#tragic beast........... only of their kind that truly ever wanted to see the stars...........

[firstaidspray]

OCs as Character Tropes!!

Tagged by @corvosattano to do this uquiz for some girlythings!! Ty!! We get Navy's uquiz debut yayy!!

the midnight lover the midnight lover [noun, german origin] refers to a character that believes their final destination is a second place. they are always there when people need them, but they are never their first choice, merely the one to talk to at midnight when one is the most honest, just to be thrown away the morning after (hence why they're called a midnight lover). midnight lovers love too much, fall too deep and land to hard for anyone and everyone they appreciate, but they never seem to get their love back in the way they'd want, forever united by the dreadful second place in people's lives. many take advantage of midnight lovers, using their heart that's always there to listen as something they can dump all their problems on, not acknowledging that their heart is just as fragile as any other. still, midnight lovers listen and comfort and give their all no matter it draining them - sometimes it's truly astonishing how much love they're able to store within themselves. all midnight lovers long for is to be perceived as something more than 'the second resort', though many struggle to realize their already achieved significance in eyes of others. who knows, many (or majority) may haven't ever been a second choice, they were just lead to believe so via people not treating them accordingly. as a certain saying goes, "one not worthy of your love should not be able to spend it." - a fellow midnight lover

the unheard poet the unheard poet [noun, presumably french origin] refers to a character who hides many words unspoken under their tongue. they have chosen to purposefully hide these words and abandoned the thought of ever letting them flow up to the surface. despite that, they tend to be very outgoing and friendly, speaking their mind and laughing at the stupidest of things whenever they can, yet there's an eerie feeling to their gaze, as none might know what they truly think of the world presented to them. the unheard poets often think of themselves as beasts with two faces, the side they show to the world never being one of their liking. they carefully craft their facade while bottling up what they truly want to say - they are people with beautiful minds, minds that deserve to be spoken out, that are purposefully hidden away due to their fear of people leaving them behind for who they are. they are the ones to attempt in molding their personality to whatever their companions want to see them as to the point where they forget which one of their 'selves' was the original poet - still as unheard and as beautiful as before. there might just be the only way to escape the tragic nature of an unheard poet and that is acceptance. - a fellow unheard poet

the icarus [noun, greek origin] refers to a character, first curious and childish, who got so bored of the world's rotten nature they lost all hope in living. as the last resort to find the spark in the world of dying stars, the icarus may have attempted numerous times to touch the blazing surface of the sun, hoping to see any kind of redemption in the reflection of their face in the sun's flames. as a result, their wings were melted down and their bones broken by the harsh landing, yet that still didn't stop them from trying all over again. the people of icarus' nature often believe their place is with the stars and their desire to burn amongst them causes them to forget the beauty of the land they've abandoned, merely flying over it - the world has stored so much beauty for them they often struggle to see through the rays of sun and yet, it is still there. the most beautiful of flowers grow upon the lands their feet haven't even touched and maybe, just maybe, if they spared a bit of their time to give the (them forsaken) world another chance, they'd see that sky might not be the home they truly desire, but one they've seeked just because they have seen only the worst of the world. - a fellow icarus

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

The Strange Saga of Spinosaurus, the Semiaquatic Dinosaurian Superpredator

I’ve been captivated by dinosaurs for as long as I can remember. My parents tell me that I told them that I wanted to be a paleontologist as early as age four. Naturally, then, I had lots and lots of books about dinosaurs when I was a boy growing up during the 1980s. One of the dinosaurs that always fascinated me the most was Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Found in 1912 in the Bahariya Oasis of the Western Desert of Egypt (could anyplace sound more exotic to a small-town kid from upstate New York?!), Spinosaurus was originally known from a highly incomplete but also very large and extremely distinctive partial skeleton found in a middle Cretaceous-aged (roughly 95-million-year-old) rock layer in the oasis. Among the few skeletal elements known were part of a strangely shaped (for a dinosaur) lower jaw, some crocodile-like teeth, and most strikingly, several back vertebrae that each sported tall spines, some of them measuring nearly six feet. These spines clearly impressed Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, the German paleontologist who studied the skeleton and gave the animal its name in a 1915 publication. Tragically, however, that original Spinosaurus skeleton—and all of Stromer’s other dinosaur fossils from Egypt—were destroyed during the Second World War, more specifically in a British Royal Air Force bombing of Munich on April 24, 1944. The story of Stromer’s lost dinosaurs found its way into many a children’s book, including several that I read cover-to-cover. As such, the tale took on near-legendary status for me, and, I’m sure, many other young dinosaur enthusiasts around the world. Here was an absolutely extraordinary dinosaur from a faraway land, similar in size to the gargantuan Tyrannosaurus rex, but clearly very different from all other predatory dinosaurs known at the time – and it was represented only by a few teeth and bones that had been blasted into oblivion decades ago and so now existed only as pictures in books.

A scan of my photocopy of plate I of Ernst Stromer’s original 1915 publication on Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, showing some of the teeth and bones preserved in the holotype (= name-bearing) partial skeleton, discovered in 1912 in Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis. Check out the long spines on the back vertebrae at lower left!

Stromer’s conception of Spinosaurus, as depicted in a 1936 publication and on a glass slide of his that colleagues of mine scanned during our visit to the Paläontologisches Museum München in Munich, Germany in 2001. Stromer knew this animal was big, as evidenced by the human skeleton he included for scale. Interestingly, too, he reconstructed Spinosaurus with unusual proportions for a carnivorous dinosaur, such as an abnormally elongate torso and short hind limbs. We’ll come back to those odd proportions a little later…

When I arrived in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, one of the first things I did was make a lengthy list of all the paleontological sites I was interested in exploring, ranked by their potential (in my mind, at least) to produce scientifically significant finds. The Bahariya Oasis and the search for a ‘replacement Spinosaurus’ quickly rose to the top of the list. Amazingly, no one had ever found—or at least officially reported—new dinosaur fossils in the oasis in the more than half-century since Stromer’s beasts were obliterated during that fateful airstrike. A need to keep this post to a reasonable length prevents me from describing the stars that had to align to make this happen, but in January 2000 I found myself in the Bahariya Oasis—one of the places I’d dreamed about going since I was a small child—as part of the first significant ‘dinosaur hunt’ to take place at the site since the early 20th century. It was bittersweet, though, in the sense that we never really found that ‘replacement Spinosaurus’ I’d fantasized about – all we ever discovered of that creature were a few isolated, fragmentary teeth and bones (and, in a very different location, a couple previously unpublished photos of the original skeleton in a Munich archive). We did find and dig up a gigantic new species of long-necked, plant-eating sauropod dinosaur, Paralititan stromeri, a creature that to this day is one of the largest land animals of any kind that’s ever been found, anywhere – but that’s another story for another time.

One of the rare contributions that I personally have made to scientific knowledge of Spinosaurus: a glass slide showing the only known photo of the right dentary (tooth-bearing lower jaw bone) of the original, name-bearing partial skeleton from Egypt. Like all of Stromer’s Egyptian dinosaur material, this specimen (including this bone) was destroyed in a British air raid on Munich during World War II. Several colleagues and I ‘rediscovered’ this photo—which nobody apparently knew existed—in an archive at the Paläontologisches Museum München in 2001. We published it and one other previously unknown photo of the Spinosaurus type specimen in a 2006 paper in the Journal of Paleontology.

A much younger yours truly digging up the incomplete left humerus (upper arm bone) of the gigantic sauropod (long-necked herbivorous dinosaur) Paralititan stromeri in the Bahariya Oasis of Egypt, February 2000. Paralititan is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered – a nice ‘consolation prize’ given that we didn’t find much of Spinosaurus during our expeditions to Bahariya. (A cast replica of the complete right humerus of Paralititan is on display in PaleoLab at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.) Credit: Josh Smith.

Back to the matter at hand, meaning Spinosaurus. Fast-forward to 2011. I had the honor of serving as the external thesis examiner for Nizar Ibrahim, a promising doctoral student at University College Dublin in Ireland. I’d known Nizar for years, ever since he reached out to me by email while an undergraduate at the University of Bristol, England, to discuss our mutual interests in African Cretaceous dinosaurs. Nizar’s Ph.D. thesis was on dinosaurs and other middle Cretaceous-aged vertebrates from the celebrated Kem Kem beds of southeastern Morocco, a set of rocks that had yielded a fossil fauna very similar to, though seemingly more diverse than, that of the Bahariya Oasis. Among the many finds that Nizar documented in his colossal thesis were intriguing new remains of Spinosaurus. I went to Dublin to participate in his successful thesis defense, and afterward, he and I hit up some of the city’s finest public houses to celebrate (no surprise for those who know me). Over a pitcher of yummy Irish stout, he told me an exciting story – he and his team had lately discovered not just isolated bones of Spinosaurus in Morocco, but parts of a probable new skeleton. If so, this find would be the first skeleton since Stromer, and moreover would be exceedingly important given how little was known about Spinosaurus, even as recently as the early 2010s. The more parts we paleontologists have of a given fossil animal, the more we can generally learn about it, so the prospect of a new and relatively complete Spinosaurus skeleton—in other words, many bones belonging to a single individual dinosaur—was thrilling to say the least.

Again I’ll skip details for brevity’s sake, but fast-forward once again, to 2014. I was contacted by an editor of Science—one of the foremost scientific journals in the world—to peer-review a paper that had been submitted by (you guessed it!) Nizar and a long list of collaborators describing that new skeleton of Spinosaurus that he’d told me about over beers in Ireland three years before. Nizar and team had revisited the quarry and it had panned out in a big way. From this one, single individual Spinosaurus—again, the first associated skeleton of this dinosaur to have been found in roughly a century—they had bones from the skull, backbone (including a few of those famously long-spined vertebrae!), forelimb, pelvis, and hind limb. More importantly, these ‘new’ bones revealed that Spinosaurus was even more bizarre than anyone imagined! We already knew, from Stromer’s specimen and other, isolated finds made through the years, that the shapes of the skull and back were really weird for a predatory dinosaur. Now, the new skeleton showed that the bones were remarkably dense, the hind legs were oddly short, and the hind feet may have been webbed! All of this led Nizar and colleagues to propose that Spinosaurus may have been semiaquatic; in other words, that its lifestyle was much more comparable to that of a modern-day alligator or crocodile than it was to a more ‘typical’ land-living predatory dinosaur such as T. rex. Other evidence for an affinity to watery habitats had been found in Spinosaurus and closely related dinosaurs (known, perhaps unsurprisingly, as spinosaurids) before, but this was, in my mind, the most convincing case yet made that these animals spent significant amounts of their time at least partly submerged in lakes and rivers. The paper was published in Science a few months later, accompanied by a cover story in National Geographic magazine and a special on the venerable PBS TV series NOVA. Almost exactly one hundred years after it had been named, Spinosaurus had become a celebrity.

Nizar Ibrahim and colleagues’ initial conception of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus in the flesh, released to coincide with the publication of their Science paper in 2014. Two aspects stand out: as Stromer already knew (see his skeletal reconstruction above), the animal is enormous, but it was more oddly proportioned than even he had imagined. Note also the ‘regular-looking’ (for a dinosaur) tail, and read on. Credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Semiaquatic Spinosaurus chowing down on a tasty lungfish in what is now northern Africa some 95 million years ago. Italian paleoartist Davide Bonadonna has produced some of the most beautiful and accurate modern depictions of this extraordinary dinosaur, and I’m grateful to him for letting me reproduce his art here.

But the story didn’t end there. Some prominent paleontologists criticized Nizar and colleagues’ semiaquatic interpretation of Spinosaurus. These opinions weren’t a final judgment. Instead, this is just how science works: we scientists propose ideas, or hypotheses—in this case, that Spinosaurus lived and behaved more like a crocodile than your garden-variety carnivorous dinosaur—and then test these hypotheses by reevaluating the existing evidence and/or bringing new information to light. If a hypothesis repeatedly stands up to testing, then it gradually gets incorporated into the body of knowledge. Other paleontologists presented evidence that they claimed refuted the semiaquatic hypothesis, but Nizar and team eventually countered with new data of their own. In late 2019, another prominent scientific journal—this time it was Nature—came calling, asking me to review a second paper by Nizar et al. on Spinosaurus. What, I thought, could these researchers have to say about this dinosaur that they hadn’t already said before? Well, as it turns out, Nizar and colleagues had kept digging at their Spinosaurus skeleton site, and incredibly, they’d continued to find important new bones belonging to the same specimen. Among these post-2014 finds was the almost complete tail. When I saw what it looked like (via an illustration in their paper), I literally laughed out loud with surprise and delight. Somehow, the shape of the Spinosaurus tail Nizar’s team had discovered—the first even reasonably complete tail of this dinosaur to have ever been unearthed—was simultaneously both unexpected and predictable. It looked really dissimilar from the tails of other predatory dinosaurs, but it was nearly exactly like what one might expect for a dinosaur that used its tail to propel itself through water. In other words, the tall, fin-like tail of Spinosaurus looked more like that of a supersized alligator or newt than that of T. rex.

Nizar and team’s Nature paper on their Spinosaurus tail was published this past April 29. Is it the last word on this dinosaur and its mode of life? Most certainly not, but the evidence is now stronger than ever—in my opinion, very strong—that Spinosaurus spent more time in the water than any other non-avian (= non-bird) dinosaur that we currently know about.

The modern view of Spinosaurus, not as a ‘regular’ predatory dinosaur, but rather as a specialized semiaquatic hunter that spent much of its life in the water. Self-serving side note: the three smaller, spiky-looking fish are Bawitius bartheli, a polypterid (an archaic, still-extant group of thick-scaled ray-finned fishes) that several colleagues and I named in 2012 from fossils found in the Bahariya Oasis. The larger fish at lower left is the giant coelacanth Axelrodichthys (sometimes called Mawsonia) libyca. Credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Two Spinosaurus invite the sawfish Onchopristis numidus to lunch in what’s now northern Africa some 95 million years ago. Look at those fin-like Spinosaurus tails! Credit: Davide Bonadonna/National Geographic.

Nizar (who’s a Research Associate here at Carnegie Museum of Natural History), myself, and our many colleagues and collaborators are continuing to study the mysterious dinosaurs and other fossil vertebrates from the middle and Late Cretaceous of northern Africa. Indeed, Nizar and I have several collaborative papers in the works right now, and I’m also working with an amazing team of paleontologists at Mansoura University on multiple new Egyptian fossil finds. It’s a good bet that African Cretaceous dinosaurs even stranger than Spinosaurus are still out there, waiting to be discovered!

Further reading/watching:

Nothdurft, W. E., with J. B. Smith, M. C. Lamanna, K. J. Lacovara, J. C. Poole, and J. R. Smith. 2002. The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt. Random House, New York, 256 pp.

Smith, J. B., M. C. Lamanna, H. Mayr, and K. J. Lacovara. 2006. New information regarding the holotype of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Stromer, 1915. Journal of Paleontology 80:400–406.

Ibrahim, N., P. C. Sereno, C. Dal Sasso, S. Maganuco, M. Fabbri, D. M. Martill, S. Zouhri, N. Myhrvold, and D. A. Iurino. 2014. Semiaquatic adaptations in a giant predatory dinosaur. Science 345:1613–1616.

Bigger Than T. rex (NOVA documentary): https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/bigger-than-t-rex/

Henderson, D. M. 2018. A buoyancy, balance and stability challenge to the hypothesis of a semi-aquatic Spinosaurus Stromer, 1915 (Dinosauria: Theropoda). PeerJ 6:e5409.

Ibrahim, N., S. Maganuco, C. Dal Sasso, M. Fabbri, M. Auditore, G. Bindellini, D. M. Martill, S. Zouhri, D. A. Mattarelli, D. M. Unwin, J. Wiemann, D. Bonadonna, A. Amane, J. Jakubczak, U. Joger, G. V. Lauder, and S.E. Pierce. 2020. Tail-propelled aquatic locomotion in a theropod dinosaur. Nature 581:67–70.

Matt Lamanna is Mary R. Dawson Associate Curator and Head of the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[revchainsaw]

The Crow (1994)

Alright Cult of Cult. Do I really need to introduce this one? Let's get all 90s and gothy and maybe brace ourselves for a bit of cringe, but like in a fun way. It's the Holy Grail of Hot Topic, 1994's the Crow Starring Brandon Lee.

Sermon

Apparently before the auto industry totally crashed Detroit was already a total fucked to death pile of burning shit, or at least that's what the crow would have you believe. Sorry Bruce Campbell, and other people from Detroit, but mostly Bruce Campbell. According to the Crow the city of Detroit is the kind of place where gangs of warlock anarchist arsonists will bomb buildings, and murder and rape whoever they feel like and then walk around bragging about it the next day with absolutely zero consequences. Funny then that if Detroit was so bad they had to go to film this movie in Wilmington North Carolina which is definitely a fucked to death pile of burning shit. I can say that, I'm from there and I got the fuck out. My brother is going to kill me if he ever reads this. (It's okay, these are all jokes people). Did you know they also filmed the Super Mario Bros movie there ... also cuz they needed a really shitty looking distopia. Moving on ...

The ludicrous criminality of the Crow's Detroit is particularly on display on Halloween. In Detroit (apparently) Halloween is known as Devils Night and it's legitimately just a night of pure lawlessness and chaos and kids aren't even safe to get candy, except later when we do see trick or treaters. Eric Draven, hunky goth rocker who sort of looks like he could be Bruce Lee's Kid and his fiance are murdered by a gang of vicious criminals. One year hence, Eric is resurrected by a mystical crow (that is actually a Raven), to exact his revenge on the gang that murdered him.

He paints his face like sad Alice Cooper and refuses to listen to Joy Division, just covers. He murders Tin Tin (a knife guy) just for his long gothy duster, he murders Fun Boy and forcibly ejects heroine from her arms and tells her "Go be a good mom now" which actually works. (have I told you about our Lord and Savior Sting? He gave me the strength to get off drugs), he blows T Bird up dick first, and then comes for Skab? Scraap? Scooby? in a meeting of all of Detroits villains and just about kills them all.

He is supported by the most 90s little girl to have ever graced the screen, and I am here for it, and Officer Albrecht, who's played by Ernie Hudson but I like to call him Zeddemore: The Most Underrated Ghostbuster. The leader of the bad guys, who I cannot beleive wasn't played by Brad Dourif or Tom Waits, is pretty interested in the occult. He keeps his witchy girlfriend around and she makes him fun dishes like smoked eyeballs, and her main use is that she knows that the Crow is the Crows weakness. They set Tony Fucking Todd on the bird, and I guess you just have to hurt the bird and not kill it, and Eric loses his healing factor and other macabre undead powers.

The Crow, Jimmy the Raven, pecks out Dr. Girlfriends eyeballs, I honestly forget how Tony Todd gets offed, and Top Dollar gets Gargoyled (that is impaled on a gargoyle). Funnily enough that is more Gargoyle related impaling on screen then in the actual movie Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness where a Gargoyle is supposed to have impaled a guy.

The Benediction

Best Feature: Injustice League

In the Crow we have not only a set of super memorable villains but they are played by the bad guy all stars. John Polito as the most lowly of the bad guys as a kind of sleazy pawn shop owner who buys ill gotten gains. Tony Todd, who's size is really on display here, the freaking Candy Man is in this movie. T Bird is the head of Top Dollars goons and is played by David Patrick Kelly, you might know as the "Warriors Come Out and Play!!" bottle guy from the Warriors, or as Jimmy Horne from Twin Peaks, and of course Top Dollar himself is played by Michael Wincott. Wincott is not a particularly celebrated actor but has played villains effectively in Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, and Dead Man.

