#someone execute this please

[lynnielle]

do you guys think lance taught Keith how to dance OHHHHH MY GOsh he would take him to bailes and lead him onto the dance floor and Keith SUCKS and lance only knows well cuz of his mom ofc and they're so cute I need someone to draw this or make a fic it's so beautiful

[aliensaltzzz]

Thrse guys are so dumb I hate them

[bamsara]

I love Arson he's my favorite heater but I should really get a cheap laptop one day so I can leave the house to write because the Noise. Is . Too Much. I need to go write in the forest

[starry-bi-sky]

Okay so this is almost a direct copy-paste of my earlier reblog but only the Xin Yuan parts, because its long enough to be its own post and i want to share it! It deserves it's own post <3 typical starry stuff to write a 2k word long reblog, unfortunately.

I say almost because I went through to proof read and ended up adding more stuff.

I've been cooking on this idea for the last two days since I saw the Xin Mo!Shen Yuan post but??? I can't find anything on Xin Mo's backstory or how it came to be -- which means that's free fucking plot right there baby. That's a sandbox and im making LIFE SIZED CASTLES. I'm so excited.

The idea of Shen Yuan transmigrating centuries before the events of PIDW as Xin Mo -- but when he wakes up, he's not the sword. He wakes up in the body of a young boy named Xin Yuan. Now it makes sense for this boy to be a demon, but the drama, the intrigue, the spice of Xin Yuan being a human child.

SY wakes up as a boy below the age of ten, and the System tells him where he is, and SY is excited to meet his favorite protagonist -- only to gradually realize that he's like, a thousand years or so before the events of the novel. The rant he gives the system is legendary.

Bc what's the point of getting dropped into PIDW if he's never going to meet his favorite character??? This is a scam! BUT he settles into his new life, he's like, some orphan street rat or some other tragic airplane-esq backstory.

The system gives Shen Yuan his first mandatory quest: become a righteous cultivator. Which was like, kinda his plan/hopes anyways, except! There's like?? No official cultivator sects anywhere? The Cang Qiong Mountain Sect hasn't even been established yet, and there are pockets of cultivators running around, maybe some groups or schools popping up and then sinking back down, but nothing's really taken root!

If he asks someone how to become a cultivator, there's no straight answer. No "oh you can go to X to do that". He's pissed! How can he become a cultivator if there aren't any schools around to teach him? Deus ex machina, that's how.

Out of sheer luck, SY manages to help save a rogue cultivator, and promptly gets adopted by said rogue cultivator, who gives SY the name 'Xin Yuan'. He is ecstatic. And you know what? It's actually pretty fun!

He's getting to travel the world of PIDW in its early stages, and gets to see the building blocks for the eventual main story. He's discovering all this local flora and fauna that are foreign to his old world and unmentioned in the book, and he's learning cultivation! Granted, its unsafe, newly(ish) discovered cultivation, but it counts!

Wistfully, he thinks about perhaps he'll do something grand and get his name carved into legend. Something that would eventually help the protagonist later down the line in his quest for revenge.

The system remains silent to his thoughts.

But Xin Yuan doesn't take much stock in that daydream anyways. It's nothing more than fantasy to him; wish-fulfillment. He does discover however, that he is positively brimming with spiritual energy. Overwhelmingly so.

It's both a blessing and a curse, as it puts a strain on his meridians if he's not careful, and leaves him prone to qi deviations for the exact same reasons. He already has a heart demon or two from a few traumatic experiences in the past.

(bc hey! angst a day keeps the writer sadism at bay, and all that)

I'll say he's about... eight when he gets picked up by the rogue cultivator, who I'm calling Lin Kai bc he deserves a name. They travel around PIDW up until Xin Yuan is twelve, where he goes through a traumatic experience that results in a heart demon.

It's after that that Lin Kai decides to put a stop to his wandering, and find a place to settle down to raise Xin Yuan in. Coincidentally! They settle down in a nice mountain region that's thriving with spiritual energy. The mountains at the time were called something different, but they will be eventually known as the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect

Coincidentally, the mountain Lin Kai and Xin Yuan end up on is Qing Jing Peak. XY does not realize that the mountain he's on is Qing Jing. The System does not tell him. But he likes it there, more than he was expecting. And as much as he's traveled around, he really does enjoy being in one place.

