#that's why ALL our heroic stories are about a hero that is chosen to bring back balance to the world

[capricornsister]

A huge chunk of the Collective consciousness wishes to experience life in a fragmented unbalanced fashion... It is very much a collective desire. But there are few of us tho that are sick of this and want to go back to Unity/God More than anything..

[emma23]

headcanon y/n and Oscar Isaac characters during Halloween:

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Happy Halloween guys 🎃

Hope u enjoy it 💕🤗

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Steven Grant:

Halloween brings out Steven's passion for mythology, and he suggests a night tour of the museum to explore its more mysterious artifacts. As he eagerly guides you through the Egyptian exhibits, he starts sharing stories.

“Did you know the ancient Egyptians believed the dead lived in a world parallel to ours?” Steven’s eyes light up as he whispers. “They thought, on certain nights, like All Hallows' Eve, the boundary thins.”

You raise an eyebrow, intrigued. “You mean like... they could just walk back into our world?”

Steven laughs nervously. “Yeah, but don’t worry! They’re friendly spirits, mostly.” He leans closer, eyes wide with excitement. “Although, if we see anything out of place… just, uh, pretend you don’t notice it.”

Marc Spector:

Marc isn’t one for costumes or spooky stories, but he’s all in for protecting you during a Halloween adventure. He ends up taking you to an abandoned warehouse turned haunted house. You’re both wandering through dark corridors when he notices you jump at a sudden sound.

“You alright?” Marc’s voice cuts through the dark, firm but soft.

You laugh, catching your breath. “Yeah, just… wasn’t expecting that.”

Marc smirks, moving in closer. “You’re safe with me. Besides,” he adds, “those fake ghosts have nothing on the things I’ve seen.”

“Care to share any horror stories?” you tease.

His smile fades, turning into a mock-glare. “Nah. Some things are better left in the dark, trust me.”

Jake Lockley:

Jake insists on taking you for a wild ride through the city at midnight, where the two of you watch costumed crowds roam the streets. You pull out your phone to capture the scene, but he nudges it down.

“Forget the photos,” he says, one hand resting casually on the steering wheel. “Some things, you gotta see for yourself.”

You raise an eyebrow. “What, like you?”

Jake chuckles, eyes flicking to you. “Exactly.” He slows down, the car idling under a streetlight. “Want to do something that’ll really give us a thrill?”

Your eyes widen. “What do you have in mind?”

He smirks, tapping the steering wheel. “Trust me. I’ve got a few tricks.”

Anselm Vogelweide:

Anselm has his own idea of Halloween—a bit unconventional. He takes you to a dingy jazz club, far from any typical Halloween crowd. As you both settle in, he orders two drinks and raises his glass.

“To... not being anywhere near a bunch of fake monsters,” he murmurs dryly.

You clink glasses, laughing. “So, not a fan of Halloween?”

He shrugs, a faint grin pulling at his lips. “Why pretend to be something you’re not? Reality’s scarier than any costume.”

Blue Jones:

Halloween with Blue is an extravagant affair. He insists on going to an exclusive masquerade ball, and you find yourself in an elegant costume that he’s carefully chosen.

“You’re quite the mystery tonight,” you tease, as you both dance in the candlelit hall.

He smirks, his eyes glinting behind his mask. “Tonight, all eyes are on you, sweetheart.”

As you dance, he leans in close. “Tell me, do you really think anyone else here can match up to me?”

You laugh, knowing exactly what he’s doing. “You really don’t have to worry.”

“I know,” he replies smoothly, his arm tightening around your waist. “But it’s more fun to make sure.”

Poe Dameron:

Poe is all about the thrill of Halloween, and he suggests a late-night ghost tour at a supposedly haunted location. As you walk through the eerie surroundings, he stays close by, casting playful glances your way.

“Alright,” he grins, “if you see anything spooky, just scream, and I’ll heroically save you.”

You roll your eyes. “Pretty sure I could handle a ghost myself, Poe.”

He laughs. “Oh, so you’re the tough one tonight?”

“Guess so,” you reply, smirking. “Maybe I’ll be the one saving you.”

Poe’s laughter echoes in the quiet as he wraps an arm around you. “Alright, hero, lead the way. But I reserve the right to hide behind you if things get intense.”

Santiago Garcia:

Pope keeps it low-key, but he suggests exploring an old, rumored-to-be-haunted trail. Walking side by side under the moonlight, he keeps you talking, subtly checking the surroundings.

“So, what’s your take on ghosts?” he asks, giving you a sideways glance.

You shrug. “I think they’re probably out there… somewhere.”

He nods, pretending to be deep in thought. “You know, if we see one, you’ve got to be the brave one.”

You laugh. “What, the tough ex-soldier needs protection?”

“Hey, I never said I was scared,” he teases, nudging you. “Just wouldn’t want them getting in the way of our night.”

Nathan Bateman:

Nathan’s Halloween style is an intellectual one. He invites you over to his house for a horror movie marathon, accompanied by his very strong opinions on everything you watch.

During a jump scare, you flinch, and he raises an eyebrow. “Scared?”

You play it off. “No, just… surprised.”

He chuckles, leaning back. “Look, most of this stuff is laughable if you think about it. The real horror? The way humans mess with things they don’t understand.”

You smirk. “Like you?”

“Exactly,” he replies, a devilish glint in his eye. “Welcome to the scariest place of all—my mind.”

Jonathan Levy:

Jonathan is surprisingly sweet about Halloween. He plans a cozy night in with you, pumpkin carving and Halloween treats included. As he carefully carves a pumpkin, you try to match his focus but end up making a mess.

He laughs, shaking his head. “Here, let me help. You’re... definitely not doing this right.”

You hand over your pumpkin. “Fine, but don’t judge my carving skills.”

He grins, working quickly. “Wouldn’t dream of it. But next time, maybe we’ll pick something less… complicated.”

You both laugh as he finishes the pumpkin, the warm glow of the candle inside casting shadows across the room.

[mdhwrites]

So do you ever think that the whole Cat God thing in the Amphibia felt kinda out of left field? Like aside from Anne rambling when high on painkillers (which is not good foreshadowing), the Cat God feels like it came out of nowhere with barely any build up and only really exists purely so they wouldn't have to end the show with Anne 100% dead.

So... I really like it. It's maybe one of the few really good fake out deaths out there because it would have genuinely sucked if Anne were dead at the end of the series but having her briefly die for once has an actual POINT to it in the story, as well as one other part I like about it that I'll get to. Most things that do this sort of death can't say they have a real point to it. For them, it's just a heroic sacrifice to show things are serious and then it's various levels of questionable of how they turn it around when they get back. *glares daggers at Kingdom Hearts 3*

Amphibia is all about change though. How change can be painful, how it can be great, the good, the bad, and what we must sacrifice for it. A story about change that never addresses death is arguably incomplete in its themes. Death is one of the most painful changes in our life after all and rarely do we get to have a choice in the matter. Rarely does it get to mean something. Anne at least got to have it be her choice and to have it be in order to save the world she loved and change it for the better, while the Core wanted to change it for the absolute worst.

So her dying makes sense. It's kind of just the natural final note for the theme to go out on. So how do I justify the god coming out of nowhere?

Well, a lot of it has to do with Amphibia's writing. For once, not just that it is a looser sort of show with a better comedy focus than something like TOH. No, this time it has to do with the writing around the stones and around the god. The stones are always portrayed to us as gifts. Even Aldrich says it is their greatest treasure and that no one knows where they came from. They have prophecies about it. It's very BIG fantasy. Not High Fantasy but BIG, the sort that includes gods and what not. Honestly, one could argue it's taking cues from Greek storytelling in that way with chosen heroes, divine gifts, etc. like that.

So when the god appears and says the stones were all a game/test... Yeah, I buy it. They are unfathomably powerful, they aren't fully known by anyone, no matter how much anyone claims to understand them and all you have to do for their full power is to ask. Send a prayer to the one who made them.

But it gets better. I LOVE that it was an offhand thing for the god that then got annoying. That they decided to change things for no reason by giving mortals unlimited power and had to scold itself for TEN THOUSAND YEARS for what a mistake that was. It treated life as a game, fucked around and found out.

Which actually brings us to the final thing: The fact that Anne's kindness is rewarded. While community and change are major themes of the show, the driving force behind pretty much the entirety of the show is compassion and understanding as what brings about positive community and change. In her sacrifice, she showed the ultimate compassion she could for her world, her friends showed understanding by knowing they shouldn't stop Anne if this was her choice and for that, she is given the chance for godhood.

But Anne doesn't back off from her choice. She accepted death and she doesn't see herself as a queen. She isn't about to become like Sasha or the Core and take power just because it's in front of her. Not when she's made plenty of mistakes during the show. In that humility, she is given a chance to finish growing but they don't take back the impact on the theme. She still accepted the ultimate change. She even accepted it over power over everyone because she didn't just assume it'd be a purely positive change for everyone.

And all of that is part of why to me, the catgod works. Admittedly, from a pacing standpoint, it's about the only way to pull Amphibia's tone back to where they can start cracking jokes and what not and have an ending that feels like Amphibia rather than some dower, bittersweet farewell which is in and of itself smart for the show.

There's a LOT in Amphibia like this. Where if not for smart, cohesive choices made on all levels, and a genuine understanding of what it is on all levels, the choices wouldn't work or they'd be stupid or rushed, etc. like that.

But Amphibia is smart enough to make it all work, almost like a capricious god playing with a world, though not without a couple cracks at the fault lines. But that's just texture since a perfect product is a boring product.

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I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[osakaso5]

La Danse Macabre Rabbit TV Part 1: The First Intermission

Part 2

Yuki: Good job with the shoot, Tamaki-kun.

Tamaki Yotsuba: ...Thanks...

Sogo Osaka: T-Tamaki-kun. You should respond properly...

Torao Mido: What's wrong, Tamaki Yotsuba? You're not nearly as energetic as you usually are.

Tamaki Yotsuba: ...It's 'cause... My character and your characters are all so scary...

Tamaki Yotsuba: I don't want anyone to kill people...

Yuki: Hehe, you're so cute. And despite that, your performance was great.

Sogo Osaka: I thought so, too. ...Don't be sad, Tamaki-kun. It's all just an act.

Tamaki Yotsuba: ...But I don't wanna act like my dad.

Torao Mido: Your dad?

Sogo Osaka: ...Tamaki-kun...

Yuki: Coochie-coo.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Hyah... hahaha! C-cut it out, Yukirin! That tickles!

Yuki: There. Now all the scariness is off your face.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Huh..?

Yuki: You're a gentle kid who's getting teary-eyed over a scary story. I don't see how that makes you anything like your dad.

Torao Mido: I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm way more scared of Sogo and Yuki than you.

Yuki: Excuse me?

Sogo Osaka: What do you mean?

Tamaki Yotsuba: ...Yeah, I kinda get why.

Torao Mido: R-right? And we're both part of Kokujohyako, so we should stick together, Tamaki Yotsuba.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Haha. Yeah. You're a pretty nice guy, Toracchi.

Tamaki Yotsuba: You can just call me Tamaki, by the way.

Torao Mido: Sure. We've got plenty of shoots ahead of us, Tamaki. Let's both do our best.

Yuki: Heh. It looks like Tamaki-kun's helping us all become a little closer.

Sogo Osaka: I suppose he is.

Sogo Osaka: ...By the way, Yuki-san. I wanted to ask you about something...

