#arthouse memes

[videodrome-fag]

yknow sometimes I just get so overwhelmed hearing stories from cast and crew who have worked with Lynch and Cronenberg, how intimate the shooting can be and how safe and comfortable the sets are, how respected and listened to they all are, and just how profoundly in love with film every single person is, that these two directors just seem to radiate cinematic perfection, taking the philosophies of film and translating them in ways and stories and stills and moments no one else can achieve. and it makes me so fucking sad that that respect for the people you're working with, that veracity of vision and honesty in your storytelling just seems completely gone from filmmaking. no intimate, tight budget flicks shot over the course of the month that cement themselves in film history the minute they're put to celluloid. no careful consideration for your actors' emotional wellbeing, no attempt to meaningfully communicate with them so they can embody the best possible version of their character. no respect for scripts, or taboos, or violence, or sex and all the myriad, beautiful ways they enrich and embody humanity and storytelling. films are not made to be remembered or respected anymore, and im so afraid we're never going to find the way out of this corporate hollywood hellhole

[weaver-z]

The "Zepotha" trend on tiktok makes me SICK as an indie slasher fan. Why did they choose the name "Zepotha?" Name one fucking indie slasher from the 80's that isn't called something like House of Guts. "Zepotha" would be the name of an arthouse horror from the 70's created by a giallo-obsessed Johnny-come-lately director from New Jersey. Zepotha would be brought up in every other "obscure horror recs" thread on reddit until it became a circlejerk meme to even mention it.

"Oh you sound so mad, you sound like you just want to gatekeep--" I DO! I'M GATEKEEPING! None of these people even like slashers! They can barely make it through Fear Street, and then they still make fun of effects that aren't Marvel-sweatshop-grade CGI! You expect them to be able to create a fictional slasher movie with the conviction that this site had when it created Goncharov? Get! Off! Of! My! Lawn!

[thesilversun]

Five Lines Fic Meme Tagged by: @howdaretrashships Thanks for the tag!

Rules: find five lines in your fic based on the prompts you are given, then change one of the prompts at the end!

A Line You Think is Hilarious

from

Mainframe, HEX and the Temporal Trouser Error

a Torchwood/Discworld crossover where two computers talk to each other despite a difference in programming language.

It' a few lines really (and tbh pretty much all the fic - it's by far the silliest thing I've written.)

Mainframe gave the electronic equivalent of a shrug, and then sent her next message. [Please identify date of three leg trouser formation] Hopefully Hex would understand it if it was sent in terms it understood.  +++14 Grune. Year eight. Century of the Anchovy+++ Which could, Mainframe computed, mean anything from ten thousand years ago to a week last Tuesday. So she sent back [Sync calendar function?] A calendar page from the previous May appeared on screen, then across one of the days flashed the word +++Wrong Trouser Day+++

A Line About Mysteries

Time Enough and Life (Torchwood, Jack/Ianto)

By 1969 the Electro was threatened with closure. It managed a stay of execution thanks to the British Film institute scheme supporting regional arthouse cinemas, and was renamed the Cardiff Showhouse. Even so, as the 1970s wore on it struggled to turn a profit and it finally closed its doors on the 22nd of February 1977. Jack stops and reads the sentence again. Simple, factual and easy to understand it is also completely incomprehensible in relation to what Ianto has told him about it. There had been such genuine fondness and affection in Ianto's voice at the memories of Saturday mornings spent there with his father that Jack finds it incredibly unlikely that it is a lie. Yet if it's not a lie Ianto is a great deal older than he looks and had lied about his age when he joined Torchwood One. Either that or his father's idea of a nice day out was to zip back a couple of decades to see a film. All the options are preposterous, yet a quick search of the internet confirms the 1977 closure date. The only thing that’s clear is that, for whatever reason, Ianto has been lying to him, and maybe to Torchwood from the outset. The question is why?

