#this post is under Schrödinger’s Canonicity

[kradogsrats]

Schrödinger's King in the Bird Box

Time for a return to the single topic that most torments me in this entire franchise canon: is Harrow in the goddamn bird or not?

Except not really. I'm not going to go over the evidence again. I've done it before. Almost everyone has done it before. It has only gotten stronger. At the absolute minimum, an attempt was made to put Harrow in the bird. That's not really disputable. I admit it. It's over.

This is actually the second time that I've struggled with narrative cognitive dissonance regarding a real core factor of this show (like not "what's the deal with Archdragon reproduction," but something that is clearly supposed to be thought about with the intent that it will eventually make sense), and eventually managed to rotate it so hard in my mind that the way I wanted to see it slipped out of my grasp and I saw it the way it's actually intended. Ironically, I think I may have been thinking about the Ocean arcanum at the time.

Anyway, what previously always bothered me about this question was mainly two things:

It would have a devastating impact on Ezran's character development if Harrow reappeared during s1-s3, but the timeskip and arc of s4-s5 made it so it would also be deeply weird for him to reappear before the show ends.

If Harrow is in Pip's body, both Viren and Pip's subsequent behavior, as well as how Pip is treated by the narrative on a meta level, make absolutely no fucking sense.

But... if Viren doesn't know whether the spell was successful or not? If we are meant to not know whether the spell was successful or not, because it's not going to get resolved in the show itself?

If we accept that the earliest point with any chance of the hooks for this plot being set is late s7—because yes, Aaron Ehasz would do an exact beat-for-beat repeat of Zuko and his mom—that both puts Ezran far enough in his growth for it not to be threatened by the "real" king returning, and keeps Harrow out of the loop for long enough that it doesn't really make sense for him to do anything but step down from the throne in favor of Ezran, anyway. As for Viren and Pip's behavior, if the show isn't going to advance that plot much further during its runtime, there's no reason for us to be constantly reminded of it. The setup has been made, and they can just let it stew because it's not actually relevant.

That being said, Viren's behavior actually does make a lot of sense if "is Harrow in the goddamn bird or not" is a question that is also tormenting him. To that end, I'll be doing some digging here on the nature and context of the body-switching spell, Pip/Harrow's behavior post-swap, and what the hell is going on in the Harrow section of Viren's dark magic dream.

The Spell is Made Up (Unlike All Those Real Spells)

First of all, I think there's been some long-term incorrect assumptions made about the body-switching spell. It's not a known spell: this is Claudia and Viren essentially flying by the seat of their pants... but we rarely stop to think about how that contextualizes the rest of the discussion around it.

The initial plan is to find the assassins and ambush them before nightfall. As Soren points out and Viren himself confirms: if they fail, the assassins will be unstoppable under the full moon and Harrow is as good as dead. Claudia decides to put her mind to that problem, so naturally she stops to flirt with Callum in the library and gets the inspiration for the spell from something he says.

(Fun fact: none of that happens in the novelization. Zero amount.)

She brings the idea to Viren, and they develop the spell from there. It's not really clear if Claudia actually knows whether something like that would be possible, but Viren does know that transferring the essence of a person can be done—he's got a nice little coin collection that proves it.

As for the snake, there's no way Viren "acquired" a two-headed soulfang serpent because he has a book somewhere on how to use a rare, malformed specimen of a dangerous Xadian creature to switch people between bodies. He probably thought "that's weird, but could be useful," or maybe whoever sold it to him just had a great sales pitch. A non-trivial amount of success at dark magic is in having access to rarer and more powerful reagents than your competition.

Anyway, what this means is that Viren has absolutely no idea what success looks like for this spell, particularly when using it on subjects of different species. When he describes it to Harrow, he is 110% talking out of his ass. He sounds like he knows exactly what the spell will do and how, and I think a lot of us kind of fell for that. He needs to sound confident, because if he admitted that he doesn't know if it will even work, with a possible failure condition of "snake eats your soul," well... a) Harrow rightfully wouldn't go for it, and b) he'd look incompetent, which is the worst thing ever.

When he goes to Harrow's room, he casts the spell... but did it work? I think that whatever it did, it did it in a way that Viren can't tell whether it worked or not. Maybe both Harrow and Pip passed out. Maybe Viren just didn't want to hang around for the aftermath—in the novelization, when he exits the room and runs into Callum, his eyes are still black from spellcasting.

Activities of Dr. Pip Harrow, Ph.D.

Probably the thing that has always bothered me the most about the entire Harrow-Pip theory is that yes, literally everything in the lead-up and immediate aftermath of the assassination points to that being exactly what happened... and then the narrative lens of the show completely drops the rope. Pip doesn't even appear in the novelization until Viren's pre-coronation scene, which is funny given his looming presence over half the scenes with Harrow in the show.

Pip appears exactly twice after the assassination—once in s1 and once in s2—otherwise he goes completely ignored. He's not in the background of Viren's office, or the throne room, or Harrow's bedroom. No one ever mentions him ever again. Ezran never mentions him again, in the show or in any supplementary materials. You'd think the boy who can talk to animals might have some interest in his dead dad's beloved pet... but who knows, maybe Pip has always been an asshole and Ezran's actually like "thank goodness I never have to speak to that dude again."

Anyway, in all of Pip's appearances, he behaves like... a bird. A trained bird—Harrow can rely on him not just fucking off—but he doesn't demonstrate human-like intelligence the way Bait does. That being said, Bait is essentially a main-cast character (at least as much as, say, Corvus... maybe even Soren) while Pip is a plot device, and even then it takes until well into the first arc for Bait to show the kind of complex reasoning and initiative that separates him from an unusually smart dog. Pip's human is also a stressed-out king, rather than a rambunctious ten-year-old, so he's probably a bit more sedate overall. I would personally bet, given the way the show has progressed with regard to Xadian creatures, that Pip is as intelligent as Bait.

The point of that is: even if Harrow's consciousness is occupying Pip's body, he's not really doing anything with it. He's pissy, sure:

But is that Harrow's pissy-ness or Pip's? Even if Pip is only as intelligent as a trainable bird, that's plenty intelligent enough for both grieving/confusion that their human is gone and holding a grudge against obvious assholes. Viren cages him, but is that because he flipped out and got bite-y? And was it Harrow flipping out, or Pip? Or is he caged just because Viren's of the general attitude that animals belong in cages? Those who fail tests of love... We just don't know.

A lot of us also, to circle back to assumptions about the spell, have tended to think of a body swap between Harrow and Pip resulting in Harrow flailing his arms around wildly and screeching... but again, we know literally nothing about this spell, nor do we actually know anything about Harrow's behavior after Viren leaves his room. Maybe his body sat catatonic on the bed until Runaan came in and shot him. Maybe Pip, being intelligent, was able to maintain the facade—once everyone's in the heat of battle, it would be hard to notice even significant deviations from normal behavior. Even if "Harrow" appeared to fight only halfheartedly, or give up entirely... well, he hasn't been the same since he lost Sarai. Maybe the spell only partially worked, and only half of his soul is inside Pip, with minimal or no influence over the bird body's behavior.

Viren does appear to take some precautions in case Harrow is alive inside Pip. The cage, for one... but he also has nearly all subsequent important conversations outside of his office. Like I said earlier, Pip's cage isn't rendered in the background of any scene, but since he escapes from Viren's office I'm assuming that's where he's been. Even if Pip was just out of frame in every scene in Viren's office post-assassination through end of s2, the only things he's seen are... Viren eating butterflies, and the conversation between Viren and Claudia about the mirror and her side mission to bring the egg back at all costs. He doesn't know about Soren's instructions to murder the boys. He knows about the mirror and Viren's obsession with it (which he could have known before), but he doesn't know about Aaravos. He may know that Viren stole his seal but only if Viren was stupid enough to stamp the letters with it in front of him (which... look, he could be). The only things he's really learned are that a) his sons are alive, and b) Viren lied to him and the egg is alive.

Now, realistically, if we were meant to hang on to the is-Harrow-in-the-bird plot thread because it's going to be significant within the scope of the show... I'd be expecting to see at least one cut to Pip glowering at some point during all these machinations. If it weren't for the mirror and Aaravos, I'd expect Viren to be yelling all his monologuing at Pip, too. But the show does none of that. Instead, the next time we see Pip, we see him peace-ing out of the show for at minimum the next three seasons, and possibly the remaining two, as well. If Harrow's in there... why? Did he go to find Callum and Ezran himself? It's not actually clear that he knows Ezran can understand animals, so it would be reasonable for him to think Viren is his only chance at ever not being a bird again. Maybe he thinks that chance is gone with Viren's arrest and would rather not spend the rest of his life in a cage. Maybe he really isn't in control of the body.

Back to Viren, though: since Pip refuses to demonstrate any behavior that could be taken as distinctly Harrow's, Viren actually has no idea at any point whether Harrow's in there or not. He doesn't know if Harrow lived. He doesn't know if he succeeded or failed. It's a constant reminder that he's almost, but not quite, in control. Almost, but not quite, good enough to achieve what he wants.

It probably drives him absolutely insane.

Did You Think You Were Somehow Getting Out of This Without Me Mentioning Kpp'Ar?

Just kidding, it's finally time to talk about Viren's dream. We've gone two entire seasons and a two-year timeskip without any mention of Harrow or Pip (though those maniacs dropped the fucking snake basket on us as an incidental but obvious prop early in s4), and then suddenly we get punched in the face by Viren's subconscious.

First, though, I do actually need to point something out in the scene with Kpp'Ar. Bear with me, I promise this is relevant.

Viren sealed Kpp'Ar's soul in a coin 12-ish years ago, and the coin has been sitting collecting dust in his secret dungeon for... some amount of that time. Now he opens the door and finds Kpp'Ar standing there, free—and I will note that I don't believe Viren actually knows how to free people from the coins, or whether it can even be done. His reaction is surprise, followed by suspicion and wariness:

When he encounters Harrow—dead—his reaction is horrified shock, which is fair since the last time he entered the room that way there was no surprise body chilling out waiting for him in it:

Then, when Harrow speaks to him, suddenly alive and unharmed, he drops straight into relief:

Some of this is undoubtedly due to the differences between Viren's relationship with Kpp'Ar and his relationship with Harrow. With Kpp'Ar, after that initial moment of confusion, he's absolutely determined to not show a single hint of ignorance or weakness—this is a trick, or a test, and a passing grade in "light verbal sparring with the mentor you're pretty sure you remember betraying" is a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve. For Harrow, who he wants so desperately to call him brother, who he walked into this very room ready to die for, before everything went horribly awry—he not only immediately and willingly goes to his knees, he literally prostrates himself.

... I'll give everyone a moment to get all the innuendo and suggestiveness out of their systems, because that's not the point. This time.

What is the point is that Viren's reaction to Harrow isn't disbelief, but relief. Hope. Kpp'Ar is supposed to be in a coin, and Viren immediately questions how he got out. Harrow is supposed to be dead but Viren doesn't give a second thought to how he's not. Fortunately, Harrow helpfully explains:

Fun fact: back in s1, we don't actually see Viren actually taking action against the assassins. We don't even see evidence that he re-entered the room at all—it's only Soren and Claudia who participate in Runaan's capture.

I haven't actually touched a lot on the complex shit going on for Viren, emotionally, throughout all of this—I mentioned it's was probably driving Viren insane over the course of the first two seasons, but let me elaborate. If Viren successfully switched Harrow and Pip, that means Harrow survived... but he expressed his feelings on the proposal in no uncertain terms, and there's a good chance he will literally never forgive Viren. I don't think Viren thought far enough ahead to consider how to get Harrow into a human body again, but I do think he's dragging his feet on it a little because if he can work things to his advantage—unite the Pentarchy against Xadia and follow through on the war Harrow was avoiding—he'll prove to Harrow that he was right all along. Any chance of that flies out the window with Pip at the end of s2.

If the body-switching spell failed, it means Viren essentially killed Harrow himself. That's the reality I think he grows more and more resigned to over the course of s1 and s2, when Pip remains unresponsive. He had no choice but to take the best chance at saving someone he loved—but this time, instead of saving Harrow, he murdered him.

In the dream, Harrow has not only survived, but credits Viren with his survival. He doesn't just dismiss Viren's show of remorse, but makes his own apology to Viren. He calls Viren brother. After an impossibly long nightmare, everything is okay. All is forgiven. Maybe there was nothing to forgive, in the first place. Maybe Viren was right all along.

Then it all turns sinister with the callback to the coin incantation, and we have a sharp return to reality:

The cinematography here treats Pip a lot more like how I would expect him to be treated in s1/s2 if we were meant to know he was actually Harrow. There's focus actually on him, instead of just other characters' reaction to him. He "speaks"—as I noted in another post—in raspy sounds very unlike his songbird chirps from s1. This is absolutely Harrow as Viren actually left him—even if he's not dead, he's in a warped prison of dark magic, a perverse mockery of himself.

Oh wait.

Harrow-who-is-both-human-and-alive was never an option, and what we've got now is mirror images of Harrow-the-dead-human and Harrow-the-live-bird, and they're going to do to Viren what he did to them.

Now, it's not that none of this makes sense if Viren knows for sure that Harrow is in the bird... but it makes a lot less sense and has less emotional resonance. If Viren knows Harrow survived as Pip, he'd be more likely to question Harrow's human form than his survival—the way he does with Kpp'Ar. He might be more guarded, expecting hostility—which, I will note, is what he gets when Pip enters the scene. Instead, because until now he believed that he actually killed Harrow in his attempt to save him, he's so relieved to see Harrow alive that for that one moment he loses all pride and is ready to beg for forgiveness at Harrow's feet.

Since legitimately none of this makes sense if Viren didn't at least attempt to put Harrow in the bird, we're left with Harrow maybe or maybe not alive, Viren having maybe or maybe not been the one to actually kill him (gonna be a fun one with the Runaan context), and a plotline that is definitely not going to be resolved in the remaining two seasons of the show. I'd be kind of surprised if they even did any more setup for it (like Callum/Ezran finding out it's a possibility, or even a hint drop like Runaan being all "it was fucking weird, he just sat there" or something) outside of future supplemental media.

Conclusion

Either Harrow is alive and in the bird, with the future intent being to do a spinoff story The Search-style, or we're in for a huge bummer of a "actually, it was Viren all along who killed Harrow, therefore Runaan is a good guy and we can all be one happy family" pile of absolute bullshit. Yes, they said Harrow's dead. Harrow's body is dead, we knew that all along. There's a note in the artbook that Viren was actually going to rip the shroud off at Harrow's funeral in order to publicly prove it's his body, because that is an extremely normal thing to do.

The show just treats it extremely weirdly because, even as the only person with any chance of knowing, Viren is in the same uncertain boat as the rest of us. (Actually more uncertain than the rest of us, since he's not genre-aware.) Also it's another chance to torment Viren emotionally, and they'd never pass that up.

Thanks for coming to my absolutely ridiculous TED Talk on this topic, I hope this screenshot now does as much psychic damage to you as it does to me:

[charcubed]

the problem with that man is that he's obsessed with two things: not explaining and not spoiling. so he just answers everything with the most surface level shit cause he has this "think for yourself" attitude. which i would love. if the internet wasn't filled with people averse to thinking and who love not connecting the dots on purpose. like yeah i know that ox are the first earthly pleasure which were followed by others. 95% of the internet doesn't. ON PURPOSE.

[ben-affleck-smoking.jpeg]

Honestly anon, I tip my hat to you because this helps me a little bit. Just a little bit, to fathom what the fuck he's on about and what his potential reasoning is for it. I mean, I'm still frustrated beyond belief by his whole shtick and think it's unnecessary/irresponsible, but I do appreciate you giving me a somewhat plausible explanation so I can have a posited reason for his behavior to wrap my head around.

The thing is, like... People are stupid.

And/or: people are, historically, so determined to project what they want onto a piece of media (while being hellbent on arguing their right to do so while arguing their "interpretations" should remain unencumbered and unexamined) that they're not interested in seeing what it's theoretically or probably actually doing.

So there are 2 ways this shit is gonna go at this point in my opinion (and it's only been a month since season 2 came out so this shit can probably get even more stark before season 3! Yippee!):

Aziraphale and Crowley DON'T fuck on screen. Neil Gaiman is in fact addicted to the praise of very online ace people and so he has internalized that he can't "ruin their rep." Oh, you say you saw subtext in HIS season 2? Surely not. There was/is no erotic or sexual subtext in Ba Sing Se. To be clear, this would be the cowardly homophobic option whether people think it is or not, in part because of the thematic relevance and subtext now attached to them as of season 2 that begs follow-through (which exists despite his pedantic carefully-worded tumblr posts right now), and in part because if we had to see Newt and Anathema fuck then there is no legitimate reason that Aziraphale and Crowley should not get to do the same in light of the subtext. Period. And media doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sorry not sorry.

Aziraphale and Crowley DO fuck on screen. All of the ace people who have read into Neil's several pedantic and carefully-worded posts and engagement for years then become loudly devastated and angry that "their rep" has been destroyed with "no warning." A new term of "acebaiting" probably enters the cultural lexicon. Extremely online carnage occurs, etc. And frankly? At this point I'd (already) be inclined to say Neil would not be entirely blameless for it because of the way he's now acting while needlessly engaging directly with some of the discourse. The majority of the onus would be on the people who assume that he is confirming or defending the unequivocal canonical validity of their ace readings, because he's technically done nothing of the sort. But while he looooves to post and engage in the manners of those technicalities, at this point he can't be oblivious to how legions of inane people end up being like "soooo true Mr. Gaiman, romance doesn't have to be sexual <3" and he just lets them think that constitutes a promise that these characters will never be openly sexual. So if they think that for years, and then the characters fuck (as they should)? Madness will descend, and part of it – not all of it by far, but part of it – will be on him. Because there's no point or purpose in him acting like this other than he gets a kick out of it. He is now openly playing stupid games post-season 2 and will win stupid prizes.

Secret third thing is that Aziraphale and Crowley ambiguously fuck – Schrödinger's fade-to-black potential sex that we just don't see, if you will – in an effort to satisfy all parties, but that is filed under a variation of version 1 in my opinion. It'll still be lowkey homophobic and purity-culture-coded at the end of the day if there's room for ambiguity and people can erase the fact that they fucked if they prefer to do so.

Anyway. The thing is that if he wants people to think for themselves and connect the dots on their own, then pretending as if the dots don't even exist by ignoring them through omission and acting deliberately obtuse with surface level responses does not inspire people to look for or continue to argue for those dots and their depth. But it sure as HELL inspires stupid people to make leaps of logic and say things like "ummm Neil Gaiman already said nothing is sexual about the ox scene soooo if you're arguing otherwise you're being aphobic." Which is exhausting and infuriating and, again, stupid lol.

And that's certainly not entirely Neil's fault! He's NOT responsible for people being stupid. But he is responsible for making things deliberately confusing because he feels clever and maybe wants to challenge everyone else to be clever without openly saying that in so many words – if that is indeed what he's doing.

And if he's not gonna explain anything sufficiently then he shouldn't be engaging with shit like this at all because people then take his deliberate selective lack of explanation as tacit evidence that there must be nothing to explain.

At the end of the day, I'm personally not interested in dissecting the tea leaves of his posts to guess at the fullness of what he truly thinks. I see the subtext and themes in his work, and either he placed them there and sees them too or he didn't/doesn't. If he sees them but doesn't want to talk about them on main for whatever reason then I have no qualms about saying that that's weird behavior. And I also have no qualms about saying that – based on season 2 – Aziraphale and Crowley should fuck in season 3. Ultimately, while his pedantic posts and the resulting discourse raise my blood pressure, I don't need his permission to know the truth of that.

[mangatxt]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @creativenicocorner; thanks nico!!

tagging @kreauxlighe @tomezeme @mosshook @carriecmoney and anyone else who wants to do this. no pressure!

answers under the cut

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

23

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

489k. i want that half-million by year's end.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

currently, i only write mp100 fics. my ao3 has some older fics from hq!! and a couple other fandoms I used to write for.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

i'm not gonna list them out because they're all older stuff i'm less enthusiastic about recommending now. the top four are daisuga (hq!!) fics I wrote in college, and the fifth is an inukoko fic I wrote before tokrev ended.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to keep up with them. It means a lot to me when people take time out of their day to send me their thoughts, and I've made a lot of friends from it! But I get overwhelmed and behind on it sometimes, and then I'm like... I probably shouldn't respond to this until I post a new chapter. oops.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

hands down, weekly consultation (mp100, gen, mcd).

second place goes to the one for the road (tr, kokoinu), which ends in a breakup.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

most of my fics have happy endings.

the parachute candidate (mp100, serirei) has a pretty happy ending. so do halo effect (mp100, serirei) and phototropic (mp100, gen).

but i think the happiest ending is probably the twelfth annual rising sun spiritual union holiday decoration contest (mp100, serirei), because reigen wins money instead of more time with roshuuto.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i've been super lucky to have overwhelmingly positive reception to my fics. i didn't love all the foot commentary on that one tokrev fic, but it is what it is.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i do. very serious smut only, like dick hanahaki and schrödinger's office smut and slow-motion trainwreck sex column

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

i wrote a short haikyuu!! x fullmetal alchemist fic for daisuga week a long time ago. that's probably the craziest one.

in medias res (mp100, gen) is the little match girl isekai, so that probably counts too. reigen literally crosses over.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

a few offers, but i'm not sure if they were completed

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have been responsible for the prose output of all of my fics, but i've had a lot of help for various plots. for example, i feel that half the blame credit for bringing flora obscura into being should go to @crownorclover

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

serirei (mp100). it has two characters i adore individually, a setting with so much canonical room for shenanigans, and a lot of open-endedness to the development of the relationship that makes it fun to speculate over.

i'm still partial to kokoinu (tokrev) too. both kokoinu and serirei have that bodyguard/loyalty trope to them and are often written within a greater found family. it's good stuff.

i also like the inherent appalling messiness of reishuuto but it's not that serious

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

that novelist!hawks fic i started once. rip.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i like an off-the-wall premise, and i am incredibly committed to the bit.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i tend to overwrite things. need to work on brevity.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

for the manga series i write for, i try to write in scanlation/fansub language for the most part. that's how i interacted with them originally, so that's how the character voices sound in my head. not everything in one language has a 1:1 translation into another.

mp100 has a lot of cultural/wordplay jokes that don't translate well into english. i have a lot of wordplay in my fics to match the tone, but i've only managed to make a wordplay joke that translates both ways once. so much respect for translators who figure out how to make that work on a regular basis.

i try to do as much research as possible to get things right, but i know i'll make mistakes. for that reason, i really appreciate people who beta read for me, who put together writing resources and other research materials, or who are kind enough to leave constructive feedback.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

pokémon.

i can't find it anymore but at one point, my 12-year-old ass wrote a fic where gym leader chuck's wife is like "chuck you spend all your time with the waterfall. i want a divorce." laksjdlkasj

i'd totally write it again.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

the parachute candidate.

(i think i'll like sage advice a lot more when i finish it)

[emiliasilverova]

Everybody Wants to Rule the World (realistic attempt 4)

As you might have noticed with my previous post, it is my birthday today, which calls for a healthy bit of self-indulgence—and what better way to indulge than OC art? (And another collab with @3nigm4art, too... colours always amazing, help on drawing this friggin oversized 80s jacket invaluable.)

(Rant and bonus art under the cut, hehe)

They always lurk in the background of my stuff, they've been overshadowed by bondalec lately, but they'll never truly die; they're the bad guys, the henchpeople, the owners of bionic eyes way before Primo made it cool... Goldo and Silver, ladies, gents and those in between or beyond.

Wish I could find a good way to give them more prominent roles in Bond-centric stories, but alas so far I am unsuccessful. One day, one day...

To those who don't already know, here are the basics:

Goldo is GoldenEye (no relation with the satellite), the silent protagonist of the obscure GoldenEye Rogue Agent. A Schrödinger's OC, as I call them, since everything about him but his name and appearance is made up by me. Also 001 in my Craigverse fics. Seriously don't get me started on how I think his game of origin influenced NTTD's aesthetics.

Silver is a pure, very old OC of mine I've already talked about at length here. Basically the whole point of her existence is to tie the Rogue Agent and GoldenEye (as in, the movie) canons and also being an alumni of the Alec school of being a little shit. In my Craigverse fics (especially We, the Invisible), you might know her as 0011/Eleven. And yes, she looks extremely non-binary on purpose.

A belated offering for OC day? Yes, yes indeed... but I can one up that by making this post also a belated offering for Drabble/Doodle Day 👀

Bam. He judges you, and he judges you hard.

Also ngl, I think my Goldo looks better than the game renders of him now 😆

[ofwraithsandwords]

Hello! I have hellsing question that has been stewing in my head for bit. I don't think there is canon answer to it but I like your posts on hellsing on this blog and your old one! My question is do alucard's restrictions do anything to him if he defies orders? Also what would make him or cause him to want to defy an order. In series hes incompentent at his job a lot. So I could take it as order needs to very specific to get him do anything but is there a consequence if he defies an order?

Thank you for sending in this ask, anon. I'm glad that you like my rambles!

So this is a very good question and highly subjective, I think. It's as you said—there is no canon answer to this question. And since there are multiple parts to this question, I'll break it down so I can answer all of these points succinctly.

1. Does Alucard's restrictions do anything to him if he defies an order?

It's difficult to say. From what we see in the anime and manga, almost all of Alucard's orders are a simple "Search & Destroy" from Integra. That's not a whole lot to go on and leaves quite a bit of wiggle room as far as Alucard is concerned. When faced with a Brazilian SWAT team breaking down his door during their mission in Rio de Janeiro, Alucard responded by effectively slaughtering the entire force despite them being innocent humans caught between a rock and hard place. We can assume that Alucard was sent there to solely take care of the vampire that presided there and was not given any other express orders on how to conduct himself in the event of an emergency.

There was, however, the situation with him being locked up for two decades and kept in a mummified state. We can assume that the only reason why Arthur was even able to do such a thing was due to the Cromwell Invocation/Seals. Did this situation come about because Alucard's abilities were too much for the issues of Arthur's time or was it also because Alucard was finding ways to defy his orders? I don't really know. But I think it's safe to to say that while Alucard may carry out his orders, it's also very possible that he regularly did whatever he wanted within those parameters.

So to answer the question: in my opinion, yes, I do think that the restrictions would "do something" to him if he were to blatantly defy orders. But I don't think it's what most people think. I don't think they "shock" him or cause him any physical pain. In fact, I think the seals on his gloves more likely serve as constant reminders of his enslavement and the tests that Van Hellsing & Co. did to him. I think the truth of the Cromwell Invocation is that they have more of a Pavlov effect on Alucard—that he has been conditioned and brainwashed into believing that these restrictions have an iron grip on him. The abused dog that wears a shock collar will cower in fear at the sight of the collar's remote, even if the shock collar doesn't work.

2. What would make or cause Alucard to defy an order?

While Alucard typically does whatever it is that he is ordered to do, the truth is that he basically does whatever the hell he wants so long as it doesn't go against the express order he was given. He turned Seras into a vampire. He engaged in combat with Father Anderson instead of fleeing with his fledgling. He didn't lift a single finger during Luke and Jan Valentine's raid on the Hellsing manor. The list goes on. The guy is incompetent, to be sure.

As far as what would make Alucard defy an order? Honestly? I don't think he's really capable of doing that—not on his own, anyway. His brain is just a plate of rotten scrambled eggs. The one instance where he defied direct orders was when he consumed Schrödinger and he had no choice in the matter. He was over-encumbered with souls and couldn't separate himself from the three million people he devoured.

