#he's always either at the den or the plateau and i feel like he tries to think of it all as just training but they are taking care of him.

[seaquestions]

on tuesdays and thursdays, you can find him at the dragon's den.

[aion-rsa]

Black Lightning’s Khalil Continues to Shine in Season 4

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This Black Lightning article contains spoilers through Season 4, Episode 11.

Black Lightning is sauntering into its final few episodes with the confidence of a keyboard warrior in a woman’s twitter mentions. It’s casual in a way that’s both worrisome and impressive, and one has to wonder if they got it or if they just think they do. Coming into the season, I felt like the writers were ramping up towards a finale that would be explosive, but so much has happened already, the story has plateaued. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy watching, but I’m less invested than I hoped I’d be by this point.  Part of that is due to the fact that the Pierces can’t seem to lose, and that’s still the case in “The Book of Reunification: Chapter Two: Trial and Errors.”

Jefferson began the season grieving the loss of his best friend and grappling with the resulting guilt. He’d abandoned Black Lightning and was ready to let him go for good. But now that his powers have been taken away, he’s struggling with the idea that he may never be Black Lightning again. We’ve seen what Freeland is like without its hero, but that was before the ASA and Markovia. What would it mean for Jefferson to lose his powers for good? We could go into the series finale with the titular hero devoid of powers. And as unlikely as that is, it is the kind of choice that could pay off if the writers fully commit to it. Black Lightning has always shown up for Freeland; perhaps, in the finale, Freeland will need to show up for him.

Despite the fact that Painkiller still feels compelled to execute the Pierces, Khalil shows up for them. Khalil has been a force ever since his reintroduction in the backdoor pilot for his solo show, Painkiller. Last week, he recovered Tobias’ business ledger, giving him information that could exonerate the Pierces and take Tobias down. He discovered that Tobias has been paying the Looker beaucoup cash to mind-control people into framing Jefferson and Lyn. He offers to track Looker down and persuade her to admit to what she’s done. When Khalil finds the Looker, she tries to take control of him. Because she’s a meta who controls the mind, we’re able to watch them fight inside of Khalil’s mental landscape. It’s a cool action piece and a great way to visualize Looker’s powers from her perspective.

Jefferson, meanwhile, has to convince Detective Shakur to help him slip a serum into the FBI agent’s drink, in order to prove he’s under Looker’s influence. Shakur is hesitant to trust Jefferson at first but he comes around, and that faith is rewarded when the FBI agent ejects Looker’s silver liquid, and agrees to make things right… as much as he can. Jefferson having an ally in the PD has been crucial this season, though I’d hoped for more interplay between Chief Lopez, Jefferson, and Detective Shakur. When Lopez goes to Tobias for more firepower, she goes all in on meta-racism when he offers her meta-boosters instead. She blames metas for literally everything wrong with the world, and there is not enough time to unpack all of that, so hating metas real hard will just have to do. She could be formidable, but she’s just a mild annoyance at this point. I wanted more from Lopez, but I’m happy at least Shakur has proven to be a solid addition to the team, even if he remains skeptical.

Jennifer should be more skeptical, and generally…. smarter. She ghosts Uriah because she thinks he set her up with FPD even though that’s hella illogical, and TC helps her find some damn sense by confirming that someone else—Lopez, obviously—hacked him. TC also points out that her use of social media is what has been causing all this trouble, which everyone warned her about. Earlier in the season I talked about Lightning being on social media and how that could impact her, and now we’re seeing the ramifications of her choices. I like that Black Lightning took this route with Jen. What I do not like is how the show punishes her by having Tobias—by way of Red— kill Uriah.

Stop introducing characters solely to kill them in service of the leads, and stop using them as collateral damage to magnify the stakes. We are here, and we are invested. Now is the time to focus on the characters we’ve already spent time with and care about, it is not necessary to throw bodies at us to reaffirm the bad guys are bad. Tobias is ruthless, we get it. It is much more meaningful to see Tobias’ plans come together than watch him enact violence on yet another person—bruh ripped out a whole spine twp seasons ago, we. get. it. Though, it should be said that Tobias is an entire dumbass. He is a master planner and manipulator yet wasted the powers of mind control on framing Jefferson instead of using it to get one of the Pierces to try to kill the other, or one of their other loved ones, or… literally anything else. But I digress. The Pierces have been able to counter every move he’s made, and I’m hoping he has more in store.

Just when it seems there is a clear endgame for Black Lightning, the writers drop something new. Gambi and Anissa explain to Lauren how Tobias used her research and Monovista’s resources to do harm. When Lauren and Gambi search for the emitter, they find a large deposit of Promethium instead. It takes only small amounts of Promethium to power the direct energy guns, there is no telling what can be powered by the Prometheum that runs underneath Freeland. This could relate to whatever Tobias is planning or it could be nothing. But at this stage I expect there to be major implications of that discovery and I hope whatever it is, it shakes the show up!

Additional thoughts.

Ishmael should be issuing refunds! He hasn’t killed a single target except Lala who was caught slippin’ (and is technically still alive and encased in concrete). Why Tobias would then task him with killing Khalil, when he has yet to check a single box on his to-do, is beyond me. But Ishmael vs Khalil/Painkiller is a matchup I want to see.

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Jefferson asks Lynn to get remarried and she lightly brushes it off. They have been more toxic than not over the course of the show, and it could be really powerful for either or both of them to choose themselves over their relationship.

