#the prompt is really just because i adore tlj and i want him to learn to live

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

For the SVSSS Ask Game :3

4. Have you seen the donghua? What do you think of it?

7. Do you believe there is a character that deserved more 'screen time'?

8. Favorite SVSSS fanfic?

14. Favorite quote?

20. What is your unpopular opinion about SVSSS?

28. Any prompts you want to give for SVSSS?

HELLO PERSON I'VE NEVER MET BEFORE, THANK YOU FOR ENABLING ME!!!

Scum Villain Asks

4. I have only seen some of the first episode of the donghua! I really wish it wasn't 3d animated. However I am on twitter silently supporting everyone crying for it to be released from censorship hell (since word on the street is S2 has been completely finished, it's just that with the recent crackdown on BL, whether it'll be released or not is up in the air. It's been over a year since the trailer ;-;). However I stan SQQ's VA for also being Dottore's VA in Genshin.

7. Oh my god Liu Qingge. Instantly. I may adore Sha Hualing and Gongyi Xiao and Su Xiyan and Tianlang-jun but Liu Qingge fascinates me. He's so obviously head over heels for Shen Yuan but is treated as his sword glare taxi service (pretty sure SQQ calls him something like that in his head, too).

Like this is a man who is irrevocably in love with his shixiong and also a little in denial about it?? He fistfights Binghe every day for years and loses every single time, hoping to god he can give SQQ a proper burial. "Women" as a concept deeply embarrasses him. He's like a proto-Jiang Chenga and Feng Xin. He doesn't know how to be a proper shizun. He's a prettyboy (derogatory). God. More Liu Qingge content please.

8. Answered here for Yan but I'll throw this one in, too:

^^ suuuper ominous, it gets the horror of Bingqiu so perfectly.

14. Hard to say. There's a lot of comedic lines I adore ("He'd turned the protagonist into a homosexual!" comes to mind) but I think I have to go with this Binghe quote, said right after SQQ self-destructs:

“You don’t like the fact that I’m part of the demon race, so I was afraid that if I went straight back to the Cang Qiong Mountain sect, you would chase me out. I thought that if I could seize the Huan Hua Palace and become a peak lord of the righteous path like you, maybe that would make you happy…”Luo Binghe said in a trembling voice, “Shizun… I… I really…”

This was the moment I realized Scum Villain meant business.

20. Unpopular opinion? Probably that it's better than Heaven's Official Blessing. That's really just because I like it more and for some reason, TGCF didn't hold my attention the same way. Scum Villain has a much shorter, tighter narrative.

28. Hmm, prompts. Alright, how about:

Tianlang-jun unexpectedly survives the attempted merging of the realms. What does he do in a world where his son hates him (with good reason), his lover is long gone, and his nephew--the only person who stuck by his side--died saving him?

[tearlessrain]

Okay. So. I watched TLJ a second time because I took my mom to see it (visiting for the holidays) and I have Opinions. Because in all honesty I did not like it as much the second time.

For spoiler reasons, and because most of it is just me complaining (and/or being pointlessly confrontational and defensive about what I did like), said opinions are quarantined safely under this readmore.

Also just for the record I know I state things like facts as if I think I have answers and should be listened to but this is 100% personal feelings and opinions and I know nothing.

The main takeaway is that I’m okay with how things ended up, I just don’t really like how they got there. If they do a really good job with episode 9 I will feel better about this movie and not be too annoyed that they got a bit lost on the way. That being said, they really did get lost on the way and it was frustrating to watch once I actually knew where they were going with it. I’ll give almost anything a ludicrous amount of grace the first time I watch it. I liked the second Hobbit movie the first time I watched it, let that sink in. My already questionable taste in media becomes vastly worse when I’m watching something for the first time in a theater.

On Luke’s characterization/arc: I’m okay with the concept of it, but the execution was lacking. Responding to a traumatic event by fucking off to a deserted island to sulk melodramatically for years is kind of a very Skywalker thing to do, so I don’t have much issue with that. The logistics of how the Kylo Fiasco actually went down is neither here nor there for me, it’s all being relayed years later by two people who were both not in the best place emotionally at the time of telling so I think taking it with a grain of salt is wise here. And I don’t think his apparently newfound post-Yoda-epiphany snark was inherently bad, I feel like he’s always had the capacity for sass and would fully expect that side of him to emerge with age, but I understand how it felt wrong to people (especially with the transition we got) and I think it would have read better if they’d just had more time to establish act 3 Luke and balanced it with the characterization we’re used to from him. Which brings me to my main complaint about the Luke arc: I didn’t like how they paced it. What I would have liked to see is for the Yoda scene to happen much earlier while Rey is still on the island, then follow that with some scenes of Luke actually being more himself and training Rey (because realistically she has an awful solid mastery of the Force for the two halfassed lessons she got). He can still be opposed to going off to find Kylo on the grounds that Rey really doesn’t know what she’s doing yet even if her intentions are good, thereby prompting her to leave on her own (I mean he did the same thing and then he learned a horrible truth he wasn’t ready to hear, lost his hand, and jumped off a cliff, so I can see him not being jazzed about this).