He has a tendency to go down the mountain and help the village setting up down there, and when he's a teenager he starts venturing out more and more.

Xin Yuan forgets sometimes that he's in a novel, especially after settling down on Qing Jing peak. The system becomes remarkably quiet since there's no quests for him to do and not a ton of opportunities to get B-Points. He cultivates with Lin Kai, helps tend to the garden they're growing, goes down to the village to play with the other kids.

There's one boy he's best friends with, a boy whose not all that good with words, named Liu Zhihao. He's got potential for cultivation though, so Xin Yuan drags him up the mountain when he can so that Liu Zhihao can sit in on lessons with Lin Kai. He drags him all over the forest at the foot of the mountain to go look at bugs and animals.

(One time, when they're fourteen and Liu Zhihao has been learning cultivation for a few years now, Xin Yuan drags him out of bed late one night to go look at the stars. Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao about ascension -- something that still feels like a far off dream to many in this time -- that night, while they're sitting on the wet grass.)

("We should ascend together." Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao, jade eyes gleaming. Never let it be said that Xin Yuan doesn't love deeply, no matter what kind of love it is. He was always so lonely as Shen Yuan, Liu Zhihao is his best friend. "We'll become immortals, and then we won't ascend until the other is able to.")

(Liu Zhihao stares at him silently, his face unreadable. Then, quietly, he asks; "Promise?")

("Promise.")

When he starts adventuring outwards, further away from the mountain and the village, Liu Zhihao sticks to him like rice. Not that Xin Yuan's complaining, that's his best friend after all, and Liu Zhihao has become a formidable cultivator. He deserves to show off his skills.

He starts making something of a name for himself by the time he's, like, 18 -- although that name is in its baby steps, along with Liu Zhihao. They're slowly growing renown.

Perhaps XY uses his knowledge of PIDW and cultivation in general to help make advancements in the cultivation field. Although the system prevents him from sharing too much, it doesn't mean he can't practice it himself. Perhaps he's one of the first cultivators to develop a golden core. One of the first known immortal cultivators. One of the first to have a spirit sword.

(Although I don't know the logistics of any of this since my knowledge on xanxia/cultivation stuff in general is all still pretty new and google wasn't all that helpful lol.)

Either way, its my excuse to eventually make Xin Yuan come across as ethereal to other people. Peerless beauty SY for the win. Hs wifebeam is too strong, Xin Yuan has a line of suitors following after him and he's completely unaware of it. The rest of history is not.

Demon realm stuff has been stirring up since Xin Yuan was a kid, but at the time it was rare and in the beginning stages. Its been steadily ramping up and the system is sending him on more and more treacherous quests -- some of them mandatory, some optional. SY doesn't often take the optional ones unless it comes with a sufficient B-point reward.

for all intents and purposes though, he's a wandering rogue cultivator with Liu Zhihao, going from place to place to either help a town or village, or to discover more creatures or artifacts (although there aren't that many). Just all around living his life. He participates in a few major quest lines that are sure to get him mentioned in legend, even if it's a background character way.

(Unbeknownst to him, rather than being a side character in these legends, he's named directly. You can't become one of the first immortal cultivators and NOT get name dropped for clout.)

He has a spirit sword named Shā Mó, (杀 shā - to kill/weaken/counteract/reduce) (魔 mó - evil spirit, demon, possession). He routinely goes back to QJP to see Lin Kai, or to rest when traveling has worn down on him and he wants nothing more than to sleep somewhere he knows he'll be safe in. It becomes more frequent as Xin Yuan becomes more famous. Liu Zhihao often comes with him.

it all comes to a head though when the rifts between the demonic realm and the human realm become too great, and the balance between both realms becomes unstable. A demonic emperor's influence, wanting to merge the two realms so he could conquer both to satiate his own greed.