So my answer is: I don't actually think Alucard would defy an order of his own "free"* will, but under enough duress, he may have to.

* = he isn't really free, technically speaking. He's kind of more like a free-range bull. The animal thinks it's free, but they're still fenced in.

[entities-of-posts]

When did this blog become a rp blog?? What’s happening?? /nm I just wanna know so I can keep up with whatever plot is happening rn

Well about two weeks ago now I (more or less) accidentally kicked off a Vast ritual - or, rather, helped it gain traction. The point was to reblog a very very long post as many times in a row possible to torture your followers, and I kept a scoreboard updated about the developments. Long story short, after that, people started interacting a lot more with me and before I knew it this was a Proper Roleplay Blog™. Since then a couple of things have happened, briefly listed:

- people started sending me statements for appraisal and questions about the Entities/avatarhood

- I started taking in students - rookie avatars who I helped choose their path and educate. Some of them are terrible troublemakers.

- I tried very very hard not to talk about Homestuck but people kept goading me into it and I eventually cracked and went Insane for One Night Only

- in retribution for Homestuck Crimes, a Slaughter avatar challenged me to a duel. I won with the power of intellect and incredible violence :) now her right eye sits in a bottle on my desk as a paperweight

- one of my students got kidnapped and thrown into the Lonely by my spider friends who used to help me around the Archives. Note the now-past tense.

- I got a cat :D his name is The Detective and he’s of the Flesh and he’s adorable

- tape recorders started showing up. Uh oh.

- another of my students was kidnapped by the spiders. Same day, the first one stopped sending updates from the Lonely. Now I was getting worked up.

- a friend got possessed & taken by the Web and started sending coded messages. At this point my relationship with the Web was officially updated to “complicated”. I spent a few frantic days trying to exchange what messages I could with the missing people and breaking cipher after cipher with the help of a few people, mainly my remaining student, until they got taken as well, and things were looking Kinda Bleak!

- finally fed up and desperate enough to take Pretty Rash actions, I gathered together some useful things from artifact storage, including a few gifts from Spiral avatars: a map of the Hallways given to me by my second pupil, plus glasses to read it and a key to unlock any door I needed to given to me by Michael. With these and the help of a Buried avatar + rocky grunts, I made my way to where I’d figured out the four missing people were: a web spun by a very very big Spider just at the edge between the domains of the Lonely and the Vast, right above the fog. There was an epic battle and I used a Desolation lighter to blow myself and the Spider up. We both survived but got hurt enough that my crew - rescue team and rescued - could escape back through the Hallways (a few of us kind of had to be dragged along at this point and I might have been in the number…)

- everyone having made it back safe, we had a big sleepover party and everyone was invited and it was very nice :) even if a lot of us were Just A Little Bit hurt.

- the next day I took it slow and answered statements and focused on healing the severe burns on 1/3 of my body :) it was a calm day overall! Though during the evening an incredibly untrustworthy looking Web avatar showed up and offered me to gamble “small favors” over a game of blackjack. They looked so suspicious and I had just barely gotten out of a scrap with the Web the day before and it was clearly a trap, so of course I said yes

- there followed a tense game; five rounds, which ended with a score of two for me and three for the Spider, meaning I now owe the Web one (1) “small favor” which isn’t worrying at all :) but I think it was worth it for the info I got out of it and because it was fun and they were kinda hot

- then I went looking through the Archives for a Stranger avatar that had gotten in there somehow (it’s off limits) and learned an unfortunate story

And that’s where we are now :) no I don’t know how this happened either. I’m having fun though

[neonghostcat]

Hundred Winters Grove: Author's Commentary

This is a post that acts as author's commentary for my LiuShen fanfic Hundred Winters Grove.

I'm about to move on to the next project officially and I wanted to write this all down before I forgot!

People who haven't read the story yet might want to do that first, though if you're one of those people who watch a movie for the first time with the Commentary track on, I salute you and support your choices. 🖖

Some of you who've read my work before and left comments that gave me a chance to ramble may already be aware that I enjoy slipping in a bit of ambiguity in my stories sometimes. I don't go for 'open endings' so much, but I do like a little bit of wiggle room for interpretations of a character's thoughts/actions; etc.

Hundred Winters Grove is just... full on, intentionally Open To Interpretation. And it starts with the tags: Not Canon Compliant & Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū.

If you're not already familiar with the paradox of Schrödinger's Cat, you can read the Wikipedia article on it. Properly understanding the concept isn't necessary, though it is interesting!

The important part to understand is just simply, "Until the results of the experiment are observed, the different possibilities (theoretically) exist simultaneously."

Or, in other words -- when I say "Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū" I am actually saying, "Who, precisely, Shen Qingqiu is in this story is open to your interpretation. What you observe is the truth."

---

There are four lenses you can read the fic through:

Shen Yuan transmigrates at the canonical time and all is as expected.

Shen Yuan transmigrates at the canonical time, but more of Shen Jiu lingers than normal.

Shen Yuan transmigrates earlier than canon... perhaps much earlier.

Shen Yuan is having a Second Chance Reincarnation/reset, not just a transmigration.

---

1 - All is as expected

Probably the lens most people were reading under -- which is obviously totally okay and not 'wrong'! Especially for those who were uncomfortable with the first kiss since that bit of crossing boundaries can be handed off to "the antagonist" figure and all is well.

---

2 - SQQ has more "Shen Jiu" than canon

I won't dwell on this possibility too much since it's pretty easy to read through this lens. All you have to assume is that he has more of SJ's memories and/or emotions lingering -- which is something I wanted because of the kisses I thought would be most fun to write naturally lead to a "sharper" interpretation of SQQ than the "soft" one I usually write.

Theoretically you could even read it as LiuJiu and switch it around. It's Shen Jiu, but when System tried to install the Shen Yuan patch, it didn't overwrite the base file.

---

3 - Early Transmigration

There are several suggestions in the story that SY may have arrived earlier and was forced by System to operate under "OOC" rules until roughly when he transmigrated in canon.

The further back you go the more of Shen Jiu's canonical experiences Shen Yuan likely would have been exposed to. This could easily lead to a sharper, more bitter personality and still be all Shen Yuan.

You can say the first hint of this possibility comes from their very first interaction -- when the quake happened and SQQ glanced over for reassurance from LQG. Obviously, it is possible that this is absolutely SJ and he at least trusts his sect-mate this far. But if you're trying to read through this lens, I'd definitely be looking for these smaller moments as supporting evidence.

It's circumstantial for sure, but there are more direct hints too, such as YQY's claims that he'd been noticing an improvement with SQQ "for years".

---

4 - Second-Chance Reincarnation

This is the one with the most (intentionally written) support. I'm not saying 'this is canon', because the whole point of writing/editing the way I did was to lean hard into the Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū concept! But I am saying that I took full advantage of the "Not Canon Compliant" tag either way.

The biggest piece of evidence for this interpretation is in chapter 3 when they briefly mention the Skinner Demon.

The Skinner Demon plotline wasn't in PIDW -- only in SVSSS. But SQQ is aware of it and assigns himself to go and deal with it, leaving his disciples behind. (The wording is pretty vague intentionally, though.)

All of the canon events that are mentioned in HWG would have normally involved Binghe. But Binghe, though still loyal to SQQ, isn't as involved in this story as I might normally write. (I do, after all, adore the soft dynamic between them. I just prefer it as platonic if they're meeting when Binghe is a kid and SQQ is an adult.)

If SQQ is living his story the second time around, like, say... if the whole Back-Up Plan attempt went wrong and he reset instead of becoming plant-zun and he were more free from System's influence to do whatever he wanted, he could easily adjust how he behaved with Binghe to encourage a more... chill dynamic between them.

---

I was originally going to start pulling quotes to support lens 3 and 4, but you'll probably have more fun looking for them yourself. (Plus this is already quite long and I have run out of free time.)

Hope this was interesting for you to read. :)

[adelcrait-old-account]

Lost and Found—  Chapter 15,16,17 and 18 are up!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24522103/chapters/63542560 

Luke and Vader go camping in an uninhabited snow planet, what could go wrong? Multi-chaptered.

As always, spoilers and rant under the cut.

Oh boy.

Long, long, loooong few chapters. I wrote this in one sitting, and realised I couldn’t post 20k words in one single chapter, so here we are. I also wanted to post this yesterday, but I accidentally deleted Chapter 18 and had to re-write all over again...yay for me.

1. The Dark Side of the Force, to vibe or not to vibe? That is the question.

Apprentice/Master situation with these two, in this AU, has been tricky to think of. Let’s be real, Luke has never had a teacher, and Vader is so terrified of failing him (and himself) that I feel like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. His last padawan was Ahsoka, and then he trained Inquisitors after that, so he has no idea what to do with someone who is deliberately asking to be trained. He didn’t ask for Ahsoka, but of course he grew to like her and she turned out to be a great Jedi. The Inquisitors are literal dark side demons so I suppose Vader did a great job? 

But Luke.

I mean, Ben Starkiller.

The boy.

The Commander.

Vader has no clue what to do. He is already doubting the dark side as per the last chapters on Takodana, because it fails him sometimes, and even Luke says that Vader is barely on the dark side these days. Vader knows what the dark side can do to a person, look no further than Sidious or himself, and he doesn’t want anyone else to go through that experience. Will he encourage Luke to try the light side? I don’t think so. He’s still bitter, but hey. Luke will do whatever he wants, he just needs Force knowledge, because everything he learnt was practical. Vader can and will teach him general knowledge that could apply to either the light side or the dark side of the Force.

Small victory. 

2. Anakin Skywalker’s existence: the eternal Schrödinger.

Ah, Anakin, Vader, the Chosen One, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, future possible Heir to the Empire. When I first started writing I wanted Vader to progress from his canon-ish Darth Vader identity towards an older, more exhausted version of Anakin Skywalker. I feel like I’ve captured this very well in these chapters *pats myself on the back* I’ve noticed that when I’m writing him now, I think Anakin Skywalker; twenty years at the dark side, chronically lonely, basically a 10% of the person he used to be. He’s still Vader, yes, but... I’m starting to see some traces of Anakin when Vader’s guard is low.

Also, he is stressed. When Luke was forcing him to take a break, that was all me speaking. I would send him somewhere nice to calm down, possibly accompanied by a doctor, but plot. If Vader disappeared for a few days, the entire galaxy would go nuts. Sorry Mr Vader, you will just have to get rest like the other mortals do: by sleeping.

3. The Force— Third Main Character and Vader’s Main Headache

In canon, Rhen Var is just another cold planet with some ancient Temples and heavily unhabited because of the climate. I decided to change it, and make the planet super Force-sensitive, like maybe Mortis but not that magical. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the Mortis arc, but I don’t think Vader and Luke are ready for that rollercoaster. 

The Force loves to torment Vader. I have humanised the Force and stuck to the fact that, technically speaking if we stick to canon, it created Anakin. The word created is used lightly, because tbh no one knows what happened there. I just assume the Force is Vader’s second mother, and knowing that Vader made very very wrong decisions in his life, the Force haunts him.

I love angst and writing darker themes, and I have to admit that the ghost child part was lowkey painful to write. Again, it was all to contrast Vader thinking about the child, and then Luke appearing like hELLO WHO ARE YOU THINKING OF.

4.The Kyber Crystals

In canon there are no kyber crystals on Rhen Var. There’s nothing. I really wanted to write the entire scene of Luke getting the crystals, but it would spoil the surprise at the end of the chapters. Vader remembering that he saw Luke when he was only twelve, and now, thirty years later, he is seeing the same person again, who had fulfilled a promise he actually forgot about...

I just....

Yeah. The galaxy doesn’t deserve Luke Skywalker. 

5. AUTHOR????????????????????????????????????????

Hey, I know! I know! Scream at me whatever you want, but The Reveal isn’t happening now. I had many many scenes where it was so easy to slip up the name of Anakin Skywalker and bam, Vader would collapse, Luke would freak out, they would be happy.

But hehe...

Not yet y’all, not yet.

I realise that the next chapter will mark 100k words on this story....when I started writing I didn’t think it would be that long. To be honest, I’m just almost at the middle of the story, and I just didn’t think that I would write so much.  I love the Skywalkers, and I love the story I’m writing. I’m very excited for the next chapters, and things will get...dramatic. Big changes are coming, and I’m super excited. Thank you for reading!

[countessofbiscuit]

Smothered and Covered, 1, 3, 5 , 9, 11, 14? This fic lives rent-free in my brain btw, thank you for writing it!

<grinch smile> thank you nonnie!! 

Smothered and Covered

or: Boba was all shiny-soft under her hands, with dark eyes that stared past her into the next parsec. Far less innocence than most, yet the theft of his clawed harder at her shame. But one crude kindness deserved another. (Explicit, Boba/Ahsoka, cw: underage) 

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

A combination of factors. 

This fanart, for starters. An anon who likened Aurra Sing to a trashy aunt. The persistent itch to write a grimy Bobasoka one-night-stand. All were catalysed by the bitter angst of the TCW S7 finale. It needed to be lanced and purged, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch Rexsoka directly: the grief was still too near. But I was desperate to play in that post-TCW, pre-Rebels void in a way that remained consistent with canon and my own fanon. 

Then there was my Banned Bingo card, which had a free space that needed filling. Shipping Ahsoka with anyone but a flower crown will get you death threats in this fandom, but in the interest of being “Totally Problematic” and really earning that square, I decided to send her to bed with — le gasp! — a teenager who’d just been raped by a parental figure, and let her yearn the entire time for her estranged boyfriend (who happens to be a genetically-modified version of the dude she’s fucking). 

This was also right at the time when rumours about Boba appearing season two of The Mandalorian went viral. The old disc horse carousel started up again: Boba is either an overrated, pointless, hollow character not worth the effort the sarlacc took to digest him, or he’s the Biggest Bossest Badass to ever make galactic citizens quake in their boots. I was sick to my back teeth of it. This guy is Schrödinger’s Mandalorian and all people seemed to wanna talk about was whether he earned his inclusion in the OT forty years ago. *yawns* Anyway, social media doesn’t thrive on nuance — but fanfic sure does. I wanted a character study of Boba as I (and a lot of excellent fic writers) understand and appreciate him; I wanted to let him be pissed about his traumatic life and act on it in his own way; I wanted him to be half as enigmatic as he thinks he is, while still being very unpredictable, even to someone who has good reason to know him better than most.

Smothered and Covered is the resultant greasy omelette, with lots of chunky bits, some easier to stomach than others. 

3: What's your favorite line of narration?

It was almost too easy, like winning ‘round a sour tusk-cat just knowing where its claws can't reach.

5: What part was hardest to write?

The ending. I’m still not pleased with it. There’s something Extended-Edition RotK about it. Or an essay where you’re super sure you made the point in the body, but that profound, “in conclusion” thought which will earn you top marks eludes you. So you just write a series of semi-profound things and hope that does the job — oh, and throw in a quote a line of dialogue for good measure :p

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Besides the hundred subtly different endings, the original draft didn’t have IC-8994 making an appearance. The exchange was just of information and bodily fluids. But in a ‘verse where Boba and Ahsoka are on texting terms, any intel that required a face-to-face drop seemed above their current paygrade as characters. Having an inconvenient commando in carbonite, however, gives Boba some plausible badass points and forces him to consider who can call to  help bury a body. And besides, every story is better with whole-ass commandos, even if they’re just deadweight plot devices :) 

11: What do you like best about this fic?

The Aurra reveal, by way of her blaster. I was stupidly satisfied with the rhyme it created, and that I got to wield obscure lore like a penknife to the heart. 

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

No one experiences or reacts to trauma in the same way. What one person does to reassure themselves that they still have agency in their life might be anathema to someone else; neither person is wrong. Fanpol/antis’ fetishization and policing of victimhood is fucked up. 

[incorrectduellinksquotes]

Some fun blog lore

Duel Links has all sorts of funky ass lore, and I just want to establish which characters are NPCs and which ones are not. Its been a while since I made a post like this and just want update things.

DUEL MONSTERS:

Honda, Esper Roba, Haga, Ryuzaki, Isis and Rishid are the only real ones. Everyone else* is an NPC.

*Mai played somewhat in the early days, but has since quit playing. Yugi is an active player, but he plays under a fake name / avatar. Ryota became so notorious when Sea Stealth Attack dropped and he nearly one a KC cup that an NPC was made afterwards. 

GX: Judai, Judai/Yubel, Manjoume, Shou, Edo, Misawa, Johan, Rei, and Saiou are NPCs. Hell Kaiser, Professor Chronos, Asuka, Tyranno, and Yubel* are real. The Ojamas, along with all other duel spirits, were supposed to be NPCs, but have since been possessed by the real duel spirits that their cards represent. The two exception is Yubel, who has already been discussed, and Dark Master Zorc, who is Dead. Probably.

*Yubel sneaks on while Judai is asleep. Being soul fused with Judai is cool and all, but they miss having their own body at times, and Duel Links helps them with that

DSOD: Sera is an NPC. Jonouchi, Seto, Mokuba, and Scud (unfortunately) are real.

5DS: Ushio, Carly (normal), Rua, Ruka, and Jack are all real. The rest of team 5Ds and all of the Dark Signers are NPCs*

*Jury’s still out on Kalin. Ushio’s been trying to figure it out for months now and has been 100% unable to figure it out. There is a Jack NPC, but its... meh at best. Jack sometimes pretends to be said NPC to get fans off his back. 

Other: As mentioned, NPCs such as the Tour Guide from the Underworld and the Card Trader have been overshadowed by their duel spirits. Card Trader(EX) is a notable exception, and all the other NPCs are creeped out by how lifeless they are. The Vagabond & Vagrants are NPCs. “Standard Duelists” are real people. 

Roaming Duelists are real, with a possible exception to Dark Signer Kalin, whos status is already unknown even without that. Some leave after their roaming events, like Rei, or (once Professional Aster ends) Edo. Others stick around, such as Hell Kaiser ---> Hell Kaiser, and Super Joey ---> Jonouchi(DSOD).

This does leave a very interesting case for Fantastic Pegasus. Due to both DSOD and GX being canon to Duel Links, one of which being Manga Canon and the other being Anime Canon, we’ve got kind of a Schrödinger's Pegasus thing going on. Pegasus died in the manga, but was alive and kicking in GX. Is he dead? Maybe! The NPC Pegasus is very clearly based on the Manga, as seen in his eye color and white pants, and Fantastic Pegasus shares that design, so its possible Fantastic Pegasus is an NPC. 

Yami Bakura seems to be the only NPC aware of their status. Kaiba (DM) is aware of who is and who isn't an NPC, with exception to himself. Yami Bakura’s sentience perpetually confuses and frightens both Kaibas. Pegasus’ AI had to be completely overhauled because he went mad one time when he found out he was an NPC. He does not currently know.

Judai/Yubel thinks every GX Legendary Duelist is an NPC, but tries not to think about what that implies for themselves. The main reason they think this is because they think everyone from 5Ds is real, because otherwise they’re from The Future or they’re Also NPCs and that would imply MORE time travel and they just hope there was no time travel happening at all. Unbeknownst to them, there is most likely time travel at work. The other NPCs know something funky is going on because How The Hell Are There Two Judais, but nobody knows what the deal there is.

All of the 5Ds NPCs think they’re real, and think that each other are real. Dark Signer Carly has come into contact with Carly (normal) on multiple occasions, but has not seen anything odd about that at all, and they’re actually starting to become friends. Carly (normal), being a real person, is both slightly disturbed and heavily intrigued by this response. 

Carly (normal) is currently under the impression that Jack is an NPC. Ushio has respected Jack’s wishes and has not informed her that he’s real. Jack struggles remembering what she’s told him IRL and in game, and has to pretend he doesn't know certain things because that Definitely Wasn’t Him. IRL Team 5Ds finds this fucking hilarious, with exception to Aki who wants Jack to come clean.

Malik Ishtar, the real one, has been known to play, but despite their best efforts Isis and Rishid cannot find him. This wouldn't be a huge deal if he wasn't on a missing persons list and his siblings hadn’t seen him in years. Formerly Kaiba(DM) and currently Kaiba (DSOD) track his playtime, and act somewhat as correspondents to help the Ishtars on their search but attempts to track him in game have been fruitless. Yami Malik finds it interesting that he’s been separated from his other self, and has joined in on their search out of pure curiosity. Honda knows what's going on and keeps an eye out, but its a more passive effort than the others.

theres probably more stuff im forgetting but that's what I got for now

[elenatria]

Since they didn't show Valkyrie's death I'll just assume she's alive and well, probably off on another planet with Lady Sif. But I'm still salty of how Thor conveniently forgot to use his newly found control of lightning, like wtf? Russo brothers did you not watch Ragnarok or did you just decide to scrap it and tell us that it's not canon? What is going on? (Ps. Loki is totally alive, even though Hiddleston is only marked as 'post-production' part of "IW" pt.2.)

Yeah, it’s called “Thanos’ plot armour”.

“Watch out for his fingers, they make sparks.”

You know I was just thinking of Valkyrie. If I saw her and Loki die, I wouldn’t know who to choose to bring back.

 IW conveniently left some major gaps in the storytelling. Maaaaajor gaps. Like yeah, whatever happened to Valkyrie (and Korg)? How come Thor couldn’t use his lightning? Maybe he was afraid to use it inside a spaceship. But he DID use it here.

Oh wait, that’s one of those omitted trailer scenes. Maybe it was omitted exactly because it was inconsistent with Thor being unable to use his lightning when the Statesman was attacked by Thanos.

Suddenly Thor needed a weapon again to channel his power of lightning. 

Joss Whedon has been accused by SJW’s of being a misogynist for having Natasha feel like a monster because she couldn’t have children.

Well, let me jump on the bandwagon too, go all anti-toxic masculinity and call out the Avengers films (NOT the Russo films because I still believe The Winter Soldier and Civil War are the best MCU films ever) on being all about endless, longer than necessary battles and super weapons and gadgets. Gadgets gadgets gadgets. Films that were made for boys with toys.

Boys, always remember, you’re nothing unless you have a big dick or a big car or the next expensive gadget. “The power within” that Taika made a pitch for simply. Doesn’t. Sell. Marvel can’t make money out of thin air.

“But it’s comic book canoooooooon, stop blaming Stormbreaker for everything!!!11″

Sure. But it’s also very beautiful merchandise.

And Thor’s inability to use his lightning power in the Statesman is STILL inconsistent with “that other MCU film”.

You know what? Maybe the Grandmaster was right. Maybe those lightnings were just sparkles. Just for show.

*shakes head*.

Also, t’s funny how many things Thor knows about the Infinity Stones or about Thanos decimating Xandar to get the Power Stone for the purpose of hasty   quick exposition. Also he mentions that Thanos “slaughtered half his people”. Nice one, Thor, nice gap in the storytelling to fill in later. So I assume Thor knows somehow that half his people have survived? (a fact we didn’t see) Did that happen before Thanos entered the Statesman? Were they teleported somewhere with the help of Heimdall and Valkyrie as their leader? Did they jump on life boats? Or was Thor hanging there, struggling in Thanos’ hands, counting the corpses and thinking “One two three four five… oh that’s not all of them, they must have escaped somehow, phew.” But I didn’t hear any wailing as it happens when people are not dead but conscious, severely injured and lying on the ground.

It seems to me Thanos gave him a little speech recounting his adventures so far before grabbing his body and torturing him in front of Loki. Like, a very detailed speech that we didn’t see.

Lol yesterday I got a troll-under-the-guise-of-a-friend telling me that “one Taika film cannot undo decades of work” (I’m assuming they meant comic book canon, because the MCU has been around for only a decade, not decadeS. Also I’m sure they copied that phrase from somewhere on tumblr, sounds like all the other Taika-hating pet phrases). I wonder, is this the new tumblr trend, shitting on Taika now that the new MCU film is out? What a great opportunity for all those who hated Ragnarok for all these months (for Tom/Loki-stanning purposes I guess) to hide behind IW now and use it as an excuse to hate on the previous MCU film. Quite convenient. Personally I don’t follow the comics, I follow MCU canon. And if the MCU cannot be consistent with its own movies then I’m sure it’s not Taika’s fault.

Tom is marked as “post-production”? What does that even mean?… o__O

Well of course Loki is alive. But let me tell you this. 

I’m not saying Loki isn’t dead.

I’m just saying, with all those convenient plot holes they left in the movie (his body not turning back to its Jotun form etc etc)  they could bring him back any time they choose. Next year, when the new Thor film is out, in a decade from now, whenever. WHENEVER.

Right now he has a 50% chance of being alive.

Like Schrödinger’s cat.

[getoffthesoapbox]

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions: Kylo’s Trajectory

After much trial and tribulation, we have at last arrived of the moment of destiny: a descent into the depths of what is arguably the most complex character created not only for the Star Wars saga itself, but for the silver screen as a whole in recent memory. Kylo Ren is a bottomless pit of onion layers--the more I peel away, the more I find. I don’t know if I, or any one single person, or even the creators themselves, can truly ever uncover or unpack everything contained within this character. But I certainly want to try my best, and I hope that I can bring some new thoughts to the table, though I admit the prospect is intimidating because this character has been discussed ad nauseum by minds far greater than mine. Still, I can’t move forward in this series without addressing him, so apologies in advance if this covers territory others have previously tread. 

This is the eighth post in my Star Wars The Last Jedi First Impressions series. The list of the topics this series covers, including links to the previous posts, is included below:

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - A Flawed Triumph

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Thematic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Finn & Rose

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Rey

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Kylo

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Leia

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey’s Trajectory  

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Kylo’s Trajectory ← we are here

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey & Kylo

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Romantic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Misleading Love Polygons

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Schrödinger's Futures

This behemoth guards his hidden treasure trove jealously. He’s no easy pickings.

Kylo Ren is my favorite character in the Star Wars saga, replacing my beloved Luke in the span of a single film (The Force Awakens). The Last Jedi only expanded on what I already saw as the most interesting and complex character ever crafted for the Star Wars saga and turns him into something that is truly a masterpiece, and I’m not entirely sure it was all intentional. 

In many ways, on the surface and perhaps on paper, Kylo is a simple character: he is someone who is being crushed under the weight of the previous generations and is trying to strike out on his own to find his own path, but who has been drawn toward the darkness in the process. But I think what we learn in The Last Jedi (and we certainly don’t learn much), points toward something much more intricate, much more human than the paper version of Kylo. How much of this is intentional on the part of the story group and the directors, how much of it is Adam Driver’s meticulous and flawless performance, and how much of it is the channeling of a message greater than any single person could create, I don’t know, but there’s so much inside this character it takes my breath away. 

I’m going to tackle this post a little differently than my previous ones and break it up into sections; the stream-of-conscious approach worked well for the other posts, despite their length, but Kylo’s just such a hugely multi-faceted character that I need a little organization to focus the different aspects into something clear. 

For everyone who’s waited so long for this post, here it is at last. Thank you for sticking it out with me, despite what a sluggish snail I am. ;) I hope it’s worth the wait, but if it isn’t, I’ll do my best to make up for it in the future. ;) So, without further ado, let’s tackle this beast of a man.

The Burden of Legacy

While some hints of Kylo’s real issues surfaced in his scenes from TFA, it isn’t until The Last Jedi that we start to see some of the real motives behind why he’s chosen the path he has. 