Yuki: What is it?

Sogo Osaka: ...Well, my character can be sort of two-faced...

Sogo Osaka: I'm a bit worried that I might not be portraying the different parts of his personality properly... So um, I wanted to hear your opinion on my performance...

Yuki: Ah, you're worried about that? Your inner darkness was out in such full force, I had no idea you were having trouble at all.

Sogo Osaka: R-really!?

Torao Mido: You're not even aware of it yourself? That's pretty freaky, Sogo.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Yup! So-chan's always like that!

Yuki: "Your very existence is a thorn in my side. Just die already."

Yuki: That line gave me shivers when you said it.

Tamaki & Torao: T-that was scary...

Tamaki Yotsuba: Y-Yukirin! You gotta warn us before you start saying scary stuff like that!

Torao Mido: Y-yeah. Exactly. Great suggestion, Tamaki.

Sogo Osaka: ...I'm so happy... I never thought an actor of your caliber would compliment my performance..!

Yuki: Sorry. It was such a cool line, I wanted to try saying it myself.

Yuki: Oh, that reminds me. If you could've chosen any other role, which one would you have picked?

Torao Mido: I would've been Libel.

Yuki: Interesting.

Sogo Osaka: He does have strong morals and mental fortitude.

Tamaki Yotsuba: He's like, a hero! I wouldn't have been scared if I'd gotten Gakkun's role, either.

Torao Mido: As a man, I couldn't help but admire the way he sticks to his beliefs, no matter what anyone says.

Yuki: Huh, so you're that kind of guy.

Torao Mido: W-what's that supposed to mean..?

Yuki: Nothing. I actually like you the way you are now.

Torao Mido: ........

Torao Mido: A-anyway, what about you, Tamaki?

Tamaki Yotsuba: Hmm... Leiden!

Sogo Osaka: Ah, I can totally see why. He's so steadfast and strong.

Yuki: And he probably wouldn't get mad at me for sleeping on the job.

Tamaki Yotsuba: He doesn't think about stuff like profits and losses. He kinda just focuses on what's in front of him.

Torao Mido: He does seem like the friendliest member of the Unity Order.

Yuki: Really? I thought my character was plenty friendly, too.

Torao Mido: Is he..?

Tamaki Yotsuba: He was clicking his tongue a lot...

Sogo Osaka: I thought he was very cool!

Yuki: Thanks.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Ugh, So-chan!

Yuki: And what about you, Sogo-kun?

Sogo Osaka: ...Um... Arme, I suppose. I feel like he has something I lack.

Yuki: He's a kind boy who's overjoyed just to walk on the ground,  and who wants to end all conflict  between the Ark and the Surface.

Sogo Osaka: He's so empathetic, despite coming from a world where most people are only fighting for their own interests...

Torao Mido: Like the Osaka household, you mean. You know, I never  was cut out for business. I'm just not built for that stuff. 

Torao Mido: Which is why I genuinely respect you, Sogo. I wouldn't say your analytical side is all negative.

Sogo Osaka: ...Mido-san, you...

Tamaki Yotsuba: You're kinda like Libel.

Torao Mido: R-really?

Yuki: Heh. You definitely said something very heroic just now.

Sogo Osaka: Right. I never even imagined that the two of us would be chatting like this.

Torao Mido: Gee, thanks...

Torao Mido: And what about you, Yuki-san?

Yuki: Well, Cura might be fun.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Wasn't expecting that.

Yuki: It's really funny to see Yamato-kun play a character who blows stuff up for stress relif. I don’t  know if I could pull it off like he does,  though.

Sogo Osaka: I thought he'd be more like Yamato-san is normally, so the scene where he really brings out the bombs caught me off guard...

Torao Mido: I'd like to try walking away from an explosion sometime, too.

Tamaki Yotsuba: You're a pretty funny dude, Toracchi.

Torao Mido: I am?

Yuki: In any case, it's refreshing to do a story that's so different.

Sogo Osaka: It can get extreme at times... I was worried about how our fans would receive it.

Sogo Osaka: Even if it is a work of fiction, it has so many shocking turns...

Yuki: Easing them into the story is a part of our work, too.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Work...

Torao Mido: I thought it was fun to see the other members of ŹOOĻ act like completely new people.

Torao Mido: But I guess that might not be enough for the average viewer.

Yuki: Exactly. For example, all the fans who like you for how sexy and cool you are might be disappointed to see you wearing a hairband.

Torao Mido: Wha... So you're saying the hairband's my biggest problem!?

Yuki: Similarly, the people who like Haruka-kun's assertive personality might be shocked when they see him as the pure-hearted and sincere Arme.

Yuki: In other words, new doesn't always equal good to some people.

Yuki: While playing different types of characters, I received different types of fan responses. And despite what those criticisms may be, I had no choice but to keep working until the drama's over.

Yuki: Are you prepared to do the same?

Torao Mido: ...Yeah. I am.

Yuki: I like the look on your face.

Tamaki Yotsuba: ...Uh, listen. Maybe we could take a pic together right now, and post it online as a behind-the-scenes shot once the drama starts airing?

Yuki: Great idea.

Sogo Osaka: Right. If we show our fans that we're all having fun, it might help them feel at ease.

Torao Mido: Fun...

Yuki: What, are you saying you didn't have fun talking with us just now? I'm shocked...

Torao Mido: N-no..! I didn't mean it like that...

Sogo Osaka: Mido-san, come a little closer to the rest of us. We're taking that picture!

Torao Mido: ...Yeah. Thanks.

Tamaki Yotsuba: Everyone say peace!

All: Peace! 

End of Part 1.

[ganymedesclock]

I think it’s fascinating how our relationship with stories grows and changes. Some things, we meet them and know immediately we love them, and love them our whole lives. Some things, we love for a while, but not later; our needs and wants change, our worldview adjusts, and the infrastructure of our hearts, minds, bodies, carries stress differently.

For myself, I did not grow up with the horror genre. I remember being kind of repulsed by the idea when I was little- why would you choose to say something bad, when you could say something nice instead? This was a thought that haunted me, particularly when I read Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, the first book I’d really experienced where a major character I was rooting for died instead. Why would you choose to make something bad, when things could just be good?

Fantasy- particularly the soaring, dragon-riding, shining-sword good-against-evil fantasy- was my beloved, and it remains instrumental to me. So I don’t think it’s surprising that its particular vernacular about light and dark sort of seeped into the groundwater of me. At its most traditional, the fantasy genre preaches a message about holding the light close, and rejecting the dark.

But what is the dark? Most of us will not be attacked by demons or giant snakes or evil wizards. We will not be turned into dogs, and, honestly, while all of us at some point or another will encounter interpersonal malice, many of us will spend our entire lives without a personal nemesis. Some of the most violent and dangerous people we will ever meet will target us because of surface qualities or even traits that we don’t have.

So what is the dark?

Is it the way I lay in bed awake at night as a small child, trembling at the thought a smoke alarm might go off, or my appendix might burst, on the simple basis that I had been taught these were real things that could happen? The way that I became- increasingly over the years- certain beyond certain that if I tried to do something and failed, that failure would be inexplicably, yawning, horrifying, devour me beyond anything?

Or was it the great forces beyond my control- politics, wars, plagues, environmental changes? The things I yearned to be a hero against, imagined shining people with swords who had very little in common with me and could vanquish all the world’s ills?

The truth was, I have been very afraid of the world. For all of how I idealized the wolves and lions and eagles that sprang across heraldry, my temperament was more that of the deer- always with my ears and nose to the wind, wondering if that sound was a predator.

The hero classic, shining and triumphant, does not fear. They do not falter or drop their weapon or run away crying, and they absolutely do not linger helpless. Fear is, after all, a darkness- as is the rage that someone might use to overpower fear and fight through it. The pure hero of light throws all darkness away from them like their torch does the cave’s gloom. They are, so very often, explicitly chosen, explicitly marked; there is no way to be mistaken. What to do, and how to do it, are etched in the stars and so nakedly evident that even the beggar-woman in the marketplace can simply peer into their eyes and see that it is true, that it is good.

The truth was, I was not that person, but I dreamed of being them. I dreamed of their existence and importance and I pressed them into words and into art. I wanted to be perfect. Radiant. A knight in shining armor, a champion to others.

As I have grown, I have moved increasingly into the dark, and ironically, it was not because I lost hope.

The truth is, we don’t idealize heroes because they’re perfect. Or at least, we oughtn’t. I know I did, for many years; it was the part of me that pulled a disapproving puzzled frown every time someone suggested there was something to find in the dark I rejected.

The truth is, a hero is a hero because they stand amongst the dark, even if it is not inside them. A hero is not safe at home, comfortable and resting; heroism is a mantle donned in the face of adversity. In the face of horror.

The knight in shining armor, pure and radiant, has an inextricable and dependent relationship with the seething darkness they ostensibly cast down and reject. At its purest, the fantasy classic myth has only two players: the knight and the dragon. The hero and the adversity.

What is the dark? What is our personal dragon? I think that people who experienced more strife from without would have different answers, but for me, I can only see the darkness with a certain lens of pity. In idealizing the hero, I spent far too much of my life carving pieces off. It was not the light that had kindness for what I was- or simply, I lacked the confidence to put the real me into the light. Instead, dreading to look at it or study it at all, I threw it into the caves, into the dark, and it was the dragon that gathered these scraps and held them in its nest.

I could not love myself with the light for the very reason that I idealized it. For the very reason that I wished to only bring the best, prettiest, ideal parts of me, parts that didn’t even need to be mine as much as they needed to be lovely, to the light. I could not sully the shining hero with myself, even as a wretch to be saved.

So it was the dark that saved me; so it was the dark that held my imperfect self.

Returning as an adult, experienced and, I believe, a lot happier as a person, I can see there are oddities to this. Did the hero really never love me, or did I simply not think I deserved heroic love? Is it really heroic, true, pure of heart to reject the dark absolutely, and is there really no interplay of these things?

Is there only the blessed kingdom and the dark forbidding cave, or are there the dappled shadows of tree leaves and stained glass windows, things that are beautiful, things that we don’t want to live without? Is there a crepuscular truth, that intermediates the boundaries of these things?

Is heroism fake, simply because we can idealize it to such a point as to make it chemically sterile, inhospitable to all life?

Or, is it that the beloved glow of the shining knight is real- but can only be seen in the way that imperfect, disappointing things, more of an off-gray- become golden as the midday sun, when they come to save us at our worst?

As I move further into horror, its scrutiny and tropes, I don’t think I have lost fantasy. My roots as a reader and writer are there, and it is the place I think I will always return to. I think that the world is horrific. I think that the world is worth loving.

I think that we do not know our knight in shining armor by the actual color or quality of his clothes, but by the moment he picks up a torch and walks down into the cave. And a cave, after all, is merely rocks, until horror lives there.

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow. 

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Gonna make full use of my ‘comic rant’ tag and roast Future State: Superwoman.

Spoilers! And yelling! Of the disgruntled kind!

So a few things at the start here: 1.) I wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be great. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, in spite of some iffy stuff in the solicit text. So this rant is not coming from a place of having decided this was going to be awful ahead of time. 2.) My tolerance for bad Supergirl comics is pretty high! Takes a lot for me to actually come out and say that a particular issue is trash. Reader: This story is trash.

It’s not ‘middle-aged white guys writing/drawing a story about sending a minor to a potentially hostile planet fully nude’ trash, mind you. It’s the compost bin, rather than the landfill. Slightly nicer trash, but it still stinks to high heaven. Allow me to expand!