A Line About Love

From All the Lies (Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley) (written after S1, not seen S2, so if there is an angel in S2 call Uriel it isn't this one)

Uriel watched them for a moment surprise growing on her face. "You love him." "We are meant to love," Aziraphale said, pulling the fuzzy, midnight-blue fabric around him. "More than anything that is our purpose. I cannot and will not be sorry for being as She made me." "Not you." Uriel pointed at Crowley. "That...thing. The demon. How can It do that?" "Thing. Demon. It. Well isn't that just charming. It's Crowley. Crow-Ley. Two syllables. Really not that tricky." He gave her an irritated look that somehow managed to be conveyed despite the glasses. "You know the one who helped screw up the whole end of the world thing for you." "But you shouldn't love him," Uriel persisted. "You can't." "Why not? We were all angels once," Crowley said, quieter than usual. "Falling didn't change..." He stopped, genuine raw hurt on his face. "Falling was a punishment and what better punishment for a Fallen Angel than to still feel love, but know they'll never, ever deserve it. Never." He turned away, swallowing down millennia old hurt. "Seriously I thought all you angels knew that. Just something else for you to be smug about." It felt like a punch in the gut. Had Crowley thought that about him too? The things he'd said to him...Some of them had been so thoughtless, cruel even. "Oh Crowley, my dear, you should have said something," Aziraphale said, catching his hand in his own. "Of course you're loved. I love you." Panic, fear and desperate hope, radiated from him as he looked at their clasped hands. "You....you do?"

A Line About Dreams

From Before the Dawn (Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Difanghua - a nightmare rather than a good dream, unfortunately)

There is water all around him. Ice cold and dark. It is full of hands. Some tiny, some huge. Men’s hands, women’s hands, things that may or may not be human at all. Gripping, grasping hands that pull at him, at his hair, at his clothing. Not clothing. His clothes are gone. He can’t open his eyes, but Di Feisheng can see them all the same. Nothing but hands. No heads or faces. No bodies or even limbs. Just innumerable hands, their sharp nails, talons, claws, red painted, like cinnabar, like wedding clothes. they hook into his skin, tearing it open. The water turns redder still. Like blood. Perhaps it was always blood. Either way he’s soaked in it. Drowning in it. He always has been. He struggles against the tide of clawing fingers. They swarm up his body, no part left untouched. They close around his throat, squeezing, crushing the air from him. They pry his mouth open, blood rushing in and out, they are in throat from the inside, choking him. He wants to scream, but there’s no air left in him. “A-Fei!” It’s distant. He tries to kick out, but his legs will barely respond. There are hands on his shoulders pinning down. He’s going to die. He doesn’t want to die. “A-Fei! Wake up!” It’s closer. More urgent. Familiar. The hands, which aren’t the same as the ones in his dream, shake him. Careful, rather than rough, as they pull back to wakefulness. To safety.

An Atmospheric Line

from Three months and a thousand miles of sea Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Dihua.

He turns to the wide horizons. “Li Xiangyi! Come back and face me!” Only the echo of the mountains answer, taunting and hopeless. He sits amidst the snow and shattered rock. The sun sets and the cold moon rises. Frost settles on his hair. His hands heal. Still the empty ache inside will not ease. The sun rises and he leaves. The cold of the mountains seems to have seeped into his bones, like he will never be warm again and still he aches for what could have been. What should have been.

Tagging: @yletylyf @galexibrain @cheesybadgers @killerandhealerqueen @momosandlemonsoda if you want to that is, and any one else who wants to do it even if not tagged

Prompts:

A Line You Think is Hilarious

A Line About anger

A Line About Love

A Line About Dreams

An Atmospheric Line

[valtharr]

I'm sorry. I know it has a few problems here and there but the MCU is not "destroying comics" nor is it "destroying cinema." Superhero blockbusters and indie arthouse films can co-exist. There's no need to use the latter to tear the former down.

You realize that meme is literally an edit of a meme doing the opposite, making fun of people who don't like Marvel movies by painting them all as people who only like 8 hour long art house films about World War I from the POV of a depressed pigeon, yeah?

Also, the multi-billion-dollar Disney franchise does not need you to defend it from memes shared by Internet meanies.

But then again, I'm like 80% sure the MCU will kill itself soon enough.

[chaos0pikachu]

get 2 know me meme

tagged by my buddy, my pal @lugarn <3

Do you make your bed?

lol

What’s your favorite number?

idk I hate math

What is your job?

wouldn't you like to know weather boy?

