kaponer

[australet789]

I just rewatched Hazbin by watching someone's else reaction and i LOVE how they started skeptical about it and then enjoyed the show so much to the point of crying.

[coexiising]

art deco - anakin skywalker

SUMMARY ◆ You’ve been Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan for almost five years now, recieving training from one of the most brilliant Jedi Knights you have ever met. In an attempt to further your training, you and your Master take a trip to Naboo, however, it is soon revealed that your feelings will get in the way. 

WARNING(S) ◆ Smut, lowkey slow burn, anakin being hot but what’s new, dirty talk, authority kink, virginity kink, bye

WORDS ◆ 7.8k and i regret nothing

NOTE ◆ I wrote this during heartbreak so this is me totally projecting

»»————-　✼　————-««

THERE WAS SOMETHING INCREASINGLY PLEASANT ABOUT BEING ON NABOO. You were quick to realize that the planet’s beauty that was always spoken about was not just a thing of rumors, and that, in fact, the place was even more beautiful than you could possibly imagine. The way that every tree hung perfectly, with it’s branches begging to be touched by a passerby, and how every single animal that grazed along it’s pastures had a sense of calm that you had never felt in all your years of living in the galaxy.

The villa along the large lake a few miles away from the main city was a thing of dreamlike structures. It’s columns held intricate pieces of wood and stone and the balconies that overlooked both water and flower fields were more welcoming than you could ever imagine. A own little touch of paradise, and you would be staying here for only a week.

The war, which you had been flung into only a few years into your training, was going on longer than anyone anticipated. The separatists were not letting up on their preposition to become a sovereign state, and the deaths of thousands mass produced clones has become a daily thing. It took a great toll on everyone involved, and more specifically the Padawan’s like yourself that were not at all prepared for this type of environment for your training. When you were just a youngling, all you expected was to go on lots of missions with your Master that would be Jedi affairs, not Republic ones. In a way, you felt as if you were being robbed of something that you weren’t quite sure how to pinpoint, an innocence in a way.

This was the Council’s way of trying to make it up to you. You knew that it wasn’t supposed to actually be a vacation, no, you were meant to keep up with your training, just in a different environment that would make you more akin with the Force. And that place was Naboo, tranquility in the form of a planet.

“I can feel your apprehension,” Your Master told you, walking in front of you up the stone stairs that came up to the front door of the place you would be staying in with him. Behind you was a ship, no one inside to accompany the two of you. To do this right, as the Council said, you were not to be distracted by anyone else, no clones, no droids, no nothing.

If only they knew that it didn’t matter if there was no one other than your Master to engage with, because Anakin Skywalker, alone, was able to distract you for hours on end if you really put your mind to it. Anakin and you were very similar in age, early adult years, and yet he had the role of Master and you were still just a Padawan. You knew that it was because of his efforts during the Battle of Geonosis at the very beginning of the war, and that alone was enough to grant him the title of Jedi Knight, but it still was awkward at points when he talked down on you, because really, he had only two years more experience in life than you did.

You did what you were told. You always did. As a youngling you had a temper, a rebellious streak that for a time was almost concerning for the Council and the Master’s that taught you. And yet, here you were, a respectful young Jedi. Over the years you have grown, probably more than any other youngling that the Order has ever seen. It was like overnight somehow you turned from a child to a young woman, and you were adamant about completing your studies so that you could become a Jedi Knight. Those plans, however, got incredibly tainted with the war, and then with the introduction of you and your Master. It was a rather uncalled for pairing. You were hoping for someone like Master Yoda to take you as his Padawan or even for master Plo Koon, yet it was wildly noted that you were picked by Anakin Skywalker yourself. A rather odd thing and he still hasn’t told you completely why.

Anakin was not entirely a man of secrets. You could ask him things about almost anything and he would tell you. The only thing that he kept guarded in the deepest parts of his mind was things of his past, and his reasoning behind making such vast decisions like taking on a Padawan during a large civil war. But you and Anakin still managed to be very close, the Force growing strong between both of you as if it too agreed in your compatibility.

You shook your head, immediately refuting his accusations. “No, it’s not apprehension,” you told him, eyes coming up to meet the back of his head since he wasn’t looking at you. “Just concern, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Your Master questioned. The second that his foot came up to the top of the stairs, his figure turned around and faced you, those bold, blue eyes of his racing to meet your own. “If you have any doubts about anything, tell me, I am your Master after all.”

That’s exactly that problem, you thought to yourself, making sure that your mental shields were up to guard it. That was the last thing that you needed, for him to know the things that you wished to push down into the darkest depths of your mind. That was the Jedi way, after all, keep all those emotions that were considered dangerous and a path to the dark side in a little cage in your mind and throw away the key. The thought of simply just being with him here alone made your brain almost electrify yourself, thinking about all the possibilities of slipping up and revealing all your emotions towards your Master directly to him. It was something to fear, and yet you were not allowed to fear.

You offered him the fakest smile that you could muster, saying, “Yes, Master, I’m alright. Let’s just get inside, it’s almost dark.” The setting sun was directly to your back, illuminating him in front of you like he was something to be marvelled at. And to your defense, Anakin Skywalker was definitely something to be marvelled at. His chiseled cheeks only looked more distinguished in the golden light, along with his dark brown hair that seemed to catch it just right. It made you feel weak in the knees, these thoughts of him, and you knew it was wrong to think of him in such ways - but you just couldn’t stop. Every time you tried to vilify him in your mind, another reason why you should love popped right back up in its place. It was a deadly cycle that you have shamelessly fallen victim to, and there was nothing that you could do to stop it or further this attraction. It was forbidden.

The moment that you stepped into the building, a sigh left your lips, eyes taking in all your surroundings. It was marvellous. There were marbled stone floors that were covered in rugs in some places, plush couches in the middle of the room, and off to the side were the counters of the kitchen, all looking as if no one had ever stepped foot in here. Suddenly you felt out of place here, like you weren’t good enough to live in such a lavish way. After all, your temple rooms were nothing compared to this. They were bland, sandy and brown colors everywhere. Only a dresser with a small mirror and a bed were in it. Yet here, there were different hues of reds, greens, and blues, tables and chairs and fancy lamps, and plants that added almost another dimension to the already breathtaking house.

“It’s - It’s,” You started, not able to find the correct words for what you were trying to say.

Luckily, Anakin finished your sentence, “Breathtaking. It’s breathtaking.”

You turned to look back at him, taking in his features for just a moment more.

Breathtaking, you thought to yourself. Yes, everything here is just breathtaking.

-

The soft silks of your bed sheets rolled between your fingers, tempting you to lay into bed and never get back up. How on Earth were you supposed to keep training when you were living like this? You could imagine yourself, not as a Jedi but as a normal person, eating wild berries as you sat on your bed near the balcony, looking towards the horizon and not having one single worry in that head of yours. It was tantalizing, the perfect picture in your mind of what you wished to be.

“You think too loud.”

You spun around to only be met with your Master, who was leaning against your doorframe effortlessly. A heat rose up to your cheeks, realizing that you hadn’t been taking the proper precautions of keeping those thoughts only to yourself. They were just little flings of ideas, nothing too brash that could get you into any trouble. “Sorry, Master, I shouldn’t have been thinking of slacking off when we have work to do in the coming days.”

A chuckle escaped his lips from deep within his chest. “It’s okay, Y/N, really, if I am being honest, I was thinking the same not too long ago.”

That was shocking news to you. You always thought that Anakin always wanted to be on the run, as if this trip that he had to take with you was annoying to him because he had to take time away from the front lines of the war. But it also made sense, even victorious war generals get tired sooner or later. Perhaps you didn’t know him as much as you thought that you did. This trip wasn’t just for you, it was for the both of you. It was good to go back to basics, remember the first feelings of the force and go from there.

“And here I was thinking that you didn’t want to be here,” You mused.

Your Master laughed at your jest. “No, quite the opposite. It’ll be nice to take a step back from life for a little bit and get some much needed rest.”

“I didn’t know that General Skywalker knew what rest meant,” You continued on your playful banter.

“I don’t,” He chuckled. “Maybe you can teach me?”

Now that sends you through a loop. You knew that he was probably just playing around with you, since you were teasing him a little bit. But that sentence was enough for that place in your mind to unlock all the fantasies you had in your head about him, the ones that you only dared touch when you knew you were alone and it was the dead of night so no was there to read them. You held yourself back from becoming flustered, knowing the moment you showed any signs of it that he would know that something was up. Instead you simply nodded your head, taking your eyes off of him to the balcony that was open to your room, seeing the way that the moonlight illuminated the waves of the water. “Perhaps after training tomorrow, we could go by the water?” You asked him.

“Sure thing,” Anakin said, turning on his heel and making his way out of your room. You took a sigh of relief at his absence, not because you wanted him gone, but because seeing him in such a leisurely setting was starting to get to your head. That dizzy feeling that got to your head every time you looked at him for too long started to subside, and you were left with only your thoughts as you put away some robes you packed for the stay.

The moment that your head hit the soft, plush pillow of your large bed, you were completely enveloped by sleep. In your dreams you only saw you and Anakin, happy and smiling in the gracious flower fields of Naboo, preparing meals together half dressed in the kitchen, and falling asleep in each other's arms. It was so real and lifelike that when you woke up in the morning, you felt as if you had awoken from an alternate universe.

-

Anakin didn’t know what he was doing.