PROLOGUE - SUMMARY: ...I actually can’t summarize this comic b/c it would devolve into a lot of senseless yelling. We’ll just have to tease out this terrible plot as we go along. 

PART I - DEAD DOGS TELL BAD TALES: The comic opens with Kara standing at Krypto’s grave. That’s not why this comic is trash, but it bears mentioning. Because why. Why would you do this. 

PART II - IN WHICH IT ONLY GETS WORSE: So, Kara has a running inner monologue, and the main thing we gather from Kara’s thoughts is that it was Krypto who taught her to be a hero. On paper, that sounds very sweet! In practice, it reads as Kara having no moral center whatsoever—whatever good qualities she might possess, she did not learn from her parents, or her foster parents, or friends, or fellow heroes. Nor do they come from within Kara herself. Nope, t’was Krypto who taught Kara not to be a jealous rage monster. That is not hyperbole--Kara’s walking around angry about her cousin all the time and she’s like, ‘It was you, Krypto, who taught me not to judge, and to let go of anger.’ Listen, I love Krypto, but this? This is, as the youth would say, a bad look.

PART III - THOSE CERTAINLY ARE...SOME THEMES: The set-up here is that Kara is on the moon, and has established a sanctuary for alien refugees. That’s a dynamite idea! I love that! Buuuuut Kara didn’t look at the plight of alien refugees and say, ‘I want to help!’ Really, she didn’t even look at herself and say, ‘I don’t want others to feel like I’ve felt.’ No, she said, ‘Earth won’t accept me as a hero, and Clark didn’t name me protector of Earth, so. I’m out!’ (Honestly, if your moral compass is so whack that you need a dog to walk you back from Hulk-Smashing...can’t say I blame Clark for not picking you, Kara!) But apparently, the people on the moon don’t really like her either. And it is literally never explained why. There’s a whole montage of Kara fixing stuff and saving lives and all the moon folk just glare at her. This makes both the moon people AND Kara look like a**holes, because they come across as ungrateful, and she comes across as a glory hound. Thanks! I hate it! So the ‘peace’ Kara’s found on the moon isn’t really peaceful at all, cause she still resents her cousin, and people still don’t like her, in spite of the fact that she’s constantly performing acts of service for them. 

Also, side note, I’m just now realizing this is an entire population of alien refugees...and Kara is somehow still the odd one out. Like, Earth I get, because everyone else is a human and maybe freaked out by the super powers. But a bunch of aliens? WHY. Why did you do this. Why did this need to be set on the moon with alien refugees if you’re not going to interrogate Kara’s identity as an alien refugee herself AND all of the aliens are inexplicably humanoid in appearance and utterly ordinary in terms of power levels.  

Like. This is not the CW show, where they have a budget, and a huge ensemble cast to serve. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. AAARRRRRGHHHH.

PART III CONT’D: There’s also this weird ‘birthright’ element introduced...like, Clark and Jon stole Kara’s ‘right’ to be earth’s defender which is...a terrible reading of Kara’s modern origin. It brings in the idea that Kara is a ‘chosen one’ and because she didn’t get to be that chosen one, all of her hero work is for nothing. Never mind the whole central conceit of what makes Clark and Kara heroic...that they have this incredible power, and choose to do good with it. Nah...it’s all about her ‘right’ to protect the people of Earth! And mean ol’ Clark took that away! THANKS. I HATE IT. 

PART IV - A POOR USE OF SPACE: So, all of the Future State books kind of struggle with the issue of too much exposition, which is understandable. They have to introduce an entirely new status quo in a very limited amount of literal page space, so you *really* have to have a handle on how you allocate your time and focus.  

Introducing a brand new, lore-heavy heroic character who gets all of the development and dynamic art and pulls focus away from the character you’re meant to be writing is a bad use of a two issue limited series.

Like, this is a crappy Supergirl comic but it’s a great backdoor pilot for a Lynari ongoing, I guess. 

Imagine if in the Jon Superman book, they introduced a random, brand new best friend for Jon, and he got the big character arc instead of Jon. That’s something you save for an arc in an ongoing title, NOT A TWO ISSUE EVENT COMIC.  

Back to said new character, there’s a lot of forced attempts to parallel Kara and Lynari, but Lynari’s backstory is so confusing, rushed, and poorly explained that it’s like: okay, they’re both...angry? And the moon jerks hate them? ...uh. Okay.

(I’m gonna bring back my ‘why is this set on the moon, even’ question so that my ‘poor use of space’ header becomes a better joke.) 

PART V - I'M HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO...B/C THERE SURE AIN’T ONE HERE: I’ve already mentioned that Krypto was apparently Kara’s conscience so when Lynari’s aunt arrives to...kill them? (again, everything about Lynari’s backstory is rushed and poorly explained) Kara gets real mad and basically pulls a Gothel: ‘You want me to be the bad guy? Fine! Now I’m the bad guy.’ But thank goodness Lynari is there to tell Kara no! Don’t murder the giant aunt eel! Lynari then steals Kara’s powers and gives up the swamp jewel that’s been hidden inside their body and now their aunt is less murder-y!

WOW. Couldn’t even give the big damn hero moment to Kara in her own book, huh?

So the day is saved. It takes Kara a while to regain her powers, and it’s only then, when she’s no longer ‘above’ the moon jerks, that they’re like, ‘oh, we like her!’ There is a bit of narration about how that attitude is awful. But that narration is provided by Lynari. See, the inner monologue is no longer Kara’s thoughts, but rather it has switched to Lynari’s point of view. They’re telling us this story. And do you know why?

PART VI - WHY THIS COMIC *SUCKS*: KARA DIES. SHE’S THE FRIGGIN’ ‘SECOND GRAVE’ OF THE TITULAR ‘TWO GRAVES’

Fudge this comic to heck.

See, Kara dies on the moon, presumably of old age. She’s buried next to Krypto. And this random character who we’re suddenly supposed to care about tells us her story. Not Clark. Not the Danvers. Not Brainy. Not even one of the supporting cast members from her solo title. No one from Kara’s life is mentioned at all, save for Jon and Clark, and they’re pretty much relegated to flashbacks of Kara punching them. 

PART VII - TIME TO COMPARE DEATHS, I GUESS: First and foremost can I just say that I hate that’s a sentence that I’m typing about Kara in the year of our lord, 2021. But okay: Kara’s big famous death in Crisis stopped the entire DC universe cold. Everyone paused in the middle of the destruction of the multiverse to mourn her loss and honor her (GENUINELY HEROIC) sacrifice. Clark and Barbara--two established characters with a strong connection/relationship to Kara--offered lovely eulogies. 

This one: Kara gets to die of old age in obscurity after a lifetime of striving to be recognized and only achieving it by de-powering and serving a population of jerks. 

Not the warm and fuzzy ending you think it is!

(Meanwhile, Clark lives for millennia and spawns an entire dynasty of Els, all of ‘em out there, protecting the cosmos. I was looking forward to House of El in the hopes of maybe seeing some Kara stuff but NOPE. Thanks to Superwoman, we’re probably not gonna see any future Kara stuff beyond this! G R E A T)

And like, the argument could be made that this ending makes Kara happy. This is the life she chooses! She wants to be alone and garden on the moon! Except, we get zero insight from Kara regarding the remainder of her life. We only have Lynari’s narration and some montage shots...nearly all of which focus on other characters. But honestly, even if we did get Kara’s side of things, I doubt it would shed much light on her feelings, bEEECAUSE...

PART VIII - SUPER BLAND: This Kara really has no personality outside of ‘detached and vaguely bitter.’ I like Sauvage, I think she’s an incredibly talented artist, but here, Kara is stiff and her expression often reads as aloof. She’s very pretty, but it comes at the expense of being expressive. (And I know Sauvage can do expressive stuff...because Lyanari gets to be expressive.) Like...I love that shojo manga vibe but this is a Kara devoid of spark and warmth. 

...Like...Melissa Benoist’s portrayal of Kara is right there... 

I’ve already sort of touched on this but her inner monologue doesn’t have much personality either. She’s just parroting the same, ‘I need to do as Krypto taught me!’ nonsense for both issues. Until, of course, we shift to Lynari’s narration, and lose Kara’s thread entirely. 

PART IX - LET’S WRAP THIS UP: This book frustrates me to no end because it had a lot of stuff going for it. It’s got a female writer and artist--still a rarity for the Supergirl book--it’s a limited series mostly free of continuity and character baggage, and it’s not tied down to the grimdark cyberpunk stuff happening in the Gotham books. YOU COULD’VE DONE ANYTHING. And, once again, DC goes with a pitch that’s: Kara is angry, Kara resents Clark...and Kara dies.

It’s also happening...right as Kara has no dedicated ongoing title, the movie’s been shelved, the TV show is entering its sixth and final season, and all promotion has shifted to new CW and HBO shows. 

*screams into the void* 

MAAAAAAN I hate this book. I hate that it retroactively makes me hate the Andreyko run a little bit--a run that I took to be about a traumatized young woman forced to confront her grief, and who leans on a beloved animal companion for comfort. Here, Krypto is L I T E R A L L Y the reason Kara’s not constantly frying folks with her heat vision. 

I hate that this book has made me use the word ‘literally’ so much in this rant.

I hate that this could possibly be more in continuity than Millennium.

Remember Millennium? Where Kara was in like...five pages? And she was warm, and kind, and promised to help Rose because it was the right thing to do, and oh yes, WAS PRESIDENT OF EARTH?!??! AND A CLASSY OLD LADY!?!?!?!?! WHO WAS STILL ALIVE AND KICKIN’ IN THE FAR FLUNG FUTURE!?!?!?!?!

I hate that I’m using my lunch hour to rant about how much I hate this comic.  

I hate that DC editorial seems hell-bent on erasing the interesting aspects of Kara’s character to sand her down to ‘the angry one’ or ‘Batman 2.0′

PART X - LET’S END ON SOME (?) POSITIVES: Don’t read this book! Don’t do it! Don’t waste your time and money!

Instead, check out ANYTHING ELSE. If you want mom!Kara, read Tom Taylor’s ‘Last Daughters of Krypton’ in the DC Nuclear Winter special. If you want heroic oldlady!Kara, read Millennium. Honestly? Pick up anything by Bendis that has Supergirl in it. It is miles away better than this. You want angry Kara working through her grief? Andreyko, Red Lantern, even Infected. ANYTHING BUT THIS. HECK, grab Superman of Metropolis instead! That has bad Kara characterization but at least she doesn’t end up dead. 

Anyways. This comic is bad. I wish it wasn’t! And this is now the SECOND TIME IN A ROW that Kara’s book ends on a terrible note before the character disappears from monthly comics for an unknown period of time.  

*screams into the void again*

[croesow]

Anonymous asked: Hey Sion, did you ever meet the "Hero of Oblivia"? Apparently they were really young for a Top Ranger.

Siôn bites his tongue hard, fighting to push back the wave of bitterness that rose to the back of this throat. Oblivia was a sensitive topic, as was the idea of heroes or chosen ones, but he knew that hadn’t been the intention behind the student’s question. It was innocent curiosity, sparked by nothing more than the regional connection between Siôn and Summer, and it wouldn’t be fair to react harshly to that.

He takes a deep breath, calming the traumatised beast within him and letting gentle understanding take its place. They hadn’t meant any harm.