If you could go back to school, would you?

shoot me into the sun before you send me back to college

Can you parallel park?

hahahahaha

A job you had that would surprise people?

something in a mall idk if that would surprise ppl other than the youths who don't know what malls are anymore

Do you think aliens are real?

yeah sure why not but they're probably way to busy to bother with us

Can you drive a manual car?

my hatred of driving is only matched by my hatred of coffeeshop owner vegas aus

What’s your guilty pleasure?

guilt is for the weak, that said, the Top Gun movies

Tattoos?

I have 1 and if it weren't for capitalism I would have more

Favorite color?

purple

Favorite type of music?

god I listen to a large range of music in a ton of different languages it'd be easier to list what music I don't like tbh - taylor swift, metal, some country

Do you like puzzles?

no, my brain is scrambled and my hands are small

Any phobias?

yes so many, but I'll never say that's how I become a char in an EAP or Junji Ito short story

Favorite childhood sport?

sitting on the bench basking in the sun for 30mins

Do you talk to yourself?

baby we're on tumblr of course I do

What movies do you adore?

to many to list truly, I love movies I've watched everything from pretentious arthouse garbage like Rubber to shoulda been best picture winner like Brokeback Mountain to direct to tape nonsense like secret obsession to big blockbusters like the marvels I love movies right now what's on my list to watch is Taboo, and The Untouchables. I'm also planning to rewatch Godzilla (1954) and Kong (1933). I'm debating on whether to get a MUBI subscription MAX has older films but since the merger their catalogue has gotten all fucky I hate it I hate them so much.

Y'all will have to come into my askbox with like specific genres for movies I adore cause I can honestly not say lol

Coffee or tea?

oh cafeito all day

First thing you wanted to be growing up?

taller

[atcarpenter]

Movie nights with the three of them are wild as Amber will always find an excuse to cuddle and get close to Tara who absolutely loves it and Sam can see through it but likes seeing her sister happy

They usually watch horror movies with Tara loving independent, arthouse ones and Amber going for more conventional ones

Amber also cries easily from emotional moments but feels that it wrecks her image so she will never own up to it except around Tara

Tara still remembers how Amber was a wreck for days after they finished The Haunting Of Bly Manor

Tara and Amber alternate being the weighted blanket for the other. Sam is actually the Decent sibling who keeps the "get a room" comments to a minimum

I can see that, and Sam's just there because tamber like scary movies. Sam would have liked to watch a Disney film or smth for once in their lives :,) send help

Yeah, Amber will commit homicide (again) if someone other than Tara ever sees her cry at a movie. Sam's on thin fucking ice. Trying not to meme too hard, but I'm seeing her as that cop from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs trying not to cry

Bruh that's so relatable though, both of them after finishing Bly Manor:

[babygirlphil]

👫

Which has been your favourite person to collaborate with Dan and/or Phil?

Ooooh this is a good question. Right away my mind goes to Tyler Oakley. Obviously his video with dan is iconic because it gave us the whisk meme, but I think his video with Phil is also really good and quite underrated! Tyler has good chemistry with both of them, which I can't say for a lot of their collaborators lol. It's also always fun when either of them collaborate with Louise (except the DD video but we're don't talk about that). Overall though, I'm gonna have to go with PJ. He's been friends with Phil for longer than he's known Dan and it shows! They're both so comfortable with him. He's a super creative guy with all of these unique ideas. He's also an integral part of the Dnp universe bc he does so much behind the scenes work with them. DAPC 4 wouldnt have been what it was without him. A lot of dnp projects wouldn't be actually. He and Phil bounce off of each other really well. I like how he always "Yes ands" Phil's weird ideas and elaborates on them. It's a nice change from Dan's straight (lol) man schtick. I need Phil and PJ to make an arthouse horror film together soooo bad.

[rathayibacter]

TTRPG WIP meme

pretty late on doing this, but hey whatcha gonna do. wips!

TTRPG Projects in some form of active development:

KATABASIS, my folkpunk afterlife dungeon crawl heartbreaker. ive got a pretty outdated edition of this out on itch, and ive been working on a pretty thorough revamp of it. im not too far out from having the whole first chunk of the game done, just gotta figure out how i wanna write out the mechanics chapter and then pretty it up a lot.

