#to see humans be the fucking badguys

[bl00dh0rs3]

Watching someone play afop and im so. Oh my god. Oh my GOD. It's literally just a fucking showcase of all the Exact type of shit that has been happening to indigenous people and people of color have been dealing with for Centuries at the hands of white supremacy and imperialism. Like its literally just Showing all that Shit from the perspective of a Na'vi in universe. So it "demonizes" the RDA accordingly. And uet so many fucking reviewers are joshing on it and calling it Boring and Slow and Uninspired and that it makes human's 'cartoonishly evil' LIKE YOU PEOPLE HAVENT LOOKED AT A SINGLE FUCKING CURRENT EVENT IN YOUR LIVES. Oh my god im so mad at all these fucking reviewers now. The fucking AUDACITY to look at something this fucking Honest about the cruelty humans are capable of, while living during the fucking day and age with all this Knowledge we have at our fingertips -- the fucking audacity to look at this game and what the character goes through and not being able to muster up ANY other fucking emotion besides "ubisoft never was great at story anyway so idc lol" fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. Like actually. You can't even fucking ATTEMPT to connect to this story emotionally? Not even a fucking Smidge? Jesus fucking christ people need everything to be spoon fed to them these days. God forbid a piece of media actually ask you to meet it in the middle for once.

[m43d4y]

Mfs be like "Ky can't be gay he's married to Dizzy!!!"

My brother in Christ that bitch is

8 years old.

Which is worse? Some old man gear tiddie in his face every once and a while or BEDDING A FUCKING 8 YEAR OLD?

I get that she's not human and ages differently but still I wouldn't see Sin like that either. Man doesn't know what sex is.

Sooo like Idk I'm gonna take Sol Badguy. Plus they got a better relationship. ❤️

[xeno-p0ny]

I yap about Happy Chaos’ Arcade Mode

I played against some of the AI and most of his arcade mode to see some unique interactions, and I’m gonna ramble about them here.

For starters, I fucking hate stage 9 Nagoriyuki. I beat up to stage 8 in Happy Chaos’ arcade mode because I heard he drops some interesting lore bombs, and we’ll get to those in a sec, but JESUS FUCK is stage 9 hard. I beat stage Nago 8 by cheesing with pauses and throws, and it took about 20 attempts. Naturally, I lost all faith in living when I learned that stage 9 was the same thing except Nago started with blood rage (I quit after 5 attempts). How about that lore though, eh? Well, Happy Chaos basically goes on a whole exposition after beating I-No a second time that “Demi-humans” (Nago and Slayer) basically transcend their universe and can travel to ALTERNATE UNIVERSES and basically just dumb themselves down for everyone else to look like they’re not breaking reality. They don’t have “IDs” in the backyard, either, which is how they’re able to travel through universes since they’re basically not a part of the rest of existence. The existence of AUs in Guilty Gear is an interesting one, and I’m curious if it’s how they’re going to justify Lucy from Cyberpunk crossing over when she’s released. Maybe it’ll even play into the next game? I mean, at the end of Strive’s story mode, Sol loses his gear powers, Ky gives up the throne, and Axl gets his girlfriend back. The three main characters of Guilty Gear’s basically all finish their arcs, and it makes me wonder if they pull something in the next game where it’s like “this is Sol Badguy from another universe where he keeps his powers!” so they can still have the same main cast as the other games. It’d be kinda stupid if they did, and I think Daisuke probably wouldn’t do something so cliche and lazy for his main characters, but it’s an interesting possibility to discuss.

Happy Chaos mentions Bedman in the same exposition, saying that he also managed to negate having an “ID” in the backyard. He says “Bedman”, not “Romeo”, which is probably just to make things easier to understand for the majority of the audience who doesn’t know Xrd Bedman’s real name, but it still got me thinking about what it could be in reference to.

It could be Bedman’s dream world. Bedman says right before he dies that he could always make the Absolute World on his own, but my guess with this new information is that his access to both the Absolute World and Dream World are actually existing worlds, and him “creating” the Absolute World just brings him to an alternate universe that already existed with the properties that would let him revive the people he’s killed, save Delilah, etc.

Him negating the “ID” system could be why the character of ‘Bedman?’ exists. Somehow, when Bedman died, he didn’t actually die, but rather figured out a way to reincarnate in the bed itself due to his lack of an ‘ID’ that would allow him to cheat the system. Then again, I’m pretty sure Bed’s Strive theme is about him going to the afterlife, so this one is really just me being hopeful since Xrd Bedman is my favorite fighting game character.

After I gave up on Stage 9 Nago, I googled the ending cutscene to see what other lore there might be. There’s not a lot, but it’s kind of exciting what’s there. Happy Chaos basically tells Nago why he’s returning to the world, which is to protect it from destroying itself from its self-destructive nature. This almost implies that Chaos is willing to play the hero if needed for humanity’s survival, which is a possibility that’s also very in character with how Chaos acts.

I recently discovered that Sin and Chaos also have unique dialogue when fighting each other, and while one of the exchanges are a cute little interaction about sugar water and milpico, the other one frames Sin as the “hero” of the metaphorical show Chaos is always talking about, which would make sense since the upcoming anime is starring him and now that Sol and Ky both stepped down Sin being the next protagonist makes a lot of sense. Considering that there’s hints of both Sin and Chaos being protagonists in the next game and they already have unique interactions with each other, maybe we’ll see them working together in the future? I’m very excited for the future of Guilty Gear lore, lol.

Anyway. I’ll suppress my autism and shut up now, and maybe go draw Sin and Chaos hanging out drinking each other’s favorite beverages while I’m at it. Thanks for reading and I apologize if this makes no sense. I’m happy to clarify my theories in the comments <3

[jupiterjunebug]

I love how glowingly complimentary taiji will be of dudes. Just finished rewatching bosj w ronan and they didnt believe me so i started pulling up his tweets about how awesome his bosj opponents are as human beings. Then he'll go out and just start yelling so we remember hes a badguy but half the yelling isnt even mean like the crowd will still be clapping because hes just going OI SHUT UP FUCK YOU I AM SUCH A GOOD WRESTLER AND GOOD WRESTLERS WINNNN!!! and everyone goes "woohooooo so trueee".

Hes like when a dog in a movie is making growling noises but you can see his tail wagging. Lover of the game AND little bitch

[agoddamn]

Finally got into the Engage groove. Sat down and went from 10 to 15.

Something about MC's "I can't do this without you!" at the Emblems is really funny. Big waifufag energy.

Again, another point where I wish the Emblems were original characters. You could actually do something interesting with Alear having some kinda mildly codependent relationship with the Emblems in spite of them not being truly alive if they weren't cool iconic FE characters that need to be objectively good and admirable at all times.

Heck, you could address the unsettling idea of the Emblems not being truly alive in the first place! They identify themselves as Emblem Name, which means even they see themselves as a derivative. Are they trapped in a hell of undeath, watching everyone around them age and die? Do they still feel the human need for interaction? They get used as weapons against their consent-- isn't that an awful existence? Why would they want to become an Emblem in the first place? They're like the cookies from Black Mirror...nightmarish.

Interesting characterization glimmer from Alcryst. His boss convo with his dad has him saying that he wants to be the one to kill dad in order to spare Diamant having to do it. Damn, son

The sad piano music on the retreat chapter is nice.

I don't get why localization did that with the shitenno names...they're supposed to be colors. Mauvier and Griss are recognizably colors, but the girls are weird. Zephia = Sepia, Marni = Maroon (or maybe Marron, the French version).

Fogado feels like the character the fandom wanted Claude to be lmao

Also not sure why they renamed his sister? She's Misteria in Japanese, the siblings are fog and mist, that's the joke.

...dragon badguy kinda sexy. Forehead clit is a turnoff though

I like how Hortensia wigs out thinking Ivy is dead and everyone just chooses not to correct her

Kingdom 1's name theme is French, 2 is rocks, 3 is flowers, and 4 is...not sure, actually. Jp had the fog/mist thing, but English...

MERRIN IS MY WIFE

Oh, the gay bandits again. Wait...do they both call one another little brother in their death lines??

Solm palace is very pretty. Easily the nicest-looking castle interior

RIP to whatever localizer got handed Fogado's fratboy retainer lmao there are plenty of things I'll drag the localization on, but the party peep lingo is so bizarre to translate. I won't even touch it. They did their best with that shit

Kagetsu has gotten str level after str level. He's terrifying. Complete animal.

Kagetsu and Zelkov feel like weird AU cousins of Odin and Zero...Koyasu voicing Kagetsu only hammers this vibe home even harder

Starting to suffer on supports. As of chapter 15, MC doesn't have one B support. They took away support-building on the enemy phase and two-space supporting, which makes it a massive pain in the ass to get support points. I've been doing arena and cafe after every battle, too! Squeezing as many support points as possible outta this, but it still ain't much

Reclassing ends up being kind of an odd beast thanks to how Emblem-dependant it is. Losing your initial batch of Emblems takes away your ability to spread weapon proficiencies around, which hobbles your ability to reclass for several chapters. Compounding that, it's a good while before you can buy Second Seals, and money is very tight. If you have a unit who starts off in a class not suited to their growths (Jean, Clanne) they're kinda just fucked. What's the point of designing a system with so much flexibility only to take away your ability to use it for most of the game? I would have preferred the system be more stripped-down and actually usable.

Goddamn, do I feel the money crunch. Buying gifts? In THIS economy?

