#I LIKE THIS SHIP i just also think Finn is a flawed human being and a possible relationship between these two would have conflict

[djsherriff]

Ignoring the age gap issues, I generally don’t think Finn and Simon would have a good romantic relationship but it’d be interesting if there was an attempt

[sometimesrosy]

The 100 Rewatch 2023 1.09

Unity Day

I gotta catch up. I'm gonna watch this one, no editing, we post like men. And then make some lasagne, and while my food is in the oven, I will watch 1.10

My typing is a MESS. And I think i lost some of my trains of thought. Like I feared, season 7 affects all the others, because we know have a context for what the struggle all means. It's hard to forget that. sigh.

Delinquents watching Jaha go on nd on about Unity Day and telling everyone they're on the groundf. Miller: after we did all the work. Raven is a bit snotty. And Finn is saying Unity Day is a lie. The ark only came together after the thirteenth station was blown out of the sky. We know why that happened now. That's kind of cool

Monty makes Moonshine. Jasper calls it UnityJuice

On the Ark. Diana Sydney is being catty and evil to Abby about the council seat and now is annoyed because he cut his words short. Because she's blowing up the unity celebration. I always hate Diana SydneyAnd Vera Kane is being blown off by Kane a mere few minutes before she is blown up.

Okay. I apologize. That was tasteless.

Oh that's a lot of blood. Gruesome. Maybe they think it's doable because of the dark gray tone to the ark scenes. You can't see the vivd red. Now Kane gives his mom the travelers blessing. He's had a rough few days.

And it's about to get worse. Poor Kane. He really is about to have an extremely bad time.

They just figured out that Sydney did it. Diana Sydney is willing to let people die and steal the Exodus ship because she thinks it's ok to

BEST UNITY DAY EVER. Bellamy and Clarke having a celebration he tells her to have a drink. have more than one. He's happy because he's been pardoned. All that guilt and anxiety goes away.

Their little light flirting. I wouldn't call it hardcore or even implying anything. Sorry is that bellarke sacriledge? They like each other thought.

Raven is again hardcore and kinda violent. She doesn't think the grounders are human. Finn is very empathetic to them. I supposed that's not a terrible Finn trait, but he's still really disapproving of everyone around him which is annoying.

O following a trail of lillies to find Lincoln. I guess this is more the butterfly girl. Lincoln is teaching her to stalk. And to kiss.

I am not finidng their story all that romantic anymore. Despite what the music is telling me. I can't get over his age and her trauma. She doesn't need a boyfriend she needs a therapist.

Finn finds them and gives Lincoln back the knife he stabbed him with. I stabbed you we tortured you. Truce right? I mean i suppose. He's also telling Lincoln about the soldiers coming. That is not wise... knowing what we now know about grounders. They are unrepentantly violent. (this is not a natural state of 'the other' but actually a characteristic the writers designed to cause unending conflict without any hope of peace and which always annoyed the hell out of me)

Diana turns in her mechanic as the bomber. Abby and Kane don't trust her. Wise.

Drunk delinquents. Clarke playing drinking games. Oh look Fox. She dies next season. Finn comes over and ruins Clarke's fun.

Finn has set up a meeting with the grounders.Finn thinks they have a chance to live in peace with the grounders. It's not true. Like I said before they were manufactured to be enemies. you CAN'T make peace with them. Unfortunately. And That is a huge flaw in this show. You keep hoping for them to be rational and human and it ALWAYS returns to them being violent barbarians. Terrible.

Clarke tells Bellamy that Finn set up a meeting, and she's taking Finn's position, she wants to attempt peace, but she wants him to follow and be their backup. Bring guns. Fair.

Aww. Jasper comes in to help Raven with her gunpowder because he was great in chemistry.He talks about his family and asks her about hers. "Nope, just Finn." Ugh. "We all got each other now, right?" Another great story line that went away by the end.

Bellamy wants Jasper to be back up because he's steady and brave in the cave with Lincoln. Raven comes along.

Finn with Clarke always icks me out. "You're sounding more and more like Bellamy," he says to her. His rival. She leaves a trail of nuts for Bell to follow.

The whole class war storyline is a big thing in season 1. Your people and our people. And they break out and lock Kane in the cell.

Aw Sinclair. I love him. People are going to freeze to death in the sections Jaha tells him to evacuate them. They figure out Diana is taking the exodus ship. Abby is hiding and watching. Jiana calls herself Chancellor. Onlly 50% of her people are on the ship. "This exodus ship belongs to all of you, you're the future of the human race and today i'm going to lead you home." She's just like Jaha sacrificing people for her own needs.

Finn and Clarke meetup with O on the bridge. Lincoln hugs her.

Finn grabs Clarkes hand when she backs away.

OMG horses. Clarkie. aww. They are armed. "Hey we said no weapons." Big surprise.

Clarke meets Anya. Hey if she didn't bring backup, Anya would have killed Clarke and The Ark would all have died when they ran out of air and Mount Weather would have gotten out of the mountains.

Anya thinks Clarke started a war. THeir flares blew a village to the ground. She calls them invaders. She says they sent an armed raiding party to capture one of theirs and torture him.

But like. Anya. You impaled Jasper first. Oh yeah. And then you hunted the kids. Oh yeah. And Lincoln kidnapped and chained Octavia. FIRST before Bellamy captured Lincoln.

WHY DO THE GROUNDERS ALWAYS BLAME THEIR VICTIMS FOR STARTING THE WAR WHEN THEY FINALLY STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK. UGh I hate that.

Now I know how it ended, I can't hope for them to change because they never ever do.

Clake is conceding the point. Because she TAKES the blame. Girl. Do you remember what they did to Jasper?

Jaha looks emotionally compromised when he sees Abby on the exodus ship. They haven't dropped that crush on her yet. Abby opens the door from inside. "ABBY!!" Jaha cries in despair as they knock her out. But they have opened the doors and they cant' take off.

Anya is mad they're sending down warriors. Clarke can't promise they will honor the terms she sets with her because she's not in charge.

"Grounder princess looks pissed."

"Our princess has that effect." Great line

Jasper sees someone in the distance with weapons pointed at Clarke.

Is it a hallucination??

No it's not. They're falling from the trees. Bellamy stops Anya from stabbing Clarke. Lincoln steps in front of an arrow to save O.

The deinquents flee.

The dropship hasn't been uncoupled and it will kill everyone on the Ark. "You don't want to be remembered like this."

And she says "I won't be." Rude.

He doesn't take blame like Clarke, blames her for having him shot. But then Sydney tells them that there aren't enough drop ships for everyone.

The drop ship breaks off and things start exploding. Then going dark.

Back to the kids. And they all yell at each other. "You didn't have to trust the grounders. You just had to trust me." Dumb finn.

B. LLike I said. Best unity day ever. C laughs.

Oh look the exodus ship is coming. "Your mom's early."

Wait. Too fast? No parachute? Something's wrong.

KABOOM.

Clarke crumples.

[thealexchen]

It’s so weird to me that people in this fandom get called abuse apologists or some other inherently horrible and damaging label for simply liking certain characters. Whether it’s for liking Chloe, Rachel, Victoria, Finn- hell, I’ve even seen Alex stans get hate bc some people think she’s too needy and that she expected too much of those she talks about in her journal. 🤦🏼‍♀️But even if that were true, you can like a character w/o thinking every aspect of them is perfect bc everyone is flawed.

It just blows my mind because one of the basic principles of character writing is that characters need to be flawed to be written well. You don’t have to be a professional writer to know that; humanity is imperfect and that is a universal and eternal truth. We fuck up, we say things we don’t mean, we have limited perspectives, and we are always learning. Also, if people weren’t allowed to enjoy media with some problematic elements because it was indicative of their personal character or values, then we’d never be able to consume any media that was more than 5-10 years old, and even that is debatable. Like, even ATLA could be written off as problematic and unwatchable for having white actors voice Asian and Indigenous-coded characters or that the ships are inherently flawed, and that would be a damn shame.

I noticed that the characters in True Colors, and TC in general, tries harder to be inoffensive and sanitized. Its stakes are lower, its tragedy is more muted and understated, Alex’s backstory is very dark but is presented and resolved in one neat nightmare sequence, its violence is downplayed (Gabe is the only character to die, and mostly offscreen, and Alex is shot but is never shown to be in any danger of collapsing or dying during chapter 5). It also tackles fewer social issues and with a lighter hand, such as the structural flaws in the foster care system and its coverage of mental health. It expresses its opinions far more quietly than LiS1 or LiS2, if at all. Whereas in those games specific characters represented very extreme political views (David’s comments on women, Chloe’s comments on guns, all the racists in LiS2), nobody outright vilifies the Chen siblings except maybe Mac. The main characters are all older and more mature, and nobody pressures Alex into making morally dubious decisions like in the previous games, but they lack the “bite” of previous companion characters that might have made them more memorable or relatable to some players. I don’t think this is bad writing, but it’s clear how LiS2’s critical reception compelled D9 to dial back on the politics in TC.

And even after all that, people find ways to hate on Steph for being “overrated” and Ryan for being “boring,” or they fixate on his one mistake of not believing Alex (which is entirely conditional) as a reason to hate him and call him irredeemable. Or people write off TC as forgettable, boring, or overhyped as well. While I love TC, I do think that it took much fewer risks than previous games to alienate fewer fans. If D9 wants to write its games like this, that’s great for them, but as fans, I think we can afford to play these games with a little more nuance and, well, empathy toward its characters, including their flaws. It’s what TC is all about, after all.

Thank you for sending this ask!

[tuiyla]

kurt for the ask game!

Let's gooo

favorite thing about them

Kurt's compassion is really unparalleled on Glee and I'll maintain that him not only forgiving Dave but actively trying to help him was incredible. He would have had every right to not want to see Karofsky again but Kurt was kind to him even before On My Way happened. That stuff is so powerful.

least favorite thing about them

Nothing that truly stands out as something I actively dislike about him but I think he does have a tendency to take things as an attack when they aren't, e.g. with Burt. I get it, it's a defense mechanism because he is hurt so much and it's only human to react this way so I like it on a narrative level that he's still flawed but yeah. Also, on the topic of On My Way, even though I get what the writers tried to do there I really dislike the exchange between Kurt and Quinn. From both sides but with Kurt for dismissing Quinn's trauma.

favorite line

Gotta go with a comedic one because “Hi I’m Kurt Hummel and I’ll be auditoning for the role of kicker” is pure gold

brOTP

Shoutout to Kurtcheltana but Kurtcedes are the ultimate besties 

OTP

Klaine!

nOTP

I don’t even know what the popular Kurt ships are but I guess I’m fine with most of them. Probs Kurtbastian, I don’t have strong feelings but it’s also not something I could get behind.

Santana          🤝           Kurt

Sebastian ship being a nOTP

random headcanon

He and Blaine celebrate his mom’s birthday every year by dressing up and just going to Central Park or maybe upstate. Just a quiet day of remembering, a day they set aside to sit with feelings. They make an attempt to be in Lima for dinner with Burt and Carole but that doesn’t always work out.