Typical evil king stuff. This comes to a climatic head in a great battle between every cultivator available and the demon emperor's army. Xin Yuan was one of the many who helped lead the charge.

In the end, it was Xin Yuan who ends up defeating the demonic emperor, but the rift that the emperor used to cross between worlds is destabilizing as well. Except instead of trying to close, it's getting bigger and bigger, threatening to swallow the heavens and earth and demonic realm whole.

You know how Yue Qingyuan's soul is bonded to his sword due to a qi deviation? Let's take it a step further >:)

Xin Yuan uses himself and Shā Mó to close the rift. However, it takes all of his spiritual energy to do so, as well as him filtering the demonic qi into his body to redirect it back to the demon realm.

In the end, Xin Yuan and his beloved sword Shā Mó fuse. Xin Yuan's soul becomes trapped in the sword. His physical body is unable to handle the immense amount of power it takes to close the rift, and is destroyed. He is immortalized in legend by his grieving cultivators.

(Liu Zhihao ends up ascending alone. He ascends with the hope that one day he'll see Xin Yuan again, even if it's in the face of someone else. Lin Kai does not ascend, too weighed down by the grief of losing his son.)

Xin Yuan, now Xin Mo, falls into a stasis. He's very confused and disorientated when he regains 'consciousness'. The system has been silent for most of his life, only popping up to give him mandatory quests, hints, points, or to answer any questions.

But once he wakes up, it cheerfully pops up again, congratulating him on completing the origin story of Xin Mo. SY freaks the fuck out. he'd shake the system screen if he could, but he doesn't have arms. or legs. or eyes for that matter.

He can sense his surroundings, but its all like imprints to him. He can sense the energies, but he can't see anything. It's all very disorientating and horrifying after years of being human. Like a sensory deprivation chamber.

The closing of the rift and the cycling demonic qi tainted both Sha Mo and Xin Yuan irreparably, and it did some kind of damage that resulted in SY needing to feed in order to use the spiritual powers. Kinda like how Xuan Su uses YQY's life force for it's spiritual energy, but instead of feeding on his own lifeforce, Xin Mo feeds on others.

The rest is history. Xin Mo is originally tied to the story of Xin Yuan -- believed to be all that remained of the man after he sacrificed himself to keep the realms separate. It's believed that the force of the realms closing permanently infused Sha Mo with demonic energy, turning it into Xin Mo.

But, like many stories do when faced against the tide of time, things get lost; chipped off; changed. Xin Mo is steadily separated from Xin Yuan, especially once it becomes clear how parasitic the sword really is, until they are all but separate entities themselves and the origin of Xin Mo's creation all but forgotten.

The years blur together when Xin Mo is not being wielded, and at first Xin Yuan was agonized by the fact that he stole the lives of all his wielders. He knows it's only a novel, but his decades spent in this life have softened him, and he's grown attached to the world around him.

But time erodes the mind like water erodes stone, and he becomes numb to it, then eventually anticipating of it. He forces himself to remember what he knows of PIDW's plot, and kinda fixates back on his old obsession on Luo Binghe. But while PIDW stays in his mind, his memories as Xin Yuan fall to the wayside.

Not forgotten, per se, but... tucked away. The system prevents him from forgetting fully.

Xin Mo isn't fully a demonic sword either i think, but instead harbors an ugly cocktail of both spiritual and demonic qi. Special circumstances and all that. Everyone just assumes he's a fully demonic sword because that's usually at the forefront, his spiritual qi weakened from the initial fusion and from years of not being fed spiritual qi. It's part of the reason his wielders always end up destroyed by him, other than the whole, yk, 'overwhelming qi' thing.

Nobody would recognize Xin Mo's human form as Xin Yuan other than some truly ancient demons. Of which Meng Mo might. But even that's iffy because there's a lack of surviving paintings of Xin Yuan, but also because of XM's demonic appearance and supposed lack of connection to XY.