Best Set Piece: Detroit Style Hot Dogs

The Set design of the Crow is perhaps one of it's most fantastic features. It's very moody and ethereal. It's just real enough to not take you out of the film, but fantastic enough to set mood and theme above realism. From Eric Draven's apartment, to the church where the final battle occurs they are all fantastic. I think that's why I really wanted to shine the spot light on a very minor set piece that would get nary a mention but just as effectively represents the qualities I was just talking about and that is the Maxi Doggs Hot Dog Stand, where a lot of the films exposition for audience surrogates takes place.

Worst Effect: Freeze Frame

At a few points in the movie the film makers made a strange decision to do these freeze frame transitions. I only noticed it twice in the movie where it was particularly stupid. I'm sure the film makers at the time thought it was a moody and atmospheric choice that highlighted the suffering that Eric Draven was going through, but it didn't age well. If you don't have the sensibilities of a goth girl from 1994 then it's very very hard not to laugh at just how self involved the movie is about it's super sadness.

Worst Feature: Tragic Accident

Solely based on the film itself, it is that very gothic and dated sensibility that hurts the Crow. The little sarcastic dance he does when he flees the police, quoting Edgar Allen Poe, and bowing to Albrecht. These affected behaviors that I'm sure seemed snarky and right on to the target audience only serve to make Eric Draven seem like an unbearable neck beard edgelord and not the troubled dark soul he's supposed to be. I'm sure at the time it seemed unique and gothy but that shit went out of style for good reason, people could see through it. It's a shame that the Crow himself was some of the cringiest parts of this movie now that I'm seeing it as an adult and not a 13 year old middle class boy with no real problems.

This however is not the low point of the movie. It's not news now and if you're reading some dudes review of The Crow on Tumblr then you probably already know the story. The worst thing about The Crow is that Brandon Lee was horrifically killed on set while filming this movie due to some negligible prop malfunctions. A series of unfortunate events that lead to the actor spending 6 hours in surgery fighting for his life before eventually passing. It was not a quick or painless death and it's really impossible to watch the movie without an appreciation for the fact that this kind of fun dark adventure was going to be a vehicle for Brandon Lee's career wound up taking his life. He was 28. I really wish I could have just bitched about the goofy goth stuff and moved on, but that's not the world we live in.

Best Effect: The Gargoyling

Maybe I should have called this best kill. But I'm not sure which it is. The slaying of Top Dollar at the Climax of the film was just super effective. The pointed wings impaling his chest and that horn coming out of his mouth, it was morbid and excellent and just fit the tone of the movie perfectly. I mean how many other movies can you say Cause of Death: Impaled on a Gargoyle.

Best Bird: The Raven

I tried very hard to look up the name of the bird that primarily performed in this movie and could not find anything. There was a Raven once upon a time called Jimmy the Raven, but that was in the 50s and I don't think birds live that long. There was a team of Ravens performing as the crow, they were chosen over crows for their larger size, and more imposing silhouettes. I just think it's so wonderful to see these often maligned birds get a chance to show off their talents. Corvids of all kinds are incredibly intelligent creatures. Im a sucker for animals, if you haven't already figured that out. I really liked seeing the ravens hit their marks, particularly the one whos job it was to drop the wedding ring into Sarah's hand at the end of the film. You can see that greedy little bastard do his trick and then look of camera at his trainer like "treat please!". It's very cute.

Best Actor: Top Dollar Performance

I'd love to take this opportunity to just put praise upon Brandon Lee, he truly gave everything for this role, but unfortunately with what was put to film we actually have very few character moments with Eric Draven. Stuff happens to him, and he does killings and fights. There's definitely some personality, but I felt like I walked away knowing almost nothing about who Eric Draven was. He was clearly a good dude but that and a few hobbies and a relationship and you don't really have a character yet. He's unfortunately not given a lot of acting to do, instead just relegated to stunts and action sequences. That were notably cool.

The bad guys in the Crow have a lot more character and among this who's who of character actors, Michael Wincott takes the cake. Hell he was standing next to Candyman himself, Tony Todd and still stealing the scenes.

Best Character: A Few Good Apples

Is the best character in The Crow really going to be the cop? The commissioner Gordon stand in? yeah, it is. Not to be political, but I don't like cops, but I guess in a world with magical birds and eyeball smoking I can suspend my disbelief and let Ernie Hudson be #1 cop dad. His character is really the heart of the film, since all Eric can do is brood and fight, we have to care about someone in this movie.

Best Sequence: Halloween Party

The best sequence of the movie is of course the scene where Eric Draven busts in on the Devil's Night party planning commission. I think Top Dollar brought Scrappy Doo there just so he could lure out the crow, knowing the baddest assholes in all of Detroit would be gathered it was likely that somebody was going to kill the beast, or if they couldn't at least Top Dollar could get a feel for his enemy. It's a bullet flying action sequence with a ton of weight. I can't put my finger on this all to common weightless third act problem that big budget super hero and action flicks have nowadays, but whatever that issue is, the Crow does not have that issue. From this point on the Climax feels earned and I am invested. For that reason, The Crow is honestly better in spite of its awkwardness, than many of the super hero movies out today.

Worst Sequence: My Guitar Gently Weeps

Speaking of brooding or fighting. The best sequence was fighting, the worst is brooding. I get that Eric was in a band or something, but didn't he have shit to do. It seemed like it was a cool idea for a shot, but for like a whole seen, watching somebody play an 80s guitar solo, that stood out so brazenly from the choices of music in the rest of the movie was extra corny. It felt like someone's( dad trying to relate to their kid. Oh you like Music. The Dresden Dolls eh? Oh man, then you're going to love Slash's Snake Pit!

Summary

The Crow is dated. It is iconic but I wonder how many of the people that hang that poster on the wall have watched that movie since they were kids. It's interesting how what i've liked and disliked about this film have changed so much sense I was a kid. It's a cheeseball fiesta. If you have matured at all beyond thinking that being sad is the same as being deep then you're going to like it a little less than you did when you were younger, but it is still solid. There's not much to hate on. I'd watch it over and over again. I was really afraid it would not hold up at all, but returning to The Crow was a completely positive experience.

Overall Grade: B

[jasonsgrayson]

Jasonsgrayson’s Guide To All Things Spideytorch

Hi guys, I know I do rec lists sometimes, and I wanted to do one for Spideytorch since I just got into it and a lot of the fics on AO3 are really great. Theres a ton of fics here, of all shapes and sizes and ratings, and in no particular order as always, so take your pick.

Above the cut are my all time favorite spideytorch fics, below the cut are a mess of totally awesome fics that you guys should really take a look at. 

If you want to save some time just look at any of Traincat’s and lamujerarana’s spideytorch stuff. They’re amazing. 

Kind, Sober, and Fully Dressed by Traincat Rated M - 8,685 words Is this my favorite spideytorch fic of all time? Yes. Is it one of my favorite fanfics of all time in general? Also yes. Are the Johnny Storm sex tape related events of this fic cannon? Yes they absolutely fucking are. Read it, I beg of you.

"Pete, my man, my completely platonic best bro," he muttered to himself in the voice he reserved solely for mocking Johnny Storm. "Come over and watch my maybe sex tape! Fun times! Just two guys hanging out -" he slammed the bathroom door maybe a little harder than necessary "- watching the one guy's celebrity sex tape! Good clean fun!" Mrs. Moretti downstairs banged on her ceiling with a broom. Everything was coming up Parker tonight. -- Or, in which Peter proves himself tragically unable to take a hint. Post-Amazing Spider-Man Digital #17, aka the time Johnny asked Peter to watch his sex tape.

Lost and Found by Traincat Rated E - 8,154 words Is it another fake relationship fic? Yes. Is it my second favorite spideytorch fic? Also yes.

“A field trip?” Peter said. “Just a little family outing,” Sue said, passing him a knife. He took it and obediently started helping her cut the crusts off a small mountain of sandwiches. “We thought you might like to join us.” “I mean, it sounds great,” Peter said. “But work is a little swamped and somehow whenever I take off with you guys I always manage to go missing for two months. My landlady does not love it.” “We really could use the extra set of hands. Also,” Sue said, “someone needs to keep an eye on Johnny.” Peter groaned. -- Peter's spider-sense starts acting up on a Future Foundation field trip. He and Johnny, recently returned from the Negative Zone, have to pretend to be married. These two things are related.

Work Song by Traincat Rated E - 50,953 words I will never get tired of this one, I’ve read it so many times it’s one of my absolute favorites. Basically Peter is Johnny’s sugar daddy.

Peter Parker has his company, more money than he knows what to do with, and the echoes of a ghost in his head. Johnny Storm's lost his family, his home, and is clinging to the remnants of his old life. -- "I’m here with you. That’s not nothing, right?” “No,” Peter agreed. It definitely felt like something, all the way up here with Johnny so close they were almost touching. Peter looked at him, at the full lips set in a slight frown, the sharp curve of his jaw, the way his hair fell across his forehead. He fit all the dazzling lights around them, warm like sunshine even in the middle of the night. “Beautiful,” Peter said before he could stop himself.

River Eyes by perissologist Rated M - 22,749 words I love it because Noir is my shit, especially when it’s done this freaking well.

If Jonathan Storm was the movie star Betty said he was, he looked the part: Hair like spun gold in perfect curls atop slender features, with eyes bluer than the Hudson in midsummer. “Normally I’d ask what a dame like you is doing in a place like this, but”—Peter cast a glance up his guest—“you’re not exactly a dame, are you?” Storm flashed a weak smile. “I can be, if you want.” Peter raised an eyebrow. Storm turned beet-red. “I mean. I’m. I didn’t mean that.” Storm huffed and shoved out a hand. “Johnny Storm.” --- It's 1933, Peter Parker has just shut down a Nazi eugenist and lost one of his oldest friends, and life in the big city is as joyless and hardscrabble as ever. Then Johnny Storm, movie star with a soul made of sunshine, walks through Peter's door, asking for his help. The rest, as they say, is history.

Eight Arms to Hold You by metaphoracle Rated T - 15,071 words I love it because it has Namor the Sub Mariner and fake relationships and Atlantis, and a really lecherous octopus, and really what’s not to like?

When Spider-Man’s best friend Johnny Storm asks him for help in tactfully declining a marriage proposal from the King of Atlantis, Namor the Sub-Mariner, the only solution is for him to volunteer Daily Bugle photographer Peter Parker to pretend to be dating Johnny at the Engagement Banquet in Atlantis. Sure, it’s technically lying to his best friend about who Peter Parker is, but the important thing is that Johnny won’t have to marry Namor, and if Peter gets some photographs of Atlantis to sell, what’s the harm? Peter thought the most difficult thing about this scenario was going to be making sure Johnny didn’t figure out Peter is actually Spider-Man. Having to pretend he wasn’t actually falling in love with his best friend never crossed his mind. Featuring fake relationships, forced (almost) marriages, identity porn, traditional Atlantean clothing, and amorous cephalopods.

Keep Throwing Things and Slamming the Door by Traincat Rated T - 7,817 words I think I’ve read this one a half a dozen times already, it’s so good/funny. She-Hulk’s in it, and she is fabulous.

Waking up in a stranger's bed is not how superhero Johnny Storm planned on spending the morning after the night before. From now on… A) No more secret hookups with Peter Parker—he's the last man on earth Johnny'd want to share a room with, never mind a king-size bed. B) Maintain a professional persona at all times. After all, he's a photographer for New York's #1 Superhero Bashing Rag and Johnny's perfect tabloid fodder. C) Keep friends close but enemies closer. Easier said than done, with She-Hulk away on her honeymoon and Spider-Man avoiding him.

The Boy From New York City by Traincat Rated E - 84,499 words I really love this one. Of all the fics on this list I would say this is a spideytorch must read, a true classic.

Central City, California is beautiful, but it’s not where Johnny wants to be – and he’s not who he wants to be, either. Inspired by the recent return of Spider-Man, Johnny convinces the newly minted Fantastic Four to return to the Baxter Building, the site of the incident that gave them their powers. But not everything is what it seems, and worse yet, Spider-Man wants nothing to do with the Human Torch. In the wake of Gwen’s death, Peter has finally put the mask back on, but nothing’s the same as it once was, and the thrill has gone out of Spider-Man. The Fantastic Four’s arrival only makes everything worse. The Human Torch is good looking, he’ll give him that much, but Peter has no plans of making friends. A series of strange attacks and a fateful encounter on the docks may not leave him much choice.

‘cause I can’t compete with your boyfriend (he’s got 27 tattoos) by Traincat Rated T - 13,495 words Who doesn’t love a high school au? I know I do. 

The thing was, Peter was stuck with Johnny forever, basically. The super glue of unintentional friendship. It was cosmic, fated, and incredibly annoying. Johnny Storm might have been a handbasket of bad decisions and personality defects wrapped up with an incredible smile, but he was Peter’s handbasket of bad decisions -- of which Daken was still the worst one Johnny had ever made, and Johnny had made some truly bad decisions. -- Johnny dates Daken, Peter has a crisis, and everything works out okay in the end.

All That We Were by paramountie Rated G - 10,298 words Here’s a super cute stuck in an alternate universe kid fic, if that’s your thing (It sure as hell is mine).

“What do you think the deal is anyway?” Peter asks. “My money’s on dreamscape.” “Twenty bucks says it’s an alternate universe.” “Nuh-uh, pal. It’s a dream for sure. Or a nightmare.”

The Spider Prince and the Morning Star by Traincat Rated M - 24,337 words Every ship needs a great fairytale fic, and this is a phenomenal fairytale fic. It’s sort of a Beauty and the Beast/Eros and Psyche tale and I loved it so much.

“Folks like to say there’s a monster that lives in the forest,” Old Swenson said the next day when Johnny told him his story. Johnny worked in his shop, when Swenson could afford to pay him. He fixed things, clocks and broken carriages. Johnny wasn’t good for much, but he had a hand for repairs. “And that it’ll grant you wishes, for a price. Folks will say anything, after a drink or five. Don’t listen to that kind of foolish talk, Johnny.” When Johnny makes a deal with the monster that lives in the woods – himself for his sister’s happiness – he doesn’t expect the giant spider to take him to a beautiful castle, or to reveal himself a cursed prince. There’s only one catch: he’s only a man in the darkest night, and Johnny can never see his face.

Better in Picture by weekend_conspiracy_theorist Rated T - 12,218 words I love this one, it’s freaking hilarious. It really uses Matt, Foggy, and Peter to their full comedic potential.

In which Peter Parker has no interest in sleeping with Matt Murdock, no matter what anyone seems to think.

you keep me hanging on by lamujerarana Rated E - 19,031 words Here’s a great friends with benefits to lovers fic, because there must always be at least one.

Johnny, reeling from his breakup with Medusa and the loss of his entire family, turns to Peter for comfort...that eventually involves casual sex that isn't so casual for Johnny, since he just so happens to be in love with Peter. Everything becomes incredibly complicated. This story takes place between the events of Inhumans vs X-Men #6 and Uncanny Avengers v3 #20.

Always Glad You Came by aloneintherain Rated T - 13,290 words Mistaken Identity or boys being dumb, take your pick.

Spider-Man is a relatively new, controversial vigilante, and Johnny has a crush the size of the Empire Building. The Four - operating under the assumption that Spidey is an adult - do not approve. “I just happen to think Spider-Man's cool,” Johnny says, matter-of-factly. “A hero can think another hero is cool without making it weird. I admire his aloofness. And his badass-ness.” “His aloofness,” Ben repeats, chuckling into his mug of beer. It’s roughly the size of Johnny’s head. “Yeah, sure, I bet that’s all your admire, right?”

When Peter Met Johnny by Measured Rated T - 14,437 words A paparazzi fic!

Peter takes up additional paparazzi work to pay the bills, which inevitably leads to an angry flaming man, a broken camera, an accidental friendship and a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Tied to the Wait and Sees by Mizzy Rated T - 14,283 words This is hilarious, poor Johnny’s trying his best. 

Johnny Storm's in love. With Spider-man. Except no one seems to even believe Johnny when he tells them. Everyone thinks he's totally joking. What a buzzkill. Even his bff doesn't react supportively, which is rude, disrespectful, and completely awkward when Johnny walks into a time anomaly and wakes up in the future married not to his beloved Spider-man, but to Peter Parker. Huh, no wonder Parker reacted so badly to the news.

Say You Will, Say You Won’t by Traincat Rated T - 15,563 words Peter in this one is hilarious, it’s perfect characterization.

Johnny Storm found him on a Friday afternoon, wearing the kind of beseeching look that filled Peter with dread. “I need to ask you a favor,” he said. “No,” Peter said, swinging away. -- Peter and Johnny get married, really-not-really.

Tales From The Black Pages by Traincat Rated T - 19,019 words A soulmate words fic, because, again, there must always be at least one. And it’s a really great one, too. 

Peter Parker was born with his words. Johnny Storm's been sure his will be said sarcastically since he was a child. Everything else more or less happens according to plan. A first words soulmate AU.

Weaving Spiders Come Not Here by Mizzy Rated T - 13,809 words Mistaken identity or boys being dumb, I think I can guess which one it is. 

People are treating Peter oddly. Really oddly. It turns out they're being nice to him because they think his boyfriend cheated on him. …with Spider-Man. It's honestly quite tiring pretending to be jealous of yourself.

Peter Parker’s Guide to Secret Identities by coocoocachu Rated T - 93,789 words Johnny is a teen heartthrob, enough said. 

“Oh wow, it’s the Human Torch, Johnny Storm.” MJ whispered to Peter. Peter just hummed back. Maybe it was a little childish to be upset but he totally had that thing with the weird mutant moth under control last night. Peter leaned against the wall while MJ milled around talking to people trying to figure out what the big scoop was here. ‘There always has to be a reason for an exclusive, Peter!’ she had said. Yeah, Peter thought, and the reason is Johnny Storm loves the attention. Peter fiddled with his camera. Action shots were more his thing, particularly somehow managing to take action selfies of himself as Spider-Man or a few of his supercharged enemies. Pictures of egotistical superhero’s shirtless? Not really his area.

stranger danger by I_mNotYourEnemy Rated T - 10,600 words Mistaken identity or boys being dumb 3: Grindr Identity

pete is this a bad time to ask who this is?? Hothead Is this not Grindr Peter? pete nope Hothead Ahhh fuck Sorry for the unsolicited dick pic pete that’s alright, ive seen worse -- In which Johnny gets a username wrong, Peter gets a dick pic, and MJ gets a headache just thinking about the situation.

Turn Me On, Turn Me Off by blue_jack Rated E - 5,158 words Honestly the summary speaks for itself here.

“I have. A vibrator. Stuck. In my ass,” Johnny said, enunciating clearly and concisely while staring him straight in the eyes, and Peter didn’t know who was blushing harder, but he was sure they were in a race to see who could match the color of his mask first.

Flip a Coin - Choose Both Sides by the_overlord Rated T - 10,993 words Johnny is president of the Spider-Man fanclub. Just- that’s it. 

Wherein Johnny Storm gets given a wrong number and ends up the President of Spiderman's fanclub. Things get a little more complicated from there.