Of course he was excited to be able to take a break from the long, withheld war between the Republic and the Separatists, but at the same time he knew that being alone with you was going to be a struggle for him. Anakin loved to train you, he really did. You were a loyal Padawan to the Order and was eager to learn the ways of the Force by his instruction. He knew the moment that he saw you that he wanted to train you. But he hadn’t prepared for him to become so emotionally attached to you, and it was tearing the young Jedi apart.

It was incredibly taboo of him to gain these feelings for two reasons. One: the Jedi were forbidden from attachment. And although Anakin hadn’t been known for following all the rules of the Jedi, he knew that attachment could possibly lead to dark places if he wasn’t careful. Two: you were his Padawan. It may have been different if you were within the same ranks as him, but you were not. He was supposed to be your teacher, and there was no way that he would take advantage of his position of power over you if you were not willing.

He, too, was having doubts about this vacation. Anakin almost asked his First in Command, Rex, if he would accompany the two Jedi for the week, but there was too much going on for the clone to take time off. So it was just you and him, alone in this house on this beautiful planet. Anakin was uneasy up until the moment he walked in your room last night when for a half a second he could sense your aura from the Force, and it was also uneasy about being with him alone. It was strange, since you were clearly hiding these thoughts from him with your mental shields whenever you were around him. But the moment he left you alone, those shields came down.

“Don’t think about keeping yourself up, the Force will do that on it’s own as long as you keep the connection with it. Focus on the rocks,” Anakin told you, walking around you in circles as you were in a handstand, mentally bringing up some rocks off the ground and stacking them off to your side. This was generally a lesson that a youngling would be given, though it was a good mental exercise. And in Anakin’s opinion: it was way better than meditating. “Feel it flow through you, allow it to take you over and become one with it.” These were the same things that Master Obi-Wan had taught him.

It was a bright, sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the time reached a little bit past noon. Training outside in the fields of Naboo were easier than doing so at the Jedi Temple, considering there was more nature that was akin to all aspects of the force. And the sun felt good on both of your skin, smelling the natural air that had a fluorescent scent to it rather than the smog and industrial life of Coruscant.

Your muscles were beginning to strain from underneath you as your head tilted to the side, watching all the rocks fall into place to your left. Even though the Force provided much needed relief on your arms, they were beginning to let out. There was one more rock for you to move and it was the smallest one, a tiny little pebble that needed to go on the top. It was such a small mass, yet with all of this mental and physical strain, it felt like a boulder to move across the air slowly with your mind. All you wanted was for Master Skywalker to feel proud of you. You wanted to see that smile on his face as you lifted that last pebble up and was allowed to finish your studies for the day.

The more you concentrated, the more you could feel the Force flow right through you. It could be felt in the tingling of your palms, sending vibrations towards the center of your chest while your blood flowed. Almost more importantly, you could feel Anakin’s eyes on you, waiting patiently for you to make your next move. Slowly, but surely, the little pebble made its way towards the top of the stacked rocks. Your eyes widened with joy, but immediately squinted back up when it shook a tiny bit. The moment that the bottom of it hit the top, you released your much concentrated attachment with the Force, and allowed yourself to fall seamlessly to the ground. The blood rushed back to your head, making your eyes darken to adjust. Once you could see again, you saw Anakin standing over you, that grin you had looked forward to seeing on his face.

“Not bad, Padawan,” He said in an appealing tone, extending a hand to help you up to your feet. You were quick to take it, ignoring the way that your heart soared as your skin touched against his skin. “We should go back to the house.” He almost turned and began walking away, but you scrunch your nose up and kept his hand in a tight grip, prompting him to look right back at you with a confused look. “What’s up?”

“You promised we could go to the water afterwards,” You told him, hoping that you were jogging his memory from last night.

But you didn’t need to jog Anakin’s memory, because he had been thinking about it ever since you asked. Thinking about having to watch you submerge under the water and come back up, drops of clear blue dripping down your exposed shoulders, and keeping himself from doing something that he would most likely regret when you would reject him, scolding him for his thinking. He thought about the way he wanted to put his hands on your hips and pull you as close as you possibly could get to him, taking the opportunity to pepper kisses along your smooth skin. It killed him to think that you probably didn’t think the same way about him, it was going to goddamn tear him apart.

Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to go back on his promise to you. It was the least he could do after thinking such sinful things about you. Anakin’s gave you a nod and walked beside you on the short trail to the large lake. You could hear the water ripple towards the small shoreline, coming up and then receding back again in a timely fashion. You kicked off your shoes, deciding that your tank top and pants were okay to get wet, especially since you wouldn’t take the risk of undressing in front of Anakin. As much as the thought was tempting, you knew better than to test your luck. Anakin watched with intensity as you got into the water, going deep enough to where only the tops of your shoulders and up were exposed. Maker, he cursed himself, did you have to look so good barely doing anything?

You cocked your head to the side. “Well . . . are you going to get in or just stare at me?” You asked, immediately submerging yourself under the water to ignore what he had to say about your teasing. Your heart thumped profusely as you sat there under the water holding your breath. Anakin had been looking at you.

He mentally cursed himself once again, taking his shoes off and following you into the water. It did feel good, the water having an almost calming effect over him as he walked deeper in the lake. He looked around him, taking in the appearance of all the beautiful trees that lined up, beautiful fruit hanging off of the branches. Little flowers were along the bay, facing right towards him as if they were welcoming him to their home.

The sun spilled harsh rays along his skin, causing Anakin to dip his head down fully into the water. Once he came back up for air, his eyes shifted over to you, both of you holding a type of eye contact that you swore almost knocked your breath out. It was unlike anything you had ever experienced before, like he was looking right into your soul and you to his, a sense of desire burning a pit in your stomach. Feeling exposed, you shifted your gaze to the fish swimming in the water near you. You could still feel his eyes on you, in them holding truths that he wished to tell you, but being unable to put the words together to explain.

-

“There’s something that you’re not telling me.”

Your eyes opened at your Master’s voice and looked directly at him. You had been meditating on your bed before sleeping, knowing that you hadn’t gotten the necessary amount of meditating that you needed for the day. At the temple they usually kept you on some kind of schedule, though here with Anakin rules were a little - no, more loose than normal.

Anakin once again stood in your doorframe, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed in, like he didn’t feel like he had a place stepping into your bedroom. You searched his face to gauge a feeling for what he was talking about, looking for hints of mischief or anger. There was nothing, his face was completely blank, almost too blank like he was hiding something from you.

You knew you had nothing to hide - or at least nothing that he should know about. “I don’t know what you mean, Master,” You replied, uncrossing your legs from their criss cross position and hugging them close to your chest. “Have I done something wrong?”

That answer seemed to not satisfy him, because for a moment something flickered in his eyes. “No, nothing like that,” He told you, furrowing his brows together and taking a tentative step closer into your room. “It’s just, I get this feeling when I’m around you. Your force signature . . . like something is just gnawing at you and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Oh, you were screwed. Alarms blared in your mind, thinking about how you had let your thoughts run too much during this trip. All the worst outcomes of this came to your mind, like how he would laugh at your growing feelings towards him, how much you wanted him almost shamelessly. It made your stomach twist into several knots, wanting to bury yourself into a hole and never ever come out of it again.

Your face and the Force must’ve told it all, because he spoke again, saying, “There. Right there. I can feel it, Y/N. Just talk to me. What is going on?” Your bottom lip quivered, knowing that there was no way you were getting out of this. This was it. The day you had been dreading and hoping didn’t come. Everything was about to come crash down onto your life.

“I can’t,” You said in a low voice, shifting your weight to sit at the edge of the bed, putting your head into your hands and staring down at the plush carpet in an attempt to get away from his stare. Almost as if you thought if you looked away long enough, he would suddenly disappear.

“What do you mean ‘you can’t’? You’re my Padawan, you can tell me anything.”

Padawan. The title felt foreign in your mind now. It was something that you knew you couldn’t hold onto for much longer once the truth was out. You would be stripped of it and be a Jedi no more. The council would hear of your feelings and immediately expel you. Padawan. Padawan. Padawan. The more the word bounced around in your mind the more you felt tears welling up into your eyes.

And you didn’t mean to sound so harsh when you said it, but your hands were balling up into fists as you said, “That’s what’s wrong!” Your head tilted up, seeing that Anakin had walked closer to you, towering over your frame. His face showed confusion, not understanding what you were alluding to. He didn’t even have to say it, but his expression was saying explain.

How could you even begin?

You were wordless.

“Please . .  . I just want to help you,” Anakin told you, his hand coming to grab onto your forearm. The touch felt like hot coals on your body, scorching your soul. “I don’t like seeing you like this.” Which you knew translated to I don’t like not knowing how to fix it.

“It’s you,” You confessed. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

For a moment, Anakin thought that he had stepped into some parallel universe. Or that this was some sort of prank let on by someone else. There was no way that this was happening, you were confessing. You had been thinking about him, probably as much as he was thinking about you. It felt as if the world had turned on its axis and was spinning the opposite direction.

You, on the other hand, was waiting for the words that never came. You expected him to immediately tell you that he was going to report you to the Council. And yet, he stood there, almost looking as dumbfounded as you did, maybe even more. This prompted you to stand up, his hand falling down and getting dangerously close to your own.

“I know . . .” You started again, seeing as he wasn’t going to say anything. “I know that it’s wrong, that I shouldn’t be thinking of you in the ways that I am. But I can’t stop, Anakin, you consume me.”