[tillman]

hi tillman 🫵 i was wondering what ur thoughts on sol and eddie’s dynamic

In canon and not my beautiful dream world in which eddie is friends with everyone and talks about their feelings together out of a desperate need to put themes into words I think they would be in that like nightmare awkward space of Understanding but unable to cope with each other. Eddie has some sort of respect for him for a few reasons namely his connection to dizzy and his ability to Hide his status of gear from the rest of the world. I dont think sol would possibly give enough of a shit about eddie to like Care about him beyond “dizzy knows him. Hes attached to a guy I want to kill.” But I think out of like some sort of sympathy of Someone Hurt by gear cells hed begrudgingly give him distance.

I think they have similar ideas on the whole being weapons for the sake of someone else thing but go about it in very different ways. They both kind of seem to give into their role very easily and embody “if im a monster im a Monster. I have no time for humanity” while both seeming to crave genuine connection and for someone to see them as human which is funny. I can see them getting along specifically if dizzy acted as a buffer to the whole. Them both having genuine physical urges from their dna to kill the other. Honestly I think the best result of their dynamic is a sort of Distant Respect. I wont hurt you because it would hurt someone who slipped through my facade of A Bad Guy. Kind of thrown out the window when zato is involved cus sol seems to genuinely despise him (rightfully) but I dunno. I think they have very similar ideas about their forced situations but kind of end up being water and oil when actually facing each other. Doesnt help their first meetings were when eddie was so desperate for a new host he just tried to kill anyone so sols idgaf attitude has already stuck… but this is my beautiful world…

In my beautiful world dizzy introduces them through a door and they get beers and bemoan life together every so often. Perhaps kick the shit out of each other for catharsis (whatever fuck it give in to your brain telling you to tear the other guy to shreds- youre both kinda immortal weapons. It probably feels pretty good.) the natural eddie jealousy of how come u as a weapon get a family. And sol badguy kicking his ribs to pieces going idfk go make one. All that shit. Not that eddie has ribs but its the thought that counts. Maybe theyre zatos. Idk.

[recusantchicky]

irl pol tw

i'm adamantly anti the read of sote that it's about "the cycle of violence" because 1: that's a story that sucks and i hate and 2: it's abuse apologism, not the empathetic nuance ppl want to act like it is.

it sequesters the crime into the victim who had to have deserved it anyway and they are the one who is broken and needs to be run out or corrected to fix the problem because challenging power itself can't be allowed, because then someone else can challenge *ME* and that's not fair or legal and social order dissolves!!

people are not compelled to genocide because they were genocided. the "timely and topical comparison" with isrl bcming the nazis isn't "cycle of violence" "hurt people hurt people sora" shit my friends.

it IS a cogent comparison but because isrl is filled with american xtian evangelists who just want to murder people for fun as part of the great western colonization project that has destroyed the world to extract juicy juicy sap from the spilled blood and burned trees of innocent people just trying to live.

like the HOLOCAUST, people were CONCENTRATED into a TARGET ZONE and KILLED EN MASSE BY PURGING FLAME.

you walk in with your eyes showing you are a fucking baby sniper tank rolling over people still alive driver and go "see how bad they are? they threw rocks at me. they organized to kill me."

people are scrambling back and forth to justify frenzy as fine actually to make the hornsent the badguys in the abyssal woods but it's fine when marika did it, i mean, it burns away soul. even torrent was afraid.

but marika was using soul burning flame against those who were not willing to enter her tree simulation. if i can't use you, i will annihilate you. nothing is sacred and the human soul is dead so we're quite fine and happy with droning sick babies from space so we get ocean side condo property but if you really don't know: that's fucking evil.

you aren't about life and love if you're willing to do that to someone just because they aren't you. you're evil actually. i know i can't change people's hearts if they think that any amount of burning babies is worth theirs getting into a good school and having the best brand of shoes or whatever but if you want a good world for your children you should want a world in which no children are burned.

[dumbassalex]

Yeah the McFarlanes art is definetly an aquired taste (i had my own issues going through it due to the art), i think the best looking human character he does is Mary Jane, but god his Peter is...something.

I feel like overall it isn't a bad story, it tackles the idea of how media can cause general panic and paranoia, how people resort to violence first chance they get, the corrupt authorities and how they often hide monsters, the struggle of reporters trying to write the truth but also wanting to write great stories that gets them the front page and alot of sales and money.

And overall i like Logan in this book, he's angry because not only is there another Wendigo, one that's a target of a monster hunt due to prejudice and exoectations of seeing a "monster" with a body of a decomposing child, but also because the townsfolk is killing dozens and dozens of innocent animals due to mass hysteria.

But yeah, his voice isn't perfect because...90s.

There is one BIG issue with this team-up tho...Peter genuinely is useless and does jack-shit through the whole 5 issues, he hides because "people can't see Spider-Man at the spot Peter Parker went to work to in Canada", fails and convincing people they're wrong about the whole story and Wendigo, doesn't really stop anything, Logan solves the mystery, Logan finds the badguy, Logan stops Wendigo, Logan stiches Wendigo up, LOGAN moves the plot forward while Peter is trying to peacefully work through the case while missing crucial details and doesn't do a single important thing for the plot to move forward.

Fact of the matter is that this is a Wolverine story that Todd propably didn't get the go-ahead to write and so he made it a Spider-Man team-up in his Spider-Man run while making Peter fucking useless.

Sci, have you read Todd McFarlanes "Perceptions" arc in Spider-Man from 1991, it's a 5 issue arc of Peter and Wolverine teaming up and looking for Wendigo and i was wondering how you felt about it if you read it?

i recognised it immediately from the first cover - that's an ass i don't forget.

i'll be real - todd mcfarlane might be my least favourite spider-man artist, ever. not for the way he draws spidey, naw. i love the way he draws spidey - but - man should never be allowed to draw human faces, ever.

i might barf too, peter. i might barf too.

i remember trying to read this one, unsuccessfully, because every single panel just reminds me how much i hate the 90s.

this man's mask? ridiculous.

i tried reading it again, @dumbassalex beloved, but i can't do it. mcfarlane's art is just far too off-putting for me. i've skimmed it - but i can't look at those pages for more than 5 seconds. hurts my eyes. a– oH MY GOD his HAIR is even more ridiculous.

dear... god... i hate the 90s...

from what i get from the writing, i don't really like it either. logan's a little too emotional, and peter – eh, he's a little annoying.

"i don't know why he's such a goody two-shoes" i read in a 12-year-old's voice.

yeah this wolverine is not the same emotionally mature guy we read in spider-man vs wolverine a few years prior. no sir.

i think that's the thing that grates me about both of their voices in this book - they sound like children pretending to be gruff grizzled adult men.

that's what a lot of stuff from the 90s sounds like to me. like they want to sound adult but it's actually like. what a kid thinks an adult would say. i think all comics in the 90s would be improved by being dramatically read by 10 year olds putting on their best batman voice

[zeravmeta]

since guilty gear characters never stay dead/gone im making up my own dlc plotline where after strive bedman and i-no ended up in the underworld hill where izuna is chilling after which when both of them are asking why they aren't dead izuna is like "oh well you're technically not human anymore so instead of death you dont really die when killed so youre like me now welcome to yokai furry limbo you have your choice of fox ears or cat ears" and when izuna gets the full story of what happened while he was gone he IMMEDIATELY ubers himself to the real world because not only has sol lost his gear powers but he also got a girlfriend and izuna needs to tap that before sol commits and since he needs wingmen he forcibly drags i-no and bedman out of their depressive spiral for the sickest grandpa yaoi roadtrip ever. they get caught on grainy 7-11 camera footage after which this leads to an incredibly huge comedy of errors where the pwab is trying to catch two worldwide war criminals and the weird furry grandpa (who they dont recognize as izuna because its funny) who keep evading capture through unknown means (izuna just keeps getting lost), axl keeps chasing them because the last time he spoke with i-no she was in a suicidal godhood kick and he just wants to make sure his bestie is ok (he meets with and like tentatively joins happy chaos who also wants whats best for i-no but axl is ready to pull the trigger piglet him at every moment, where happy is too thrown by the idea of saving i-no when shes right fucking there -points at megumi-), throw in robovenom getting accidentally involved as unintentional accomplices where bedman is forcibly adopted and drops his reddit style 'im not owned!!' cadence because robo ky is far more annoying and venom is embarrassingly flaming, which in itself also means that baiken delilah and anji (and therefore his boy best friend chipp) get involved because now they think that robovenom fucking graverobbed and kidnapped bedman. the moment izuna reaches sol he sees him having a fighting yaoi moment with asuka, at which in the same moment everyone breaks into sol's little cabin in the woods including sin and ram where sin is introducing everyone to his sort of grandpa/uncle. sol sees everyone enter his house and the sheer indignation makes not the flame of corruption or the scale of juno but a new weird 3rd thing appear inside him so now he's a gear again, which DOUBLES his anger and now sol badguy the guilty gear kicks everyone out into the rain dlc over daisuke you have my number call me

[ilikelookingatthings]

The things that irritate me about Gabriel

For one....this guy’s plan is logical.

His wife got sick due to using the peacock miraculous where even with the book thye couldn’t figure out a cure. 

The guardian’s did not exist so he didn’t have professionals he can go to and he does not know about master fu. He feels the only way to save his wife is using the Wish so he needs the ladybug miraculous and the blackcat miraculous. So to get them to be activated he pretends to be a villian to create a threat that would force them to be activated(a.k.a stoneheart) so they could come out of hiding. his plan had been to get the ring and earings after that first time so he hadn’t actually planned for harrasing paris in the long term. and because he is playing villian he feels he can’t just ask for help because why wold they help someone who caused stoneheart.

he also has a set up where he made sure everyone knew he was the badguy in charge so people wouldn’t blame the akuma victims. Gabe also knows if he wins he can just reverse all the damage and set free his akuma victims and if he loses then ladybug will fix all the damage and the victims with her miraculous. So Gabe has a illusion at least that no one is seriousky getting hurt. It does not excuse what he is doing but from a logical standpoint his villian plan makes sense where he would not see the real danger since he knows what he wants is to save his wife and not take over the world. Even the missing mom theory implies its a opening for when they fix the mom to return.