Finn’s first birthday after his death sneaks up on Kurt and hits him like a ton of bricks but from what would have been his 21st on Kurt and Blaine also do a similar tradition for him. Sometimes they spend the day with Rachel, often with Burt and Carole. In any case they make an effort to schedule around it like they do with Kurt’s mom’s birthday just to allow that one day of reflection. They take long strolls in nature and take a moment to be grateful for what they have in life.

unpopular opinion

If only I knew what counts as unpopular haha. I suppose I don’t see many people acknowledging the menace season 1 Kurt could be; and to be very clear I do not mean his crush on Finn and I highly disagree when people call him creepy or even predatory for that. But just in general how he was more sneaky and I guess Slytherin-like. It was a fun quality. It might also be unpopular to just acknowledge he was flawed? Kurt gets babied quite a bit as a character imo and I find it wholly unnecessary to pretend he never made mistakes - but sometimes Gleeks can’t like characters unless they’re purely ~unproblematic~. Oh and depending on how popular we view this opinion as, people who say he was a walking stereotype grind my gears so much. Even if they also acknowledge his importance it’s still a shitty take.

song i associate with them

Again I can only think of Glee ones, the two standouts being Rose’s Turn and Not the Boy Next Door but I’m also partial to his Beatles solos. Adore Blackbird and ever since rewatching the episode I’ve been obsessed with I Want To Hold Your Hand. It’s the recontextualisation for me. Also Bad Romance.

favorite picture of them

Any picture of his side profile because I’m obsessed but this is also a good one:

the h a i r

[fedonciadale]

What's fans obsession with proving Sansa classist, racist and sexist when every character share those traits including their faves. The westroes society harbour those traits. It's not like she is committing hate crimes or punishing people who don't confirm. Also fans needs to learn they themselves are not perfect as the world we living is still had those problems.

I think it has to do with the weird concept that you need a moral reason for liking or disliking certain characters or ships.

So, if I say I like Sansa and someone else dislikes her they tell me : she's classist - which implies how dare you like a character that is classist. That must mean you're classist as well. This kind of reasoning is doubly a 'non sequitur'. It implies that being classist is Sansa's only characteristic and it implies that l condone what I like.

I had this discussion with a R0mione fan who told me that supporting a 'toxic' ship like Dramione (regardless of how I ship them) is damaging to me and that I should ship healthy relationships.

Characters who are perfect are incredibly boring and to be quite honest I hate stories with a blatant moral.

There is this one story about two kings who wanted to wage war but at their border was a nice little house with a happy couple in it and the kings saw this couple and decided that they could not disturb their happiness. It always made me roll my eyes. As if that is in any way realistic.

The thing is that sometimes moral does come into liking or not liking a character. I mean I think Ramsay Bolton is so disgusting that I hate reading about him even in this 'horror' way, you know where a story is full of horror and you are slightly horrified but at the same time you feel safe because you're at home and it's warm and cosy. And Ramsay is just so bad (to me) that I skip the parts where he is mentioned.

But most of the times? We like characters for some things. I for example like characters who are witty and intelligent and maybe even a bit vengeful. That is one of the reasons I like Hermione Granger, Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy - even though I know they are flawed. This is also the reason why I liked Tyrion for quite a long time until finally something happened that soured the character for me forever - he killed Shae and that was just too much for me.

So, the question is while we just like who we like at the same time moral does come into it. Happens in real life as well. Sometimes we have friends we like and something happens that makes us fall out of friendship. A line is crossed.

So, when people tell us and try to prove that Sansa is classist etc. They want us to fall out of liking her and they do this with moral reasoning. In a way they want to persuade us to cancel her.

But moral is only a part. We like who we like. And no one is perfect including ourselves. If we could only like people who are perfect we would end up hating ourselves and all of humanity - present and past.

I'm a historian, I know that the perfect society does not exist and it probably will never exist (which does not mean that we shouldn't try). Ancient Greece had freedom of speech but they had slaves. Women in ancient Egypt were almost equal but the Pharaohs still waged war and captured enemies and exploited them. Rome had an incredible system of law but they thought that adding a new province to their Empire was bringing peace ('pacare').

I think people should relearn that no one is perfect and they should also relearn that liking someone does not mean that we condone all their actions. Liking is not blindly following.

Literature can teach us that. We see fictional characters in a flawed fictional world and they are influenced by the moral of their world and at the same time they might go beyond that. That Sansa is a classist is no surprise. She was raised like that. But her empathy goes beyond that. That Huck Finn uses racist language is not surprising either. That he befriends Jim despite people telling him that this shouldn't be possible. That is the surprise.

Still, even if Sansa were as classist as antis claim we could still say we like her regardless - or we could still like aspects of her.

I still like Tyrion's wit for example even though I've come to dislike him in general.

In a way all of these discussions about characters usually lead nowhere. Because it usually goes that way : people like a ship or a character for whatever reasons and then they try to give moral justifications for it, maybe because they are attacked for liking this character or that ship. And I would say of course moral comes into it. But that's not the only thing. It's also about what we relate to. It's also about what we find interesting.

Well written fictional characters like Sansa have so many aspects that the readers find different things to hate or to love and maybe we all should just try to just accept that there is nuance and that we aren't completely consistent in our likes and dislikes.

And while we can discuss the morals of the characters and we should try to understand them, we should try to differentiate more between the moral judgement of an action in the timeline of the character and our own as well as the between explanation and excuse.

Sorry I went on such a detour but your last sentence really hit me: we need to learn that we are not perfect. Indeed. And we won't become more perfect ourselves by telling other people how they can become more perfect - e.g. by policing what they like or dislike.

Thanks for the ask!

[worldismyne]

Omg you have warrior u oc’s ?! Please tell me about them!

I've been in the fandom for a hot minute and a half, so I got a few and they break into two generations lmao.

1st Generation (2013-2014) Made for funsies.

2nd Generation (Present)​ Made for the future issue we're working on.

It's kinda hard to talk about the 2nd Gen ones without spoiling too much, so I'll just stick to stuff that's irrelevant or not covered in the draft??? They'll be at the bottom, so feel free to dip out of the post if you don't want spoilers.

With that said....

*Inhales*

Gen 1 OCs

Ophilia - Y'know how almost everyone had some fem unicorn/pegasus to ship with Hevvin lmao; uhh this one was mine. She's less of a character and more like a concept. I liked the idea of a counterpart to Hevvin's 'magical creature killing things on purpose' with a 'magical creature killing things on accident'. She's supposed to be a clydesdale like pegasus that was also poisonous to the touch. She was used to being hunted for her feathers, and was supposed to have long fur/hair. But like really hated humans because they wanted her magic to hurt each other; made no sense for her to have a human disguise, but eh. Also I was an inexpirienced artist, so I made her super skinny/tall like all my other drawings, but really she should have been BUFF. I never gave her a concrete personality and was too nervous to do anything other than use her as a dress-up doll for different outfits that would fit the aesthetic. In hindsight she doesn't really fit in the world (Aisha denounced pegasus existing, and Hevvin's human form is canonically from one of Leenan's lost spells soooooo) but I still like the idea of a character that was poisous to the touch. Ended up finding a VN series that scratched that itch, so I officially retired her. She did make a cameo in my fic Plain Gold Ring as one of the monsters Emet ran into on her adventures. This is what she'd look like if I made her now.

JD (Can't find his full name, my gut says Jasmine Diane???)- Made for my fic Plain Gold Ring as a travel campanion for Emet and Rhodri (because there's no one else in the comic their age lmao). I knew I wanted a 'neutral' party for them to talk to so they weren't always talking to each other. He's the youngest of seven brothers, I think he was 11??? (him and his brothers all were given girl names by their stubborn mom who thought naming the baby before birth would give her a girl). He's a very meek and gullible person and a grain farmer; the kind of kid Rhodri usually scams. A pushover toatie made sense for an added member to the squad, so I had Rhod drag him along and they made him do all the stuff they didn't want to do. He ended up being a fairly practical and chill person as the story progressed, whose biggest flaw was not speaking up. He used the adventure to step up in the world and act as a merchant (so he sells all the treasures and junk Emet finds overseas and doesn't like.) With the happily ever after being them forming an adventure/merchant guild. I seem to remember submitting him to the OG tumblr for review (I can't remember why) but he got artist approved!  I snuck him into the background of pg 28 of Ambrosia since we needed people in the streets according to the thumbs [that by no means makes him canon, it's more an easter egg than anything else]. I still really like him and the idea of his fam from a worldbuilding standpoint, though I have 0 plans for him. I may go back and revise Plain Gold Ring, if so, he'd get developed further.

Gen 2 OCs (Spoiler Reduced)

Belladonna Ashenburrow (sp?) Age 13 and a half

Biological daughter of Freya Ashenburrow and her 1st husband (supposedly), but not the oldest of Finn's cousins. She enjoys studying ediquette/customs of other cultures, making tea pastries and torturing her step sisters's tutors until they quit. Permenantly housebound, Bella is determined to get married first and be a celebrated nobel lady to spite her family (not that she's made any progress thus far). She is first in line to inherit the family home as the only descendent that is blood related to the Ashenburrows AND holds a noble title AND willing to marry any noble her family picks out. No one in the family is happy about this. Her mother and father are deceased and her step father is always away at work as a woodsman. She refers to everyone in her family by cutsey nickname versions of their names with exception of her grandfather (Papa) and her step father (Mother's Second husband). Her aunt and grandmother try to pretend she's not in the house. (She is LOOSELY inspired by the tale of Cinderella, in that she has step-sisters and an akward family)

Rosaline Ashenburrow Age 15

Technically the eldest of Finn's cousins, she entered the family through her father's second marriage (and as such is not a blood-realitive). Despite that, she was very close with her cursed step-mother and was her unofficial favorite child. Her favorite story from her step-mother was how marrying her father made it feel like the curse was gone, that true love isn't the first love you find, but the one you build through hard work. She wears Freya's old dresses to feel close to her again, though they are extremely dated. Still, she struggles with adapting to the expectations of noble ladies and often falls short of her aunt's expectations. Rose enjoys gardening and has an interest in white witchcraft, but is too scared to pursue it in the home given past events. She discovered of Leenan's existance after her suitor accidently triggered an old hex Leenan had left behind. (He got turned into a bear mid proposal; he's kinda stuck as a bear until further notice). She's inspired by Rose Red from "Snow White and Rose Red".

Clarice Ashenburrow Age 5

Fairytale rules state there's always 2 step sisters; so I thought it'd be interesting to have one be older and one be younger. When she talks, it's in test bubbles with layered crayon/pencil dialogue to replicate how young kids have rapid/repeating speech. She's extremely hyperactive and has grown up in the Ashenburrow home realively unsuppervised (she has Rose, but Rose gets busy with lessons and other things). She's quite the terror, but when she's older she'll focus her energy into playing piano instead of tearing the house apart. She also has a habit of biting people when she's upset. She doesn't remember her mother at all or Freya and often tries to get Senna and her grandmother's attention by missbehaving (it rarely works). I wouldn't say she's a brat, more like an unchecked ball of chaos. She actually adores her older sisters (and her cousin once they meet); but no one has time to play with her 🙁 Inspired by Bell's younger sister in Beauty and the Beast. Fun fact, the disney animation removed her character from the final draft of the movie to make Bell seem more isolated/lonely in town. 