The usage of his name snapped him back to reality and out of his own spinning thoughts, and hearing it come from specifically your lips was not helping his frame of mind. It sounded . . . different coming from your mouth. Like you were saying it like a praise rather than just a passing phrase like most people did. He wanted you to say it over and over again, repeating it like a mantra you were to speak or you would die if you didn’t. His eyes flickered into your own and saw how scared you were of how he would react and how he was definitely not helping to settle your nerves.

In truth, he didn’t know how to handle this situation. After all, this was not a lesson that had been given to him and he was definitely not in the best place to tell you anything, since his emotions were starting to cloud his judgement and all he could think was how he wished to tell you he felt the same way.

You waited for his response, getting impatient and wanting to just get this over with. You were waiting for the words he was supposed to say.

But Anakin didn’t always do the things he was supposed to do.

“You and I both know that forming attachments isn’t allowed,” Anakin said. “And yet I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

A visible look of shock washed over your face, mouth opening slightly and eyes widening, heart pounding against your ribcage. His hand reached down and grabbed your own, fingertips softly touching the palm of your hand. This felt like a dream. Were you sure that you weren’t dreaming? No, this was definitely real. Anakin was in front of you for sure, confessing that he was feeling the exact same way.

Anakin tipped his head down to meet your own, his breath fanning along your face, making you shiver. Your breath hitched in your throat, his lips brushing against your own, almost like he was testing you. You could feel the tips of his hair tickling against your forehead, nose against nose. You were so close. The hand on your own was grasping now, pulling your body close to his. And the two of you sat there, lips millimeters close while each of your minds buzzed with the feeling of doing something so daring.

You felt yourself going mad, you couldn’t do it anymore. You couldn’t wait. All of your feelings erupted inside of your throat and suddenly you were kissing him, lips smashing against his own with no care in the world. You didn’t care about the Council, the Code . . . anything. All you cared about was Anakin, wanting as much of him that he was willing to give you.

You had never really kissed anyone before. There was a moment back when you were only ten and you were with another youngling, seeing one of the citizens of Coruscant kissing each other on the street. Interested in what they were doing, you and your friend kissed, thinking that it was weird and dismissing it. That had been your first kiss, a rather embarrassing one, but it was nothing compared to the way Anakin kissed you. He kissed you like there was a purpose to every single move of his muscles. He kissed you like you were forbidden fruit and he was starving.

His other hand came up to the back of your neck, tangling in your hair and keeping your face close to his. For just a moment his tongue slipped into your mouth and you made a small sound, butterflies swarming in your stomach. You tried to mimic what he was doing, going with your instincts and grasping onto his bicep, feeling the taut muscles under your touch.

Everything about yours and his actions were needy and hungry, wanting each other with such need that you had pushed down for so long. All of it seemed to come out of you like crashing waves. The kissing was nice, though after a while you needed more, you were dying for more of him. Please, Anakin, you thought.

What do you want, Padawan? He asked through his thoughts to you, hand coming to caress your face to look down at you. You looked into those big, blue eyes of his that never ceased to awaken something within you.

“You, Anakin, I want you,” You whispered to him, as if someone was going to hear if you talked too loud. “Please.” You thought that you probably sounded like someone desperate, and in a way you were, you had waited for this forever and had convinced yourself that it would never happen. But he thought the exact opposite, he marvelled in the way that you looked at him, wanting to show you how much you truly meant to him. The attraction and lust was there, intermingled with something more that neither of you dared to acknowledge.

He didn’t hesitate to give you what you wanted, slowly inching you towards the bed and helping you rest on your back, the silk sheets against the back of your arms and neck. Anakin was quick to follow, climbing on top of you and connecting his lips onto the skin right below your jaw. His lips were soft like snowflakes falling onto your skin, creating a masterpiece on your skin like you were his canvas. It all felt too good, the Force heightening the sensations to an almost unbearable amount. It sent shockwaves to your core, igniting a feeling you often only felt during the late hours of the night.

Seeing how well your body responded to him, well, almost drove Anakin crazy. You were so willing, so ready for him that his mind became cloudy, the only thing he could make out was his thoughts of you. Nothing about the war, the Council, the fact that he was your Master . . . It all blew away with the wind. His lips trailed down from your jaw to your neck, paying extra attention to the places that made you breath out more than the others. Your hands found their respective place in his hair, feeling the softness of the dirty blonde curls between your fingers.

Your clothes suddenly felt foreign on your body, you wanted them off, you wanted his off so that you could see all of him. He seemed to hear your thoughts, humming against your skin and pulling away, pressing a soft, firm kiss to your lips and helping you get out of them, and in turn you helped him get out of his.

Anakin’s body was like nothing you imagined. He was breathtaking. You knew that he had a nice body because of all the training and countless amounts of physical strain he has been through, but looking at those abs that he had, along with the sun kissed skin he had, you felt your throat close up, feeling inferior to what he looked like. “You’re beautiful, Y/N,” He spoke to your thoughts. “Don’t ever think that you’re not.” And you believed him.

His hands came to your hips, fingers toying with the fabric of your underwear that was the only thing blocking him from seeing you fully. His eyes scanned you, taking in the sheer and utter beauty before him. He wanted to kiss, lick, and nip on every single inch of skin on you. He wanted to learn each and every single curve, hear every story behind your scars, and know just what touches would have you squirming from underneath him.

No one has seen you this exposed before. You didn’t know whether or not to feel embarrassed, because he seemed to know what he was doing. It was not that you had taken the Jedi code to heart, but you simply hadn’t known anyone that you found enough to take that last piece of innocence from you - no one except Master Skywalker. And only now did you actually realize what was going to happen.

Your whole body felt hot, needing to feel the release that was beginning to build up from all of his kisses and your imagination running its course. “Anakin,” You breathed out, not knowing how to form into words what you wanted from him. Of course he knew, he could feel your force signature morph into something almost sinful, something he was sure he was emitting himself. After all, neither of you were hiding anything anymore. He knew exactly what he was going to do to you so that he could hear the plethora of moans that he knew you had just for him, wanting to hear his name come off of your lips in pleasure.

His head ducked down and kissed your hipbone, fingers hooking under your underwear and slowly sliding them off. Your eyes stayed on his actions, mouth forming into an ‘O’ when you realized what he was going to do. He was going to use his mouth on you. These were only things that you thought in your deepest, darkest fantasies, like he had reached into those parts of your mind and did exactly what you wanted.

As if Anakin was just tempting you, he pressed another slow kiss to the inside of your thigh and then did the same thing to the other side. Your hips lifted up only slightly, showing him that you couldn’t wait much longer. A chuckle left him, eyes reaching your own and saying, “Eager?” You weren’t even ashamed when you shook your head, keeping eye contact with him as he licked a bold stripe right up your slit. It felt as if an earthquake hit your body, your back arching and hands gripping onto his hair.

He hummed against you, liking the way that you responded to his actions. If he had it his way, he would sit here with you like this for hours on end, bringing you up to that high place again and again until you were a wrecked mess before him. It made him simply go crazy to think that he was the first person to ever do this to you, that he would be the first of anyone to hear those moans and profanities that slipped from your cherry kissed lips. Anakin’s own thoughts made him groan out, a noise that you played on repeat in your mind as your eyes screwed closed.

Your thighs quivered beside his face, attempting to squeeze shut so that you could keep him there forever. But his hands came and held them in place, fingers digging into your muscles that gave in to his touch like it was nothing. You were putty in his hands, the only movement you had was your hands pulling on his hair and the arch of your back while he lapped his tongue against you with no mercy.

“Stay still,” He told you, pulling away for a moment to lick what was left of you on his lips. You nodded, chest heaving and heart sinking at the loss of contact. But Anakin didn’t leave for long, his mouth on your clit accompanied with one of his fingers circling your entrance. You nearly lost it when he dipped his middle finger in experimentally, gauging your reaction. You could feel the coil in your stomach start to tighten, which only amplified once his finger pushed into you all the way.

You didn’t even attempt to try and censor the obscenities that came out of your mouth, mixed in rhyme with his name. Anakin. Anakin. Anakin. It was the only word that felt real in your mind.

You waited for that final jump towards a euphoric end, but it never came. Instead Anakin pulled away from you and his fingers left, making you feel uneasily empty. Opening your eyes, you saw that he was pulling down his boxers, taking his cock into his hands and watching as you almost became slack jawed - realizing what was about to happen. A moment of worry nestled its way into your mind, making your heart thump. If anyone was to find out, you would surely not be accepted back into the Order. You would never be able to have Anakin again. Jedi were not to fear, and yet here you were, fearing that you would lose the one person that you cared about - the only one you knew cared about you.

It was your moment to choose. You knew that if you backed out, at least you would be able to work under him still and not have his affections. It would be better than never seeing him again. And yet, you couldn’t see your life without him, all of him. Not just the side that was your Master.

Anakin sensed your worry, taking your chin in his hands so that you looked up at him. “Are you sure?” He asked you, not wanting to move forward before you were ready. And God, were you ready.

And with all the courage that you mustered up, you gave him a small smile and said, “Yes.” You felt like you were flinging yourself off of some sort of cliff, or even more sinfully feeling like you were Persephone, cutting up her own slice of pomegranate and looking right into Hades eyes as she tasted the fruit, securing your fate that you would stay with him. You would stay with Anakin, even if it was only for this night.