                     ❝  I left Oblivia before they rose to prominence.  ❞

It’s the same vague answer he gives to anyone who asks about his time before Adreffe. There’s little reason to share his tragic life story every time a question gets thrown his way, and to share such sensitive information with the students would only make them feel bad for asking. Adreffe is supposed to be their home, a place where they can seek shelter away from the world’s unpleasantness, and Siôn could never bare to snatch that comfort away just for the sake of sharing his own sob story.

                     ❝  We might have met once or twice in passing. There were always Rangers coming in and out of our village grounds, so it’s very possible she paid us a visit at one point, but I’m afraid the heroic streak came to life after I had already found Adreffe. I’ve got no exciting stories to share.  ❞

One hand toys with his glasses as he thinks, trying to recall the happy times he’d had in his small village. Despite having no Ranger Base of its own, it had always had a heavy Ranger presence. Their uniforms had been blurs of colours against the otherwise quite samey backdrop of beige and white houses and dusty cobblestone paths, and Siôn remembered sparking up conversation with them on more than one occasion. All their names were lost, faces smudged and indecipherable, the conversations themselves reduce to nothing more than scattered whispers floating about inside his head.

Summer might have been among his Ranger acquaintances. It’s impossible to tell now.

He smiles, moving to stand up and bring this conversation to a polite end. As much as he would love to stay and talk, a Champion’s life is a busy one, and the student’s school day is not yet finished. Best not to distract them any longer.

                     ❝  Unfortunately I have let Oblivia’s more recent happenings slip out of my attention, but I’m sure our dear Hero will continue to benefit the world and work to keep us safe. Being a Top Ranger is an impressive career, and I have no doubt their exceptional future endeavours will further prove exactly why they are so well-suited to that field.  ❞

                     ❝  And remember, age has no bearing on ability! Just as Oblivia’s Hero is young and able to surpass all others in her field, you can surpass us if you keep up with your training. Now move along, class will be starting soon and you know Mr. Farrant can’t abide lateness.  ❞

[tsukikoayanosuke]

The Dorm Leaders' Heroic Counterpart(?)

This has been in my thought for a while.

I was wondering which twisted version of the hero/heroine who will appear in Scarabia arc, and it got me thinking about why the three 'hero' characters (Che'nya, Cheka, and Rielle) was chosen.

Okay, let’s see like this:

Why was Che'nya (Cheshier Cat) chosen as the opposite of Riddle (Queen of Heart) instead of Alice? If I remember correctly, in the last few minutes of Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshier Cat was the one lightning the fuse that caused the Queen of Heart to chase Alice. He was the chaos energy in the whole trial scene. Which means, it was him who brings the Queen of Heart to her final wrath, not Alice.

Leona (Scar) and Cheka (Simba) was obvious and no need further explanation. Simba was the next heir to the Pride Rock. If Simba was never born, then the throne will go to Scar (or Nala, but we're not going there). Simba was also the one who bring Scar to his final tumble before the hyena eats Scar.

Azul (Ursula) and Rielle's (Ariel) connection was just business. Ursula noticed that Ariel was interested in the human world and decided to use that in her favor. But if you think differently, it was Ariel and Eric's love that finally kill Ursula. If Ariel never fell in love with Eric, and if Eric never loved her back, Ursula will be the queen of the ocean.

What about the rest of the characters?

Let's start with Kalim (Sultan) and Jamil (Jafar). We're still debating who will be overblotting in this chapter, but I'm guessing both of them will do it. This means, there's a possibility of two hero-counterparts. Let's look at Jamil first. In the 2019 version of Aladdin, Jafar mentioned that he and Aladdin were the same: a thief, which made Aladdin a foil to Jafar, simple. But what about Kalim? Well, Jasmine. Both Jasmine and the sultan always disagreed about the law of the kingdom. Jasmine, who wants to rule as a sultana and marries someone she loves, against the sultan, who wants his daughter to follow the rule for the kingdom's sake.

For Vil (The Evil Queen), it was Snow White. Snow White was the reason why the Evil Queen sent the huntsman. When she survived, the Evil Queen immediately took the act to kill Snow White herself, which led her to her death by falling down the cliff.

Before we go to Idia (Hades), let's recap Hercules for a second. Hades wanted to kill Hercules because of some prophecy, that's understandable, a decent motive. However, Hades never really meet adult Hercules until the beginning of the final battle. He made a deal with Hercules and took his power. Technically, he had won. But there's one thing... He didn't predict that Megara will sacrifice herself to save Hercules, thus giving Hercules his power back. Hades even mentioned himself: "We were so close! So close. We tripped at the finish line. Why? Because our little nut, Meg, has to go all noble." Megara was the one ruining Hades' plan, which is why I choose her.

Finally Malleus (Maleficent). Now, this is interesting, because Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Maleficent (2014) are two different stories. Let's start with Maleficent first. Easy, it's Aurora. Aurora was the one who changed Maleficent. Maleficent even regret putting the spell on Aurora after the times spent with her. She was willing to risk her life, traveling back to the castle to stop the curse from happening, even be the one who woke Aurora up. However, this is not what happened in the 1959 version. Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty was an evil b*tch and I love her for that. She didn't care about Aurora at all which means they can't be a foil to each other. Then who? Who in the end killed Maleficent? Phillip, right? He was the one who threw the sword, right? This can be a good argument, but if we look closer and remember what happened before the stabbing moment, it was the Three Good Fairies who gave the power to the sword. Heck, they were the ones who saved Phillip, raised Aurora in the wood, and alternated the curse. They are the real hero of the story! And if I have to choose between the three, I have to choose Merryweather, because she was the one who made the first move to ruin Maleficent's curse.

What do you guys think? Which hero do you think will appear in future chapters?

[luninosity]

2020 fic round-up - original / published fic!

Time for the original fic overview, from this year! There’s a LOT, but some of that was written (at least mostly) last year, and only published this year. So let’s see...

Original Fic (at least mostly written and published in 2020) (Character Bleed, E, 254,099 words. **Pretty much all of this was written in 2019, so I'm not really counting it as 'new words' - but all the editing - and the publication!!!! - happened in 2020!** THIS STORY, YOU GUYS. I love it and these characters so much. It's  the  most ambitious thing I've ever tried to write, that whole  story-within-a-story, being about actors filming a  Regency-era gay love  story, and falling in love themselves. I'm just looking at it all...and  I'm in awe...and the response to this, oh wow. I've been so amazed and  so grateful and so thrilled - the art, the trailer, the comments, the  people thinking about these characters and loving them along with me -  I'm so lucky to have all of you. *hugs everyone* And now you can buy it! As three volumes - Seaworthy, Stalwart, and Steadfast! Available via JMS Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere!) Character Bleed Bonus Scenes,  E, 84,125 words, which means 58,428 new words! Also there're at least three special bonus scenes that *aren't* on AO3, only included with the published books! (Conversely, there're at least two bonus scenes that will only ever be on AO3, for all of you reading there!) So that's probably an extra, oh, let's say around 5k words. Cinnamon and Strawberries (A Character Bleed Story), E, 12,169 words. My Jason & Colby holiday novella! Full of celebrations, love, moving in together, and interesting uses for holiday ribbon... Cadence and the Pearl, E, 60,097 words, About 30k of it written in 2019/2018 (Was this really also published this year? I had FOUR novels out this year? Gosh.) I really love this one, honestly - historical, paranormal, pensive, ocean magic, a fairy tale. The Arch-Mage's Firebird, E, 11,220 words. A spin-off story in the Kitten & Witch universe! (I really ought to write the third part of the main story...) A runaway firebird, and an Arch-Mage in hiding, and a beachside town. One Night in London: Robert & Anthony, E, 29,247 words. My part of the fabulous collaborative three-part novel, with @turtletotem and @thebestpersonherelovesbucky ! <33333 You can buy the collected version here - they're more fun to read together, since our characters interact, but they can technically stand alone. Regency m/m romance, ballrooms, scandals... (I also wrote the prologue for the collected edition, so, + about 5k words!) Eventually there'll be a print version of the collected edition! We had so much fun - perhaps we'll do it again sometime... :D :D A Demon for Forever, E, 13,752 words - surprise! I thought I was done with the Demon for Midwinter  universe - but JMS did a submissions call for stories celebrating LGBTQ  marriage, and, well - I'd written the proposal story for Kris and  Justin, so...we should get to see the wedding, right? With Justin in a wedding dress. A sparkly one. This story is also available as part of the JMS Books 2020 Top Ten Anthology! The Demon's Choice, E, 19,365 words - extra surprise! I'd had to cut this whole subplot from an earlier Demon story, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so...I finally wrote it as a bonus story! Hurt/comfort, Justin confronting his heritage, and of course a happy ending. Refuge at Clifftop, E, 17,262 words. Third in the Extraordinary superhero polyamory series! Lots of hurt/comfort in this one, near-death self-sacrifice, tons of heroic love! Leather and Tea in London, E, 20,909 words - the third  of the Leather and Tea stories! Written for the JMS Books BDSM  collection call. Simon's brother needs a favor. So Ben and Simon head to  London, bringing Ben's retired-spy skill set and also some fun toys for  enjoying themselves. This story is also available as part of the JMS Books Hurts So Good BDSM Trio Collection! A Penny for Your Thoughts, E (but mostly implied / discussed - those darn truth-telling coins!), 3,981 words. A original-fic rewrite of an Evanstan drabble, expanded somewhat - and I really love these characters! A magician, his hero, mutual pining, and love confessions. Of Starlit Balls and Starship Captains, T, 6,596 words. M/F, with bi/pan protagonists - my attempt at mixing space opera and Regency romance! Technically I'd written an earlier version of this a couple years ago for a contest, for which it was not chosen, so this isn't all new writing, but substantially so. Statuesque, E, 3,491 words - some lesbian erotica! Short and kinky - established Dom/sub relationship - and loving. Honey Witch, E, 4,032 words. More short lesbian erotica! A witch and her princess, finding each other. Original Fic (written/heavily revised in 2020, publication contracts signed but not yet published) A Sonnet for a Thunderstorm, M, 3,202 words. An expanded original-character version of a several-years-old Cherik drabble - 18th century historical, thunderstorms, a poet and his pirate. Probably out in April/May 2021. (Frost & Raine, expanded version - the version that's still on AO3, which I'll have to take down, is about 31k - the published version, coming in February 2021, is currently 40,020 words. So...8,141 new words!) Original Fic (written in 2020, not yet under contract or published other than on AO3) In Focus, which is the Character Bleed spin-off, Leo's story - still in progress! it's up  to 68,458 words, so that means...52,947 new words in 2020! Not bad. Whumptober 2020 - Original Fic Edition, E (overall; individual chapters vary), 13,271 words. All the Whumptober fics for my original fic - fanfic for myself! A couple of the Character Bleed-related ones might make it into publication, as well as the Jamie/Brendan story, eventually, I hope. Ember and Serenity,  E, 23,170 words currently - I added chapter 5 in 2020, so that's 2,418 new words! I do have plans for this one. Oh yes. My  librarian-magician and his book-thief...yes. And if you're wondering who  hired Serenity, well, there already has been a clue... :D Spells and Sensibility (working title), aka the Mystery Project I'm working on with @thebestpersonherelovesbucky  - which involves Regency-era magicians, and is currently 35,546 words!