Unskilled Labor, a game about getting supernatural powers from your minimum-wage job and then fighting authoritarianism before your shift. i put out a google form asking folks for their job experience and got some *incredible* responses, ive read through nearly all of them and have definitely taken some serious inspiration already. unlike KATABASIS i dont really have the full shape of the game in my head just yet, so i cant say exactly how much ive got left, but it’s still pretty early on.

TTRPG Projects on some sort of hiatus or back-burner status:

Disparateum Act II, the second third of my weird arthouse reality-hopping adventure game. ive got the whole thing outlined and a couple chunks completely finished, but there’s still a ways to go. Disparateum’s tricky cuz it’s such an eclectic montage of weird ideas that it kinda needs to be my sole focus for anything to get done on it, but ill probably be coming back to it soon.

TTRPGS I've let go of but might return to some day:

oh god too many

like you dont even know

for every game i release i write up notes for maybe thirty

and ive released a lot of games

[toskarin]

i know it's a really popular meme, but do you think there is any prereading that would make reading subahibi better?

all memes aside, you will genuinely benefit from a prereading of Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Night on the Galactic Railroad (you can also watch this one), and, if you're insane, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. a passing familiarity with Wittgenstein and Kant is more than enough to get most of the references, but the Tractatus comes up a lot

this sounds like a shitpost but Subahibi is borderline arthouse

this is also a trimmed down list because I'm not going to tell you to read Flowers for Algernon or Chronicle of a Death Foretold to get some references in a vn (you should read those on their own merits though)

there's a lot more you could read/watch to get a "fuller experience" but I'm assuming you've probably been around otaku stuff long enough to at least osmose some FLCL and Lucky Star references, so I won't include that kind of stuff in the list

it's an extremely intertextual story, but you can also just choose to read nothing in preparation and go in blind. the confusion is part of the experience!

[roncheg]

get to know me better tag meme

@idrilka, thanks for tagging me ♡

rules: answer all the questions, then tag 9 people you want to get to know better!

three ships: SEONHWI (my country: the new age), wangxian (mdzs), aaand i cant remember anything else at the moment, even wangxian feels a bit cloudyXD harry/drako in adult post-canon-slice-of-life AUs was always my comfort ship though.

first ship: oooh boy let me tell you a storyXDD it’s kind of irl RPF BUT (long story ahead!) -

here it is: i was ~15, and i was in a school hiking club, and we went on a 2 weeks mountain hike in two squads - older kids (last year of school) and younglings (like me, second to last year of school), supervised by our geography teacher. It was an amazing experience, we were responsible for everything but trail navigating and pace. 

And in the older squad (those kids were like only a year older than us but the gap felt insurmountable, they were Wise Adults (TM)) there were two leaders, two best friends, one tall, handsome and like aristocratic (but pretty outgoing) and the other one an inch shorter, with longer hair, always laughing, and he had The Guitar (TM) and was not afraid to use it. All the girls were either infatuated with one or the otherXD

So, those two cute guys, always tousling, sharing a tent (with three more boys, ‘cause limited tent amount, tents are f* heavy), laughing, constantly bickering with lots and lots of innuendos, ‘cause you know, teenagers))

And one evening almost at the end of the hike we were sitting around the campfire, and The Laughing One with The Guitar was singing the most heartfelt song about a breakup , which coinsidentally had a name of his friend in it, while looking straight at said friend with laughter sparkling in his eyes,

and my little maiden heart went - OMG are they......... you know..................... ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ 

(mind you, i live in a very homophobic country and it was as bad then as it is now, i knew in theory abt possibility of same-sex relationships only because i was a curious child who liked to read too much for her own good and i’ve found an uncensored version of greek mythology in my mom’s books on the topmost shelf; but it was like historical and not applicable to modern society in my mind, so those two guys might’ve been pretty intense to even put a thought abt that possibility irl in my head))) 

* in retrospect, a lot of my fictional ships make so much sense nowXDD i’ve just imprinted on those two guys)))*

//and if we are talking fictional ships - the first one would be Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Byakuya (Bleach)))))

last song i listened to: Иду - Танцы Минус 

last movie i watched: /last movie i watched that left an impression, i def watched smth else after but can’t recall what was that/ - Triangle of sadness. Don’t go for arthouse usually, that genre can be too pretentious or too revolting for the sake of revolting but this one was good..