Its frusterating because while it makes complete and utter sense for the city and the heros to fear and doubt hawkmoth because hawkmoth never tells them what he wants the miraculous for, and what he is willing to do to get them is really messed up so its undertsandable to assume worse case scenerios. But rather than pure evil its frusterating human for him to justify what he was doing as he had a reason to at least think no one was seriously getting hurt or in real danger.

And considering to use his powers he has to amplify his own negative emotions and connects to someone else with negative emotions and acts like he understads and supports them...so weirdly there is a parallel where both Gabe and akumas have justified emotiojs for why they are upset...but juts both end up trying to confront those issues in emotion based without logic ways. it twists it a bit were they don’t understand its not going to get them what they really want.

there a implication that Gabe using his miraculous for selfish reasons and amplifying hsi own emotions like taht all the time is making himself less and less focused and while also hyper fixated on his goal. there has been hints that Gabe is making himself worse and was not always like this.

Gabe IS terrible as a person no doubt...but him wanting to save his wife IS a understandable motive and isn’t evil in of itself. She is the mom of Adrien and clearly better at emotions....Gabe SHOULD steo up and be there for Adrien but Gabe thinks he is doing this FOR Adrien and the family because adrien would be better off with his mom being around. and he hadn’t actually planned for it to go on this long and we did see him feel guilt from hiding where the mom was from Adrien.

and through the lens he wants to save hid mom...alot of the time when he is being a deliberate Dick he is doing so with the idea to save teh mom by causing a akuma. On one hand that is fucked up on so many levels deliebrately messing with someone to create an akuma where he takes advantage of those emotions...on the other is does raise the implication Gabe isn’t alway naturally a asshat.

There HAVE been signs that Gabe does genuinely care for Adrien and others sometimes. his worry in startrain. him helping nathalie over going after the miraculous. How he tried to stop nathalie from continuing to be the peacock. Him bragging about his son to ladybug when hsi son was out of the room. him actually being impressed when chat ripped him a new one. How he did let people stay for teh christmas party and gabe had gone down to meet adrien for christmas eventually even if it took a bit. and gabe worry about adrien after collector and Gabe did own up that Gabe was in the wrong and he hasn’t taken adrien out of school since and admited some of his issues to adrien after collector. He did let adrien go to school. and did let adrien go exploring the city in shanghai. Gabe also was very undertsanding when mari returned the mircaulous book, not only answering questions but acknowledging it was brave of her to come forward and he didn;t shout at her about it. even agreeing to not tell adrien like mari had asked and answered Mari’s question on the book. Gabe did let adrien go to the music festival in the end. and Gabe did want the mom about the mom with adrien in the end. 

It doesn;t change that the other bad aspects overpower these moments as we HAVE seen worst case scenerio gabriel in those alternate futures where he akumatizes his kid after finding out he is chat andhow he messed iwth adrien’s love life. and gabe did basically act like it was dangerious for adrien to be outwhen gabe was the one making that danger. and everyone time we get a good moment with gabe potentially they find a way to give a worst moment to counter act it or  a different worst motivate at time.

but the thing that frusertates me the most is the show treating gabe as just a simple bad man most of the time. I LIKE the focus being on him being bad...and heck even bad people can care about people...but its like they try to stomp out any potential nuance at times...which I wouldn;t mind so much if they had more expliantions for why gabe was getting even worse...like him using all those miraculouses all the time or a sie effect from using the butterfly the way he was.

He has teh simple the undertsandable motive but sometimes it feels like they make him worst and more careless in otherways that muddy up that motive,...dude literlaly almsot cuased world war 3 when he messed around in newyork!

Now I don;t mind him not being the most senstaive toward other people...this is actually a slight parallel he has with marinette who when she has a goal can sometimes forget to factor in other people’s feelings properly even mari is clearly a better person.

but if they are going to make him a worse and worse person and put some set ups abot side effects of unworhy peple with miraculouses! then USE it and connect it properly.

Sometimes villians are just bad and honestly gabe does deserve to go to jail at this point. heck it is ALL too easy for the fandom to argue adrien should just throw gabe in the trash and feel nothing....but its frusterating as hell when he has all the buiding blocks of more nuance to him lingering around all the time...and espeically when he is a darkmirror to Marinette. and the theme aspect when it comes to akumas is that akumas are people who are lashing out and hurting but lashing out for help in the wrong ways.

Gabe is literally someone who’s motive is understandable and he didn’t really have other options to fall back on to get other help but maybe if he asked for helpthe guardians or others would have found a alternative by now. But Gabe thinks no one is going to help him and is stuck on his one idea on how to fix things.

I Hate him...but I’m so frusterated that the show basically gives me almost no room but to hate him. like the ‘right’ move is just for him to give up and let his wife die. We don’t even get to morally wonder about maybe it could be worth it as a tradeoff somewhere as instead of there being a specific trade off..like someone else going into a coma so she can come out of it...they literally just have the world impload and get rewritten. I can’t even fully tell if he knows thats the risk of the wish or not or if he thinks they are just trying to scare him off about it.

Adrien’s strongest mark is seeing that when people do mean things...most of the time its coming from some place of pain or misunderstanding that it will get them what they want...like Chloe with her mom and dad and her not really finding kindness coming naturally. and how if you don;t give people a chance to change then they are just going to double down.

I definitely dislike lila but we don’t actually know anything about her homelife so its not completely disproven that her lying doesn’t come from something seeking attention and adrien wasn’t wrong that Mari trying to out lila the way mari was originally going about it would make lila feel cornered and lash out back(and yes we know Mari agreed to leave Lila alone but mari never actually told lila that mari was going to let it go...even though it IS on Lila for jumping to conclusions and then later for choosing to continue to dislike when mari actually meant the olive branch that time).

Even Felix was taking out his frustration over his dad dying and using adrien as a target to vent despite it being gabe who made it so adrien couldn’t come.

Gabe even has a interesting backstory with how he built his brand from the groundup and he feels like new money even if he acts like old money sometimes. He has so many parallels with marinette that no one really brings up because they also right Gabe so terrible that no one would want to compare the two because Mari is clearly the better person.

I mean I know the man needs to be incompetent enough they can milk him as a villian for this long and he can escalate so we can worry....but damn it I wish there was something to work with to increase the tradgedy...because sometimes you do just get a trash parent like chloe’s mom for example...but Gabe feels different from that because his plan made logical sense...but what do we get,...astric just doubling down on him being trash! without any the parallels between gabe and marinette explored?

[guiltygearofficial]

How did each of the Guilty Gear characters manage during tax season?

Sol evades his taxes. This takes no effort on his part, since he legally does not even exist and no tax collector is gonna look for a man named “Sol Badguy”.

Ky Kiske, Leo Whitefang and Daryl all do not need to pay taxes, due to being the kings of illyria. Ky however, still donates a chunk of his salary to be used to help homeless orphans. Leo donates exactly 1$ more of his salary than Ky does. Daryl uses tax payer money to buy pudding.

Johnny and the entire jellyfish pirates don’t pay taxes because they’re pirates. Pirates usually don’t pay taxes, unless they’re really uncool pirates that work for the government (See The East India Trading Company and Privateers from Real Life)

The assassin guild used to pay taxes back in the day, until Zato decided it’d be cheaper to just kill any tax collector that shows up at their door because they literally murder people for money already, may as well murder people to not lose money

Chipp does not need to pay taxes due to being the president. He has however been seen leaving the office with a comedically large bag of cash with a $ sign on it to meet with the ghost of Masashi Kishimoto to comission new chapters of Loruto (sequel to Boruto)

Faust diagnosed himself as allergic to taxes so he can’t do them, for health reason.

Axl Low tends to mysteriously disappear into different timelines during tax season, only to reappear later. He has been doing this for 200 years.

Whenever tax collectors show up at Kliffs place he tells them to fuck off, taxes are for people that haven’t fought Justice 17 times and for people that are still alive.

Testament lives in the middle of nowhere. The IRS would try to tax them if they actually knew where they lived.

Justice does not pay taxes because it is very hard to tax someone trying to wipe out humanity. Not that the IRS didn’t try, mind you. Their tax collectors simply got incinerated.

Baiken has been evading taxes for years now, it’s why she avoids the colony. Her entire mailbox is filled with nothing but warnings that she owes them money.

Anji does his taxes wrong, on purpose, to cause more paperwork for the people processing his tax report.

Jam has refused to pay any taxes since the IRS took more than 87% of the reward money she got for defeating Dizzy

Dizzy doesn’t have to pay taxes due to the combined reasons of being legally nonexistent and being married to the guy who runs half of europe.

For similar reasons, Sin, Ramlethal and Elphelt do not have to pay taxes.

Bridget doesn’t have to pay taxes because she’s 12. Lucky bastard.

Slayer is rich people and we all know rich people don’t pay taxes.

Zappa tries to pay taxes, but gets posessed by the ghost of Ayn Rand, spectre of anarcho capitalism, who insists that taxation is theft and eats Zappas tax return.

Robo-Ky was built by the IRS to collect taxes. You may say “Dear Daisuke Ishiwatari, creator of the Guilty Gear Series, incredibly handsome game developer and loremaster supreme, but Robo-Ky was built by the Post War Administration Bureau, not the IRS!” Well, I have news for you Dear Gearster, The IRS and the PWAB are one and the same.

Answer declared the “Answer doesn’t have to pay taxes” law on the 27th of June 2187, making it legally required for him not to pay taxes. He instead spends that money on more frogs.

Raven and I-no have both flirted with enough tax collectors that the IRS has chosen to simply not send people after them anymore because it’s honestly not worth it.