#

That’s a lot of words! I feel Accomplished. Looking forward to more words in 2021 - and sharing them all with all of you, without whom I’d’ve never had the courage to try to publish stories. Thank you - you’re why I do this. <3333

[gffa]

“This whole trilogy, VII, VIII, and IX, is really sort of about the generation that follows the great generation and the idea of bringing balance to the Force, which is the whole point of the Chosen One, Anakin, in the original trilogy. “What I loved was the idea that balance brought to the Force doesn’t mean it’s forever.  It’s not immediately everlasting and I think the idea that, if we are not careful, that evil will rise again.  That we have to be proactive and doing what we can to maintain the balance and how does the generation that follows the great generation do that?”  --JJ Abrams, The Rise of Skywalker panel I’VE YELLED A LOT ABOUT THIS, why the sequel trilogy actually has started to really work for me, even though I first felt like it ruined the happy ending of the original trilogy. As I look around our real world and the evil that’s rising again here, as people work to make us forget our history and we repeat it because we think we’re distanced enough from that that we’re immune to it coming back, I think this message is spectacularly salient to our times and something that makes sense to be reflected into a fictional story that’s so much about one generation to the next. While I would have done things differently, I’m not arguing that TROS is a perfectly executed movie, but instead that the foundation of what motivated them in this direction is one that resonates strongly with me.  That Anakin was the Chosen One, he did bring balance, but one of the things about Star Wars is that it’s not just about one or two legendary figures. The Jedi themselves aren’t important because they can move the mountains of the galaxy, but instead because they are teachers, they are inspirational figures, they give others hope, they create a moment where the galaxy can finally swing back in a better direction, but it’s up to every day people to pick up on that. “Jedi have the ability to turn the tide, to make a significant moment, to give hope where there’s none.  That’s their ultimate role to play, to be this example of selflessness.  And that’s what makes them a hero, when no one else can match that heroic thing.  And then our job is to emulate that, to use that example, and further our own lives.”  –Dave Filoni It’s why, all throughout the prequels and the originals and even the sequels, the idea of putting everything on the Jedi is against what’s really going on--that it’s about the galactic public, the everyday citizens who must do the maintaining.  A Jedi can bring balance to the Force, they can defeat the ultimate evil, but it’s up to everyday people to band together and fight off the Empire in the Rebellion, it’s up to everyday people to band together and fight off that legion of Sith Star Destroyers. Rey can destroy Palpatine and choose the light and that’s a tremendous, epic moment.  But without people helping her to maintain the balance in the Force through everyday acts, without the support to maintain the balance after the great generation maintains it, it’ll go out of balance again. That’s what was so fucked up about the Republic--the public didn’t do shit.  They sat back and let the Senate buy a bunch of clones and draft them into the war so that they didn’t have to fight, and it stretched the Jedi so thin that they had no real choices left to them.  They sat back and let the Empire rise, the Senate literally applauding as it happened--”So this is how liberty dies.  With thunderous applause.” is one of the most memorable lines for a reason. It took the galaxy twenty years to really fight back against the Empire and we see in comics like Poe Dameron or in books like Aftermath and Bloodline that people don’t want to think about it anymore, they just want to forget all about it.  They’re tired of hearing about the bad shit the Empire did, they don’t want to deal with another war against something like the First Order again. No fucking wonder the ST happened--because people didn’t help maintain the balance, the light. I am delighted that JJ said it directly in this panel, as well as giving credit to what Anakin did, that the overall ST hasn’t taken away from that.  I have a lot of criticisms about how this trilogy went about these themes (separating the OT cast, the shitshow that is the pacing between TLJ and TROS, the lack of putting this theme more front and center), but I will die on the hill that the theme is there and it’s an important and good one.

[tildehummingbird]

Spoiler about Catherine and the Soul Riding

(I posted this over at sso forums, so if you see a thread like this there, it's me hehe)

So, I've done the Catherine Quests and I've completed them and as a lot of other people, I was mad. 

I mean, I had so many questions: If Aideen is in everyone, and destiny doesn't matter, then what's the need for Soul Riders, if anyone can do it? Destiny and being the "chosen one" is the whole entire concept of this game, and changing the route NOW, or at ALL doesn't make any sense, and they're probably gonna lose a lot of players that are interested in lore because this doesn't make any sense. Then what's even the need for a 5th rider? What's even the need for this game at all, if a 5th rider isn't needed then just follow the storyline in Starshine Legacy and don't add the 5th rider. If anyone can do it and if Aideen is in everyone, then explain why we're the only ones in this whole entire generation that can handle all powers at once, why can't any of the other riders in Jorvik? Why was Elizabeth so surprised that we could in fact use all powers? What was the need for the beginning cutscene? It literally told us "In times of despair, a sisterhood of Soul Riders will ride forth to protect the island from the evil that seeks to rip the world apart. It is foretold that a sisterhood led by a heroic and fearless girl will appear on horseback to bring hope and light back to those who believe that all is lost... Are you that girl?" I don't know dude, it doesn't even matter if I am because apparently anyone can be that girl, so who cares if I am? Then why were we able to literally fly on our horse? Why would Fripp be so adamant about our protection to the point of where he put his own life on the line, just so we could be protected? The message of "anyone can be a hero" is great, however that's not the point of this story and it never has been.

All these questions and no answers, so I thought we could theorize a bit so that, together, we could try to understand a bit more about this and understand what even happened, what it means and where it is going.

I was checking the star stable tag on Tumblr, and I saw a post by @sso-emberwood that pointed out a lot about Catherine: She didn't even want to be Aideen at all, all she wanted was a normal life with Thomas and her baby, to be free from this prophecy and these duties. Not only that, but The Keepers of Aideen aren't exactly the most telling bunch, so she would know as much as we do: nothing. She wasn't a fan of the prophecy thing, she wasn't a fan of being the only one who's special and different, and she rejected the whole idea, so it would make sense as to why she'd project that onto us, too. Not only that, we saw that she lost her horse, and therefore "half a soul", as Linda described it so maybe she really doesn't get it anymore.

Either that, or maybe we perceived what she said wrong. I went back to check on what she said, so I'll write it here: "We needn't wait for Aideen's return. The goddess is reborn with every horse and rider who open their hearts and form a true bond. Aideen's gift is love. She's been with us all along. In me. In you. At least that is what I believe."

So, to start off, I think that last part is very important. That's what she belives - referring back to what we know is fact: she didn't like the prophecy, and she wanted to define her own destiny and not be controlled by it - so it would make sense for her and her character that she'd have these beliefs. To her, all you need is Aideen's love because Aideen's gift lives in everyone. Now, it is true that Aideen's Gift lives in everyone because Aideen's gift IS for everyone in the island of Jorvik, and I even have Rhiannon dialogue to prove that the Keepers of Aideen agree on this too. This bit of text is from one of the Soul Riding quests, where Rhiannon takes us to South Hoof:

"Have you ever noticed there's something different to the nature of Jorvik? The grass is greener, the birdsong sweeter. But most importantly, the horses are happy and free. They have all this land to roam, and we Jorvegians share this land with them. This connects us to horses on a deeper level. The other Druids put so much focus on the Soul Riders, Guardian Horses, Aideen herself....but they forget to see the magic that's right before their eyes. The magic of Aideen's gift." At this point, you're given two choices: either "I already know that." or "That's what they all say." Regardless, she'll say "Is that so? You've probably heard folk talk about it as if it's some kind of friendship between horse and human. But it's so much more than that. It's what pulled me to travel up North to care for magical horses. It's what makes Nix so special to me. It's even why I'm a Wild Whisperer...On Jorvik, our deep bond with horses is magical. You've been training exceptionally well. During this time, the bond you have developed with [horse name] has flurished. But you haven't just strengthened the bond between both of you. You've connected to the nature of Jorvik on a deeper level, and with that have honed a magical link to all the horses in this island. Close your eyes, and listen to the sound around us. Can you feel how everything is connected?", yet again you can choose between "Yes, it's magical." and "Uh...no." she'll say "You clearly have an affinity for this. I'm impressed. Sometimes, if you focus clearly, you may notice a spark of something powerful. That's the presence of a wild horse. It's one of the ways we Wild Wardens sense they're nearby and ensure their safety. So now you know. Aideen's Gift ties us to all the horses on Jorvik, and it is something to treasure. You can use this knowledge to improve your riding skills. Pay close attention to your horse, and the horses around you, and you will find harmony. This is what I wanted to share with you weeks ago, but I thought you weren't ready to understand. However, I was wrong. Your dedication to Soul Riding has proven just how much you care for the horses on this island. I'm proud of you, [player name]. Thank you for helping protect the horses on Jorvik."

Aideen's Gift is what makes you have such a good connection with horses and it is what makes Jorvik's people and horses special - however, that's certainly not enough to lead Soul Riders into battle. Love isn't enough to defeat Garnok - you need to be chosen for it and destiny DOES matter, no one else has any power in any circle, only the people who are born specifically to have it. However, Catherine is right, but I'm not exactly sure that she understands that that's not why we are unique and that's not what makes us fit for battle instead of literally anyone else - we're unique and the reason as to why we're the only ones who should be able to go into battle is because we don't just have Aideen's Gift like everyone else - we are Aideen. Catherine is Aideen too, we are her and she is us. Cause all of the reeincarnations of Aideen are the same thing, different body. Us and the Soul Riders don't just have Aideen's Gift, we were reincarnated to be her and the soul riders were reincarnated to be what they are today.  Catherine very visibly rejected and left behind her duties and gave up being a soul rider after she lost her horse - she completely rejected even looking for a reeincarnation of it like we did with Anne - but when she did, we were born, because Catherine gave up which meant that another reeincarnation was needed, because it needs to be Aideen herself, not just someone who has the gift - she kept the gift, but she no longer had what it takes to be that girl, and didn't want to either, so someone who did was born.

And again, the Druids make it very clear that their mission, and their end goal is he rebirth of Aideen. A couple of days ago I got a lore book from the Soul Riding missions called "Druids and Horses: A Partnership" that said this: "Aideen's Gift enables druids to continue to protect Jorvik, feel spiritually closer to the land, and ultimately fulfill their mythical goal of the rebirth of Aideen" and  "[...] a network of spiritual people whose sole mission is to protect Jorvik through ensuring the return of the goddess Aideen." 

Which means they acknowledge that they're waiting for a specific someone to be born, so that that specific someone can lead the sisterhood into battle, when the final battle comes, which means that they acknowledge that it can't just be anyone. Waiting for someone special is the whole point of the Keepers of Aideen - they are literally called Keepers of Aideen, no Aideen reborn, no Keepers of Aideen.

Also, in the mission "Strenght in Numbers" with Rhiannon in the Soul Riding, she said that what made her leave Jorvik was that she saw a hooded figure in the forest, and it felt like it was draining the life out of her and her horse, so she left because she was afraid, but she came back upon Elizabeth's request for help, and she when she saw how much closer the Keepers of Aideen were, she decided to stay, but after she says she says: "What really opened my eyes was you, [player name]. Your dedication, skill, and sheer talent has given me faith in Aideen's Light that I haven't felt for a while." Everyone has something like this to tell us, I think there's a reason for that. One of the most important ones so far was for example, when Darko was able to enter the Stone Ring, threatening to destroy the keystone, and Fripp says: "I would sooner destroy the keystone than let you take [player name]. She is more important than you imagine..."