currently reading: i mostly read fanfiction these days; if we mean a novel - then Thousand autumns (it’s on pause, i’m too into my current obsession)))); reread some of shorter stories by Olga Gromyko last weekend, needed comforting)))

currently watching: psyching myself to rewatch MCTNA, planning do dive into WDH’s & Yang Se-jong’s filmographies; planning on watching A league of noblemen (gifsets on tumblr look intriguing);

currently consuming: nothingTT_TT food needs to be prepared asap

currently craving: roasted tofu from that one cafe my friend dragged me to last month*////*

tagging (not obligatory! ♡) @gorgeousgalatea, @dadwife, @opticor, @rej11, @soleil-tiara, @smallwinterchild, @turtlewobbles, @maureen2musings, @notenoughgatorade

[7clubs]

kristoph and phoenix

BUDDY I DON'T EVEN KNOW... god krisnix... I enjoy them as a complete crack comedy completely uncanon (i LOVE when people make funney divorce memes) and as a quiet tragedy. the agonies. full of misplaced trust or the small affections for a friend who you were destined to betray from the beginning.

i don't think i consider myself a shipper just bc i think in my ideal headcanon they never ever become anything other than friends. but i am still fascinated by them. the love (at least from nick's side) was always there, though not necessarily romantic. MAYBE that blurry threshold of like, where ur not sure if it's only platonic, at the most.

i am Very picky with how people do them because like. it's kind of a delicate balance. i don't like it when ppl make their messed up relationship like. too sexy, or with kristoph having nick too wrapped around his finger and subjecting him to very overt domestic toxicity. it takes me out of it and can kinda feel like fetishizing abuse if taken way too far, but also while he's kind of evil and absolutely manipulative i just don't see Kristoph like that. I think he's a lot more subtle, and I do think he genuinely cared for Phoenix here and there, despite the conflicts of interest and the fact that this friendship began on a false pretense.

whatever the fuck these two have going on is a 3 hour arthouse film where they never actually touch but they take you on the complete journey of fraught love or loss or whatever.

tl;dr that one intense and fraught codependent friendship (???) you had in middleschool

[fade-out-lights]

it's all a huge trick. im no longer interested in watching either oppenheimer or barbie. i know i probably will at some point but as of now the amount of ads is insane - im not even talking about the real ads. people are doing it themselves - with the memes, the trends, the outfits. no, it's not the "if it's popular - then i hate it" logic. it just looks fucked up. everywhere i go (...i see his face...) i see these two dead stares. i know nolan is no longer capable of creating a movie with characters you could empathise with. interstellar is probably the last movie where you could feel something, even cry a bit, it was beautiful, especially if you were lucky to see it on a big screen. otherwise his characters are polished and lack... humanity, they don't seem to be alive, and while in some cases it could look like a metaphor (inception) - on the whole his movies are not... arthouse enough for such boring characters to exist. his female characters are a disaster - they mostly seem to be useless. while directors like guy ritchie don't even hide the almost ridiculous machismo of their movies filming fanfics for men - nolan thinks he creates something new and complex when in reality he doesn't. and, yes, maybe it's his plan, whatever, but it looks boring. no, no, don't tell me to go watch marvel movies - when i say boring i don't mean i need constant jokes and bwaahs and baaams in a movie - you go to a cinema for a spectacle, a kind of magic, and even if a movie disgusts you - you have a feeling, a true one, absolute disgust, the taste, the memory. watching tenet - it was like watching a screw rotated on xyz or something. im not saying the oppenheimer will be bad. maybe it's going to be good. im saying the whole situation makes me, um, wince?

the thing with barbie... im afraid it can be such a scam, and, even if it's not that bad - it still kinda already feels like a movie buried underground because people are so overstimulated. yeah, it justifiably looks like a trip - because it's a barbie movie (and i love barbie pink honestly) - but, oh, makes me remember that, uh, tiktok?? or something, about how after taylor swift's concert there's a lot of clothes just thrown away because it's no longer needed - that's how this movie feels.

at the end of the day i always say that if that doesn't harm anyone - let people enjoy it. but in this case... it makes me laugh. it's laughable. a bit sad. predictable. yeah. and probably actually has some harmful impact.