I keep flipflopping on whether she should be Bella's step sister or half sister. Step sister would be more traditional and secure Bella's role as heir, buuut half sister would mean Rose could have been raised by Freya for longer and raise the stakes of competition in the house. Either way, she'd be treated the same in the issue she appears.

Senna Ashenburrow Age 37

Not technically an OC, but she doesn't really appear in the formspring or in WUPurgatory; so her personality was concocted by me and Coffee. She's Leenan's elder sister, and the fact Coffee calls her Finn's "wine aunt" makes me laugh because I associate her behavior with my boomer grandparents lmao. Definately a functional alcoholic though, but an ideal duchess (ediquette is on point, dresses immaculate, socialable with all the right people, etc.) She has a "close friend" *cough*wife*cough* whom she's been with since they were 22. She figured she could avoid the pressures of an arranged marriage by supporting one of her sisters; and in return get left alone. Freya seemed like the safer bet (unfortunately she had all girls!) and now is stuck training her nieces on how to care for the duchey. She's been pushing Rose to take control, because she thinks Rose would be inclined to let her do whatever she wants. Until then, she stuck waiting for her parents to pass, but they're stubborn and in good health. 

She HATES kids and is mostly taking care of them out of a sense of duty. She's not wicked/abusive, just emotionally constipated and uncomfortable around young people.

[randomeditscreates]

The Force Awakens Breakdown

So I know no one gives a shit about my opinions on movies and my last post about the sequel trilogy [ST] But honestly I want to continue talking about these crap movies. So now that we got that through, lets start.

1) Jar Jar Abrams start this movie by basically ripping off the concept of the OT [Original Trilogy] The First Order [The empire] has taken over with a dark side user [Kylo Ren in this one, and Darth Vader in the OT] with a more powerful dark side user in the background pulling all the strings [Snoke and Creamy Sheeve respectfully] With an opposing side that happening to be small in numbers, [The Rebels and The Resistance(What they're resisting, no fucking clue, but it sounds nice)]

2) Rey Palpatine (I refuse to use the other name) is the protagonist of this story, and just so happens to live in a desert planet, you know like Luke. And happens to be the most laziest character Jar Jar and Kathleen Kennedy ever created. She's kind, and friendly and her only flaw is that she doesn't have any family. She's a scavenger, yet has so much proficient in the force, you would think she's been training for decades. She has great skill in flying ships and fixing them, that you would think, it would at least be a throwaway line. But nope, she has no reasoning for knowing how to fly or fix ships and the only reasoning we really have is that, Jar Jar wanted it, so he put it in. And throughout this movie and following ones, she picks up skills like their pokemon cards because fuck hard work. Now Rey pisses me off, not just because of her lazy character, but because during all the movies, nothing ever fucking happens to her, she doesn't get hurt to an extreme degree like Finn, She doesn't go through a huge revelation, all that happens is that Rey loses Han (someone she barely knows) then she magically beat Kylo,( who if you don't remember has years even decades over Rey in training) and then decides to find Luke. And that leads to the third problem...

3) The movie is too full. for being a movie that is 2 hours and 16 minutes, yes I fucking looked it up, this movie seems to drag on and not develop any of their concepts. Because while I fucking agree that Rian Johnson left fucking nothing for Jar Jar to work with, at least his story had some character development, and yes it dumb and breaks the world but I'll take what I can get. All the main characters in this movie all ends up the same as they start off with. Rey is a happy and kind character with no past, turns to Rey is a happy and kind character with no past and force abilities. Kylo Ren is tangled up Christmas lights drenched in yogurt and acid, and turns into a tangled up Christmas lights drenched in yogurt and acid, who ends up Killing his father. But if you remember is haunted by that death by TLJ [The Last Jedi] Poe Dameron is a self assured Spit-fired Pilot and ends up a Spit-fired self assured Pilot who's Not dead. Even the characters who do get develop, Finn and, oh my god, it's only Finn, get's completely rewritten in TLJ and gets the story arc redone just terribly. We can't even talk about Han, Leia or even Maz, because Han doesn't change and then dies, Leia doesn't get enough screen time to show anything about this character, and Maz is supposed to Yoda in a yellow and female clothing, and they do shit with that too because it leads to this..

4) Maz Kanata and holy fuck, she's literally the reason Han is dead. Maz yells very loudly to the entire cantina that Han Solo is here, which leads for the First Order to be notified. She somehow has Luke's lightsaber [It doesn't get explained, not even in the later movies] and somehow Rey is drawn to it, and leads to Maz giving advice, but you know the shitty type because it ends with Rey running away in the forest for her to get caught by Kylo. She tells Finn that he shouldn't leave, and that it turns makes him severely injured. And if you don't remember she does the same to Han, and he ends up dead. And her cantina gets fucking destroyed after being their for centuries, yet she couldn't give a fuck. and it shows the true issue, Jar Jar and Kathleen Kennedy in extent doesn't give a fuck about characters and just wants to to get from point A to point B with a lot of flashing lights.

5) Han Solo: Character Assassination. A character who developed into a man who was ready to risk it all for the rebellion. A character we loved in the OT is now broken down into his New Hope person all over again. Who apparently has scammed everyone in the galaxy? Um, Jar Jar, I know it might seem strange to you, but a smuggler needs people who trust him to get jobs and therefore receive income. But I guess I shouldn't expect much from the same man that think a Smuggler would want to be easily known or recognized. Also Leia and him are either broken up or divorced and that makes me feel really happy to know a couple that I loved are no longer together and one of this dead. Because Han Solo is just there for fan service and to shoot his gun, because that's what he's here for to go pew pew. Oh and to die, that what all the OT fans wanted, One of the main three characters killed by their own child.

6) Subtle doesn't exist in this movie, everything is given the delicacy of a hammer. We find out that Kylo or Ben, (I really don't fucking give a shit) is the son of Han solo, by Snoke just saying, the droid is in the possession of your father Han Solo, like no shit I assumed that when you mentioned the Millennium Falcon. Who would you think I thought Kylo was the son of, Chewbacca? Finn's story arc is the only one that makes you think, and brings a new aspect to the movies, and to the Stormtroopers. I just fucking wish we could do the same for the others Stormtroopers, because the other are killed with no regards that most of them, as Finn states were sold into this at a young age. Good job Resistance for killing all these people who was forced into this with no regards. How does a series that came like a decade before you (Star Wars: The Clones War Series) manage to develop the concepts that stormtroopers or clones are not mindless drones better than you. (The Rookie episode in the first season helps flesh out all the clones and they only have 25 minutes per episode, get you're shit together Lucas Films) And these are only the examples I could think of, off the top of my head.

7) Rey is a great example of Sexism, but instead it goes the other way around then usual. All the male characters are laughed at and or ridiculed, but all the females are perfect and don't need to change. One of the last scene is a great example of this, Kylo Ren, the one with years of training and two powerful masters who trained him, gets beat by Rey, someone who has no skill with a lightsaber and didn't even know she could use the force until Jar Jar decided to pull it out his ass. Even Finn who has at least close quarters fighting skills under his belt couldn't beat Kylo, and has to be saved by Rey. Now I will admit to being a feminist but Kathleen version completely differs from mine. Because while I believe both men and women are both capable of reaching the same level of skill, Kathleen think women should be able to do incredible things without working for it. And it clear by her stupid "The Force is female" Like shut the fuck up, the force was never given a gender, why the fuck are you doing it now? I also found out that most of the Crew in Lucas Film, happens to be female. and it's clear who's doing that. Again I am a feminist but I hate when people just have diversity for the sake of diversity instead of the person's capabilities. It's very vindictive of the Feminist movement, The Black Lives Movement and LGBT+ agenda as well, as we're trying to make people see them as just like everyone else which they fucking are (I will not stand for any form of bigotry and if you don't like something simply because of someone's race, gender or sexuality, you are shit human being) , they just so happen to not be a straight white man. And that they have the same struggles as everyone else. Also we already had strong female characters in the series without the big emphasis on the fact that they have a vagina. As from the basis, Star Wars was never about gender and because of this we got fully developed character we could relate to.

Now Dishonorable Mentions

A) This movie is fucking 2 hours and 16 minutes long, yet it feel so unfinished

B) Jar Jar Abrams deep seated love for mystery boxes and how it get more screen time then the actual Character it involves (Rey)

C) The movie could've been great, they're was definitely potential but it was dwarfed by mystery boxes and Visuals

D) Rey is not a Mary Sue in this Movie, she becomes one by the end of TLJ but she's not yet. So I guess it one positive.

E) Jar Jar inability for world Building, and doesn't even fucking tries to explain how the First Order even began to rise.

F) Poe Fucking Dameron, and the amount of time that is dedicated to him. I love him but come on, just make it someone like Han, as it could bring up the relationship between him and his son, which could then bring more emphasis when we reveal their relationship. But no lets bring up a character who we all assume is dead until about the end. And then does absolutely fucking nothing.

G) And Lastly when we see Han die, we don't get a scene of any of the characters we give a fuck about and who knows Han mourn his death, instead we just have two characters who had about 15 minutes of screen time with Han, and Chewbacca. And it doesn't get better because Rian Johnson decides in the second movie that we don't need a scene of Luke mourning over the man who fought side by side with him and is his Sister's husband. No Instead we get a scene of him drinking tit milk.

So that's it, well for now, I'll make another post for this if I have any more issues. But that it for now. I would also like to make it damn clear now, as I'll probably continue this, that me tearing apart a movie is based soley on the technical aspects of it. And that if you enjoyed this movie, you are entitled to it, but you cannot defend this movie's writing , because as I hoped I made clear, the writing is very much shit.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

Ron Weasley, Peggy Carter, Raven Reyes, Will Turner.

Oooooh some good ones I don’t think I’ve ever been asked about!

Ron Weasley (my BOY)

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them* 

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav (in the BEST way because I love how human his flaws make him)

otp(s): Romione

other ship(s): I can see the appeal of Rarry

#noromo ship(s): Harry/Ron are the BESTEST of friends and people need to stop forgetting how joined at the hip these two are. They share a brain. Also I love him with Luna because they both genuinely like each other and find each other funny and are both absolutely thrown by the other thinking they’re genuinely funny, which is cute.

crack ship(s): I mean he 100% had a massive crush on Krum but I don’t know if that counts as a crack ship

fav headcanon(s): Ron is the Mom friend. He shows his love by taking care of people. He’s a huge touch guy - he’s constantly giving people hugs, pats on the back, etc. Sometimes when he knows Harry’s feeling down he’ll just shove his way into his bed and cuddle him - it happens even more after the war, and sometimes Harry will just look at Ron and Ron knows that means it’s Hugging Time. They get so comfortable with it that they’ll just sit there in a conversation with someone else with Ron just hanging off Harry and neither of them acting like it’s a big deal.

He learns to love to cook for his family and provide good food for them like his mom did for him. He’s the one that learns most of her recipes and they spent a lot of time together in the kitchen after the war. The only one who can make food as good as their mom, the Weasleys all agree, is Ron - which is good, because Hermione is an abysmal cook.