He nestled between your legs and you could feel his tip press against your entrance. Air was caught in your lungs, sitting up on your elbows so that you could see as he eased himself into you. A sting of pain and a subtle feeling of pleasure was seated inside of you, watching as his cock be enveloped by you inch by inch. Anakin hissed at the feeling, you were so goddamn tight and he never wanted to stop from being inside of you. Once all of him was inside, he leaned over so his head was in the crook of your neck, pressing a kiss to your searing skin as you adjusted to him bottoming out.

You urged him to continue, thinking that the discomfort would soon go away with time. And you were eager to get all of him that you could, temptation coming forward instead of reason. He pulled out all the way then eased himself back in, continuing the slower pace and watching your reaction before him, your hands reaching to his back and finding their place there. One of his hands kept your legs open, taking you by your thigh and hoisting it up.

It took all that he could muster to not just ram into you, the want starting to cloud his judgment. The Force felt as if it was pushing both you and him towards each other, the connection almost driving each of you crazy. “You feel . . .” He started. “You feel so good.” That alone, along with the raspiness in his voice, made a fire erupt in your stomach. You sighed in response, eyes fluttering closed once again.

And then, much to his surprise, you whispered, “Go faster, Anakin.” You needed him so bad you felt like you were going to explode, lust enveloping the both of you and intertwining with your Force energies.

He didn’t need to be told twice, and he gripped onto the leg he lifted up, beginning a slightly faster rhythm that had you arching your neck and eyes rolling to the back of your head. Anakin was so big, stretching you out in just the right way that had you almost keeling over if he hadn’t had such a tight grip on you. Your one leg wrapped along his waist, heel digging into his back while his pace increased.

This angle he had you in made you yelp and moan shamelessly, not caring if people all the way in the capital could hear you as you yelled his name like a prayer. His pace finally became a fast rhythm and you found comfort in being to finally feel nothing but pleasure with every deep stroke he made.

In this place, it was only you and him. Like you were in your own little place of paradise where you could explore each other in every way. There was nothing that could take this moment from you or him, this moment would forever be engraved in your mind for many years to come, remembering the way that he moaned out your name and the way he looked when you opened your eyes to peek at his face. His brows were furrowed, sweat beading on his forehead and mouth spilled open saying nothing but your name.

He made you feel so good, so euphoric that the fire grew and grew, becoming a wildfire raging inside of you. And you looked so heavenly to him, the way that your eyes only looked at him, breasts bouncing with every harsh thrust he gave you. You took him so well, like you were made for only him. His hips brushed against your own, hand coming up to caress your cheek, forcing you to look at him in the eyes.

You weren’t going to last much longer. Not with the way that he was pounding into you with sheer force you didn’t know was possible until now. But you didn’t want this to end, you never wanted this to end in fear that things would go back to the way they were before. You would have to try and forget that this ever happened. It wasn’t something you wanted to do and didn’t even know if you had the strength to do it. After this moment both of you would be connected.

You made a guttural noise, teetering over the edge of what felt like a wave of bliss. This was it, there was no way that you could keep yourself from it now. It only took a singular deep stroke of his cock to send you right over the edge, your back arching and body spasming, his name rolling off of your tongue in the most sinful way you have ever said it before. Your hands gripped for any part of him that you could reach, groping his muscles to keep him close to you. He didn’t stop moving inside of you, making you ride it out even harder as he chased his own high.

You were so sensitive as he fucked into you, giving you no mercy. He groaned as you came, watching the way that your eyes screwed shut and mouth opening in as you sucked in harsh breaths. You could feel his cock twitch inside of you and you knew that he was close, wondering if he was going to cum inside of you or pull out before he did. He did the latter, taking one more deep stroke before pulling out. Anakin was about to start stroking himself with his hand but you rushed with your own to meet him there, using your own and pumping a few times.

A string of profanities came from his lips as he came, white hot liquid spurting onto your stomach, dripping like beads coating your skin. He had no shame as he shuddered, muscles flexing with every passing second. He drank in your body, seeing how wet you were for him, how soft your hand was on his cock, how much he longed to see you like this more times before you and him left back for the war. And soon enough he was finished, the only thing between both of you was both of your panting breaths.

Anakin moved to grab something on the floor, realizing that it was the shirt he had on before and moving to wipe your stomach off, dropping it to the floor and coming to lay down next to you. You winced for a moment as you moved to look at him, his own eyes staring at the ceiling. You were scared of what was to come next, if there was anything that was supposed to come next. You knew that the two of you couldn’t be together, at least openly, though it was even risky to continue doing something like this in private.

“Anakin,” You called out to him, forcing him to look at you. “What will happen next?”

“I don’t know, Y/N, I don’t know,” He responded. All he knew was that he wanted you, again and again. In the domestic moments and in the explicit ones like before. You were so tantalizing, and he realized now that because he had tasted the forbidden fruit that was you, he would never be able to stop. There was simply no way that he would be able to conceal his want for you from you anymore.

You waited for his answer, knowing that it would probably be one you didn’t want to hear. But for the second time this evening, Anakin surprised you again.

He leaned over and kissed you.

And you knew his answer from that.

[derkastellan]

Musings: That fantasy show no one is making...

Fantasy is a genre of movie and television is a back and forth. Nobody talks about it for a while and then it’s back with something big. “Lord of the Rings”. “Game of Thrones”. And yet they fail to make the show I’d like to watch.

I’d say the fantasy genre is good at painting itself into corners. Or being painted into corners. Each success digs a hole it then falls in and vanishes for a while. The “Hobbit” movies were abysmal (compared to the “Lord of the Rings” movies) and had “money grab” written all over them. The prequel shows for “Game of Thrones” are basically cancelled. 

I wasn’t really a fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (and its spinoff “Angel”), or “Hercules” and “Xena”, but they did something right. (And so did “Highlander”.) They were successful ongoing stories about monster hunting. And they were doing fantasy in a way you could watch it every week, even if it was “urban fantasy” or ripping off Greek mythology and not “classic fantasy.”

Fantasy - in the sense of pseudo-medieval, wizards, druids, and shit - however has not been released in that format, really. Yet I think it would do really well. The problem, I think, are fantasy-themed movies defining the genre in the heads of television producers. 

In the 80s, fantasy met clear special effects limitations, but the stuff we got was “The Neverending Story”, “Willow”, and “The Dark Crystal”. Save-the-world plots. In two out of three you can see very clearly the limitations of their SFX possibilities. (Oh, and the astoundingly dark “The Black Cauldron” by Disney. Holy cow. And a first “Lord of the Rings” animated movie, showing the potential of animation to do fantasy.) 

Oh, and the Conan movies, especially the first one - a brillant piece of Sword & Sorcery, very nice, but that one - like He-Man and everything else in the 80s - fed the desire for larger-than-life action heroes - like Arnold became in many movies. It soon didn’t matter what these “heroes” did, as long as lots of extras died, their muscles showed, and you got a lot of bang for the buck.

In the 2000s we got the “Lord of the Rings” (saving the world, now including mass battle sequences) and the “Harry Potter” movies, the latter being a genre of their own (which found its own imitators, but I forget who is what.) People clearly like fantasy and it can draw audiences beyond genre fans if done right.

In the 2010s we got “Game of Thrones” (for example). Here we see that somebody adapted fantasy not revolving around a story that just meant getting the MacGuffin to save the world or similar. Power politics. Factions. Murder. Tits and ass, and lots of it. (And rape.) The show made sure that there were all kinds of “adult thrills” in it. (Hey, “It’s not porn, it’s HBO!”)

I out myself as a fan of Piers Anthony and his life-sized protagonists and their life-sized struggles. Or take Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. There are plenty of stories that don’t need protagonists that save the whole world and then their story concludes.

The actual premise of D&D - go out, kill monsters, fight multiple villains, save villagers and what not - was obviously good enough for hundreds of video games. Why does it not show up on the “small screen?” Something like Leiber where our “heroes” are half-scoundrels making their living in a rough city. Dungeon explorers. Whatever.

The silly thing is that doing something like Lankhmar doesn’t need a huge SFX budget, the bane of many fantasy productions. Most antagonists can just be human. You can develop a core cast that can play off each other. This should be prime TV material, actually, especially in the age of Netflix. Just play it fucking straight for once! No quirky twists, no bizarre unique thing about your world. Even playing it straight would be novel by now because it hasn’t really been done.

Frankly, TV doesn’t have to be that original. How many crime and cop shows are out there that only slightly diverge in the disposition of their “asking the questions” cast? How many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes? A show like “Highlander” was solid TV (and definitely better than the 2nd movie). Fantasy has the possibility to be a TV staple. Just make the episodic format work.

I mean, now we have “The Witcher” this and that, but again, there’s a large plot moving around, and fate of nations. Where are the people that just make their own lives work? A fantasy party could be at times like “Friends” and it could do mystery and crime investigations. I sometimes joke to my players about “CSI: Woodrealm” when they ask questions about a mystery murder they could have gotten off of a cop show. The fantasy genre is versatile because we made it so. There’s a lot of ideas buried in modules written for role-playing games.

Once upon a time the “Star Wars RPG” not only preserved the “Star Wars” universe when the movies petered out, it also did the world-building that video games and comics and books then expanded upon, until we got more “Star Wars” movies (albeit mostly shitty ones) and TV shows. RPGs are notoriously good at creating worlds for basing stories in.

Think small. Or at least smaller. Make a decent fantasy TV show.