Although he himself never states any of his thoughts, we can discern quite a bit about what happened to him in the beginning of his life up until his betrayal by Luke from what the other characters say and from hints from the novels. Now, I consider novels to be “secondary canon,” which means they’re only “canon” until something from future films disproves them (this is why I’ve thrown out the TFA novel entirely as a useful tool; as soon as Rey didn’t meet Poe until TLJ, TFA’s novel now moves into an “alternative universe” as far as I’m concerned, because it contains inconsistencies). However, it’s unlikely the novels surrounding Kylo’s past will have any retcons in the films themselves, so it’s safe to use them for now.

In one of the novels (I think Aftermath), we discover that before Ben is even born, a shadowy force is targeting him. This would have been the fate of any child of the Skywalkers--whether Luke’s or Leia’s--because they are somehow at the heart of the galaxy and are a powerful family. It was always going to be a risk to have a child under such circumstances, but if Leia and her husband were strong enough and savvy enough, it still hypothetically was possible to shield any children from such influences. 

Unfortunately, Leia’s partner is Han, and she herself is a force intuitive rather than someone trained in it. They’re just not equipped--through no fault of their own--to handle what their union creates. Leia is a key political figure in restoring order to the galaxy and can’t give any child the attention needed, and Han is...not exactly the most sensitive or patient man, likely due to his own traumatic past. When Ben is born, he is born into a world that is already hunting him, already expecting much from him, and already discarding him. 

One might say that the fact that Ben takes over 20 years to “turn to the dark” is quite remarkable given the influencing factors of his birth. That is a testament to his natural affinity toward the light as much as it is a testament to his ultimate failure to find enough purpose to withstand the pressure he was under. Unfortunately, we probably will never get to see these years covered in any film, and that’s a real travesty because this is pivotal for understanding the deep well of inner strength that this character has--and that Rey sees so much hope in. 

Still, we have enough clues to extrapolate the likely trajectory of Ben’s early years. At first, he was most likely merely a normal child who maybe did some strange things due to his extraordinary force-sensitivity. What his parents may or may not have known was that the shadowy force was likely always there, in the back of his mind, even during his early years. Yet in the beginning, that probably didn’t matter. Leia and Han, being new parents and still in the first years of the rebuilding of the republic, would likely have been very involved in Ben’s life. It’s clear to see in both films that he loves them both, that they both matter to him, despite the actions he takes against them. He couldn’t have been neglected all his life if he still holds them in such high regard. So at least in his formative years he must have been cherished by them. 

At some point, this changed, and a few things likely happened. First, he encountered “society,” and this could have happened as early as six or seven. This would be the first time he encountered the burden of legacy that would eventually break him--as the child of two war heroes and the nephew of another (and magical war heroes at that), expectations of his future were likely sky-high simply by virtue of his genetics. If this were all Ben had to contend with, he might have been able to bear it, but adding to that pressure was something else his DNA bestowed upon him--a ridiculously out of control force-sensitivity and prodigy-level abilities in the force. When these abilities fully manifested, I can’t say, but something about the way Luke talks about Ben in TLJ makes me think they didn’t fully manifest until puberty, which is likely when most of his problems actually started.

Before puberty, I would posit that Kylo’s problems were mostly localized to his family rather than the exterior world: he missed his mother, who was likely frequently out of the house and busy; he didn’t get along with his father, who by his own admission (and by Luke’s and Leia’s) couldn’t understand the boy very well and who didn’t “get” the whole force “thing” despite his proximity to two powerful wielders of the force; and, worse, a shadowy voice was likely lurking in the back of his mind, whispering things he shouldn’t be hearing. There may have been other factors as well, such as bullying in school or children being intimidated by him in general simply because of who he was. But something tells me that probably wasn’t the case in his early years because despite his rage-outs during TFA, in TLJ he shows some remarkably savvy social skills when he interacts with Rey, and that doesn’t come out of thin air simply because you’re sexually attracted to someone. I’d say that before his turn to the dark side, he was a well-mannered, kind, and pleasant boy to be around, probably a little too quick to display his heart on his sleeve and likely an empath. He probably was, in general, very well liked early on in his life, even by schoolmates. If this is true, then this makes his downfall all the more tragic because he knows what he’s thrown away; if he’d always been mistreated for his entire life, then he’s more pitiable, but for him to have known both good and bad and to be unable to correct course to return to the good is far more classically tragic in my opinion. 

I think puberty (so around 13-14) was when Ben’s force sensitivity probably started going out of control. Likely he was testing the limits of his powers, exploring the boundaries of authority, trolling a bit, and acting out as teenagers are wont to do, and he probably scared the bejeezus out of Han. Han, unable to deal with Ben, shut down on him right at the one moment the boy needed him most--the shadows in his mind were likely growing louder and more insistent and clear, and he needed a strong role model to follow to stay on the straight and narrow. Leia, of course, was torn between her husband, son, and political duties, and so she likely called for Luke’s help because Ben was becoming too much to handle for both of them and they were out of their depth. When Luke saw Ben, he had the same reaction to him Snoke has--he sees all that ability and potential and wants to harness it and be the one who molds it. It’s the natural allure of the mentor, and it’s something mentors have to be very careful about--it’s one thing to want to foster talent, it’s a whole other thing to want to mold talent. 

Luke convinces Leia and Han to release Ben into his custody, which we know from his own testimony in TLJ. Han’s reaction is left up to the viewer, but I expect he was probably in favor of dumping the boy onto Luke simply because Han tends to run from his problems (and we know his own deep guilt is the reason he retreats back into his former scalawag ways, so he fully knows where he went wrong with his son). But Leia probably lets Ben go because she genuinely thinks Luke can help him--and we know from her testimony in TFA that she regrets that decision and thinks it was the wrong one in hindsight. Because what Leia’s choice does, inadvertently, is prove to Ben that the voice in his head might be right after all--maybe his parents don’t love him and wish he were something other than what he’d turned out to be. This is something all kids face in their teens to some degree or other--it’s part of becoming an actualized individual--but given how empathic Ben was, and how deeply rooted the shadows infiltrating his mind were, he had a harder road to walk than the typical teen. 

So Ben is packed off to Uncle Luke’s faraway foreign retreat, away from everything he’s ever known living at the center of civilization, and thrown into a monastic lifestyle he probably never wanted in the first place. The culture shock alone would have been rough even if Ben had wanted to go to training, but likely he was unwilling yet too obedient to his mother’s wishes to make his own wishes heard. Part of Ben’s problem, and part of the eventual problem Kylo Ren demonstrates, is that he’s too obedient. He’s trying so hard to be the good son to Snoke that I can’t imagine he didn’t do the same for Han, Leia, and eventually Luke. Yet another reason why he and Rey resonate so well together--both of them want to be lovely objects worthy of their parents’ love and affection deep in their hearts. 

Ben likely took being sent away to Uncle Luke’s as a punishment from parents the shadowy voice whispered didn’t really love him rather than an attempt to help him, which he may have understood better had there been no shadowy voice. But Ben is a good boy, and we know by how deeply hurt he is by Luke that Luke quickly won him over and gained his trust and affection. Luke becomes the father figure to Ben that Han couldn’t be (and whoa, I just realized how this echoes Rey’s trajectory, like holy crap, Ben wasn’t describing Rey during that force connect moment when he was mocking her searching for her parents--he was describing himself), and Ben manages to make a life for himself.

We know he manages to last about 6 or more years at the jedi academy before Snoke finally gets the upper hand on him. Neither Ben nor Luke give us much information on his life at the academy, but I think we can safely assume a few things:

Ben was highly talented and was the teacher’s pet.

While some of the students became Ben’s friends and bonded closely with him, there were others who envied him and became resentful/bitter. (As I said before in my post on Luke and Kylo, this is likely why not all the padawan were killed when Ben went Kylo-mode; likely there was a fight between Ben’s friends and the kids who didn’t like Ben, and it turned into a slaughter.) 

Snoke is getting a stronger and more insistent hold on Ben the more he trains and the more he connects to the force. Snoke by this point is also probably trying to poison Ben against Luke and may be priming the pump by hinting that Luke is afraid of Ben and will one day “prove” that by striking Ben.

At some point Ben learns about Vader, and the galaxy does as well, giving the padawan who may resent him full leave to increase any bullying tactics they may have been employing (or holding back on employing). 

Possibly Luke, in order to keep the peace, turns a blind eye to any bullying behavior Ben’s receiving, despite knowing he should do something about it. Or, conversely, he’s just never around and is always out searching for new padawan, and so through neglect he, like Leia and Han, abandons Ben. 

Luke at some point realizes that his training isn’t helping Ben and the darkness is becoming greater in him. Luke may or may not know about Snoke (I suspect he doesn’t until he talks to Leia after Ben disappears).

As Rey points out to Luke, Ben’s choice was not made before Luke raised his saber against him. In fact, I would argue (and I think Rey would agree), that by staying by Luke’s side, Ben had chosen Luke. If Luke had kept the faith and believed in the strength of the light in his nephew and the strength of his bond to his nephew, perhaps he might have steered Ben in a more productive direction. But moreover, Luke should have trusted that even if Ben turned, Leia, Han, and Luke were all enough to bring him back, no matter what it took. 

Yet Luke didn’t believe in Ben, he didn’t believe in Ben’s light, and so he lost Ben to the darkness. Likely after the attack, Ben probably ran away scared and began gathering up his things only to be attacked by the padawan from the faction who resented him, and who now had a justification for their resentment (his attack on their master). Ben, being cornered, likely lashed out, was joined by his own friends, and a war began while poor Luke was pulling himself out of the wreckage. By the time Luke was free, Ben was gone and some of the padawan with him, leaving Luke to believe Ben slaughtered everyone, because why the hell wouldn’t he believe that Ben was a murderer?

So we can see from all of this that the “Skywalker legacy” brought Ben a great deal of pain and very little joy: likely he was bullied, pressured, neglected, abandoned, feared, hated, and abused simply because of his DNA and his abilities. For an empath as strong as Ben clearly is, this is an unbearable way to live and would send even the strongest straight down the steep descent into nihilism if there isn’t a very strong and clear purpose for them to latch onto. 

Ben’s DNA and genetic legacy and the legacy of his family itself buried him beneath their weight. At a time in his life where he needed to make a name for himself and strike his own path and test the strength of his fledgling wings, he was being crushed by the weight of both the dark side of his lineage (the Vader side) and the light side of his lineage (the war heroes). His force sensitivity made him a target to enemies and allies alike--he was likely seen as a tool to be used or an object of envy for those less naturally gifted. And because there was not yet a Rey by his side to give him the love and devotion he likely desperately sought from his parents and uncle in lieu of all the pain, he was left with the only other person who had remained by his side through it all: the shadowy presence who had been there from the beginning, the voice of Snoke.

Welcome to the Dark Side

So what about that loyal shadow presence lurking in the corners of Ben’s charmed life? What on earth would make that presence more attractive to Ben than his comfy home and wonderful family? As with the rest of his past, this aspect of Ben’s life is shrouded in mystery. However, we can assume a few things based on Snoke’s gloating:

Snoke can read and has been reading (for how long is unknown) all of Ben’s thoughts. As in, every. single. thought. Kind of hard to grow up if you have no privacy at all. Poor kid probably couldn’t even have any fantasies. No wonder he’s a 30-year-old virgin. ;) Joking aside, this is actually incredibly sinister if Snoke’s been able to do this Ben’s entire life. That means for the entirety of his life his every move has been “observed” by someone. Living under constant surveillance normally would drive anyone mad in general, but this goes even further than mere visual surveillance. The implications here are horrifying for Ben’s ability to actualize himself in a healthy way and also are an enormous testament to the depth and strength of the light within him--he managed to withstand daily torment from this shadow presence for most of his life. He’s only been truly in its grasp for a brief span of time--at most 6 years, virtually the same amount of time he’d been a padawan. 

Before I go into what this means for Kylo Ren in the current timeframe, I’d like to explore what this meant for Ben Solo. I’m not sure how long Snoke was able to communicate with Ben, but given how powerful he is, I’m sure at the very least he was able to send his own thoughts to Ben (perhaps even masking them to sound like Ben’s own thoughts), even if Ben couldn’t respond. When Snoke began speaking with Ben, I can’t say--perhaps he only observed initially and didn’t begin speaking until Ben’s relationship with Han began to fragment and he was shipped off to Uncle Luke’s. 

I think we can say for certain that at least during the 6 or so years of Ben’s padawan training, Snoke was messing with his head and his belief in himself and his family. So even if Snoke had started as an unwanted presence in Ben’s mind, or something Ben fought, by the end of the journey Snoke became the only thing Ben “had” that had never rejected or betrayed him, that “loved” him. This is a classic manipulation tactic--to seduce the victim with the idea that you alone hold them as “special” and then to isolate them from other sources of strength and support. This is one of the reasons I suspect Kylo’s Knights of Ren are dead--if Kylo had friends or supporters, he wouldn’t be as vulnerable to Snoke’s influence as he clearly is during TFA and TLJ. Snoke also makes sure to keep Hux and Kylo at each other’s throats rather than letting them form a friendship (which would be more natural given their similar ages). I can’t see him letting Ben keep his friends--likely he “arranged” for the friends to “tragically die” in battle for the First Order, isolating Ben further. (This, I think, may have been part of the vision Rey saw in TFA.) 

Either way, Ben goes from potentially distrusting and not believing the voice in his head to placing his hope of a future in its hands. This is likely due to the fact that the voice probably “predicts” what will happen (Leia/Han’s abandonment, the other padawan’s resentment and envy, Luke’s “betrayal”), and thus the voice gains credibility over the other people in Ben’s life who have continued to fail him. This credibility leads Ben to go to Snoke’s side.

I’m not sure at what point Ben “meets” Vader. TFA implies Ben has spoken to Vader before, but isn’t speaking to him by TFA. Since we know Vader was redeemed and has shown himself as Anakin as his force ghost, we can assume whatever “Vader” Ben has been talking to isn’t real and likely is a creation of Snoke’s. Snoke’s probably powerful enough for this simply because he’s the one who creates (or at least manipulates) the force connection between Kylo and Rey; if he can do that, he can surely create a vision of Vader to “convince” Ben that the dark side is the only way for Ben. 

But even with all of this, it’s hard I think to see why the dark side would be an attractive option for Ben rather than just striking out on his own and building his own destiny as an unknown person. That honestly would have been the more natural option--most teens in Ben’s situation would simply “run away” (and this would have put him on a trajectory more like Han’s). If he was tired of his force abilities, he could even have cut them off entirely like Luke does in TLJ. 

So I don’t think Ben’s actions can be written off simply as “I had no other choice.” Clearly there are other choices, but for unknown reasons Ben doesn’t take them, which implies they don’t fulfill whatever deeper need is operating underneath his desire to be “free” of his family’s legacy. Especially given that all he does is “trade” one form of “legacy” for another--he discards his family’s light side legacy in order to explore its dark side. 

As a jedi padawan, Ben would have been subjected to what spotty jedi training Luke was able to give him (we know Luke hadn’t read the jedi texts from TLJ, so Luke’s training probably wasn’t the same kind one would have received during Anakin’s time). We see a hint of the kind of teacher Luke was during the small training sequence with Rey in TLJ; he’s clearly a different kind of teacher than Yoda or Obi Wan. He doesn’t believe in separating the dualism of life--he clearly believes in balance, in the interplay between the light and the dark, between chaos and order. However, he likely makes the same mistake with Ben that he makes with Rey--despite his belief that the dark/chaos has a place in the world, he does not encourage exploring it, which is exactly the very thing that led to Anakin’s downfall and to the downfall of the jedi, though Luke probably isn’t aware of that. 

So we come back, again, to Ben’s similarities with Rey--what is it that Snoke (or the womb pit in Rey’s case) has to offer that Luke doesn’t? The knowledge of the shadow side--the full ability to integrate into a whole personality. Snoke can give Ben the other half of the training Ben needs to actualize himself--and I think this is an unconscious desire of Ben’s, not a conscious one, because Ben’s naturally an empath and an intuitive person, not a rationalist. This is the real reason Snoke is attractive for Ben, despite the fact that ordinarily I think Ben would find Snoke repugnant (as he clearly does in TLJ). 

Ben’s journey mirrors Rey’s in a lot of ways, though he’s “further along” than she is up until the mirror scene. Once she accepts her dark sides and her anxieties, she pulls ahead of Ben in development, because he gets “trapped” in the underworld when he ventures in to find himself. This is likely because, unlike Rey, Ben did not willingly enter the underworld. He was driven to it. This is the difference between willingly taking a risk and unwillingly being forced to--Rey retains her agency while Ben cannot; Ben is subsumed by the dark forces of the underworld and dragged deeper to become weakened, while Rey is able to touch it briefly and then escape back into the light stronger for the adventure and with a pearl of wisdom at hand. 

When Luke rejects Ben, this leaves Ben with the only other option that fulfills his deepest desire--go to Snoke and integrate his shadow side by learning from a dark master. This is a very dangerous path and for Ben to take it only as a “last alternative” plays right into Snoke’s hands--Ben now becomes trapped in Snoke’s cage and needs to be rescued or killed in order to be freed from it. It’s a strong prison and one that will take more than what Ben has in him alone to overcome. Had Ben taken the path willingly, he might have overcome Snoke far sooner and with much less torment and destruction. 

This is why Ben can’t abandon his legacy entirely though--if he did, he would be an incomplete person. I think the force knew this, and so that’s why it found an alternative to help him. The force seems to be very active in this sequel series, almost a kind of universal collective that’s trying to guide everyone to a greater path, even if it means taking a detour now and then. So we find that Ben has several reasons why Snoke was the only path he could take, despite having alternatives: 

He still wants to be loved by a father figure because he’s not actualized as a person.

He’s subconsciously seeking integration with his own dark side, something Luke has denied him out of fear. 

Wherever he goes, Snoke will follow anyway. Probably even if he shut off the force.

In addition to these, there’s one more thing that Ben probably would never want to acknowledge that is driving him: in truth, he has no desire to run from the legacy he was born under (he’s actually quite proud of it)--he wants to make his own mark on his legacy. But in a dichotomous worldview (and before Rey), he only has two options for making his mark upon his family’s history: be “good” like his family and probably be forgotten due to there being no great war to fight, or become “bad” and surpass the only member of the family to ever have “gone bad.” 

If we assume that Ben didn’t learn about Vader until he was in his late teens/early twenties, it may be that this suddenly opened up a temptation for him that coincided with his own subconscious desire to explore his dark side: he found out his legacy was “bigger” than just heroes--there were “villains” as well, specifically only one villain. While he could never be greater than Han, or Leia, or Luke, maybe he could be greater than Vader--and being greater Vader, as a larger presence than all three of his close kin, would make Ben himself greater than his own family. If he could surpass Vader, he’d be the greatest Skywalker of all--a ruler of galaxies feared and never forgotten.

It’s likely this fantasy (which probably was a fantasy exacerbated by his teenage anger at his family for discarding him and at his fellow padawans for being resentful and his own hubris over how great his abilities were) that Snoke stoked and encouraged. This is the fantasy we see being played out between them, the carrot Snoke continues to dangle before Ben in TFA and which he removes in TLJ: the idea of surpassing Vader, and by extension surpassing the burden of his legacy entirely to mold it into a new legacy, a legacy entirely of his own.

This is why, I think, Ben becomes Kylo Ren--he wants to redefine and reshape his legacy into something he is master of, rather than something he’s crushed under or manipulated by. He wants to devour his legacy and rise above it, rather than being devoured by it. Snoke and his own ambitions seduce him into thinking that this is the only way to truly make his mark on the world, and this is the reason why I don’t think his motive (before Rey and TLJ) is to discard his legacy, despite the burdens it’s placed on him. Kylo can bear his legacy and wants to bear his legacy. It’s all he has. It’s all he’s ever had. He was born with it. It’s the only thing that’s never left him. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to be its pawn. He wants to be in charge of it. To do this, he has to transform himself and join the dark side. 

Of course, the problem with this is...unlike Anakin, who truly did fall to the dark, Kylo is playing. It’s a fantasy he’s acting out, and not his true desire, which is simply to actualize himself and find his place in the world. (A positive place, not a negative one.) Kylo doesn’t want to be evil, and this is why he has such a hard time playing the part. We see this in TFA; while he’s good at pretending he’s tough in front of soldiers who he orders to do the actual killing (rather than killing himself) and while he’s snarky and quippy and capable of force-extracting info from resistance members, he’s still an empath who is deeply troubled and deeply sympathetic. We see this when he lets Finn go despite knowing what he’s going to do, we see this when he admits his doubts to the Vader mask, we see this when he takes his temper tantrums out on objects rather than people, we see this when he forgets his goals to try to understand Rey, we even see it when he is moved by his father’s love. 

Likely what happens between Ben’s initial choice to “become” Kylo Ren and the events of TFA is that he slowly becomes demoralized and disillusioned about what Snoke has to offer him. He switches from playing the “good son” in order to genuinely please Snoke to playing the part simply to stay alive. Snoke is all he has, but Snoke is abusive, cruel, manipulative, and downright nasty. Kylo isn’t a child--he knows exactly what kind of person Snoke is. And likely as the years pass and he continues to be unable to free himself from Snoke, he begins to lose the last remnants of faith in himself and to crumble under the pressure. This is why we see him plaintively begging Vader for help in TFA--he’s lost and can’t escape. Some dead guy he never met is his only hope. That’s pretty sad. 

Fortunately, the force hears him (maybe even with Anakin’s help), and brings him his salvation, though he won’t know she is until the third film I think. For the first time in a long time, Ben receives some of the validation he’s been seeking--in the form of Rey taking him seriously as a threat, but also overcoming him as an equal. The interrogation scene both puffs up his ego and tears it down simultaneously, and, as we see from his reaction when he races to Snoke, it’s an exhilarating experience for him. Snoke, stupidly, doesn’t see the danger of the fox who’s entered the henhouse, and he instead sees Rey as a new way to twist Kylo further. 

Then Kylo proves himself by performing the ultimate act--he’s not yet taken by the alternative Rey’s existence provides, and so he continues to pursue his fantasy of becoming greater than Vader by doing what Vader couldn’t--sacrificing a parent. It’s probably easiest to sacrifice Han in some ways because Han was the first to abandon Kylo and the last to understand him. Yet at the same time, which we learn from TLJ, Han’s murder destroyed Kylo and left him unable to continue the path he’d set out to conquer. Rather than making him stronger and firmly setting his dark side as his prominent alignment, Kylo disintegrates and breaks down. All that’s left to him in this moment is the faint thread connecting him to Rey, and this leads to his violent anger at Finn as well as his offer to Rey of training. She’s the last thing he has; all his fantasies and illusions have begun breaking down due to his own actions. But the force separates him from Rey, and he is returned to Snoke because it’s not time yet for her to reach him. 

His meltdown continues in TLJ; his loss to Rey shatters the remainder of his pride and his murder of his father and the loss of Rey sunder his foundations, but the encounter with Rey (and how deeply he affected her) has birthed something new within him that’s only fledgling in form at the beginning of the film: a new desire, a new wish, even if he can’t verbalize it or even acknowledge it because of Snoke’s mental spying. Rey’s existence brings hope back into his life--hope of finding a path that allows him to achieve his dream (which is to make his mark on his own legacy) while escaping the clutches of the dark side he’s become trapped and mired in. 

We see this begin to play out in his first scene in the film, when he appears before Snoke. There is so much undercurrent in this scene it’s quite a revelation in and of itself. His rivalry with Hux continues, and Snoke stokes it, but it’s not nearly as strong as it was in TFA. Something has changed inside Kylo, and Snoke initially assumes (mistakenly) that it’s a weakening. Snoke taunts Kylo about his failures and rubs salt in the clear wound. He commands Kylo to remove his mask, exposing his vulnerability. Kylo, who in TFA was firmly on the path of playing the “good son” to Snoke, despite knowing the truth of the words his father said to him in TFA long before his father uttered them, now in TLJ has transformed--for the first time in his life, he has taken on the mantle of the rebellious son, and it’s an uncomfortable and unfamiliar role for him. 

Gone is the reverence for Snoke, gone is the obedience. Snoke mocks Kylo, throwing his resemblance to his father in his face. Rather than beg for mercy or agree, Kylo snaps back that he killed his father and he didn’t hesitate when the time came. He for the first time defends himself, and this is probably the first time he’s ever done this in his life. It is the mark of something new that has awakened in him, something that his own actions and the small thread of connection to Rey have sparked. Having destroyed his own father, he has toppled the paradigm of fatherhood itself and has opened the door to rebellion against authority for the first time in his life. 

Unfortunately, this role isn’t one Kylo’s comfortable with, so Snoke quickly shuts him down by pointing out that he’s a hot mess, which Kylo is forced to acknowledge even though he tries to stick his nose in the air and maintain his pride--Snoke’s words are true, as they often are. And then Snoke makes his first mistake of the film--he tries to diminish Kylo’s achievement by pointing out his lack of balance and, of course, his failure to defeat Rey. 

What I find interesting at this moment in the scene between them, and what will reverberate later in the final red room sequence, is that Kylo has probably never actually attempted to fight Snoke before in his life. Yet the minute Snoke tries to diminish Rey and use her as a weapon against Kylo, Kylo moves. Now, a casual viewer might say that the reason Kylo attacks Snoke is because Snoke poked his pride. The problem I have with this interpretation is that Kylo would have needed to move after Snoke said he failed. But Kylo is already in motion while Snoke is speaking the failure line, meaning the point Snoke made that pissed Kylo off to the point of wanting to fight was the comment about Rey. 

Now, we know Kylo doesn’t feel ashamed of himself for being bested by her. (Mostly because I don’t think he was, and I think he knows he wasn’t--not that he let her win, but that he didn’t want to best her, and honestly I’ve always believed that he was okay with her killing him in that moment simply because of how much he likely hated himself. I think he kind of saw her as an avenging angel in a way, and would have been all right being defeated by her.) The reason we know he wasn’t ashamed of being bested by her is because his first reaction upon seeing her again is to light up like it’s Christmas. That’s...not a normal reaction for seeing someone who’s caused you to feel ashamed of yourself. =P (More on that later of course.)

So this leaves me with only one conclusion for why he stands against Snoke for probably the first time in his life in that first scene--Snoke insulted the bae, and you don’t insult the bae and escape. This scene is foreshadowing for his choice later in the film. It’s also foreshadowing for the manner in which he kills Snoke--we see here that a full frontal assault against Snoke is useless, and thus cunning has to be employed instead. For the first time in his life, Kylo will have to use his own strength and knowledge to outwit a being far stronger than he is. 

In this moment, Kylo takes the first step toward what is a journey, at last, into manhood--his stunted and frozen growth is at last thawing into spring. It’ll be incomplete in TLJ, of course, because this is the midpoint of the story. But the key points of the first Snoke scene are three-fold: foreshadow Kylo’s ultimate alignment and choice in the red room sequence, establish his switch from “good son” to “rebellious son,” and to demonstrate that Kylo, in the murdering of his father, has torn down the mystique of the “father figure” and so father figures no longer hold any power over him. 

This is further emphasized by Snoke calling Kylo a child at the end of the sequence, and Kylo storming off in anger to the elevator. The first thing he does is destroy his mask. What does the mask symbolize to him in that moment? Likely it’s the obedience to the father. And so he, like any good prodigal son, heads out to go destroy some people and prove his worth in his own way. But for the first time he’s begun to contemplate rebellion and what rebellion means. He’s picking up on the lessons he’d left off on in his teenage years, when Uncle Luke betrayed him and helped push him down the path of exploring the underworld alone. Now he’s more conflicted and lost than ever, as the remainder of his choices will demonstrate. He’s been unmoored by his actions in TFA, and although he never speaks a word about them, they seep out of everything he does.