He’s the one that takes a more active role in taking care of his kids too and the household duties. Not because Hermione won’t, but because her job ends up being so taxing and Ron loves taking care of his family and kids. (He does talk her into setting a strict schedule for herself though. Sundays are family days and unless a new dark wizard is back, she is not allowed to touch any work for the whole day.)

(I could keep going but I’m going to stop myself.)

Peggy Carter:

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav 

otp(s): Cartinelli 

other ship(s): Steggy, though I’m not the biggest shipper and I ship it a lot less post Endgame haha, Peggy/Sousa

#noromo ship(s): her friendship with Jarvis is so GOOD and I love them

crack ship(s): none that I can think of

fav headcanon(s): She 100% played a role in Tony’s life and nothing will tell me otherwise. She was (awkward on and off again) friends with his dad. She was besties with his caretaker/true father figure. She was definitely Aunt Peggy to him and adored him.

But to make a lot of Tony’s characterization and the fact they never see each other in the MCU work, I imagine they had some sort of falling out - either around the time Peggy seemed to have her falling out with Howard or after Howard’s death. Or maybe after Jarvis’s death. I imagine Tony pushed her away and eventually they hardly talked anymore. It’s one of his deepest regrets. He didn’t go to her funeral only because he felt like he didn’t have a right to.

Peggy is a terrible cook but really great at all other household chores and super handy. She refuses to call anyone for help when things break and will get them back in working shape through the power of her will alone. When she lives in the women’s apartment building, she gains a reputation as the person you should call if your fridge breaks down or you need to hang a new shelf or whatever. She gets a lot of requests to come fix things and she always does. Sometimes the other women try to pay her and she always refuses, though sometimes she’ll accept her pay in the form of homemade treats. One time she got a full pot roast for fixing someone’s heater. Usually, she just likes the women to keep her company and chat with her while she works.

Raven Reyes

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav (again, in good ways! her flaws are great!)

otp(s): none

other ship(s): I’m coming around on Braven; also see the appeal in Raven/Echo and Raven/Luna

#noromo ship(s): her and Murphy are little shits together and I adore their friendship; also her and Echo, her and Monty, her and Emori (basically her and all of Spacekru)

crack ship(s): I get the whole Raven/Anya thing haha and wish we could have seen them interact

fav headcanon(s): Raven spent a lot of nights growing up over at Finn’s place instead of her’s to avoid her mom. His parents fully accepted her and treated her as one of their own, always willing to let her stay there, though there was a lot of tension between them after Finn got locked up. Her mom would often trade her rations away for booze, so Finn usually split his rations with her growing up. Raven also started offering to fix things for people for payment, even before she was officially working as an Ark mechanic - usually for food. If you had something broken that you knew the Ark government wouldn’t give a crap about, you knew to go to Raven Reyes, who’d probably fix it better than anyone else the Ark would’ve sent anyways.

She and Murphy end up bonding a lot on the Ring about their mothers and their childhoods. They talk a lot about what it was like to have to scrape by for food when your own mother didn’t seem concerned with feeding you. They relate to each other in a way none of the other Ark-borne kids on the Ring do. 

She has nightmares of ALIE long after the AI is gone, horrible dreams where she watches her own body move without her and do terrible things to the people she loves. She stops wearing the color red for awhile, even though it used to be her favorite color. 

Will Turner 

(I’ve never been asked about him!! Yes thank you!!)

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav (yes, he’s all three)

otp(s): Willabeth

other ship(s): Will/Jack

#noromo ship(s): also Will/Jack

crack ship(s): Will/Calypso!!!! lmao he is her new ferryman

fav headcanon(s): Will accepts his new duty as ferryman for the dead and never wavers in it, and so he never is cursed or starts growing things out of him and yes I am ignoring the movie that shall not be named because it’s BULLSHIT. He is a kind ferryman. Davy Jones is terrifying, the sailors say. He’ll drag you to his locker as you scream for mercy and trap you in never-ending torture. But then when sailors die at see, a young man with kind eyes and a soft smile approaches them instead. “It’s time to move on now,” he tells them, and when the sailors say they don’t want to, he asks, “Are you scared of death? It’s nothing to fear really. But there is another option if you’d like.”

No one is bound to his service. They can stay on his crew for as long as they’d like, and when they’ve finally had enough and they tell him they’re ready to move on, he let’s them. 

Calypso is well pleased with him. She comes to visit him often and he always has tea (and rum) on hand for her when she does. They usually gossip about Jack. 

Great picks!! Thanks!!

[bellamygateoldblog]

Raven in S1 and now

Anon asked: Character game = Raven Reyes

This is longer than I pictured, sticking it under a ReadMore!

How I feel about this character:

I adore Raven, especially in season 1. SEASON ONE - I love her softness and her toughness and the way she feels natural. She has really admirable qualities and also flaws. In season one I enjoyed her journey, we got to see her form relationships, we got to see the way her personality clashed with others, we got to see her struggle and get insecure and find things hard. She’s such a compelling character.

This is carried into season 2, but in come ALIE mind wipe and consequent “upgrade” and a lot of her allure and complexity was dimmed for me. Her brain is brilliant, but she sorta went deus ex machina somewhere along the way, it felt like she was turned a plot convinience and tool to drive it forwards or get them out of writing corners more than she was a character. Suddenly she was unnaturally smart and the way she would come through and solve everything with her “awesome” brain fell flat to me, it wasn’t as amazing watching her accomplish these tasks in season four as it was in season one. In season one she felt so special. Maybe because season one was more localised, because it felt more intimate, immediate, drastic? Not sure. She built a pod from scrap metal and travelled through space by herself and survived. She’s remarkable, but she’s not superhuman. She’s had no storyline of her own since early days, and she should’ve because she’s full of so much potential and interest and I think it was a real waste reducing her story to torture and big brain time. She feels pain, then she saves the day. Over and over again. Worse: she’s rarely actually credited for these feats in the show, attention isn’t put on just how incredible it is that she is able to do these things! It’s just another Raven thing. Flat, empty. She feels her most human in seasons one and two. So i enjoy her lots.

SEASON SIX - I mean…huh. She had another love interest ripped from her, she said some science-y words, got mad, reacted to another death, and saved the day…again. It took me such a long time to even remember that, that’s how bad six was. They don’t know what to do with her. They pushed her aside. I don’t feel anything for her character anymore because she isn’t a character anymore. There’s nothing there. She’s empty, like most other characters at this point in time, and I feel no more attachment to her.

Who do I ship romantically with this character:

…Nobody. I mean, I usually don’t do shipping unless it’s central especially for a show with constantly rising stakes like this one. SEASON SIX - Echo. Yea. Give me Spy mechanic. Give my two ladies a happy ending with someone who actually deserves them (hint: each other).

Non-romantic OTP for this character:

Oh yea baby here‘s where it’s at. Finn & Raven. I adore them still. Love love love. Wish i got more of it, but will cherish what I did get forever and ever. And also the bits I added because canon can’t stop me. Couldn’t even rip them from my cold dead hands. Found family is my weakness. Which brings me next to Spacekru & Raven. Unlikely set of personalities, bring out the best in each other, protective, my babies. Her dynamic with each spacekru member is so unique and fun— SOS take me back to season five.

Unpopular opinion:

I think some parts of fandom are particularly defensive over her, it always feels like someone’s gonna jump down my throat the moment I say anything remotely critical of her character. I think she can be selfish, and sometimes she acts without thinking from a place of love, pain or desperation. I think she’s more ruthless than she’s given credit for. She recognises the reality of what’s happening around her, she doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t stop it. She’s accepted that her station is to do the work she’s told to do, she knows she’s the only one who can and she’s prepared to do whatever it takes for herself, her loved ones, and her people. I think she’s absolutely capable of making hard decisions, and of doing what she thinks necessary. She doesn’t view anything she’s done as mistakes, because they weren’t. She has the balls to stand by her choices without throwing herself pity parties. She knows the weight of loss and I think she understands better than anyone what it feels like to have everyone and everything depend on her, on her brain, on her intuition and her ability to carry on no matter what. Yes she was barely a character in season six, but her stance on morality and leadership was in-character. It’s also understandable for a woman who’s:

• been tortured multiple times, sometimes being done by or because of people she thought valued and cared for her.

• seen her family tortured

• been threatened, seen her lover almost lose his leg, something extremely personal and traumatic to her

• almost lost her family in more than one situation

• was heavily burdened with blasting off a burning planet and consequently saving the entire human race

• lost two members of her family

• lost her lover

• seen her family die and be resurrected

• probably some other events I’m forgetting

• watched Abby die, someone she has a long and important history with

— just within the past fortnight. I think it’s ridiculous the fandom collectively demonised her for being the slightest bit upset. How dare she. It wasn’t the first time she’s confronted Clarke, and it was absolutely warrented.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened to them in canon:

Hmm…i wish she’d never been dragged into a love triangle. Never in my life have I actually liked a love triangle. I wish the Finn/Clarke relationship hadn’t continued after Raven got to Earth. It always felt unnecessary to me. Eventually, after much thinking, I got the whole Finn/Clarke situation to make sense, but i wish it’d never happened. It hurt Raven’s dynamic with her only family, someone who should’ve been hers, belonged to her story as well as his own.

She isn’t the protagonist, but I guess I wish she was. I find she has so much story potential, her dynamics are sweet as hell, her backstory could’ve been fully fleshed out, the true extent of her hardships could’ve been explored including her struggle with her disability, her relationship with Finn, Sinclair, her strained and neglectful relationship with her mother and how important being important is to her because of that, the back-breaking burden of being gifted in a world of survival. I love her. I love her. I love her. SEASON SIX - not entirely specific to season six, but I just wish she was treated well.

[chamerionwrites]

Star Wars asks: 5, 13, 19!

5 - What’s the worst headcanon you’ve ever seen?

I don’t like to Start Shit and I try to actively avoid a lot of the fanwank, but I will say the galaxy far far away gives rise to some real galaxy brain takes. (In fairness this is true of most large fandoms, and some of the worst takes of all are George Lucas’s, so we come by it honestly LOL.)

Very broadly speaking though, I’m deeply unfond of anything that paints certain characters (it’s especially common with Luke, Cassian, Bodhi, Finn, Rose) as unrelentingly pure soft fluffy cinnamon rolls, in a way that is totally at odds with everything we’re shown onscreen. Characters can be profoundly compassionate and gentle and GOOD without robbing them of all their flaws and edges and backbone, especially when canon shows them to be quite justifiably angry and traumatized because they live in a galaxy full of grinding injustice. 

It just strikes me as dehumanizing to declaw characters that way, and indicative of people’s tendency to empathize only with perfect victims rather than real multifaceted human beings.

13 - If you could swap places with any character for a day, who would you swap with?

The GFFA is honestly sort of a terrible place and nobody is having a very good time of it, but I might swap with Kaytoo because I would also like to offer Cassian Andor my unconditional support as well as a goddamn hug.

19 - If you could pilot any ship in the galaxy, which would you choose?

There is a certain iconic romance about X-Wings, and the Millennium Falcon for that matter, but ultimately I think the Ghost from SW Rebels is my favorite. It’s big enough to live on, fast and agile enough that piloting it would be fun, and it has that homey feel without breaking down constantly (sorry Han, but I’ve had that sort of car and you have my sympathies but not my envy).