As an aside, I really don’t like the throwing away the lightsaber thing. It felt too much like the emotional bait-and-switch thing Marvel does a lot and it’s a huge pet peeve for me. I just really hate it. Give me a damn genuine emotional moment for fucks sake. There were ways they could have conveyed the same thing that wouldn’t have felt so jarring and lazily written.

As another aside, and this is totally personal bias, I really love the Yoda scene, just full stop and without shame. It resonates with me in particular because in addition to being a very Skywalker thing to do, wanting to fuck off to a deserted island and hide for a decade because of one failure is also a very me thing to do. So that whole scene was just kinda cathartic on a personal level. They got lazy with Yoda’s dialect, though, which was mildly irritating to my pedantic obsession with keeping one’s lore consistent. It wouldn’t have been that hard to rearrange those sentences.

I also love the end with the twin suns callback. I know people feel like it was cheesy and trite. It is. I know this. I know. But I wholeheartedly love it anyway and I teared up both times I saw the damn movie and I will defend that scene with my life. Fight me.

Oh and shoutout to Actual Fashion Icon Luke Skywalker taking the trouble to astral project himself a stylish new all-black ensemble and perfectly trimmed beard to face Kylo in. Our boy’s still got it.

On the whole Finn/Rose plotline: .... why? Why did it happen at all? There was basically no payoff aside from what I guess was supposed to be a kinda heavy handed resolution to Finn’s personal arc but was ultimately just a waste of Captain Phasma as a character. They introduced Rose and gave her skills that should have been useful for what they set out to do but never got around to having her actually do anything, so while I enjoyed her character, it felt kind of hollow because there was no clear reason for her to actually be in the movie. Same with the casino planet, I loved the aesthetic and concept and atmosphere and that they did something new, but there wasn’t any point to it, they could have gone literally anywhere to find the guy they ended up with. If they’d actually picked up Space Dorian it would have been interesting because he’s not an archetype we’ve seen as much in Star Wars. We’ve seen plenty of grungy outcasts, let’s take advantage of the cool new setting you just presented. It even potentially could have made the eventual betrayal better, if they still needed to do that.

Thinking about the social climate and attitude toward rich people right now, if the betrayal had been a filthy rich arms dealer being let off by the empire because of his own privileges/connections and leaving Finn and Rose behind, I think you’d get a strong emotional response to that in a good way. Instead we’ve got... some guy who happened to turn out to be an asshole. And who could have come from literally anywhere in the galaxy and is not really bringing anything new to the table. He didn’t change as a character at any point, and his presence didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said or change Finn or Rose in any way in the end, so why is he here. I mean the whole casino planet was fun, but the way they did it they could have cut almost the entire thing out and the movie overall would not have been affected.

I just generally feel like 90% of what Finn and Rose did during this movie was only for the sake of giving them something to do and once again splitting up the main three and I’m sad about that because I adore Finn, and he has fantastic chemistry with Poe (whether you ship them or not, that’s irrelevant, I just mean they play off each other well but they’re never in the same place for more than five minutes and it feels like such a waste).

Also not liking that they had to throw in romantic tension with Rose, you want to make it a thing in the next movie fine, but it’s too soon right now, we only just got to know her character, can we maybe chill.

On Poe: I like his arc, I don’t much like the context, it was a bit contrived and of course tied in with the entirely pointless Finn/Rose shenanigans. But in a vacuum, I like where they took him and I like where he’s at now.

On Kylo: honestly? They have my attention and my interest. They didn’t after TFA, but he’s turning into an interesting character and I think I like where this is going so far. As long as they keep doing a good job in 9, I can definitively say that I like Kylo as a villain and as a character. If not as a person. He’s a dick. But it’s a good thing. And I’m sorry but I’m endlessly entertained by his entire uncomfortable relationship with Hux, I desperately need some people who can both cosplay and sing to perform What Is This Feeling from Wicked with these two (I propose Kylo on Elphaba’s parts, Hux on Glinda’s, seriously someone do this). Hux is just so pitiful and Done and it’s great. I usually don’t really like when a movie/show makes one character into a designated punching bag, but he’s inherently so damn punchable that I can’t even be mad. His actor did a fantastic job.