Love for Mother

My brother said to me that he doesn’t believe Kylo has any special feelings for his mother over his father, and that if Leia had gone to Kylo first, Kylo would have killed her. I thought about this for a while, but I still don’t buy it. Kylo’s very focused on authority/order/father figures. He has virtually no animosity toward the feminine in any way--he’s open with his emotions, he’s sensitive, he’s compassionate under the right circumstances. All of this implies, to me, that he’s a mama’s boy who was abandoned by mama, not a sociopath who doesn’t care about either of his parents and could have easily killed both of them. The reason I think Han was arguably the “easiest” simply is because Han was the one he was the furthest from emotionally--even fighting Luke was harder for him than killing Han. 

The scene with Kylo coming to attack Leia is so subtle but it breaks my heart to pieces. This boy knows the inside and outside of her ship; he’s the first to get into her hanger and blow up her ace’s vehicles. Yet even though he knows every inch of the resistance ships, he still hesitates when the moment comes to take his mommy down (and seriously that face could not kill mommy--Adam Driver does such a phenomenal job at breaking down like a child in that scene--that’s clearly a boy who wants to come home but who knows he can’t). And when two other First Order pilots do the favor for him, he clearly is distraught by the choice being taken from him. 

I’m pretty sure his first instinct was to go after her when he saw she was blown out of the command center. That’s why we get that bizarre sequence where Hux tells him to pull back because he’s too far out--what other reason would he have to do that other than to search for Leia? Of course, once Hux shines a spotlight on him, he has to pull out or risk whatever punishment Snoke’ll be sending his way, which is why he gets snarly about complying. While he was willing to rebel a bit, he’s fresh off his failure to actually achieve anything in that scene. There’s no way he could rebel against Snoke for Leia in this instance. 

Still, it’s telling that he wanted to try. This is more evidence of how torn up he is--on the one hand, he’s destroying his mother’s allies and helping bring her down, but on the other his impulse is to go save her the minute she’s in danger. Snoke as usual has it right: his light and dark sides are out of balance. 

The reason I don’t think Kylo is willing to betray Snoke for Leia, but he will for Rey, is for the same reasons why he won’t join Rey to fight the First Order, which I’ll get into more later. But in short, Leia (and Han before her) can only offer him the same thing he left Luke over--more neglect and a return to the status quo, where he’s buried under their legacy and unable to distinguish himself and--worse--due to his own actions, now unable to avoid the vitriol of those he fought against. He can’t return to Leia yet. There’s no place for him in her world yet. This was the same problem he had with Han’s offer--Han could only give him a return to the place he (rightfully) no longer believes he can return to because of how much damage he’s caused. He’s gone too far down Snoke’s path, he’s lived too long in the underworld, to come back to the light on his own. Like Eurydice, he’s going to need someone to bargain with Hades and lead him out into the light. 

Anther factor in why Leia can’t save Kylo, I think, is because in all those years she never tried. She never dropped her duties and obligations to the resistance and the republic to chase down Snoke and get her son back. It’s the same reason why Luke can’t save him--Kylo spent nearly 6 years under Snoke’s thumb and his family never came for him. They’re only trying to “save” him now because he “happened” to be in their vicinity--he had to come to them, not vice versa. And this is another reason why Rey will ultimately be the only one who can reach him--just as he will tear the galaxy apart for her, she will fly to wherever he is no matter the risk or the cost. Both of them will place the other above their duties and obligations, and that’s what each of them is seeking. 

Speaking of, I guess it’s now time to dig into Kylo’s side of the Reylo in this film. ;)

First Love, True Love

It’s hard to fathom how much development happens across four short scenes between Kylo and Rey in the middle of TLJ, and even more astounding is how much depth those scenes contain. For easy reference, just note that I’ll be referring to the force connection scenes as FC1 (the first scene where Rey shoots Kylo), FC2 (the rain sequence), FC3 (the shirtless sequence), and FC4 (the hand touch sequence). Shorthand helps in long posts like this. ;)

Before I go into the sequences themselves, I want to talk about what is--and is not--revealed by Kylo about himself in these scenes. For a film whose deepest purpose was to explore Kylo Ren himself and help us answer questions as to why he ended up where he was, we get remarkably little information from the man himself. 

I think the reason for this is actually two-fold: 

As I said earlier in the “Welcome to the Dark Side” section, Snoke has access to Kylo’s mind at any time and can be reading it at any moment (how often he actually does this is anyone’s guess--but the mere threat of it is enough to affect how Kylo reacts). That raises the likelihood that Kylo is constantly filtering what he says and even what he thinks. It’s honestly a travesty Rey isn’t allowed to see glimpses of how Snoke infiltrated Kylo’s mind and broke him down, but even worse is the effect this has on the viewer--how much of what Kylo is saying a trustworthy and honest representation of his viewpoint? How much of it, much like Rey, is thinly veiled behind “appropriate” (but this time for Dark Side users rather than Light Side) thoughts for a First Order man to have? The threat of Snoke’s presence makes it virtually impossible for us to know the “real” Kylo because Kylo is likely censoring or veiling his words and his thoughts--he speaks cryptically to Rey in regard to anything about his family or his real reasons for doing things (such as the murder of Han Solo, which, I might add, we still have no idea why he actually went through with it). 

The other reason I think is that Kylo himself views his actions and motivations as reprehensible but due to reason 1 above and due to how far he’s gone into darkside territory, he doesn’t see any hope for himself other than to keep treading the path he’s on. He isn’t nihilistic enough to contemplate suicide, but he’s not finding any meaning in the dark side either. To explore any third option, he needs to break completely from the dark side.

Honestly, Kylo’s character leaves me completely flummoxed. Ordinarily a villain would try to justify his actions to the hero, but despite having the opportunity, Kylo never does that. When Rey throws barbs at him about being a monster and a murderer, he never once tries to help her see his point of view or justify his actions to her. For a man who killed his father to clear his head (supposedly), this is just ridiculously bizarre behavior. He’s obviously hurt on a personal level by her judgment of him, but he never once says it’s unreasonable of her or disagrees with her (he even acknowledges she’s right). For him to accept that he’s a monster is an odd thing to do for someone who thinks their actions are heroic or justified.

Given that, as I established earlier, Kylo is becoming disillusioned with what Snoke has to offer him and what the dark side itself has to offer him, it does make sense that he wouldn’t view his actions from TFA and before in a favorable light. Given that he comes from the dichotomous world of light/dark of Luke’s jedi training, he should have at least something of a moral compass, even if it’s been deconstructed due to misuse. It reminds me a bit of how the idea of an “ideal” is two-sided: on the one hand, it’s a North Star and a goal to chase and pursue, on the other hand it is a judge, flooding a spotlight on all your imperfections and inabilities to live up to the ideal. There is some ideal in Kylo’s head, I think, that he’s failing to live up to and he’s lashing out against it--perhaps this is part of the light side legacy he’s running from. But it seems to me the reason he so desperately wants to cut all his ties to the past and bring the whole house down on his own family is that they remind him of what he should have been but is not because of his own choices. 

He’s a remarkable character who actually takes responsibility for his evil, but doesn’t seem to know what to do to rectify the wrong he’s done, so he continues to commit wrongs in order to try to reach an equilibrium in his own tortured mind. Maybe he’s even hoping to a degree that if he keeps it up, if he keeps doing further into the dark, one day the light will cease to torment him and he’ll be free of it. This to me is more reminiscent of a terrorist or a war criminal than a sociopathic mass murderer, despite the egregious nature of his crimes. Hux seems to be more in line with a genuine monster--a man who has thrown away his humanity in order to pursue an inverted goal of meaningless nihilism; Kylo, on the other hand, just seems to be unable to find a way to extricate him from the prison he’s constructed around himself. Yet he’s still self-centered and childish enough to want to try to save himself from the consequences of his actions; he’s not yet ready to legitimately take on the burden of the mantle of what he himself has contributed to the misery of the world. We all have the ability to tune the world slightly more toward heaven or hell, and Kylo has tuned the world toward hell. He’ll need to pay for that at some point, and to bear those consequences with a willing and humble heart. 

So given all of this, we begin this sequence of force connection scenes with a Kylo who is cagey and unable to fully express himself--yet is desperately seeking to explore this new connection with Rey. Because of this, what I think he does (and we can see evidence for this in the way he talks to her) is attempt to help her both understand him and warn her against making his mistakes by using her own history and actions as dual-layered metaphors for himself. And for some reason, I think Rey understands this weird way of speaking, probably because their minds are bridged and she can see “what he means” in a way most people wouldn’t be able to.

In FC1, their first force connection moment, we establish a couple interesting things about Kylo. First is that he’s not unhappy or displeased to see Rey--rather, the minute their minds connect, his eyes and face light up. Her presence is welcome to him, almost a gift he hadn’t been expecting. This tells us immediately that he holds no grudge against her for what she did to him in TFA, nor does he feel diminished by her (after all, he still bears her scar, and though he’s healing it up so that it’s not a gaping wound, he’s not removing it entirely and he’s not ashamed to bear her mark at any point in TLJ)--instead, he still holds all the admiration, respect, and adoration he held for her ever since he first saw into her mind in the forest. Even more interesting, her first response is to attack him, and rather than attempt to deflect (as he did in TFA), he flinches, fully believing he’s been shot. So right away we can see this man leaves himself deliberately vulnerable to this young woman, even though he fully knows she has a penchant for “shoot first, talk later.” So for the second time it’s confirmed that he is okay with whatever “justice” this young woman wants to enact upon him--she, and only she, may take him to account for his wrongdoing. This probably will be significant in the future for Episode IX.

After the shooting sequence, he goes racing into the hallway, skidding like an eager schoolboy, searching for her. When he turns back to see her, he tries one last time to bring her to him (in an acceptable way of course; with Luke in tow lol). She’s too strong for any mind games now, and he gives up the minute he realizes it. It’s like he just doesn’t even care anymore; it was just a test. There’s a wonderful scientific bent to his personality that implies he was probably a huge nerd when he was Ben Solo--he’s testing the limits of this new connection, what it can do, why it works the way it does. Rey’s busy fuming, and he’s like a kid in a candy store babbling about the limits of space and time. 

We not only see his experimenter’s mentality, we see his intuitive perception as well. He should by rights have no idea where Rey even is--as he says himself, he can’t see her surroundings, he can only see her. Yet the minute she turns her head upon Luke’s arrival, he knows who has arrived. What’s weird in this moment, at least to me, is that there’s virtually none of the vitriol toward Luke that he shows toward the end of the film. He doesn’t spit Luke’s name like it’s venomous or snarl or show anything other than curiosity. It’s something I’m not sure what to make of yet, other than perhaps it has something to do with how his world crashes down around him when Rey rejects his proposal. More on that later. 

The one last thing we see in FC1 which is just mind boggling given by this point in the story they’ve had only a whopping three small scenes together is how he looks at her when he says he can only see her--it’s like he’s seeing this vision of angelic beauty and is experiencing some transcendent idea of grace in that moment. Again, props to Adam Driver for his amazing performance (I have no idea why he wasn’t nominated for the Oscars seriously it’s a shame), but I think given his expression it’s very clear that the boy is mad about this girl and it has nothing to do with her abilities or power. I think if she were just a normal girl with no ability at all, he’d probably still be this wild about her. Her ability may have been the first thing that interested him, but at this point he’s gone beyond that, and in such a short time on top of it. 

We don’t get to see him again until FC2, and unfortunately unlike Rey we don’t get to see how he feels about FC1. When we pick up with him again, he’s standing alone, quietly contemplating something as he observes the First Order hangar bay. Honestly, from his body language and the way his head gently curves down upon their next connection, I’d say he was waiting for them to connect again. He’s highly intuitive as a character, and I can’t imagine he thought it wouldn’t happen again. 

In all their scenes there is a deep sexual undercurrent between them, and this is the first scene where it’s palpable not just in the subtext but also in the visual metaphors. He gets to have a bit of the voyeur’s experience while he watches her revel in the rain. The rain’s a powerful symbol of the feminine, as rain heals and brings new life. This is the scene of their mutual sexual awakening, and it culminates in the rain itself appearing on his cheek. This is simultaneously a metaphor for a wet dream in his case and also foreshadowing for his ability to force project into her space the way he will by FC4. In essence, as far as I can tell, this is the mutual “hitting puberty full speed” scene for both of them, which makes sense, given both of them have been “frozen” up until this point. After this scene, the sexual undercurrent between them changes form and becomes more akin to that between teenagers in teen flicks. We’re still not yet at the adult range these two should actually be interacting within (they’re both actually adults), but I’m sure that will happen in the third film, when they’re both ready to take on the responsibilities of adult partnership. 

Beyond the sexual subtext, Kylo is a gabby gus while Rey is still unable to move on from her own anger and rage that she’s projecting onto him (not without good reason of course). Poor Kylo is still trying to figure out why this cool thing is happening to them and Rey just does not give any shits, haha. This shows they’re on different pages still, and what I love about how Kylo handles her is that he gently backs off and follows whatever direction she wants to take the conversation in. If Kylo had a zodiac sign, he’s probably a cancer or a scorpio haha. He just screams water. Rey’s more fire/earth (I’m not sure which yet since she seems to have elements from both--maybe she’s got one as a moon and one as a sun). Though it’d make sense if Kylo was a cancer (the deepest/furthest point in the zodiac) and Rey a capricorn (the highest/loftiest point in the zodiac). Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

In this scene though, Rey hurts Kylo the most. When she calls him a murderous snake, his face becomes immediately crestfallen and his early cheerful questions fall away. He then asks her if she knows what happened between him and Luke. She then hurts him again, but he’s ready for it this time. What I love about how he handles his hurt though, is that he never attacks her or defends against her; he accepts her spears in his heart and lets her stab him over and over again. Rather than attacking back, he plays up the rising sexual tension between them (another reason I think he’s better socialized than TFA lets on, because this is not something a man as stunted as he is should be able to do with this level of dexterity) to seduce her instead. Rather than reading her mind, he looks deeply into her eyes and croons agreement with her, which immediately throws into doubt how much truth is in her barbs. He then reminds her of their encounter at the end of TFA, which shows how deeply that scene affected him. 

Then Rey does something for him which I think is very important, though I’m not sure she knows it--she validates him by asserting he is a monster. Remember, this guy just went through a scene with Snoke where Snoke told him he’s still a child in a mask. Rey acknowledges Kylo’s destructive power as a man, which reaffirms him right after Snoke has torn him down. Obviously this isn’t a healthy affirmation, but the point here is that Rey rebuilds what Snoke has torn apart. Kylo’s pride is beginning to heal because she sees and accepts the existence of the very real and powerful darkness within him here. And he, fully knowing himself and knowing how far gone he is, affirms her assertion. What I think is interesting here is that despite it seeming clear he’s hurt that she sees him as a monster, he doesn’t disagree with her assessment. It’s just that he seems to wish she’d see he’s more than “just” a monster--that rather than being a bogeyman, he’s a man--capable of both the monstrous and the altruistic. I think this is a sign that he wants her--and only her--to see him as “more” than he himself sees himself, which is a sign he’s beginning to realign with the “ideal” again because of her. Yet he can’t refute her assertion, because he’s not a dishonest person and that’s his own assessment of himself. It’ll take something more to pull him out of this. 

So yet again, between FC2 and FC3 we don’t get to see Kylo’s thoughts, but given how...deliberately...he’s staged himself in FC3, and how bizarre it is for him to be removing his shirt in the middle of the damn day, I’d say chances are higher on the “waiting around for the next connection to show off his assets to the bae” side of things than “just happened to be working out when Rey force skyped him” side of things. =P Plus the way he says “yeah, me too” to her before she sees the state he’s in just screams “liar.” He was waiting for her and hoping to connect again. =P

What I love about his reaction to Rey in FC3 is that he just doesn’t make anything easy on her--this boy has decided to seduce the pants off her and by golly he’s not giving her an inch. But what’s really cool about this is that he leaves it as subtext; he’s offering himself to her as feast for her eyes to devour, but he doesn’t try to make her uncomfortable, nor does he actively provoke her. FC3 is actually one of the deepest connections they make in the film, despite its silly beginning. She gets worked up and upset that he killed his father and begs him for an answer--he’s clearly moved to compassion by her pain, but given the restrictions on his ability to speak about his true motives, he can only offer her an insubstantial “I didn’t hate him.” This is the closest he’s come to being able to admit there was more going on with the Han scene than even we the viewers may know--I still lean toward the interpretation that he never wanted to kill Han, but that Snoke had made it clear that in order to “stay” with Snoke, if he and Han ever crossed paths, Kylo had to kill Han or he would lose his place. Of course, this doesn’t absolve Kylo of the consequences of his choice, but it does make the whole thing more nuanced than merely “Kylo is an evil villain who kills his dad for ‘reasons’.” Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ll ever get to find out what was really going on because...Rey honestly doesn’t give two figs for why Kylo really killed Han, which...we’ll get into that more in the future Reylo post, lol. For now it’s enough to say that we can now reinterpret TFA through this new lens--Kylo’s anger and hurt with his father did not mean he hated him, and his desire to go home with his dad now that his dad had finally come for him was likely very real. If Han had come with Leia, I do wonder if Snoke would have had a chance and it just breaks my damn heart over and over again that they both ran away from their son and left him in Snoke’s hands rather than uniting their strengths and tearing the galaxy apart to get him back. 

But this small comment is as much as Kylo can give us; when Rey demands further explanation, he redirects the focus back to her. As I said before, he speaks to her in a sort of mirrored way--what he says about her is equally true about himself. He reminds her that her parents threw her away like garbage but she’s still unable to free herself from him. Now at this point, this guy knows nothing about her parents--he himself doesn’t find out the truth until he receives whatever is in his vision when they touch hands. All he knows is what he gleaned from her mind in TFA, which is her own loneliness from all the years of waiting. Of course, he’s intuitive, so his words hit the mark because in the end he’s right. But his words are still about himself as well. He tells her that she’s looking for her parents inside these alternative father figures (Han, Luke). The funny thing is...I don’t really think she sees a father figure in Luke. Han, for sure, she did. But Luke is more like...a legend to her, an unreal being. So what Kylo’s doing here is actually revealing his own actions--he is the one who was looking for Han inside Luke, and then Snoke. And of course you can’t replace the father with other father figures very easily, especially not when your own father is still alive and a very real presence in your life. 

He then asks her again if Luke told her want happened the night he burned the temple. What’s so weird here is the way Adam delivers the line. It’s not at all accusatory or angry--it’s tender and gentle. He’s trying to help Rey see something here, and this is why I think he’s trying to help her avoid the mistakes he himself made. He gives her his alternative version and warns her that there are men out there who will be afraid of her power and seek to destroy her. This is as much about Snoke as it is about Luke, but he hides it behind Luke. And then he gives her the most helpful advice he could have at the moment--he encourages her to get stronger by letting the past die. Now, he of course adds “kill it if you have to,” which most people I think would assume he’s talking about his own father. But I don’t think he is. I think this is yet another mirror into his own psyche--he intends to kill his own past by taking down Snoke. I’d read somewhere that Rian said Kylo was planning to kill Snoke by the time we reach the elevator scene before the red room sequence, and if that’s true, then it’s something he’s been considering for longer than the elevator scene. Snoke is his past, like Han and Luke, and the one who will be taking the full variant of his own advice is Kylo himself. However, his advice also gives Rey the push she needs to face her own dark side, and ironically he becomes what he wanted to be in TFA--her teacher and her guide to the “ways of the force,” or full integration, if you will.

What I love about this is that unlike Snoke (who wanted to control and direct Kylo as a tool), when Kylo sees Rey’s potential he wants to help her integrate and actualize herself to her full potential. His true motives are freaking altruistic and in her best interest. In a true sense he frees her from herself and her own prison by encouraging her to face the test head on. It’s just brilliant that Rian had him do this. Kylo does for Rey what Snoke would not do for him, and thus he helps transform her into the very thing that can save him in the end, and that can restore order and true balance to the galaxy. Simply by encouraging her to become a fully formed human being, simply by giving her the freedom to find what that means for herself, he opens the door at last to the light he’s been desperately seeking beneath his pretenses of darkness.

This leads us to FC4, which reiterates Kylo’s role as Rey’s mentor in the dark side--he listens patiently as she pours her heart out, and all he offers her is a gentle reminder that he’s here by her side and she’s not alone. He never once diminishes her achievement, and he’s completely supportive of her discovery, yet at the same time he doesn’t attempt to “preach” to her what her experience meant or lord his superior wisdom over her--at all times, he is just a supportive presence allowing her to interpret the experience for herself. And because he has freed her, she sees him in a whole new light--she sees that there is “more” to the monster than she she knew. To his compassion and support, she at last offers him the only thing that could ever have moved him--her affection and loyalty. You can see how much this moves him playing out on his face the minute she extends her hand to him. 

When she extends her hand, Kylo at last makes his choice. And this time he truly doesn’t hesitate--the minute her hand is offered, he whips that glove off and reaches for her. What’s remarkable about this moment, and what completely underscores it, is that we actually see him literally force project himself into the room with her; Luke actually sees him when he bursts in on them. Kylo clearly chooses his “side” and it’s to be with her, and that brings him to her. 

What happens next for him, sadly, we don’t get to see. But given how unsurprised he is to see her ship herself to him in her little coffin, I’d say he intuitively knew she’d come for him. Being the troll he is, and wanting to fool Snoke, he still has to give her a bit of trouble before they enter the throne room. But his expression when he sees her again is a bouncy, cocky one--he’s got his spunk back, and while he’s delighted that she came for him, he’s also leaning a bit toward the “why are you doing this to yourself you dummy” side of things. But I think we can assume at this point that whatever he saw in his own vision when their hands touched, it gave him just as much confidence as it gave her that things would work out if they were together. 

Before I leave the force connection section and head into the meat of their story in this film, I want to point out how important it is that Kylo believes their connection is natural and unconnected to Snoke. Kylo is as genuine as he can be under the circumstances, and he allowed himself to be more vulnerable than perhaps was wise. Rey rewarded his vulnerability with acceptance, and the sincerity between them is hugely important to Kylo. To have it tarnished by Snoke’s interference is a huge blow to what the force connection means to Kylo, and it has some seriously detrimental effects on how he handles Rey after the red room scene. But, hey, why not just get to the fun part and cease stalling?

Decision Point

So the elevator scene is mostly remarkable from a combined Reylo perspective, but I’ll briefly touch on it from Kylo’s end because there’s a few nuggets to enjoy here. Kylo’s body language is very self-contained and controlled, but his face is a different story. Clearly he’s trying to maintain his composure because he’s preparing for what he knows he has to do in the next sequence (take down the man who, only a few hours before, bested him handily the minute he even tried to rebel). He’s not nearly as gabby with Rey anymore--he’s now the more stoic character while she’s the talker. It’s super cute how they switch roles in this scene--she can’t resist talking away while he just listens. Still, his body language alone speaks volumes--he’s chosen her and now he’s openly adoring everything about her. She came for him, she dressed up for him, she’s looking at him like that--all of this serves to strengthen his resolve to be by her side at all costs. How warm and wonderful she is, how openly seductive, how natural--all of it is what he knows he wants for himself, more than any crusty old mentor. ;) He does offer her an alternative to her own naive vision of them, but honestly...I’m not so sure his vision is wrong. I’ll talk more about the visions in the future Reylo post, but I suspect their visions weren’t from the same time period. Even hers might not be. i think they both may have just assumed the visions were about the near future, when really they’re about Episode IX’s events. Or hers were of the near future while his weren’t. But more on that in a future post. For now it’s sufficient to say that her response to him in the elevator sequence is more than enough to bolster his courage for the next trial.

There is a lot going on subtextually in the red room sequence, but before it even starts there’s this wonderful little moment where Kylo gently guides Rey forward with his hand on her elbow. This is traditionally a reassuring position, and this is reiterated when he releases her--he doesn’t shove her or push her forward, merely allows his hand to fall and hover in the air slightly before he kneels before Snoke. Kylo’s body language is really important throughout this scene, and the interplay between him and Snoke is actually the crux of the scene, though the strength of his bond with Rey is also important. I’ll be dealing with his bond with Rey in the Reylo post; for now I want to focus on the Kylo vs. Snoke dynamic, and how that will influence the proposal sequence.

The first thing Snoke does here is restore Kylo’s “place” as the “good son.” Remember, Snoke had stripped Kylo of this previously. But this restoration is actually meant to tear apart Kylo’s bond with Rey--Snoke knows Kylo thought his connection with Rey was genuine, and he’s making it clear that even in this Kylo was merely Snoke’s pawn. It’s a reminder to Kylo that he has no agency and no way out. He’s a bird in Snoke’s cage, and anything that happens to him is at Snoke’s pleasure. 

As I mentioned in the earlier “Welcome to the Dark Side” section, Snoke stupidly sees Rey as yet another means to twist the knife in Kylo’s side. Like any manipulator, he’s trying to use Kylo’s attachments against him to further Snoke’s own goals. This is where he underestimates Kylo, because he’s looking down on him and on the power a connection--a real connection--with Rey means to him. 

Throughout the conversation with Rey, Snoke is using his words to actually needle Kylo. Snoke has no interest in Rey other than as a tool to tear Kylo apart. He knows Kylo is affected by Rey (how could he not when he reads Kylo’s mind), and so he purposely twists the knife, pulls it out, and stabs it back in to twist it again as much as he can in this scene. I know Snoke comes across as a bit over the top and cartoony in this scene, but I think some of that is because he’s really playing it over the top in order to make a point to Kylo. 

Sweet Rey of course defends Kylo, because she truly does believe in him, but Snoke makes light of her assertions. Here is where he cuts Kylo to the point where doubt begins to form again in Kylo’s mind--he asserts that he is the one who bridged them together (which honestly I still call BS on--I firmly believe the force connected them during the interrogation scene and again during the snow fight, but I’ll explore that in the Reylo post). Regardless, what this does is place a kernel of doubt inside Kylo about the legitimacy of his connection to Rey (Snoke is really good at this crap; this is probably how he got Kylo to doubt his family too, with these tiiiiiny little “truth” bombs). On the surface it looks like Snoke is trying to deflate Rey’s belief in Kylo, but in reality he’s cutting down Kylo’s belief in Rey. The reason we know this is because when Snoke speaks of their minds being bridged by him, we don’t cut to Rey--we cut to Kylo. It is Kylo’s reaction to this that matters, not Rey’s (mostly because I think Rey, like me, knows this is BS and knows “where” their connection came from--it’s the very connection that she, as I mentioned in my Rey post, fled to Luke to figure out in the first place--a connection forged by their encounters in TFA). But Kylo has had to deal with so much betrayal in his life that this (as Snoke surely knows) is a blow to his faith in Rey. Rey hasn’t had as many betrayals as Kylo (and I’m really not sure she considers her parents’ situation a betrayal per se, honestly), so she’s hardier in this sense than he is and more resilient to Snoke’s little truth bombs. 

Snoke then twists the knife further by saying Kylo’s vulnerability and offer of connection to Rey was merely a honey trap to lure Rey to Snoke. This hurts Kylo on a completely different level (as Snoke surely knows)--that his very desire to connect with Rey has brought her into danger and potentially this revelation by Snoke will destroy Rey’s faith in Kylo. In this moment, Kylo could potentially lose Rey simply because he doesn’t know for sure if she has faith in him that’s stronger than Snoke’s barbs. (Of course she’ll prove she does later in this very scene when she continues to call him by name.)