[wangzapper]

characters to break down: poe dameron, kylo ren

thank you or asking!  i’ve had just enough wine to be opinionated but still coherent so buckle up!

Poe Dameron 

How I feel about this character 

I just finished reading the Poe Dameron comics (highly recommend!) so I feel a lot more strongly about Poe than I was going from the movies.  I just… really love him.  I love that he’s flawed and rash and impulsive but also that he’s soft - he can express emotion, he can show physical affection to his friends.  He’s complex and interesting and believable without having to be like an anti-hero or a super tragic figure. 

All the people I ship romantically with this character

IN CANON: I mean Finn, obviously.  I am really sad we never got to see it happen on screen, but I can’t say I’m surprised that Disney wouldn’t go there.  It’s pure and good and at least it lives on in fanon.

NOT IN CANON: (making this distinction bc it would make no sense in canon and we all know) but I can go in for Poe x Hux.  I’m writing a gingerpilot fic right now.  But it’s fully a guilty pleasure/morbid curiosity/crack ship.  

My non-romantic OTP for this character

All of Black Squadron?  

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t 100% hate the concept of him having been a spice runner in the past.  I like that maybe he rebelled against the legacy of his parents and dipped his toe into something other than being a hero ™ for the new republic and then the resistance like his parents were before him.  It should have been handled better but I don’t hate it.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

At the risk of being repetitive, I wish he’d gotten to have a thing with Finn. It was never going to happen, but I wish it had.

Kylo Ren

How I feel about this character

I like him a lot as a villain.  I like him as this unstable guy who by all rights should have been set up to be a hero given who his parents and his uncle were, but still fell to the dark side.  I haven’t read the rise of kylo ren comics and i feel like i’d have more feelings about him if i did but as is, i think he’s fine as a villain but his stans are EXHAUSTING

All the people I ship romantically with this character

IN CANON: No one.  No one should have to date that man.

NOT IN CANON: Look, in canon, it makes no sense and would be horrifically unhealthy, but honestly Kylo x Hux is still my jam.  I think it’s because they make really interesting counterpoints to each other.  One of them was essentially raised to be evil, the other was raised to be good but chose evil; both of them killed their fathers but one of them had a MUCH better reason for it.  It would be unhealthily but they’re two people who realistically wouldn’t know a healthy relationship if it slapped them in the face.  It’s one of those things I ship not because it should happen ever but because it opens up interesting avenues to explore their characters.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

No one?  Some human decency maybe?  

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t agree that he doesn’t “deserve” to be redeemed.  Maybe because I don’t think that redemption is something that is “deserved” I think it’s something you work through personally.  The way it was handled was garbage and I don’t like him with Rey at all, but if, for example, he had died saving Leia, if we had seen him really feel bad and work through that in a complex, nuanced way, that would have been neat

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I guess in direct contrast to what I said above - I wish there was no redemption at all - I wish the tragedy of him was that he couldn’t be saved.  Some people don’t want to change.  No body ‘doesn’t deserve’ redemption, but not everybody wants it or gets it.  I wish he’d been a villain to the end.

Give me a character and I’ll BREAK THEIR ASS DOWN

[sometimesrosy]

hi rosie! I know it's been months since the 100 ended and I've seen lots of people talk about how they failed bellamy and clarke but I was wondering what you thought of raven and her storyline in s7. do you think it was good for her character and her story arc?

Ahh. Raven’s arc.

Yeah, so the problem with Raven’s arc is JR hasn’t known what to do with her since season 5. Season 4 was the last season with a good character arc for her, and even that one had a major character glitch as he tried to take her from the pragmatist who would blow up a bridge or dam or tell Clarke to kill Lxa while surrounded by her armies, to a person who said “it’s not your blood that matters, it’s your heart.”  Which was one of the worst lines in this whole show. It’s not even funny like “we’re back bitches!” It’s just corny and soppy and dumb. Her character shift on science island always felt false to me. It should have been Bellamy who held Clarke in check with morality, since that had been HIS character arc. I thought it was a misstep then, and now knowing the entire narrative arc, I think it was where they started to go wrong with Raven. Until then she was my third favorite character after Clarke and Bellamy.

I ALWAYS had a problem with this, but I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could pull it out. Season 5 was the least bad for her, with her sacrifice for spacekru on the ship, but honestly I didn’t think they went far enough with that. I feel like they should have explored her feelings of guilt more at not being able to get her friends home, or leaving Clarke behind alone.  And there was great potential in the scene where she and Clarke took McCreary down using her own body as the weapon (especially for a character whose body was always in pain and whose body had failed her... idk that’s quite some symbolism there,) but instead they chose to retreat and turn her back into the judgmental shrew that told Bellamy he shouldn’t have saved the slaves, and told Clarke she was the one who said whether everyone lived or died.

So like. She never addressed with Clarke what happened with Finn at his death. The blame she put on Clarke, when SHE wanted to instigate a war that would have had them all exterminated, including Finn. For some reason, the genius couldn’t connect those dots that her plan would have caused all of her people to massacred? I mean, it’s normal for her to have that failure in such a time of high emotion, but six years later, she still thinks Clarke was wrong to do what she did? No. Plot hole. Forgetting all the times that she enabled Clarke’s plans, or eagerly set about torturing and killing (remember SHE’S the one who electrified Lincoln without a BIT of the remorse that Clarke and Bellamy had,) is a failure of character.

Also, she never addressed the FACT that she wanted to trade Murphy to the grounders for Finn’s life and have him tortured to death in place of her boyfriend who was a literal mass murderer, AND she blamed Murphy for Finn’s actions when Murphy was the one trying to stop him the whole time. And THIS is a plot hole for a character arc and narrative line that was about Raven having learning about forgiveness and morality and leadership and sacrifice and hard decisions, and making judgments on Murphy, who frankly has been one of the most moral characters of the show since season 2. His morality might not be the SAME as everyone else’s, but it was the most firm.  So, this narrative arc again did not go FAR enough. 

In season 5, I figured that they would make up for the s5 scanty Raven storyline with a stronger s6 one.. That didn’t happen. I thought maybe it was because her love interest left, so she took on his judgmental role, but it didn’t work well. I also thought that part of the problem was that it would make her into too big of a character and they needed to keep the focus on the main characters, Clarke and Bellamy. But from s5-7 MURPHY got a large role, too, that brought a thorough narrative arc and finished out his character journey. So he got the focus that they never managed for Raven. I hear tell that Richard helped Murphy’s story in season 7, so that might be why. But idk. It shows that they were capable of finishing a character story with attention and detail, but they just failed with Raven. 

So season 7 had Raven confronting her own leadership and putting her in Clarke’s place to face the judgment she put on Clarke. And...oh she was sad and felt guilt and had to face the repercussions of that. But... it didn’t go far enough. She was reunited with Clarke and was no longer angry at her, and they were a team again. But this wasn’t HER story arc. Her story arc just kind of went *sad trombone.*

I know she was the one who went into the anomaly and met with the sparkle aliens, but that just seemed so forced and fake. Yes, they built up the morality narrative, but... like. It should have been Clarke. Instead they turned her into the crazy vengeance lady, like Daenerys, even though her entire narrative was about her dealing with her pain and she kind of never killed anyone in vengeance? I mean she spent 6 years ALONE and she only wanted to kill herself? IDK. It doesn’t make sense that THIS was the end. She sent madi into battle too save Bellamy and that did make her crazy lady. She had her after death reckoning and we saw no crazy lady. 

Sorry, that went off into failure of Clarke’s story.

How did that affect Raven? I think that from about season 3, Raven was used as a substitute to fill in gaps where they lost characters, or moved characters around. Where they changed their narrative ideas, and they needed a narrative tool to do something, they would stick Raven in... because she was a strong character who was involved with all the other main characters (except maybe Octavia.) She became like a swiss army knife who would take the place of characters that were needed but didn’t fit. And that meant that HER character was not really consistent in the later half of the series.  And it feels WRONG. Someone’s judgy? Make it Raven. Someone’s empathetic? Make it Raven. Someone’s mean? Make it Raven. Someone’s righteous? Make it Raven. Someone’s a sister? Make it Raven. Someone’s a daughter? Make it Raven. Some main character needs a supporting character to prop them up? Make it Raven. They just moved her around to fit the other character’s stories. Even her big morality arc was to support Abby, Clarke, or Murphy. :/ THAT’S why it didn’t work when they made her the Clarke proxy in the transcendence narrative. Because she hadn’t actually worked through HER story, but through Abby’s Clarke’s and Murphy’s. Bleh.

And she also basically disappeared in a lot of season 7, too. Same as Octavia. Who had her story with Sky Ring and skyringkru, but then disappeared until she gave the inspiring peace speech with the goddamn petty, dumbass stupid grounders, whose main flaw FROM SEASON 1, is that they are too stupid to have survived this long. All they want to do is fight. And blame everyone else for what they did. And the eligius prisoners, and the brainless cult sheep. Honestly. 

And what do we have? The most unnuanced, flat character in the show. Sheidheda. Like there isn’t even any symbolism or archetypal energy in there. He’s just there to make them fight for NO FUCKING REASON. 

These are the characters who had decent story arcs that were resolved.

Murphy and Emori Diyoza Gabriel And Indra a bit. Better than most. 

Fucking DEV had a better character ending than Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, and Octavia. 

Actually, Mackson was satisfying, although skimpy. But then the characters didn’t have a really deep narrative line, so their ending was in keeping with their story. But it fit with their long term stated goals, what they wanted out of life. Just to be together in peace with maybe some chickens, by the shore, right? That was THEIR goal. The ending was theirs.

That was never what any of the other characters wanted. Or not ONLY. Do the right thing. Live a good life. Create a better society. Save humanity. Be good people. Live morally. 

nope. But it worked for Murphy’s ending too. He didn’t want to die alone. He died, with Emori. Then he came back and got to life his half life with his friends. 

I just can’t get over how they tossed the main story of being the good guys and saving humanity. I suppose there was always the question of whether they’d get a happy ending emotionally, but I never thought they’d destroy humanity, erase Bellamy and say Clarke was never the hero. 

I guess I needed to address the endings of the other characters to see how they all fit in with Raven’s. Because none of the characters stood on their own, so we have to see how they were woven together and compare and contrast.

Raven was my biggest disappointment as a character in this show from season 5 on. I kept waiting for her character arc to come together or get the attention Murphy got. She had the weight to be major character, but her story just wasn’t told. She became a supporting character and really lacked meaningful development. 

[emeraldspiral]

Real talk, the only reason Anakin had to go to Jedi school to git gud is because he needed to be a kid when he left his mom and an adult when he began his romance with Padme. If the plot had called for it, he would’ve been a Master Jedi in a week because the needs of the story outweigh the need for “realism”.

Just look at Luke. His training lasted maybe a couple of days or weeks at most because it just wouldn’t make sense for Luke to stay out of the fight for years and years. He could only train for as long as it took Han and Leia to get captured by Vader, but he also needed to not instantly lose to Vader when they fought. Therefore, the amount of time it took for Han and Leia’s storyline to play out was the exact amount of time Luke needed to get good enough to face Vader.