Tanglewood Tree by amaronith Rated E - 6,901 words Another fuckbuddies to lovers au.

but love is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie, and a half whispered prayer Or: what happens when Johnny becomes fuck buddies with the guy he's been in love with for years.

let the choir bell sing by gottalovev Rated E - 16,457 words Another fake relationship, this one set abroad in Venice.

Johnny and Spider-Man are on assignment at the Carnival of Venice, and asked to be present at an influential politician's costumed party. When he becomes worried that said politician wants to match him up with his daughter, Johnny announces he's secretly married to Spider-Man. They can totally fake being secret husbands for a few days! Not a problem, not even when they have to share a bed. After all, they are good buddies; it's not as if Johnny would have to sleep with someone he has a crush on, like Peter Parker.

Stay With Me - by oneshinyapple Rated E - 2 works - 29,958 words total This is a great verse which is also part of the Like Gravity verse, which I haven’t read all the installments of. 

Movie nights, fighting alien dinosaurs, and falling in love with your best friend — one of these may be a worse idea than the others.

A Melody That’s Calling Your Name by gleesquid Rated T - 32,731 words Another great high school au.

When a boy gets trapped in the Baxter Building fire, Peter must make a quick choice: let the boy die terrified in the flames or gain his trust by showing him what's underneath his mask. In the end, it's no choice at all. But when that same boy shows up on the first day of senior year, Peter finds himself caught in a spiraling lie. The next thing he knows, he's got a boyfriend, he's starring in a musical, he's going to rich kids' costume parties, and he's realizing that maybe there are worse things than having someone know your biggest secret. You'd think high school couldn't get any weirder than a radioactive spider bite, but that's just the Parker Luck.

hang a shining star upon the highest bough by lamujerarana Rated E - 15,386 words A lovely little Christmas fic for that time of year

The first time Johnny and Peter meet up at the Statue of Liberty on Christmas morning, Johnny's kind, thoughtful, and supportive to Peter at a time when Peter, still mourning the loss of Gwen Stacy, really needs it. Peter doesn't know how he'll ever pay him back for that, but he's sure going to try. Or, Peter tries his best, throughout various Christmases, to be there for Johnny when he needs it.

take my medicine, treat you like adrenaline by gleesquid Rated E - 2,763 words The one and only Spiderverse fic on this list, for when you’re in that Peter B. Parker mood.

“Every time I even think about dating again, it’s like, ‘oh, there’s MJ’s nose,’ or ‘hey, she has MJ’s eyes.’ I don’t know how to not see her in everyone. I don’t know if I want to.” “You ever figured you’re maybe barking up the wrong tree?” Peter furrowed his brow. “Explain.” “Well, ya know.” Harry sipped his martini. “There’s a larger dating pool out there than you’d think. With people who will not remind you of MJ.” Or: After the divorce, Peter tries for a rebound.

Save a Horse-Adjacent Alien by Traincat Rated E - 3,915 words Poor Johnny made a terrible actor. 

He was minding his own business, sitting in a movie theater in Queens, snacking on popcorn and wondering how many times he could make fun of Johnny Storm’s hair before Aunt May asked why he was so fixated, when the trailers ended, the lights went out, and Johnny appeared on the screen. Peter’s mouth went dry, and it wasn't because of the popcorn. Maybe it was the distance the movie gave him, Johnny up on a screen instead of right in front of him, warm and bright and frighteningly human. Maybe it was how endearingly terrible of an actor he was. Maybe it was the lighting. It was, Peter thought, probably the cowboy boots.

Bring That Summer by pommenade Rated T - 15,070 words Ahh social media, get’s you every time.

Juggling the duties of Spider-Man as well as his life as CEO of Parker Industries was easy. Peter Parker had years of practice. Add in a clandestine relationship with Johnny Storm and things got a bit more complicated. Add in Johnny's Instagram account, and suddenly Peter's life is impossible.

Educational Purposes by Traincat Rated E - 5,510 words A sexy little married fic

“I just,” Johnny said, flicking his gaze up at Peter through his eyelashes. He pressed the pen to his bottom lip and lowered his voice, pornographic. “I really need to pass your class, Professor Parker.” Peter snorted. “Cute, Johnny.” “Please, Professor Parker?” Johnny continued, and suddenly Peter realized that he wasn’t just joking around. “Isn’t there anything I could do to improve my grade? Anything at all?”

[smilemoreimagines]

something tragic about you (Geralt x reader)

Part 1

length: 1,792

tw: death of family, physical abuse, canon-typical violence

Your ears come out to a slight point, but are not entirely without a human roundness.  On one, at the edge, is a scar, thick and paler than the rest of your skin.  You resent the human in you; years ago, you tried to cut it away into a full point, rid yourself of that which reminded you of your humanity, make yourself into a true elf.  But the pain was too great and you could not finish it.

You are not angry with your father for being human, but you’re not exactly not angry with him either.  Humans took both your father and your mother from you when you were too young to remember much of them, so that now you aren’t able to feel anything in particular if you try and call them to your mind.  And you are riotously angry for that, that you were never able to know them, that humans stole that privilege from you by burning your village to the ground after slaughtering its people as you watched in mute-horror hidden at the edge of the woods.  All you retain of that night is the scent of coppery blood and screams and flickering fire.  And laughter.

You stayed in the charred wreckage for days, sleeping in the ashes of what had been your home, until a trader and his wife rode in expecting a bustling market day but instead found you, tiny and starving.  They brought you to the nearest village and left you there on the street, not wanting to cart along a toddler half-elf.  All you had left of your family and childhood was your mother’s embroidered shawl, which you were not supposed to wear outside of the house but took anyway; it was cold and you had wanted to gather winterberries and the shawl was warm and beautiful.  You are glad you took it.

You have worked in the tavern of the town ever since.  You no longer know how many years it has been.  Two decades?  Three?  

The original owner of the place was not exactly kind to you, but he very rarely ever hit you.  You’re sad, in a way, that he died, because his son Lyden is not as tolerant of your kind.  He strikes you over the smallest of things: a few drops of spilled ale, a customer complaining of your elven blood, a customer desiring you for that very same reason.  But you’re thankful for that last one, that he refuses to make you join the pretty girls upstairs.  You have instead earned your position as a barmaid, and if you have to avoid the pawing of men wanting to fulfill a fantasy, you will.  Anything to not be a girl faking moans into the night, being pinned night after sleepless night into a hard mattress.  Not that you catch much sleep, either. 

You do not like your empty, lonely room at the end of the upstairs hall.  Rather than sleep there you slip out into the woods, and creep back in before dawn.  The other girls know this, and most are kind and do not tell on you, but sometimes you are unlucky enough to sleep in and come through the back door when the owner has already risen from his bed and crossed the street from his home to the tavern to rouse the girls and collect payment from the men who stayed the night.

On those unlucky occasions when you are caught you are beaten worse than usual.  If ever you catch a glimpse of your back in the mirror after a bath, you try not to think of the sound of his belt meeting your skin. Your keeper does not like that you have some secret place to go in the night.

Even if it is just the stars and the moon that you are looking up at from your bed of moss, wrapped in your mother’s shawl.

Out here you don’t feel as though you’ll suffocate, the open air gifting you with wind, cicada song, animals rustling.  Sometimes, if you lay still enough, deer will walk near you, regarding you with soft eyes.

Tonight though, you hear none of these things that you love.  It is unnaturally quiet and still.  When a twig cracks nearby your body is already coiled and ready to jump up.  You scan the trees, not able to see much from the light of the sliver of moon, until it gives you the flash of eyes in the dark, and then you can see the man walking towards you, fast enough to make you nervous.

“Get down,” he rumbles, but in the next moment another stick snaps behind you and you whirl around in time to see too-long teeth and a clawed hand swiping at you.  You stagger back but it’s too late, those claws tear through your arm and there is only pain, white hot and searing.  You think you would rather the dull ache of bruises.  You think you would rather death.  You think nothing and hear the unnerving sound of something sharp sinking into something living, the thump of a body hitting the forest floor.  You hope that the beast will kill you quickly and be done with it all, but you feel nothing but the persisting agony of your arm and then a soft touch on your shoulder.

A voice full of gravel tells you that you will be alright.

-----------------------------------------------

You wake under the cold blue sky, blink hazily at a sun that is already halfway to setting.  You’re laying on something soft -- a fur blanket? -- with a heavy cloak thrown over you.  Your arm is hot, a stabbing, throbbing pain.  You wonder idly at what happened to it, and then remember throwing your forearm up to block that creature from anything vital.  

And then you process that it’s noon.  You cannot even imagine the beating that you will get.  You bolt up, crying out at the searing pain, but struggle to your feet anyways, letting the cloak fall off of you.  But then a man is in front of you, golden-honey cat eyes wide.  

You sway on your feet, dizziness overcoming you.  “I have to get back,” you say, “Or I think he might kill me.”

“Fuck,” he says, before you tip over.  He catches you easily, but one hand presses into your bandaged skin and you scream.

“Fuck,” he says again.

-----------------------------------------------

When you next open your eyes it’s sunset and the man is sitting right beside you, his cloak once again thrown over you.  

When he sees you stir he places a hand on your shoulder, a gentle pressure, and says, “Easy, little elf.  You lost a lot of blood.”

You don’t have time to worry about that.  You sit up despite the hand meant to keep you down and ask, “How long have I been asleep?”

“Somewhere you need to be?”

“How long.”

He grunts.  “Almost two days.”

Two…?  Shit.  Fuck.

You try to get to your feet again, but he just grabs the hand of your good arm and tugs you back down to sit, which is when you notice you’re no longer wearing your dress.  Instead you are practically swimming in a shirt that smells of pine and horse, and your shawl is wrapped around your shoulders.

You look down at the shirt, then at him.

Unfazed, he says, “Your dress was soaked in blood.  It’s nearly winter; you would have frozen.”  

You can’t say you wish he’d left you in a blood-soaked dress, so you let it go.  

Next, he asks, “Who do you think is going to kill you if you don’t get back?”

You don’t want to tell him.  You don’t know this man.  You grip the shawl tighter around you and look at the ground.

“Is it the same man that bruised you up and left scars on your back?”

Now you look at him.  No one has seen them before.  Lyden never hits you where it will not be covered by your clothes.  He likes to kick you once he has you on the ground, so your back is nearly always painted black and blue, not to mention bloody when he lashes you; you often have to sleep on your stomach.

And now, with this new wound that has already seeped through the bandages…

“How bad is it?” you ask.  “How deep?”

He shakes his head.

Fine.  You pull at the knot tying it together and unravel the stained cloth before he can stop you.  For a moment you worry you’re going to faint again, but the feeling passes.  It is four gashes into the meat of your forearm.  The worst two are stitched fairly neatly, but the edges still tug apart slightly, just enough that you can see more of your own inner anatomy than you would care to.  You are careful to keep your arm palm-up so you don’t brush anything along the ragged cuts.  

“Please cover it again,” you say.  “I shouldn’t have looked.”

He sighs and reaches into a bag laying next to him, procuring a fresh cloth.  As he re-binds you, you can’t help but think that like this you won’t be able to fulfill your duties as a barmaid.  The only work you will be able to do, that requires no lifting, is on your back, under the weight of a man.

You do not like the feeling of fear, of powerlessness, but now it seems to ooze from your heart.  Your eyes are still on his face but your vision unfocuses, blurs.  You can’t remember the last time you allowed yourself to cry, to give in to hopelessness.

“What hurt you?  Left you so beaten?”  The heaviness in his voice requires an answer.

You choke out a laugh that is more like a sob, tell him, “Not what.  A man.  A man who will now have no use for me other than to fulfill the perversions of his customers.”

This man, who saved you and has cared for you even though he knows you are elven, shakes his head and growls, “Then that is no man.  He’s worse than the beast that tried to kill you.  He chooses to hurt.”

You nod and wipe at your wet face, more angry than scared now and annoyed at yourself for crying in front of a stranger.

“If you truly need to return to him I won’t stop you,” he says, but you don’t make a move to leave.  

The dying sun, in a last burst of light, glints on the pendant that hangs from his neck, and something in your memory clicks.  The wolf pendant, silvery hair, gilded eyes...

“You’re the Witcher, aren’t you?”

He hmms, and nods.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #15: The White-Haired Boy

They called him Alyn Ysmai, the White-Haired Boy.  In the village he came from, it was said he had fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star.  His skin was white as the clouds, and his hair as white as the Moon, and his eyes the golden color of wild animals.  From earliest days, it was said that the Lady of the Moon had marked him for her own, for his sight in the darkness was like that of the night beasts, while the sun blackened and blistered his moon-white skin. Later it became even more apparent that the Moon had favored him.

None could resist the charming spell of his words, his eyes.  Like the Moon, he mesmerized.  All the young women and not a few of the young men threw themselves into his arms, desperate for his love.  Not a few of these killed themselves afterward, too, when he abandoned them for a new lover or cruelly rejected them.

In the 25th year of his life, he still had the form and features of a boy, but a boy so beautiful none could take their eyes from him. To men who had never before considered another male attractive, he seemed almost a woman in his beauty, and they gave him anything he asked.  He was as precocious in mind as he seemed slowed in his growth; when 13, he completed his Passage to manhood by trickery, and since then had made three fortunes and become Captain of a vast Company, specializing in the acquisition and sale of information, as well as the dispatching of skilled assassins.  All the other Companies in the city of Tylar trembled in fear of Alyn Ysmai, and his every word was law.  Some grumbled, quietly, that Alyn Ysmai sought to make himself a Lord, as they had in some of the barbarous lands of Lysar.  But they grumbled this very quietly indeed, or they vanished, never to be seen again.

In truth, the charge had teeth.  Alyn Ysmai held a kind of court, where people seeking favors from him came to grovel and beg.  Sometimes it pleased the White-Haired Boy to grant their requests.  More often, it pleased him to shred their feelings, humiliate them, ruin them, or else steal their souls and make toys of them.  Few, few women dared go to him; ever since the Captain of a rival Company killed herself for love of Alyn Ysmai, none who sought men for their night's pleasure, male or female, went to the White-Haired Boy unless their need was very great.  The old and hardened, the men and women who loved only women, these were the only ones safe from loving him, and these faced other dangers of the soul instead.

There were those who said he was the son of the Lady of the Moon, one of the star angels fallen out of the night sky.  Others said he was a demon from beneath the ground, with his skin that could not bear the daylight.  It was people possessed of the former opinion that Alyn Ysmai surrounded himself with.

One day in his 25th year, as the White-Haired Boy held his "court", an old woman was brought to him.  She had the reputation of a seer, but none of the psychic Companies would take her, claiming she was a charlatan who prostituted whatever Gift she had.  Her only son had betrayed his Company and broken his bloodpaper, and so a deathpaper had been placed on him.  She had come to beg Alyn Ysmai to use his influence to save her son.

His gold eyes bored into her own, and it seemed to her he could see all she desired, and more; all her pains, her tragic memories, all her deficiencies and the weaknesses in her heart.  Almost, she cringed from his gaze-- she was not a very brave woman.  But though she was not brave, and though she might be called a trickster, still she loved her only son.  So she bowed deeply, instead.  "My lord of the white hair, my humble bones groan with the honor you place on my shoulders, agreeing to lower yourself to see me.  Words cannot describe my gratitude and humility..."

"Then don't waste them,"  Alyn Ysmai said, and his smile was as cold as ice. "I am not terribly fond of lowering myself to see gutter trash like you, old woman.  Apparently you convinced my assistants that you were worth my time; either you've got a treasure unheard-of hidden in those rags, or you've a silver tongue.  In which case, it would look very attractive if I melted it down and made a necklace out of it.  So which is it?"

The woman quailed at his vicious words, all the more terrible for the mild, somewhat bored tone they were spoken in. Trembling, she prostrated herself at his feet.  "O most noble lord, I have had a vision concerning your exalted self.  Poor as a seer though I might be, still it is said that the gods may choose base vessels for their lofty messages, and who can gainsay the will of the gods?"

"Oh, you have a vision.  Concerning me.  No doubt, something about how I will be successful in love, or achieve wealth, or something.  Since if you came with some doom­saying prophecy, you wouldn't expect a gift for it."  He yawned, ostentatiously.  "You have no way of knowing how tired I am of every halfwit who fancies herself a seer telling me things about my future anyone could have guessed from looking at my past.  If this is another of those tedious predictions, I don't want to hear it."

"No, no, nothing like that, noble one! My vision concerns your true nature, and your rightful position among the people of Tylar. Indeed, the people of all the land of Taldyr!"

"Oh, don't tell me.  I'm the chosen of the Lady of the Moon, right? I do get tired of this. Guards..."

"Wait! My lord, you don't know your true nature-- it's even greater than anyone had predicted!"

That had gotten his attention.  He leaned forward slightly, gesturing to the guards to hold their places.  "So tell me then, base vessel of lofty messages that you claim to be."

She dared not look at his eyes, or he would discern the truth of her message soon enough.  She had to make him believe it.  "My lord, as you know, four days ago was a night with no moon.  It was on that night that I dreamed.  I dreamed I went out into the street and looked up at the sky, and I could not see the Lady's face.  I called out, 'My lady Moon, don't leave us behind! Don't leave us in darkness!'

"Then the stars spoke to me.  They said, 'You fool! You call to the sky for the Lady, when she dwells on the same ground as you? Your brains are addled, old woman!'

"I asked, 'How can the Lady be on the same ground as me? Surely any ground I walk on must be too unworthy for her exalted self...'

"They replied, 'Do not overestimate your importance, gutter slime.  Your actions are so totally meaningless that they can have no bearing on the Lady's actions.'

"But then one of the stars said, 'Wait, brothers and sisters.  Feeble, old and unworthy this piece of human trash may be, but she may yet perform a valuable service for us.  After all, she is not the only human who does not know what magnificence walks among them.'

"'That is true,' said the other stars.  Then they said, 'Our Lady walks among your people, in the very streets of your city, trapped by her enemy the Sun and unaware of who she truly is.  We will give you a task worthy of far better than you, old woman, and no gods shall help you if you fail it.  You shall find the Lady and inform her of who she truly is, and ask her to take her position of worship.  For if, trapped on Talla in the body of a human, she does not receive the worship of her loyal servants, she will pine away, and the Moon, her visible manifestation, will fade forever from the sky.'

"'But she cannot be among the people of Tylar!' I protested.  'For her loyal worshipper and chosen servant, Alyn Ysmai, would surely have found her, seeing as he knows all that transpires in this city!'

"They laughed.  Then they said, 'Oh, yes, Alyn Ysmai knows everything-- except the secret of his birth.  Perhaps you have forgotten, old woman, that in other countries, the Moon is worshipped as a man.  As lord of desire and love, the god you call the Lady of the Moon is not bound to the shape of a woman-- she contains within her the essence of the masculine, as well. Go and tell Alyn Ysmai that he is no mere servant of the Lady of the Moon-- he is the Moon, trapped in the form of a white-haired boy on Talla, bound by his enemy, the Sun.  He must know himself for what he is and be worshipped, or he will never achieve the strength to break the bonds the Sun has placed on him and return to his rightful place in the heavens.  Tell him, old woman!'

"And then I awakened.  I feared to come to you at first, believing my dream only the foolish fancy of an old woman.  But then I remembered the legend, that the touch of the Sun corrodes your skin. There have been others favored of the Moon, but it is the birthright of all humans to touch the Sun and be warmed. If the Sun is inimical to your existence, my lord, then you cannot be human.  Your substance is of an entirely different nature, and the Sun is its ancient enemy.