Xin Mo has never spoken to his wielders before, not in the same way he does Luo Binghe. He tells Luo Binghe this, and he also tells Luo Binghe down the line that he is both spiritual and demonic -- something he also never told his wielders because there was no point to it.

okay okay i've got to end it here because its already gotten ridiculously long -- of which im both apologetic and unapologetic for -- but i DO think the Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan meeting (and reveal) would be fucking hilarious. Especially if SY has learned how to pop between sword form and human form by then -- although i guess it doesnt matter either way because SQH's reaction is still the same.

And that reaction is internally screaming and going "hey what the FUCK?? WHY DOES XIN MO HAVE A HUMAN FORM??? WHAT IS THIS??? SYSTEM??? EXPLAIN???"

meanwhile from his place on the sword hilt xin mo is squinting at Shang Qinghua in bewilderment and going "aren't you supposed to be dead" but doesn't pay too much mind to it because its not like its going to change anything.

...up until he catches shang qinghua going "WTF" silently from his little corner while all eyes are off him. One moment SQH is standing beside his king, and the next he's been tackled to the ground by one wild-eyed, human-shaped Xin Mo.

everyone, including SQH, thinks Xin Mo is going to kill him. It is a surprise to everyone when he does not, and instead dissolves into deranged, uncontrollable laughter after spitting out some phrase in some ancient tongue and watching SQH's eyes grow wide in recognition.

[slavhew]

dreaming of friends

[pose reference: Reunion by Salman Toor (2018)]

[finns-tword-blog]

ALRIGHT just hear me out. We all appreciate the fact that ticklish!Jax is just SO MUCH CUTE, this purple rabbit is just an adorable lee

But can we rate the fact that he's just proffessional ruthless ler? Just imagine this violet meanie using his tickling techniques to annoy Ragatha for his own pleasure

But sometimes, he can use it to cheer her up instead

I think you understand me. Can we get ler!Jax and lee!Ragatha content please? 🥹🩷

Also, LOVE your artstyle very muchhh🫴🏻❤️

i can't imagine him doing ANYTHING that would cheer up someone but. come onnnn :)

- this is a SFW tickle blog, so no funny business in the notes -

[miyamiyano]

Ughhhhhhh themmmm

[thembrooklynboysbig]

someone needs to draw the “why does x call you babygirl?” “lets all be quiet” meme with parry and soda🙏

IF THIS EXISTS SOMEONE SEND IT TO ME

[blogblogartstuffuhh]

HEARD OF ACTION DOUGLAS?? GET READY FOR EXECUTIVE DYSTOPIA DOUGLAS !!

HE IS A COMPUTER TECHNICIAN AT MANDARK'S CORPORATION!! And general technician as well

Douglas is the only one who actually knows how the computers work and is at charge of the power energy of the building. The problem is that he is the ONLY one that is at charge of these tasks, despite how efficient it would be if Mandark actually hired more people for that department to help Douglas out, this is on purpose as putting Dexter's best friend under so much distress feels like indirect misery for Dexter !! And Mandark was never truly fond of Douglas in the first place, boot licking dork.....

Despite the horrific stress and lack of sleep from all the exploitation, Douglas still tries to stay cheerful and positive about the circumstances

Also fun fact! His designated number is 137 as a reference to Tom Kenny's birthday (his VA)

[epickiya722]

This thought just came to me.

Hypothetical question! Think that 20th Finger survived Nobara's attack or it's still going to be around even after Sukuna is defeated?

Here's the thing, Gojo had demonstrated that the Cursed Fingers can't be destroyed and he used a physical attack to show that.

The CFs contain pieces of Sukuna's soul. Nobara's technique attacks the soul. So...?

Could Nobara have possibly destroy that last Finger or would they have to seal it away?