Potemkin pays his taxes because he’s an upstanding citizen of Zepp and the only character on the roster that actually pays taxes

[digimonloving]

Thoughts on how Digimon keeps using the Royal Knights and Yggdrasil as badguys?

(I mean, I kinda thought for a season or two it'd make sense and be a bit of a twist since the Royal Knights aRE supposed to be the sort of "good guys" of the Digital World, but they're also very strict w/ how they go about things and all have their own thoughts on how to interpret Yggdrasil's Will which is also a whole bs too fhsdfh

I could also see why Yggdrasil might b like 'we gotta deal w/ humans RIGHT NOW' b/c, well, sometime things that happen in real world mess w/ Digital World and it's just a bit of bs sometime dfhsdf

Anyway. In some ways it can make sense, again cause all the RKs have their own ways of how they go about the Will of Drasil, but clearly some are less stubborn and wanna get along w/ ppl more than others so dfhsdfhs

it can b a toss up at times depending on how well they're used too. Anyway.

I sometimes enjoy it, but only if it makes sense as to what the fuck going on in the Digital World dhsdf

[popculturebuffet]

Darkwing Duck Quadruple Feature! (Beauty and the Beet, Whiffle While You Work, Jurassic Jumble, Something Fishy)

Welcome back! It’s been a bit since I visited St. Canard and my march to watching Just Us Justice Ducks by watching one episode, with the exception of Megavolt the first chronological appearances of, each member of the Justice Ducks and Fearsome Five. The Megavolt exception was so I could, by comission, cover the one and only appearance of the OTHER Negaduck if you were curious.So far besides Negsy and Volty, i’ve covered both of Morgana’s first chronological episodes, Liquidator’s and (SIgh) Gizmoducks. But with only 6 left to go.. I put the seires on hiatus to work on ride of the three cabs and my minty fresh retrospective of life and times. At the TIME it didn’t seem like a bad idea, I could get to this any time and what not.. but in hindsight.. yeah putting an almost finished project on hold till two much larger projects, that at the time of this review have 10 and 13 installments left, WHILE also starting two more projects... was not my best move, especially since I have a comission, and an episode needed to properly review that comission AND a valentine’s day episode to review.. all of which come AFTER Just Us Justice Ducks chronlogically and 2 of which involve Negaduck. So yeah I whiffed it bad on this one and this mini-marathon is my way of fixing that, finsihing up the last few episodes before the big event. The episode i’ve waited almost a decade to watch and one of the most loved in the series history: Just Us Justice DUcks, which is coming up next week. Then LIfe and Times will be right back where it was and I promise to get that out weekly. But yeah with logisitcs out of the way and 4 episodes to go, I don’t know how to go slow so let’s get dangerous shall we?

Beauty and the Beat:The Misplaced Batman the Animated Series Villian

We open with one of the first Darkwings I watched via my old Darkwing Duck DVDS, rewatched a while back and easily one of my faviorite episodes and the first apperance of my faviorite Darkwing Duck Villian, though Liquidator and now Quackerjack are giving him a run for his money. But yeah I love Reggie and part of it is he’s something far diffrent than what Darkwing normally fights. 

While he still fits in with the Rouges gallery: someone with either powers or a good gimmick whose intresting, engaging and most importantly to this show, Reggie is still diffrent in that he’s an inherently tragic figure. While the rest of the rouges have sympathetic qualities theier still not really good people: Quackerjack chose to lash out at what drove him out of buisness instead of starting over again, Megavolt is your standard wants money bad guy, and Liquidator was a massive asshole. And if you add in the other villians i’ve covered, Taurus Bulba was basically Marvel’s Kingpin as a bul and Splatter Phoenix while having a noble goal of funding her arts does so via framing an innocent child and stealing. They aren’t unsympathetic, some of them anyway, but they are still ruthless because they choose to be.  Reggie.. didn’t get that choice. We see from the start of this episode his life has just been being everyone elses punching bag: His boss dosen’t respect him, his cowowkers not only don’t respect him but actively bully him and only the newsest researcher has ever paid him the time of day much less told the two assholes, Gary and Larson, a nice shout out, to stop. And given I reviewed Wonder Woman 84 yesterday i’ts NICE to remember a version of a “geek becomes a supervillian’ story that’s.. actually good. This is basically the same sorry, a disrpsected scientest trnasforms and gets revenge.. just you know done right. 

And SOMEHOW Reggie’s life only gets worse as asshole one and asshole two sabotage his work, he gets fired and is forced to experiment on himself. While that’s a classic mad scientst and supervillian trope what’s notable is Reggie didn’t go immiedtly to world domination. He just wanted to cure world hunger and get some respect. He just wanted to be treated like a human being for once. Instead he got turned into a plant and despite this being a miracle.. he gets MOCKED by gary and larson and runs away, feeling like a freak. And since after that the transformation has clearly made his brain unstable.. he goes from a sweet, put upon guy who just wanted help to people.. to an obsessive plant monster.. who still just needs HELP. He needs therapy and a warm blanket and to turn his life around. And his motivation.. is just not being alone. While his kdinapping of the one scientest who liked him, and he assumes has feelings for him, is bad, and selfish.. it’s clear by that point Reggie is just not himself anymore. He’s Bushroot now. He’s lost himself and were this a diffrent show maybe he could’ve gotten the help he needed and some empathy.  But what adds to the tragedy is Darkwing himself. This episode really showcases one of Darkwing’s biggest weaknses: his inablity to see crime other than in black and white terms. To him it’s just a game of heroes and villians. Nothing more nothing less. Villians can become heroes, as he hopes for Morgana, but to him there’s just good guys ,him and bad guys, everyone breaking the law. For someone whose often seen as an outlaw himself.. he still can’t see things in any other terms. However instead of just being lazy writing... it’s a clever character quirk, at the center of this episode and our final one, as well as one that pops up a little in Stegmutt’s first apperance. It nicely parodies/deocnscruts the whole good guy badguy dynamic by making it clear that sometimes while the person may be doing bad things.. they have a reason for it and sometimes the law just dosen’t work. It’s something I do wish they’d dug into more but given this was more of a comedy, I get why they didn’t, but what they did with it is great and it adds to this episode tremendously: Darkwing just sees Reggie as another villian to stop and not as a very unstable man who needs his help, but also needs tobe stopped for his own good. It’s why this is such a good episode, besides some great comic set pieces: it has a really tragic and moving story that , with some tweaking woudln’t of been out of place in batman the animateds eires. It’s still a bit goofy in places, as it should be giving the show it’s in btu at i’ts heart it’s just a relaly godo really tragic supervillian origin story. 

Whiffle While You Work: The Saving Grace of an Okay Episode This one’s more of a mixed bag. For the good... Quackerjack is fucking awesome. While I already loved him from the comics, I hadn’t met his more lightehearted tv counterpart yet.. but boy was he a delight. From his it’s play time catch phrase which despite being repeated a LOT never got bored to his really invenitve use of toys. While a vilian with a toy gimmick is not new, Toyman has been around for.. 80 years? Damn. I should do some Superman TAS episodes this year to commemerate that. Point is between him and the joker the gimmick isn’t “New” but Quackerjack still feels unique from using actual jacks, to a motorized hula hoop, to a GIANT CRYING BABY DOLL TO FLOOD A CITY. Jackie is just a delight every minute he’s on screen, and his motivation is solid: wanting to get revenge at the Whiffle Boy video game and i’ts insuing phenmonin and merchandise deals for squeezing him out of buisness. It makes him mildly symathetic enough to be intresting but not enough to override his terrible actions. He’s just fun to watch, and Micheal Bell is phenominal in the roll. easily one of my faviorite vilians thus far and it’s easy to see why he showed up quite a bit. 

Sadly the rest of the episode.. is not very intresting. It starts with your standard “Adult gets child away from the video game only to play it” plot which is belivieble, my dad was a gamer back during my childhood and probably still plays games ocasionally to this day. He fucking loved Starcraft, Ultima ONline, Super Metroid, Warcraft II and III.. and swearing. He really loved swearing at the games. And the idea of the episode isn’t bad, Drake is jealous that Gosalyn is in the limelight for once.. the issue  being a grown man competing with his own daughter just makes Drake really unlikeable. He at one point tries to use his parental authority to take her out of the contest, lies about being in the competition, and dosen’t apologize or learn enough to make up for his being a dick about this. THe episode really suffers from Launchpad not being around to be a buffer between the two and as ssuch it’s just uncomfortable. Hell Gos threatens to reveal Drake’s identity to .. someone.. but she still comes off sympathetic as when Drake presses her on it.. it’s very clear she made the threat on the spur of the moment out of hurt. 

Also the whole Whiffle Boy game craize extending to a city is delightfully batshit, and plausable given i’m pretty sure if nintendo could afford their own city we’d have it over in japan and for a video game episode in the 90′s, this one isn’t all that bad. It actually seems to get games on SOME level, and seems based more on an arcade game, which drake plays whiffle boy on at one point and the 80′s arcade competition craze, and since arcade comeptitions were still a huge thing in the 90′s, it’s very clear this si written by people who actually know what a video game is and don’t just fear it as some strange doodad their kids are into. Trust me I’ve been around animation so long this plot has become tiresome. So not a BAD episode, just held back by drake being written even more dickishly than usual.  P.S. there’s apparently an ultima level to the game.. so either Lord British is finally putting Chuckles down or someone needs to know what’s a paladin. 