"Is it true, my lord? Does the touch of the Sun truly burn your skin? Are you the Moon in human incarnation?"

Alyn Ysmai stared at the old woman, shocked to his core. Always had he believed he was touched by divinity, but never that he was divinity himself.  Could he believe that? Dared he believe that? If he was not the Moon, and claimed to be, would not she withdraw her protection from him, as punishment for his pride?

Yet-- if he was the Moon, it would explain a very great deal. It would explain his power to see into the hearts and sometimes the minds of others, knowing what they felt as if it showed on their faces even when they showed no sign, and sometimes knowing their thoughts as if they had spoken them, even when they had made no sign. That was no seer's power, no psychic's trick-- that was a far greater power than the humans of Talla had, and he had it.  Why? Why did the sun sear his skin? Why was he so pale, as if all the color had been drained from him, when even the babies never bronzed by the blue-white sun were born brown? All around him had black or red hair, curled tightly, loosely, or waving-- his was white and straight as moonlight.  All around him had eyes of black or brown-- his were tawny gold. The men of 25 years that he knew were muscular and tall-- he was yet small and slight, with the beauty but not the strength of a woman, as if he were yet a boy.  Why?

If he were the Moon, trapped here by the Sun-- oh, that would explain it all.  A deity in human form could not be expected to look human.  The Sun's substance would corrode the Moon's skin, naturally.  And he could not grow to full manhood as long as he remained ignorant of his true nature.

No wonder people loved him whenever he wished, if he was the god of desire and love.  No wonder people threw their reason away for him, lost their willpower to his, when will and reason were gifts of the Sun, if he was the Sun's ancestral enemy.  It all made beautiful, perfect sense.  He felt a sudden rush of warmth for this old woman, who had shown him the truth of what he was.

"Yes,"  he said. "Yes, it's all true.  Now that you tell it to me, it's so obvious I wonder how I could have failed to see it before.  I am the Lady of the Moon."  He stood, and graciously helped the old woman to her feet. "You've done me a great service, old woman,"  he said. "Is there any service I can do for you, as a token of my gratitude?"

"If you would, my exalted Lord,"  she whispered, her eyes cast at the ground. "My dear and only son, the delight of his mother's old age, has had a deathpaper placed on him by the Athysuvyras Company.  If you would only use your great powers to make them rescind the papers and let him join a new Company..."

"I'll do that,"  the White-Haired Boy, now revealed as the Lady of the Moon, told her. He took from her the details of the case, and dismissed her.  Then he dismissed all those who sought an audience with him.  Turning to his subordinates, he said, "You've heard what she said.  Do you believe it true? Will you accept me, not only as your Captain, but as your goddess?"

As one, all of them bowed deeply.  His second-in-command, a woman he had never found attractive enough to seduce but who loved him deeply, said, "We will follow you even to death, my Captain and Lady, my god.  Command us, and we will follow."

"Then we all go to the temple of the Moon-- to My temple, tonight.  There are a few matters I wish to discuss with My priests."  Already he had shifted into the dialect used only in myths and religious services, the speech used by the gods to mortals.

***

In the temple, the Lady's priests awakened as their goddess's manifestation first began to brighten in the sky.  They went about their duties as if this were a day like any other, until they heard a clamor outside.

One of the priests went to the door, and saw there the White-Haired Boy, followed by a hundred or more.  It was well-known that Alyn Ysmai was the favored of the Moon, and so the priest opened the gates.  "What brings you to the temple this fine night, sir?"  he asked.

Alyn Ysmai looked at him with an expression of cold fire, and the priest suddenly wanted to wilt into the ground beneath and die. "You will address Me with proper respect,"  the White-Haired Boy said.  "It has been revealed to Me today that I am your Goddess, taken flesh in the form of a human male.  I wish to address all of My priests.  Call them from their duties and have them assemble in the main courtyard."

Stunned, the priest managed to stammer, "Y-yes, my lor-- my Lady..."  He turned and ran, to bring the news to the other priests, his mind in turmoil.  How could it be that they had not divined the presence of the Lady in their midst? Something had gone terribly wrong.

The priests came out from the chambers where they worshipped the Lady with their bodies, men and women with disheveled hair and hastily-donned ceremonial clothing.  Hairbrushes and makeup flew about as they tried to restore themselves to the beautiful aspect they should present, before their goddess should arrive.

Then finally the White-Haired Boy strode into the room. He had dressed in the garment of a priest himself, and was made up to be unbearably beautiful.  None who looked at him could disbelieve that he held feminine essence in himself, nor could they disbe­lieve that he was Desire incarnate. His followers mingled with the priests and prostrated themselves in the courtyard, except for the bodyguards who stood behind him.  In his pale white beauty he seemed to glow like the moon itself, and this is what he said:

"Listen, priests of My temple! Today it has been revealed to Me that I am not merely the favored child of the Moon.  I am the Moon herself, taken flesh in My male aspect.  The Sun, my ancient enemy, has trapped Me here, giving Me a male shape in a place where I am worshipped in My female aspect. But look at Me! Can you not see in Me the duality of My nature?"  His voice became seductive, his whole body sensuality incarnate.  Every lover of women saw a woman in him, while every lover of men saw him as a man, and all adored him beyond belief.  "Is there anyone here who does not desire Me? Who does not think Me beautiful? Who would not die for Me, should I ask it?"

"No one, Lady, no one!"  the prostrated priests and followers chorused.

He beckoned to one of the followers.  "Stand up and be counted!"  he called to him, and the man stood.  "Do you not love Me?"

"Yes-- yes, my Lady! I will do anything for You!"

"Take your knife and plunge it into your breast for Me, then,"  Alyn Ysmai said.

Mesmerized by the burning gold eyes and the beauty, the man did so, and died with a cry of anguish and ecstasy as his own knife pierced his heart.

As the man fell dead, Alyn Ysmai said, "From this day forth, all of you will direct your worship to Me, to My fleshly aspect, as well as to My heavenly manifestation.  You will obey My every order without question, and serve the desires of the flesh I wear.  If I tell you to break all your bloodpapers, to murder your employers, to make the streets run with the blood of those who worship My enemy the Sun, you will do it. And I will reward you with My presence, and with fortune in love, so long as you please Me."

***

They built Alyn Ysmai a throne in the temple, and brought him the finest brocades to wear, the finest delicacies to eat.  He enslaved the hearts and minds of those who opposed him, or claimed he was no god.  If they hated him too much to be enslaved, his followers and priests would compete to devise new and interesting ways of putting them to painful death. People broke their bloodpapers and murdered their employers at his order, just as he had said, and when deathpapers were placed on those who had committed the crimes, his worshippers would rise up against that company and devastate it.  The streets ran with the blood of those who worshipped the Sun, or sometimes, any god but Alyn Ysmai.  Those who earned his gratitude had great rewards granted them, and led enviable lives. Those that disappointed him were required to abase or humiliate themselves, or sometimes to commit horrible suicides.

And through it all Alyn Ysmai grew very bored.

He showed no sign of aging, of developing a more manly body. Worship satiated him, but gave him no mystic strength to command the heavens, or any other of the great powers that should be his by right.  And his pleasures had to grow progressively more unusual to appeal to his jaded soul.

Finally, one night he had a dream.

In the dream he saw a woman, and she was mirror to himself, with long hair the color of moonlight, and eyes the color of night. Her body was perfection, and more than perfection, and he fell immediately in love with her, desperately and completely.

"Alyn Ysmai,"  she said, and her voice was the music of the night.  "I've heard a great deal about you."

"Have you?"  he asked, and his mouth was dry.

"You're very beautiful,"  she said.  "Truly, you are favored."  And she smiled at him with biting sharpness.  He could not tell if her smile was a mockery, or if she meant what she said.  For the first time, his gifts deserted him, and he could tell nothing about her, affect nothing of her.

"You are also very beautiful,"  he managed.

"Yes, I am, aren't I?"  she said, and stepped toward him.  

She drew him into her embrace, and it was like nothing he had ever experienced.  It was more real than any dream he had ever had-- more real, in fact, than reality had ever been.  And when she took him in love, there was more pleasure than he had ever imagined, more than he could easily comprehend.

Then she faded like smoke out of his arms, leaving him unfulfilled and despairing.  He called out to her...  and realized that he was awake.

Desperate with unfulfilled desire, he summoned one of his priests, a beautiful woman trained in all the arts of pleasure, to his bed.  But she was empty, hollow, after the woman of last night.  He felt dirtied by her touch, and experienced no enjoyment, only the release of a physical pressure.  His mind and soul were left as unfulfilled as before.  

For hours he lay in bed, throughout the burning day, trying to regain the dream he'd lost, but to no avail.  Finally, sick to the soul, he rose with the moon, dressed, and glanced out the window.

She was standing in the courtyard below.

Alyn Ysmai was down the stairs faster than anyone should be able to move.  But when he reached the courtyard, she was gone.  

"Did you see a woman here?"  he demanded of a priest passing by.  "A woman, with hair and skin as light as my own?" In his desperation, he forgot the terms of godly address, and spoke just as he had when he was thought an ordinary man.

"No-- no, my Lord,"  the man said.  "I saw no one."

"Did you see her?"  the White-Haired Boy demanded of other priests, searching the entire courtyard.  "Did you? Did you?"

Finally one said, "I think I saw a woman like that heading out the gates, my Lord."

Like a man possessed, Alyn Ysmai headed for the gates, searching for the woman.  Already he knew that he would never know pleasure, real pleasure again, never enjoy anything in life again, until he found her.  Without her, his life would be empty and meaningless.  And when he found her, she would become the reason for his existence.  He would worship her, as he himself was worshipped, and give her everything he had, and in return she would give him pleasure far beyond the domain of mortal men.

So he went into the city, and demanded of passersby that they tell him where she had gone.  He had none of his bodyguards, but the force of his need was such that even those who hated him answered him readily.  It did no good.  The fragments he learned indicated that she had somehow drifted out of the city, like a flower blown on the wind.  He turned and left the city, hiking out into the wilderness to seek her out.

In the day he sheltered from the sun under the rich brocades his worshippers had given him, and still he searched.  In the night, he drove himself without food, without sleep, crossing the wilderness alone, and still he searched.  And for days and nights he searched, until days turned to weeks, and then to months, and then to years.  And still he searched...  for his life would not be complete until he found her again.

In the city, his worshippers tried to follow him, but found that the moon was too dim to find him by-- it clouded their vision, somehow. And slowly they awoke, as if from a dream, and realized that their goddess in male cloak would not be returning to them.  So they resumed the old patterns of worship, and the life of the city returned to the way it had been, before the arrival of the White-Haired Boy.

***

In the heavens, the Lord of the Night, master of sleep and dreams, and his sibling the Lady of the Moon, stood in the palace of the sky and looked down.  Alyn Ysmai still continued his desperate quest for the woman who had stolen his soul-- she who was none other than the true Lady of the Moon, herself.

"I'm not sure I should have let you enter his dream,"  the Lord said.  "You've stolen his soul, sister, and doomed him to wander all Talla, searching for you."

"Surely you don't think the punishment was too extreme,"  the Lady of the Moon said, surprised at her brother.  "The White-Haired Boy brought chaos to the city he dwelt in. He toyed with the hearts and minds of others, and destroyed people for no better reason than his own pleasure, or to alleviate his boredom.  If anyone on all Talla could be called evil, it would be Alyn Ysmai.  Surely you must realize how much he deserved his fate, brother! I did nothing more to him than what he did to countless others."

"I know,"  the Lord said gravely.  "For what he did, the White-Haired Boy deserves a thousand punishments, and I don't grieve to see him tormented the way he tormented so many others.  But I question your motives, sibling."

"My motives? Why do you question--"

"When he won the hearts of all his family, so that they spoiled him and gave him all he desired, you smiled on him.  When he tricked people of their birthrights and of their bloodpapers, you clapped your hands in delight like a small child.  And when he played with the hearts and minds of others, enslaving people to his desires, robbing them of will, making them his toys, you laughed and beamed down on him.  He was your favored child, agent of your pleasures and your manipulations.  It wasn't until he grew arrogant enough to believe himself you, to steal your worshippers and rain blood in your name, that you grew angry enough to punish him."  The Lord of the Night gazed sternly at his sister.  "You destroyed him, not because he was evil-- for he was evil even before he took your temple, made so by the gifts you gave him.  No, you destroyed him for the sake of your own pride."

And the Lady of the Moon could make no reply, for it was true.

***

They say the White-Haired Boy lived a long, long time, and spent all that time searching for the Lady of the Moon, never finding the cruel goddess again, nor regaining her favor.  Some say that he wanders Talla still, calling her by the name "Beloved,"  calling to her as he searches.  If you cross his path, these say, he will doom you to a devastating and unrequited love, to make another share his anguish.  Others say he died a long time ago.  But even those turn aside when they see a pale form in the distance, on a moonlit night, or when they hear the wind crying a name.

***

Translator’s notes:

Aside from the Great Diaspora, when the people of Laon fled their original homeworld, and the world of Scamara, which according to their legends wasn’t settled by willing Laon’l, there is very, very little evidence of Laon’l space travel prior to being contacted by the Galactic Confederation. This is understandable; prior to the Diaspora, the Laon’l perceived space to be the realm of demons, while the chthonic realms of their planet’s depths were understood to be the realm of their afterlife, cradled in the peaceful bosom of their Mother. After the Diaspora, Laon’l saw space as the realm of their tormentor, the Daishenéon Emaroth (the title translates as either “Great Empress” or “Greatest of Demons”.)

However, it cannot be denied that on the new world of Laon, the technology for space travel existed, and the Laon’l leadership has always tended to be conservative and controlling – a combination that often leads free-thinkers, iconoclasts, and members of minority cultures to flee their homes. The Laon’l leadership is known to have suppressed any knowledge of individuals fleeing Laon, in the past, but archaeologists have found evidence of attempts to build spaceships. Until now, however, we’ve found no evidence on Laon’l presence on any world other than Laon and Scamara.

This particular legend comes from the continent of Taldyr on Talla, and has been understood by the Taldyrese to be fictional, or possibly to be based on the actual exploits of a charismatic leader with albinism. However, there are certain factors that suggest that this is not the case.

-          The White-Haired Boy is presented as unusually sensitive to Talla’s sun. The blue-white sun of Talla is in fact a serious problem for the rare Tallese albinos, and for humans of the “Caucasian” subgroup and Draigoili of the “anthela” subgroup, but only Laon’l are known to actually die of radiation poisoning from a full day of exposure to the Tallese sun (during summer, or near the equator, and on a cloudless day). The exaggerated sensitivity the White-Haired Boy supposedly had to sunlight in legend sounds significantly more like Laon’l sensitivity to the Tallese sun than to the sensitivity Tallese albinos exhibit.

-          The White-Haired Boy, if he existed, would almost certainly have had to be psionic to demonstrate the abilities he supposedly had. This might simply be a convention of fiction – on Earth, another low-psi world, legendary figures have abilities that in reality would require powerful psi, as a matter of routine. But Alyn Ysmai is actually the only Tallese legendary figure to demonstrate abilities that seem to fall in the range of telepathy, telempathy or expathy; most Tallese trickster figures or legendary heroes have abilities that cannot be explained by psionics, such as shapeshifting, flight, abnormally high strength, et cetera.

-          “Fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star” : any version of the Alyn Ysmai legend that covers his childhood at all makes reference to this part of the legend. The resemblance to a spaceship crash-landing is obvious.

-          “had the form and features of a boy”, references to the femininity of the White-Haired Boy – Laon’l are significantly more neotenous than other humanoid species, and typically have less sexual dimorphism. To a Tallese of a thousand years ago, a Laon’l of 25 Tallese years would look much more like a teenager, and would appear more androgynous than the average Tallese teenager.

-          Talla’s star is visible in the sky of Laon, often during the day. It’s one of about ten stars that writings of Laon’l who believed their species should return to space spoke of attempting to reach.

-          Laon’l and Tallese are not interfertile without modern genetic engineering, and some variants of the Alyn Ysmai legend make much of the fact that he fathered no children. No variants claim that he did have children. With the amount of coitus, the number of partners the legends suggest he would have had, and the social status he had, it’s implausible that he wouldn’t have had children if he were fertile at all.

Of course, all of this is circumstantial evidence; without access to Alyn Ysmai’s remains, we have no way of proving for certain his species. However, it’s fairly strong circumstantial evidence.

Given the value to identifying evidence of pre-GalConfed Laon’l space travel, we suggest that an archaeological expedition to Talla to attempt to determine whether the White-Haired Boy actually existed or not, and to potentially recover whatever may be left of his remains, should be funded within the next five years.

[arkt-nehrim-archive]

For the asking thing: Thoughts on Lexil Merrayil? :3

I adore Lexil.  He’s -brilliant-, and he felt very genuine to me compared to other characters. He was always happy to see us, -thankful- that we came back in one piece, and sets himself up to be trying as hard as you are even while not giving himself the credit of -honestly carrying nearly this whole thing himself-. I really feel like more could’ve/should’ve been done with him. And I don’t just mean for like, content that could’ve been added in Forgotten Stories, I mean from a -total- narrative sense too. This might get lengthy. And also spoilers, so many spoilers.