[finalgirlminamurray]

remember when halloween 2018 (or as i like to call it, halloween h40) came out and people were making those flowchart-style diagrams explaining the various halloween timelines? i like when people try to do that for the texas chainsaw massacre series because it is a fool's errand. you cannot divide that series into distinct specific continuities because there aren't any. there's a good argument to be made that every single film in that series takes place in its own completely separate timeline because it so often does not bother to meaningfully connect them beyond the single recurring character of leatherface.

i've mentioned before that tcm2 is my favorite sequel and the only one i actually like and will accept as a canon sequel to the original film, and part of that is because despite the complete 180 in tone it does, it's the only one that bothers at all to be a sequel. i think it's the only one that makes sense as a continuation of the first movie - the only glaring continuity errors are confined to the opening scroll text, which you can take or leave as part of the films' canon. (by this i mean the first movie's opening implies that the sawyers' crimes were discovered after sally's escape, while the second film explicitly says no evidence was found. also it retcons sally's last name to be "hardesty-enright" instead of just making lefty's last name also hardesty, for whatever reason.) there's one newly introduced member of the family but you can infer why he wasn't there in the first movie, and the one who isn't there this time has a good reason to be absent (he's died.) one of the main characters in this movie is a relative of the first film's final girl and his involvement in the plot is explicitly connected to what happened to his niece and nephew. the events of the first movie clearly happened in this universe. low bar, i know.

this could be attributed to this being the only sequel also directed by tobe hooper, although the original film's screenwriter did not return, and him having more of a vested interest in continuing the story of his own work. most of the original film's cast did not return for this one (can't say i blame them), but they work with that pretty well. i do think the film ends in a way that pretty decisively puts the brakes on any possible continuation from there, which could be attributed to hooper not really wanting to do a sequel in the first place and trying not to get asked back for another one. (i agree this was not a film that should ever have had sequels, much less become a full-on franchise. but you can tell that upon having to do it they were just like fuck it, let's have fun. hence the tone.) not that that stopped the studios from valiantly trying again and again to profit off of this title.

which might explain why the later sequels are so particularly weird. they don't really have a lot to go off of, i guess. i think part of the problem is that this is one of the few slasher films where the villain is actually a group of people, not a single recurring killer or identity various killers take up. they do have a silent, masked slasher who can be played by whichever new stunt guy you get for each film, but what about the rest of the family? it's always felt important to me that there isn't anyone outside of this isolated little unit in the first movie, but sequels keep inventing totally new characters out of nowhere with no explanation as to where they've been in previous installments. doesn't matter - we're in a new continuity now. tcm3 does not logically follow in any real way from tcm2 or tcm1. it's not a sequel despite the number in the title. it's a reboot.

(i've kind of come around on tcm4 aka tcm: the next generation. i used to think it was the worst sequel but now i think i get what it's trying to do a little better, although it is a pretty stupid movie in a lot of ways. some people have described tcm2 as a deliberate parody of the first film but i think that applies way better to the next generation, seeing how it follows a lot of the same plot beats but done in a more outlandish and parodic way. also, hey: same screenwriter as the original, returning this time as director.)

then the remake made a shit ton of money and kickstarted a new direction for 2000s horror (great. thanks for that.) and got a prequel that also actually made sense as existing in the same continuity as the film it was a prequel to. (again it probably really helped that they were able to get most of the cast back. no need to invent new family members when you still have all the same people playing them.) then in 2013 we got a sequel that promised to Finally be a Direct sequel to the original movie and...it made no sense as one. they try to pick up right where the original left off but right away there are once again a whole bunch of new characters who definitely weren't there in the first movie suddenly appearing in the house, including a baby whose existence is crucial to the plot.

(i'm sure everyone knows about the bizarre timeline decisions of this one, namely the main character ostensibly having been born in the same year as the events of tcm1 but only being about 18 years old during the main events of texas chainsaw 3d, despite it seeming to take place in the modern day. however there is an explanation for that! originally the film was supposed to take place in the early 90s when a character born in 1973 would have been that age, but studio meddling forced them to reshoot it to be 2013. you might notice that any mention or depiction of the exact year the opening scene takes place seems conveniently obscured in this film, implying that it is yet another alternate timeline where the events of tcm1 occurred sometime in the 1990s. this also serves as further demonstration that 1. studio executives are the dumbest people alive, and 2. people really don't care that much about the first movie. more on that later.)