We’re only allowed one small glimpse at Kylo’s reaction when Rey’s mind is probed by Snoke, and it’s the one you’d expect--he doesn’t want the bae to be hurt like this, but he knows he can’t do anything yet (Snoke will just destroy him if he tries). He’s forced to endure her torment while doing everything he can to remain a blank slate. The only way he can do this is by turning his eyes away from her pain, but his resolve is hardened.

We don’t get to see much of his reaction to Rey trying to fight Snoke until Rey takes his saber and Snoke sends it back to him. When the saber lands at Kylo’s feet, I’m fairly sure that’s when the idea at last comes to him on how he’s going to take Snoke down. He just has to wait for the right opportunity now. We get a very deliberate shot of his face looking from the saber to Snoke with determination. But we get a hint as to his plan during the Snoke diatribe as he places Rey before Kylo as a sacrificial lamb--Kylo’s eyes shift from Snoke to her face, and the expression within them is even in this moment revealing of his true feelings for her. He will not betray her. 

Snoke tells him here to complete his training and fulfill his destiny. Kylo takes him at his word. To fully actualize himself and escape the underworld, a sacrifice must be made--and Kylo intends to make it. What I love about this part of the scene is that when Kylo at last stands, he looks at Rey and tells her softly that he knows what he has to do. Rey’s fear probably breaks his heart, but his words were all he could offer her in that moment in order to reassure her and still keep Snoke in the dark. Yet again, his soul is in his eyes--he never looks at Snoke even once; he locks his eyes on her face, and his expression is still gentle and determined. As Snoke’s continuing his diatribe, Kylo’s eyes remain steady on Rey’s face, and I’m sure in that moment she understood that he was going to stand at her side. 

And here is where Kylo at last fulfills his destiny, foreshadowed at the very beginning of TLJ when he stood against Snoke--he not only “completes his training and fulfills his destiny” but he also takes his own advice to “let the past die and kill it if he has to.” Snoke is his past, Rey is his future, and it is here that he makes the choice to reach for freedom. He at last steps outside of the box of “son” to enter the beginning of the journey into manhood. This rebellion is the last rebellion.

Kylo’s choice is rewarded by Rey’s beaming “you’re getting laid tonight” face, which is a perfect segue into their absolutely impeccable synchronicity when they turn to fight the remaining Praetorian guards. There’s not much in the fight that’s particularly remarkable as far as Kylo’s individual psychology other than his desire to protect Rey and his faith in her abilities. (Though it’s funny that she’s like this little feisty terrier dodging around and stabbing anything that might hurt him lol.)

What I think this sequence establishes is that Rey is the first thing Kylo has ever truly wanted for himself. She is not a legacy imposed upon him, or some other mentor’s wishes or desires being forced on him. All she really has to offer is herself and a connection--and this is something Kylo has been hungry for all his life. Because she is offering him the deepest, truest thing he’s ever wanted, by pursuing and accepting her offer he is at last able to begin the path to actualizing himself. This desire for someone who loves him completely is something that’s reflected in Rey’s own desires for herself, and something that makes them deeply compatible as future romantic partners. They both are looking for someone who will tear the galaxy apart for them, who will come for them no matter the cost, and who will not place other priorities above them. This, they find in each other, and for the briefest instant they both get to taste how good the world would be if they could remain at each other’s sides. 

But all good things must come to an end in the second film in a trilogy, and things break down when the fight comes to its conclusion, despite the wonderful teamwork between Rey and Kylo and the hint of possibility their partnership offers the future of this world.

The Botched Proposal

Before we dive into the botched marriage proposal (and yes, I interpreted it as a marriage proposal because...that’s what it was--Kylo’s a “go big or go home” type lol; all or nothing if you will), let’s reiterate a few things going into it:

Kylo just took the biggest gamble he’s ever taken in his life for a girl he barely knows. If what he’s done gets out to the First Order, he could be killed as a traitor. 

The seed of doubt as to the strength of Kylo’s connection to Rey has been sown by Snoke’s pronouncements in the red room sequence.

Han already failed to bring Kylo back by using the “just come home” method. Kylo knows he can’t return to either the light side or the dark--with his actions in the red room sequence, he has rejected both sides of his legacy and must find a third option in order to survive.

The proposal sequence is the first time Kylo has ever tried to make a decision for himself in his life. Because he’s a n00b at this, what he does is try to merge his old fantasy (surpassing Vader and ruling the galaxy) with his new desire (have a life with Rey). It’s not that his old fantasy is particularly attractive to him, I think; it’s just that Kylo literally has no clue what else he can do because of how much damage he’s done. On top of this, I don’t think he’s confident in Rey’s feelings for him--Rey only recently shifted from calling him a monster. He’s likely a bit insecure about what it is about him that Rey suddenly finds attractive and doesn’t have the confidence to just offer himself to her and let her decide; instead he tries to offer something greater than just himself to her--the greatest thing he can think of, which is power.

I think of it this way: Kylo probably knows what Rey really wants (for him to just drop everything and come home with him). But he also knows a few things Rey doesn’t: 

For one, it’s going to be tough for them to escape the First Order together.

For another, he’d have to basically kill all of the First Order high command in order to get control of the troops. After all, as we’ll learn later, Hux is actually the head of the military, not Kylo. 

If they manage to save the fleet, Kylo is going to be put in irons and likely tried for war crimes. The punishment for that is either death or long-term imprisonment. Kylo wants to live with Rey, not live the rest of his life in a tiny prison. 

Given these factors, it’s pretty obvious why Kylo wouldn’t be keen to join the resistance and help Rey’s friends. With this all in mind, I think it’s easier to understand why Kylo botches the proposal the way he does. 

After having killed both his light side father (Han) and his dark side father (Snoke), Kylo is now ready to forge his own path. This is where he finally completes the idea he began with his advice to Rey in FC3--rather than just letting his personal past die, he broadens the philosophy to include the political and societal as well. It’s time to let everything from the past die and completely start over from scratch. This includes the sith, the jedi, Snoke, Luke, the resistance, etc. Kylo doesn’t say the First Order, but likely that’s because he intends to take over the First Order and use it to accomplish his goal.  

Now, this is a horrible idea. Because the past never truly dies; it’s a burden that is carried forward thanks to the survival of our DNA and the cultural legacies and tragedies brought forward and passed down from our ancestors. Our ultimate job isn’t to burn it all to the ground and start over, but rather to integrate and revive the past so that it can be useful to the present and future. But Kylo doesn’t know this because he’s a n00b at self-actualization. Unfortunately, Rey only managed to get herself started on the path to integration hours previously, and thus she has literally nothing to offer him to counter this idea. 

After espousing this new ideology, he tells Rey that he wants her to join him. This is his clumsy admission that everything he’s done and everything he’s thrown away was for her, in order to find a way to be by her side. The only thing he can offer is this path, because right now he can’t see any alternative. Notice, he doesn’t tell her to join the First Order--his goal is to create something “new” with her, a new order for the galaxy unstained by the legacy and burden of the past.

Of course, Rey, being further integrated than Kylo, knows something is very wrong about this offer, but she’s not yet able to articulate why it’s wrong or offer an alternative solution for him. Now his reaction to her reluctance here is rather interesting. He becomes agitated with her for the first and only time in the two films. On first viewing I think it’s hard to understand why he’s raising his voice to her here, but when I keep in mind where his mindset is (he’s just sacrificed his entire life for her, and her body language and words are implying that she’s about to reject him), it’s pretty clear that his agitation is fear-based. He’s afraid that their connection means less to her than it does to him, and that he’s about to lose her (which he is). But because he’s kind of stupid, he tries to pressure her rather than backing off and saying “well, what should we do next, my dear?”

Rey herself doesn’t seem to be offended or afraid of his outburst, which reiterates to me that she understands his fear and that he’s not trying to hurt her. He then tries to convince her that she’s alone by reminding her about her parents. This is a fairly manipulative tactic, but it’s not done out of malice--it’s done because he’s desperate to keep her by his side. Again, he just sacrificed everything for her sake. Literally everything he’d worked for in the past 6 or so years. To lose her now, after he was finally able to accomplish this for her, is likely a horrifying prospect to him. 

After pressuring her into admitting the truth about her parents, he places his final card: her parents may have been shit (and I just love the way Adam delivers this line; it gives me the chills how much disdain and disgust he has for what her parents did to her), and she’s nothing in the grand scheme of things (I don’t think he means she’s nothing to the resistance or her friends, but rather that there’s no “grand legacy of destiny” for her to uncover for herself), but she is not small to him. In fact, she is so large a presence in his life that he literally threw away everything he’d ever wanted for her sake. Now, of course, this is a rather self-centered perspective (like, really Kylo, you’re not that great a catch right now, sexy 8-pack or not =P) and he’s still being manipulative here because he’s trying to keep her at all costs, but there is truth in his words here: this story isn’t her story (at least not yet). 

Consider this: not a single thing in this story has actually been related to her own quest or her own desires. She just gets caught up inside other people’s stories (really the larger meta-story of Kylo, Snoke, Luke, Leia, and Han). Even Finn for the most part is “caught up” in this larger meta-story. And yet Rey (like Finn, and like Rose) is the key element to revitalizing this dead story--she must make the story her own and forge a new chapter in it. This is exactly what she has done by drawing Kylo to her--now she, not a Skywalker, not a Solo, is the centerpiece of the story, simply because she has connected herself with the Skywalkers and decided to draw one of them to her. But this isn’t something that’s fully evident yet to Kylo, and certainly not to her, and thus despite the manipulative nature of the words he stabs her with, there is still truth in them to cut her. 

When this tactic fails as well, he has nothing left to offer her, and his pride and hubris won’t let him back down. All he can do is extend his hand again and reiterate his request. When she still hesitates, he gives her the most plaintive, desperate “please” I have ever heard in my life and probably shatters her heart into a million pieces. The remainder of his existence depends on her answer, and she has to say no. 

But rather than talk to him about this, Rey makes a huge mistake. She holds her hand out in a feint to make him think she’ll take his hand when in reality she’s calling her saber to herself. This was probably the worst choice she could have made, though it’s understandable why she did so (Kylo’s a freaking powder keg, who knows how he’d have handled a full Elizabeth Bennett-style rejection lol), but this does to Kylo exactly what so many of Snoke’s truth bombs had done to him in the past--it confirms that Snoke was right. Their connection was a false creation crafted by Snoke, it wasn’t real, she would never stand at his side, she would never choose him as he would choose her. 

This sends Kylo spiraling back down into the underworld. He tries to stop her from taking the saber, and it’s a testament to how balanced he now is (and how much darker she herself is) that the saber is torn between them and splits. They are now equals in ever sense of the word, and that is important for the future. 

Sadly, when Rey rejects him, she leaves him nothing but the position he’s been groomed to take by others. He now has no choice but to return to the dark side and try to pursue the now dismally inadequate fantasy of “surpassing Vader and ruling the galaxy alone.” Kylo’s true desire was to break free of this dichotomy with Rey, but her rejection leaves him with nothing but his legacy or despair. Although he wanted to form a new place for himself, he just ends up falling back into the tangled web of the “story” of the other side of his family. Rather than standing on his own, he’ll now become part of that “dark side” story. How much further he’ll fall now is anyone’s guess, but he’ll be falling fully aware of everything he’s lost until Rey can stop his descent with a proper third path that gives him what he truly desires--freedom from the burden of his legacy and a place by Rey’s side. This time, the offer will have to come from her. 

Despair on the Heels of Resignation

We don’t get to see Kylo again until Hux finds him sprawled on the ground in the throne room. There are two possible variants of this scenario, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know which was true:

Rey is the only one who awakened before Hux’s arrival, and thus she’s the one who returned his saber to him. 

Kylo awakens before Hux’s arrival, and decides to “stage the scene of his defeat at Rey’s hands” in order to keep his place in the First Order.

I lean toward #2 myself, given how prepared Kylo seems to be with excuses and reasons for Hux. So likely he waited until Hux checked to see if he was dead, then he magically awakened in perfect time to give Hux the “story” of how “the girl” (love that she’s back to being “the girl”) managed to “magically” best himself and Snoke and all the Praetorian guard by herself. =P Hux, predictably, smells a rat, but Kylo shuts his immediate questions down by threatening Hux’s life and taking something more important from Hux--his army. Hux now has bigger things to worry about than how the hell an upstart kid managed to best two powerful force users and their guards. 

Still, I think it’s clear that Rey’s rejection cut Kylo to the core and he’s now completely unhinged and unmoored. He has no idea what he wants to do or accomplish; he’s just a burning ball of rage, and he regresses quickly into a childlike fanaticism. His decision-making becomes impaired to the point where Hux has to course correct for him. He becomes myopically focused on his own past and destroying every last remnant of it. Yet all of this is really just a cover up for how hurt and betrayed he feels by Rey’s rejection, which is of course no excuse for his actions. =P One shouldn’t go around blowing people up because the girl you like wouldn’t go to the dance with you. =P

I do think this this is why he suddenly becomes insanely angry at Luke to the point of irrationality; he was much more collected about Luke prior to losing Rey. But, having lost the only thing he ever wanted for himself outside of his family’s love and approval, he now turns his venom toward the last person standing that he feels justified to hate: Luke. Luke reminds him that hope isn’t lost and that he’s not the end of the line.

Kylo knows exactly who Luke’s referencing, and he foolishly asserts that he’ll destroy “her” and Luke himself and “all of it.” This is quite an interesting line because it implies he’s fallen into despair and nihilism for the first time in his life. This is genuine nihilism talking. Because when he destroys “all of it,” he’ll have no reason to live. Fortunately trolly Luke doesn’t intend to let him end up that way, and so he makes a sacrifice in order to be part of what will save and restore Kylo in the end, placing the remainder of his faith in Rey to do the rest.

Kylo ultimately fails to destroy Luke himself, robbing him of that sin as well as the sin of killing his mother. Luke protected him from that at least, and paved the way for Kylo to return in time. The resistance manages to escape, and Kylo is left to infiltrate an abandoned base. There he finds his father’s dice, falling to his knees to pick them up. It is here that the last spark of hope reaches him--a force connection! With Rey! While Snoke is dead! He looks up, and his face is so full of hope that maybe, just maybe, she’s changed her mind.

Yet her impassive expression says otherwise, and then she shuts the door. It’s telling that Kylo flinches here: her second, final rejection drives the nail into the coffin of his dream and it shatters completely, represented by the dice disappearing in his hands. All hope is lost, and he sinks down further in resignation that will inevitably lead to despair.

And here is where we leave our fearless Supreme Leader--on his knees, having lost everything. It’s actually a place where you leave heroes normally, in the second film of a trilogy. =P The second film is always the “all hope is lost” moment--yet it is Kylo who carries this narrative beat, not Rey. It is not her pain we focus on; it is his. This says to me that despite his “narrative position” as Rey’s antagonist, he is probably the protagonist of the story--whether he can transform it into a comedy or is unable to overcome his flaws and it remains a tragedy is up for Episode IX to determine. For now, he has sunk to the bottom, and it’s going to take one heck of a reckoning to get him a third chance. He’d better be willing to take it this time. There won’t be a fourth.

What’s in a Name?

Just a quick little side note, but honestly I’m pretty torn about how I feel about Rey trying to push Kylo back into “Ben” as a name. I get the sentiment--in a way it’s revitalizing his name and restoring it to him, but at the same time, I feel like it’s just Rey being in denial about his dark side and trying to “separate” him from it. So I’m kind of torn about how I want his name situation to unfold in Episode IX. 

Personally, my preference is a renaming ceremony where she gives him a fresh first name and restores either the Solo/Skywalkers/or Skywalker-Solo name to him. That would be a proper marriage of the “old” and the “new,” which would encompass all that he is. But honestly I don’t know what way Rian and JJ intended for us to take Rey’s resurrection of Kylo’s old name, so who knows how it’ll unfold. A renaming ceremony at the end of Episode IX would just be my preference, but I’ll dive into this more in my conclusion post to this First Impressions series. For now, I think this post has gone on for long enough. =P

To everyone who made it this far, congratulations: you’ve read a fifth of a novel (17k words!) attempting to dissect a fictional character. ;) You get a virtual cookie. For everyone who waited so patiently for this post, I’m sorry I took so long, and I hope my turtle self will be able to scuttle over the finish line for the remainder of the posts sooner rather than later. =)

Until next time!

[end-o-the-line]

A Captain America: the First Avenger Timeline for Fic Writers

(I’m so sorry I erased the original post I’M SO SORRY! You can read this without the visual aids on AO3.)

March 10, 1917 - James Buchanan Barnes is born, and we were all officially fucked.

July 4, 1918 - Steven Grant Rogers is born, and somewhere in Brooklyn Bucky's mother wept . . .

June, 1924 - Steve's mother is bedridden from illness associated with Tuberculosis.

September, 1930 - 12-year old Steve and 13-year old Bucky meet for the first time in Hell's Kitchen, where Bucky scares off bullies trying to steal Steve's money. What were they doing in Hell's Kitchen? No one knows. Steve tells Bucky he's been living in the orphanage 'on 8th' since his mother's death. Which is odd since Bucky was apparently at her funeral when they're both legal adults in a flashback scene from the Winter Soldier. For the purpose of this timeline, info from the movies will take precedent over info from the various tie-ins. Meaning Sarah Rogers is basically Schrödinger's Ma for the next 6 years.

1936 - Shrodinger's Ma finally actually dies fo sho of Tuberculosis. Bucky breaks everyone and their mother's heart with his 'til the end of the line' line. (Also, per MCU canon, Bucky's 'folks' are still alive . . . and own a car.)

February ish, 1940 - Colonel Phillips first approaches Howard Stark, in Los Angeles, about working for the SSR. (Stark Industries was formed in 1939, and 'a year later' Howard is at a nightclub in West Hollywood called Ciro's, demonstrating the properties of Vibranium. Ciro's opened in January of 1940. So keeping in line with the MCU canon and with real world history, as you do, January 1940 is the absolute earliest that Howard could have been recruited.) They're pursued and Stark deploys rockets from the ass-end of his car to escape them because Howard Stark.

Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter, aka Agent 13 is already in deep cover working for Schmidt as a maid in his personal mansion.

November, 1940 - Peggy rescues Dr. Erskine from Schmidt's mansion two days after Johann Schmidt forces him to inject the experimental serum, proving that we all could have saved a lot of time if Peggy had done that three fucking days earlier, Jesus.

May 25, 1941 - Steve goes to the Dodgers-Phillies game at Ebbets Field. Was Bucky with him? We don't fucking know. It was a Sunday, so maybe. It’s not like Steve knew other people . . .

December 7, 1941 - Steve and Bucky are in an art class - like . . . how can anyone write these two as dirt poor when they're fucking around on their Sundays at baseball games and art classes? By this point the economy was booming as the work force was being drafted left and right, these two would not have been in need of jobs. And two Irish-Catholics (honestly, Bucky is probably Scottish, lbr) skipping church? tsk tsk - when the class is informed by a runner that Pearl Harbor has been attacked.

Okay real talk here, for a second. The draft officially started in 1940, pulling men 21 years of age and older. In 1940, Bucky was 23. He was single, no kids. He absolutely could not have given conscientious objector status as a way to avoid it because if he had, when he was drafted later on he never would have seen combat. He should have been drafted in '40 or '41. The only reasons he wouldn't have been was if he was a student, or if both his parents and/or his siblings were considered his dependents. Since some sources say both Bucky and Steve were orphans, then it is entirely plausible that both Bucky's parents died close to the time Bucky turned 19 or 20, in which case he could have become the legal guardian of his younger siblings.

PS: Bucky is not an orphan in the MCU (nor is he poor in that suit, jfc):

So either Bucky was working like a damn dog supporting his family, in which case the fuck are you doing in an art class, kiddo? Or he was actually a student at a college or university.

.....he could also have, during the years the US was gearing up in case they were forced into the conflict, held a job that was considered vital to the coming war effort. This sort of deferment was limited to jobs in war production, and jobs that involved national 'health, safety, or interest'. Literally the only job I can think of without actually like . . . researching it, that Bucky could have been in where he would have been skipped the first few times but taken in '42, is if he had been a police officer. That would fit very well with his ability with a gun, plus explain why he made sergeant so fucking fast, with prior training other inductees would not have had.

Considering what a golden child Bucky was in Brooklyn, all three of those scenarios would be a perfectly valid reason for Bucky to have avoided the first several waves of conscription. Just thought that was interesting.

Anyway! Steve wants to enlist right away, so Bucky (a three-time YMCA welterweight boxing champion, suck it) trains him for two whole weeks because Bucky is apparently of the opinion that Steve is an idiot who won't get in anyway so why fucking bother going hard.

*at the time, under the regulations of the New York State Athletic Commission, welterweight was a weight class of 147 to >160 pounds. Meaning post-war Bucky gained about 40 pounds of pure muscle after getting the serum....dude.

December 24, 1941 - Bucky is right and Steve's first attempt to enlist fails so hard. Go to Midnight Mass, Steven.

March, 1942 - Red Skull fucks shit up in Tønsberg, Norway and finds the Tesseract.

September 21, 1942 - Bucky receives his draft card, and takes it to an intake facility and enlists in the US Army. The following dates are literally nowhere in canon, but I have research to back up what is essentially pure speculation on my part. His serial number is 32557038. There is a real world counterpart who actually had this particular serial number, and he was enlisted on this date. So, in order for Bucky to have gotten to the number before this guy, Bucky probably woke up early Monday morning to get shit done.

Desperate Historian's Note: I always assumed that since he was a Sergeant when he first shipped out, Bucky had been in service for at least a year and a half, which is still pushing it within the constraints of the timeline. Most NCO's at the start of US involvement in the War, Corporals and Sergeants, already had years of Army service under their belts. But no. 9 months. So. Bucky basically kicked ass and took names to become a Sergeant in 9 months of non-combat training (which took place at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin btw). That, or every NCO in his regiment came down with a sudden case of the Deads and he got promoted.....Bucky would have needed a special recommendation from the company commander - TWICE in 9 months - to reach that rank. Jesus. It is canon fact that Bucky was indeed an absolutely phenomenal soldier (and leader) . . .

He would have been sent to basic training and been gone for ten weeks, meaning it would have been over by the 1st of December, 1942, or thereabouts.

December 1, 1942 - Give or take a week or two, maybe, depending on how quickly he was whisked away after enlistment, Bucky would have been given a week's furlough after training at Camp McCoy ended.

December 8, 1942 - Since he is a designated marksman (not a sniper, the US Army didn't have those in WWII. A designated marksman was just a guy in a regiment who was an excellent shot and stuck with their regiment at all times and was used situationally, never went off alone to shoot people in the head and stuff), he absolutely would not have been sent to any sort of sniper training because, again, the US did not have those in WWII. He wouldn't have stayed in NYC, though.

He would have been on an Army base somewhere, with the occasional week-long furlough to return home. There were 114 mobilization camps by 1942, and only three of those in New York state; Madison Barracks, Camp Upton, and Pine Camp, with three more in New Jersey; Fort Dix, Fort Monmouth, and Camp Shanks. 17 were in California, 14 in Texas. Anyway. So, before Bucky leaves for war, he and Steve wouldn't have seen a whole lot of each other for the year before that, either.

June 7, 1943 - Bucky probably arrives in NYC on a final week's furlough before being sent to War. With the way Steve looks at him when he sees the uniform later on, and Bucky's cocky little head tilt, it's probably safe to say Bucky received his sergeant's chevrons not long before this furlough. (Honestly . . . I have never understood this part. Bucky damn well knew he was 107th from the moment he reported, and Steve should have as well. Also, ‘getting his orders’ had nothing to do with his uniform, soldiers were required to wear that shit everywhere they went. Unless Steve knew he’d gotten his orders simply because he was there and shouldn’t have been....whatever, movie exposition, blah blah)

June 14, 1943 - Steve's fifth attempt to enlist fails spectacularly because he had to claim to be from New Jersey. He then goes to get the shit kicked out of him in an alley behind a movie theater, that's what you get for saying you're from Jersey, Steven. He and Bucky attend the Stark Expo that evening, where Steve ghosts like an asshole - even though for all he knows this is literally the last time he will ever see Bucky alive!! - and is chosen by Dr. Erskine as a candidate for Project: Rebirth.

June 15, 1943 - Bucky and the 107th ship out for 'England'. Now, the troop transport Queen Mary left NYC on June 1, 1943, heading for Gourock, Scotland and carrying the 1077th Signal Company Service Group. It took 5 days; they arrived on June 6, 1943. On July 16, 1943, the Edmund B. Alexander carried 5,000 replacement troops to Liverpool, England. That journey took ten days; they made land on July 26, 1943. Maybe. The records are full of literal question marks, so I dunno. That's the closest thing I can find to Bucky's stated journey. Most of the troops leaving from NYC at this period were actually heading for Africa, landing in Casablanca, Morocco.

I know Bucky says he's shipping out for England in the morning, but it makes so much more sense that the 107th would have been sent to Africa and then swept up into Italy in the next four months of fighting, where Steve finds them later. It would be easy to deal with this by either saying Bucky's an idiot, or (my recommendation) that Bucky knew exactly where he was heading and he just wasn't telling Steve that he was being sent into the heart of the brutal African and Italian campaigns rather than a nice balmy Liverpool in the summer. The journey from NYC to Casablanca, Morocco would have been anywhere from 11-15 days.

June 20-25, 1943 - Bucky would have hit Liverpool, England right around this time, if that's the way he was sent.

June 25-30, 1943 - Bucky would have docked in Casablanca, Morocco, if this is the way it went instead. So I guess you could safely say he made landfall in the European Theater on June 25, 1943? Haha right in time for Mussolini to get his ass arrested and the Italian Fascist government to fall.

June 22, 1943 - Steve is injected with the super-soldier serum, right Steven? (Meaning he only had a week of basic training, at most, and everything else he knows about being a soldier he taught himself with all those books he brought to Camp Lehigh with him.)

September, 1943 - Ugh, okay, history nerds cover your ears, because there is just no way to make the real invasion of Italy match up with the MCU invasion of Italy. Unless the 107th just said fuck those guys and marched right into German territory past the . . . bombs and stuff. On September 9, there were Allied landings at Salerno and Taranto, Italy, and they didn’t enter Naples until October 1. I mean, is it really all that shocking that they got their asses kicked in Azzano? NO. But having a fucking USO show that deep into Italy means the MCU said fuck it, so you too can say fuck it when it comes to the real WW2 timeline in Italy, idfc. This is apparently what the MCU lines looked like at this point in time, and let me just tell you, see that bulge there, right under the Hydra flag? Those fuckers would have been surrounded and cut off so fast, so fast, just like in Bastogne. Assholes....anyway.

October, 1943 - The Battle of Azzano results in Hydra declaring war on anything that moves, including Nazis, and takes prisoners from various different regiments that historically were either still in training or in the Pacific Theater at this point, but that's fine. Prisoners are taken over 120 km away to a Hydra weapons factory in Kreischberg, Austria, where their Hydra captors separate the men into cages according to their nationality and other factors. The purpose of this is for the bickering hodgepodge of Allied soldiers to keep each other busy with in-fighting so the Hydra guards can forget to train and get beat up by Captain America in a month or so.

Dum Dum Dugan almost immediately makes a joke while Cage Team Howling Commando is introducing themselves, and a brawl breaks out. As you do.