Jurassic Jumble: Two Great One Shot Characters that Taste Great Together Well okay Segmutt does get one more episode but this is still his only episode on his own just like Neptuina next, so I count it well enough. Point is this episode is pretty good. It does have some weaknsses: It starts with Drake not beliviing Honker’s theory about a recent theft of acountants, one he’s only on the scene for because he happens to really need help with his taxes because, contrary to what Wesley Snipes thought, Superheroes still need to pay taxes. He dosen’t belive it’s dinosaurs.. he dosen’t belivie it’s dinosaurs despite the foot prints, honker being smart and HAVING FOUGHT A DOG MADE ENTIRELY OF WATER. 

I just get annoyed when superheros in a superhero universe don’t hav ea logical reason for dismissing something.. or random citizens.. it was fine if reptitous in the stan lee days because it’d been 20 years, at the time, since superheros were active and people can be stupid but it gets grating when someone says somethin’gs not possible in a superhero universe. Given we’re currrently dealing with an outgoing president who refuses to accept an election is real and his followers who think masks are a polical issue i’ts not exactly unrelasitic, dosen’t mean it’s enjoyable to read or watch. 

Still it works here because it splits the plot nicely and Gosalyn’s disbleif is less grating as she just wants it to be martians and dosen’t bully her friend or anything over it, just makes a few snyde remarks. The episode also wasn’t helped at first by the fact there’s a really reptitive bit where Darkwing bungies down to investigate the crook he thinks is responsible, but is actually just chilling at his minium security prison. It’s just not funny and takes up too much of the episode. But the episode picks up towards the second half when we meet our dinosaur: Stegmutt, a dumb but kind and friendly child like former janitor turned stegasaurs, whose unwittingly kidnapping people for his “friend” Dr. Fossil, the professor who turned him, and genuinely is not a bad soul and likes gosalyn and honker. He’s just clumsy and destructive and working for someone he dosen’t know is evil.  Speaking of which.. Dr. Fossil is really damn awesome and i’ts a shame he never came back in the comics or cartoon and hopefully Frank does him better in the reboot. Seriously he’s enjoyable, a bit nebbish but delightfully insane, deciding to wipe out all non dino life because he’s tired of getting panicked screams in the street and of all the dino merchandise like those puzzles with the pieces missing. He’ sjust delightfully nutty, with his love of saying bin bang boom and his having to put up with Stegmutt’s antics, as well as the whole joke that he TURNED HIMSELF INTO A DINOSAUR, yet gripes about being a dinosaur and acts like it’s humanity’s fault , balking when Gosalyn suggests he just.. turn himself back. Plus Ptetrodacytl’s are awesome so tha’ts a bonus. Seriously his showing up turns the episode from okay to fucking amazing. Seriously bring him back for the reboot.. and get Rich Fulcher to voice him. Seirously Bob Fossil as Dr. Fossil... it’s too perfect NOT to do casting gag wise, and he frankly perfectly fits the charcter down to the nasily voice. Plus Rich does voice acting quite a bit, so he’s already likely in Frank’s Rolodex. 

Stegmutt himself is also not too shabby, your standard child like moron, but he’s got a sweetness and niceness to him and we get some good gags like his habit of breaking off handles, his opening sodas with his tail and Fossil getting rid of him by telilng him to check if he left the bathroom light on...

And the climax with Darkwing.. turning.. into this

I don’t get it either but i’ts still a fun climax. Also forgot to mention Dr. Fossil can do that blow you away by flapping his wings thing Storm Eagle can do. Neat. All in all while not the series BEST outing, it has some flaws holding it back, it’s a damn fun one and one I highly recommend. Okay one more. 

Something Fishy: The Better Submariner This is a simple but good one: St. Canard beach has gotten trashy.. literally there’s trash everywhere. And while Drake is ambilent to it, Gosalyn is taking up the crusade to take out the trash and the garbage people... and gets her dad beaten up over it by dumping trash on some guys head but frankly, he deserved it.  Things go up a notch though when some sea creatures invade and .. clean up the beach and beat up darkwing. And while they destroy some property.. they aren’t exactly wrong? This is where that flaw I mentioned comes in though. Drake just.. can’t see things in shades of grey and insits he must be the good guy and whoevers doing this must be stopped.  However it becomes clear when we meet the antagonist that while her methods are wayy to extreme.. she’s in the right. Neputina is an awesome character, easily one of the series best and esaily horribly underulitized. She was a simple fish who thought a toxic waste barrel was a new friend.. and learned the hard way by becoming a sexy fish woman. Yeah I said it. But her motive is understandable thanks to her origin and just how BAD it’s gottne, with piles of trash all underwater and the laws Drake cites agianst this sort of thing not doing squat. It’s a nice take on the old enviornmental message , something I dreaded going in as it makes a valid point; sometimes diong things the “right” way isn’t enough.. but it still dosen’t justify harming innocent people in the process, as Nep’s ultimate plan to flood the city would.  Launchpad ends up being the voice of Reason as drake is too caught in his games of good guy bad guy to get Neptuina ISN’T a bad person, just one fed up with people hurting those she cares about. Neptuina is a unique villan in that unlike Morgana, who while having a sympathetic motive was out for herself, Stegmutt, who didn’t reailze he was on the wrong side, and Gizmoduck.. wellll

Neptuina.. is just misguided. She has the right idea but the wrong methods and Darkwing’s too stubborn to admit it.. but he’s also seen as in the wrong with Launchpad realizing DW just.. isn’t the good guy this time, but in the best scene of the episode talking Neptuina down by pointing out innocent people will get hurt. It’s a good, nuanced episode about envrionmetnalism with a throughly charasmatic and intrersting, acted wonderfully by Sussan Silo, antagonist. Neptuina is a better version of Marvel’s namor the submariner: she goes against humanity.. but I don’t want to punch her and dosen’t have one of her constnat character traits as “I want to bank your wife richards BANG YOUR WIFEEEEE”

So overall.. a good batch of episodes. Only Wiffle While You Work was all that weak, and even it had it’s charms and Quackerjack. It shows the series overall quality: even the just okay episodes here are still really fun to watch. It’s just a solid show overall and whie not without flaws is a classic to this day for a reason. Next week we’ll wrap this up with JUST US JUSTICE DUCKS! Until then stay safe and goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. 

[cryptidbutchh]

WELCOME TO MY THOUGHTS WHILE REWATCHING THE MCU IN TIMELINE ORDER: CAPTAIN MARVEL

wooshy blue magic and blood. how mysticy and unanswered it is

“wanna fight?” 💥P O W💥 also magic powers she cant use in every fight is a punch of bullshit. kill that dude, carol you dont need him >:T shapeshifting lizards are badguys. got it. also jude law is hot as hell

rescure mission. totally gonne get ambushed (update) FUCKING TOLD YOU IT WAS AN AMBUSH. NOW YALL LOST THE MAIN CHARACTER. WHO APPARENTLY LOST HER MEMORY. stupid lizard people

women airpilots fuck yeah! and possibly has a a girlfriend?? lesbian captain marval??——FUCK UP THEM LIZARDS. punch them in their stupid faces. fucking skRulL

BLOCKBUSTER

COULSONNN- FUURYY :D FIGHT BUT THIS TIME ON A TRAIN! +car crashes bc fury cant fuckinn drive. and apparently punching old ladys- SHES A IMPOSTOR. ew the shapeshifting is gross and horrifying. 6/10 do not recommend

awh stan lee, my heart hurts

of course car-coulson is a fake. next thing ya know a cat is gonna be some fucked up lizard. dead lizard man in a car is dead, yay. also more fuckedup techy shit and a old computer

ew gross perverted men, you steal his motorcycle. and alien autopsy is very ew. and old boss looking mf is also lizard how fucked are yall that you cant even trust the old boss looking guy?

“if toast is cut diagonally, i cant eat it.” yall heard it here first. fuck diagonally cut toast. photon blast go brrr

“everyone calls me fury.” thats gonna be important later on

this bastard got upset she had to lose the flannel she had on? shes gay. new info in the hall of records show one- old lady is a alien. and two- CAROL IS HUMAN AND TWAS ON EARTH

fury you mcfuck dont call in for backup. she has space blasters IN HER HANDS. thats someone you wanna fight??? old boss guy said nick. told yall it would be important

SPACE LESBIAN SAVES EARTH FRIEND FROM ALIEN LIZARD(NOT CLICKBAIT)

FLYING JET THINGY HELPS EM GO SEE CAROLS FORGOTTEN GIRLFRIEND! also HIDDEN CAT

“auntie carol” FUCKING FUCK. stupid child. carol and mariah are inlove yourhonor. and i will die on this hill

awkard neighbor interactions. blegh. JESUS FUCK THE LIZARD IS IN THE HOUSE. lizard men good??? good guys bad???? HA THE ALIENS ARE SCARED OF CATSKABSKHSSKJS

what the fuck is a flerkin?? why is the cat called a flerkin????? SPACE BATTLE WITH THE WOOSHING AND PEWS oh they got fucking merked and crashed. losers

GOODS GUYS ARE BAD I KNEW IT. LIZARD PPL GOOD I WAS FOOLED, WRONGED, AND BAMBOOZLED. carol fucking shot a space engine and got blued by magic shit. ORIGIN STORY COMPLETE SHE HAS BECOME THE ENGINE ITSELF

this is getting sad. i feel bad for ragging on the lizard people but at the same time HA HOMELESS. mariah go! yell your space- nOT BESTFRIEND NONKSJKSKSKS. JUDE LAW BAD. LIZARD GOOD

NOREX YOU STUPID LIZARD. HOW HARD IS IT TO FIGURE OUT ORBIT SHIT COMPARED TO CORDS ON EARTH🙄 talos shut the fuck up about the stupid cat. its a C A T !

floating space cat is adorable. 10/10

SPACE CUBE! TESSERACT! in a fucking tin lunchbox- bellowing call thingy to reconnect with lizard wife and child. beautiful moment in the movie right now 😌

ITS A TRAP. okay not really but THEY FOUND YALL FCKING RUN. DONT THROW THE CAT YOU MONSTERS. “jOg thE olD mEmoRy” shut the fuck up.