leatherface 2017 is an attempt at a prequel that also makes little to no sense as a backstory for its titular character; i wouldn't be surprised if it started out as an original screenplay that got retrofitted into a tcm movie. there are no new sawyer relatives invented for this film (i don't think), but it does seem strangely insistent on keeping its leatherface away from the family for as much of the film as possible, making it feel especially like it didn't actually want to be a tcm movie. (the twist of the titular character's identity is clearly meant primarily to be surprising and not to make sense, but i can only say: there's no way that the original film's leatherface grew up apart from his birth family for that long and also used to be a "normal"-by-neurotypical-standards, verbal kid. different continuity.)

then in 2022 we get yet another attempt at No Guys Seriously For Real, This is a Direct Sequel to the First Movie, and i should have known things weren't looking good when it was announced this was actually getting dumped on netflix in february but my expectations plummeted to rock bottom when that teaser came out that thought the most relevant part of the movie to sell to people was a "canceled" joke. jesus. tcm:tng i'm sorry, this is the clear worst sequel. (if it was just that one dumb joke it might not be, but there's so much more that's awful in this movie - whatever.) anyway continuity-wise i guess this isn't completely disconnected, there is clear acknowledgement that the events of the first movie happened, but it's really not relevant to the main plot at all, when you get right down to it. pro tip: if a slasher sequel advertises the return of the original film's final girl, she will most likely not be in the film for more than five minutes. there's some implied backstory about leatherface running away to this neighboring town and being taken in by the lady who runs the orphanage, but honestly this could easily be yet another different continuity where leatherface is the adopted son of a kindly old lady (who still has a confederate flag in her window, jfc, i think this is the first time that imagery has ever been used in this series and it's associated with a character who's supposed to be sympathetic??) who was keeping a lid on his murderous tendencies before she died. points for effort i guess but i don't think it deserves much.

i really don't know why this series in particular is like this. most horror franchises will have their movies clearly follow each other and exist within the same continuity, sometimes with a reboot or two if they've gone on long enough (see: halloween having at least three different timelines, but all clearly branching from the same source.) if it's supposed to be an anthology series, they'll just...say that. i've heard it said that this series works best when viewed as variations on a theme, like the original film's events are an urban legend of sorts being told and retold around the campfire and every version is different because everyone remembers it differently or makes up their own. i do like that and think it makes the franchise make more sense but i know most people watching these movies aren't thinking about it like that, they're thinking of them all as sequels to the same movie, with the remake and its prequel being the only ones clearly existing in their own separate continuity.

it's a little sad to see how no one making official movies in the series seems to really care that much about the ostensible source material. maybe i'm biased because it's the film my brain latched onto the hardest when i started really getting into horror, but i think this movie is so interesting and there's so much there to explore with the little we're given about these characters and their dynamics and what they do and why they do it, and even if you can't really dive into all that in a movie you could at least use what's already there for your sequel and most of them just...don't. like they don't seem to have watched the original movie even before writing a sequel to it, just going off their own vague memories about that one scary movie about a guy with a human skin mask and a chainsaw. i know i shouldn't be expecting any more from a slasher franchise on its 9th installment but...whatever. it is what it is. this was never supposed to be a franchise in the first place. at least i can shout into the void about my thoughts and feelings on here.

(i think i read somewhere that the filmmakers were actually forbidden from referencing cannibalism in the script for texas chainsaw 3d and if that's true...oh boy. talk about missing the point. if you feel like something significant is missing in the later films in this series that's probably part of it.)

[psychomusic]

i started watching tbb but. it's so surface level. does it get better?? I'm super disappointed by the s1 finale

[weirdmageddon]

whenever my drawing skills return from war i NEED to make this with jade and dave

[fiddlepickdouglas]

Diurnal vampires my beloved. Ones who are often excluded from their own kind because their sleep schedule never changed. Being unable to be touched by sunlight has only made them have to adapt in other ways. Besties with insomniacs human and vampire alike because it's not their fault they got this way.