In Bucky's cage are the following:

Jacques "Frenchie" Dernier, French Resistance, born January 2, 1911 (32). The fuck was your French ass doing in northwestern Italy, son? To my knowledge the French Resistance kind of worked mainly . . . in France. The Italian Resistance was very active in this period, so they could have been collaborating, but that's not what the Resistance did, mostly. So the only logical conclusion we can come to with Frenchie is that he was captured somewhere in France by Hydra and transported to the factory as labor. He lived in Marseilles before the War, and likely would have stayed close to it.

Major James Montgomery "Monty" Falsworth, born January 2, 1914 (29), of the British 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade, which historically first saw action in June of 1944, ha. Anyway, Monty was from Birmingham, England and was known in the comics as Union Jack, and the pin on his beret is a nod to that. Teeeechnically? Monty outranks Steve, but since they're not even part of the same Army, that's kind of a moot point. He winds up with the rank of Brigadier, which wtf, that means he outranked Colonel Phillips when the war ended . . . four for you, Monty.

Private Gabe Jones, born August 14, 1918 (25), was 92nd Infantry Division, a segregated unit that historically first saw action in September of 1944, haha. Gabe was from Macon, Georgia and was fluent in French and German thanks to pre-war studies at Howard University. Just as proficient in hand-to-hand as the others, he was often part of the team’s frontal assaults, as well as handling the radios . . . and he boned Peggy Carter in the comics.

Corporal Timothy 'Dum Dum' Dugan, born April 11, 1912 (31), was a member of the 69th Infantry Regiment, which is also known as the 165th or Fighting Irish, recruited solely from NYC, who were making landfall in the Pacific right about now. Frustrated historian's note: Had he been a real boy, Bucky Barnes would have been enlisted into the 69th Infantry as well, just like Dugan. Canon-wise it makes sense that Bucky and Dugan were from the same unit, even though canon thinks they weren't because canon made up the WWII-era 107th? Anyway, the fact that both Dugan and Bucky were in the same foxhole when the Hydra tank hits in the cut scene from First Avenger is all fucked up because you don't put your NCOs where they can be blown up together, okay. It's bad strategy. Add to that the fact that Dugan calls him Bucky like they've been buddies for a while, but the tie-in comic is still on 'Jimmy' and also states that Dugan and Barnes were in the same company after all, that cut scene is frustrating. Or I guess the comic is frustrating? Something's frustrating, anyway. I think the best way to deal with this is just to say that the 107th IS the Fighting Irish regiment because fuck it. Dugan will eventually take over leading the team when Steve goes splat, leading the Howling Commandos and being involved with SHIELD, and Nick Fury personally, well into the Cold War.

Private Jim Morita, born October 20, 1919 (24) - also, Happy Birthday here's a Hydra weapon NOW ASSEMBLE IT - wasn't in the same cage as the others, but he served in the US Army's Nisei Squadron as a Ranger, aka the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Their real fight in the European Theater began in June of 1944, so who the fuck knows how his ass wound up in Austria. And since the whole unit was made up of men of Japanese descent, it's safe to assume there's a 50/50 chance Morita was given the choice back in Fresno between enlisting and an internment camp. A lot of fics write Morita as the team medic, but I'm not entirely sure why. In WWII, medics held a rank of Private, Private First Class, or Technical Sergeant. So, the medic would either have needed to be Morita or Gabe Jones in keeping with this. But there is literally no canon mention of him being any better at triage than any of the others, and he is definitely not a medic by trade. None of them are. The more likely scenario here, because none of them wear the insignia of a combat medic, is that all of the team were equally trained and capable at the most basic of field triage, but the team itself probably flew without a safety net and used the medics from whatever regiment they were shadowing at the time.

Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (26) - who you will notice is literally the fourth James in a team of 7 men - contracted what can only be assumed to be walking pneumonia on the battlefield of Azzano, and as his condition gets progressively worse in captivity, hastened by the hard labor of the weapons facility, he eventually becomes so weak that he drops several components in front of the officer in charge of the Facility, identified only as Colonel Lohmer. Lohmer beats Bucky like a rented mule, and when he's deposited back in his cage, the other four realize that if he's made to work again the next day, he'll die. They devise a plan to kill Lohmer, which would put one of the kinder Nazi assholes in charge who would allow Bucky to remain in the cages until he was able to recover. Their plan works, crushing Lohmer under a ton of machinery and symbolism and signifying the first time the soon-to-be Howling Commandos had worked together successfully. The soldiers return everyone to their cages after the accident to keep order, and Dugan tells Bucky that he's safe from Lohmer now, with the only punishment being a reduction of the POWs food rations for a week since there was no one specific to punish. Bucky is an ungrateful dick and not only asks Dugan to stop calling him "Jimmy", but graces him with the nickname Dum Dum in the process. Bucky is saved from dying on the manufacturing floor only to be singled out by Arnim Zola and taken to the 'examination rooms'. And we all know what happens there.

August to Early November, 1943 - Steve Rogers sings and dances his way through over 200 shows and makes several badly conceived films while his best friend is slogging his way through Italy.

November 3, 1943 - Steve disappears behind enemy lines to go find his Bucky.

November 8, 1943 - The Man With A Plan dramatically re-enters the Allied base camp where Colonel Phillips is fixin' to tear Peggy Carter a new one for losing Captain America over enemy territory. If the Battle of Azzano happened on a goddamn Earth map at the real Azzano in the Province of Udine, and assuming the Allied camp was somewhat close to that area, the march from the factory back to the Allied base camp would have been well over 120 kilometers as the crow flies. Those prisoners were metal af.

I'm getting that date from the assumption that walking over 120 km back to (supposedly because in reality they'd have needed to walk to goddamn Naples) Allied territory with 400 sick and wounded men would take a few fucking days. An American unit in Sicily in WWII (30th Infantry Division) marched 54 miles in 33 hours across country. But it's safe to assume that the company Steve rescues from Kreischberg would not be moving at top speed, but rather a steady pace that would keep them moving, but not fucking kill them.

The closest thing I can get to this incident is in July of 1944, when the German armies began a forced march of POWs across Germany to delay their liberation by the approaching Red Armies. Groups of 250 to 300 men marched over bombed out roads in a meandering route because they were forced to skirt around various battles, kind of like what our POWs would have to do in enemy territory. The groups would march between 20 to 40 kilometers a day, with very little food, clothing, shelter or medical care to speak of. Using 30 km/day as our benchmark, that's at least 4 days that it would have taken to get back to the Allied encampment. If the Hydra factory went boom on the night of November 3rd, and Steve flounced into camp in daylight, November 8th is a very safe bet.

November 15, 1943 - Steve pinpoints the Hydra facilities on the map in the SSR bunker in London (which was located in the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall) and is given permission to form his own elite special ops unit. Sidenote, the Howling Commandos were never called the Howling Commandos until after the War ended, they were merely called the 107th Tactical Team. Another nickname bandied about in 'non-canon because it contradicts the movie ahahahahahah' was The Invaders, which is probably what other soldiers would have known them as when encountering them. Neither Steve nor Bucky would know what the fuck a Howling Commando even is until they read up on history, and even then neither of them would likely ever think of himself as a Howling Commando.

Now, in trying to find this date, my inner frustrated historian has begun to weep, because I just cannot find a base in Italy that makes sense for any of these damn movements to have been based out of. The Allies hadn't even gotten through the Gustav Line at this point, which ran across the boot and through the town of Cassino, south of Rome. For them to be in Northern Italy close to the Austrian border, dude. WTF were they doing there? And how did they get in and out?? I mean was anyone really surprised when their straying asses got pounded by enemy forces deep in enemy territory??

I have no idea how to judge how long it would have taken for the future Commandos to get to London and drink in a pub because there is literally no rational logic to pinpoint their starting location, and therefore no way to guess what modes of transport were even available to them so close to enemy territory. The easiest way to find this date would have been to find out what date Captain America was awarded his Medal of Honor, but . . . even I'm not that good, apparently, 'cause I can't dig up shit. The Medal of Honor ceremony that happens at the same time as this scene would have been at least a week and probably more from the action on the night of November 3rd simply because it took that long for the paperwork to travel back to Washington. It was usually months before soldiers received their Purple Hearts, for instance. But let's assume this was fast-tracked because it's Captain goddamn America. Let's also assume they didn't have Howard Stark fly them back to London in his plane and tell the other 400 POWs to go make like a leaf and fuck a tree or something.

So the trip back to London probably took at least 7-10 days. We also need enough time to have passed that they expected Steve to get from the front lines all the way back to DC for the ceremony. My first instinct is to say up to a month could have passed when this scene comes around, but a month just seems way too long when looking at the context of the scenes, from the celebratory pub crawl of the POWs to the fact that Steve is being debriefed here, which would have been literally the first concern of an agency whose job is gathering intelligence.

TL:DR version, this could be anywhere from a week to a month later, idfk.

It's safe to assume this is also the night of the pub when Bucky reveals how heterosexual he is not by asking if Steve is going to keep his stage suit for no apparent good reason.

Mostly I'm putting this date here because it is the day the Allied Expeditionary Force for the invasion of Europe is officially formed. Having the SSR gearing up for - or as a result of - that meeting seems to make a lot of sense.

November 15, 1943 to March 4, 1945 - Steve and the Invaders, often along with other military forces, plow through HYDRA factories like an enraged ex with a John Deere tractor and a bottle of Jim Beam, and also join the larger battle against the Axis Powers on the Western Front. Essentially this period is Band of Broooos: Howling Commandos Edition. This period is where you can really have your fic fun, because canon doesn't tell us fuck all about it.

Well . . . that’s not necessarily true, though. Through the (paltry imo) Howling Commando montage of the movie, we see at least 10 distinct missions, and in clips from TWS there are hints of a few more; as many as 15 total. There are 6 Hydra facilities on the board, labeled 1-6. #4 was never taken during Steve’s time. But we can assume at least 5 of their missions were blowing the rest up. One was ‘in Poland, near the Baltic’, the other was ‘30-40 miles west of the Maginot Line’, thanks Steve. That doesn’t give us shit, son. But I will try.

1. A Hydra facility raid, #2. This is the one 30-40 miles west of the Maginot Line, labeled #2 on the map. West, in fact, of Liechtenstein, and southeast of Innsbruck, in a town that begins with RES. I think this is Resia, Italy, and the Reschen Pass (Resia Pass in WW2), which would make sense, tactically. I’d like to point out that they show Bucky entering with the team, show the team running out, show Steve riding out on his motorcycle, and then the place blows up. No Bucky. Take better care of your marksman, boys . . .

2. An approach with additional military forces through a forest, in the snow. Look at those BAMF motherfuckers. I got no clue what this mission could be, though. This has the feeling of a patrol, rather than a directed attack on anything. Bucky doesn’t even have his rifle.

3. A direct attack through a forest of exploding trees . . . no snow. This is probably a frontal attack intended to push at the enemy lines. With mortars like that coming at them as they advance, there’s no way whoever they were facing wasn’t dug in on a forward line.

4. This is most likely a harassment mission. They’re shown disturbing the lines of supplies to somewhere, and taking care to be covert, which is . . . not usually how Steve rolls, lbr.

5. Another Hydra base raid, Base #5. This is shown through only film, with Steve planning an approach to somewhere and a whole shitload of troops mobilizing with them. From where they are, he’s pointing south. God help me. Looking at the map he’s pointing to, the best guess I have based on the coastline is that it shows the northern bits of Belgium, and he’s pointing toward Hydra base #5, which is somewhere in the northeast corner of France, right below the border of Luxembourg.

6. Seek and destroy mission. This was another battle, not a base. Despite the fact that they’re in rubble, but then . . . most of Europe was rubble at this point, lbr. Peggy pulls a ‘Hydra battle lines’ flag from the map after this mission, so this was about pushing the forward line back. And we know this was the Hydra line, not the Nazi line. The scene we see was likely after the battle itself was over, when the search for the wounded and intel begins; that’s when enemy snipers made their last stand, like the one seen stalking Steve’s oblivious star-spangled ass. Bucky almost kills Steve for saluting at him and giving away his carefully chosen position.

7. A pitched battle in a town, somewhere. Steve is seen kicking ass and stuff.

8. Cool guys don’t look at explosions . . .  The only reason I am separating these three clips is because the middle one is obviously in a forest, where the other two are in towns. We’ll call them three separate skirmishes. I would imagine all three of these are about pushing back that forward line.

9. The mega huge tank in the middle of town. I can see the team being sent out just to take care of this thing. Historian sidenote; the Nazis did indeed cook up some monster tanks. Hitler had a size kink. The Tiger II, or as the American GIs called it, the King Tiger, was . . . I mean, you were fucked if one of these rolled up into your path. They were damn near indestructible and they carried a big fucking stick. The problem with a heavy tank is that a Europe that has been bombed back to Creation for several years is a muddy Europe . . . if that Hydra tank wasn’t stuck in 5 feet of mud it was made of aluminum or something.

10. A last Hydra base raid, Base #?. This is shown only through the resulting smoking husk of a destroyed base and Red Skull being a diva. I don’t know which one this was, other than knowing it had to be #1, or #6. I hate to tell Steve, but I’m not sure any of the flags on this map are in Poland near the Baltic Sea, my dude. It would have to be #6 that he was talking about, though. #1 is just northeast of Lübben, Germany, in what appears to now be Briesensee nature preserve.

The only other hints we get at their missions are the clips of footage from TWS. 

11. Hydra Facility #3. #3 is in the south of fucking Greece, near the northwestern tip of the body of water called Maliakos Kopos. There’s a marina in that area, Agia Marina, that would make a very convenient Hydra facility if I do say so myself. Now, this looks like a water landing! And it’s not an ocean landing, so that marina at facility #3 might be the ticket.

12. I’m going to call this a Hydra Facility Raid. Look at him go. There he go. Again, this is either #1, or #6. idfk anymore.

13. Prisoners. Cap is seen escorting surrendered German soldiers, It’s notable that they’re not Hydra, so that would be one of the ‘regular’ missions they ran with other troops. It could be part of any of the above missions, though.

14. Clearing out a town left by retreat. Those soldiers are not particularly the kind of alert that possible enemy combatants in the weeds will make you, so that town has probably been cleared.

15. Troop Transport/Advancement. This is notable because it’s a bridge, and not a little stone bridge, either, it’s a big one. In fact, this is the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine. (You can learn more about the capture of this bridge by looking up the Battle of Remagen.) Bridges were kind of a big deal at this stage when the German army was pulling out all the stops trying to prevent the Allied advance. Bridges large enough to convey heavy artillery got blown up but quick. This bridge in particular was front page news when it was captured by the Allies. Unfortunately, we can’t place Steve and his team at the Battle of Remagen, or at the Ludendorff Bridge, because this happened just days after Steve nosedived into the Arctic. So. We’ll call it an MCU bridge! This was either coming back from the front and they were deeper in Allied territory, or more likely after a battle, but on the way to the new front lines, as established by the winning of the goddamn bridge. Doubt this was a Hydra mission, either.

All in all, Bucky and Steve have 16 months of battle side-by-side. Bucky would have had 20 months total of combat service in the War.

I'm going to list some real events from the War during this time that the team might have been involved with or nearby for that could fill in some of those non-Hydra missions above, and some things they would definitely have at least talked about. You can skip these if you like, just scroll down to the next bolded bit. I am copying and pasting these because I can:

December 2, 1943: The Germans conduct a highly successful Air Raid on Bari, Italy. One of the German bombs hits an Allied cargo ship carrying mustard gas, releasing the chemical which killed 83 Allied soldiers. Over 1000 other soldiers died in the raid.

January 17, 1944: The first Battle of Monte Cassino begins when the British X Corps attacks along the Garigliano river at the western end of the German Gustav Line.

January 20, 1944: The U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Gari River but suffers heavy losses.

January 22, 1944: Allies begin Operation Shingle, the landing at Anzio, Italy. The Allies hope to break the stalemate in south Italy, but they are unable to break out of the beachhead and the line holds until late May.

February 15, 1944: The second Battle of Monte Cassino begins with the destruction of the historic Benedictine monastery on Monte Cassino by Allied bombing. The Allies believed the grounds were used as an observation post by the Germans

February 16, 1944: Germans launch a major counter-attack at Anzio, threatening the American beachhead.

March 15, 1944: The third Battle of Monte Cassino begins. The small town of Cassino is destroyed by Allied bombers.

April 27, 1944: The Slapton Sands tragedy: American soldiers are killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.

May 8, 1944: D-Day for Operation Overlord set for June 5.

May 11, 1944: The fourth battle of Monte Cassino begins led by general Anders of the 2nd Polish Corps.

May 18, 1944: The Battle of Monte Cassino ends in Allied victory. Polish troops of the 2nd Polish Corps led by general Władysław Anders capture Monte Cassino. German troops in west Italy have withdrawn to the Hitler Line.

June 4, 1944: Allies enter Rome, one day after the Germans declared it an open city. German troops fall back to the Trasimene Line. Meanwhile, Operation Overlord is postponed 24 hours due to high seas.

June 5, 1944: Operation Overlord commences when more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day. And the first Allied troops land in Normandy; paratroopers are scattered from Caen southward.

June 6, 1944: D-Day begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The Allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.

June 10, 1944: At Oradour-sur-Glane (a town near Limoges), France, 642 men, women, and children are killed in a German response to local Resistance activities.

June 13, 1944: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England, in retaliation for the invasion. The V-1 attacks will continue through June.

July 3, 1944: The Allies find themselves in the "battle of the hedgerows", as they are stymied by the agricultural hedges in Western France which intelligence had not properly evaluated.

July 24, 1944: Operation Cobra is now in full swing: the breakout at St. Lo in Normandy with American troops taking Coutances.

August 15, 1944: Operation Dragoon begins, marked by amphibious Allied landings in southern France. Elsewhere, the Allies reach the "Gothic Line", the last German strategic position in North Italy.

August 19, 1944: The French Resistance begins an uprising in Paris, partly inspired by the Allied approach to the Seine River.

August 25, 1944: Paris is liberated. The German military disobeys Hitler's orders to burn the city.

September 2, 1944: Allied troops enter Belgium.

September 6, 1944: The "blackout" is diminished to a "dim-out" as threat of invasion and further bombing seems an unlikely possibility.

September 9, 1944: The first V-2 rocket lands on London.

September 17, 1944: Operation Market Garden, the attempted liberation of Arnhem and turning of the German flank begins.

October 18, 1944: Hitler orders a call-up of all men from 16 to 60 for Home Guard duties.

November 1, 1944: "Operation Infatuate", an Allied attempt to free the approaches to Antwerp begins; amphibious landings take place on Walcheren Island. It would become a major supply port for the Allies by the end of the month.

November 20, 1944: Hitler leaves his wartime headquarters at Rastenberg, East Prussia, never to return; he goes to Berlin, where he will soon establish himself at the bunker.

December 16, 1944: The Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces attempt a breakthrough in the Ardennes region. The main object of Hitler's plan is the retaking of Antwerp.

January, 1945 - The only mission the MCU gives real details about comes from the Smithsonian Exhibit's interview with Peggy Carter (which you can watch in its entirety btw). The 'difficult winter, 1945' has to be January, and they were outside Stalingrad, Russia. During - or possibly in the aftermath of - a blizzard, Steve (and presumably the Commandos but fuck those guys amirite Agent Carter?) fight their way through a Hydra blockade that had been there 'for months', and saved half a battalion, over 1,000 men, who'd been penned down behind German lines. That's literally all we've got for mission details, and none of that makes any sense. Like any. At all. Why the fuck were they near Stalingrad?? How did they get to the Eastern Front, STEVEN???

February 1945 - Bucky falls from a goddamn train in the Alps. There is no resource to tell us how much time passes between Bucky's fall and Steve's supposed death in the Valkyrie. So let me get my history on for a second. On February 17, 1945, the British Special Air Service executed Operation Cold Comfort, a parachute drop raid near Verona, Italy with the objective of blocking the main rail lines through the Brenner Pass by landslide. The Brenner Pass is a mountain pass through the Alps which forms the border between Italy and Austria. Sounds familiar, right? (It's also featured on one of the Captain America covers, Captain America No. 33, 1943).

The operation would ultimately be a failure, but since Schmidt wouldn't have known that, hearing rumors of this operation, or even word that it had been attempted and fearing a second try, this could have been the inciting incident behind why he had Zola hauling his evil ass along that railway at a speed described as 'moving like the devil'. So we can safely put Bucky's fall between February 15 and February 25th. You could also stretch and say it was February 14th, if you are the reborn incarnation of Satan.

Now, by the end of February, the Red Army was sweeping through the northern regions of Poland toward the German border, moving north and west. It's a Russian soldier who finds Bucky in the Alps, so either that patrol was way the hell out of their lane, or . . . Bucky laid there for a while, folks. Seriously, the Red Army didn't even sniff the border of Austria until March 31, 1945 with the Upper Silesian Offensive. Which leads one to postulate that, a. the Russians who found Bucky were lost as fuuuuuck, b. the Russians who found Bucky were a rogue group who defected to Hydra after Hydra declared itself a separate entity from the Axis forces (doubt it), or c. neither Steve nor any of the rest of the team ever actually looked for Bucky's body, even after Steve went down in the Valkyrie, and he laid there for weeks. I honestly choose to believe one of the former, since the latter is just . . . I can't.

[No, you know what? Fuckin......frustrated historian meta addition.]

It's always bothered me that they might never have looked for Bucky's body, y'know?

I always assumed the arm got ripped off when he hit the side of the ravine. Like maybe he grabbed for or hit a ledge and the speed/height of his fall was just too great and it got ripped off. Because it's not crushed like it would be if he'd landed on it, it's a traumatic amputation. It almost had to have happened during the fall. Which could mean he'd have landed close to the edge, or maybe like hit higher up and tumbled until he was at the bottom instead of freefalling the whole way?

In his flashback, you can see he's still bleeding as the soldiers are carrying him. Bleeding a lot. If he'd been in the water or motionless in the snow for any amount of time, the bleeding would have at least become sluggish. He'd be hypothermic; his body would route blood away from his extremities to protect his vital organs, plus the blood vessels in the wound would be constricting due to the cold. But, if he'd been moving under his own power trying to get to help, it would explain why he's still bleeding; his movement kept the blood circulating where it would otherwise have clotted up.

In this gif, it looks almost like the blood trail starts just a few meters away. If we take a leap and assume that when they started moving him it jogged him awake, then this scene shows where the Russians found him. Those are trees, aren't they? Meaning he moved under his own power after he landed. Meaning he got the fuck up after falling off that train, and walked through that ravine toward help. What a fucking badass, jfc.

Two things I think we can say with certainty; one, the Russians were definitely searching for someone. He's on a stretcher, which wasn't something a normal patrol would've been carrying, especially over rough terrain. They had it with them for a reason. And two, the Russians weren't there because of Zola. Between Bucky falling and Gabe taking the control room, he had very little time to get off a communication with sitrep and location. And even if he was able to, it would have been to Hydra troops, who would have shown up wearing Hydra gear. And Russians are almost certainly not part of Hydra at that stage in the War.

Those Russian soldiers were probably an Allied search party that was sent out to find Bucky. That would tick off a lot of problem boxes, wouldn't it? It would mean someone - the SSR, the Army - did order a rescue/recovery for a damned war hero like a fallen Howling Commando, and Allied Russian troops were closest or something. It would explain why Russian soldiers were in such a remote area, with a stretcher, when they had zero other reason to be there! It would explain why Bucky is listed as KIA instead of MIA even though they obviously never found his body. It would also explain why Bucky didn't struggle as they were carrying him off; he thought they were on his side, rescuing him.

My theory after writing all this up? He lost the arm in an impact with the side of the ravine, but contacting the ravine walls also slowed his landing and put him on dry ground. He then got up like a BAMF and moved, either until he found shelter under some trees, or he simply collapsed from shock or trauma or exposure or all of the above. An Allied rescue/recovery party found him, but they were Russian, and they reported him KIA and kept him because they knew he must be enhanced to have survived that sort of fall, cold, and blood loss, and they wanted their own Captain Comrade.

March 4, 1945 - The SSR and other forces raid the secret Hydra bunker and Steve Rogers boards the Valkyrie on his way to getting fridged, literally haha, so Peggy Carter can become a hero . . . good job Captain Cannonball.

March 15-24, 1945 - The Commandos assist in Operation Undertone, which was part of the Allied invasion of Germany by the U.S. Seventh and French 1st Armies of the U.S. Sixth Army Group. It was a very real operation, so info is easy to find about it if your heart is still in your chest after watching both our boys plummet to their supposed deaths.

Some time in April probably?? 1945 - Dugan and Morita head to the last known HYDRA facility, Facility #4 bitches!, known simply as the Fortress, located some the fuck where in Austria, with Peggy Carter. They capture HYDRA General Werner Reinhardt and take possession of the first known classified 084, the Obelisk. We don't see the Obelisk again until Agents of SHIELD.

May 8th, 1945 - VE-Day. The remaining five members of the team gather in a pub to toast 'the Captain', suggesting that they did indeed just leave 'the Sergeant's' body rotting in the Alps somewhere, fuck that guy. (It is notable that one of the tie-in books for the movie states explicitly that they toast to both 'the Captain' and 'the Sergeant', so it's probable that they gave each man his own, individual farewell. We just didn't see it.)

(If you want more timeline! Trying to track the Winter Soldier through both canon and history.)

[beauvoyr]

Lazy People’s Club for the Sleepy and Tired | 14

flowering | the beginning of the end

Pairings: Noctis/Reader Genre: Friendship/Romance/Friends-to-Lovers Tags: Fluff, Humor, Eventual Romance, Slow Burn, Abuse, Torture, asphyxiation, no beta we die like men, pre-canon a.k.a before FFXV Chapter Warning: Forced regurgitation in the first flashback.   Chapter Rating: T Crossposted on: AO3 Summary: Rules to join the Lazy People’s Club for the Sleepy and Tired: 1) One must love sleep. Sleep is love. Sleep is life. 2) One must be tired. Physically or emotionally, both are acceptable. 3) One must love video games. Halfhearted interest in video games will result in immediate termination of membership.

Fortunately, Noctis falls into all three categories.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: There are things Noctis doesn’t know, and there are things he’s better off not knowing.

YOUR MORNING IS DIFFERENT NOW. What used to be late mornings and hot cocoas evolved into the prince barreling through your door and shoving you awake. Well—shoving is a hyperbole. A heavy, unpleasant weight presses insistently on your shoulder, tugging in minute yet persistent action that makes it hard to ignore. Once or twice, you might have swatted his face by accident, and he might have chewed you out for that. Isn’t Noctis supposed to be a creature of morning sleep-ins whose ecosystem revolves around the bed? Ignis certainly had his selection of stories on how unpleasant it can be to rouse the prince from his temporary death.

The systematic start to your day begins with rubbing your eyes and trying to understand why Noctis is shouting at you and yanking you to the bathroom. Something about a Gladiolus—a flower? Whatever. Grumpily dragging your feet across the hundred-mile stretch, you pause to work out another yawn as Noctis groans from behind. The prince sure is loud, you note, as you resume your pilgrimage to the terminus. Rubbing your nape, you snag your towel on the way, shutting the door behind you and effectively halving the sound pollution by a startling fifty percent. Sunlight streaming through high windows helpfully supplements the automated lighting in your well-lit bathroom. In here, pockets of warmth linger where the air-conditioner fails to reach.

In fact, if you think about it, right behind this door is also a pretty decent spot for resuming your nap.