Afterward, in RotJ, supposedly there’s a timeskip of a year, but you’d be forgiven if you thought, as I did, that only a few days or weeks passed, since there’s 0 mention of a timeskip in the film and no reason to think it would take that long to get to Tatooine or plan Han’s rescue. In fact, it seems out of character for a dedicated Rebel like Leia to take that much time off for one person, no matter how she felt about him. But I digress. Regardless of whether it was really a year or only a few days, the fact remains that Luke didn’t have any additional training during that timeskip. He only returned to Dagobah after rescuing Han, and upon arrival Yoda was on his deathbed telling Luke he was already ready, no additional Force training or lightsaber combat instruction required.

In any event, however much training he received, it was definitely significantly under ten years and, from what we saw, didn’t even cover lightsaber fencing, at least not nearly as much as lifting rocks and reading minds and other Force skills. Yet, he still managed to overpower Vader, the strongest Jedi/Sith to ever live. Because the story required him to be that powerful at that point so that he could complete his arc by rejecting the opportunity to slay Vader.

Now, let’s consider Rey’s skills, abilities, and accomplishments, starting with the dumbest of the dumbshit things people complain about when trying to use the “she’s too good at too many things/gets too good too fast” argument for why she’s a Mary-Sue.

First of all:

Why does Rey speak droid and Wookie (as if that’s a particularly uncommon skill)? Because she needs to befriend BB-8, so BB-8 can bring her together with Finn and because someone’s got to be able to understand Chewie once Han’s gone and that someone should probably be the one who’s going to be spending a lot of time alone with him co-piloting the Falcon when they go to find Luke. The better question to ask is why anyone cares about shit like that? Like, is that on some Mary-Sue litmus test somewhere? “Is bilingual in a world where most people are?” If you’re going to complain about something that stupid I have to assume you think character writing should work like Pokemon where you have to drop traits in order to stay under a certain limit, even if half the stuff filling up the quota is stuff like “can ride a bicycle” or “doesn’t burn the house down when they cook”.

Second:

Why is she an ace pilot (as if half the characters in Star Wars, both Force sensitive and non-Force sensitive aren’t also Ace Pilots, and also as if Rey has more than ONE SINGLE flying scene or had any trouble handing over the spotlight to any of the other THREE ACE PILOTS JUST IN THE SEQUEL TRILOGY)? Because she has to be a pilot because Finn can’t be, because he had to need Poe so that he could get his jacket, in order to catch BB-8′s attention, so that BB-8 could bring him and Rey together. Also, because it emphasizes Rey’s major character flaw; that she is the architect of her own misery. She has the means to leave Jakku but doesn’t, something directly acknowledged immediately after her one and only flying scene.

Third:

Why does she show Han up on knowledge of his own ship? Well, for one thing, she fucking doesn’t. She only knows about one thing installed in the ship after it left his custody. But even if you wanted to make the claim that this was supposed to demonstrate that she was some kind of Superstar Mechanic (as if mechanics are something rare and special in Star Wars) and that the reason for her being a Superstar Mechanic is just to get Han to like her, even that has a story-related justification that isn’t just about wish-fulfillment or using a cool character to shill for her. Having Han take a liking to her creates another opportunity for her to demonstrate her character flaw when she rejects his job offer in favor of returning to Jakku to wait forever for parents that don’t love her when there’s a man she already thinks of as the father she never had right in front of her. Also, having her bond with him makes his death at Kylo’s hands more personal for her, thereby creating a greater hurdle for her to overcome in order to come to have compassion for Kylo, making it more satisfying when she does.

Fourth:

Why does she have the Force when she’s already a pilot, mechanic, and proficient stick-fighter (as if any of those things are unique or special. Or more importantly, ever used at the expense of letting other characters shine)? Couldn’t she have been a Badass Normal? If this were just about beating bad guys and winning the war maybe. But it’s clearly not. This is about the old heroes passing the torch to the next generation. The main character was always going to be Force sensitive, always going to become a Jedi, and always going to replace Luke no matter what gender they were, who they were related to, whether they were a scavenger or a stormtrooper or secret royalty or Born of the Force or who, if anyone, they were going to be romantically partnered with. Rey needs to be Force sensitive because, as the main character, her ultimate purpose is to define what it means to be a Jedi for a new generation.

Fifth:

Why can she do things with the Force without training? Well, the only reason Luke needed a training montage was because the Force was a brand new concept for him and he was limited by his own ideas about his capabilities, and because the audience was going in blind as well and needed to hear the Force 101 lectures just as much as he did. Rey meanwhile, has no reason to think lifting rocks or picking up a lightsaber hilt is hard when she’s grown up hearing stories about Luke doing much crazier things. Between that, having Kylo demonstrate all those abilities to her beforehand, and also being able to access his training through the Force Bond there is 0 reason for her to need a training montage in-universe. But more importantly, because the audience has already gotten a crash course on standard Force abilities from the previous movies, a training montage would be redundant. We don’t need the same exposition given to us again anymore than we need to see Rey repeat the same character journey as Luke. The Force Bond and Rey’s preexisting fighting capabilities may be a convenient workaround to explain why Rey doesn’t need a training montage, but they exist because a training montage would be dead weight that adds nothing to the story. And that’s just the Force Bond’s ancillary purpose. Its much more important function is getting Rey and Kylo to stop fighting and start talking.

Sixth:

Why couldn’t Rey and Kylo at least fight to a draw or better yet, have her forced to retreat in their first battle? Why did she have to beat him at the very beginning of her journey? Doesn’t that make her too powerful with no room for advancement and him too weak, leaving no tension for future confrontations?

Because Kylo’s defeat isn’t about Rey at all. It’s not about making her look good. Kylo’s supposed to be at his lowest point going into TLJ. He’s supposed to look weak, not because the screenwriters think it’ll make Rey look stronger in comparison. They know damn well that the way to write a villain is to present them as an impossible obstacle to overcome. To hide any semblance of vulnerability in order to keep you in suspense as to how the hero could ever prevail against them. But that’s not Rey and Kylo’s dynamic. That’s Kylo and Snoke’s dynamic. Kylo isn’t the villain, he’s the “other half of the protagonist”. He doesn’t exist for Rey to be afraid of him. She’s meant to sympathize with him, which means he needs to appear vulnerable and human in front of her. They couldn’t build the romantic (or even platonic) connection the film clearly intended for them if Kylo actually did come across as threatening as people wanted him to be. The appearance of physical or emotional invincibility would be antithetical to the entire story they’re trying to tell.

Also, Rey isn’t even that good with a lightsaber. Kylo had been shot with a bowcaster, injured further and tired out by Finn, and handicapped himself by not aiming to kill or maim since he wanted to recruit Rey to his side and Rey still spent 98% of that fight running and only won because Kylo chose not to kill her when he had the chance.

Believe it or not, some dumbasses have actually heard all this and still tried to argue that Rey shouldn’t be in any fighting shape after hitting a tree hard enough to lose consciousness and that should nullify all the advantages she was given. If you make this argument, you’re being an anal contrarian fuck and you know it. Getting hit in the head is NEVER portrayed realistically in fiction. It is completely standard and in no way exceptional for a fictional character to awake from unconsciousness with no impairments. It has fuck all to do with trying to make characters look cool. It never has been and never will be a Mary-Sue trope.

In conclusion:

None of Rey’s abilities or feats are just there to make her look good. They’re either there to move the story along, or to add to her characterization and character journey, or to add to Kylo’s. Furthermore, they’re nothing special in the context of Star Wars, the stuff she learns quickly has in-universe justifications and it’s not even unprecedented for characters to git gud enough to match someone more experienced in a very short amount of time with no in-universe justification.

[plunder-heaven-and-devour-god]

So the line 

“This is how we’ll win. Not by killing what we hate, but by saving what we love.”

IS AMAZING. I’ve been turning it over in my mind for days, and only now did I realise why upon my third Last Jedi viewing. 

The Last Jedi appeals to the feminist framework regarding war and violence. (and I forever regret not getting my full gender studies credits to qualify for that diploma).

IF you learn about the violence of war outside combat, the destruction of infrastructure, the gendered upkeep of agriculture/school/society at large at the hands of minorities, you will know that:

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but when everyone’s needs are met.” 

https://www.ted.com/talks/zainab_salbi

(see this amazing Ted Talk for an amazing perspective that was important in my formative years)

Leia’s goal, and subsequently, Holdo’s goal was always to save the people of the Resistance. The Resistance is made of people who fight for each other, it’s not an abstract concept under the guise of nationalism, not even of a blanket statement like “good”. It is a people who try to protect others, whether they be flawed, lost, or alone. This remains true of the two women generals right down to the mechanic Rose. The Resistance is meant to fight for “the down trodden and oppressed” and for each other.

The other portion of the feminist critique is that using power and resources to constantly be on the offense in an arms race, or a one up-manship leads to an empty victory. Poe constantly runs into this conflict, whereby being on the front lines, uses violence and “action” as a means to assert control and manifest a goal. This form of leadership leads to casualties where casualties should have been considered first.

Even DJ, the codebreaker, sees these gestures as empty and each blow is another step down an unending road of violence. “Take it easy big F, they blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow”

That isn’t to say that violence is wrong or the defensive is right. IT doesn’t have much to do with that. The terms start a dichotomy that’s easily translated to a gendered dichotomy. 

man: offensive, violence, war etc.

woman: defensive, love, peace etc.

It’s a toxic gendered dichotomy. 

The focus of the feminist framework is “degendering terms in relation to war.” 

War is no longer seen as a masculine endeavour barred to women, and it’s no longer a method to prove a manly worth. Peace is not just a woman’s game, but an abstract concept meant to be criticized.

The core idea is the community is your priority, rather than an endless cycle of violence that puts human life in jeopardy. The end goal is always that human needs can be met. This can be done through violence too when circumstances call for it. But if violence is the only avenue not only do you lack resources, labour, people, and infrastructure, but you’re allowing a gender fulfillment to take precedence. 

The reasoning behind it is that in a world of industrial wars/nationalism/capitalism/arm’s races, the discussion of human casualties is shamed for being “womanly” and “weak”. (see camp david discussions or anything to do with US military nuclear strategies it’s honestly terrifying). There is also a rhetoric that men are built for war which is easily debunked by the volume of unfired rifles in history and the mere existence of PTSD plaguing war veterans. 

Putting human life as the main value seems naive and like it won’t work. And to be fair we can see how outside circumstances interfere with that framework in real life. The benefit of film is that we can control those circumstances.

If anything the Last Jedi is very good at showing where trying to do right by others is met with failure. But it is extremely good at representing gender coded characters acting outside that societal dichotomy. In the feminist framework, it offers a degendered view of violence, where male coded characters can assert their wills without the act of violence, and where female coded characters can assert their wills with violence. 

We see male coded characters astral projecting to stall for time where other male characters rush their comrades to safety. 

We see female characters ordering executions and letting out war cries. 

But it’s lovely to see that most of the female coded characters (save for Phasma) and male coded characters take an approach to adversity in this framework. And by the end of the movie, all of the characters that can learn from their failures take on this view of leadership.

Leia and Holdo hold the mantle throughout the movie for this framework.