DONT PUT A MUZZEL ON THE CAT YOU WHORES WHAT THE FUCK IS A FLERKIN ANYWAY

gas-lighting, manipulating fuckers of a alien race deserve kicks to the teeth. stand up to them carol, you got this. KICK THEIR ASS.

all lesbians glow. she-ra, captain marvel, korra, etc. they’re that badass. HOLY SHIT THE CAT HAS FUCKIJG CUTHULU IN ITS MOUTH JEUSS CHRIST. “im trusting you, not to eat me.” YOU BETTER HAVE MORE THEN TRUST, FURY

GOOSE YOU BEAUITFUL OCTOPUS MOUTH CAT GOOD FOR YOU EATING THE GLOWY CUBE

im just a girl playing in the background while danvers kicks the kree ass is amazing.

“do you have the thing?” “flerkin kittu ate it.”

bombs go brrrr. why is minerva so pretty its unfair. space ships also go brrr

FLYING SPACE GAY, HELL YES. HELL NO RONAN SHOWED UP. SHE STOPPED A WHOLE ASS SPACE NUKE FROM HITTING EARTH AND MAKING IT BLOW UP ALL THE OTHER ONES

“take her down” she just took out all your fucking warheads, do ya think ships would work????. “return to the jump point” COWARD

intense stand off. jude stfu you’re a badguy. you dont get a moment for a teaching lession.

“SHOW ME YOU CAN-“ BOOM. get blasted bitch. “you cant do this.” she will take that bet and win

FURY LOST HIS EYE TO THE FUCKING CAT SLSGSKHSSKHSKSS

intergalaxy pager! range can last a couple galaxies! now only $499.99! for emergencies ONLY. no out of town calls

“so is it true? the kree burned out your eye because you refused to give up the tesseract?” fury just tell em the cat clawed your eye out and stop being embarassed :/

NEXT MOVIE: IRON MAN :D

[helenofsimblr]

The Old Sonic Vs Mario Debate.

I can remember this as a child. Frankly there is no debate, Sonic is just fucking better. Let me highlight why. Firstly, Mario fought staple badguys like this:

And sonic fought badguys like this:

Metal motherfuckers with floating metal spikes round them that could only be killed by perfect timing of your flash shield!

Then lets get onto a typical boss fight. So this is the kind of boss that challenged Mario:

A turtle in a bad stripy tank-top flailing its arms about wildly as Mario jumps on him 3 times.

Sonic by contrast, gets to fight armour plated 20 foot tall walking death robots with fucking wolverine claws on each hand! 

Mario fights because he wants to shag this:

Fair enough Mario, I see the attraction. She’s a like some of the sims around here, she’s “Soooooo cuuuute” 

So Mario wants to keep his girlfriend safe, in order to get laid. Sonic by contrast fights to stop these: 

The chaos emeralds. AKA the infinity stones of the sonic universe being utilised for evil by his main adversary who builds all these death machines and basically stops him from taking over the universe.

Dr Robotnik or “Eggman” as he’s sometimes known, true he’s just a nebulous looking puny human, but, he has an IQ of 300, he is evil to the bones, and most importantly... like any other would be evil ruler of the galaxy he of course, has his own version of a Death Star:

King Bowser by comparsion, is a violent narcisstic beast that can somehow string a sentence together, and this dullard was actually able to trick Mario using nothing more than a wooden cut out of Princess Peach in one of the games! 

He looks like the bastard offspring of a hells angel crocodile and a tortoise who then found the girl from brave and scalped her sticking her hair on himself. He looks terrifying sure, but, he doesn’t have his own death star, he has... 

A very unhydrodynamic submarine with an incredibly poor surface trim. 

So Sonic’s main villain is basically Thanos, and Mario’s is a hells angel looking crocodile turtle hybrid thing...

This is why Sonic is better than Mario. 

That is all.

[pulpwriterx]

RESURRECTION: CHAPTER 4- A GAME OF THRONES

Links to previous chapters

Chapter Three

Chapter Two

Chapter One

CHAPTER 5: A GAME OF THRONES

(Author’s Note: Not a crossover. Title based on an observation Ben Solo makes about Skywalkers and the Galaxy)

When Leia sat up with a start, freeing herself from a heavy white sheet, she knew Ben must be alive.

She walked into a huge celebration of victory that she was distracted from only by her thoughts of him.

It also became a celebration that the reports of the General’s death had been greatly exaggerated.

In the midst of all of it, Leia kept looking for Chewie.

When he picked her up in a big Wookiee bear hug, howling for joy, she knew she was really alive.

And she felt better knowing he was there with her.

“Ben did this, Chewie. I’m alive because Ben is alive. We have to find him?”

Chewie cocked his head to the side, questioningly.

“Why? Because I need to know what he’s up to.”

***

More than anyone else could be, Leia was sure that her son was up to something.

Leia heard Rey’s heartbreaking story about Ben’s passing, and the poor girl cried and cried in her arms.

She tried to tell Rey that if she was alive that meant Ben was, too, but Rey was adamant.

She had seen him die.

Most people thought Rey's story about Ben’s alleged passing was romantic.

Not Leia.

What was it that Arkanian pain in the ass Armitage Hux often said about her son?

Leia ruefully remembered.

The man originally known as Ben Solo is an amoral, charismatic merchant of dreams. If you want your dreams he will sell them to you. Or if you prefer your nightmares you can have those, too.

She had been trying, for the past decade and change, to remember the Ben she knew.

Ben had been a sweet, kind, funny, little boy.

He had a goofy smile, and a ready laugh and she really didn’t see where Han got that whole dark, ancient eyes thing.

He was quirky, and weird, but in an endearing way, and she found lovable in his gangly awkwardness.

But even as a child he had a dark side, all you had to do was ask the boys who bullied him, and they would tell you through pulped noses and broken teeth why they had stopped.

He had moods, and Leia suspected that Ben also had mystical visions.

But it was only when he reached his terrible teens that things began to go downhill.

Ben Solo had left the Jedi Temple, twice, to pursue his father’s vocation, and he had excelled at being a ruthless pirate.

The second time, he was suspended for breaking his vow of chastity, multiple times, with the equally black-hearted daughter of an Arkanian warlord.

Hux, her Force null cousin, had been sent to keep her out of trouble.

He failed.

At the meeting with his Master, Ben had listened to everything Luke said, and then replied?

“Well, Uncle Luke, you’d better kick me out, then, because after being a virgin for twenty years, all I want out of life is Hela Darkstar's gorgeous ginger cunt. You can’t convince me that hokey religions and ancient weapons are better than fucking. Nothing is better than fucking. Except maybe crushing your enemies, having them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their kinsmen. Can I go back to space, now?”

Han was so proud.

Leia had been appalled.

After he had dismissed Ben, Han and Luke had laughed over what Ben had said for about fifteen minutes, but Leia didn’t see the humor in it, or the fact that Ben was going back to Anchorhead with his father as soon as Han could stop expressing his relief that Ben had finally got a girlfriend.

At the time, she had though that a pirate’s life was the worst thing that could happen to him, and she made Han send him back to Luke after Ben’s suspension was over.

The third time was the charm on that one.

In hindsight, it would have been better to let him go back to space with his father, and stay there.

But Ben had that option.

After Luke had tried to behead him, Ben could have left, found his father, went back to space and never had anything to do with the Jedi, or the Sith, again.

But, and unlike his Uncle, Ben wanted to play the game of thrones with his mother.

She was willing to make a place for him in the governing of the Galaxy, in time, and with maturity, but Ben Solo didn’t want to wait for his piece of pie.

So he became Kylo Ren, and threw in his lot with the Sith.

That was only his first move.

And killing Snoke was his third.

Leia believed that Ben really was in love with Rey, but it was awfully expedient for his purposes for that to have happened.

That was his second move.

But a funny thing happened as he shed Kylo Ren, the mask Ben Solo wore, on his way to become Ben Solo, Hero of the Resistance.

To kill the badguys, win the day, and get the girl.

He died.

But that was only a temporary setback for a Skywalker.

Skywalkers had many death and many births, and lived many lives, in-between.

Ben’s hunger for his victory, and the spoils of it, and for Rey were intense enough to bring him back from the other side, and her with him.

That meant his power was growing; that he was almost as strong in the Force as she was.

No, it wasn't romantic.

How had Ben managed to court Rey, and win her love when they were enemies, and all their encounters ended just short of murder?

It was something, the bond between Rey Palpatine and Ben Solo, but romantic wasn’t the word that came to Leia’s mind.

Terrifying was more like it.

She knew that Ben would come for Rey, and now that the man she loved was Ben Solo and not Kylo Ren, Rey would welcome him with open arms.

Leia was glad that Ben had returned to the light, and that he was alive, but she was still worried.

Hela Darkstar seemed to be out of the picture, but Leia had thought that in the past.

Ben was more sentimental about his women than his father had been; Hela was bound to take a part in Ben’s story again, sometime.

That and Leia knew that Kylo Ren was the mask that Ben Solo wore, and she suspected that Ren had been a means to the end of becoming the Galactic hero Ben Solo now was.

Galactic heroes often end up becoming galactic rulers.

Leia found would be happy going back to the Solo empire on the Outer Rim, to be a Pirate King.

It was, she knew, the best thing for him, and not the worst.

Still she remembered what he had said to her on the remains of the Death Star, as he thought he lay dying.

Don’t think I’m going anywhere, General. I know the game we play in this Galaxy. It’s all a game of thrones. And if you’re not a Skywalker? You don’t get to sit on the throne.

And as for Rey?