[flippinoptimist]

> Vel : Meet a nerdlord

Today at 2:45 AM

deputyheadmistress Alright, someone talking to you on my behalf about a lack of privacy got to me a bit. But I'm not upset with you for how the internet behaves.

flippinoptimist thats lurky, theyre a little closer to omniscient than is average for most beings, and like kind of giving advice, and they mean well i think they meant it mostly to make me stop chargin around in like, manic mode, though, even if stuff relatin to you was the causal start of the chain sorry you got dragged into it miss granger, and that i wasn't doin the tact thing

deputyheadmistress I didn't mean them, I meant the thread about different faux book titles. But a close to omniscient being is, I suppose, something I'll also have to get used to. I'm at least a bit used to manic teens, though it's not the best way to get shocking information.

flippinoptimist i think my earth age would technically start with a two, but thats sorta recent after you spend enough time around here you get used to the like, multiverse

deputyheadmistress Can we, perhaps, stop talking about the multiverse for a few moments? And talk about something a bit more grounding, like your particular brand of magic. I'm very curious.

flippinoptimist sure its sorta a fusion of everything ive run across, since the inherent stuff that my ~destiny~ tried to put on me isnt the same kind of stuff as the place where im learnin the inherent is more of a "woo, heres a big abstract concept, you are an incarnation / channeler of a shard of it, neato"

deputyheadmistress That sounds like a lot to dig into, but alright.

flippinoptimist the school part is about how you can structure thought and energy flow into symbols and runes and things i'm focusin on artificing ..and the inherent part has given me a knack for illusions i cant figure out how to actually cast spells but im good at making things!

deputyheadmistress Oh! I was very good at ancient runes during my time at Hogwarts, and while I haven't managed to do much with it since graduation, other than an enchanted bag, I'd be really curious to see what similarities there might be. I wonder if you can cast spells. Logic seems like it'd point to yes, but if you're from somewhere else...

flippinoptimist id be curious about them!  i know the words to a few spells but ive never seen  them and do naut have a wand of the kind you are thinking of the wands i know about / make each have a specific spell in them, and are locked to create a specific effect that triggers when a gesture or word or w/e happens

deputyheadmistress That's terribly inefficient.

flippinoptimist sure, its Terrible

deputyheadmistress ... Is that referencing those historical people of note who end up being so infamous people associate them with the word 'Terrible' as well?

flippinoptimist naut much different than having a necklace that makes you invisible though yes! it also enables a billion terrible puns

deputyheadmistress I was curious. It's a bit strange to add it yourself, don't you think?

flippinoptimist (ba dum tsh)

deputyheadmistress Oh.

flippinoptimist it is

deputyheadmistress Well, that explains that, doesn't it?

flippinoptimist but my species has this thing, where on adulthood we each replace our kid name with an adult Title

deputyheadmistress Oh, it's a cultural thing.

flippinoptimist yeah, and i chose a human one

deputyheadmistress Alright. I read a little bit on that.

flippinoptimist because humans are neat and i like them

deputyheadmistress Oh! Well, I'm glad you like humans, then.

flippinoptimist and i respect a lot of the cultural things i see in most of the human places i have found

deputyheadmistress Good, I was about to ask that.

flippinoptimist also everything that comes out of japan is amazing

deputyheadmistress I don't know how I could let you use a wand from here, but I want to try.

flippinoptimist id love to try if you can think of a way! i am pretty good at establishing first contact with new universes, and i could get you alien tech and magic to check out if you wanted for various definitions of alien

deputyheadmistress ... Alien tech won't work so well on Hogwart's grounds. I had to heavily modify this computer so it'd function here.

flippinoptimist i am curious about how

flippinoptimist alllsooo....  ill have to find a copy of the magic version of getting around from place to place

deputyheadmistress Oh! I wrote a whole thesis on how to make magic more compatable with muggle text over the summer, let me...

flippinoptimist but i know where to find it!  couple of steps and itll work out okay

deputyheadmistress I'll send it to you later. It's a bit lengthy, and I have to type it up here. Alright, I'll hold.

flippinoptimist okay i hate to say this because i am definitely interested in exchangin data and showin things, but it feels rude not to remind you before we get much further that a step of getting this to work is probably going to involve me (random internet stranger) havin to figure out what your coordinates are, so i can write them in the format needed for the circley part i can get you the circle rune pattern either way, but if you want a way to actually use it, id need to basically track your IP but, like, fancy and involving you running a thing on a computer let me know if you want to do that part, but heres the circle diagram

flippinoptimist -- flippinoptimist began sending file : transportationcircle.pdf --

deputyheadmistress I have been warned about random internet strangers.... I may have to work on protection wards for a moment, for the sake of safety.

flippinoptimist sure thing i highly advise not using that w/o fillin in coordinates the way it says, and also not without knowin your home coordinates if you step through that thing, the only way back is to know how to write your home address, you know?

deputyheadmistress Alright

flippinoptimist to find home coordinates, install one a these chat programs, and send me a private message, i can use a couple a tools to trace the connection from there and get your code

deputyheadmistress This is certainly the sort of decision I want to be making at five in the morning. Alright, I've got everything set up. What is life without adventure, and the chance to make the headmistress mad at me.

flippinoptimist lol the decision will still be here at not five in the morning, but you wont be able to blame it on the time then shit i should give you the programs shouldnt i -- Discord, Trollian! --

deputyheadmistress Thank you.

flippinoptimist i have a set of coords i can give you that are explicitely for being a neutral place to meet people, but the sky isnt done yet so its janky lookin but!  the building is finished

deputyheadmistress I've chosen a fairly neutral place for the moment, don't worry.

flippinoptimist ok!

deputyheadmistress > Message him on Discord. This will be absolutely fine. Totally.

flippinoptimist > He messages her back!  About two minutes later, he gives her the number version of her coordinates, which she can use to get back home from anywhere.  He also gives her the coordinates to the convenience store, which he mentions is "a pocket dimension under construction"

deputyheadmistress > She'll... Write that down and probably not do anything with it for a while. > If he tries to look at her coordinates directly, it will really really not work, as if his machine were glitching, but he can probably go a few miles out for a nice view of a scottish country side.

flippinoptimist > Neat!  He ..does poke that far, but then sets his machine to go back to looking somewhere else.  The coordinates are saved, but he promises to himself to not use them. if somebody gives you coordinates, you can go places, or people w/ yours can send you stuff or come visit

deputyheadmistress Alright. This is going to take a bit of getting used to, but if you want to come over you can.

flippinoptimist > ..man, he was supposed to be in time out, but lately he'd been doing so well ..until today.. and he'd been leaning into choosing the Chaotic choices more and more often... > What good was putting yourself in time out if you didn't stick to it?

flippinoptimist crazy o clock in the mornin probably aint the best time for first impressions, though its temptin as hell.  i could send across some small magic gunk and weird alien snacks as a proof of concept, and meet you like, tomorrow or another day soon?

deputyheadmistress That sounds good! I'll send you some magic things too, then.

flippinoptimist sweet!  we can compare notes

deputyheadmistress > Time to gather some of George's jokes and some magical candy.

flippinoptimist > He would send an invisibility ring, a few novelty disguises, a small opal that made anyone within line of sight experience a slightly sweet taste (in a well-shielded bag), and a variety of alternian mass-produced snackfoods labled in a clearly alien language.  Ones he thought might not creep out humans too bad.

deputyheadmistress > Bertie botts every flavor beans are a necessity, though she does make sure to include a carefully penned note about what flavors he may come across that are less pleasant. Chocolate frogs are included as well, of course. Things that turn skin different interesting colors, fireworks that make flame animals bound through the air.

flippinoptimist > He is going to admire the hell out of and carefully store these for later perusal.

deputyheadmistress > He also gets a somewhat large coinpurse that he can shove his whole arm in and still seem to not run out of room.

flippinoptimist okay this is a pretty neat bag stupid question and no i am not going ot try, what happens when you turn it inside out

deputyheadmistress You could turn it out for a really long time. I think it'd be annoying to stuff it back in though

flippinoptimist okay, what if i went for a swim in the ocean with it is there a limit?

deputyheadmistress Of course there's a limit. But it can hold a tent or two, several thin blankets, changes of clothing, general everyday use things, and of course money. Thin things work better, obviously. You could probably fit thick blankets, but it'd be way more annoying both to put them in and pull them out.

flippinoptimist that makes a lotta sense and is pretty interestin i have a tech way of carrying lots of stuff, but you mentioned tech was sad

deputyheadmistress Oh! I have a print version of the paper I was going to type up.

flippinoptimist ive got an amulet thats basically like a mr potato head that disguises you all the runework lines up so you can unclip parts and clip in different parts

deputyheadmistress > Send that along, also. There's moving pictures involved, with her pictured. Oh wow.

flippinoptimist modular!

deputyheadmistress I don't think describing it as 'Mr Potato Head' is reassuring, for a disguise, but a modular disguise is interesting.

flippinoptimist it only works when everything is seated in firmly and shut, but its also sort of like legos > He .. sends a modular disguise amulet over too, with a couple of bits and pieces it only does disguises for my species, but hey, maybe thatll be handy

deputyheadmistress Maybe.

flippinoptimist pro tip if you are ever going to go to a place with my species, ask them which color of person is best for you to be can of worms subject really

deputyheadmistress That sounds racist as hell.

flippinoptimist oh yeah

deputyheadmistress Joy.