I think those are the main points I came away with, anything else is just nitpicking (porgs are the Jar Jar of the new trilogy, not nearly as bad but they still aren’t cute enough to carry the weight Disney has given them). My strongest feelings are regarding the Luke situation and it’s mostly because in my ill-advised hubris I feel like I know exactly how to fix it and could personally have done it better (that’s almost certainly not true but it’s how I feel). I don’t know what to do about Finn or how to better contextualize Poe’s character growth. I dunno.

But hey, at least Reylo isn’t canon and that’s really all I ever asked for.

[pomrania]

SW fic recommendations

@phoenix-jedi13 said:

If you have the time, do you have any good Star Wars fanfictions you would recommend? Preferably not NSFW or super romantic/shippy? Thanks so much, and sorryforbotheringyou (Btw your blog is one of my favorites, and I love your Little by Little au fic - but I've read all of it. That's the problem. :'D)

First of all: *squee*

Second of all: I’m ace and aro, so I don’t generally care for NSFW or super-shippy either. I’m not romance-repulsed, it’s just... boring, most of the time, I don’t see it as an interesting end-goal for a story.

Third of all: Okay, this might take some time. Let me browse through my AO3 bookmarks, and the stuff I’ve reblogged with the “fiction” tag (which however won’t have all the stuff, because I haven’t retagged my blog lately).

This is entirely in the order I come across them, and it won’t include everything.

@radioactivepeasant always has some great AU concepts. There’s not always full stories associated with them, but just the ideas are fun too.

Transition is great. It’s a little story set during Steps into Shadow, with Kanan and Sabine talking, before Kanan goes to talk with Ezra.

@kaelinaloveslomaris is THE person to go to if you want Luke and Vader father-son fluff. They’ve this large ass (over 70k words, and still going) fic called Allegiance, and it’s good.

Not If I Can Help It, where Kallus finds out that the Rebels know frick-all about shooting blasters, and tries to help them

Crystals by @entothewormhole (although that link is for the AO3 version of their story) is awesome. Set between seasons 2 and 3, Kanan learning how to deal, and Ezra being a cringe-worthy idiot, as he was in canon. And Chirrut shows up.

The Story of Finn is a bit of an outlier. Full disclosure: I haven’t watched TFA, I’m not planning on watching it before TLJ comes out, and I’m not sure even then; but this story is wonderful anyways. It’s about some First Order people, and how Finn’s story changes everything for them, for the better.

@vintage-smokestack also writes some good stuff, and I think they’re taking prompts at the moment too. My favourite of their AUs would have to be Vader Flips (where Padme appears to him before torturing Leia, saying that she’s their daughter, and he takes it about as well as expected) and the Doggoverse (Anakin gets reincarnated as a giant floofy dog at the end of RotJ).

Okay, this one isn’t even vaguely Star Wars related, but Mr. and Mrs. Baggins is one of the greatest aro-ace fics I’ve come across. Two hobbits, both of whom think romance is silly and sex is either unnecessary or disgusting, decide that they should get married. Only problem is that their families hate each other. It’s adorable and also hilarious.

Game Night in Cell Block A is a collection of three stories with Sabine and Rau, all missing scenes that could have happened offscreen. It’s good.

(Aaand that’s as far back as my “fiction” tag goes; I know there’s more, it just isn’t tagged to easily find yet. Going off of AO3 bookmarks entirely now.)

who cares about your lonely heart is something I like (Obianidala with asexual Obi-wan) but might not be to your taste; still linking it here though

Two and a Half Men (with a baby) by @jerseydevious, in which Darth Vader, Firmus Piett, and Obi-wan Kenobi are stuck in a shuttle together, along with toddler Luke Skywalker. Hasn’t been updated in a bit, but it’s still active.

the Double Agent Vader series by @fialleril. Basically, Anakin realizes he dun goofed a few years after RotS, and is working to help the Rebellion while staying at Sidious’ side. The biggest draw to this ‘verse, at least for me, is that he and Leia end up having a very good relationship, almost like father and daughter, and they’re really precious together, although neither of them know they’re actually blood relatives.

@prepare4trouble has written stuff other than Little by Little; in fact, that’s how I first met them, talking about their story on AO3. You can find their page here. I haven’t read all of it, but it might be worth a shot.

Hopefully that’ll give you some good stuff to read; and once I’ve gone though my blog and added the tags I’m now using, I’ll add some more to this.