[darkladylumiya]

My thoughts on Tales of the Empire

I'll start with my overall thoughts - the animation is really good, though at this point the contrast between more standard Clone Wars-style models and the more realistic ones who look like they could be from a video game is a bit jarring (though this could easily be a just me thing, I've not seen anyone else talk about this), the Barriss arc was way better than the Morgan Elsbeth one, which I doubt was a surprise to anyone, though I still have some issues with both. My big thing is that, compared to Tales of the Jedi, where we get little excerpts and character moments to fill out the characters and their progression through time, here Tales of the Empire is more or less our only source for info on these characters at this point in time. We know what happens with Dooku and Ahsoka in between their episodes - we have no clue what happened to Morgan to get her from Dathomir to running a planet for example, or how Barriss went from inquisitor to hermit healer (though this example is much less extreme).

Anyway, into the arcs proper. Get excited everyone, other force witch clans are back! Like the... checks notes Mountain clan. Not Singing Mountain. Just... Mountain. Cool, thanks Filoni. A decade later you finally make other Dathomiri clans canon, but you just shave a word off a name and now it's totally your own original idea, right? And don't worry, we'll have more totally original ideas from Filoni later, but first. Okay, the first episode is kinda like... a nothing episode. We end the episode with Morgan in the same position as she was halfway through, with a strange plot where Morgan immediately tries to seduce people to the Dark Side because... I don't know, she can? And again, we have no clue how she made it off planet. Dathomir doesn't exactly get a lot of space traffic, and apparently there are droid gunships still scouring the planet looking to kill literally any Nightsister left. Surely the first episode should have dealt with her getting off-planet? And not her sowing some dissent in a clan we've never met before and never see again? Some dissent which immediately ends and goes nowhere because most of them are now dead.

Anyway, next episode, she's in charge of a planet now because she has to be for The Mandalorian to still work - surely her getting to be in charge of a planet should have been an episode? Have the first one be her family getting killed and then her getting off-planet with some scavengers or pirates or whatever, the second episode is her rise to power over this planet and then the last is her meeting Thrawn? But sure, whatever, she's in charge already, cool. She's the designer of the TIE Defender, because they love beating my boy down. I'm not even going to ask how a Nightsister who has probably never even seen a starship before her clan got murdered figured out in the however many years it's been now knows how to design one of the best starfighters out there. Let's actually address that though - how many years has it been? The Battle of Dathomir was 20 BBY. The episode starts with a shot of Coruscant, where we see six Venators before finally an Imperial-class Star Destroyer appears. This implies to me that this has to be early on in the Empire, right? The first five years or so maybe? But then in Rebels season four there's an episode where they steal a TIE Defender prototype. So it took the Empire, or I guess Thrawn more specifically, at least seven years to go from design to a single test model? That's just strange to me, but who knows, it's been forever since I've seen that Rebels episode so maybe I'm just misremembering how they talked about it there. Anyway, the thing that truly got me was Pellaeon and Rukh. Fucking Rukh. But yeah, why was Eli Vanto not here but Pellaeon was? New canon more or less replaced Pellaeon's role with Vanto, so why is he not here now but Pellaeon is? My guess - because Filoni wanted to cover all the Thrawn bases. He read a brief summary of people and things associated with Thrawn in Legends and he put them all in one episode. We have Pellaeon, we have TIE Defenders, we have fUCKINg Rukh. I genuinely do not know why the FUCK Rukh is here.