flippinoptimist p much sometides people call the usual empress "fish hitler" most of the dudes i know are huge rebels

deputyheadmistress The magical world just recently got done with a war similar to Hitler's.

flippinoptimist but!  there are placeswhere things are fine its just good to check if a place is one of them first

deputyheadmistress So I'm a little sick of that.

flippinoptimist i hang out in like three different places where she got deposed differentamounts of time ago yeah thats aight

deputyheadmistress At least there's that.

flippinoptimist speaking of humans, its great how often its naut like that like, sometimes, but anyway people can be pretty cool when teyre given teh chance

deputyheadmistress I do like to believe in the inherent goodness of people, despite how much bad has happened.

flippinoptimist i think people can choose how theyre gonna be theresa lotta nice reasons to choose not to be a dick

deputyheadmistress I should hope you wouldn't need reasons, but yes there are reasons to be nice.

flippinoptimist sometimes bein mean is tempting, otherwise people wouldnt do it you get all wrapped up in somethin, dont see all of it, then suddenly you get a reality check an gotta go "hey is this where i wanna be" and then people ignore the question because they dont wanna think about it and then its sealed, theyre dicks and theyll stay that way

flippinoptimist till they look around again

deputyheadmistress I suppose.

flippinoptimist i spend a lotta time thinkin about it i was a jerk when i was younger, and i decided to be nice instead so i spend a lot of time talkin to dudes who are or were also jerks and we all get better! cause i can help them find the reasons they need to start

flippinoptimist also jerks are sometimes kinda hilarious, and theyre often pretty good at shit.  otherwise theyd have learned better when they ran into a problem they couldnt solve w/o help.

deputyheadmistress It's getting a bit late. I think I should probably turn in for the night, before all of the teenagers wake up and need scowling at.

flippinoptimist that is probably a thing i hope you have a good night miss granger it was nice meetin you

deputyheadmistress It was really interesting talking to you, Vel.

flippinoptimist i try for interestin

deputyheadmistress Do you really need to try?

flippinoptimist not really

deputyheadmistress Have a good night. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

flippinoptimist bye!

[megacircuit9universe]

Escape Velocity

If the Earth were bigger... say ten percent bigger, then people would be, on average, smaller... because the stronger gravity would make it impractical to stand, say, six feet tall.

In reality, we rarely see humans who are seven feet or taller, and the few that we do see, have extreme difficulty pumping the blood through their bodies, against the force of our normal gravity. 

And there are also issues with our feet and spines not being very well designed for... well, honestly... even normal sized humans, let alone ones who are seven feet or taller.

In Earth’s past, we’ve had enormously large land animals, such as brontosaurs, or even the T-Rex, but these creatures evolved at a time when the atmosphere was far richer in oxygen than it is now... allowing them more energy to power much larger hearts and other large muscular structures.

If Jurassic Park were real... most of the dinos would either die of hypoxia in adulthood, or... just not get that big.

Still, we humans have evolved for today's oxygen levels and... given Earth’s relatively unchanging mass, and therefore unchanging gravitational pull... we don’t get a lot taller than six feet.

An Earth 10% larger, would mean maybe five feet was the max.  I haven’t done the actual math on that but the point is that the bigger the Earth, the smaller the humans... until at some point, there is an Earth so massive, that the humans can’t be humans anymore, because they’d be too small to have brains that can do the things human brains do.

Not that brain size is everything... because it’s not.  Even humans with relatively small brains can be just as intelligent, or even as genius as humans with big brains (and humans with big brains can be morons) but there still is some lower limit on the size of a brain case that can house the computing power of a humanoid brain.

Maybe on a planet much larger than Earth, evolution would be more efficient in the way it gets to that level of computing power in even a tiny brain case... possibly so...

But those intelligent humanoids... let’s say they are only a foot tall in adulthood, but every bit as clever as we are... would have a much harder time ever getting into space than we do... because the escape velocity of their planet would be much greater.

You may be thinking here... well, but they would weigh less, so their ships would weigh less, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

That would be wrong, because they would weigh the same as we do.

At least if the analogy is one to one, then a twelve-inch tall human on a much larger Earth would experience the same pull of gravity that we six-foot humans do on our own planet. 

In other words... everything would “weigh” more.

All the elements of the periodic table have their specific “weights” as determined by the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus... So all of the carbon they are made of... all of the steel... the copper... the gold... used to make their rockets or satellites... would require more energy (per molecule) to accelerate to escape velocity than the same materials require here at home.

The energy, on the other hand, available from burning any of he fuels we burn as propellants... would be the same.

Yes, they would probably use less overall material, and on a larger planet they’d have more raw materials to mine but... the mining of all that material would take more work, thanks to gravity and... in the end the scales tip toward our little humans on a giant Earth having an extremely difficult time launching anything into orbit... even if they had all the math down cold.

And such a people might decide it makes no economic sense to bother with space. The cost just outweighs the benefit, so... forget it.

Where am I going with this?

Well... the reverse is also true that humanoids living on a smaller Earth will “weigh” the same as us, even though they could be much larger... and will, all things considered, have a much easier time with escape velocity... possibly to the point where space travel is a no-brainer, because it’s just so easy to do, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

When we’re thinking about earth like planets in the universe, the earliest of which could only have formed several million years before ours (given that several generations of stars had to pass before there was enough higher elements to form earth like planets)...

...and when we’re talking about which ones may have given birth to humanoids who got the space faring jump on everybody else... using their millions of years of lead time to create vast intergalactic empires... 

...we are probably talking about humanoids who evolved on “sub earths.”

I use that term to contrast the common term, “super earth,” that is applied to exoplanets we’ve discovered which are similar to Earth, but a good deal larger.

Everything we’ve examined about the Earth Moon relationship, and how it has been critical to human evolution... could work with a smaller Earth, that had a comparably smaller moon.

As long as the two planets in such a double planetary system are roughly the same size, and distance with respect to one another... all the same benefits will be present, such as a stable axis, and a relatively slow rotation period.

So... while we don’t know how common such double planetary systems are... i.e. ones like the Earth and Moon in a star’s habitable zone... we CAN safely assume that within that subset... our particular instance is most likely near the middle... in terms of size.

Half the earth/moon systems out there are bigger than ours... with the biggest being the most rare... but half are smaller...

...and somewhere in that smaller half is some perfectly ideal pocket where, if humanoids evolve... they just jump right out into space as soon as somebody gets the idea to try it... the way we’ve done with aircraft.

Now, there ARE issues with a small planet holding on to a decent atmosphere, such that it can give rise to humanoids.

Without as much gravity to hold the air down, it would need a stronger magnetic field... which is hard to do if you don’t have as much mass in the molten core... which is also cooling off faster than a larger molten core would cool.

But... all things considered again... there’s still a nice pocket there where slightly smaller earths than ours, with slightly smaller moons, could still have enough mass and magnetosphere to allow humanoid evolution... yet would have an escape velocity low enough to make space exploration a relative walk in the park.

It’s important to remember here, that once you’ve established a decent orbital infrastructure of space stations and moon bases... the resources of your whole solar system are easy pickings.

Establishing that orbital infrastructure is the hard part, because of all the hardware and fuel you first have to launch off the surface... not to mention all the resupply of food for all the people in your space stations before they get to the point where they can produce their own food.

For humanoids living on a sub-earth, creating that orbital infrastructure could be as economical as what we’ve done here, colonizing the continents and establishing all our surface level metros, with their air and shipping routes.

If our escape velocity wasn’t such a costly hurdle... we could have whole factories in orbit by now, along with colonies on both the Moon and mars.

What would our alien visitors think of that?

But instead, what they see is a planet of humans who... because our escape velocity is just a tad too burdensome... have all but given up on space travel...

Preferring to settle for orbital communication satellites, a token space station, and a smattering of robots to go and take pictures of planets we can’t afford to visit first hand.

This must be why we are so fond of our whimsical little airplanes... because we know the sky... the blue part with the clouds in it... really is the limit.

But that’s an atmosphere with some issues... growing hotter as we pump out more CO2 by the ton... which can happen when you don’t take your industry off planet.

They see a world of humans using their most advanced tech... such as their nukes... to war over limited resources on the surface... rather than just get out into space where there are unlimited resources.

And they see us slowly destroying our planet with the waste that comes from using up those ground resources... as well as all the destruction that comes from all the warring.

They’ve probably seen this before.

This is just what you get from a planet of this particular mass.

People on planets of this particular mass are always bitching and moaning about how expensive it is to get into space, like jobless pot-smoking kids in their late twenties, still living with Mom and Dad, whining about their crushing student debt, and the shitty gig economy.  

Wah Wah Wah...

Not to bash young adults. I’m not. That’s just what the Aliens think, because they fail to recognize how their ancestors came from “escape velocity privilege.” And they should be helping us, but they don’t care.

They don’t care, because centuries of space travel has made them comfortable, and lazy... with their nearly useless limbs up there in near-zero G, eating their bon bons.

So... despite the fact that the universe as a whole may be teeming with intelligent life... we really are on our own at this juncture in our history.  

And as much as everybody squabbles about racism, pollution, climate change, and economic disparity... pointing fingers this way and that way at what party, or corporation is to blame...

The only sustainable solution for the human race is to invest in space.  

Given our body plans, and our brains, space is our legacy. 

And that legacy is ours to lose.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Wussy Interview: Monsters, Inc.