Rose delivers the thesis statement of the movie when Finn nearly kills himself. But she also changes the circumstance of the Fathier’s mistreatment instead of just putting a hole through a casino. One act has meaning for the down trodden and oppressed, one doesn’t.

Rey, sensing that Luke won’t be of any help, is driven to go to Kylo Ren to turn him to the Light. She tries to save instead of annihilate. She finds sameness in loneliness and isolation in her power. Seeing herself in her enemy is not weakness, but compassion. One act can turn the tide of war, one act leads to endless retaliation.

Part of the reason Rey gets ANY FLACK AT ALL for this is because she’s coded as a woman, and upon unfair surface analysis, looks like she’s trying to save a broken baby bird. In reality, part of what made Luke so compelling is that he acted outside a “men take the offense or manifest their wills through violence”. He applied compassion to a father he thought was too fargone. Rey tries this degendered framework and to the film’s narrative credit: Rey fails! Now we know Ben will only turn if he does it himself. And this is not because Rey was weak to do so and that is why she failed, but because of character writing! Rey failed and will learn to be a better leader from it

Luke astral projects to give others a chance to get away. He takes the chance to apologize to his nephew. He didn’t go slice up an advancing squad of first order war machines! 

Poe is able to learn this by the end of the film, and so does Finn in different ways. 

Poe leads the resistance to safety instead of taking the offensive.

Finn relinquishes a neutral stance after fighting phasma and nearly kills himself to save everyone. (thank god he was saved by rose)

Again, the offensive is also used to great credit. Rey is violent and takes no prisoners in the Praetorian Guard fight. Leia guns down the First Order ship in a hangar on Crait. Poe is the best damn pilot in the galaxy, and Rose has a taser fork. Violence and the offensive are not wrong, but knowing when to use violence and when to save what you love is the mark of a true leader.

Even moreso to the films credit, it doesn’t present the feminist approach to war as a fail safe ultimate strategy. Above all, failure is the biggest teacher, and Yoda makes it explicit when speaking to Luke. These characters, even with the “fight for each other”, fail through outside circumstances, adversity, and character stakes. The point is to continue striving for it, even when times are hard, and especially when you can’t see the light. These characters gain the tools they need to win the war in this film.

Part of the reason this movie is fantastic is that it doesn’t lack tension, or stakes, or even great action sequences, but it also propogates this quiet feminist framework. It does so without being ham fisted, and better yet, it presents itself as a genderless set of concepts ready to be adapted for anyone. 

“Fight for each other” is what will lead the resistance to victory whereas the First Order is a series of high ranking self interested chrome imperialists. The statement of Star Wars is that if you do not fight for each other you cannot win. It’s a simple concept, but one that Star Wars has become unimaginably deified for in the past 40 years. 

And I’m still floored we get a slightly holistic feminist framework in a coming of age star wars movie that features a female lead. I never thought I’d see the day where all of that was presented along well rounded and well written male characters that are friends, and not all love interests. There are characters of color whose stories aren’t bent on their minority status. I can’t believe we have a messy, emotional, yet horribly volatile villain that has more in common with out protagonist than we thought. We got a beacon of hope made into a man, and that trauma is treated as real, but not without closure or without love. We see a third evil take itself beside the lightside and the dark: MONEY! The industral war machine makes a lovely appearance. 

We get thoughtful subversions of Star Wars expectations executed in the most Star Wars of ways!

I don’t pretend this movie is perfect or without flaw. I just think this is WORTH the discussion!

Meanwhile! We still get the PEW PEW and the VWOOM VWOOM of Star Wars! How cool is that?!

[neoduskcomics]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review (FULL SPOILERS)

LAST JEDI SPOILERS

Bottom line, I saw The Last Jedi (twice now) and I think overall it's a pretty good movie but it also has a lot of glaring problems. I'm just gonna make a list of things I didn't like, things I liked, and criticisms of the movie that I think don't make sense.

This is going to be long and verbose, and no one's gonna wanna read it. So, here we go.

Things I didn't like:

- Poe and Finn's story lines are totally contrived. If the vice admiral had just told literally anyone her plan, none of that stuff with the code breaker and mutiny and all that would've happened, and the rebels wouldn't have been decimated. We could've shaved off like forty minutes of the movie.

- Finn, my favorite character from Episode VII, has almost no role in this story. Yes, he's on screen most of the time, but he's mainly a bystander, running around as people lecture him about the greater good and who he's supposed to be. In TFA, he was such an important character, providing Rey with the first positive relationship in her life and adding an element of humanity and relatability to the cast. His story is basically him listening to people talk, and then he does this grand gesture of almost killing himself, which quite frankly would've been really dumb when the movie did so little for his character to earn such a dramatic development in the plot. Also, why the hell weren't Finn and Poe just put together in this film. Rose was okay, I guess, but come ON. Finn and Poe.

- I don't know if this is controversial, because I haven't seen anyone talk about it, but I was very disappointed that the movie just ends up with Rey and Kylo Ren on the same sides as before. Rey felt like she was really earnestly making a connection with Ren and she was really earnestly tempted by the dark side. I don't think it's unbelievable that she wouldn't turn, but it does feel like she was put on the spot to make a decision between light and dark at the last possible second. I would've liked to have seen her actually give in to Kylo Ren to set up a major conflict for the next film, or maybe even just her and Ren forge a new path together and leave both the First Order and Resistance behind. There was a LOT of build up to the connection between them, and seeing it thrown away so quickly felt very dissatisfying. This is something, though, that I think I can probably get over as time goes on, and plus I don't know what they're gonna do in the next movie. We'll see.

- The casino world was meh. Rose was nice but kinda meh. A lot of the humor was meh. A lot of the pacing was meh. A lot of the in-between-adventure stuff was meh. Some of the character arcs were meh. Phasma was meh.

Things I liked:

- Luke actually gets a freaking character arc in this movie that is meaningful and plays off of the expectations of the fans. He is not just another Master Kenobi or Master Yoda. He feels like a real human being who is flawed but also self-aware. He is stubborn and dogmatic, but also introspective and morally fibrous. He is wracked with guilt, but uses it as a stepping stone to overcome a new weakness and become stronger and happier for it.

- Luke, Rey and Kylo Ren's relationships all have great execution in this film. Their scenes together are dramatic, emotional, relatable and just plain good storytelling. You identify with all of these characters, and seeing them play off of one another lets you learn more and more about who they are, how they see each other, how they see themselves, and how that all changes throughout the film as a result of those interactions. It just plain works.

- We get some beautiful and much-needed fleshing out for Kylo Ren and Rey. Ren feels smothered and weighed down by the past, his mentors and his insecurities. He's trying desperately to overcome his weaknesses, kill off what gets in his way, and become his own man. Rey is struggling with a deeply set fear that she is alone, that she has no real family, and that she doesn't have a place set before her in the galaxy. They are struggling with opposite problems, and yet find common ground to connect over. Ren is a fantastic villain by the end of this film and Rey finally feels like a real, developed individual.

- The action was great. The visuals were great. Yoda was great. The performances were great. The drama was great. The themes were great. Some of the character arcs were great. The way the Force is explained and portrayed was great.

Criticisms that I kind of understand, but I think miss the point:

- "Luke acted completely out of character in this movie." Luke is a human being. He has flaws. He can change and experience new things and have new failures and get new lessons. He is not a pinnacle of benevolence, patience and wisdom. He demonstrates impatience, lapses in judgment and anger/hatred in every single movie. Luke becoming grumpy or considering killing Kylo Ren does not undo him as a good person. Him going through with killing Kylo Ren or refusing to learn anything/help anyone by the end of the film would have made him a bad person. He stews, reflects, learns and grows and it's a great part of the film.

- "Being able to smash through ships with hyperspace is dumb/you shouldn't be able to do it/why doesn't everyone just do it." A) It's Star Wars. B) It's Star Wars. C) Because it means someone commits suicide, you lose a gigantic probably really important and expensive ship in the process that you could've used for many years for other things, and now that there's a precedent for it, people will probably stop it before it happens again. It only worked this time because it'd never been done before and the First Order just didn't get what they were doing until it was too late. And if your complaint is that nobody thought of it before, then...your criticism is that this movie came up with a new idea? Not buying it.

- "Rey should've been related to someone important." Luke's related to someone important. Ben's related to someone important. How many of these characters need to be related to each other? Yes, there was build up that Rey had some important backstory, and then you find out she doesn't. That's the point. The film plays off of your expectations and does so in favor of making Rey confront what is to her a terrifying truth: as Kylo Ren puts it, she's a nobody and she has no place in this story. It's a legitimate insecurity that she has that she has to overcome. It's a far more interesting direction for the character than simply revealing that she's Kylo Ren's cousin or Kenobi's granddaughter or something. It's something new to the series and it makes sense both for the story and the character.

- "Snoke never got a backstory." Yeah, he didn't, and I get it. It's kind of annoying. But, you know, the Emperor never had a backstory until the prequels. Like the Emperor, Snoke was just a big, evil figure who was super important and had a lot of build-up, but ultimately was just a plot device for the character(s) to overcome (still like the Emperor). Yeah, we don't know how he seduced Ben, but we also don't know how the Emperor seduced Anakin (again, until the prequels happened). Not saying I loved this part of the movie, but it's, you know, nothing Star Wars fans should be unfamiliar with. And don't tell me there was tons of build-up for his backstory. Fans created that hype themselves. It was never even hinted at in the movies that we'd ever get elaboration on who exactly Snoke is.

This film is not perfect. But it's not terrible either. I get it if people think it's bad--I also think many parts of it are bad. But I don't get it when people say it's, like, the worst thing to happen to Star Wars ever. I think a lot of that hatred simply comes from the fact that Star Wars has been around so long, and has become so important to so many people, that it's become a bit of a double-edged sword. People love Star Wars, and they build a very personal attachment to it. But that also means that when Star Wars does something they disagree with or that doesn't align with how they personally interpret or connect to its story, they get really upset or sad or disappointed or like the world is ending. And I get it. I love Star Wars a lot, too.

But, come on, guys. Star Wars is a fantasy epic about space samurai flying around throwing lasers at each other. It's about drama and evil and good and relationships and magic and story, yes, but it's primarily, to me, about joy. I think a lot of people are letting their positive feelings for Star Wars become something ugly and mean, like Anakin turning to the dark side because of how intensely he loved his mother or Padme. There's a lot to dislike in this movie, but I think there's also a lot to love. Whatever your opinions, a lot of love clearly went into the making of this film, and for me, even if we're inclined to hold onto the hatred, we should make an effort to embrace the love instead.

Because, you know what, it's not about fighting what you hate. It's about protecting what you love.

[trashqueenkyloren]

Longass Meta on Kylo Ren’s Redemption Arc/Rey and Kylo

SO, to begin, this is something I’ve wanted to write literally since Dec 2015 but the fear of being hated on has been so strong that I’ve just recently felt confident enough to post it and I really just want this out there before The Last Jedi comes out so I can compare although it’s so close to the release date this is all probably irrelevant now oh well

So I went into The Force Awakens basically as a blank slate (I’ll explain later) and I really just want to point out a few thoughts I had while watching it the first time that point to a potential Kylo Ren Redemption arc and the possibility of Rey and Kylo at least teaming up (this is mostly just my opinion, feel free to disagree!)