The reason as to why I choose to share the Rhiannon one is because it is recent, just like Catherine's memories which means the story and the objective remains the same, with the only difference that we know Catherine's perspective and why she failed and why the sisterhood fell apart, which will be important in the future, because if you don't remember, the dark riders are trying to recruit Nihili (previously known as Elise) who is the 4th Dark Rider. So far, we've only seen her horse but what we do know about her is that she has the ability to cause discord within the Dark Riders, but I'd imagine she'd have influence on us, as well, and that's why she'd probably be recruited. The Dark Riders know that the previous sisterhood failed due to discord and fights within the group, so it wouldn't be surprising that they'd try to make that happen yet again.

Apart from all of this, I simply don't think Catherine knows enough about this whole thing to be the one to reveal it to us, and I also think the "big reveal" was anticlimatic and not well done, at least in my eyes, because *assuming* this is the route they're going with...eh? What? Why was it so...dry?

Also, if you go back to the very first news post on Catherine's diary, it says "This chapter of the Soul Rider story arc is a standalone quest and is not mandatory to complete in order to play future quests with the Soul Riders." and if they were to add SUCH an important reveal then it wouldn't be a something you could choose not to do, it would be a mandatory, integral part of the story -  this seems like very important information, right? If we don't do this quest, and just move on then in the world and in a story sense, MC wouldn't know that there's technically no Aideen to look for. It doesn't make sense if this is really what they're going to do...Unless it's not and this is just Catherine's opinions on the matter.

Overall, I'm just not a believer yet - I still think this is just Catherine's thoughts. As @sso-emberwood said, the only one who could actually tell us anything for sure is Fripp. He knows way more than everyone in the Keepers of Aideen. But he's sick still, and has been since 2017 the poor guy. I don't think we should assume anything yet, and I certainly don't think the game has changed directions. If it did, I'll be honest with yall - my interest would not be the same and I think it would be that way for a lot people as well and I think that's fair. You can't just come in and suddenly change the route of something that has been hinted at and is supposed to be the point of the game, it just doesn't make any sense. If so, then there's no need for this game or for a 5th rider.

[essays-for-breakfast]

Should Fate Ever Part Us

Kiane Week Day Seven: AU

Note: Yes, this is the Fate AU the world was waiting for. Seven Sins, seven Servants - I can’t believe no one realized the potential of this concept before I did. Then again, Fate is complicated. I tried my best to make everything understandable, but I can’t guarantee I succeeded. Side note: All the Japanese is taken from James Clavell’s Shõgun. I apologize for any mistakes.

He is back home. The leaves dance in the air. Her laugh echoes through the forest, a tune like a sweet windchime. The warm rays of sunlight through the canopy bathe the skin of her bare arms in gold and emerald as she twirls with the leaves, her face obscured by locks like the bark of the hickory tree. With another spin, her bare feet bring her towards him. She extends her hands. Inches separate their fingertips…

“Wakarimasu ka, Harlequin-sama?”

The scents and scenery of the forest disappeared to leave the Heroic Spirit Harlequin alone on the barren rooftop of one of Fuyuki’s plentiful skyscrapers. Thousands of electric lights pierced the sky and blackened the stars with their cold presence. And although Harlequin was not a physical part of this world and hadn’t been since his death eleven hundred years ago, the wind bit into his skin.

“Nan desu ka?”

For a moment, Harlequin failed to make sense of the strange words the disembodied voice of his Master whispered to him. Then the images of the forest left him entirely, and his mind pieced the Japanese expressions together into a coherent picture. Gilthunder had asked him what was the matter – maybe more than once judging by the distress of his voice.

“Gomen nasai, Master,” Harlequin said. An honest apology. He had let his mind wander astray from his assigned duty for too long already. In Japanese he continued, “Could you please repeat your instructions?”

Like all Servants, Harlequin had access to the entirety of human knowledge collected until this point in time, and this included the ability to speak any language with the same ease as his own. But the complex expressions found in Japanese never felt comfortable on his tongue.

Gilthunder’s teeth clacked against one another. A clear sign of his unease. “Am I not providing you with sufficient amounts of magic? Is that why you are drifting off sometimes?”

“Iyé.” – No. “I was lost in thought. I promise I won’t fail you again, Master.”

Gilthunder said nothing for a while. For his age, he was a talented member of the Clock Tower Mages, but he always harbored doubts about his potential. Not an hour since Harlequin’s summoning had passed without Gilthunder second-guessing the connection he has forged to his Servant. His doubts were not unfounded – in the Holy Grail War, the strength of the bond between Master and Servant could tip the scale between loss and victory, life and death.

“Are you sure you have recovered from your battle with Archer?” Gilthunder asked. “We can’t afford any mistakes, not this time. Not against Hendrickson. I know his methods, he will stop at nothing to win the Grail.”

“Won’t you do the same?”

“I don’t want the Grail. I want Hendrickson and Dreyfus to pay for what they did.” Gilthunder paused. At the foot of Harlequin’s vantage point, cars and motorcycles rushed by with roaring engines. This world was too loud, no matter the time of day. Here, a leaf sailed to the ground unheard.

When Gilthunder continued, his voice sounded distant. He too reminisced about the time before the Holy Grail War. “Have you ever lost yourself in battle? To the point of regret? Of course, I have heard your tale, the stories they exhibit in the Clock Tower library… but how did it feel? Do you think you could have chosen another path if you had wanted?”

Harlequin held his palm out in front of him. The scars were the same as back then. And when he concentrated, the blood of the criminals still ran from his fingers. They deserved to die. He had repeated this phrase until his final breath, and whenever he remembered the torture she had suffered at their hands, the phrase sprouted another root to anchor a sense of rightfulness in his mind.

He closed his fist. “Perhaps. But my story has been told already. You can still influence yours. Whichever path you chose, I will follow you. It is my duty as your Servant.”

“You would be the first Servant to lose the Holy Grail War because your Master lacked commitment. Don’t you have a wish you want to ask the Grail to fulfill?”

Harlequin nodded, even though Gilthunder could not see him. “Hai. But only one can obtain the Grail. We first have to overcome the remaining five Servants opposing us. Luckily for us, Rider is off the board already.”

“Would you have been able to defeat him?”

“In a fair fight? No. Although it is difficult to say for sure without knowing the potential of his Master. But from what I have gathered, Rider possessed the highest reserves of magic out of all of us. Caster outsmarted him. Otherwise, he would have lasted far longer. He might have even won.”

Gilthunder snorted. “Then I owe Caster my thanks. Her and Arthur Pendragon.”

The Pendragons held the honor of one of the longest-running Mage bloodlines. They and the Liones family had participated in all previous renditions of the Holy Grail War, and more often than not, the Grail had wandered into either of their hands. And although the appointed Master of the Liones family had yet to show herself, Arthur Pendragon had made clear that he fought to win the war. With his victory against Rider – in his previous life known as the chosen hero of the sun, Escanor – Arthur had certainly proven to possess the wit and the strength to succeed.

Harlequin let his eyes trail across the skyline. There, past the red beams of Fuyuki bridge, at the harbor, Gilthunder supposed to find the hideout of one of his enemies.

“The port holds little to no magic,” Harlequin said. “If Hendrickson stays there, then as an invitation to fight.”

“What strategy do you suggest?”

“Unless either Dreyfus or Hendrickson have summoned the Saber-Class Servant, we have a good chance of winning this round. Even if we don’t defeat the Servant waiting there tonight, discovering their identity would help us decide on our next steps. I suggest we accept the invitation before another party joins the fray.”

“Wakatta.” – Understood. “I will track down Hendrickson. Once you have engaged his Servant, he will have to divert part of his attention to your battle. Then I can take him down. My father will be avenged.”

Although he empathized with Gilthunder’s motives, Harlequin could not help but doubt. The Grail chose Masters in need of its aid, those with a wish the Grail could grant. Sometime before the Holy Grail War, the selected seven Mages would find three Command Seals on the back of their hand, the symbol of their participation and the link to their Servant. But Gilthunder had only one goal in this war: revenge against the two heads of the Clock Tower. A short-lived wish that shone brightly for a while. But before his hands would touch the Grail, the wish would be burnt out.

Harlequin knew these hungry flames, its heat had guided his hands as well.

But it was not his duty to question his Master. His duty was to serve.

And maybe reach the end of the Holy Grail War to have his own wish granted.

With five steps Harlequin reached the edge of the roof and jumped. The wind rushed in his ears, and the light from countless windows blurred to lines of red and white. And then he dissolved. His physical shell vanished to leave him blind and deaf for a heartbeat.

When the teleportation had completed, the crimson glow of Fuyuki bridge ignited the darkness behind him, and the concrete of the harbor pressed against his boots. Hard and unforgiving, a far cry from the mossy grounds of the forest he had called home. Mountains of containers surrounded him, and every stack might hide an ambush. At least one Servant was close.

Who would he face? Assassin? Or had he risked too much and would meet his end at the hands of Saber?

Twenty yards ahead, Gilthunder waited in the cold light of a streetlamp. He signaled Harlequin with clipped military gestures to secure the area to the left while he himself would zero in on Hendrickson. Then he slipped into the shadows between two tanks labeled as motor oil.

With a mere thought, Harlequin called forth his Noble Phantasm, the Spirit Spear Chastifol. The leather-wrapped staff hugged his palm, but the unease remained. As a Servant of the Lancer class, he sought the open confrontation with his opponents. The tiptoeing and trickery of Assassin and Caster had their merits, but the thought of applying such dishonorable strategies himself created a salty taste on his tongue.

If only the other Servant would show themselves.

Harlequin searched the surrounding containers with his eyes. “Master?”

“I have visual contact on Hendrickson,” Gilthunder replied between gritted teeth. “He is preparing for a spell. I can’t get a good read on the alchemist circle he’s drawing – wait, it can’t be… they told us never to use such magic. The Mage’s Association forbids its use. With these spell spheres he could drain the people of the entire district of their energy…”

“I’m on my way.”

“No, wait, I know what Servant he has.” The horror spoke from Gilthunder’s voice. “Berserker! He has Berserker!”

And one heartbeat after the information passed from Harlequin’s eyes to his brain, the three stacked containers to his right exploded. Razor-sharp shards of metal cut the air, a storm of deadly leaves. He evaded the attack with a jump, defected the last projectile with Chastifol. A roar thundered through the night, pained, furious, beyond reason. The concrete under Harlequin’s feet quaked, and past the dust of pulverized harbor pieces, a ten-foot figure emerged. A wild mess of brown locks danced around their head, and their dark eyes stared at Harlequin. All they saw was the enemy.

No, no, no, no, what were the odds? History had thousands of Heroic Spirits to choose from, why would it pick her? Why would she return to him as Berserker, a creature who only listened to the voice of its Master and the call for destruction?

Because she had lost her mind during the torture. Because he hadn’t arrived in time to save her from the suffering or the madness. He had seen how the pain had mangled her, even back then.

Harlequin, a hero of ancient times who had won the heart of a Forest Spirit, Lancer in the Fifth Holy Grail War, looked into the eyes of Diane, the same Forest Spirit who had died a horrific death and who had been reborn as Berserker.

A flash of lighting split the night to her left. The product of Gilthunder’s magic painted over her features and emphasized the protruding bones. Like this she had looked when Harlequin had held her in his arms for the last time with the blood of her captors on his hands and the taste of tears on his lips. Broken body, broken spirit.