  The Star City, for example.  Lexil clearly showed interest and ability in being able to go along for that trip, but instead his mentor/mother figure Yaela gets shoe-horned in as a random expert in Starlings, when if -she mentored him-, Lexil could’ve have just as easily been.  “Didn’t he need to stay to work on the Beacon?”  Development on the Beacon was at a stand-still at the time, he would’ve been free to go on the trip with you. Cue actually getting to speak to him on the ship, and the opportunity for a romance dialogue -if- there had been one as an option for him (providing us tall ass Aeterna players with a not borked cute scene).  Carrying forward into the journey where -he- would’ve figured out the everything, with -all- the relevant data running amok in his head since he’s basically been doing 90% of the work here and it -could’ve- been a stressful thing. Not this “GASP! I FIGURED IT OUT!  -barfs exposition out of nowhere coming to conclusions for the sake of plot convenience over it actually making any sense to magically know these things off of some pictures that could definitely be interpreted in like 20 different ways-”.  Lexil, you, and Jespar/Calia could’ve spent that 12 hour window to explore and get back to the ship smacking your collective heads against the wall to figure this out, having another moment that Enderal prizes so much to truly -discuss- and potentially argue your points, before Lexil (after hearing all the counsel) could more -realistically- come to the conclusions that Yaela came to.  Oh no!  The big dragon boss reeeee!   Now there’s a character defining scary moment where you can CHOOSE to either leave Lexil behind to hold the line while you escape -OR-, if you got the chops for it, -fight the lvl 100 Steel Dragon- with your best pal Lexil, getting to finally show him in -combat- for once, paired up with your choice of bestie. “But wait, if we chose to let Lexil die, how would we finish the Beacon-”  YAELA! Who could be JUST as sad about losing her basically adoptive son to Tealor’s magical adventure quest to be famous save the world, and -she- could finish the Beacon. Or Yuslan could, I mean he contributes quite a lot too, especially when we hit snags. Oooor, we beat the boss and Lexil is proven a total badass that we -all know him to be-. But wait then why would they have any reason to flee in the drop pods?  Easy!  The steel beast still destroyed the ship and there’s no other way down, plus the alarms are still in play at that point (thanks Kurmai), so it’s not like it isn’t still dangerous to be there. It could’ve given him -such- a deeper role to play even if that was the only quest we got to really -do- with him out in the field.  Alas~  Such is only the dreamy realm of headcanon. Before I stop, I want to add in that Lexil had an effect on me that’s -never- happened in a videogame, ever.  And that was at the -end-.  Already striking was just -seeing- the Cleansing happening, but it’ll be forever burned into my memory seeing that subtitle at the bottom of my screen, “Lexil Merrayil: -wheeze-” I whirled my camera around trying to find him, and by some awful luck, he was -centered- in my camera in such a way that took my damn breath away. He looked like he might’ve been running for the very place I was going, before he collapsed. Took the few steps needed to get closer to him, in which I saw just how awful he looked; the shivering I remember the most.  It froze me solid, I just couldn’t -do- anything for -minutes- while the Beacon roared in the backround and that heart-wrenching music played, and somehow, for whatever reason, -all- of my failures and triumphs up to this moment in the game did not feel like -this-.  I felt awful that I didn’t even -know- a healing spell, in the off chance that would help. I couldn’t bring myself to try to put him out of his misery, despite the obvious terrible pain he was in.  I don’t honestly remember what happened after, at some point I had to have moved, because I finished the game.  But I legit barely recollect between waiting there with Lexil aaand waking up in the Star City for the Brave New World ending, it’s all a haze. Maybe it was the fact of anybody I’d encountered, he well and truly -did not deserve this-. It made me wonder what sort of writer would -want- to write that. And y’know, some people think that helplessness expressed in their stories is provocative and -good-; and for some it -is-.  For me it’s...overdone and unnecessary, as its so often accompanying other tragic circumstances that are already bad enough on their own.  Lexil’s situation was obviously no different, I mean. The Cleansing and all that. Yes, some writers desire to load their stories up with grimdark awfulness, that’s tragedy as a genre in a nutshell, some kind of reminder of “real life” where bad things happen and you can’t do anything about it.  Buuut... Lexil was a bit much in a game with several other prior character deaths, one of which is a -suicide-, another a -child-. There’s a point when it is -too much-, even for a tale of that genre, -especially- in a conclusion that just ends in -everyone- dying. Lexil’s fate required such a disconnect that I don’t really remember the end, as I said, and I still haven’t been able to go back and play again, because everytime I see that Beacon at the beginning, I think of Lexil and the fate that awaits him and me; it puts this firm -stop- into it that questions what about another trip through could possibly be worth it when -that- is the end? And it -sucks-, because Enderal is such a fun game! I genuinely -loved- it, up until that. It’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played, but man... Lexil.   How’s the saying go?  Straw that broke the camel’s back?  Maybe one day I’ll manage to play again, but so far I never make it past that first meet with Jespar.

Huuh. Wow, that got long winded.  So uhm, to answer the question.  Lexil Merrayil left quite an impression. He’s very special to me; if not just for being a solid, under appreciated character, than for the emotions he invoked. I really wish he got a better hand dealt to him, but, alas.

@cat-with-a-keyboard   Thank you!  Apologies for the feels trip! 

[officialthiamlibrary]

2019 THIAM REVERSE BIG BANG MASTERLIST

Below is  the masterlist of all of the creations by the amazing artists and writers for the Thiam Reverse Big Bang… four months of fantastic work, preparation, organization and collaboration between the creators are in this list, and we’ll never stop shouting about how thankful we are to everyone who participated this year for the work that you’ve put in to these!! 

Some of those participating were even creating for other events (including our Halloween event) in between this one… and they still have these fantastic works ready to show everyone... so PLEASE show them some love for their hard work by commenting, reblogging, and giving likes/kudos/comments where you can! <3 

All fics are arranged by the date each collaboration was scheduled for posting, titles for both each artwork and fic will take you to each individual creators post.

Special Thanks to @manonisamelon for creating this event’s roundup banner!

16 December 2019

The Price of Freedom + Artwork 1,  2

Author: @volsungar-the-mighty   Artist: @moondrunkmonster56

[41k Words | Rated: M | No Warnings]

When the McCall pack find out that Mason is the Beast of Gevaudan, the Dread Doctors plans go awry, and Theo is left in the firing line. He goes on the run, only to be captured and paralyzed by them before he gets too far.

Liam, a Fallen Angel turned demon, is convinced to leave hell for the first time since his Fall. When he comes across Theo, paralysed, wounded, and about to be tortured and punished by the Dread Doctors, he offer's the Chimera a deal.

Theo's freedom, in exchange for his soul. But something goes wrong when Liam makes the deal a reality, and he becomes stuck on Earth with Theo.

And thats when the fun begins.

Archive Tags: Thiam Big Bang | Thiam Reverse Bang | Thiam | demon au! | Demon Liam! | Bargains | Selling of Souls | Violence | Action | Kinda Romance | Slow Burn

~~~

Making The Pieces Fit + Fic Aesthetic , Thiam’s Story Aesthetic , Aesthetic for Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, 

Author: @bookwyrm07   Artist: @manonisamelon

[7.5k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

When Theo was hired to rob a bank he knew he could do it, but now that two of his crew have taken themselves out his only option left is to get help from his ex.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Criminals | Past Liam Dunbar/Hayden Romero | Past Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken | Getting Back Together | Bank Robbery | Light Angst | Idiots in Love | Mild Sexual Content | Thiamrbb19

~~~~~

17 December 2019

Eyes Unclouded + Artwork 1,  2

Author: @wolfenboyb   Artist: @marauders-mess

[6.5k Words | Rated: General Audiences | No Warnings]

Inspired by Princess Mononoke... Theo leaves his remove village after it is attacked by a mysterious dark god. Cursed, he ventures out into the world to discover the source of unbalance in the land. He discovers a wolf prince at war with an encroaching town of humans making iron out of sand and destroying the sacred forest. As tensions rise, Theo must find a way to end the conflict and protect the one he loves

Archive Tags: AU | Inspired by Princess Mononoke 

~~

Those Who Wait + Artwork 1, Aesthetic 1,  2 ,  3 

Author: @lovelylittlegrim   Artist: @tabbytabbytabby

[6.5k Words | Rated: Explicit | No Warnings]

Theo finally gets what he's always wanted. 

Archive Tags: Dark | Manipulation | Murder | Smut | Claiming | Biting | Alpha Theo | Top Theo | runaways- freeform | Theo’s been so very patient | Established Relationship

~~

Like The Trembling Heart Of A Captive Bird + Artwork 1,  2 , 3

Author: @impalachick   Artist: @osirismind

[9.5k Words | Rated: Explicit | Warnings: Underage]

Liam is head boy for the Juniors at Beacon Hills Preparatory Academy, and Senior Theo Raeken gets in trouble a lot. They don't exactly get along.

Everything changes when Gerard Argent shows up. Liam finds out that the supernatural seniors are to be drafted and sent to Vietnam on Gerard’s orders. Liam is determined to keep the pack safe and is surprised when Theo agrees to help. When they work together, Liam realizes there is much more to Theo Raeken then the bad boy stereotype implies.

*The underage tag is checked because in this story, Liam is 17 (and Theo is 18). There is discussion about the Vietnam War Draft Lottery and the drafting process, and the pack seniors face the stress of possibly getting drafted.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - 1970s | 1970s | Alternate Universe - Boarding School | Enemies to Lovers | School Dances | First Time Blow Jobs | Vietnam War | Evil Gerard Argent | Banter| Explicit Sexual Content | Cigarettes | Clothed Sex | Suit Porn | Suit Kink | Formalwear | Getting Together | Getting to Know Each Other | Werewolf Senses | Christmas | Christmas Party | Angst with a Happy Ending | Teamwork | Pack Dynamics | Head Boy Liam | bad boy Theo

~~~~~

18 December 2019

All The Broken Pieces (you chose to love) + Artwork 1,  2

Author: @flyde  Artist: @marauders-mess

[22k Words | Rated: Mature | No Warnings]

Life fell to pieces, not suddenly, not violently, but slowly. Softly, the broken parts were caught. Safely, they were held. Lovingly, they were protected, although they could never be put back together.

Or: a childhood friends to tragic lovers AU

Archive Tags: Emotional Hurt | Emotional Hurt/Comfort | Angst | Minor Character Death | Depression | Sadness | Childhood Friends | Friendship/Love | I'd tag this happy ending but I don't want to promise too much

~~

The Strangeness In You Is The Strangeness In Me + Artwork 1, Artwork 2, Artwork 3

Author: @eneiryu   Artist: @18-sweet-poisoned-heart

[28k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

Theo’s life is never boring, considering where he works, but he’d have to say that his job doesn’t truly get exciting until the day that their entire station gets taken hostage by the Fae King of Northern California, pissed off that Theo arrested his murderous little protégé prince.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism | Alternate Universe - Fae | Supernatural Cop!Theo | Fae Prince!Liam | Life is Full of Misunderstandings | Thiam RBB 2019

~~

(Not) Dying For Brew + Artwork

Author: @nabawrites   Artist: @snaeken

[7k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

Liam graduated from college, and now he’s back in Beacon Hills. He didn’t expect to run into Theo again, especially not in a coffee shop. It stirs up some old feelings he hadn’t ever really forgotten about…

Archive Tags: Miscommunication | Angst | Fluff | Banter | cute nicknames | Getting Together | First Kiss | coffee shop AU | Future Fic | Anchors | puns | Friends to Lovers | sort of slow burn?

~~~~~

19 December 2019

When the Day Met Night  + Artwork

Author: @imjustafangirl-nobodylovesme    Artist: @lightfiretomypaperwings​

[8.2k Words | Rated: Teen | No Warnings]

The day finally arrives where Theo is told he's officially joining the family business. He's not happy to hear the news. Life under his father's thumb is a nightmare come true.

On his last day of freedom, he meets Liam Dunbar, a human ray of sunshine that changes everything.

Archive Tags: Original Genderfluid Character | Organized Crime | Mob Boss's son Theo | Photographer Liam | Theo and Tara hate their lives

~~

Saw the shadow of the valley but the shadow was mine + Artwork

Author: @eneiryu   Artist: @colder-bones

[17.3k Words | Rating: Mature | No Warnings]

No one ever trusts Theo, but then again: they’re not supposed to. It’s Liam they never see coming.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence | Dread Doctor Spy!Liam 

~~

Caput Mortuum + Artwork

Author: @imjustafangirl-nobodylovesme   Artist: @moondrunkmonster56

[16.3k Words | Rating: Teen | No Warnings]

Liam had pretty much resigned himself to never leaving his home, but then HE moved in. Or

The one where Liam is a ghost (but not really) and Theo buys the house he haunts (but not really).

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Human | Haunted Houses | Home Renovation | cursed liam dunbar | theo is handy with tools | that's not relevant to their relationship | i just thought you'd like to know | For reasons

~~~~~

20 December 2019

Melting The Ice + Artwork

Author: @extrasteps​  Artist: @snaeken

[30k Words | Rated: Mature | No Warnings]

Liam's entire world is shaken up when Scott McCall, the captain of the Los Angeles Rams and Liam's mentor at the club, unexpectedly asks to be traded to the Dallas Stars. As Liam struggles to deal with this in both his personal and professional life, his teammate and friend, Theo Raeken, is there to help him in any way he can.

Archive Tags: Ice Hockey AU | Liam doesn't handle his ied very well | Scott is a prick (sorry) | First Kiss

~~

The Memory + Artwork 1,  2

Author: @tabbytabbytabby   Artist: @lovelylittlegrim 

[5k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

When Theo's away and can't reach Liam he gets worried. Especially when neither Liam's parents nor Mason will give him answers. When he gets back to Beacon Hills he's able to quickly find Liam. The only problem is, Liam has no idea who he is.

Archive Tags: Memory Loss | Established Relationship | Light Angst | Post-Canon | Future Fic | Curses | Good Theo Raeken

~~

Be Free With Me + Video

Author: @ethereal--jeonghan  Artist: @underthegallowws

[20k Words | Rated: Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence]

After being recaptured and dragged back to Eichen House, the place he's been running from for years, Theo vows to do whatever he can to escape instead he finds himself being drawn towards Liam, someone who was deemed as a 'high-level threat' within Eichen.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe | powers | Angst | Sadness | Everyone Needs A Hug | Angst and Hurt/Comfort | Self-Hatred | Nightmares | Comfort | Emotional Healing | enemies to friends to something else | Enemies to Friends to Lovers | Sort Of | Happy Ending | Slow Burn

~~~~~

21 December 2019

You Just Need To See The Signs (Quite Literally) + Artwork

Author: @marauders-mess  Artist: @wolfenboyb 

[9.5k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

Liam is used to not notice most things.

Like when Mason gets a new shirt or his mom gets a new haircut.

The usual, y'know.

But not noticing he got a boyfriend is kind of a new level, even for him.

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Human | Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés | Oblivious Liam Dunbar | Deaf Theo Raeken | Deaf Character | Crush at First Sight | Strangers to Lovers | Getting to Know Each Other | Getting Together | Getting Back Together | Awkward Romance | Fluff and Humor | Attempt at Humor | The Author Regrets Everything

~~

Blue + Artwork

Author:  @flyde​    Artist: @li0nh34rt​

[10k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

Every werewolf has a soulmate.

Every werewolf has a soulmate, and this is how it happens: On every day you spend on earth, the stars move a little closer together above your head until they form a line - the curve of a closed eye that will one day open to look upon you. From that day on, you will have someone to watch over you in life and death, and you will never feel complete without the soul that the eye belongs to.

But what if your soulmate's eye opens to reveal something you didn't expect?

Archive Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates | some angst and some fluff | Sharing a Bed | Sharing Clothes | Holding Hands | First Kiss | Happy Ending

~~

You've Got Nothing Left To Lose (I Have Even Less Than You) + Artwork

Author: @snaeken​     Artist: @theraeken​

[3.5k Words | Rated: Mature | Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death]

After everything that’s happened in Beacon Hills, Theo really shouldn’t be surprised soulmates exist. He just never thought he would have one of his own. 

(Still to be completed, word count below is as of 1st chapter)