[levitatingbiscuits]

I posted 7,384 times in 2022

176 posts created (2%)

7,208 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@glimmerglanger

@gffa

@doctrpepper

@forcearama

@twinterrors29

I tagged 512 of my posts in 2022

#fandom wank - 31 posts

#my writing - 22 posts

#anonymous - 22 posts

#ask meme - 11 posts

#pro jedi - 11 posts

#star wars hot takes - 9 posts

#pro jedi order - 8 posts

#fic idea - 8 posts

#sheev my beloved - 6 posts

#pro katara - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#but because boba is a maori man and fennec is an asian woman they dont give a shit that the objectively more boring character stole boba's

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I don't go here but I have been seized by the idea for an obikin au

OK so imagine: Obi-Wan and Anakin are celebrity actors. They run in totally different circles; Obi-Wan acts in dramas and arthouse films and keeps getting snubbed by awards ceremonies, but he's got a dedicated fanbase of cinephiles raving about his acting techniques and how he masterfully embodies every character etc. etc. He doesn't make a whole lot of money, but he's an ✨️artiste✨️

Anakin, meanwhile, is an action hero blockbuster star. He's the type who has a toxic and devoted Twitter standom, a cult of cringe nerdbros worshipping him a la Elon Musk or Keanu, a fuckton of RPF, the works.

Their fanbases HATE each other. They're convinced from the bottom of their hearts that the 2 are bitter rivals. They pore over interviews and tabloids for the slightest HINT of animosity. Obi-Wan had to private his Twitter account because of the barrage of hate from the Stanakins. Anakin has never been cast in anything artsy because all the auteurs are on Obi-Wan's side, so he's stuck doing Marvel movies and action franchises while Palpatine, Disney's greedy CEO, uses him as a dancing monkey.

The thing is, Obi-Wan barely knows the guy?? They were both discovered by Director Qui-Gon Jinn and acted in one film together (Anakin's debut as a child star), after which Obi-Wan got dropped from the mainstream like a hot potato, but he's not bitter about it. Sure, it would be cool to have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame and a mansion in Beverly Hills, but he's proud of his career (even if Palpatine's bought off everyone to ensure he NEVER gets an Oscar. Or a Golden Globe. Or a kid's choice award.)

Unbeknownst to him, Anakin's actually his biggest fan. Obi-Wan's the one who inspired him to get into acting, Anakin's seen all his films, he may or may not have posters from Obi-Wan's short-lived teen heartthrob phase, and Obi-Wan was so nice to him in the one family film they co-starred in when Anakin was a tot.

He's also stupid, and he's got Palpatine and Jinn in his ear, so he genuinely believes the tabloids and gossip blogs when they say Obi-Wan hates his guts. He's heartbroken, but he's sure not gonna SHOW it, so he lets people believe he hates Obi-Wan and does nothing to stop his fans from being awful to him. (He might even want to punish his favorite actor for not liking him back, because Obi-Wan said in an interview that he's never even watched Anakin's movies! EVERYONE'S seen Anakin's movies!! That's obviously a snub!!!)

(Obi-Wan hasn't even seen his own movies. Screens give him migraines.)

But everything comes to a head when ambitious young director Padmé Amidala casts them alongside each other, 10 years after their last film together...

783 notes - Posted May 11, 2022

#4

Reva lay perfectly still beside the cooling bodies of her crechemates, and tried very, very hard not to cry.

The clone troopers with blue paint on their armor were roving around throughout the fallen forms scattered like trash all over the temple. Occasionally, a blaster went off. The lightsabers, in contrast, had all long since gone quiet.

If they find me, Reva realized, they’re going to shoot me.

None of the clones were on the walkway anymore, at least not for the moment. They had seen Knight Skywalker swing at her, had seen her fall along with all her brothers and sisters. None of them noticed that his saber hadn’t cleaved all the way through her helmet; he’d swung too high. Maybe he was more used to killing people his own size.

Younglings weren’t a threat, not like knights or masters. She supposed that that’s why the clones were checking the grown-ups’ bodies first.

She slowly moved her arms underneath her, choking back a whine when her elbow hit something fleshy and crispy and small enough to roll away. She thought it might have been a piece of either Mirax or Phad, but she couldn’t bring herself to check who it belonged to.

Reva got on her hands and knees and crawled. Over Tane, around Muna, their eyes staring at her unseeing as she left them behind. She was slow, playing dead whenever the Force told her to, hiding in plain sight. She’d always won hide and seek when she played with her crechemates. All she had to do was find somewhere to hide, and then she’d be safe.