Leia could have told her about all the things she was going to discover, good and bad, if she went off with Ben.

But when she had been about Rey's age and Han had been about Ben’s age?

Leia knew she wouldn’t have listened, either.

That night, Leia’s rival had heralded his arrival with the presence in the infirmary of a 5 man squad  suffering from various scrapes, contusions, scratches, shiners, fat lips, bloody noses and even a nasty human bite.

They had snuck up on a really big guy while he was pissing on a rock in a deep cave on Exegol. A man the size and breadth of a short Wookiee, and he must have thought they were attacking him, because he fought back so fiercely they let him have an X-Wing.

These were compounded by reports of a barefoot naked man in a blast helmet wandering around camp, looking for something.

What did that mean?

That Ben was back in the game and he didn’t need a weapon, or even pants, t play it?

The last report came from Finn and Poe, who burst in to the command tent without knocking.

“General! There’s some man in Rey's tent and he’s assaulting her like a raging Wookiee! You can hear her screaming all over the place! And he won’t let me save her!” Finn told her

“She doesn’t need saving! He’s full of shit, General. Finn's just jealous because it’s not him in Rey’s tent. Did you know Ben was with Rey?”

“My son, Ben? How do you know it’s him?”

“I recognize his voice. We, uh, I worked with him and Han. Before the war.”

“That guy is still a fucking animal! You wouldn’t believe the stuff he's screaming at the top of his lungs! I think we should check on Rey, General. Make sure she’s OK.” Finn insisted.

“Yes, I would believe it. Alright, Finn. If you really think Rey is in trouble? We'll go find out.”

It was just conceivable that Finn might be right, and Poe might be wrong.

Call him Kylo or call him Ben, Leia suspected that to get what he wanted, her ruthless pirate son was capable of goddamn anything.

Rey was the brightest light in the Galaxy, the only Jedi of her generation.

Claiming her just might be Ben’s next move.

***

Ben just laughed, and turned his head, sparing his mother having to see the face he made when he shot his wad.

Deeply embarrassed, Leia slammed the door shut and locked it.

Ben was still laughing.

It made her think of a time when Ben was about seven or eight, and Han hadn’t locked their bedroom door, and Ben had walked in without knocking.

And caught them in the act.

“DAD! This is so gross! Cantcha take Mom someplace else to do that? I live here!”

“So do we, kid! Get out of this room and lock that door, Ben! You know you’re not allowed to just walk in here without knocking!”

“It’s still gross.” Ben said, and left.

Locking the door before he shut it.

Han had neither been ashamed or missed a stroke.

And he saw no reason for them to stop, either.

Ben had just put the radio on, and later, when Leia was too deeply embarrassed to breathe, Han had put his pants on and gone out and made Ben’s lunch.

“Dad, did you do something weird to Mom? How come she’s hiding in your bedroom?”

“Most people get embarrassed about shit like that, kiddo.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Eat your lunch.”

It didn’t bother either of them.

Born without shame.

For the first time since she had realised he was alive, no, for the first time in a decade and change, Leia began to think of Ben as her son, only.

Not an opponent, or a rival.

Not as an enemy, or a symbol.

As her son, Ben.

He knew she would be embarrassed, so even though he thought it was funny, he turned his head and laughed.

What am I going to do with him? How can I just be his mother, now? All those scars, holy mother Force, what did they do to him? 

Is there anything left of the boy I knew, in that man I just saw?

“Is she OK?” Poe demanded.

“What about the raging Wookiee?” Finn demanded.

Leia smacked their heads together.

“Idiots! Do you think I wanted to see that? Do you think I raised a rapist? An animal? A monster? Rey is fine. She looked very happy. It’s just that she has a boyfriend, Finn, and it’s not you.” Leia snapped

“Rey has two boyfriends, and neither of them are me.” Finn said.

“Yeah, but I know Ben. He won’t care about me. You? He’d cut your head off.” Poe explained

“I talked to him. It was definitely Ben Solo. He didn’t threaten to cut my head off.” Finn said.

“Because he probably figures it’s me, not you. Rey’s into flyboys. What can I say? Was it really Ben, General?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, Poe, but yes. It was. He wasn’t embarrassed, because Ben has no shame. Solo family trait. But I am very embarrassed. So, from now on? You boys just  mind your own business.”

The General began to walk away.

“That makes sense. If Rey is Ben’s girl, that's why he killed Snoke and they killed all his guards.” Poe said

“But Rey killed Kylo Ren.” Finn added

“Rey killed Palpatine. Ben probably killed all the Knights of Ren to get to Kylo Ren, and killed him to avenge Han.” Poe explained

“He told me the Sith held him in detention for three years and tried to break him.” Finn expanded

“That was a mistake. You cross Ben Solo? You die.” Poe reminded Finn.

Rey’s door opened.

She shut it.

Leia turned around.

She was frozen to the spot

“Ben, put these on.”

“I don’t want to wear those, I hate underwear!”

“Just put them on. To go out. You’re naked!”

“Okay, okay.”

The door opened and Ben stepped out.

He looked like he’d just made the Kessel Run on foot.

He brushed his sweaty hair out of his face.

Poe started applauding him, and Ben grinned.

“She made me work for it.” He said.

“Always does.” Poe agreed.

“Oh, so it’s you. That’s OK, Poe. Because I know you. So tell me, Tiesdays and Thursdays only, right?”

“Right, Ben. You think I want to die?”

“I know you don’t. This way, we’re keeping it in the family. But any of these other guys? We kill him.”

“Immediately.

Poe and Ben both laughed.

Ben sat by Rey’s campfire, and started poking the embers with a stick.

“What, Mom? I’m beat. I have to get some sleep.”

What Mom.

That was all he had to say?

The last time she had seen her son in person he was a boy of 23, still a little soft around the edges

Now he was a grown man, 35 years old, hard, and scarred, the tough guy his father had always wanted him to be.

But he still had her little Ben’s sweet, goofy smile.

And after all these years?

What, Mom?

“Can you try to be a little quieter, in there?”

“Sorry. I got carried away in the moment.”

Ben poked the fire.

He looked at his feet.

Then he looked up at his mother, again.

“Well, here I am. I came home. Like you wanted. Now what?” he asked.

“There’s so many things I want to say to you, Ben. Is that all you have to say to me? Here you are? Now what?” Leia demanded.

“I did a pretty good job, didn’t I? I mean, it’s over now. Maybe too many people got killed. And I killed too many of them. But I ended it. If I didn’t do what I did, , it never would have ended. Somebody had to do it. That somebody could only have been me.” Ben said.

“Ben, I don’t want to talk about religion and politics. What are you going to do with your life, now? Are you OK? Really OK?”

“I think I’ll be OK. With time. And I’m just going to go back to work. I still have the ship. And the place in Anchorhead. I’ve got money stashed. I’ll be fine, Mom. Really.”

He seemed like he really needed to hear her praise him.

“The Galaxy owes you and Rey a great debt. You did a pretty good job, Ben. But this isn’t all is forgiven and everything is fine. It can’t be.”

“I am not going back to jail. You might as well just kill me.”

“I said this wasn’t about politics. In the morning? We need to talk. And none of your bullshit stories, or I will pull the truth out of your head. I’ll be back at 9. Have clothes on.”

“Okay. Can I go lie down before I fall down?”

“You had better. I'll see you in the morning, Benjamin.”

***

Morning broke.

Ben snored.

Rey woke up.

Ben rolled over.

And snored.

“Ben. Wake up. Your mother will be here, soon. She was very sick.”

“Bullshit. Skywalkers don’t die. He'll be back too. Many deaths, many lives. Skywalkers come back.”

“What?”

Ben sat up.

“She fooled you, huh? It’s alright. She fools everybody. I know better. My mother is the most powerful living Force sensitive being in the Galaxy. I have only begun to sense the contours of the universes that she commands. It’s a game, Rey. A game of thrones. And if you’re not a Skywalker? You don’t get to sit on the throne. But I’m not ready to be the King. Let her have the Galaxy. For now. That’s what she wants to know about. And if I were her? I’d be worried about me, too.”

“But Ben, the General is your mother.”

“Yeah. But did she hug me? Did she cry? I had to drag it out of her to say I did a good thing for the Galaxy. She doesn’t trust me. She can’t. She’s not my Mom, anymore. I’ll always be the enemy to her.”

Ben’s voice quavered.

He stood up, stretched, and sat on the stool she had made to put his socks on.

Rey noticed his left ankle was bruised and his foot was swollen up.

“Ah, shit. Sprained my ankle. That’s why it hurt to walk on it. Probably when those guys were chasing me. Now I can’t even escape before she gets here.”

Then he put one boot, and  the coveralls.

“I like the beard, Ben.” Rey told him.

It was a lame thing to say, but she couldn’t think of anything else.

“Disguise.” he replied.

“You have to give your mother time, Ben. It took me years to allow myself to love you. And to trust you. And I still almost killed you when you crushed the Sith wayfinder.”

“That didn’t go the way I pictured it. I thought you’d fall into my arms when I told you the only way you were going to Exegol was with me.”

“Well, maybe you’re wrong about your mother, too. Maybe she didn’t want to hug you because you were all sweaty and covered in come and squirt.”

Rey had insisted they wash up in the stream before getting back into her bed. 

That made Ben laugh.

At 9, his mother and Chewbacca both came to Rey’s tent.

Ben was sitting on one of the stools Rey had made.

When Chewbacca walked in Rey sensed an emotion in Ben she didn’t think he had.

Shame.

Ben bowed his head, and rounded his shoulders, making himself look smaller.

He made a mournful sound that Rey didn’t think could have come from a human throat.

Chewbacca chastised him, angrily.

Ben made the same mournful sound.

Chewie was so sad and so angry that Rey couldn’t even understand him.