The post Black Lightning’s Khalil Continues to Shine in Season 4 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[edenfalling]

[Fic] “Foundlings” - Star Wars

musesfool said: I think something with Finn, Rey, & BB8 for your "cute" cotton candy square would be awesome. *g*

Note: I cribbed some information about Jakku and Rey's past from Wookiepedia, but most of the worldbuilding in this ficlet is blithely made up -- because I wanted to and because I can. :D

This is pretty dark for a fluff ficlet, since it contains discussion of animal death and general references to Finn and Rey's traumatic pasts, but the main theme is about hope and togetherness and stuff. (1,175 words)

--------------------------------------------- Foundlings ---------------------------------------------

"I never thought droids could be cute," Finn says idly to Rey, as they sit on a workbench at the back of an empty flight deck, waiting for Poe's squadron to make their overdue return from a reconnaissance flight around the Kathecora system. Safely out of earshot, BB-8 rolls restlessly back and forth at the open door of the new Resistance base, silhouetted by the bloody glow of Kathecora's red giant sun. "The First Order doesn't use a lot of them -- probably because they didn't want stormtroopers to start comparing ourselves to them and get ideas -- but there are a few in interrogation, medical, and construction, and they're all terrifying. And the droid-related combat courses were mostly about how to rig them up as improvised bombs and EMP generators."

"That's a terrible thing to do to sentient beings," Rey says, but there's a hollowness under her words, like she's trying to convince herself as much as Finn. They both grew up knowing bone-deep how chillingly indifferent the galaxy is to suffering. Terrible things happen to people every second of every day, without any need for active malice. It can be hard to sustain moral outrage over something that you were raised to think is just the way of the world.

That doesn't mean either of them will stop trying.

"It is terrible," Finn agrees. "But see, because that's the only context I had for droids, I didn't realize that they build personalities over time, just like biological people. And I definitely didn't realize they could miss people, or act like they need a hug."

He gestures toward BB-8, who has rolled away from the ledge and settled next to Poe's neatly coiled fueling hose, where it's now warbling to itself in melancholy binary.

"Like a jinnua missing its pack," Rey says. "They're social scavengers and small game hunters, a bit like cats with scales and venomous fangs, and about as clever as a three- or four-year-old child," she adds in response to Finn's blank look.

Then she turns away, fixing her gaze on BB-8, like whatever she's going to say is too big for her to speak while watching his reactions. "I left Niima Outpost when I was sixteen, to work in a shipbreaker yard in the scrublands south of the Starship Graveyard. Some of the mining co-ops figured it was cheaper to bust up ships on the surface than dig for ore underground, and I figured I needed a steadier job than scavenging, after my swindler partners stole the freighter we'd restored and left me with nothing. The jinnuai don't like dunes, but you can find them all over the canyons and plateaus where the ground stays fixed, and if you're polite and patient they'll take you as... I don't have the words. It's a little more than friends, but a little less than family. What it feels like between you and me and Poe and BB-8."

"Like a squad's supposed to be, the good kind where you all have each other's backs," Finn says. The kind of squad he always wanted and never found, until he stretched his hand out into the terrifying unknown beyond the First Order's indoctrination and found Poe reaching his own hand back so they could haul each other to freedom.

"Yes! Like that," Rey agrees, still turned away. "I fed them scraps since I wasn't used to eating full portions, and dug holes under the scrapyard fences so they could get in to hunt gnawers, sting-scuttlers, and even a flock of steelpeckers that tried to build a nest in the containers we were preparing for export. On my days off, they'd let me follow them to their dens and play with their cubs. They were round and cuddly, with big dark eyes, and colored in all the shades of sand from cream to rust--"

"Definitely like BB-8," Finn says.

Rey's laugh strikes the air like a cracked bell. "Just as cute as BB-8. And their baby scales were so soft that petting them felt like skimming my fingers through clean water. I loved them."

Finn has a sinking feeling that this story doesn't end well. He met Rey at Niima Outpost, after all, not in a scrubland shipyard. And he knows what happens to trainee stormtroopers who try to adopt local wildlife or shipfaring vermin.

"I must have taught them to be too trusting, though, or maybe they assumed the other yardworkers were my pack and would follow my lead," Rey continues. "The jinnuai stopped hiding in the shadows and started getting underfoot. Eventually the yard boss decided they were vermin and needed to be poisoned and shot. She didn't care that we'd stopped losing work-hours to poison sting reactions, or losing supplies and product to the gnawers and steelpeckers. She just didn't like visible disorder."

Finn starts to put his hand over Rey's on the bench. Then he thinks that might be presumptuous, or seem like he's saying she's too weak to face her own past without breaking.

Rey reaches up to clasp his hand while he's still hesitating, and squeezes his fingers in a wordless gesture of reassurance.

"The one survivor came to me and I hid it in my bunk for two nights while it cried," she says, eyes still fixed on BB-8, who has extended a tool-arm and started pushing Poe's spare helmet back and forth on its shelf. "That was when I realized the scrublands weren't any kinder than Niima Outpost. They only put a pretty paint job over the rust. So I quit that job and went back to where my family would know to look for me. I looked for more jinnuai on the way, and dropped the survivor off near where I surprised a pair out hunting. I didn't have enough portions to wait and see if they let it join their pack, but I hope they did. No one should be alone in the world."

"I bet they did take it in," Finn says. "Just like the Resistance took in you and me, and we're building a squad with Poe and BB-8. The one thing the First Order gets right is that it doesn't matter who your makers -- your blood family -- were. What matters is who you choose to trust and protect. I bet that's true for jinnuai too."

Because the universe is indifferently cruel, but that doesn't mean the people who live in it have to follow that example. The point of life is that you can choose how to act. He chose to defect. Poe chose to trust him. Rey chose to help him and BB-8 escape Jakku. They all chose to fight for a better world than the one they grew up in -- one where nobody, biological or droid or any combination in between, ever gets abandoned or treated as a thing instead of a person -- and they keep choosing that every day.

"Let's go keep BB-8 company until Poe gets back," Finn says now, and waits for Rey to join him when he stands.

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End of Fic

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Ha, victory!