Photo by John Erhardt

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“The magic of the modern world,” dryly quips Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver as I’ve successfully connected him and co-band-leader Lisa Walker over a three-way call. “We tend to be Luddites,” he adds. The sort of simultaneous weathered curmudgeonly sarcasm and conversational warmth Cleaver and Walker exude is exemplary of a duo who’ve been at it for a long time. A band born out of a dare to play together in 2001 (Cleaver was in Cincinnati cult heroes Ass Ponys), Wussy have released seven albums of folk-, shoegaze-, and country-tinged rock. Cleaver and Walker share vocal, guitar, and songwriting duties, while Mark Messerly plays bass and Joe Klug the drums. Recently, they’ve added John Erhardt on pedal steel. All five shine on the band’s latest full-length, the excellent What Heaven Is Like.

Heaven, like a lot of Wussy records, centers around society’s Midwestern outcasts--not who they consider the “other” but who society as a whole considers so. In context of today’s climate, the band seems all the more essential, avoiding the self-righteous trap of writing politically inspired music by channeling it through the ultra-personal consumption of culture. Walker’s songs, especially, are loosely based on everything from Fargo to Charles Burns’ Black Hole. And on the record, the band covers folk singer Kath Bloom, another outsider. “If key and musical ability are something you’re concerned with, you’re not gonna like Kath Bloom,” jokes Cleaver. “She is a wonderful writer.”

While Wussy don’t have any upcoming tour dates (they recently had to cancel a couple tour dates due to Cleaver experiencing spinal stenosis), they’ve been quite busy even besides Heaven, releasing a duo CD, Record Store Day CD, Cleaver solo record, and split single with The Paranoid Style on Bar/None. Still, it’s Heaven that will endure and remain both a document of socially inspired music in 2018 and a timeless record. Read my conversation with Cleaver and Walker, heavily edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: What about What Heaven Is Like is unique as compared to your past discography, and what about it is a continuation of your past albums?

Chuck Cleaver: It took a lot longer to make the other ones for various reasons--we kind of tried some other studios, and it worked out to varying degrees, but we were kind of away from our home turf a little bit. We got some good stuff out of it, but we decided we were more comfortable where we normally record. 

It took us a little bit to actually get going. Current political stuff kind of hindered us for a while because we were all to varying degrees put off by it. But that worked its way into some of the lyrics. We explored a little more. I think we do with every record. We thought, “Let’s go even farther out of whatever limb we normally do.” The quieter songs were possibly even quieter than before. 

I don’t think try is the right word, but it’s just something we naturally lean towards. We just get bored otherwise. We keep things moving and hope it’s interesting for other people.

SILY: In the opening song, “One Per Customer”, the line about the astronauts stands out: “back when astronauts had more appeal.” What did you mean by that?

CC: I was born in 1959. Throughout the 60′s, my sister and a lot of her friends wanted to marry a fuckin’ astronaut. They were new, and it was the “it” job for swingin’ guys or whatever. Now--in reality, being an astronaut is scary as hell--but it doesn’t have the appeal that it once did. Kids when they grew up wanted to be an astronaut. I don’t have any idea what they want to be now. A robot, maybe. Maybe kids just wish they were more intelligent. I don’t know. It does seem like being an astronaut used to be more of a goal.

Lisa Walker: I had an astronaut Barbie.

CC: And there was an astronaut GI Joe.

LW: But I feel like that’s not as much of a thing now.

CC: Now, everybody wants to be a fuckin’ reality star or something. Ugh. They should just be murdered in their sleep. Sorry.

LW: What?!?

CC: [laughs]

LW: Oh my god.

SILY: “Gloria” was inspired by the character in the latest season of Fargo--it’s not the first time you’ve named an album or song title after a movie or TV show. Attica! was named after Dog Day Afternoon. Why do you like naming things after other parts of culture?

LW: My theory on this is that I think classical allusions are a little played out. We’ve already used all the biblical ones.

CC: We’re big TV advocates.

LW: I prefer TV over film generally.

CC: I prefer TV over people.

LW: I’m in that camp, too. And I watch the same things over and over again. It’s like a comfort. Almost like therapy. One of the documentaries I saw over the past couple years I really enjoyed was that brony one. I can’t remember the title. [Editor’s note: It’s Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony]. It sounds odd, but it’s pretty sweet. It’s sort of like that Bob’s Burgers episode with the Equestranauts.

CC: [cackles]

LW: They talk about how a lot of people process stuff through watching television. Something made for children helps people process adults, conflicts, emotions. I kind of get that. For me, that third season of Fargo helped me process the election. It took me a while to get through it. I had to quit in the middle because it was too bleak. I was like, “This guy’s gonna win.”

CC: The thing is [in the show] he doesn’t beat her spirit.

LW: That’s my takeaway from every article. I try to come away with the long view of history. I know a spark of hope when I see it, too. And I think that TV, more than movies, is good at telling the story.

SILY: Over that many episodes and hours, over a serial thing, it allows for greater storylines and development. It’s just such a commitment, and there’s so much, it can be hard to pick.

LW: I know. Some are too intense for me, frankly, because I get too into it. I’m one episode into Season 1 of Legion, and there’s flashbacks with a puppy. I’m already like, “If they do something to that dog, I’m out.”

CC: I’m like that with animals and little kids. Unless the little kid’s an asshole--then I’m like, “Kill that son of a bitch.”

LW: [laughs]

CC: Plus, I have the attention span of a gnat. Sometimes, when we’re watching a movie, I’ll get up and leave the room, and my wife will be like, “God damnit. We’re watching a fucking movie! What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, I forgot.”

LW: I watch a lot of Bob’s Burgers and Parks and Recreation. Things I’ve already seen. And that stuff helps me with reality a little bit because there’s a kindness to it.

CC: There’s kind of a not-kindness to it too that keeps it funny. Bob’s Burgers is a very irreverent show. But in a sweet way.

SILY: What else helps you process and come to terms with the world around you?

LW: For me, I listen to a lot of Gang of Four and Wire. Their anger is soothing.

CC: Just being in a band. My wife always notices I get really grumpy when we don’t play for a while. [Lisa and I] both for varying degrees buy lots of junk--not really junk--but vintage stuff. We both collect all kinds of things. Going to antique malls and fairs and stuff like that is very therapeutic for me. I don’t even have to buy anything. Just walking around and seeing the tritest of people’s lives is interesting to me.

SILY: That’s exactly what my girlfriend does. She just organized her so-called “cabinet of curiosities” with her knick-knacks and what not.

CC: That’s it. Organizing and reorganizing things, looking at each thing and wondering whether it’s haunted or not. It’s just interesting to me. It provides great joy. I just posted a picture on Facebook--I found an old rat trap with Mickey Mouse’s picture on it. [To Lisa] You actually found it first, I think.

LW: Why would you put Mickey Mouse on a rat trap? That makes no sense.

CC: Exactly. But it’s just beautiful. Like, “Oh my god. Who thought of this?!?” That keeps me going. It made my entire week.

SILY: There’s a clip of Tom Waits on Letterman from a few years ago wherein he for no reason brought a rat trap from the 1800′s. He didn’t explain why he had it--he just had it. It makes me crack up every single time.

LW: It explains itself. 

CC: It’s just fascinating. Especially when it’s something that’s mass produced. I’ll never get over some of the stuff we found created by individuals, but the idea that a group of people got together in a board room or wherever and thought, “This rat trap with Mickey Mouse on it is going to be a good idea” is just great to me. Wow. This mass hallucination of people thinking it’s the right thing to do.

LW: It’s like the Middle Ages dance hysteria. Where people did something in hysteria until they died--like dancing. There are paeans with the Pied Piper of Hamelin where they think something happened like that. If you look in the town records of Hamelin, they say, “It’s been such and such years since our children went away.” And they don’t know what it means. There’s a stained glass that told the story.

CC: That’s some X-Files shit.

LW: You could also make correlations with acts of terror now. You read and think, “Why would somebody do that?” It’s crazy.

SILY: You can be fascinated and talk about how crazy the past is, but part of me thinks you can’t judge it at all because we do shit that in a number of years is just as crazy if not crazier.

CC: Imagine two generations from now people looking back at our political atmosphere and wondering, “Those motherfuckers were nuts. What the hell were they thinking?”

LW: I always love watching movies made before cell phones because people actually look around. You see their face. Now, if everyone’s not on their phones, it seems disingenuous somehow. You’re like, “That’s not real.”

SILY: I was waiting for the train the other day, and some guy was talking on the phone and very purposely and loudly saying, “I’m trying to engage with these people and they’re all on their phones!” Part of me was like, “Nobody wants to talk you to, it’s early.” But there was a certain extent to which he was right.

CC: And, you’re on the phone, [too].

SILY: Back to the record. It seemed like it had a much darker instrumental tone than previous records. Was that at all an intention or observation on your end?

CC: It was probably just a product of the time in which it was made, I’m guessing. We don’t ever talk about that stuff. We never say, “Let’s put in the devil’s chord,” or “the brown note” or anything.

LW: If we could, we would, though.

CC: Especially the brown note. The idea of our record making people poop their pants is just great.

LW: Musical laxative.

CC: Again, we don’t discuss much. We just do it. However it comes out is how it comes out. I know that seems strange. We’re just not that kind of a band.

LW: You know what it is, though. It’s a product of what we listen to. If we’re listening to a lot of Yo La Tengo--particularly their darker stuff, as I do--that’s gonna come out in what I play. Not like I’m trying to copy it. It’s just by osmosis.