Your soul is as weary as Noctis’ exasperated sigh coming from the other side, and your eyeballs need the rest before they shrivel into raisins. All the years you spent on staring right in the face of a computer is starting to show, especially with how you dozed off after checking through the hundred-something photo in your Moogle Drive. Those pesky Niflheim prototypes are starting to get to you, even though they’re pencilled sketches for now. What'll happen once they come to life? Peskier, perhaps. Slumping heavily against the mahogany, you rest your head against the door and allow yourself to close your eyes—

“You better not be sleeping in there, you hear me? You want three hours sitting seiza again?”

—and jerk awake.  

Crap.

Snatches of memories flicker before your eyes like a highlight reel before your imminent death, of the solemn promise of pain in Gladio’s amber eyes, of raw knees chafing on hardwood panels, of Noctis tapping your thighs and planting pins in its wake. And that’s just because you were late by seven minutes on his watch. Who’s to say he’ll be more generous with his punishments this time?

Double crap.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, sprinting all the way to the training hall is a bad idea, dashing with a mad start as soon as the lift dings at G. Theoretically, you understand what running is and how to execute the action. Performing it without years of practice, however, is a different matter altogether. Are your sides supposed to squeeze with this much of pain and is your vision supposed to blur like someone’s pasted a filter over your eyes? The prince is a far cry better runner than you even if there is certain strangeness to his style—an awkward bend of his knees and a stranger twist to his hips. Maids echoing their morning routine squeak as he flits past their laundry trolleys and the guards barely manage to salute an after-vision as Noctis sprints past their posts.

You’re obviously not Noctis, so you’re the one stuck presenting all the apologetic, sheepish looks their way, trailing after the prince from behind.

By the time the finishing line is in sight, a lengthy corridor with only a broad double-door at the end, Noctis picks up his speed by twofold, flings a dagger, and splinters into fragments of mirrors—only to burst through the doors in a flash of blue via kicking them down with a ragged shout. “Time!”

“6:29 a.m., with only two milliseconds to spare!” Gladio returns Noctis’ shout with one of his own, mildly amused with half a grin on his lips. Only, when he seems to spot you lagging from behind, he discards the grin altogether. “Uh. Better catch the kid before she faints, Noct.”

Faint?

What?

Oh.

It’s a bit of a delayed reaction when you reach the training hall multiple seconds after Noctis slams through, but something black munches around the edges of your already blurry vision and your chest hurts. Physically hurts. Hurts so much even when you inhale raggedly, shuddering with the action. Lungs burning and head tightening, all that and more. A strong, muscled arm hefts your midriff before your legs give way and it’s a wall of broad chest pressing you close, a distinctly large hand—much larger than the prince’s familiar touch—rubbing circles between your shoulder blades. Sagging against this—this cottony muscle tee and face pressed into the crook of his arm—is that his armpit?—your eyeballs roll back into your head.

Gladio’s chest rumbles with his grunt. “Well, shit. Kid, you need a lot of work in you.”

The darkness closing your eyes seems to agree with him.

what will it take to kill you? to torture you numb through routine, swallowing fifteen facts on what the kingdom hopes to learn from solheim’s great war of the old and regurgitating them on paper? you run your fingers over the creases under your eyes, vessels bursting in your eyeballs, washing them a watery red like byron’s. splashing your face with cold water helps with nothing save for reminding you that reality remains constant at your suffering and nothing changes even with all the proud a’s dotting your results. nobody cares. your tutor doesn’t care. father doesn’t care. you don’t care.

does byron care?

maybe he does. maybe he doesn’t. it’s schrödinger’s cat all over again with byron erasing mother’s existence, his hand holding yours instead of her painted fingernails tracing over your palm. he’s gentle like mother, he smiles too much like mother, he worries too much like mother, he nags too much like mother, and he—oh mother, your face is in your hands and your cheeks are wet and your throat is tight, but the tears do not come, not anymore. you’ve eviscerated them into body bags, remember? yes, yes you did, that’s why your tears are empty.

where has mother gone? she disappeared better than a magician’s third-rate performance, leaving you with her songs and her perfume as remnants of her memories. these four walls witness your existence but the statues do not acknowledge your presence, and father is all too happy to pretend you do not exist, you are not his daughter, you are never an andronicus. what if you never fought against his wishes and became the docile daughter he dictated? never disagreeing with your fate, married off as another man’s arm-ornament by twenty? will you be doted by father? will he finally breathe his yes on your name? will you finally be happy?

oh mother, mother. if only she’s here with you. it’s because of her you’re like this, you’re the shoddy excuse of an andronicus. it’s because of her you’ve grown dependent on her existence, finding her breath as the oxygen to your lungs. it’s because of her you’re shivering before the bathroom sink, damp hair matting over your forehead, plastered over your cheeks, flushed nose and ruddy cheeks. it’s because of her byron’s scarred beyond salvation, a broken man you glued together with your tears. it’s all her fault.

your fingers ghost over your eyebrows, running over your sticky eyelashes, grazing down your cheeks.

it hurts.

it hurts inside.

you need to get it out to fix it.

you shove your fingers down your throat as deep as they’d go.

SOMETHING SMELLS GOOD. Like freshly laundered sheets drowned in a healthy dosage of fabric softener. A lovely, powdery scent you’ve smelled before. Where is it? Oh, it’s pressed against your cheek, how convenient. Is this your bed? No, it’s certainly too hard under you, like a floor of some sort. It must be your workspace again with your pillows and blankets Byron sun-dried after restocking your cabinet. But what’s the awful racket back there? Wood clattering against wood, manly grunting and even manlier shouts? Did you fall asleep with Tekken 7 running on your TV again?

Throat all scratchy when you groan, you twist on your floor as you bury your face into the comforting scent. Here is good. Here is where the thick blanket smells best, all too familiar at the back of your head. Just like this, with a looping background noise for distraction and something that smells good like clean soap and wonderful detergent, you could fall asleep within just a few seconds. And who exactly is policing you from sleeping, right? Nobody. That’s right, nobody.

You give a small sigh, one born out of contentment, and dig your fingers into the plush fabric. Feels good and smells good, just how you like it.

Oddly, the background noises have stopped, almost abrupt.

“Uh.”

“Go wake her up.”

Voices. You’ve been hearing these familiar voices a little too much lately, one that is a distinct baritone and the other, a sultry tenor.

“No way, you go.”

“Responsibility, Noct. Forgot about that already?”

“Fine, fine, I’ll go.”

The floor vibrates under you—and that’s strange, marble isn’t supposed to vibrate unless subjected to incredible amounts of weight. Something akin to a grey shadow drapes over the insubstantial darkness of your closed eyes, and then there’s that awfully stubborn thing digging into your shoulder. A small push and pull with the very same persistence as this morning. Gods, can’t you just get some well-deserved and undisturbed sleep? Analyzing all those Niflheim documents will be the death of you. At least you’d like to clock in an extra hour before getting ferried into the afterworld by Etro’s divine grace, where you can sleep for the rest of your after-death.

No such luck and the hand on your shoulder ramps its intensity.

“Hey, wake up. I know you’re up.”

Who’s to say you’re awake when you haven’t opened your eyes? That’s right again, nobody. You nestle your face as close as possible to the blanket as if you aren’t close enough, fisting the fabric tight. No one is going to wake you up, and that’s final.

“Uh.” An awkward pause. “That’s…my jacket.”

That gets you blearily opening your eyes to confirm the authenticity of such outrageous claims—and it’s not your blanket, it seems to be some sort of folded clothing placed under your head to support your posture. Oh. Owlishly, you blink once or twice, taking in the velveteen blackness contrasting your blanket’s whiteness. But its scent is so divine, just like something you’re used to smelling—

Someone makes a grab for the folded pile before you even had the chance to react, pulling it right into the safety of lean forearms with a head attached to the body. The prince. Noctis. Right, he’s staring at you and you’re staring at him while rubbing your eyes just to get the sleep to go away.

“Mine,” he clarifies as if justifying his actions, dubious blue eyes peering closely underneath sweaty bangs. “My jacket. In case you’re still not, y’know, awake yet.”

That explains the familiarity of the scent. Hair damp and fresh clothes, Noctis visited you before, smelling strongly like that jacket of his—or rather, any article of clothing he wore, whether sweatshirts or sweaters or whatever. Huh. It’s too bad, really. You kind of liked that fancy scent of his. Unthinking, you reach out to snatch the jacket right from his arms, bringing it to your face as you slump on the floor once more. “Not anymore. Good night, Prince.”

Gladio’s bellowing laughter almost muted the undignified noise Noctis makes, and you crack an eye open just to muster the scariest glare you could manage. Doesn’t seem to deter Gladio’s uncontrollable chortling while Noctis just makes the feeblest impression of trying to look disappointed at you—and failing miserably at that. Really, if they knew of Niflheim’s machinations and the private documents encrypted in your Moogle Drive, you’re certain their smiles would be wiped clean in just seconds. Still, you can’t complain. Magnanimous Noctis granted your desire of wanting to be stronger for his sake, so letting him down isn’t listed anywhere in your long-term goals. You just have to find some way to adapt to this ruthless roster, that’s all.

Drawing his jacket into your lap, you rub the sleep away from your eyes for the umpteenth time and attempt to seem vaguely organized in your bearings. “Mmkay…I’m up, I’m up.”

“You’re up, riiiight,” Gladio teases you, approaching Noctis and dropping to sit cross-legged in a haphazard triangle between you, him, and the prince. “Good thing you woke up. Ya scared the shit out of Noct when you passed out on me.”

Something about that has Noctis bristling. “Did not. Prom fainted before, remember?”

“Yeah, but not from running,” Gladio counters. “That runt’s a runner, not like this squirt. Kid needs to train more on her stamina,” he adds knowingly, eyes lingering on your face, “and probably get some more rest too. You sleeping all right? You look like shit.”

You’re rather convinced that line’s patented by the prince since he’s already told you twice before. Now Gladio too? You suppose your drab appearance never improved their impression of you as the hopelessly sleepy child of the Andronicus. Maybe a new haircut or a fresh change in your wardrobe should do the trick. Mentally filing away a list of new shopping errands for Byron to enjoy once he returns from his murder spree, you stifle a yawn. “Not really. Working on stuff. Don’t usually get some sleep until 5, to be honest.”

While Noctis is ogling you like he’s waiting for a punchline to a joke, Gladio all but whistles low at your reply. “Look, kid, if you’re really serious about doing this training, you need to get some proper sleep. Runnin’ on less than an hour’s worth of rest is only gonna make you suffer in the long run. What if you accidentally hurt yourself during some exercise? You can’t get away with pulling all-nighters to do your thesis ‘cause physical training is different from mental training. Cram that in your head.”

The underlying severity of his words rings clear in the hall, emphasized by the taut set of his jaw and his closely knitted brows. You know. You know he means well, but there are things they won’t understand. It’s not about your thesis anymore, nothing on scavenging the remains of Solheim’s technology for Lucis’ prosperity. Without the right strategy, you couldn’t aspire to best them, Niflheim and father alike.

No complaints. Swallow it down and stamp it out. You brought this upon yourself.

“I understand,” you sigh, resigning yourself to a rueful nod. “Sorry, I’ll do better next time, I think.”

You earn Gladio’s approving grunt by way of his large hand coming up and tousling your hair. It almost feels like how an older brother treats his sibling, and you momentarily marvel if this is what being his little sister feels like.

“Don’t look so glum, kid, at least you realize your mistake. Just don’t pull this kind of shit again, all right?” he warns, adopting a softer tone, eyes crinkling around the edges with his smile. “Now that’s all cleared up, I need to talk to you about other stuffs. Next week, we’re deciding on your weapon.”

You perk up under his hand, blinking. “Weapon?” you echo dubiously as if the word itself slipped away from your lexicon out of lacking usage. “My…weapon? As in—that weapon weapon?”

“Yep. I’m more of the broadsword and shield kind of guy, the tank in the team,” he quips, then jabs a thumb to the brooding prince. “Noct’s an all-rounder since he can use all sorts of things. Polearms, daggers, swords, shields, crossbows—“

“—and firearms,” Noctis finishes with a guilty rubbing of his nape. “Trained with loads of stuffs ever since I was a kid. We’re pretty well balanced since we’ve got Prom covering the range with his guns, while Specs is our dual-wielding dagger guy. Now that he’s getting the hang of polearms, that makes him the pole dancer of the team.”

Said with an unflinchingly straight face, you’re unsure if you should take his word for it, or pass it off like it never came out of his mouth in the first place. Because the hazy images formulating inside your mind is starting to take the solid shape of leanly toned legs stretching up the impressive length of a fixed pole, and you don’t know if that’s a good idea in case those pictures automatically blemishes Ignis’ reputation the next time he comes around. Thankfully Gladio snorts in chain reaction, sparing you from your mild mortification.

“He’s gonna hand in his resignation form if you crack that joke in front of him,” he points out.

“I know.” Noctis finally cracks a grin, apparently pleased with himself. “Good thing he’s busy huh?”

“Cheeky shit.” Gladio makes a derisive sound in his throat, shaking his head in disbelief. “Anyway, kid, don’t sweat it for now. We’ll just focus on your training this week and add that to your menu in the next one. We still need to attune you with Noct’s magic too, that’s one more thing you’re not gonna look forward to. Think about that.”

Your fingers begin to worry the hems of Noctis’ jacket, lips pursed.

What a tight schedule this is going to be. Rearranging everything in your head is already enough to make you wonder where you’ll be slotting in all the extra hours to unravel Niflheim’s conspiracies; now you have to worry about your weaponry and magic training as well. This won’t do. This won’t do at all. Your old schedule requires a complete overhaul, routines long obsolete should be disposed and a new one conjured in its place. One that takes into account of your intensive training, investing major hours in studying the empire’s escalating movements, and making time for brushing up on your thesis just to make sure you’re not falling behind on your progress. Every second you spend determines life for some, while every second you waste is an execution for many.

Will you actually have time to breathe by the end of it all? You don’t know.

Becoming someone worthy of the prince’s council is trickier than you initially thought. You had already anticipated that succeeding father’s position would require someone of unparalleled intelligence, embodying the person who sets the chessboard rather than the player directing the pawns. Yet, father’s reluctance made it all too difficult, thwarting every progress you made. Back in the mansion, he would’ve banned all training instructors if Byron as much as implied the idea. Weapons, hah, he’d scoff. If you were a son, then he surely would’ve been enthused with the prospect of drilling you into the next Andronicus worthy of the king’s entourage. Blades, clubs, chains and daggers would’ve been an arsenal readily equipped in the mansion. You would’ve been able enough to bench-press thrice your size, would’ve learnt swords like they are an indispensible extension of your limbs.

But.

A daughter, what more a fighting daughter, is of no worth to him.

“You still listenin’? You’re spacing out on us.”

It then occurs to you that you haven’t made any response for a while, undoubtedly throwing them into a moment of suspense as if the barrage of information overwhelmed you. “Right,” you clear your throat, bringing your eyes to meet Gladio’s heady stare. “Yeah, was just thinking, sorry. I’ll do my best.”

What you’ve asserted doesn’t seem to hold any weight to Gladio. Molten ambers are still trained on you, soundless, and one second lapses into two. Two seconds become three. There it is again, he’s staring you down the same way he did yesterday, searching for something in you that reassures him of your dedication. Whether he’s found it or not, after a whole five seconds, he breaks off the uncomfortable eye contact and jabs you in the forehead.

“I know,” he breaks into a grin when you rapidly scrub the spot where his fingernail dug into your flesh. “Noct’s not gonna be around for long, so you gotta make sure you learn as much as you can from him this week.”

Not going to be around for long? What does he mean by that? The strangeness of the statement must’ve made some sort of quizzical expression flit past, for Noctis fidgets uncomfortably when you turn to him for answers. “Really, Prince? Where are you going?”

“Back to uni,” he says, voice unusually thick. “Final semester’s going to start soon, so.” He shrugs, lamely ending his statement. “So yeah.”

Oh.

Right.

Lost in all the haze of spending your afternoon naps together with him, trading texts via King’s Knight, wedged in Insomnia’s midnight life deliquescing behind the wheels of his Audi, Noctis is still a student of Lucis U, a diligent prince attending his classes together with Prompto. The Astrals suspended you in this dream together with him, and now it's time for them to reclaim what they lent you. You had, simply put, forgotten about it. He has his own fate to govern as an heir to the throne, leaving you on your own. He’s never yours to begin with.

No—you’ve grown too dependent on him.

You’ve seen how dependency destroys you.

You’ve seen how you grew dependent on the prince the same way you grew dependent on mother.

How she destroyed you will parallel how he destroys you.

but it’s all right, isn’t it? he’s your king, isn’t he?

There is sound logic in that. You fought fate and you fought father just for the throne of the Andronicus. You’ve always been on your own, haven’t you? Always the friendless Andronicus, corpses making your bed, mother’s blood caking your lips, hands dyed a shade of sin. Once you are truly the queen governing the household, you will be bestowed the raiment of the royal council, donning it with the very same pride father dons his, prostrating yourself for the king—for Noctis, your one and only king.

yes, your one and only king

Noctis trusted you the same way you trusted him.

In turn, you should allow yourself to depend on him the same way he will depend on you.

so, it’s all right to continue this way

It is?

it is

Yes, it is.

There is fulfilling comfort in the frail reassurance you give yourself. Little lies you spoon-fed just to make you believe what you want to believe. Just to keep yourself going for another day, and another, and another. It’s what kept you going, it’s what kept you breathing long enough to stay alive. Being needed is far better than being denied. Father devalues your existence, but the prince takes care in brushing the dirt off you just so he could get a better look. As long as Noctis needs you, as long as you believe he needs you, you will live.

Warmth blooms underneath cracked ribs and rotting lungs, something that seizes you with nausea. A foreign feeling you struggle to name even with the words you devoured over the years. This nausea is exquisite in its pain, taking root in the desolate garden of your heart, never to leave again.

A certain nausea you associate with Noctis.

“We’re losin’ you again, kid. Sheesh. Noct, take her upstairs; I don’t trust her to go through the hallways without passing out somewhere and freakin’ out some maids. Go.”

Gladio’s grousing eases you out of your thoughts, and you try very hard to pretend the ache no longer exists when Noctis finally looks your way.

it is said that, in the beginning, the six fought side by side with mankind. even so, the deities themselves seldom appeared before mortals, and instead sent loyal servants to convey their divine will to the oracle. these servants are known as messengers, and they number twenty-four. cosmogony; the hexatheon and their divine host.

THERE THEY ARE AGAIN, just you and him, trudging through the halls after Gladio exiled you from his sight. Minimal conversation as always, a recurring motif whenever he rouses you from sleep. Half-slouching, rubbing your eyes, you meekly trot by his side, yawning every now and then. In this setting, it’s easy to pretend nothing’s going on. Just two friends strolling through the Citadel under the morning light, returning to their respective rooms. Passersby are unmindful of their presence and nobody cares enough to stop and stare. Only, the story doesn’t quite go like that.

Whenever they made their appearance, the manservants fold into a bow, never raising their heads until he passes. The guards are no better, saluting straight until Noctis disappears around the corner, then easing once more.

Does it disturb you? He imagines it does. Maybe a little, just that you never spoke up about it. He catches you making eye-contact with them—sheer accident, really, but their questioning gaze lingers too long until you willed yourself to look away. He’s not sure if he imagined this, but your elbow brushes against his forearm once or twice, then three more times until he’s sure he’s not imagining things. You’ve inched closer to him, almost closing the little gap in between.  

Uncomfortable, yeah, he gets that unspoken message. It’s one of the reasons why he moved out in the first place, arguing with his dad and Clarus and Drautos and Cor on why he wanted to be independent as a teen, while Ignis and Gladio simultaneously doubted his ability to stay independent for long without accidentally dying of malnutrition along the way. Just that—the people here, they’re too impersonal—too statuesque for his liking. They live and breathe with, “Your Highness,” readied on their tongues even if their eyes look right past him.

Does anybody care about him, not him as the Prince of Lucis, not him as the King of Kings, but him as just Noctis, that twenty-year-old guy who’s stuck in university?

Noctis toes the plush carpet squished under his boots when you falter to a halt, pressing up for the elevator. Save for Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio, he hazards a no. Not his dad too. Probably too busy doing kingly stuffs like he usually does until his own son gets neglected for an entire kingdom. A king pushes forward, accepting the consequences and never looking back, that’s what his dad used to say. He pushes and pushes and pushes forward, and forgets that he left his son behind.

But hey, maybe you care too. Maybe, he’s not sure about that since you never openly shared your thoughts with him.

“So,” he starts, almost biting on his tongue when you glance at him because he did not mean to vocalize that thought out loud, but it’s too late when you’re already tilting your head to the side, waiting. “Uh.” Think, think, think. “My jacket.” Right. He points at the black velveteen draped over your arm, his favourite with an expansive behemoth embroidered in vivid threads, then stuffing his hands in his pockets to give them something to do. “You wanna give it back?”

“Jacket?” you repeat, again with that detached voice, one that definitely signals your mind is elsewhere again. Taking one good look at the clothing, you seem to jump under your skin before hastily holding it out, nodding. “Yeah—yeah, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to steal it. I just kinda like to sleep while hugging something or,” you shrug, the ungainly action closely mirroring his, “y’know, burying my face in stuff. Yeah.”

You always seem to be hugging a pillow or two, no lie in that, it’s no wonder his jacket became the hostage of the day. Tucking yourself right into a nest of pillows, blankets, and comforters, you’re content to let the world pass behind tightly shuttered eyelids. But what’s going on in that head of yours? What are you thinking about? What are you doing on all the days you spent without him? Sleep, he thinks, since it’s the only thing you like. Maybe you like to be cuddled too? Since it seemed to fit your nature, what with your whole pillow thing going on.

Noctis catches his thoughts before they stray any further, guiding them back to the conversation in hand. “Don’t sweat it.” Or so he says, snatching the jacket and swiping his clammy palm down the front of his pants. Today’s workout is making him sweat harder than he thought. “I get that. A lot,” he adds when you’re openly questioning him. “Prom does that too. His bed’s so full of stuffed chocobos, he could beat your pillow collection.”

He meant it as a joke, or just something to erase that placid lethargy seizing you all over. But all he gets is a nonplussed, “Prompto did seem like that kind of guy with tons of plushies,” as the lift dings its arrival. It’s not until he prods 56 on the console that he gets some other response from you when you squeeze into his side, all bleak. “There’s something comforting about hugging something, you ever felt that before?”

Funny. Now that the conversation’s turned to this, he can’t even remember the last time he hugged something—or rather someone. Does it count if his dad was the one who lifted him out of Regalia, hugging him tight in his arms? With that bristly goatee brushing against Noctis’ cheeks when he’s pretending to be asleep just so dad would hold him longer? He gets carried into his bedroom and tucked right under the sheets with a kiss on his forehead, safe and sound from nightmares. At 20, it’s too distant a memory now, but it’s still his favourite.

Noctis ignores the way his heart sinks when he’s trying to decide whether it’s just plain melancholy or childhood nostalgia that’s abruptly weighing him down. “Yeah, kinda,” he finally relents, scratching his cheek. “It feels. I dunno. Okay, I guess.”

Your throat makes some sort of scratchy noise he can’t interpret, then the world goes silent.

Great. He’s probably killed the mood with his noncommittal reply, more dead than a zombie. You’re still silent and while that’s an extremely common thing between you and him, something about this feels a whole lot different than before. Different, but he can’t put a finger on what changed and what stayed the same. Your shoulder’s digging into his bicep and strands of your hair are kind of ticklish on his skin. That elbow of yours is rubbing on his forearm, but the warmth from your skin spilling across the back of his hand is making him stay. Just you and him together in this lift, a space too stuffy and a silence too overbearing. Same thing, but a different concept. Stewing in the thoughts impolitely letting themselves in his head, Noctis attends the funeral for this dying conversation before letting it go in peace.

The lift dings again at 56, successfully diverting him away from the oppressive silence in this metal deathtrap. Noctis keeps his strides even and unruffled as he leads the way, sewing his mouth shut tight lest he starts something stupid again—like asking why you kept burying your face in his jacket as if it’s an oxygen mask. Later, he tells himself that lie, later he’ll ask you about it. Slow and steady, he turns around the final corner of the northwest wing where your room awaits, only to stop short.

That white butler is there.

Byron.

Bowl-sized blossoms in his hands, expert fingers are tender in tending to frilly petals, all radiant pinks and powdery yellow hearts crowding the vases. Their footsteps echoed loud enough to alert anyone of their presence, but Byron doesn’t let up from his menial task. Meticulous in his pursuit for perfection, he goes through one blossom after another. Once the arrangement satisfies him, he dusts off his gloves to turn on his heels.

“Peonies, milady.” Byron smiles, tight-lipped, hands behind his back. Almost as if he isn’t guilty of shattering your heart many days ago with his unfeeling accusation of how you aren’t able to love. “They wish you happiness and prosperity, a fitting theme for this week.” Faking a cough and quite purposely avoiding Noctis, he gestures at the door. “Now then, shall we have some tea together?”

As usual, Noctis is nonexistent in the equation. Not that he’s surprised, he’s long classified Byron as one of those cynical bastards thriving on treating others as though their collective intelligence is on par with five-year-olds. Scoffing under his breath, Noctis folds his arms over his chest and follows you, letting you lead the way to your room. Byron is all fancy bows like a mockery of some sort, throwing the door open with an exaggerated flourish and shutting it behind him once they’re all safely inside.

You toe off your sneakers and Noctis has half the mind to do the same—except, should he even be here?

You don’t seem to be distraught with Byron’s appearance anymore, none of the pained look reflected in your eyes whatsoever. Out of the kindness—or weakness—of your heart, you probably forgave your butler sometime ago. And Noctis kind of gets that since he had catastrophic cold wars with Ignis before. More than half the time it was unanimously agreed that his immaturity started the fight in the first place, though it usually ends with Ignis surrendering and making amends even when it wasn’t his fault. Your dynamics with Byron probably translates to something like his and Ignis’—except Ignis isn’t half of a bastard like this full-fledged asshole you have right here, something Noctis should be thankful for.

Maybe you and him are more alike than he thought.

Or maybe that’s just him reaching for straws?

“You look like a man who’s just heard his beheading announced, milady, what’s wrong? Nightmares in your sleep again? Would you like me to stay with you for the night?” Byron jests by the kitchenette, clicking the electric kettle on and bustling about with making himself a pot of tea. A pot of tea with three cups, judging from all the clinking porcelain. At least Noctis is indirectly getting acknowledged, for now, so he takes the cue to unlace his boots.

You cough, a universal signal of discomfort, heading to your worktable with Noctis in tow. “No thanks, too old for that now.” You wave for him to seat himself wherever he likes, so Noctis takes up the armchair adjacent to yours. After clicking through your computer, you tidy the unnamed hardcovers on your desk to make space, stacking them aside. “Just been busy reading some stuffs. Kinda need to catch up on some sleep since I’ve been neglecting it.”

Having absolutely no place in this conversation, Noctis appropriates his best impression of a sulky teen and leans deeper into the chair, eyeballing your butler as he putters about behind the counter.

“Goodness, milady, please get enough sleep,” Byron exclaims with absolutely no ounce of surprise, nope, even if his choice of words makes him sound like he’s ready to dramatize an entire play right there. “What did I say about overworking yourself, hmm?” Hoisting a silver tray, he brings tea over and makes sure to serve you first and foremost, then pouring some for himself, and intentionally leaving Noctis last. “After tea, it’s off to bed with you, no buts. Drink up.”