Okay, let me explain. In the original Thrawn trilogy from the 90s, Rukh is Thrawn's personal bodyguard. Rukh is a Noghri, a species who regard Darth Vader as the savior of their people because their planet got nuked during the Clone Wars (it was an accident) and Vader came in and promised to help rebuild the planet, which he did. Very slowly, so the Noghri would always be indebted to him, because as it turns out they're very good assassins and commandos. But the important thing to note is that they're sworn to Vader, and serve him. Now in the books they work for Thrawn because they're more broadly sworn to the Empire, and after Vader is dead they end up working for Thrawn once he's in charge of the Empire. But Filoni doesn't care, the Noghri are associated with Thrawn and so here Rukh is as his bodyguard testing whether Morgan can fight. As soon as she got attacked, I immediately guessed it was going to be a Noghri, but once I saw the face of her attacker I was much less sure, because the head is completely wrong for a Noghri by the way, their head looks nothing like that. But anyway I lost it when Pellaeon said Rukh's name, because I knew I was fucking right. We're just pulling out all the sick Thrawn trilogy references, but not actually using these characters in any meaningful way - Rukh is here so his character page on Wookieepedia can have a canon tab now and so Filoni can show off his cred of pretending to have read a single book in his life. Oh yes, there is another thing Rukh is famous for by the way. KILLING THRAWN. I'm sure Filoni just forgot that little detail. Or who knows, maybe he'll just recreate it word for word at some point because he cannot do anything but steal from other people's work but do it in a worse and more amateurish way. I was so upset with Rukh being here with no explanation or justification I really did not care about anything else that happened in the rest of the arc. Thrawn shows up and recruits Elsbeth and then the third episode is just her killing a diplomat and burning a forest for no reason, yeah sure whatever who cares. I simply wish at some point there would be a notable character from Legends who is just... left there, and doesn't get dragged by cowboy hat man into whatever nostalgia bait ploy or attempt to pretend he has ever read a book, because the nostalgia bait doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't - it simply pisses me off. You're reminding me of better stories while I watch your lame shows, Filoni. Is that really what you want?

Ugh. Anyway, Barriss. I have a lot less to say because it's actually pretty good. I think it's way too short and she deserved way more screentime, or at the least not having to share an equal amount with Morgan Elsbeth (who I honestly forgot was even in the Mandalorian, I genuinely thought she was made up for the Ahsoka tv show for a while she's so forgettable). Anyway, the fundamental flaw is still that Barriss's massive heel-turn change of heart came out of nowhere and makes little sense with her character as established, so while this does a decent job at building upon that, it doesn't change that her arc in The Clone Wars makes no sense and was obviously chosen so that Ahsoka could be emotionally devastated by her best friend betraying her. A different complaint I then have is like... when did Barriss, woman who killed over a dozen people in a terrorist bombing, at least one of whom was someone she knew and liked, Barriss who murdered a woman in cold blood and purposefully framed her best friend so she could get away with this bombing, Barriss who convinces a wife to make her husband into a living bomb, Barriss who kills three clones with her friend's lightsabers to set her up even further and leads her purposefully where she has stashed more of the same bomb material, and indeed Barriss who kills someone who seemed to be her friend with the same technique she used to kill the woman who was about to rat her out - you want me to believe she suddenly has an issue with killing a village full of people? I'm sorry, but you have to actually explain how she sees this as different. Because you don't actually address at any point how she might feel about her terrorism now, or even what exactly her moral compass is. Killing innocents is good when she does it bad bad when it doesn't make the political statement she wants to make? I just don't get it. Anyway, final episode is the best of the series because it does the most to actually have a moral and message and actually does something pretty interesting? Whether she dies or not (I doubt she does personally), it's still an interesting setup for something else, either another season of this or a comic or book or whatever, to come back to and follow what the hell Lyn (and probably Barriss too) does now. I'm also glad Filoni finally remembered Barriss's specialty was healing actually, and not terrorism, even though we don't actually get to see her do any healing, with the Force or otherwise. Oh also, why does she look so old? It's like she aged 50 years over the course of 10? Like Lyn looks exactly the same but Barriss looks like she's 80. Idk, that was weird. Anyway I've rambled long enough, Filoni is still a hack who's never read a book in his life, but the Barriss stuff here was pretty good, at least somewhat enjoyable throughout. If you watch anything, watch that - all the Morgan Elsbeth stuff is terribly forgettable or outright frustrating.

5/6 edit: I’ve fixed Eli’s name (sorry Eli) and while it’s been pointed out to me that Rukh is in Rebels, a fact I was unaware of, I’m going to maintain the rant as it stands with this disclaimer here at the end - Rukh was in Rebels and was not originally added in this show. However, I still think his design sucks.

[wereh0gz]

I cannot wait, genuinely cannot wait, for sonic 3 to come out and for the hype around it to die down so that sega can move on and finally tease whatever next big project they're planning. I've had Enough of the movies please give us even the smallest taste of the next fully new game I beg of you