Diane roared, and the magic radiating from her hit Harlequin with the force of an asteroid. The war hammer in her hands split the earth where he had stood a second ago. Debris rained onto the harbor, and the glass of the nearest lanterns shattered under the shock waves. Harlequin spun out the way, always dodging, never retaliating while his mind screamed to find a solution, a way out. Diane tore through containers as though they were twigs under her feet. Senseless hatred burned in her eyes as she pursued her opponent.

Harlequin leaped onto a crane, but the metal shrieked and bent under the barrage of Diane’s hammer. “Master, I won’t be able to defeat her. I beg you, let us retreat.”

“No. This is the best chance I have.” Another storm of lightningbolts struck the port and the water of the Mion river quivered. Hendrickson answered with an explosion of dark magic. “I will use a Command Seal.”

“No, please! You only have three, and when you use the last one, I will disappear, and you lose the Holy Grail War. Please, Master, consider caution. I- I cannot fight her.”

Gilthunder growled. “Hendrickson murdered my father for the Holy Relics in his possession. Without the work my father dedicated his life to, he would have never been able to summon Berserker. And if I have to sacrifice all my Command Seals, I will take away what he stole from my father.

“Lancer! As your Master, I order you to use all your strength and the power of your Noble Phantasm to destroy Berserker!”

The shackles of the Command Seal wrapped themselves around Harlequin in an instance. He fought their pull, tightened the grip around his spear until his fingers went numb, but he could not escape the voice of his Master.

His duty was to serve.

Even if it meant watching his beloved die a second time.

Diane’s next blow shattered the support beams of the crane. Harlequin vaulted her and flipped midair, the tip of Chastifol aimed for her neck. The bronze head of her hammer crashed into him beforehand. Blood filled his mouth. But with the surplus of strength the Command Seal had imposed on him, he hardly registered the sprained ribs.

He landed on his feet and cut the container she threw at him in half. Then he charged.

The ground shook whenever spear and hammer clashed, sparks flew as they pushed the metal to its limits. Harlequin danced through the barrage of her hits, spinning, skipping, leaping forward. Blood sprayed as he gazed her legs, her arms, her cheek. And still she refused to step down. Still she did not recognize him.

The magic of the Command Seal tore at Harlequin’s muscles, blind to the tears in the corners of his eyes, deaf to the pleas of his heart. One last time, he pushed against the order. But all he could do was to grant her a quick death.

When her next swing broke a crater into the concrete, Harlequin soared above the wave of destruction. He infused Chastifol with all the magic he had to offer and all the energy the link to his Master provided him with. And then he revealed the true nature of his Noble Phantasm.

“CHASTIFOL INCREASE!”

The Spirit Spear fragmented under blinding light, scattered into a hundred and more pieces, and all of these transformed into knifes shaped like the leaves of the willow. Harlequin held the storm in place for a heartbeat. Inside he apologized. Then the knives swooshed forward, a deadly rain of iron shards no living creature could escape. Diane roared and met the onslaught with her war hammer. But she could not prevail. For each blade she deflected, a new one appeared and sunk into her flesh.

The strength of her magic presence depleted. Either Hendrickson could not or did not want to save her with a Command Seal.

The blades had ripped her legs to shreds, but the brute determination of the Berserker class pushed her further. On her stomach, she crawled forward to escape the tornado of knives, but she was fast approaching her limits.

And then she had passed the breaking point. Her arms stopped moving. The presence of Berserker flicked one last time and died.

Harlequin stumbled towards her, and as he felt the influence of the Command Seal fleeting, he kneeled down to take her hand in his, the way he had eleven hundred years ago. Her body was already dissipating into golden light; The Holy Grail called her back from the plain of mortals.

“I’m sorry,” Harlequin whispered. Tears ran down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry you had to suffer the same fate again. But this’ll be the last time, I promise. The Holy Grail is in my reach. Only four other Servants stand in my way. And then I’ll wish for death to set you free. You will never have to suffer again. We will go back to our forest, to the birches and the pond covered by snow-white water lilies. I will win the Holy Grail for you. I promise.”

Maybe the part of Diane untouched by madness heard his words and turned her head towards him to listen. Maybe she never grasped the love he gardened for her. But before Harlequin had the chance to place a kiss on her fingers, her hand dissipated.

Golden lights danced through the night, dozens of memory candles to mourn his loss. Then they too vanished.

A great exhaustion weighed on Harlequin, born from a shortness of magic. He would most likely be unable to maintain his physical form for the next day. But his resolve had never burned brighter. Archer, Caster, Assassin, and even Saber were mere stepping stones on his way. With Gilthunder’s help, he would defeat them. And once he held the Holy Grail in his hands, he would wish to return home with Diane. No matter what trials waited for him, he would face his fate and triumph.

For her.

[impalementation]

Why do you think season seven featured so much bodily harm. It’s the only season we really see our characters bodies being cut, stabbed, eye gouged, flayed.

Oh, I actually talked about this once before! Here’s a link to that post, but I’ll copy it here in case you don’t want to click through.

think it’s interesting how it’s only in season seven that we repeatedly see buffy be seriously physically injured. she’s had minor scrapes and such before. and there’s the stake to the gut she gets in fool for love, which serves much the same purpose as her season seven injuries. but i like that they wait until the last season to really pull out that gun, because it hits much harder. everything from the big claw marks across her back in selfless to her thrashing in bring on the night, to her big slash in chosen. it’s genuinely arresting, and worrying, in a kind of unconscious way because you don’t really realize in the moment that you’re not used to seeing buffy like that. it contributes very effectively to the season’s sense of creeping horror about the familiar no longer being safe. haunted houses, collapsing floors. in fact, buffy’s injuries exactly parallel her house’s increasing state of disrepair. people expect buffy to protect them, and they expect her house to protect them (just as, perhaps, on the meta level, we seek shelter in chosen hero stories and familiar-but-broken ideas like that), and by emphasizing the very physical fragility of both buffy and her house, the show makes the safety of both feel suddenly uncertain. it’s kind of the point of the season. no matter how strong and brave and heroic buffy is, she is at the center of a dangerous and unstable system. you put all of your eggs in buffy’s basket, all of your potentials in buffy’s house, and something is going to crack.

Although I didn’t address it there, I think the fact that we see other characters injured is part of that theme and pattern too. I know I’m always on my “season five and season seven are mirrors” bullshit, but I think it’s telling that in season five, the people around Buffy also get injured a lot. Especially their hands. Xander’s hand, Riley’s hand, Tara’s hand. Dawn cuts her arm. It’s imagery that I think is meant to echo how impotent Buffy feels in the fact of both Glory and mortality. And in general, that sort of injury plus Joyce’s illness or Riley’s heart problems all emphasize the fragility of mortal existence. Similarly, I think the Scooby injuries in season seven emphasize the fragility of the situation. Given that the season has themes around perception, it makes sense to me that Xander’s eye would be injured, or the prokayote stone would crawl into Spike’s eye. Just like it makes sense that because season five has themes around strength, people’s hands would get injured. But in fairness Xander’s eye is really only the one case. The injuries in seven are much more varied, so I think as as whole they are, again, more about conveying general instability, vulnerability, etc.

[ariainstars]

Rey Palpatine, Kylo Ren or Ben Solo: Who’s Got the Button?

Warning: longer post.

  Who Is Rey?

Sigh. I can’t believe I was this naïve. Really, I can’t.

There are narrative parallels between The Force Awakens and A New Hope, of course. But apart from desert planet and droid, the parallels between Rey and Luke, which many fans took for a sign that she might be a secret daughter of his, are few. 

Rey is a slave on a desert planet who collects and repairs spare parts. Her parents were nobodies. She doesn’t want to leave because it would make her lose the tenuous link she has with her family.

She saves someone she just met in a brave, crazy stunt where she proves that she is a very good pilot even with hardly any training.

She meets a kind elderly man who tells her about the Force. He is a father figure for her because she doesn’t have one, but he gets killed about a day after she met him.

She had barely known about the Jedi but finds out she has talent in the Force, so instead of going home she is sent to train with someone whom she doesn’t know and who is not very willing to do so, and not capable of being a father figure for her either. 

This is Anakin to a T! And Anakin ended up being the bad guy in the end. I’m sure that watching the PT, no one who was unfamiliar with the saga would have believed he would be. 

It is not a coincidence that Ben’s light sabre looked like a cross and Rey’s like a fork: that was another dead giveaway announcing that he would be the victim in this story, and she the perpetrator.

„Show me again the power of the darkness, and I will let nothing stand in our way. Show me, grandfather, and I will finish what you started.” Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens 

Ben and Rey are a dyad, meaning that in one way or another, their destinies parallel one another. It was he who wanted to “finish what his grandfather started”: but it was she who actually finished what her grandfather had started. Jedi and Skywalker family are extinct; Finn may or may not be Force-sensitive, but he’s not trained. All of this leaves Rey solely in charge. And everybody cheers her, the way Palpatine was cheered when he ended the clone wars. But the dirty work had been done by Anakin; same goes for his grandson.

It all fits together too well: Rey was always meant to turn out evil, while the “bad guy” in truth was the hero all along. If you watch the Sequel Trilogy again and feel annoyed by their development, try to look at it from this perspective. 

“Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!” Palpatine in Return of the Jedi

Palpatine always needed someone young and fresh by his side to give him strength; which could be explained by the fact, finally addressed in The Rise of Skywalker, that he is some kind of clone. Not being capable of living on his own, he wanted Rey to kill him so that all of the darkness inside him would possess her, and he managed. Now he is reborn, and the young woman stepping into his shoes believes that the worst is behind her. The truth is that the Enemy is now an inherent part of her.

The good news is that by this time, Rey has also made the experience of unconditional love: Kylo / Ben saw her at her worst, but he still cared about her. Some viewers thought that Rey would be the key to Ben’s redemption, but honestly: that story had already been told with Luke and his father. The alleged bad guy saving the alleged heroine from herself is a new message in Star Wars; a message so powerful that I still didn’t get over it.

The Heir of Sheev Palpatine 

Palpatine’s role in the saga tends to be downplayed although he is the mastermind behind it all: in the PT he is literally one of the first characters we see. It is easy to say that he was the devil incarnate who wanted absolute power - he also was a sly and influential politician, and after the clone wars he did bring peace to the galaxy reuniting the Republic and the separatists under the roof of the Empire. Anakin and his heirs could not make up for his sins because they were busy with their own and the Jedi’s. 

As the audience, we want to see our heroes happy; yet their failures and unhappiness are often necessary.

Anakin and Padmé had to die so their children could grow up the way they did, two idealistic souls untainted by the Jedi’s sins.

Leia had to lose Alderaan, else the princess would hardly have had a chance to marry the scoundrel.

Luke had to lose his home with his uncle and aunt, else he wouldn’t have agreed to come with Obi-Wan in the first place; and he had to go through the trauma with his father’s revelation to become the wise and strong hero of Return of the Jedi.

And sad as it is, Ben had to spend almost all of his life in a dark place. The few moments of understanding he had with Rey in TLJ were probably the few rays of lights in his whole adult life; no wonder he fell so deeply for her that he would literally have done anything for her; he had to become a besotted idiot who saved the girl he loved although she had literally killed him and usurped his whole heritage. 

Meaning: Rey was always meant to take over. 

This is not only the story of the Skywalker family, it’s also the story of a galaxy in desperate want of balance and peace. And if you want to tell how that is accomplished, you can’t erase Palpatine from the equation. Palpatine is a “clone”, i.e. he is not wholly human; which makes him a parallel to Anakin who ostensibly had been generated without a father. Rey, flawed as she is, is a young woman of flesh and blood. 