Archive Tags: Soulmates | Time Loop | Temporary Character Death

~~~~~

22 December 2019

Darkened Skies + Poster, Aesthetic for the fic, Theo aesthetic, Liam aesthetic, Liam with his dragon tattoo, Theo with his dragon tattoo, Theo and his dragon

Author: @lightfiretomypaperwings​   Artist: @manonisamelon

[3k Words | Rated: Teen and Up | No Warnings]

In a world where black dragons are a sign of evil, Theo Raeken was automatically an outcast. Coupled with a tragedy from his childhood that he was responsible for, it was easy to understand why everyone was afraid of him. But not Liam Dunbar, the friend from childhood that Theo hasn’t seen since the fire that claimed his family.

Archive Tags: Dragons | alternative universe

~~

I don’t suffer from my sanity, I enjoy every minute of it + Artwork

Author: @lightfiretomypaperwings​​    Artist: @moondrunkmonster56​

[8.4k | Rated: Teen | No Warnings]

When Theo Raeken became the new therapist at Eichen House, he didn’t expect a collection of secrets. His high priority patient, Liam Dunbar, won’t speak a word to him during their sessions. But when Theo uncovers a stash of notes from a previous doctor, he finds more questions than answers.

Archive Tags: Eichen | Echo House | insane asylum | Secrets | Alternate Universe

~~

Your heart or mine (we’re running out of time) + Artwork

Author: @lightfiretomypaperwings​​    Artist: @snaeken​

[3.8k | Rated Teen | No Warnings]

Theo Raeken knows it’s a long shot. Finding the heart of immortality feels like an impossible task, but it’s an adventure he has to pursue if he wants to survive. He doesn’t expect to meet Liam Dunbar along the way, a man with a record of violence that wants the heart just as badly. When circumstances force them to work together, Theo discovers there’s a whole lot more to Liam than his mercenary past. Can these two manage to get along on their quest or will they tear each other apart?

Archive Tags: Treasure Hunt | some steampunk vibes | Enemies to Friends to Lovers | Angst | Alternate Universe

And that’s it! Thanks again for a great event and we will see you all at the next one ;P

OTL Team

[margridarnauds]

Did you watch some Shiki Stage Musicals ? I also love how their productions look through th PV and the documentaries but it seems to me that people not talk so much about the Company contrary to Toho Stage. Is that because they have another politics concerning their musicals ? Also what you can tell about the Shiki Actresses ? What are the differences with the Toho Actresses ?

Your timing is actually IMPECCABLE here, because I was only just looking at Shiki’s channel as you sent that on and thinking about how I’ve somewhat neglected it. In Toho’s defense: It’s only really as well known as it is because me and a few others worked our tails off to get it SOME recognition, and we’re still actively working on trying to keep things that way. An awareness of what Toho is has been slowly spreading through the last few years, since we’ve been making gifsets and posting material, but it’s still very much in the shadow of Zuka, in many ways. There just...is not that much attention paid to non-Zuka Japanese Musicals, sadly, and even Zuka tends to fall into the “niche interest” category, and for the past few years, my attention’s been kind of spread thin trying to go from new Toho musical to new Toho musical while also checking on whatever’s happening in Korea at the moment. 

As a warning, I do not know NEARLY as much about Shiki as I do about Toho and Zuka; it can be on the elusive side as far as tracking down material, especially as a non-Japanese speaker, so I’m very willing to be wrong here. 

So, what I would say, off the bat, is that there isn’t really the same rivalry between Shiki and Toho that there is between, say, Zuka and Toho. Or at least. None that I’ve personally witnessed. I think that people are generally willing to attend both, though Toho does have the prestige of having The Imperial Seal™ (at Imperial Prices™ to match.) On a personal level, the reason for why I *personally* don’t work with it as much is nothing really personal against Shiki, but more that, specifically because a ton of their musicals are taken from Broadway, that means that the rights to distribution are...well. Complicated. Which means that you don’t really GET proshots of Shiki musicals as such. Not saying it will never happen. But I’m saying that, as of the present, Shiki doesn’t really do it. Which means that I have considerably less material to properly work with, as opposed to Toho where, okay, proshots are limited, but they do happen, and so I can watch the entire musical and draw material from there. With Shiki, I only ever have a few minutes to work off of. Shiki is, in that sense, still very much kind of confined to Japan, since the only way to REALLY support them is to go to Japan and attend a musical yourself, which...well. I can’t really do. That and, at the risk of being perfectly blunt, I’m a sucker for really, really expensive costumes, and Toho happens to know how to appeal to that. 

Looking online at fanboards, whenever someone asks the question “Toho or Shiki?” the general consensus really seems to be “It’s impossible to really compare them because they’re essentially different styles of musical entirely.” Shiki is....I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t devalue one or the other, but it tends to be a little more light-hearted, it has a little more of that family-friendly “People can bring their families for a night out at the musicals” charm, while Toho....well. Okay, if I theoretically had spawn, I would be willing to take them to, say, Roman Holiday or Fiddler on the Roof at Toho, but....1789? MARIE ANTOINETTE (with its lovely depictions of mob violence, swearing, and references to incest and sexual abuse)? NO. NO. SAVE YOURSELF, SMALL CHILD. And, of course, the light, happy Black Butler musicals. Toho.....not ALL the time, of course, but it tends, in my opinion, to have a darker edge. The musicals are glorious, the production values are high, and the costuming is fantastic, but still. A darker edge. Even among their more family friendly musicals, like Fiddler, they’re still....mature, you know? You get the feeling with Toho that the people watching it are all very much adults. Takarazuka....I’d have LESS trouble bringing my hypothetical spawn to, but also, traditionally, Takarazuka is generally, in a Japanese context, associated with middle-aged women. Also keeping in mind that children have low attention spans and I’m not sure they would REALLY want to watch a 20 minute revue at the end, though the revue is undoubtedly cool. 

But Shiki? It’s bright, it’s colorful, it does musicals like The Little Mermaid, Frozen, The Lion King, and Mamma Mia (which is DEFINITELY not for kids, really, but still has that kind of....happy, sparky vibe to it). Also musicals that have come to really represent BROADWAY tend to get staged there, like Phantom of the Opera, Evita, and Cats. Yeah, it doesn’t quite have the budget of Toho or Zuka, but it’s FUN.  Everyone there IS trained, and it can actually be a decent way of checking who might be up and coming in the Japanese musical world, since, of course, just because someone STARTS OFF with Shiki doesn’t mean they can’t move to Toho (I believe that Mitsuo Yoshihara, for one example, started with Shiki, as did Rie Yoshizawa, who is better known by me for playing Mary I in “Lady Bess” but also played in Mamma Mia and A Chorus Line at Shik, and Megumi Hamada, who is arguably one of the most respected female Japanese musical performers of our time, with her roles in Wicked (Shiki), Mamma Mia (Shiki), Beauty and the Beast (Shiki), Death Note (Toho), Sunset Boulevard (Toho), Love Never Dies (Toho), and Jekyll and Hyde (Toho) giving her a reputation of a truly world-class diva, in the best possible sense of the term.)

As with Toho, you have to go through an audition to get in -- Personally, I think that Shiki has more fresh blood passing through it than Toho, which can sometimes cycle the same cast around repeatedly, with the exception of musicals like Les Miserables and Miss Saigon that tend to be star creators. (ALWAYS take note of who’s playing Enjolras in Les Mis in particular; a lot of Toho stars have made their careers that way, ditto for Eponine and Kim in Miss Saigon. Not that I recommend anyone watch Miss Saigon. Because it’s a racist, orientalist mess. But at least check the cast list for it.) So, as with Toho, you do generally have people who went to school for acting and singing, though you don’t REALLY get, say, former Takarazuka actresses. I don’t think that Shiki is generally (underline generally, because no sooner do I give out a rule than I find that someone broke the rule) considered to be prestigious enough for the REALLY high profile stars. It’s a good place, again, it isn’t like there’s a STIGMA against it, but it’s just a matter of degree. So, my dream of seeing Sayaka Kanda playing Princess Anna of Arendelle on stage is tragically doomed. 

Compared to Toho, I have relatively few actresses I’m really ATTACHED to, mainly because I think that Shiki doesn’t really emphasize the performer as much as the musical, if that makes any sense? Shiki, unlike Toho, subscribes to what is called the “auteur theory” which, put to its core, states that it is a strict meritocracy, with no famous celebrities being cast, and that actors exist to make a musical shine, not the other way around. (Takarazuka is the polar opposite, emphasizing the Top Star system, while Toho is halfway in-between the two of them, as discussed here.) Which is good, to some extent, since I firmly believe that a musical should never be about one person and, quite frankly, I have seen my fair share of cases where a single actor’s vanity tanked my impression of a musical, but it also makes it a little harder to get attached to individual actresses/actors when I don’t really get to see that much of them. Two that I’ve noted: 

- Azusa Hirata - A particularly interesting case because, unlike the usual cases I see where you have a Shiki actress “graduating” to Toho in a sense, she actually went from doing quite a few Toho musicals in her youth to doing Shiki. She actually won the 1st International Szilvester Levay International Singing Competition, where she performed “Blind vom Licht” from Marie Antoinette (of course I have to like her). Her rendition isn’t my FAVORITE in terms of the context of the musical, a little too polished for my personal tastes, but still brilliant, and she definitely earned her spot. 

- Masae Ebata - The youngest Donna Sheridan in the world, at the age of just 30, and renowned for playing both Donna and Sophie in the same performance period. Also the VERY first Korean performer to play the role of Elphaba in Wicked, before the official Korean premiere in 2012. It’s been noted that, along with her voice being very good, she pronounces her Japanese VERY well, which is something that many Korean performers coming to Japan have trouble with (another performer who’s been noted for it is Park Hye-Na in Death Note.) 

- Marie Wakana - Her performance of “Part of Your World” in the PV is SO good. 

(I actually suspect that this might be partially why Shiki doesn’t have as much of an international following, because foreign fans will generally get really attached to a singular STAR, whereas the Shiki musicals don’t have that same bait. They don’t really have a Furukawa Yuta of their own, someone who, just by name alone, they’re like ‘Ah, yes, they’ll be playing in this musical, so it’s going to be a good show.’ And, for most international fans, I feel like, without the allure of a castmember they’re attached to, they might look at Shiki musicals and essentially go “What are they doing that I can’t get closer to home?” That’s my SUSPICION, at any rate.) 

[alexsfictionaddiction]

10 of the best pandemic novels

It’s an understatement to say that the world as we know it has changed insurmountably over the last few weeks. We’re apart from our loved ones, most of our summer plans have been cancelled and we’re faced with more uncertainty than ever before. Pandemics and plagues have been present in horror, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic books for decades and they’ve always seemed to be exactly that. Abandoned cities, fast-acting deadly diseases and epic efforts for survival are things that happen in different worlds to our own but of course, they’ve never reflected reality more than they do right now.

I’ve been using this time to research and read a bunch of books that deal with pandemics and I wanted to share 10 of the very best of them with you. I completely understand if you’re trying to avoid these kinds of reads at the moment to limit anxiety or simply to escape. That’s why I also have a list of feel-good reads especially for you!

1. The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand is a book you’ll see on every pandemic fiction list because it is widely considered to be King’s masterpiece. The virus is really just the beginning of this enormous tome as its proceeded by ominous dreams, the inevitable end of days and the very real eternal battle between good and evil -perhaps not unlike some of your recent political discussions? Typical of a King novel, it’s populated by a huge cast of morally complex, tragic characters and there is an overwhelming sense of dread from the very first chapter. Expect a harrowing atmospheric read that will stay with you for a long time.

2. The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

Essentially, it’s a zombie book but it’s also so much more than that. Set in a world where ‘hungries’ roam the wastelands, a select group of infected but high-functioning children are contained in a special facility. Amongst a ruthless scientist, a kindly teacher and a wary sergeant, child genius Melanie’s story will become one that haunts you in the middle of the night. It’s a classic page-turning thriller that isn’t an exact reflection of our current world but there are some eerie likenesses that will have you questioning who the real monsters are.

3. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Station Eleven is so full of believable situations and characters that I could easily see the end of the Earth looking exactly like this huge sprawling landscape, dotted with towns populated by small groups of suspicious, scared people. It chiefly follows five principal characters -seasoned Hollywood actor Arthur Leander who dies on stage during a production of King Lear, his incredibly talented but unappreciated first wife Miranda, his oldest friend Clark, Jeevan Chaudhary who tried to save him and Kirsten, one of Arthur’s child co-stars whose life has been shaped by the events of that fateful night. It’s a beautifully written, expertly constructed book that explores loss, resilience and the heartbreaking notion of desperately trying to hold on to the past. You’ll want several boxes of tissues for this one!

4. The Fireman by Joe Hill

Ok, so the virus in this one isn’t QUITE like COVID-19 but the intense fear, teetering sanity and unexpected small rays of hope aren’t unlike our current set of feels. Dragonscale marks its host with black and gold and burns them up from the inside causing them to eventually spontaneously combust and no one appears to be safe from this horrifying end. We follow pregnant nurse Harper who bears the ominous marks but is desperate to live long enough to give birth and the mystery of the Fireman -an afflicted man who has somehow learned to control the fire within him. It’s a very original premise and although it’s another beast of a book at over 700 pages, it will have you gripped from the very first page.

5. The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

There’s something about memory that feels so precious to me. It may be because in a normal functioning brain, it’s the only thing that constantly keeps us company and therefore, in some ways it’s like an old friend. The Book of M features a virus where shadows have begun to disappear, leaving their humans with a strange new power but also with a rapidly deteriorating memory. Following Ory and Max -two halves of a couple who have been torn apart by the prospect of heartbreak- we meet a bunch of wonderful characters on a journey to New Orleans, where sanctuary reportedly awaits. I stayed up late to finish it because I became so invested in getting these characters back together but I was left completely thrown and sobbing my eyes out by the very cruel twist at the end. Yeah... brace yourself!

6. The Last Town On Earth by Thomas Mullen

Set in 1918 in Washington state, this story follows a small quarantined town trying to stave off the Spanish influenza. The effects of financial instability on the community, the fear of the unknown and the erratic actions of a panicked mind will definitely seem familiar in our current world. It’s an enclosed domestic drama with a lot of social history, tear-jerking moments and a truly explosive ending. I’m delighted that I discovered this emotional hidden gem!

7. Skin by Liam Brown

Skin describes a world with an extreme version of a COVID-esque virus. Everyone must completely isolate from everyone else including the people they live with and can only communicate from separate bedrooms via technology. But then our protagonist Angela spots a man outside without any protective gear on and he doesn’t even seem to be slightly sick. Full of intrigue, complex characters and a twist in the tale, it’s a fast read with a lot to say about contemporary society via a wry cynical voice.

8. Severance by Ling Ma

Candace Chen is a routine-loving millennial who turns ghost city photo-blogger when the deadly Shen Fever sweeps New York. Joining an eclectic band of survivors on a trek to a supposed sanctuary, she is harboring a secret of epic proportions. Things get progressively darker as the group begins to develop a cult-like dynamic and the seemingly self-elected ‘leader’ Bob becomes increasingly tyrannical. The sudden jolt out of ordinary life and the making and breaking of human relationships in times of hardship mixed with a touch of satire makes for a thoroughly entertaining, topical read.

9. Wilder Girls by Rory Power

I love a good boarding school novel and this is possibly the darkest, most unique one I’ve ever read. The Tox has left multiple pupils at Raxter School For Girls with deformities and they’re now waiting patiently for a cure. But then Hetty’s best friend Byatt goes missing and suspicion heightens as to what’s really happening on the remote island. I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom for the entire time and there was such a heavy gloomy atmosphere that seeps through the pages. There was a lot of buzz around this book on YA Twitter when it was released late last year and it’s definitely worth all of the hype! 

10. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

This impeccably strange, enchanting novel is a little glimpse into some of the weirder rooms of Atwood’s mind. Snowman lives in a tree on a deserted beach and spends his days foraging for scraps and mourning his best friend Crake and the woman he loved, the enigmatic Oryx. He seems to be the only human left but somehow he has become a prophet-esque figure to the beautiful, ethereal Children of Crake. The actual virus doesn't appear until the final 50 pages but we see the effects of it from the very beginning, so I was pretty eager to find out exactly what had happened, which kept the pages turning. Although it is funny in places and exceptionally thought-provoking, there is a lot of disturbing content to be aware of including animal experimentation and child trafficking and sexual abuse. It’s a horrifying window into a possible future if extreme capitalism and the fast advances in genetic engineering were ever to meet in a head-on collision. 

[oldphone-whodis]

How much money do I have to pay for any form of writing on a shikamaru jinchuriki au

No money at all, my good dude. Here! How about the classic introduction scene of the Squad meaning their Jonin Sensei? It took a while, but I like how it turned out and hope you do too!

And just a note, since there's a lot of swaps, many (but not all) characters will be part of different clans. I'll make a post of the swaps later.

Rating: T (for some cursing)

× × ×

His team. His team is an equal balance between an absolute disaster and a dream come true!

On one hand, he has a better chance at befriending Chouji now. If only the boy will look past his ingrained prejudices and see Shikamaru for who he is -- just a chill guy who wants to be friends. Damn all the adults in the village for deciding that just because the Kyuubi was inside of him, he himself was to be treated as that beast. (Honestly, he'd learned that fact very recently.)

Sure, Shikamaru may go out of his way to act out from time to time, but they're all for a good cause! People just just tend to look at his art and call it "illegal" and "vandalism of public property."

Truly, it was a mistake on his part. Next time, he won't paint his artworks on the Hokage Monument. Or he'll at the very least use paint that cleans away with water. He wasted hours cleaning that up while Mikoto-sensei sat with him to make sure he got every last bit of it. It was so… troublesome.

His other teammate is -- for lack of a better term -- a total bitch. Hanabi. He doesn't care what sort of trauma she's gone through. A tragic backstory doesn't mean she can go around manipulating her fanclub into doing dangerous stunts for her amusement or making them buy her snacks on a whim! Why does nobody else ever do anything about her?

Shikamaru himself just prefers to stay out of her way as much as possible. Though he does intervene when it comes to Chouji. He can't stand how often others take advantage of the boy's friendly nature. And Hanabi truly finds some sick pleasure in seeing the others around her do her bidding, no matter how outrageous. He can't let that happen to Chouji.

So Shikamaru has his long-awaited Genin Squad of the person he likes the least and the person he likes the most.

It's been one hour now after everyone else's Jonin Sensei have come to retrieve them, and their Squad -- Squad 7! -- is all that remains. If Shikamaru knew their Sensei was going to be late, he would've went straight for a nap. He stayed up all last night.

"Our Sensei still isn't here," Shikamaru sighs finally, breaking the silence. "I can't sleep because they couldn't be here any minute."

Chouji looks up as if curious when Shikamaru stands up. Confidence thoroughly boosted by the attention, Shikamaru strides down a couple steps to the chalkboard and begins on making his newest artwork.

And by the finish of Shikamaru's interpretation of an improved Konoha, their Sensei is still missing. Two hours late now. And pettiness boils in his heart as he picks up the chalk eraser. He knows it won't work. He knows! But on the off chance that maybe it will, Shikamaru places the chalk eraser in the space between the sliding door and the door frame.

"Shikamaru, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Chouji asks in disbelief. "That's our Sensei! You can't just do that! They'll hate us for sure if that's what you do."

Shikamaru is temporarily conflicted. Give in and remove the eraser for the sake of preserving the very small relationship he'd gotten between himself and Chouji? Or does he keep it to satiate his pettiness powered by a need for vengeance against their Sensei?

"Agh! Fine, I--"

Before he can even finish his sentence, the door slides open and reveals a… very distinct man, to say the least. And he now has chalk dust all over his head.

"My first impression of you in that you're very unyouthful!" the man exclaims. "One of out five stars! Would not recommend!"

All three of them cringe in unison at hearing the man say such a thing. Is this guy really a Jonin? And a good enough one to train Genin? Shikamaru, in that moment, has his doubts. Surely this is a joke, and their real Sensei will walk in any moment now.

"See Shikamaru!" Chouji exclaims in distress. "I told you you shouldn't have done that!"

Shikamaru just sighs. Damn his faulty impulse control.

"Okay! You three, meet me on the roof!" the man -- presumably their Jonin Sensei -- orders them before disappearing in the blink of an eye.

× × ×

"Okay, let's do introductions," their Sensei says.

"Introductions?" Chouji asks warily. "Like what?"

"Yeah," Shikamaru points out. "We could use an example, so why don't you go first?"

"Great idea! I am the very youthful Maito Gai! I like youthfulness and I dislike unyouthfulness!"

Shikamaru can't help but mostly zone that out. Youth this, youth that. What the hell is this guy even saying? But he thinks he's getting the general idea of what Gai-sensei wants from them.

"And finally my dream is…," he trails off as if lost in a very heartfelt memory, which is frankly a little concerning. Should Shikamaru go to the Hokage and petition for a new Sensei now?

"Anyways, just like that!" Gai-sensei says. "Now, you first, with the ponytail."

"Uzumaki Shikamaru," Shikamaru introduces. "I like napping, I guess? I don't like…"

He doesn't like Hanabi, but he doesn't want to make himself a target for her. He doesn't like the people in the village who give him those looks, but he doesn't want to get into that. Maybe he should just skip that, say he doesn't particularly dislike anything. Yeah.