Finally she understood Chewbacca ordering “Kallaurra” to lift up his head.

Ben was crying.

Real tears.

“I’m sorry.  I can live with everything else I did. But not what I did to the Old Man. It’s horrible. Worse than just killing him. I’m not even sure if he’s alive or dead. He might not be dead, Chewie. At least I don’t think he is.”

“Your father, Ben?” Leia asked.

Leia had been up all night.

Crying because she had her son back.

Crying because Han was gone.

“Ben, I've seen his ghost.” Leia told Ben.

“Me too. But I, uh, I pushed his spirit out of his body. So he wouldn’t have to stay frozen.”

“What? Benjamin Skywalker Organa Solo, what did you do to your father?” Leia insisted.

“We had a different fight, before the fight Chewie saw. The Old Man punched me in the face, and I hit him and long story short, I almost didn’t give him the blast vest. But I knew I had to give the Hutts something.  Then again, it’s not like I wanted him to suffer.  I used the Force to push his spirit out, so when he fell into the freezing chamber, he wouldn’t be trapped. It’s still connected. Once he’s out of hibernation, body and spirit will be reunited. I think. I’m pretty  sure.  I did it to myself, a couple times, when I was in too much pain to take it, and I’m still here.”

Leia interrupted Ben.

“I’m sorry, you did what? Is this something the Sith taught you?”

“No. I figured it out myself. While I was doing my Sith training, which is pretty much torture in solitary confinement. I got hurt pretty bad during training. All of us did. The pain drove some of us mad, and some of us just died. But I figured out how to use the Force to push my spirit out of my body. If the pain was too bad, or if I was too sick? I’d just leave for awhile. You can pretty much go anywhere you want. Me, I used to like to go to forests. Or deserts. I went to Hoth a few times. Quiet places where there were no people. So I did the same thing to the Old Man. Pushed his spirit out of his body. He should be fine. I always am.”

Leia looked at Rey.

There were tears in her eyes, too.

But she quickly got angry when Ben finished explaining himself.

“Anyway,  that chasm the Old Man fell into on Starkiller Base? It was a huge carbonite freezing chamber.  Before I delivered him to Jobi, I checked the slab.  He’s alive. Or he was, then. Right now, he’s hanging on Jobi the Hutt's wall. At Jabba’s old palace on Tattoine. At least he’s been completely safe for the whole war.”

“You ruthless little pirate bastard! What did you owe the Hutts?”

Leia slapped Ben.

Chewie sat down heavily, opposite him.

He muttered something.

“Rathtars? What rathtars? Chewie, you and Han were selling rathtars to the Hutt syndicate? Were you insane?”

“They were my rathtars. It’s your fault, Mom. When you sent Dad to Starkiller Base, he was supposed to be delivering my rathtars to Jobi. The Hutt wanted both of us on his wall after the Old Man didn’t deliver his product. And I couldn't give Jobi the money back, because I already invested it in some product he was selling me that I already had buyers for. That and I owed him for the rathtars. But he made me a real sweetheart deal to get Captain Solo back on the family wall. I really didn’t have a choice.

“You were still in business, Ben? The whole time?”

“Everybody was, Mom. What was I supposed to do, quit? You already gave Dad the boot and what were he and Chewie gonna do? Starve? Were we all supposed to miss the opportunity to get rich off another Galactic War? I gave the Old Man a Captain’s Medal, and he stayed on the Outer Rim. He was safe, we made money. People got to have booze, cigarillos, coffee and rubbers so they could have a little fun during this war, because I brought them in. So don’t say Ben Solo didn’t help the war effort. Everything worked out until you decided my Daddy needed to come and bring me home because I had been a bad boy.”

Leia slapped him, again.

This time, Ben fell off the stool.

“Shit, Mom, quit hitting me! My balance is off, I sprained my ankle.”

Leia forgot about everything else she was going to ask him.

“You’re hurt, Ben?”

“It’s fine. I fixed it, before. When I first put by boot on, last night. It’ll heal. No doctors. Mom. No needles. No bacta tank. I can’t do any of that. If I get sick enough, ever to need needles and medical droids and bacta tanks? They’ll have to keep me unconscious the whole time. You don’t want to know, and telling you about it would break my mind. No. No fucking doctors.”

Ben’s voice raised in pitch and in volume

He looked scared.

He was terrified.

Without thinking, she reached for his hand, and her mind was assaulted by a barrage of terrifying images from his memory.

She could hear his screams.

Ben tried to pull his hand away.

But Leia pulled him into her arms.

“It’s alright, Ben. You’ve carried this pain long enough. I’m your mother. I can bear some of it, for you. Now I understand. I understand.”

Ben hugged his mother back, and started to cry. 

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m really sorry.” he sobbed.

“You’re still my son, Ben. And I love you. And I’m so glad you finally came home.”

Ben cried for a long time.

***

“Ben, let me see your ankle.” Leia demanded.

Ben stuck his foot out.

“It looks really bad. I can’t stand on it, today.” he admitted.

“It does. If this isn’t set right, Ben, you'll be limping all the time. How about one doctor. An old lady, like me. No droids, no bacta tanks, no needles. No exam room. I’ll bring her here, to Rey's tent. You don’t want to limp for the rest of your life, do you?”

“No. I’ll try.” Ben agreed.

Leia went to get the doctor.

“Fucking ankle! What about the Old Man? I fixed up a place for all of us to lay low, but I can’t go now, Chewie. I can’t walk.”

Chewie told Ben that they needed to make a plan, anyway, and they'd wait to rescue Han until he was healed.

Rey laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Ben asked.

“If Han survived, he'll be so proud of you. You’re a real pirate, Ben. You sold your own father to settle a debt and get a load of swag from the Hutt Syndicate.”

They all laughed at that.

***

The doctor wanted to see Ben, alone.

Chewie knew how afraid he was, and refused to leave him.

The doctor came out, after she was done, to talk to Rey and Leia.

They waited for the doctor.

“Your son is a powerful man. Without the use of the Force. With brute force, he could have crushed me with one hand. He’s almost the size of Chewbacca! A rescue party made the mistakes of approaching him in a way that looked like an attack, and I treated five people for minor injuries they sustained. With no weapons. And he was terrified of me. Terrified.”

The Twi’Lek doctor sighed.

“When they held him captive, Leia, the First Order tortured your son. I don’t…well, the ankle, first. The ankle isn’t broken. It's badly sprained. He tied two sticks to it with a rag, shoved his foot in the boot, laced it up tight and walked on it. I’m not surprised. He’s tough. He had to be. There are scars on his ribs, on both sides, he’s broken every one. And the scar on his collarbone tells me that someone stapled it together. The scars around the stitches are ragged. They held him down, stapled his collarbone together and sewed his muscle and skin shut with no anasthesia. Then they probably let him lie, and after it festered, shut him up in a bacta tank. He’s also broken his elbow. And there’s a scar. It starts on his right hip, crosses over, wraps around his leg, and ends just above his knee. It’s from a torture droid. Your son is a strong man, mentally, that he could survive.”

“What about his ankle, doctor?” Rey asked.

She didn’t want to hear any more of the other things.

“Ben needs to wear a brace for a month, and limit his walking for about two weeks. Keep his foot elevated. Use a crutch or a cane. I told him. He didn’t like it, but I told him listen to me, or limp forever. Does Ben have somewhere to go? Someone to take care of him?”

“He does. And I don’t mind. If he can fly? We can leave, as soon as he gets something to eat.” Rey volunteered.

Ben came out of the tent, hopping on one leg.

“I’m not using that crutch. It’s undignified.”

“Ben, if you were worried about your dignity, you should have conducted your personal business a little more quietly last night. Or come to this camp with pants on.” Leia suggested.

“All that added to my legend. This crutch makes me look weak.”

Rey ran into the tent, rummaging around, and then came out.

“Here, Ben. I found it in a wreck in the woods. I restored it and used it when I twisted my ankle, even though it was too tall for me. The bottom part is real wood. Some kind of dark wood, it’s not painted. That top part is a geode.”

Rey handed Ben the cane.

“This is better. I’m going home, Mom. To the Outer Rim, to Tattoine. I have a place out in the hinterlands to hide. Tell me when it’s safe for me to go back to Anchorhead and be Ben Solo again.”

“Rey, you know Ben Solo makes his home in Anchorhead because he’s a smuggler and a pirate, don’t you?’’

“Honestly, Master Leia? I’ve always had a problem with flyboys. I don’t mind at all.”

“Be careful, Rey. My son, here? He’s a whole bunch of guys. One for every occasion.”

Rey waited for Ben to deny it.

But, he didn’t.

“Add one more, Mom. Ben Skywalker. I am a Skywalker, after all. Ben Skywalker, and his lovely wife. Just two nice kids without a lot of money, trying to get by.”

“Rey Skywalker? Master, Leia, can I can be Rey Skywalker?”

“Yes, Rey. Welcome to the Skywalker-Solo family. I’m very sorry for you.” Leia replied.

She hugged Rey, and then hugged Ben again.

“Don’t make waves, kid. I need to think about what I’m going to do about this Ben Solo and Kylo Ren problem. Do you have anything to prove you killed him?”

“I brought his broken mask and his gloves to Exegol with me. They’re still in that cave. Why do you think I fought so hard?”

“What about his lightsaber?” Leia asked.

“Threw it away. This is Uncle Luke’s. I’m going to make another one. I liked the crossbar, but I’ll make the beam a different color.”

“Good idea. Lay low, and don’t worry about your father. Chewie and I will figure something out.”

***

“Luke, I need you to do me a favor.”

The Jedi Master’s Force ghost sat down beside his sister.

“I don’t think I need the Force to predict what you’re about to say.” he replied.