The Prequel Trilogy humanized Darth Vader; the Sequel Trilogy did the same with Palpatine. Few viewers expected this because one hardly gets interested in the villain’s bloodline. Vader’s portrayal as Anakin Skywalker in the prequels was also largely disliked because the young man was everything but cold and sardonic like the villain he became later. And as many viewers did not like to see “their” Darth Vader humanized (portrayed as a good little boy and then an ardent, stormy young man), now we don’t like Palpatine coming back in form of a young woman, who for sure is deeply flawed but not by far the monster he was. Palpatine always wanted to use Anakin’s, the Chosen One’s, power for himself; and with his final plan he managed to blend his heritage with the soul of the last Skywalker scion. 

  The Heir of Anakin Skywalker

Vader had to become Palpatine’s ally and to serve him loyally to make the old devil let his guard down enough for him to kill him at last, just like Kylo had to fool Snoke that he was still on his side while in the Throne Room he was silently plotting his demise. Anakin always was the hero of the Skywalker saga, a fact that is largely overlooked. His son pushed him to do the right thing, but the decision was his own, and he paid with his life.

Many fans of the Original Trilogy and also of the prequels dislike the sequels heartily because to them it “retconned” or “cancelled” what had happened before. Which is not quite true; the original heroes did find their happy ending. We witnessed what came after that, which irritates us because it’s something we usually never face once the credits roll or the book covers are closed. That does not mean that the heroes’ accomplishments are obliterated.

My guess: these fans might be right and the Skywalker saga is indeed at its end with Return of the Jedi. The saga was Anakin Skywalker’s story, and he died.

What did not die was his heritage - his sins, his excruciating pain, but also his heroism, and his prophecy as the one who would “bring Balance to the Force.” The mistake of his heirs was having wanted to go back to what once had been. Their links to the past were tenuous, e.g. we never learn how Luke came to know what had made the Jedi fail (the content of his second lesson to Rey); in any case, he must have learned it only after the fall of his own temple, in order to explain why he wanted to give up on the Jedi. Obi-Wan never told about his own faults, the clone wars, the Republic, the creation of Darth Vader; most importantly, he never mentioned to Luke that his father actually was the Chosen One, and that the Force wants Balance. It is not surprising that Luke and his friends could not build lasting peace, not knowing what had caused the conflicts. They had to fail; “failure is the greatest teacher” means that only from understanding and moving away from those failures the galaxy will (hopefully) finally learn to avoid repeating the Empire, the First Order, the Final Order etc. over and over again.

I also did not like very much what the sequels did to the heroes of the original trilogy, honestly. But had they survived, found together again, and or proven more heroic and less flawed than they were this time around, the general audience would never have stopped pestering the studios with wanting more of Han, Luke and Leia. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be. They’ve done their time; they had their happy ending. They had their hero’s journey. They ended the Empire the way they wanted, their achievements were completed. It is up to the next generation to learn from the past and build something new and better. We, in our everyday life, also have to bring the people we once looked up to (parents, teachers, mentors etc.) down from their pedestal and to acknowledge the good they did but also see their failures and limitations, if we ever want to get on with our own lives.

In this light, the Sequel Trilogy is indeed not part of Anakin Skywalker’ story. If Ben is brought back and stands good on his promise of finishing the Chosen One’s work, then it will be a new saga - his. Not his grandfather’s any more.

Though a Palpatine, I believe Rey does have the potential for finding balance and unite the galaxy. If Ben, her dyad, comes back to do his part, the galaxy will be again under the rule of two powerful Force users the way it was when the OT begin; but this time they need a chance on something united and positive.

  Balance At Last?

The authors repeatedly stated that the sequels would be “very much like the prequels”: not incidentally. The prequels also were the story of a usurpation, where at the end everything that was good seemed forgotten or turned into the hand of the wrong person.

This sheds an interesting light on the next trilogy: by this logic, it ought to mirror the original trilogy.

Whatever you can say about the Star Wars saga, it never repeated itself. It has recurring themes, which do not run in circles but in spirals; like in any family, or political system, the lessons not learned always demand their price.

All of this is not to say that I like this ending. The Rise of Skywalker mostly is so dissatisfying because being Episode IX it ought to have been a definite ending, but it does not feel like an end. It feels more like a new beginning, or an interruption of a story that was largely not yet explored. The new heroes have wrapped up the past, but what about the galaxy’s future? A future that has maybe already begun with the Mandalorian’s mysterious adopted Child, who symbolizes faith where Yoda was all about (avoiding) fear?

Rey and Baby Yoda both are two younger and more innocent versions of someone we are very familiar with; and they are both paired off with someone who becomes a redeemed version of a familiar villain - Rey with Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, who is reminiscent of Darth Vader, and the Child with the Mandalorian, reminiscent of Boba Fett. Also, the Child knows Force healing, the way Rey does.

It seems to me that this must be announcing a continuation that fits to it all and brings the loose strands together. If the Force is at work, then it knows what it’s doing.

Luke was always one to give people a second chance: in A New Hope, we see him befriend literally anyone who is willing to go along. Star Wars is all about getting another chance. Are we really supposed to believe that Ben Solo is gone forever, and worse, that he deserved no better than dying after sacrificing himself for the girl he loved? Did Luke Skywalker in person come to Crait, sacrificing his life in the process, to give his nephew a second chance only for him to disappear never to be seen again? 

Ben and Rey being a dyad means that they mirror one another, in every way: what happened to one will happen to the other too, eventually. The iconic “You’re not alone” is so powerful because it comes from a person who knows damn well what loneliness means. If Rey finished what her grandfather started, then so must he. When the Republic fell everybody also believed Anakin to be dead; he wasn’t. and when Han left Luke and Leia towards the end of A New Hope, they did not count on him coming back; but he did. 

The next trilogy is not yet announced but it has been known for years that it’s in the cards; thankfully it’s in the hands of Rian Johnson, who already proved that he can tell a masterful Star Wars story; and who reintroduced the subject of Balance again. I still hope that this image was a foreshadowing, not an empty promise.

The ST doesn’t really make sense - not yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t make sense when the rest of Rian’s story is told.

“Hope is like the sun… If you only believe in it when you see it, you will never make it through the night”. Let’s keep our hopes up, fellow Reylos and ST fans. 😉

[jtavington]

I'm having trouble sticking to any one 3H play through due to choice paralysis when it comes to house and who to recruit. So I thought I would try to articulate what cast I would include for each route if I were novelizing them and try to articulate for myself how I see each route. And just to be clear I'm not saying this is the right way to view any of this, just me thinking out loud. Also, I'm horribly biased in favor of CF and VW ;)

CF: if this route got anymore blatant about the power of love and friendship, it would be an 80s cartoon. Edelgard is our designated tragic villain who would be executed by even an impartial court in Fodlan. But Byleth cares for her student so much that she sees that there's more to her than her actions in part one. Edelgard rewards that faith a hundredfold and the villain becomes a hero while traditionally heroic figures become villains. The ending is like something out of a fairytale, with the woman who never cries finally weeping and her beloved teacher "coincidentally”being restored to life and humanity. It's Edelgard’s route that keeps the friends group together for five years and she who gets the climactic speech about friendship played completely straight without even using it as a distraction. This is the route where the Death Knight can heal and be reunited with his family. This is the route where, frankly, love wins. It's also the route of revolution, where those who have suffered under the system say that time is up for peaceful reform and the route that can be pretty bleak unless you’re willing to put in quite a bit of work.

So... My first rule would be not to break up any found family groups if they can be avoided. The second is to pick up those characters who have particularly suffered under the Crest system. Sylvain, Lysithea Mercedes. And they bring their close friends. So basically the entire recruitable Blue Lions, Lysithea, Alois, and the Wolves in their entirety. Childhood friends and family reunited and I can toss in favorite non-BE ships like Netfelix. Hanneman and Manuela also join to give El much-needed character development.

VW: if you forced me to pick a "true" route, this would be it. It's the route where you finally learn the truth about Seiros and Relics. Like CF, the old order is swept away, if more gently. Claude is an outcast everywhere and so is determined to create a world without outcasts. Existing institutions are subverted rather than destroyed. The people nobody wants, who Fodlan at large would dismiss as hated by the Goddess are the ones who destroyed the devil figure for good. It's a route where the other lords are undone by their own flaws, which is either tragic or justice depending on your point of view. Despite that, it's probably the most cheerful route.

I would include those characters from other routes who are outcasts in some way. Definitely those who are people of color. Petra, Cyril, Shamir. The entire Wolves. Also the scholars Hanneman and Linhardt. Maximum number of Saints encountered: check.

AM: I have a love-hate relationship with AM. The students themselves rival the Eagles as my favorite, as you can probably tell from twisting myself into knots to recruit all of them that I could on CF. But I hate the idea of magic blood and rightful kings, and a lot of the stuff I like about White Clouds was just dropped. So keep that in mind.

But I'm dealing with the route I have, and there’s still a lot to unpack. In some ways, this is CF’s opposite. Dimitri is far from disinterested in the state of the world, but his concerns are more personal than the other two. He wants to keep the social order in place and reform it, mostly by making sure good people are in charge. And since the cost of social disruption disproportionately falls on those least able to bear it, that's not nothing. And it works, more or less. Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix all accept their chosen roles and the world is better for it.

It's also, of course, a story of redemption. Dimitri looks too far gone to be saved, but the potential to be the Savior King is still within him. Recovery is possible for anyone, but they will have to work at it. And yet, there are some things that can't be changed. Arundel’s dying curse that either El or Dimitri will kill each other is fulfilled despite the fact that Dimitri loves her and his best efforts to prevent it. The best Mercedes can hope for is for Emile to die in her arms. Heck, even Dimitri's beloved stepmother who raised him is all but confirmed to have nearly got him killed. Love cannot overcome everything and the scars of the past will never be fully healed, but the world is still worth fighting for.

Caspar is recruited mostly to unlock his and Mercedes’ paralogue, but I’d also be inclined to make him kill Linhardt just to keep the doomed childhood friends theme going. Marianne as well for her depression improving and her supports with Dimitri. Catherine for her support with Ashe, which is a beautiful example of letting go of the past and forgiving even when it's hard. Ferdinand as the best of what the current system has to offer. And Dorothea to give another mentally scarred vet a break. Everybody but Balthus from the Wolves and he isn't out of the question.

Silver Snow: The only route where I was glad I was on antidepressants. Byleth fully embraces the role as Sothis’ second coming and boy do they pay for it. One thing that struck me was that several times they say that they want to run away or otherwise avoid fighting, other people tell them they can't, and those other people are right. Fate cannot be denied and that fate mostly involves people dying horribly and nations falling apart. You spend most of your time looking for Rhea, she finally sees you as your own person and regrets her actions, only to have it yanked away from you by her going mad. No one wants the final battle and yet it must be fought to music that’s a funeral dirge. There's the smallest possibility of light in the end of the tunnel in Rhea's surviving and truly becoming what she claimed to be, but you will really have to work at it.

The snarky part of me says that I shouldn't recruit anyone. If I'm so committed to destiny, I should take what the game gives me and like it. But that's unnecessarily grim and a pain to play. I would pick up Lysithea because Retribution is my favorite paralogue and really fits here. The faculty because why not and I insist on having one route where Seteth/Manuela is a thing. Constance and Yuri only from the Wolves because I won’t force Hapi to work with people she hates that much.