"…I don't really dislike anything specifically," Shikamaru continues. "Hobbies? I'm good at art, I guess. And my dream… Hokage."

The Hokage because if he's Hokage, he can make some much needed changes. Such as fixing that lacking education system. He gets a headache every time he hears someone call the Byakugan a "Sharingan". Definitely fix the education system.

"Nice! Now you!" Gai-sensei points to Chouji.

"I'm Haruno Chouji," the boy says softly. "What I like most is… uh, barbeque. I like barbeque! And my hobby is rating different restaurants around the village. And my dream…"

Chouji glances over to Hanabi with a smile. Shikamaru isn't even sure if she's paying attention. Of course, Chouji's dream would be to finally hook up with Hanabi. Shikamaru wishes he could show Chouji what a demon she actually is.

"And what do you hate?" Gai asks.

"I hate how Shikamaru won't even give Hanabi a chance!" Chouji exclaims. Ouch! Does Chouji think Shikamaru is being unfair to her? He isn't! She actually is a terrible girl. He spend a few months trying to be nice to her after he heard about the incident, but she just doesn't care. All she wants is to see the world suffer and burn. He just knows it.

"Right…," Gai-sensei says as if a bit uncomfortable. "And our last person?"

"My name is Hyuuga Hanabi," she says, emphasizing her name to prove some unknown point. "Likes, dislikes. I'm sure you'd like to know."

He can just hear her calling them plebeians and pissants in the undertones of how she speaks. And Shikamaru wonders how she's gotten through life this far without anyone else getting pissed at her with the way she talks.

"My hobbies," Hanabi says and chuckles darkly. Shikamaru doesn't want to know what that's supposed to mean.

"And my end goal?" Hanabi leaps to her feet and slams a fist against her chest. "I will murder the one I hate most, once and for all!"

Shikamaru shivers and scoots as far away from her as possible. What the hell is her problem? Does she really have no life outside of… whatever hellhole she's trapped herself in? She has too many problems and not enough therapy.

Shikamaru makes a mental note to add that to the list of things that will have to change when he is Hokage.

"Okay then," Gai-sensei says with a nod, now looking a bit more serious. "Now that we're done with our… very passionate introductions, I must tell you about the test tomorrow."

"A test?" Chouji asks and Shikamaru can't help but share the sentiment.

"Yeah, what kind of test?" Shikamaru questions warily.

"It's a survival test," Gai-sensei says, "and your opponent will be me! Prepare for tomorrow -- anything is fair game! -- but you can't eat breakfast because you'll just puke it all back up! Be at Training Ground 3 at dawn! See you then!"

Before anyone can ask any further questions, Gai-sensei is gone, leaving his three students blinking in his dust. That was… very quick.

Nonetheless, Shikamaru will be heading home and start on his petition for a new, more suitable Jonin Sensei for the three of them. It will take some time though. And some reading up on Konoha Law. What a drag.

[almasexya]

Attack of the Giant What?? (Gorath, 1962)

Like The Mysterians before it, Gorath, released mere months before the hotly anticipated King Kong vs. Godzilla, is one of those science fiction movies that just kind of happens to have a man in a rubber suit in it for a little while. But while Moguera managed to make enough of an impact to return (much later, I’ll admit, and in an entirely different way) the kaiju in Gorath is without a doubt Toho’s weirdest and most forgotten of them all.

Gorath is not really a movie for kaiju enthusiasts, unless those kaiju enthusiasts really enjoy being disappointed. The true antagonist of this movie is the titular Gorath, a rogue planetoid (or stellar remnant, its difficult to tell) on a doomsday collision course for Earth. And Gorath itself is an intimidating beast, a great ball of fire swallowing everything in its path, growing in mass and exploding its way toward Earth. This is my first time watching Gorath, a movie that I’d always been interested in but had just never gotten around to watching. Like many of the others I’ve reviewed, my copy is a bootleg, which as far as I know is the only way to get the original Japanese version. There might be an out of print English dub knocking around on Amazon or Ebay somewhere.

Gorath is a tough one to summarize, so I’ll keep it short. In the late 1970s, a rocket known as the JX-1 is sent on a mission to Saturn, after which it receives orders to investigate a rogue planet known as Gorath, which is heading towards Earth. The crew tragically lose their lives when they’re caught in the object’s gravity, which is 6,000 times more powerful than that of Earth. The UN quickly convenes, and after deliberation it’s decided that powerful jets dug into the south pole could push Earth out of Gorath’s path before it arrives in two years.

The rest of the movie follows the construction of the south pole station, as well as the lives of the characters as they ponder what will happen if they don’t succeed and Gorath strikes the planet. Another rocket is also sent to gather last-ditch data on the star, while the people at home struggle to keep the south pole project operational.

If that all sounds rather grim, that’s because it is. Gorath is eclipsed in its gloominess only by the original Godzilla, since you can’t out-bleak a film that has somber children’s choirs and people getting roasted alive by atomic breath. That said, Gorath gets closer than it has any right to, considering its main plot involves pushing the Earth out of the way of certain death by using a bunch of nuclear rockets.

As always, Ishiro Honda’s direction lends its usual gravity, often mostly in the film’s quietest moments - none of the characters ever get to truly relax, exemplified when a man in a bar, apropos of nothing, casually remarks about the end of the human race when the rest of the cast is trying to let off steam. The usual suspects also make their appearances, with Takashi Shimura playing a venerable doctor (who gets his contractually obligated line about not wanting to see the monster killed) while Akihiko Hirata plays the taciturn captain of the second expedition to gather data on Gorath.

I’ve gone this long without mentioning the monster, so I suppose I should get it out of the way. Gorath contained a kaiju only due to the urging of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, and the way it was shoehorned into the plot at the last second makes it abundantly clear just how much the team had to have dragged their feet on it, let alone how little of an impact it makes. The way the film grinds to a halt as soon as the monster appears, along with how quickly it picks up after it’s gone, speaks to how much the team just did not give a shit about it, though this wouldn’t stop Tanaka from mandating a kaiju in later films.

The south pole station is abruptly attacked by a shoddy-looking giant walrus, who stomps through half a building before retreating, coming out later, and getting buried and shot to death by one single airplane that granted, had a laser on it. Maguma, which is what the walrus is called, though you wouldn’t know it from the movie, is only onscreen for maybe 40 or so seconds before it’s summarily dispatched, after which no one really bothers to mention it again. The American edit excised the beast entirely, and apparently the dub team mocked it, calling it “Wally the Walrus,” and assuming it was some kind of joke. Maguma has not a whit to do with the plot, and removing it takes away nothing from the experience.

The rest of Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects are great, and the final 15 minutes make for wonderful disaster footage, as model cities are flooded, whipped with heavy winds, and obliterated by earthquakes as Gorath passes by. The footage of the UN team bustling about building the jets on the south pole is also some great effects work, with numerous machines and conveyors buzzing around.

Gorath can be a tough one to recommend to the kaiju fan - if the bane of your existence is watching doctors and scientists talk in these movies, you likely won’t be able to get through Gorath. While it has its share of sci-fi tension, the vast majority of the movie is quiet dialogue scenes and they can make the film drag quite a bit. That said, the message of cooperation - that the world must pull together to save itself, is an uplifting and powerful one, and the effects work is far and away some of the best yet seen in a Toho production. Pick up Gorath when you’re in a more pensive mood, and try to ignore the giant walrus.

[satbiym]

Both Alike in Dignity by satbiym

Summary

Breaking News!

This just in, according to the Lotus Pier Police Department, Walmart has now banned local man for driving an electric cart while drinking wine from a Pringles Can at 9AM.

Walmart Employee, Wei Wuxian, who first reported the drunk man, when asked for about this ban said, “Nah man, we’ve all been there, you know? Let he who hasn’t had the exact same urge cast the first stone!”

The man in question could not be reached for any comments.

We’ll keep you updated as the story progresses.

Next up! Is your cat plotting to kill you? Find out, after the break.

Listen.

Listen.

Lan Wangji hadn’t thought his recent (unwilling) transfer to Lotus Pier, brother’s engagement (to a complete and utter asshole) and his (first ever) heartbreak would impact him much.

But if the police officer in front of him was to be believed, he might have to reconsider some of his earlier considerations.

Like where he got his groceries and sandalwood moisturizer, because it appeared that the logistics of shopping at Walmart were now… legally complicated.

When the Walmart Employee who started it all starts challenging him at every turn, Wangji’s life is turned upside down yet again. Thus begins a journey of saving bunnies, breaking engagements and starting a cult.

… and somewhere along the way, maybe falling in love.

AKA: The not-so-tragic Romeo-and-Juliet love story that shook the foundations of Lotus Pier, now with 1000% more Walmart representation!

ACT 1 Prologue

O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

X

Lan Wangji woke up to the sound of clucking, the smell of hay and the taste of what appeared to be all the grime of the world; his mouth was - Lan Wangji was certain - now housing the occupants of Pandora’s box, presumably to accelerate Lan Wangji’s descent into the abyss from sheer, unfiltered anguish.

And no. Lan Wangji was not being a - as his dear brother would claim - drama llama, and the fact that you thought so makes you complicit in the heinous system of victim blaming. Stew in that.

However, putting aside your blatant enthusiasm for contributing to a systemic socio-economic issue, the point was, Lan Wangji had woken up disoriented, not quite ready to do so and all the more resentful for it.

By the smells and sounds assaulting his senses, he could deduce that he was not the sole occupant of the space he had somehow found himself in.

Lan Wangji forced his eyes open with a repressed hiss at the bright light that caused him to almost empty his stomach right then and there, and looked around.

Oh.

He was in a barn.

He had never been in a barn before. Lan Wangji looked around with curiosity, only to lock gazes with someone whose very glare seemed to scream: Colonizer! Begone!

It might have been his equal parts fascination and disdain for British history, but it did seem like his co-occupants weren’t very pleased about his presence in their midst.

The rooster cocked his head and, with a considerable amount of self-importance and flair for the dramatics, as if the audience had only validated his illusions of self-grandior, crowed.

Loudly.

Lan Wangji flinched back, unable to bear a sound he had only ever read about and heard in movies or ironic ringtones born from phones of people he never spoke to again, especially as his head felt like it was splitting itself apart.

Clutching his pounding head with his hands, Lan Wangji offhandedly wondered if this was how Zeus had felt right before Athena had been born out of his split skull.

The rooster continued its morning call, caring naught for Lan Wangji’s lifelong practice of vegetarianism or his regular recycling habits. The world truly was not kind to those who tried, Lan Wangji despaired.

His clothes were dirty and disheveled, hair unsightly and a rooster was loudly proclaiming that Lan Wangji was not welcome in his territory. He couldn’t remember how he had ended up in this situation. The last thing he could recall was loud laughter, turning instinctively (as if he could do anything other than heed the siren call of that laugh) and watching as We-

No.

Lan Wangji got up.

Answers could wait. He needed to first get out of here and maybe get some food. For some reason, despite it being early morning he was ravenous.

Only, before Lan Wangji could proceed with his plan, the barn door abruptly opened, hinges creaking and even silencing the self-aggrandizing rooster.

Lan Wangji looked at the newcomer with trepidation, making sure his face remained as stoic as the muscles would allow.

A woman stood with sharp light behind her, making her seem all the more ominous. Upon seeing Lan Wangji, she stopped, doorknobs still held in her hands.

They surveyed each other for a second, but before the twisting in Lan Wangji’s stomach could get too much, the woman broke out in a wide grin, open and unerringly friendly.

“Doctor! What’s a fella like you doing in a place like this?” She boomed, voice echoing off of the rafters of the barn.

Lan Wangji blinked. He had never before understood how someone could relate their complex and intricate human experiences to pithy existential questions that were carelessly tossed en masse. But, it seemed like today was a day for revelations.

Lan Wangji bowed slightly and intoned, “Apologies for trespassing, Ma’am.”

The woman’s eyes widened and her face seemed to somehow become fevered, as if she was coming down with the flu. She fluttered her hands, almost dancing in her place, and giggled, “Oh, don’t worry about it, Doctor! It must be the lack of apples in my diet!”

What.

Lan Wangji decided this conversation wasn’t worth the emotional toll as of this moment and with another bow took his leave. He very firmly did not run, he simply… power walked. It was better for the cardiovascular system.

But as he reached the door his stomach made itself heard. Lan Wangji paused, he wasn’t familiar enough with this area to be able to locate a restaurant quickly enough. He turned back, the woman was turned towards him presumably watching him leave to ensure he never darkened her doorstep again with his trespassing.

“Excuse me, Ma’am, where is the nearest restaurant that serves breakfast at this time?” He asked.

The woman laughed and said, “Doctor, I think even you’d find it difficult to find a diner serving breakfast at 2 in the afternoon.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes widened against his permission. He had never woken up past 5 AM since the day his Uncle had taken him in. But then, why…

“Your rooster. He was…” Lan Wangji trailed off, unsure how to describe the unholy shrieks of anarchy the beast had been emitting to his definitely demonic overlords.

The woman slapped her knee as she shook with laughter, “Oh, that’s just Henry for ya! He is up and cock-a-doodle-dooing at all hours of the afternoon. My husband likes to tell me it’s because he’s working on a different timezone. ‘We, Bertha,’ he says, ‘have gotten ourselves a foreign rooster!’” The woman continued, voice much softer and fonder than before.

Look, Lan Wangji was a certified veterinarian.

Lan Wangji even had a PhD!

But no amount of wet lab or theoretical knowledge of “roosters can crow at any time of the day” could prevent the inherent wrongness of the realization that the movies had lied to him.

“But if it’s lunch ya want, then there is Mellie’s diner right down the road, next to the Walmart.” She continued, positively brimming with good-natured joviality but that didn’t stop Lan Wangji’s traitorous heart from lurching at the end of her sentence.

Lan Wangji nodded, ignoring his inner turmoil and after sending one last look at the anachronistic hell bird, walked to the direction the woman had indicated towards, recent memory still evading his grasp.

Maybe it was the headache still pounding away or his avoiding thinking about recent revelations by trying to recover his lost memories, but so engrossed in his own mind was he that it was almost a surprise when he reached the diner cheerfully proclaiming itself as being Mellie’s.

Straightening his clothes and wishing he had had the chance to wash up, Lan Wangji walked in, the bell at the door chiming sweetly, announcing his presence to all the other patrons.

The diner was full, Lan Wangji noted. Not that you would know it by ear, seeing as they all fell silent and turned to look at him like he was a particularly interesting alien species.

Lan Wangji waited until a man wearing a garishly cheerful uniform walked up to him nervously.

“Table for one.” Lan Wangji said, voice level and seemingly oblivious to the way the many eyes had not moved past him.

The server nodded and with a look of confusion but as if directed by an external puppeteer as he played a role he hadn’t realized he had auditioned for, walked Lan Wangji to the nearest empty table, which was, to Lan Wangji’s consternment, right next to a raised television playing the local news.

As Lan Wangji moved, the eyes of the diner’s patrons followed.

But at this point, Lan Wangji was used to it. The stares, the open differential awe you’d give to a limited edition figurine, prized but untouchable. Alien and inalienable.

It seemed as if moving to a new town hadn’t been the answer to this particular quirk of circumstance.

The server cleared his throat, a sound that reverberated in the silence of the diner, sounding like a caricature of the act. Lan Wangji looked at him, askance.

“May I take your order, Doctor?” The server asked, seemingly flushed for some reason.

The server, Lan Wangji offhandedly noted, had gray eyes. Eyes which were somehow too reminiscent of another pair of eyes and at the same time, not gray enough to be an apropos comparison.

A pair of eyes that danced into being more silver than gray on any given day and answered more questions than Lan Wangji had been prepared to have had answered when he had moved to this town.

“Salad.” Lan Wangji intoned.

The man bobbed his head and clutching the unopened menu in his hands, walked away. Lan Wangji resumed staring ahead at nothingness and contemplated the recent disorder that had been wrought on his life: abrupt, unwelcome and without even the good grace of having sent a courtesy invitation.

Dear So-and-So,

You have been cordially invited to witness the anarchy that has befallen what many experts could identify as the remains of a perfectly fine life that didn’t deserve to have experienced the full spectrum of human emotion when it was perfectly fine without it, thank you very much.

The noise returned gradually.

Lan Wangji tuned back in just as the news anchor changed to a woman he had heard at the grocery store last week as she shouted about deadlines and leads into her phone while carefully cradling a carton of eggs.

Maybe it was that familiarity bred sustained patience for the a person’s presence, but Lan Wangji found himself turning his attention to the television as she spoke, almost jumping with preppy excitement. The excitement made sense a moment later as the television flashed with red signs alerting the other patrons of an incoming breaking news story.

She cleared her throat and clutching her ear-piece, said with alacrity, “This just in! According to the Lotus Pier Police Department, Walmart has now banned local man for driving an electric cart while drinking wine from a Pringles Can at 9AM.”

Lan Wangji blinked, Who in the world-

A video of a long-haired man grinning cheerfully flashed onto the screen and Lan Wangji’s thoughts halted to a stop.

Surely-

She continued, her voice loud and clear in the silent diner as all awaited the rest of the story, “Walmart Employee, Wei Wuxian, who first reported the drunk man, when asked for about this ban said and I quote, ‘Nah man, we’ve all been there, you know? Let he who hasn’t had the exact same urge cast the first stone!’”

The diner’s patron’s hooted and some laughed as someone yelled, “Yeah! You tell ‘em, Wei Wuxian!”

The news anchor continued, “The man in question could not be reached for any comments. We’ll keep you updated as the story progresses. Next up! Is your cat plotting to kill you? Find out, after the break.”

A cheerful anthem broke the segment, signalling a break and an advertisement of the local Walmart and its services filled the screen.

The patrons were still laughing and loudly discussing the news.

“That Wei Wuxian, he will never change!”

“Why should he? He is just perfect!”

“Oh, please. He is so out of your league. You know he is going to be the one to inherit Walmart after Madam Yu steps down as President of the franchise, right? Stop dreaming.”

Lan Wangji clenched his fist, hidden by the table.

“Forget his hopeless delusions! what about that story, right?! Who in the world could do something like that?!”

Lan Wangji turned back to his staring at nothingness, eavesdropping was prohibited, even if they were making it really hard to not eavesdrop with their loud voices and inclusion of the whole diner into their conversation.

The diner bell chimed.

Lan Wangji paid it no mind, at least until he sensed a presence coming towards him. He looked up. It was a uniformed police officer. The officer stopped before his table and waited until he had Lan Wangji’s attention before speaking “Are you Doctor Lan Wangji?”

Lan Wangji, with a foreboding feeling in his gut, inclined his head. The other diner patrons, at this point, weren’t even pretending not to be listening in. Clearly, they hadn’t been brought up by Lan Qiren.

The police officer nodded, pulling out an envelope which he handed to Lan Wangji.

“I am here to inform you that you have hereby been banned from Walmart for the foreseeable future in light of the incident that took place this morning.”

Lan Wangji blinked, a sort of rushing sound echoing in his ears. He didn’t understand.

“I am afraid I do not know what you are referring to, Officer.” Lan Wangji said, outwardly calm despite a dawning in his chest, like he had almost grabbed hold of an late-blooming epiphany but it was still dancing out of his reach.

The officer looked back flatly and said, “I am referring to your operating an electric cart while intoxicated at walmart at nine o’clock this morning.”

Lan Wangji stilled.

The epiphany had stopped dancing out of his reach, simply vanishing into a whiff of smoke and regrets.

And it appeared that so had he.

… Or so he wished.

“I am afraid you have the wrong person, Officer,” Lan Wangji said succinctly, not believing even his own words because somehow that - considering how disobedient, contradictory and unruly his life had been behaving - sounded… about right.

The Officer raised an unimpressed eyebrow and pulled out a credit-card sized object, handing it to Lan Wangji.

It was a... picture.

In it was a laughing Wei Ying, hands tied together with a white ribbon throwing up peace signs regardless, flushed and all the more beautiful for it.

It was a lovely picture and Lan Wangji wanted copies, but how was this proof of his alleged crime? If this was some kind of joke-

The officer, probably impatient with Lan Wangji’s lack of enlightenment, pointed behind Wei Ying, at…

Oh.

Yeah, alright. That was him riding an electric cart while drinking from a pringles can.

Lan Wangji nodded, pocketing the photograph, focused on making sure the internal screaming remained internal, “Noted. Anything else?”

The officer raised his other eyebrow and said grimly, “Not at this moment, no, Doctor.”

Lan Wangji inclined his head and turned back to stare at the spot he had been staring at before, dismissing the officer and uncaring as he walked away.

Everyone pretended they weren’t staring at Lan Wangji, though somehow he felt their presence more keenly than before when they hadn’t even been trying to conceal their stares, as the server walked up to him.

“Um, D-Doctor? Your meal.” The server stumbled out, hands quickly depositing the plate on the table before swiftly walking away before Lan Wangji even had a chance to look at the food.

Lan Wangji looked at his plate.

It was not a salad.

X

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

[spacejellyfish3]

Thought I was joking about that essay in my last post, didn’t ya?

Well guess again.

So if you know me, you know that my absolute favorite comic book storyline, NAY, fictional storyline of all time is the incredible, incomparable, indomitable, Dark Phoenix Saga...

I love this story to death! It’s such a great tale of love, loss, pain, action, and space genocide! It’s the story that cemented Chris Claremont as the definitive X-Men writer AND catapulted Wolverine into the ensemble darkhorse we know now! What’s not to love?

