers they meet on the journey. It opens at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center on Friday.

Opening in New York and L.A. on Friday and on Demand Sept. 4is Josh Crockett’s dark comedy Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks (Gravitas Ventures) about estranged brother and sister who reunite after the death of their parents.

Based on Lois Duncan’s Y.A. novel of the same name, Down a Dark Hall (Summit/Lionsgate Premiere) stars AnnaSophia Robb as Kit, a difficult girl set to a boarding school to deal with her temper via the headmistress Madame Duret (Uma Thurman) and the other four young women. Also starring Isabelle Fuhrman from Orphan, it opens in select cities, On Demand and on iTunes Friday.

Emmanuel Finkiel’s Memoir of War (Music Box films), opening in New York this Friday at the Film Forum and Film Society of New York and in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal and Regal Edwards Westpark 8 next Friday, adapts Marguerite Duras’ novel The War: A Memoir, and it stars the ever-present Mélanie Thierry as Duras. In 1944, Duras was a Resistance member along with her writer husband Robert Antelme. When he is sent to the Dachau concentration camp, she becomes friendly with a French collaborator (Benoît Magimel)to get information to help her group. (Interesting fact: Duras was the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour.)

A few more odds and ends…

Shirley McLane and Gina Gershon star in a modernized live action adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid co-directed by Blake Harris and Chris Bouchard. Not sure what more can be said about that.

Opening in New York at the Cinema VillageFriday before its digital release on Sept 4 is the doc Davi’s Way (2B Films) about Italian-American Robert Davi, a Frank Sinatra enthusiast and stylist who prepares to recreate Sinatra’s famous 1974 concert at Madison Square Garden.

Actor Peter Facinelli makes his directorial debut with the dark comedy Breaking & Exiting (Kali Pictures / Freestyle Digital Media), starring Milo Gibson as house thief Harry who stumbles upon (film co-writer) Jordan Hinson’s Daisy and tries to save her from herself.

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Not a ton of repertory things on my radar other than a Winona Ryder retrospective at the Quad Cinema called “Utterly Winona,” including all her great movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s. I guess there’s a Truffaut retrospective at the Metrograph, but you know what I always say: Truffaut... Tru-cares? (I don’t always say that so don’t write me angry letters Truffaut-fans. I don’t mean to cause a Trufuffle for anyone.)

Last but not least, streaming giant Netflix offers the Spanish film The Motive from Manuel Martin Cuenca based on the novel by Javier Cercas, about an aspiring writer who seeks inspiration for his novel by manipulating lives.

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