She didn’t know how long she crawled, inch by aching inch. Long enough that bluish predawn light was starting to show through the windows. It had been nighttime when the attack started, but before bedtime. She thought, for one detached, floating moment, that the commissary droids might be making breakfast right now, unaware that no one was coming.

Reva heard boots marching against the marble floor, mosaics scuffed with the remnants of deflected blaster shots, and froze, heartbeat rabbiting in her throat. A panel in the wall beside her opened; a cleaning droid, barely tall enough to reach her knees when she was standing, beeped frantically and corralled her into the network of tunnels throughout the temple that it and its brethren used to move around, then slammed the panel shut behind her. 

“What’s that?” said an indistinct voice from outside, slightly distorted by a helmet.

“Cleaning droid. Keep moving, trooper, we need to round up any traitors that might be hiding,” came an identical voice, and the boots she’d heard earlier marched away. 

The tunnels were cramped, but they were a great hiding place. She just had to go further in and no grown up would be able to reach her, because they wouldn’t fit. Especially not… him. He was too tall. He’d towered over her, in the few seconds he’d looked at her before he—

Reva started crawling again.

The tunnel came out in the nursery. She wished it hadn’t.

Most kids came to the Order after a few years, when their Force sensitivity started manifesting, but a lot of people left their newborns on the Temple steps if they couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them. The babies weren’t always Force sensitive, but they needed a place to stay until the Jedi could find them an adoptive or foster family. So they stayed here.

Or they had.

Reva didn’t look too closely at the overturned cribs or the little bundles of blankets on the ground. She didn’t want to know if this had been Knight Skywalker’s doing or a clone’s. A lot of these kids never would have become Jedi, anyway, but they’d died just because the Jedi had cared for them when no one else would.

Reva heard a soft, frightened coo. She whipped around, and saw two huge eyes peering at her from inside a wastebasket in the corner. The baby squeaked and hid, the lid coming down as they ducked to hide.

“It’s okay,” Reva croaked. All at once, tears flooded her eyes. Someone else had survived. Another youngling had survived.

She crept over, knelt, and opened the wastebasket. She stuck her hand in, tentatively patting the little head. She carefully lifted the baby out when tiny clawed hands reached for her, frantically hushing him when his big dark eyes started to grow wet.

“Please, Grogu,” she implored, “You have to be quiet.”

Grogu was still a baby, but he was also almost 30 standard. He was the nursery’s longest resident by far. He’d only just begun to walk, which is most likely how he escaped the fate of the other infants; the clones hadn’t known any of them could do that yet. Grogu was supposed to move into the creche with the big kids and begin training with them in only a few months. Master Yoda had been so excited.

Knight Skywalker hadn’t known Grogu could walk, either; before last night, he’d avoided all the younglings like the plague. He’d been nicer when he was younger, but then he turned nineteen and something had changed.

“It’s all right,” Reva whispered, bouncing him slightly in her arms. “I’ll get us both out of here alive, I promise.”

915 notes - Posted June 23, 2022

#3

it’s so funny when people think cody is the boring clone trooper when cody literally body slams his metal opponents. cody is the MOST crazed he’s just a goddamn professional about it

2,284 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

#2

I love Mandalorians so much. They're all digging their own graves all the time and arguing about how this method of grave digging is much better than that OTHER guy's method of grave digging. Sometimes they get into wars with each other about whose grave is better. It never occurs to them to stop digging.

2,923 notes - Posted May 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Sometimes, when Luke wondered about his father, he thought he might have remembered him. Just a little bit.

He remembered warm arms holding him close. He remembered sad blue eyes. He remembered a hoarse voice swearing to watch over him.

He’d thought he made it up. First, because Uncle Owen had gruffly told him that he’d never met his father before he died, and then because he’d learned exactly who his father was and what he was doing during Luke’s childhood. An empire isn’t built in a day, after all.

But when he asked Leia about their mother and listened to her talk about remembering her face so clearly, he couldn’t help but wonder who that man with the bristly beard and the tired eyes had been.

3,805 notes - Posted January 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[moonglittering]

“ Do you believe in love ?”