But everytime DPS gets adapted, it falls flat with an unimaginable thud. There are many reasons for this, and in this tangent I will be listing the reasons why I, in all my teenage wisdom, think adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga will be a thankless, thankless result for everyone of its fans:

1–The Changes:

This is the reason I hear of the most whenever a DPS adaptation is criticized. You know the drill; they changed it, now it sucks yadda yadda I’m gonna complain to the internet about it! (Hello irony, it’s been a while...)

But in all seriousness, this complaint is a mixed bag of sorts; any adaptation has to have changes not only to be unique and original to fans new and old, but also to fit the new medium it’s being adapted into. This is true for many Marvel films; Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse may be adapted from the Spider-Verse event comic, yes, but it’s change of the method of transportation from The Great Web of Life and Destiny to a particle collider as well as its focus on just six Spider-People instead of thousands makes the story more clear and concise but still adhering to the roots of the comics, and while Days of Future Past’s switching up of the characters involved and plot points is annoying to some, it did so in a way that made sense and kept true to the plot of the original.

But for some odd reason, any changes made to the Dark Phoenix Saga ends in tragedy (which is hilarious to me considering how the storyline ends). The Last Stand (which I am only acknowledging as existing for the purposes of this essay, and everything besides Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, and that one scene with the family in the car on the Golden Gate Bridge can go die in a dumpster fire..) changed the Phoenix from an intergalactic force to a psychopathic split personality in Jean that Professor X suppressed for years, which, to be frank, I could forgive since the 2000s X-Movies were set up to be more realistic than the comics. What I can’t forgive is the addition of characters like Magneto to a story that they weren’t even a cameo in, the numerous plot holes, the atrocious Phoenix costume, and fusing DPS with The Cure storyline for some god forsaken reason...

And while Dark Phoenix 2019 seems to at least try and be more faithful to the original story (with a Mastermind analogue, aliens, and keeping the Phoenix Force an actual intergalactic force of power), only time will tell whether or not it is as such...

2–The Characters:

In any story, the characters are one of the most important aspects. They move the plot, twist the narrative, make funny quips, etc...And for the Dark Phoenix Saga, the most important character is Jean Grey herself.

And you might be saying: “But Jellyfish, isn’t that kind of obvious?” Well, in any other case, you might be right. But for some weird reason, Jean is never defined enough as a character for us to care.

In The Last Stand, Jean is basically an afterthought while the audience is subjected to “The Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine Show”; she’s just there to act as a macguffin for the characters to fight over who occasionally has a line or two with a hint of character depth. It’s insulting how I know more about Movie!Nightcrawler (who we got to know over the course of a single movie) than I do about Movie!Jean (who we had THREE movies to get to know). Dark Phoenix 2019 does carry the positive of putting Jean in the role of main character, but we still know nothing about her because the writing in X-Men Apocalypse for Jean is very, very lacking...

In the original Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean Grey was simultaneously hero, victim, and villain. She was a heroic figure who tragically fell from grace, ultimately sacrificing herself to save the entire universe. She was a selfish, cruel, and wicked monster who cared only for her own passions and desires, with no regard for the hundreds of thousands of lives she destroyed in the wake of her malevolent acts. She was caring, kind, fiery, fierce, terrifying, vain, passionate, etc...In every aspect of her—from Jean Grey to Marvel Girl to Phoenix to the Black Queen to Dark Phoenix—you could see shades of all of these traits and emotions in her. Phoenix and Dark Phoenix weren’t two separate entities, and neither were Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force itself. Two sides of the same coin. Yin and Yang. Mortal and Goddess. Maiden and Monster.

In the end, however all these problems with defining Jean Grey’s character are symptomatic of a much larger issue that these movies continuously fail to acknowledge. That reason being:

3–Buildup:

This reason may be, in my opinion, the one that ultimately causes the failure when it comes to adapting DPS.

The Dark Phoenix Saga is one of the most impactful and powerful stories ever written, and the reason behind that distinction is, in my opinion, because of the amount of buildup it had; this storyline wasn’t done in just a few months, it had taken place over 41 issues, which is five years in real life time. There was time spent with the X-Men and building up the Shi’ar Empire and Princess Lilandra as allies and friends to them. We were intrigued by the mystery of Jason Wyngarde and his intentions towards Jean, all while the sinister Hellfire Club lurked in the shadows. We saw the gradual change in Jean Grey as she became more powerful, as she seemingly relived the life of her ancestors all while growing more unsure of her identity with each timeslip. As Jean lost control of her reality and sense of self, the audience was right there with her, trying to make sense of the world we had come to love and enjoy.

And even before all of this—before the Dark Phoenix Saga and the Phoenix Saga—from the very first issue of Uncanny X-Men, we’ve been with Jean Grey. From being the newest student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to awakening her telepathic powers for the very first time to piloting a space shuttle in the middle of the worst solar storm in history, we’ve been with her every step of the way. And with that history, seeing that fiery redhead fight a herald of Galactus to a standstill, save the universe from destruction! It was so triumphant, so full of awe!!

And...it only served to make things even more tragic with the coming of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Seeing this girl, this heroic girl, as she was twisted and controlled and tamed and broken. As her struggles mounted, with each manipulation and lie, every use of her awesome power growing more tempting and seductive, Jean began to crack—piece by piece—until eventually she just...snapped.

To see her consume that inhabited Star like she was simply drinking a bottle of water, fighting her friends with no remorse, her kind face twisting into a monstrous mockery of a smile...It was terrifying. The buildup gave this story depth, impact, emotion! You could feel every punch, every blast of energy, every scream, every cry, every word echoing in your head and in your heart. And seeing her sacrifice—it was truly uncanny. Begging Cyclops, the man she loved with all her heart, to kill her before she transformed into a nightmare goddess of death was heartbreaking, but his refusal to do so led to her doing the unthinkable; from the moment they were abducted by the Shi’ar to face trial, she knew what she had to do. To destroy any chance of the Dark Phoenix rising ever again, she had to destroy it...and herself as well. So, to save the galaxy, Jean Grey killed herself. In the words of Uatu the Watcher:

“Jean Grey could have lived to become a god. But it was more important to her that she die...a human.”

This storyline was filled with blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a reading experience like no other. A love letter to every X-Men fan, past, present, and future. It astounded me when I first read it 5 years ago, and it still astounds me when I read it now...

And that’s why I think we might never get a great adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga; to build up a story like this is a undertaking. It wouldn’t be like the buildup to Infinity War, because that was done so that every character in the movie would be well-defined and known to the audience so that they would care what happened to them. If you wanted to make the Dark Phoenix Saga into a movie, you would have to build up Jean Grey throughout each and every movie before that while simultaneously building up the other X-Men too. It would require more than 5 movies to do this; introducing Jean Grey, having her in the X-Men as Marvel Girl for a 2 movies, doing the Phoenix Saga with the M’kraan crystal and the Shi’ar, another movie where she grows in power and develops, and finally the actual Dark Phoenix Saga.

This storyline is incredibly close to my heart for many reasons, not the least of which being that it was the comic book that officially got me into comic books for real. I want to see it done right so badly!!

It’s a tale of tragedy and terror. A symphony of love and loss. A story of absolute power corrupting absolutely, and the unbeatable spirit of humanity that triumphs forevermore...

[spiderneds]

Bittersweet and Strange (Peter Parker [TH] x Reader) PART TWO

i am not surprised this won lol - hope y’all enjoy <3

songs used:

Prologue

Home

Home (Reprise)

How Long Must This Go On?

If I Can’t Love Her

Something There

a month later

“I’m so sad to hear about you and ___,” May said.

Peter was looking out of the car window. “How did you hear?” he mumbled, not really interested. He knew the answer.

“Ned,” she answered.

Yup. He sighed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “You have to tell me things, Peter. Remember what I told you a year ago? It’s just you and me.”

He looked at her. “I know, May. It’s just...”

“Hard,” she said. “I get it. I’ve had my fair share of breakups.” She breathed heavily. “In face, in the summer of our tenth grade year, your Uncle Ben broke up with me.”

“What?” he asked. “No way.”

“Way,” she said, nodding. “I’m being serious! He broke up with me because he was going to Mexico with his family on a family trip. He didn’t want the extra baggage, you know, because of all the freedom he would experience. But we were just kids.” She shook her head. “You guys are just kids, too.”

“Yeah, but this is different. I think... I think she likes another guy. Richard.” 

“Maybe you were paranoid,” she pointed out. 

“No. No way,” he said.

She sighed. “I don’t want to argue with you, Peter. Just... don’t give up so soon, alright?” She pulled up in front of the school and stopped the car. Peter leaned into her at the same time she grabbed the side of his head and planted a kiss right on his temple. “I love you, Pete. Have a good time at practice. I can’t wait to see you as the Beast! He’s so cute.”

“Yeah... thanks, May. Love you, too.” He got out of the car and shut the door. She waved and pulled away as soon as he hopped onto the curb.

It was getting close to the opening night of the play, In about three weeks, this would all be over. Peter couldn’t lie and say he wasn’t looking forward to that. He was about sick and tired of hearing Belle and Gaston “work so well together” on stage. 

The scenes that he had had with you lately were nothing but awkward. They were stiff and dull, and the director pleaded with you and him to get it together. The Beast acted like he liked Gaston more than he liked Belle.

Which was far from the truth. 

They put you in your dress and Peter in part of his outfit - not all of the fur, because that would take a lot of supplies. You and Peter were fully dressed and ready with the rest of the cast. 

But you weren’t speaking.

He didn’t really mind. His first scene was with the Enchantress, but after that, he had a few minutes to hang back on his own. He watched Ned absolutely nail every line as LeFou (the guy was seriously made for acting - who would have guessed?) and tried to ignore you and Richard. Me was a pretty loud song, though - but right after Maurice got to the castle, it was pretty safe. 

Of course, Belle and the Beast didn’t really get along in the first part of the show, which fit ironically well. After the first meeting (where Belle was scared) and after the Beast asked her to dinner (where Belle was angry) came Home, which was pretty much a knife in Peter’s heart. 

He had hurt you by assuming that you were less than faithful to him. 

And that song was pretty much meant for him. 

He didn’t want to be mad at you anymore. He didn’t want you to hate him. 

Before Something There came on, he decided that, by opening night, you would know that he was sorry.

He would be sure of it.

Opening night was stressful, just like it was for The Little Mermaid. But it was a different kind of stressful.

Last year, Peter just wanted to win your heart. 

Tonight, he just wanted to win you back. Or at least let you know how much you meant to him and how sorry he was. 

He tried to talk to you before the show, to no avail. Richard was at your hip the entire time. And right before the curtain opened, he hugged you around the waist. You smiled and laughed, and Peter’s heart broke a little more.

Peter went out there for the prologue. He was a handsome prince at first - and then, after turning the old beggar woman away, he became the Beast. He stood on the stage for thirty seconds, roaring and acting his heart out because he didn’t want to ruin the play for everyone else just because his life was crappy. 

“Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world...”

Peter held up the handheld mirror, showing the glowing object to the audience, then cradling it to his chest. 

“The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose. Which would bloom for many years. If he could learn to love another, and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell, the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.”

Peter fell to his knees slowly, silently.

“As years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?”

When that scene was over, it was time for Belle. Just before you went out on stage, Peter grabbed you by your arm.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry. About everything. I... was an idiot. And whether you liked Richard or not, it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You mean the world to me, you know?” 

“___! Come on!” hissed one of the villagers.

You looked up at Peter with wide eyes. “What are you-”

“Good luck, okay? I... I’m sorry.” He let you go.

You stumbled out on stage, your hands pulling up your skirt as you stepped behind the cardboard cottage and up the set of small wooden steps. You looked away from him and turned towards the audience, ignoring who you were and focusing on Belle.

As the music started, you walked out of the cardboard door. 

You sang Belle, going through every line perfectly (as always). You acted your heart out, and Peter could hear the audience. They were just as much in awe of you as Belle as they were when you were Ariel. 

He understood that. You were so incredibly amazing. 

You didn’t get a break in between scenes, really. There was a brief one before Me, but you weren’t allowed to stand backstage where Peter was. He wondered if you wanted to talk to him. If you were thinking about what he had said. If not...

Oh, well. There was nothing he could do.

After Belle got to the castle, the arguments ensued. It wasn’t you and Peter, it was Belle and Beast. 

Then you sang Home.

It was different this time.

“Yes, I made the choice. Oh, Papa - I will stay. But I don’t deserve to lose my freedom in this way! You... monster. If you think that what you’ve done is right, well then... you’re a fool. Think again.” You didn’t look at him this time. 

Peter held his breath.

“Is this home? Is this where I should learn to be happy? Never dreamed that a home could be dark and cold... I was told, every day in my childhood, even when we grow old, home will be the heart is. Never a word so true. My heart’s far, far away. Home is too.”

You sat down on the prop that was your bed and put your hands to your chest. “Is this home? Is this what I must learn to believe in? Try to find something good in this tragic place - just in case, I should stay here forever, held in this empty space. Oh, but that won’t be easy - I know the reason why. My heart’s far, far away. Home’s a lie.” 

You stood up. The power in your voice was incredible.

“What I’d give to return to the life that I knew lately, but I know that I can’t solve my problems going back - is this home? Am I here for a day or forever? Shut away from the world until who knows when? Oh but then, has my life has been altered once, it can change again. Build higher walls around me! Change every lock and key. Nothing lasts, nothing holds all of me. My heart’s far, far away. Home... and free.” 

The lights faded and people erupted in applause. The curtains didn’t close, but Mrs. Potts and Chip came into the scene. They offered Belle a cup of tea, and, upon noticing her tears and hearing her anger towards the Beast, Mrs. Potts said, “Cheer up, child. It’ll turn all right in the end, you’ll see.”

Belle looked at her and smiled sadly.

“I hope that we’ll be friends, though I don’t know you well. If anyone can make the most of living here, then Belle, it’s you... and who knows, you may find home here, too.”

Your eyes shifted from Mrs. Potts to Peter.

Peter felt a small twinge of hope. Small, but it was there.

Richard had his songs, and Ned was the star in both of them. He had the audience cracking up - and Peter swore Richard looked a little jealous. His version of Gaston just didn’t have that same impact. It was like he was too much like his character to begin with.

After Gaston, it was the Beast. Alone in his room, in the West Wing, mourning over the enchanted rose - which was dying too quickly. 

Peter sang, his voice extra gruff (the way he had to sound so the audience could tell the difference between the Beast and the Prince). “How long must this go on? This cruel, trick of fate? I simply made one careless, wrong decision. And then that witch was gone, and left me in this... state! An object of revulsion and derision. Hated. Is there no one? Who can show me... how to win the world's forgiveness?”

The enchanted mirror lit up. On the picture was supposed to be you. 

“The girl,” he said. 

Everything went dark, ready for the set up for Be Our Guest. 

At the end of Be Our Guest, just like the movie, Belle wandered up to the West Wing to explore. And just like the movie, the Beast jumped out at Belle and scared her. He then screamed at her until she ran away.

Gosh, Peter thought. How am I supposed to make her like Peter when I’ve got to act like an absolute monster to her right now?

After Belle fled from the castle, the Beast mourned. 

Because, like Peter, he realized what a giant screw up he really was.

“And in my twisted face, there's not the slightest trace of anything that even hints of kindness. And from my tortured shape, no comfort, no escape... I see, but deep within is utter blindness. Hopeless. As my dream dies... as the time flies. Love, a lost illusion... helpless, unforgiven. Cold and driven to this sad conclusion.”

From offstage, he felt your eyes on him.  “No beauty could move me, no goodness improve me, no power on earth if I can't love her,” he sang-

And he meant every word.

“No passion could reach me, no lesson could teach me, how I could have loved her, and make her love me too. If I can't love her, then who?”  

The music swelled around him. The Beast glared at the rose, then at the reflection of himself in the mirror. He pushed it onto the table face down, disgusted.

“Long ago I should have seen all the things I could have been. Careless and unthinking, I moved onward...” He threw his arms up, tossing his cloak around. “No pain could be deeper! No life could be cheaper! No point anymore, if I can't love her. No spirit could win me, no hope left within me... hope I could have loved her, and that she'd set me free. But it's not to be. If I can't love her... let the world be done with me!”

The moment the music silenced, the crowd of people applauded. He walked off stage, and you came on, pretending to be fleeing from the castle. You were stopped by wolves, who began to attack you.

Peter ran out on his cue, roaring and tearing at the creatures. He pushed you out of the way, covering you with his body. This was the first unselfish act the Beast would ever commit.

The scene ended with him on the ground, bleeding an unconscious, and you - unable to leave him. 

You took him home.

Now both of you were at the center of the stage. He was in an armchair and you were knelt on the floor beside him. The castle was put back together behind you in the dark.

Covering your mic with your fingers, you said to him, “Peter, you were wonderful.”

He looked at you with soft eyes, even though he couldn’t see you. “___, there is so much I need to say to you-”

“Shhh.” You touched his lip. “There’s no rush. Wait until the curtain closes.”

The lights came on. You lifted the cloth in your hand. “Okay, now hold still. This might sting a little.” You touched it to his arm, and he growled. You sighed. “Please-”

“It hurts!” he roared. 

“Well, if you stayed still, it wouldn’t hurt as much!” you shouted.

“If you hadn’t of run off, this wouldn’t have happened!” he retorted. 

“If you hadn’t of frightened me, I wouldn’t have run away!” 

He glared. “You shouldn’t go where you aren’t allowed.”

“Well,” you said, “you should learn to control your temper!”

He fell silent.

“Now hold still,” you said, softer. You pressed the cloth to his arm. He growled, but didn’t move. “I want to thank you. For saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” the Beast said. And he smiled.

Something There began to play. 

“There’s something sweet, and almost kind,” you sang, sitting there and looking at him, “but he mean and he was coarse and unrefined. And now he’s dear, and so unsure. I wonder why I didn’t see it there before.”

Mrs. Potts chuckled as she came by. “Come on, dearie. Let’s get you out of those wet things!”

You were taken off stage. 

“She glanced this way,” Peter sang, I thought I saw... and when we touched, she didn’t shudder at my paw! No, it can’t be... I’ll just ignore...” You came back out on the stage, in a new dress. You patted down your hair and smiled at the Beast. “But then she’s never looked at me that way before.”

The Beast hurried over to you. “Belle? I have something to show you. But first, you have to close your eyes. It’s a surprise!”

The moment you closed your eyes, shelves of books were rolled out on stage. Peter held your hands and pulled you to the center of the stage. 

“May I open them?” you asked. 

“Alright... alright... now!” The music swelled and you opened your eyes, gasping in delight. 

“Oh, I can’t believe it! I’ve never seen so many books in my whole life!” 

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“It’s wonderful,” you said, touching his arm. 

Unscripted, and it made Peter’s heart skip a beat.

He turned away shyly. “It’s yours.”

You looked after him, and slowly, step by step, approached him. “New... and a bit alarming. Who’d have ever thought that this could be? True... that he’s no Prince Charming, but there’s something in him that I simply didn’t see.” You grabbed his hand (paw) and dragged him to one of the shelves. You plucked a book off. “Oh, this is one of my favorites! It’s King Arthur. Have you ever read it?”

“No,” he answered.

“Oh, well you don’t know what you’re missing! I would love to read this again. Wait. You can read it, first.” You tried to hand him the book. 

“No, that’s alright.”

“No, really, I insist.” 

“No, you.”

“No, you!”

“No!” the Beast almost yelled. “I... can’t.”

“You never learned to read?” she asked him.

“Only a little and long ago. Oh...”

“Well it just so happens that this is the perfect book to read aloud. Come here, sit by me.”

“Knowing now, that this was indeed the legendary sword called "Excalibur,"” Belle read, “Arthur tried to pull it from the stone. He tried once, to no avail. He tried a second time, but still, he could not pull it out. Then, for the third time, Arthur drew forth the sword... “So that must mean he's the king!” the Beast interrupted.  Belle laughed. “Wait and see!” “I never knew books could do that.”

“Do what?” she asked.  “Take me away from this place, make me forget for a little while...” “Forget?” she said. 

“Who I...what I am,” he said, ashamed.

“We have something in common, you know,” she said, nudging him. “What is that?”

“In the town where I come from, the people think I'm odd.”

He said in disbelief, “You?” You nodded, and it suddenly didn’t feel like you were Belle anymore. “So, I know how it feels to be...different. And I know how lonely that can be.” Glancing at the Beast, you returned to the book. “For the third time, Arthur drew forth the sword, and there arose from the people a great shout. Arthur is king.” “I told you so.” The Beast smiled. 

You grinned, but only because it was more like a Peter smile than a Beast smile.

OKAY Y’ALL SORRY TO CUT IT SHORT BUT IT IS NEARING 3 AM AND I AM OFFICIALLY ONLY GOING TO BE GETTING 5 HOURS OF SLEEP :-))))) PART THREE WILL BE OUT TOMORROW

[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!