(way more under the cut guys, read on if you like!)

To begin, let me explain a little bit about myself

PART 1: BACKGROUND

When I went to go see TFA in theaters, I knew almost nothing about Star Wars. I had seen the originals like once when I was like 5 and had not really gotten into it. In fact all I knew was that 

1) The force and the light/dark side are a thing

2) Darth Vader is Luke’s father

3) Han is Leia’s love interest and Luke is her brother (and even this I had to ask my friend to clarify/make sure I had it right)

and obviously I knew the names of yoda and r2d2 and other really basic knowledge, you get the idea

The Force Awakens is what made me become a Star Wars fan (don’t worry, I have since then made up for my mistakes by rewatching all the movies and such)

but anyway what this means is 

I went into TFA as basically a blank slate, meaning I had no biased Star Wars thoughts to cloud my judgement 

I saw what the filmmakers wanted me to see

In addition, being a person who currently studies Literature, Psychology, and Film Studies at college (yeah, yeah, I fit the stereotype, kill me), if there is something I know well it’s Storytelling 

The only things I really knew about TFA before going into it were that 

 1) It was a sequel to the originals 

 2) Rey and Finn are the main characters (had seen pictures and was already lowkey shipping FinnRey) 

 3) The bad guy was some masked dude

That's it. I wasn't a huge fan so I hadn't bothered to look up anything else about the movie and hadn't seen any spoilers. But enough about me .

PART 2: THE CHARACTER OF KYLO REN

Now, while viewing TFA, one thing that struck me and captivated me in a way that no other Star Wars movie had was the character of Kylo Ren. I had definitely not expected to like this character at all. Two things changed this for me

1) The reveal that he is the son of Han and Leia

Never before (in the movies) had Star Wars had a character that was so clearly torn between the two sides. Him being the son of Han Solo and Leia gave him a legacy and a reason for us to want him to be good. We want Han and Leia to get the happiness they deserve. Honestly, if you don’t want a Kylo to be redeemed just think about poor Leia losing her son and still having hope for him (Do it for Leia!!) .

2) His feeling the pull to the light

This scene surprised me because the fact that Kylo is talking to an old helmet about his inner feelings means that 

a) he has no one to confide in so he is withholding a lot of strong mixed emotions and feelings, which is unhealthy

b) he is tempted by the light side while being on the dark, which is very, very different from most villains, who (it seems to me) disregard the light completely. Which means despite wanting desperately to be bad he can’t even do it because of an inborn light side like a teenager going through a rebellious phase

and c) he is being honest about his call to the light because he has no reason to lie if he’s not talking to anyone, which means he really does still feel a compulsion to be good

Star Wars, being a family-friendly film saga, usually has a pretty clear dichotomy on good and evil (hence, light and dark sides). We root for the good guys, not the bad guys. It’s always been sort of a black and white morality going on, but Kylo is one of the few characters that enhances the Star Wars universe by bringing to light (heh) the potential for gray morality in an otherwise black and white world (as it is) 

He is a person that really should be on the light side because of his family and such, but because of Snoke’s constant manipulation and unfortunate upbringing he’s been struggling with the dark side his entire life. It’s really a sad thing to think about. 

Additionally

While initially hating him, I ended up feeling a great deal of sympathy for him throughout the film, so much so that I wondered why they had even made him a villain at all

He was not a weak villain like I had heard in reviews, just a conflicted one. A lot of people don’t like it when villains don’t fit perfectly into a “pure evil mustache-twirling-type”. I found Kylo infinitely more interesting because of this.

He’s no Darth Vader. But that’s the point. Both he and the audience, in a sort of meta twist, know that he’ll constantly be in the shadow of Darth Vader. So, instead, he’s younger, more volatile, more emotional, uncontrollable, unpredictable. He’s contrasted from all these villains to show how he stands out as different. He seemed to me separate from the Hux/Snoke kind of evil that didn’t have any sort of redeeming qualities at all. Evil for the sake of evil, if you will

The viewer’s sympathy for the villain and how obviously they showed his flaws and potential for good is the crucial foundation of a redemption arc

I liked him a lot as a character pretty much up until he killed Han Solo. Then, I obviously believed he was a lot more evil than he looked, although the fact that he definitely didn’t seem happier or better or more dark-side oriented in any way after this still suggested that he didn’t become completely evil 

After this, it hit me that the ONLY sure-fire way to make people absolutely hate Kylo Ren as a villain and squashing people’s complaints that he was too wishy-washy or not bad enough as a villain was to have him kill off one of the most beloved characters in Star Wars history (who also happened to be his father)

He was so obviously drawn to the light and not bad enough throughout the first half of the movie that the writers had to take a huge step in order to get him to the actual level of villain and add a lot of unlikeability

PART 3: KYLO REN AND REY

(My favorite part of the movie ^ Has been my laptop’s background wallpaper since Dec 2015. I would get a poster of it if I could)

In this section, I will describe some things I picked up both about Kylo’s characterization around Rey and their interactions between them. I think that Kylo’s actions towards Rey played a large part in getting the audience to think he was “too weak” of a villain (Something I heard in reviews a lot after watching the movie)

1) The infamous bridal carry scene

Okay my first thought when I saw this was that he was way too gentle with her. Honestly, Kylo, you need your hands to use your lightsaber and the force, so this is much you rendering yourself completely useless on unsafe territory

He could’ve slung her over his shoulder? Or passed her off to a Stormtrooper? So this struck me as very strange, to say the least. To think that he would carry her so gently. But then we see this 

Now, the importance of the combination of the bridal carry and the crossing of the threshold was not lost on me 

It reminded me a lot of a movie a had scene only a few months earlier (which I would highly recommend), Crimson Peak.

While the bridal carry itself could indicate romantic interest between the two characters (somebody already wrote a really good meta about this so I won’t go into it here) the additional crossing of the threshold is a step in the traditional “Hero’s Journey,” a set of steps in a literary work that star wars loves to rely on, where the hero’s journey begins and the hero’s life is changed

Typically, it’s the point of no return for our hero, as things change in a permanent sort of way for their journey moving forward

2) The Unmasking Scene 

I was shocked by this scene for a few reasons which I’ll go into here

a) First off, I was shocked by how youthful he looked. I was expecting a creepy looking old dude or someone with a bunch of scars on their face, but instead we get this young, handsome boy. (Yes, I find Kylo Ren attractive, but does this somehow invalidate my thinking in this meta? No. I can put aside attraction for an objective analysis.) But what I also realized is that he doesn’t need the mask to live, like Darth Vader did. He needs a mask for the entirely opposite reason, in order to make him seem intimidating. Without it he just looks like a lost child, he needs the mask in order to be taken seriously.

b) The second thing that shocked me was that this is the first installation of a trilogy and they’ve already unmasked the main villain. This speaks volumes to them wanting the audience to humanize him as early as possible. Darth Vader didn’t get unmasked until the later part of the last movie of the trilogy. If they wanted him to remain purely antagonistic, they would would have left his mask on. This means that they aren’t going to want us to view him as the one-dimensional cardboard cutout villain, they want us to view him as a human with flaws.

c) The final thing I want to touch on is that Kylo’s unmasked came directly after Rey’s quote “That’s what happens when your being hunted by a creature in a mask”. When Rey said this, my reaction in the theater was, So just take it off! And then he did. And I had really not expected him to actually take off his mask for her, as this meant he did not want her to view him as a “creature” or a “monster,” but he wanted her to see he is a human, just like her. He wanted to create empathy between them. This move, along with me noticing that Kylo was much younger and more attractive than I thought, coupled with his attempts to reassure her (tells her he doesn’t know where her friends are, “you’re my guest,” “don’t be afraid, I feel it too”) led me to believe the Kylo Ren might actually be Rey’s love interest, instead of Finn. It seemed like a unique plausible twist and it was just kind of an instinctual gut feeling that hit me. Of course, the thought of this went out the window when Kylo murdered Han, but, after reviewing the movie a couple more times, the thought kept coming back to me.

(Okay quick side note, my friend and I came across a Kylo Ren action figure for The Last Jedi that says different phrases in Barnes and Noble recently, so I pressed it, and one of the phrases is just Kylo saying “Don’t be afraid” in a gentle tone and my friend and I were laughing because what kind of villain just says “don’t be afraid” even in their action figure? That’s like, the least threatening thing, so anyways...)

3) The Final Fight 

I really, really liked the fight at the end, aesthetically it was beautiful. I really liked that neither Rey nor Kylo seemed to overpower the other, even though Kylo should’ve easily been able to overpower Rey because he’s physically stronger and has had more experience and training. 

The fact that Kylo says “It’s just us now” clearly to Rey honestly made me laugh because Finn is standing literally right there, but Kylo clearly doesn’t view him as a threat because he knows that Rey is strong with the force and therefore, she is more of a threat to him. A lot of what Kylo says can actually be applied to Rey too, which I find interesting. When he says “Han Solo can't save you,” yes he’s talking to Rey but he’s also talking about himself, as he believes Han Solo was unable to save him.Then he’s obviously not trying to flat-out kill Rey in their fight, he’s trying to get her to join him because he believes he can train her (“I can show you the ways of the Force”) which also surprised me.

It was interesting to see Kylo weakened by his wicked act, instead of strengthened as he thought. This, to me, meant that he still had the potential for light and redemption in him, given enough character development in future movies. I’m excited to see what The Last Jedi and Episode IX holds for him, and what they decide to do with his character. All I’m saying is, he has a lot of potential for a good redemption arc, as the foundation has already been laid for it.

PART 4: ENDING THOUGHTS

I think that both reylos and “antis” have a lot of valid points, but miscommunication seems to be a main problem. 

I guarantee you that literally no reylo wants Kylo Ren and Rey to make out, like, right now, as it stands with the ending of The Force Awakens that we know. They need Kylo to go through a redemption arc FIRST and there needs to be a lot of things that need to change for this to occur. If Kylo Ren didn’t threaten Rey in any way in this movie then they would not be enemies, and there would practically be no plot. Also, I’m pretty sure no one wants Rey’s story to be eclipsed by Kylo or her story to revolve around saving him. This should come about through Leia/himself. But also, love does not make a character inherently weaker.

Right now, Rey and Kylo are enemies, on opposite sides of a war. But they have a lot of potential for the “Enemies to Allies to Lovers” classic trope (with TFA as enemies, TLJ as allies, and then ep 9 as Lovers) But things must proceed in this order for this to occur. There is no skipping stages here. It is their potential for more which intrigues reylo shippers so much.

Personally, I am intrigued by their yin and yang, with one person in the dark being drawn to the light, another in the light being tempted by the dark, and I want them at least to team up (it could remain platonic) to bring balance to the force. To me, seeing this play out would be extremely satisfying, and be something unlike what Star Wars has done before.

Now, if you don’t ship reylo or don’t want Kylo Ren to be redeemed, awesome. That’s your opinion and you are free to have it. I don’t wish to start arguments or discourse, I simply wanted to vent some thoughts. This post shows my opinions, which I am also free to have. Thanks for reading about it!