✨ @ofsnarkandmagic. meme. still accepting!

❝Of course I believe in love. I'm a bleeding heart, artsy type. Who would I be without love?❞ The soju was getting boring and the canned wine had overstayed its welcome—he was now cracking open a bottle of merlot. Some overpriced, fancy something that promised the taste of red plums, dark chocolate and subtle spices. ❝I love a lot of things... And, um. I love my family. Like, a lot. I love going out during summer evenings and I love when the Chinese bakery down the street has cheesecake. I love arthouse cinema. I love a lot of things, but. Y'know. Romantic love is very different, isn’t it? We'll see. It’d be nice. It takes a big ass storm to stir the ocean waters of romantic love. Someone that has the strength of a hurricane. I’m so obsessed with my own life that it’s hard to flip my boat over. But, eh. Like I said, y’know? We’ll see.❞

[bennyswhims]

Animation throughout my life: a spotlight.

As someone who's giving their life into a career in animation, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I've had quite a history with the medium. Of course, as most, I grew up watching cartoons every day, and it'd be naive to think those childhood experiences haven't deeply shaped my thoughts on both the medium and art as a whole, as well as in life in general, as the emotional resonance and mood that animation can achieve are pretty much the main pieces that bind me to it as artistic impression. This being said, in my thinking for this post, I wanted to showcase works of art that have impacted me more recently, as a series of big and fast life changes have molded me into the person I am today, and I credit these pieces, among many others, for helping me hold everything together over my yet short stint in the field of adulthood. As per my usual, I've tried to spread myself evenly into one movie, one game and one show, for the sake of balance.

Song of the sea (Cartoon Saloon, 2014)

This masterwork film comes from a very small Irish animation collective, Cartoon Saloon, held up mostly by Irish government subsidies, as their works have garnered a bit of a reputation as preservation efforts for millenary pieces of traditional Celtic/Gaelic/Irish culture. This, however, is no edu-tainment snoozefest. The story of an older sibling coping with both the birth of a new sibling alongside a wave of loss is by no means a story never told. However, there is so much more here than what can be conveyed in an elevator pitch. Breathtaking animation that fits the emotional storytelling like a glove, a score that puts chills on chills and creative use of its setting form a piece of magical realism that moved me more than I can put to words. If you don't mind crying, give it a watch, I hope it gives you as much as it's given me.

Bee and Puppycat (Frederator/Cartoon Hangover, 2013)

The history of this show isn't anything short of bizarre. Released originally as a bit of a proto-web-animated series on the YouTube channel Cartoon Hangover and later released on the Nintendo 3DS' Nintendo Video, this loosely connected, hour long show/special tells a story equally as... avant garde? (Is it pretentious to use that term on Tumblr?) as its odd release strategy. Bee, a young adult struggling to keep a job and bouncing from place to place, bumps into a strange creature that looks kind of like a cat and a dog, smelling like the latter and having the ability to speak. Over the course of the show, they go on monster-of-the-week style (4-7 minute long!) episodes, all surrounding Bee, her closest friends and her own astranged relationship with her origins and her humanity. What can often feel like a high budget meme of a show ends up turning into a series of emotional meteorite strikes that will not hesitate to put you under. Definitely one of the best things you can watch on a 3DS.

GRIS (Nomada Studio, 2018)

This game is a bit of a no-brainer for this trio. Emotionally resonant arthouse style indie productions with a cutting edge plot line deeply hitting into a gutpunch climax are, well, my favorite genre of... things, really, and this is no exception. Fully hand-watercolored, GRIS tells the story of a girl who has to come to terms with the loss of a loved one, vagueness fully intended. Over the course of the game, you begin to unravel more of the stark emotional reality of what this loss has meant to the protagonist, and how difficult it can be to cope, as what brought solace has become dim, if not fully unattainable. This game has no dialogue, none of the characters have names and is a rather simple one-sitting puzzle platformer. On top of having one of the most touching plots in games I've ever played, this is a piece of art that knows what it is, recognizes it's limits and fully embraces them, utilizing it all to its major advantage.

Overall, while far from comprehensive, these are some of the pieces that have made a deep impact on me and have helped me understand both what I enjoy and what I personally aim to strive for in my artistic pursuits, and the past few years have been quite rich in both quantity and quality for me in that regard.