Lifting the steaming porcelain to your lips in unison with Noctis, he catches your eyes and your lips give a faint twitch, as if telling him to put up with it for just a few more minutes.

Right. You certainly haven’t forgotten him, so that's a relief.

Noctis experiments with a sip of the fragrant tea, something with a fruity aftertaste in its mix but not entirely disagreeable with his tastebuds, and sets it down again. “Yep, straight to bed with you,” he finally finds his voice, causing Byron to huff a little. “I don’t wanna see you online on King’s Knight too, got that? Sleep. No more fainting on Gladio tomorrow morning.”

In retrospect, maybe he shouldn’t have said that, for Byron fixes you a look so lethal it could cut a glass in clean half.

“Fainting?” Byron repeats, this time looking directly into his eyes. None of that evasive bullshit anymore, all stern redness mottling pewter greys, an antithesis to Noctis’ deep blues. “You do mean she fainted as in one with all the collapsing of her knees—“

“—yep, that kind of fainting,” Noctis cuts him off, reveling a little because Byron doesn’t seem pleased with the interruption. “She wanted some training, so I took her to the training room. Just some light stuffs for now, nothing heavy.”

Steely eyes slither from Noctis to reach your own, digging for the answers you hold in your mouth. You cock a brow in challenge. It’s a dare. But one does not simply dare the predator without expecting retaliation. Byron recoils with the sinuous fluidity of a snake seconds before it lunges for its prey. He seizes your chin in his hand and whoa, that’s a scene straight out of Gladio’s romance novel right there, what with his thumb subtly digging into your cheek, holding you in place. There is a caged animal within him, smiling a smile with too many teeth in it. Overturning the dynamics of a lady and her butler into a master and his slave.

“Milady,” he breathes, each word a severe deliberation behind its selection, “what exactly are you thinking? Or were you not thinking at all to begin with?”

Noctis doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like the tone he’s using on you, doesn’t like the way your eyes narrow and your jaw tightens, doesn’t like how your fingers rake across the wood. He doesn’t like any bit of it.

Before he gets a word in edgewise, you’ve gone ahead and removed Byron’s hand from your face with nary a force behind your action, setting it on the table carefully. “I want this, Byron,” you say, unflinching even when your butler’s smile turns plastic. “I need this. I can’t stand being weak anymore. If I want to succeed father, I need to have some experience in combat. Gladio promised to make me stronger, and I intend to see it through. You’re forbidden from stopping me. It’s long overdue.”

There is obviously more barb on Byron’s tongue that he hasn’t unleashed, words that might hurt you, words that might crush you the same way he did weeks ago. However grudgingly it may be, your butler seems to remember his place the moment you explicitly forbade him. Good, Noctis likes it that you’ve got a backbone when it comes to shutting him down like this. At least you don’t let Byron push you around, even if he could easily disarm you with his solid build alone. At least you know what you want, even at the expense of Byron’s loyalty.

Knowing there’s no other way to make you submit to his demands, Byron takes a calculative turn.

“Was it not enough, milady?” he tries in a softer note meant for a man to coax a child, sweet promises that might never be fulfilled. “Everything—everything I’ve done for you, it wasn’t enough, was it?”

As soon as those words left him, Noctis is suddenly all too aware of how the air seems ten times chillier when nobody’s tampered with the setting. And it’s not just him. You have degraded into the unfeeling shell he first met many months ago, content with sipping your tea and watching over Insomnia from your throne in your room. The vacant glaze in your eyes finds a room again and so does the monotone in your voice.

“No,” you shake your head softly, even if your voice hardens. “I want more.”

More of what? What’s not enough? He feels like he just got caught up in a massive crossfire like parents arguing in front of their kid—and if this is what it feels like, it’s definitely not a nice feeling at all. Nothing made sense and all he’s getting are more questions than answers.

But with your words comes certain finality to the conversation. That’s the end of that, and none should bring it up. Byron seems to understand that much. He picks up his own teacup and busies himself with polishing off the entire content in one go. A restrained act. He inhales. Exhales. Inhales. And brushes some of his fringe out of his eyes. “As you wish, milady. Let’s put this aside and get you some rest. I want to see you on the bed. Now.”

The tension in the air saps away, swirling into dust. You sigh, finally finding a common ground to agree with. “Mmkays.” Letting your chair drag behind you, Noctis catches your eyes again and you pull your lips into a grimace, rubbing your nape. “Thank you for walking me up here, Prince. Good luck with your training, okay? Don’t push yourself too hard.”

Once again, you’re a human. None of that apathetic drawl or that hollowness in your heart that he can’t seem to bury. Like the fight never happened scant seconds ago, you carry yourself light and breezy—or you’re pretending to be. It’s probably not a big deal, but it’s getting harder and harder to convince him what you’re hiding isn’t worth his probing. No now—later, maybe. Later, when he figures out what buttons Byron pressed to put him on edge, later when he comes up with an idea why he doesn’t want to see you unsmiling again.

“Unless Gladio pisses me off again, I won’t,” Noctis remembers to snort, all boyish arrogance that Ignis has long since given up trying to rid him of it. “You worry about yourself and get some sleep. G’night.”

Your slight grimace shifts into a smile for him, feasibly reassured. “Okay, good night.”

He lets you retreat into your private bedroom—well, not that private considering the number of times he trespassed before—and once you’ve closed the door behind you, he gets to his feet and cracks his neck. Leaving training for too long will only get Gladio hounding his ass with extra ‘sparring sessions’, so it’s best if he scrams. And as much as Byron’s still an asshole, at least the guy made him a drink.

“Right. I need to get back.” He cranes his head to the exit. “Thanks for tea.”

“Let me see you to the door, at least,” Byron offers, but Noctis is already plodding his way there, brushing him off.

“Nah, I can see myself out.”

Byron has a finger under his chin, half-lidded eyes studying him, all white lashes like the claws of a cat. “Ah,” he says. Monosyllabic, a thoughtful sound underneath its curt nature. It has Noctis slipping on his boots fast enough so he can get the hell out of here, far away from that unnerving stare, but just as soon as his hand lands on the doorknob, Byron’s voice accosts him on the spot. “Then, at the very least, allow me to offer you a word of advice.”

Advise him? The genuine incredulity to the offer stops Noctis right where he stands, gaping like a fool. He’s sure Byron’s got nothing to offer unless he’s offering tips on how to one-up Ignis and the dagger for his tongue. That could probably work. Then again, deliberating the way Byron perches at the edge of your table, his ponytail trailing down his back, a leg braced against your chair, that gets him to stay, mostly curious of what he’ll get out of this anyway.

Slowly, Noctis tenses and readies himself. “What?”

Evidently satisfied with how he’s lured him into this—whatever this is, Byron runs a finger over your computer. His smile withers, growing dispassionate with each passing second. “Please don’t hurt her. She may be foolish with her feelings, she may be blunt at times, and she may be weak without help, but she is all I have.” He stops, each word a wound on his body, and starts again. “Do take care of her for me. That is all I ask of you, Noctis.”

It sounded like the standard passing-of-duty speech a superior delivers to his underling if one scrutinizes its contents. Only, there’s obviously more to it than that. Noctis isn’t as stupid as Byron wrongly assumed. “…what do you mean by that?”

Byron only tilts his head back, a laugh both soft and sweet falling from his lips.

“I, once, looked at her with the very same look in your eyes.”

[tbc.]

NOTES:  1) before we get too deep and lost into the whole byron and noctis shenanigan, just casually throwing it out there that the next chapter is chapter 15. and you know what 15 means. 2) and also in case anyone’s going ??? wtf byron???, chapter 23 will answer (some) of your questions! 3) what do you guys enjoy doing on rainy days? :D  

thank you very much for everyone’s favs and messages! i love every bit of everyone’s enthusiasm, encouragement and kindness! sometimes when i get stuck on a bit of a writer’s block, rereading your comments and messages leaves warm feels and motivation to keep me going. 8’) even if that means writing well into 3 am and heading into office with eyebags, so be it.

PREVIEW:

“Ohhhh boy, I’ll go grab The Bucket™ real quick,” Prompto groans, dragging a hand over his face as he scrambles to his feet. Met with your confused gaping, he only finger-guns your way and flits from the circle, rushing towards the showers. Cue clanging sounds, startled jumps, and epic sounds of scuffling before the blond emerges with a steel bucket dented at the side. He sets it down in front of you coolly, much to Nyx’s amusement.

[coolgirl]

Fic recs masterpost

ok so i used to have a lot of fics masterposts on my old blog and people keep asking for recs + i wont be able to upddate them or anything anymore so i decided to just move them all to this blog

under the cut: AUS / arkham knight / jaykyle / jayroy / robin!jason / gen / angst fics 

*: last added (april 4) //   for some reason the links arent working so go to jasontodd.tumblr.com/ficrecs for the links, sorry!

AUS

The Virtue of Revenge | young justice au with jason as red x making his own team with roy, starfire, raven, and others. i love it, even if it has shaky moments and stuff pls give it a chance.

crystal silence creeping down | young justice/lost days au

Flicker from View | another young justice au

Live to Rise | yes. you guessed it. young justice au.

Collide &  Convergence | au where post crisis jason goes to the young justice universe

The Changeling Sequence | series where jason meets damian before he went to gotham. The last part is a wip that i doubt will ever get updated again, so uh be careful. read only the first or second part and forget about the third.

The Drag of Fate | au where jason is lady shiva’s son as well. Part of a series, which i also highly recommend but idk if they would be au as well

heavy on the heart | another jason and cass are bio siblings. A+.

Didymous | cass and jason are twins.

repairing the world | i dont know how to explain this series.. its an au and really really good. Jason doesn’t appear in all the pieces.

just go  | jayroy, wings au

In the Shadows (of Who We Used to Be) | jayroy, black widow & hawkeye au

The Family (or how Jason Todd was adopted by the Avengers) | marvel crossover

bad boys bad boys (whatcha gonna dooo) ♫ | jason is damian’s batman. iconic fic imo.

Rise (And Try Not to Fall) | star wars au

A Bird in Morning | bruce finds jason when he’s at the hospital after crawling out of his grave

Moment Between | ghost jason & ghost martha and thomas wayne

We’re not in Crime Alley Anymore | au where jason was younger when bruce took him (and he didnt become robin)

Perhaps The World Ends Here | marvel crossover, future jaykyle

Batten Down the Hatches | a few different aus here. young justice + helena wayne

My Brother's Keeper | jason & damian knew each other from before + damian arrives to gotham just for jason

When the Moon Found the Sun | main story is clark/bruce but it’s preetty cute. soulmates au.

Between the Light and the Dark* | damian & jason uuhm i cant remember what this one was about per se bc im reading like 5487 similar fics but yeah

Two Dead Birds  | time travel stuff

Red Blood, Blue Blood | jason (and the rest of the batkids) are bruce’s biological kids, yeah i wasnt a big fan of the premise at first either but its gud

Rebirth | talia & jason, mind the warnings

you belong among the wildflowers | kate n renee adopt jason instead of bruce

We're the warriors of tomorrow |  Cass, Jason and Damian meet while with the League of Shadows

Can You Hear Me?  | ghost jason

to death's other kingdom I will not go  | bruce makes it on time au

The Ties That Bind  |  The pit restores Jason's body but not his mind, Ra's makes him one of his assassins and Talia adopts him as her own.

death’s outlet song of life* | the gordons find jason before the events of lost days

reflections on shattered mirrors.* | talia & jason stuff

Come Alive* | young justice s3 based

A Path Upon The Ground* | au from lost days, eddie and jason meet again

ARKHAM VERSE

If He Had Come & the sequel  Desiderium | au where bruce rescued jason before he could become the arkham knight.

the roads we know

this gun needs no bullets

JASON & BRUCE CENTRIC (not romantic)

Quack | this one is so crackish but so so cute i love it, robin jason

If He Had Come & sequel Desiderium  | arkham knight verse and its so good and has a lot of bruce & jason feels

Neverland /  Keep Lying To Me | deaged/ little jason from another universe.. sad and cute

Icarus and Bubble Gum | fluff, robin jason

Knock On Death’s Door | bit of both but not so so so angst, red hood jason

dead and dying things | au

In Memoriam | angst, trying to fix their relationship, red hood jason

If the Fates Allow | angst, red hood jason

The D-Word | fluff kind of.. red hood jason

This Place We Built With Grace and Guilt | angst angst angst, red hood jason

I Love You | robin jason, fluff

Wayward Birds | fluff and angst, robin jason

yesterday’s gone, yeah it went away (i’ve been lost but i’m here today) | another trying to fix their relationship fic, its cute and sad

We’re not in Crime Alley Anymore | au where jason was younger when bruce took him (and he didnt become robin)

Little Absences | sad, robin & red hood

Schrödinger's Honest Man | sad, drugs tw, absolute fave

White Christmas | bruce & robin!jason

Frozen History | de-age

Stargazer | jason n bruce patching their relationship.. its iconic

Unconventional Family Reunions | bvs setting

Prompt: Trapped | mind the warnings

Safe In My Arms 

The Failures of Reverse Engineering  | ghhm not really bruce & jason maybe?

to death's other kingdom I will not go | bruce saves jason au

points of impact  | glass case get fucked

is it my fault? (we've been missing each other)*

waiting for you. *

The Little Things*

World's Finest* | my uwus my uwus have fallen everywhere

JAYKYLE (all iconic)

In Which Kyle Confesses The Same Thing Six Times

milk and honey

Batman vs Space Bureaucracy

deadlock

attention to detail

tempest in a teapot

violet tendencies

no love, no glory (no hero in his skies)

keep the door open for me

waffles and war 

The Art of Subtlety (jason lives au)

Perhaps The World Ends Here | marvel crossover, future jaykyle

Riding in Batcars with Boys

boy, you fill my lungs with sweetness

no chance, no way, i won't say it (no, no)  

a change in the atmosphere

invitation to commitment

Overexposed 

i deserve that, don't i, some sort of blazing love that i can live with 

i won't say 

The water is always warmest at dawn

JAYROY (all iconic too)

sleepless 

Countdown

just go (wings au)

Unspoken

(for thy love is) better than wine (E)

Rooftops

Dick Wolf is a Really Funny Name

A headache isn’t always a bad thing

sad eyes, bad guys, mouth full of white lies [high school au]

kairosclerosis 

The Night They Met 

march down an empty street (like a ship into the storm) *

Archange de la mort (rallume ton flambeau) * | hic warning lol

this time, the loser wins | steph & jason centric though

So Baby Come Light Me Up *

Little Talks *

All the light is never ending, much like you and I; *

Don't let me go, for I feel I may fall * | soulmates au

Something Reckless * 

OTHERS

how to make a home. * | some eddie/jason if you squint, rose/eddie/jason team up

This Car Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us* | could be read as jayconnor :3

Robin/young!Jason

The Art of Subtlety | jason lives au, jaykyle

Little Absences | sad, robin & red hood

I Love You | robin jason, fluff

Wayward Birds | fluff and angst, robin jason

Icarus and Bubble Gum | fluff, robin jason

Quack | this one is so crackish but so so cute i love it, robin jason

we were not tragedies | jason & babs, read warnings

Heavy Home | gen, alfred & jason

Good News (No One Mourns the Wicked) | Jason & steph & damian. harold they’re dead (kinda robin!jason??)

Love Yourself (So No One Has To) | good amazing au with some selina & jason (not really.. robin but it starts as robin!jason i guess?)

Moment Between | ghost jason & ghost martha and thomas wayne

We’re not in Crime Alley Anymore | au where jason was younger when bruce took him (and he didnt become robin)

Tired &  Laundry | kinda au, read tw!

Smoke | jason & jim gordon

White Christmas | bruce & robin!jason

is it my fault? (we've been missing each other)* | mix of present and past jason

Sidekick* 

waiting for you.* | technically baby jason

The Little Things*

World's Finest* | oh this one.. my uwus

GEN

hold on to what  we are, hold on to your heart | gen, Barbara & Jason friendship. Some dinahbabs & jayroy

gotta give the boy points | gen, absolute fave

Strangers in Nothing but Name | marvel crossover, side steve/bucky

If He Had Come |  Desiderium | Arkham Verse, gen

I can’t  think up a good  name for this | young justice verse, gen apart from canon relationships

A Better Thesis | gen, p short but i loved it

The  F-Word | gen, batboys being batboys

until i’m in my grave | gen, wip 

Robins United | gen, batkids bonding, except for cass, thats my only complaint

Free of Dogma | gen, canon divergence, marvel crossover w Jason & Bucky

bad boys bad boys (whatcha gonna dooo) ♫ | au where damian is jasons robin and not dick’s, obviously damian & jason brotp. 

Heavy Home | gen, alfred & jason

In the  Shadow of Two Gunmen | gen, Marvel crossover

Flicker from View | side Barbara/Dick, young justice verse

I Love You | gen, Bruce & Jason

how to  hide a stray resurrected superhero from your parents/parental figure | au, jason & tim friendship kinda

One For The Road | Jason/Roy/Koriand’r but its SO cute

Baby,  It’s Cold Outside | gen, Dick & Jason

The  (Family) Doctor’s  Appointment | gen, batboys bonding

The Family (or how Jason Todd was adopted by the Avengers) | marvel crossover, gen

Reason | wip, gen, canon divergence

Soliloquy | gen, tim & Jason brotp,  and really cute batfam moments

Red As The Shadow Of Death | gen, young justice/under the red hood verse

Give Yourself a Chance | gen, duke & Jason & leslie brotpish

homecoming | outlaws brotp fic, could be considered shippy if you want to

And I Said What About Breakfast at Tiffany’s | jason & steph

Of Bats and the Forsaken | jason & all the batkids, side steph/cass and jay/roy if you squint

this is a long drive (for three robins who don’t agree on much) | no capes au, steph & jason & damian, background tim/tam

The Dying of the Light | marvel crossover, bucky & jason, canon divergence

Cat | selina &  jason, catlad au

Killing for Love | cass & jason, au  where jason was lady shivas son  

Keep Lying To Me | de-aged au, just heartbreaking imo, cursed fic

The Social Habits of Robin | gen, batboys. Where_is_cass.jpg tho

Steph and Jay’s Excellent Adventures | series, Steph & Jason

Neverland | jason & batkids, young!jay travels to the future. sad asad sad

on a thin chain of moments and something like faith | gen, jason & cass & steph mostly. really good

Good News (No One Mourns the Wicked) | Jason & steph & damian. harold they’re dead

In a Parallel Life | batboys focused, it has amazing dialogue, dynamics, and characterization. It’s only missing Cass and the rest of the girls.

repairing the world | series, not everything is about the batfam.

Born to Run (Born to Rise) | Jason & Talia having a mother/son relationship reblog if you agree

Live to Rise | it updated again p recently so yay! young justice verse

To Save a Dying City  | jason + other people

Let’s Have Some Fun This Beat Is Sick | mostly damian centric

Movie Night: The Mummy  | read trigger warnings, batboys

The Trading Chain  | not jason centric, but it has cass being older than jason and calling him “little brother” so noice

we sure know how to run free  | jason & cass

Yesterday’s Voices | bruce loses his memory au

Nests and Cages series | read trigger warnings

Roots | barbara centric, really good plot and characterization

Love Yourself (So No One Has To) | good amazing au with selina & jason

Retrograde Motion | de aged jason au

Provenance | mostly roy centric, bruce fucks oliver’s life for what he did to roy. iconic

Schrödinger's Honest Man | sad, drugs tw, absolute fave 

Batten Down the Hatches | a few different aus here. young justice + helena wayne

My Brother's Keeper | jason & damian knew each other from before + damian arrives to gotham just for jason

White Christmas | bruce & robin!jason

until i'm in my grave v2 | this one is already mentioned in this post BUUUT the writer started rewriting it so!

Frozen History | de-age

Stargazer | jason n bruce patching their relationship.. its iconic

show me yesterday, for i can’t find today | time travel au

Warm Enough | alfred & jay fluff

Parallels | mia & jason team up

Legacy | reverse robins, not jason centric but hes there alright.. i think.. i cant remember :D

What are the words I'm forbidden to say?* | damian & jay fluff

Cracked Foundation| jason n damian

Cat's Cradle  | more jason n damian

spaces in between ��| damian & jason again

When the lights go out  | damian & jason, theres a pattern here

in my head, i do everything right | some jason & steph

is it my fault? (we've been missing each other)* | past & future jason

life, if well lived* | jason travels back in time and meets martha & thomas wayne

In Charge * | babie jason

Pyrrhic victory* | jason & damian stuff

Twists and Turns* | more jason & damian bonding

Of Brothers and Batcows* | guess what.. yes! more jason & damian

This Car Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us* | jason & connor.. say no more!

First Gear* | back to jason & damian please read this.. damian tries to teach jason to drive

changing, falling, fading (please watch over me)* | jason bonds with damian & steph

ANGST

Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death [read the trigger warnings!!]

in the repairing the world series there are a lot of fics dealing with jason, tho Warm Enough ugh not all are centered around him. I would say read  Escalation | Coup de Grâce |  Interlude for the rh!jason arc, and  Tired &  Laundry for robin!jason. [also read trigger warnings]

Countdown | jason/roy]

those six days [trigger warnings again!!!]

Call | angst

the tune without the words  | kind of character study from jim gordon’s pov

Unspoken | jason/roy, really angsty if you remember how red hood arsenal ended

If He Had Come & Desiderium | arkham knight verse, read trigger warnings!

Reason | on hiatus :/

hold on to what we are, hold on to your heart   | this is my favorite ever.. read trigger warnings

Heavy Home | alfred & jason

until i’m in my grave [trigger warnings!]

Keeping Broken Pieces Together

Monsters | marvel crossover

gotta give the boy points | this one please!!!! another fav. read trigger warnings

The weight of it [trigger warnings!]

Live to Rise | young justice verse

Neverland | THIS ONE IS PURE ANGST!!! please its so sad..

Keep Lying To Me | this one has some angsty scenes too im sad emoji

hangman is coming down from the gallows  | some angst

Movie Night: The Mummy  | read trigger warnings, batboys

Love Yourself (So No One Has To)

All in the Blood [read trigger warnings]

Little Absences

Stargazer | jason n bruce patching their relationship.. its iconic

Rebirth * | mind the warnings and its really. sad.

The Failures of Reverse Engineering *

Eternal Soliloquy * | sad sad

throw me a lifeline (I might even catch it) *

changing, falling, fading (please watch over me) * | jason & steph & dami angst

[shell-senji]

Otome games & reader-response criticism, part 1

Oddly enough, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, but a brief discussion of Schrödinger's cat, of all things, with @impracticaldemon prompted me to revisit it. So, buckle up, bitches. We’re talking literary theory.

Disclaimer—I am *not* a literary theorist—my areas of expertise are rhetoric and composition, plus all the grammar/mechanics/style/punctuation that comes with being an editor. But I was an English major, so I feel I can at least speak *in general* about the topic.

*Edit: originally this was going to be just one post, but it began to get a bit out of control, so I will split it into another part to be completed at a later date. 

[more below the cut because for those of you who don’t give a rat’s ass about this, it’s liable to seem lengthy and dry 😊]

Reader-response criticism is very much as it sounds—it is “an approach to literature that focuses on the reader rather than the work itself, by attempting to describe what goes on in the reader’s mind during the reading of a text. Hence, the consciousness of the reader—produced by reading the work—is the actual subject of reader-response criticism. [...] Thus, there is no single definitive reading of a work, because readers create rather than discover absolute meanings in texts. However, this approach is not a rationale for mistaken or bizarre readings, but an exploration of the possibilities for a plurality of readings. This kind of strategy calls attention to how we read and what influences our readings, and what that reveals about ourselves” (Meyer 2011, 2140-41).

Phew. Still with me? 

Sorry for the huge quote definition, but I’d only muck things up if I tried to provide my own paraphrased one.

One of the things I recall from one of my myriad literature courses was a professor explaining that per reader-response theory, someone can pick up a book when they’re ten years old and then again when they’re thirty and have a completely different reading experience, because they are a different reader than they were the first time they read it. Hence the whole “plurality of readings” thing. The text is not a “fixed” item—it is constantly changing depending on who is reading it or, to use the example of the same reader revisiting a work years later, when. Obviously the text does create certain constraints, somewhat like a sandbox we as readers must play in, but while one reader is building a sandcastle, another is burying their friend and making him into a mermaid. 

What does this have to do with otome games? Well, think about it—each fan of whatever game (we’ll use Hakuouki for the moment) tends to have a personal favorite character. Or one or two they lean more in favor of. Why? Sure we can argue physical appearance, voice actor, supporting characters in their routes, plot quality, etc. But what about people who disagree? Are they wrong? Are we right? Is my experience more “canon” or “valid” than someone else’s? 

No. And reader-response supports this. [Caveat—don’t ignore the part in the definition that says it does NOT justify a wacky cracked-out bizarre interpretation.] As readers, we come “to the work with certain expectations and assumptions, which are either met or not met”  (Meyer 2011, 2060). So as individual fans, we all have very very different personal lives and personal life experiences, which impact the way the game and its characters feel to us. Also, our personal social and cultural contexts affect our reading—it is highly probable an American fan of Hakuouki playing the English version has a different experience than a Japanese one playing the Japanese version, as much for the reason of translation as the reason of one’s environment.

(The rhetorician in me is screaming about the importance of context in all things. Quiet, you. Wait your turn.)

One of the reasons this has been bouncing around in my head for a while is that it has interesting applications to us as a fans, and by extension, the fandom. IF (and I’m not saying the theory is infallible...none are) we buy into reader-response criticism, then what we should be focusing on is less about “right” or “wrong” readings or opinions, and more about sharing and discussing our experiences with the game, and exploring the possibilities. “The text remains the same; the readers do not” (Meyer 2011, 2061). Ten years from now, we could all replay Hakuouki and have vastly differing impressions and opinions than we hold now. 

An example—and I’ll throw myself under the bus, yippy skippy—using Hakuouki. I find Toudou Heisuke to be a charming character. He’s cute as a button, cheerful, struggling to find his way and make his own path, yet full of hope for the future. I enjoy his character immensely. 

Yet he is pretty far down on the list for my “favorite” matches for Chizuru. Why? Well, at the end of the day, try as we might, Chizuru is at least a teeny bit of a MarySue. We’re supposed to slip into her shoes somewhat (if not entirely, depending on if you change the character’s name). Given that, I just don’t find him a “romantic” match—BFF? Sure. Romantic partner? Not really. He’s just...so...young compared to his compatriots.

Now, now, before you come at me with pitchforks, yes, I know he’s the same or close in age to Saito and Souji. BUT when I say “young,” it’s more than just the number of years we’ve survived on the planet. He feels less mature, more idealistic, less worldly. Saito, for all that at times his stoicism makes me want to scream, is more mature, more realistic, and more appealing (though he’s not at the tip-top of my list either LOL). 

Now, does this mean that anyone who prefers Heisuke and/or hates Saito is wrong? Nope. Not a bit. And I’m not saying that in a “I’m being open-minded” way—if we are using reader-response criticism as a jumping off point, my perspective is merely one of the many that make up the fandom’s plurality of readings. I come to the table with certain biases and personal experiences that affect my preferences in an otome game that another reader will not have, be my age, race, gender, sexual preference, job as an editor, the fact that I have a personal penchant for profanity so our foul-mouthed oni no fukucho is quite appealing, whatever.  

Right, well, this is enough food for thought right now. It’s late, I’m losing coherence, and I may or may not continue this in a part two at a later date. 

Source: Meyer, Michael, ed. 2011. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.