CC: And I’ve watched a lot of black metal documentaries this year. [laughs] There’s probably that. It’s just interesting to me. I don’t listen to the music much or at all. I could watch a documentary on practically anything.

SILY: Any good ones in particular?

CC: If you go on YouTube--I’m terrible at remembering titles--there’s a couple that are really informative. They’re always kind of funny. Any time I see someone in corpse makeup, it just makes me giggle. At the same time, they seem very genuine and into it, so I can’t make fun of it too much. It’s no less relative than what we do.

SILY: Lisa, how do you like the new Yo La Tengo record?

LW: I haven’t heard it yet. I’ve only heard one song. I’m looking forward to it. My favorite Yo La Tengo record is Electr-O-Pura, if that gives you a sense of the ones I like. I like them all, but the ones that tend towards that. I think that record is kind of dark. A lot of singable noise. You could hum that record. Some of their stuff is so monotone--the I Can Hear the Heart Beating era. Like that song “Demons” of theirs from one of their covers records. I tend to like their dark stuff, so I’m hoping it goes in that direction.

SILY: It’s pretty droney.

LW: I’m in.

SILY: One song is in that great tradition of sweet, fuzzed out bliss like “Tom Courtenay”. I think it’s one of their best songs. The rest is kind of atmospheric.

LW: Sounds like Yo La Tengo. I will be happy.

SILY: The song on the new Wussy record “Tall Weeds”--

LW: We’ve played that more than any of them.

CC: We’ve been playing that for almost two years. Since the end of Forever Sounds.

SILY: The delivery in the vocal tone reminded me of Nick Cave.

LW: Sweet. That’s always a compliment.

CC: Thanks. I can think I’m skinnier and more handsome now.

SILY: The line, “Are you afraid of all the monsters in the folding metal chairs,” on the final song “Black Hole”--

CC: Best line on the record.

SILY: What’s the story behind it?

LW: Since “Tall Weeds” was kind of born out of Black Hole, that graphic novel by Charles Burns, I was having trouble knowing what to write about on this record. So I thought, “Let’s just make a whole suite about that.” Chuck had already gotten the ball rolling, and I had to write my half. If you haven’t read [Black Hole], it’s about this mysterious disease that afflicts people graduating from high school in this town. It’s like an STD, but people mutate. Not so much X-Men style--they become lizard skin or part animal. Some people grow a tale. Some guy grows a mouth on his neck that talks and tells his secrets.

CC: [laughs] It’s an amazing graphic novel.

LW: It touches on fear of aging, growing up, fear of change. I just thought about what that graduation would look like. But it rang true to me because of the climate, challenging my perceptions of people.

CC: Where it hit with me is I can remember my graduation, looking out on all those dunce faces and thinking, “What a bunch of fuckin’ assholes, I’m getting out of here.”

LW: That feeling of alienation from everything from your own body to your neighbors. Because even though those people mutate, they’re still the same people. And that’s the key. It just sort of brings out what’s already dormant in their spirit. They turn into something that makes them want to act out.

CC: You and I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Different places. But all I thought about was getting the hell out of there when I was 18.

LW: Me too. I don’t like to downplay where I’m from.

CC: I respect where I’m from and respect the people, but I didn’t belong there. I was afraid of all the monsters.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album title?

LW: [laughs]

CC: [cackles]

LW: One day, when I was walking in the studio, I was thinking about this tweet from Donald Trump. He was shit-posting all day. After all of the shit-posting and talking about hating people, there was something like, “Oh, read this new book!” I forgot what the title was, but it was something along the lines of “what heaven is like.” “Read it today! Beautiful.” Are you serious? [laughs] It was so gross, but so funny. It was like Onion level. I got the title wrong. It’s not “What heaven is like.” It’s A Place Called Heaven. [The rest of the band] laughed so hard. They were like, “That’s the title.”

CC: Then we found an old postcard and ran it through some filters and that’s how we came up with the cover.

SILY: Are you still ingrained in the Cincinnati music scene?

LW: I think so. I never really was that much. I’m really less so now but just because I don’t go out a lot. I save my going out for being on tour. I don’t go to a lot of shows. It’s not because I don’t like music. I just don’t like going out socially much.

CC: We have two band members who are a little more social than me, Lisa, and John. We never go anywhere, pretty much.

LW: We do, but with our own families. I get together with Chuck and his wife or John and his wife.

CC: Mark and Joe tend to be our butterflies. [laughs] Our rhythm section.

LW: I go out on the road, and that’s sort of how I get it out of my system.

[theconservativebrief]

The most important scene in Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2 comes early on and offers a brilliant summation of everything the writer-director does so well.

The Parr family, having attracted the attention and irritation of the government with their superhero shenanigans, sits in a lonely motel room, munching on Chinese food. They’ve just saved the city of Municiberg from the Underminer, who set his giant drill on a path to destroy City Hall.

But officials don’t see all of the destruction that was averted — they only see the rubble that actually exists. Yes, nobody wants supervillains like the Underminer robbing banks, but there’s a process in place to ensure those banks and the money within them, and having superheroes leap in to save the day just complicates that process.

The scene is notable both for its small, detailed animation — pay attention to how Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) can’t seem to grasp anything with his chopsticks and finally just stabs an eggroll through the middle — and for the way it tosses a bunch of questions the movie knows it can’t possibly answer up into the air. To change the law that has made superheroes illegal, the Parrs will have to break it, to show that superheroes can still be useful. Or, as G-man Rick Dicker wearily sighs in an earlier scene, “Politicians don’t trust anyone who does a good thing just because it’s right. It makes them nervous.”

The first time I saw Incredibles 2, all of these ideas jostling for space within the movie struck me as a movie frantically searching for a story to tell, one it eventually found but that didn’t quite cohere with everything else. The second time through, though, the movie made more sense to me as a meditation on the popularity of superhero stories and what it means to live in a world where what’s legal isn’t always what’s right. It doesn’t offer solutions, because it knows there aren’t any.

But the movie is also keyed in to something that’s always present in Bird’s work, something that’s caused some to accuse him of being an objectivist along the lines of Ayn Rand: an obsession with the rights of the exceptional and how they can be stacked up against everybody else.

Incredibles 2 strikes me both as Bird’s deepest exploration of this idea and his biggest refutation of it. Bird might be fascinated by the exceptional among us, but he’s also not interested in exceptionalism if it doesn’t benefit the larger community.

Brad Bird Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images for Disney

The works of author Ayn Rand — including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others — have been hugely influential on the thinking of various political and economic theorists over the years. (Among current politicians, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is a notable devotee.) To put Rand’s writings in modern terms, you could describe her objectivism as a kind of extra-strength libertarianism, in which the truly great among us should, as much as possible, not be shackled by the law or by conventions.

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, a futuristic dystopia in which citizens who don’t contribute to society leech off the business classes, who create both wealth and useful material goods (mostly trains and railroads). The action of the book — if a book so heavy in long discussions of philosophy can be said to have “action” — mostly involves the various characters learning that society needs them more than they need society, that the world is only as strong as its strongest, who should be subject to as few rules and regulations as possible. Rand stops just short of saying, “Billionaires should be able to straight-up murder whomever they want,” but reading the book, you have to think the idea occurred to her at some point.

This is a vast oversimplification of a book I read once in high school for an essay contest, but Rand’s ideas that regulations are bad and wealth creators are good have trickled down into the modern Republican Party in ways that are hopefully obvious.

The question is if they’ve also trickled down to influence the films of Brad Bird, one of modern animation’s few auteurs, but also a writer-director who keeps returning to the idea that society places unnecessary constraints on exceptional individuals. You can see where the comparisons come from.

Bird has made just six films — 1999’s The Iron Giant, 2004’s The Incredibles, 2007’s Ratatouille, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2015’s Tomorrowland, and 2018’s Incredibles 2 — and four of those wrestle with the above idea at length. There’s a touch of that idea in Iron Giant (which we’ll get to), but it doesn’t dwell on it at length, while Ghost Protocol (one of the finest modern action movies) is mostly about how it would be totally rad to free climb the world’s tallest building. (Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland are live-action; the other four films are animated.)

The “objectivist” tag was first applied to Bird extensively after the first Incredibles. And to be sure, the very premise of the film plays in this territory: superheroes have been outlawed due to safety concerns, and one character bellows, “With everyone super, no one will be!” This is particularly true of a concluding scene in which young Dash Parr, blessed with super-speed, intentionally throws a race at a track meet. The plot reason for this is that he can’t let anybody know he has superpowers (which are still illegal), but it plays as a weird critique of the idea of participation trophies and the attempt to make sure no child’s feelings are hurt.

The criticism followed Bird through Ratatouille — which is ostensibly about how anyone (even a rat) can cook but is also kind of about how if you don’t have talent, you should get out of the way of people who do — and especially Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses abscond to an alternate universe where they build the sci-fi future imagined in the ’50s and ’60s and mostly abandoned in our modern era of imagined dystopias.

A world where the exceptional cordon themselves off and refuse to save the rest of the world is literally Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, where the book’s mysterious hero, John Galt, hides out to proclaim his superiority to everybody else. And now Incredibles 2 toys with many of these same themes, which makes sense as a continuation of the first film. (When I asked him about these themes, he mostly punted on answering the question, saying he didn’t think about it that much when writing his movies.)

I think it’s worth considering all of these ideas in the context of Bird’s career, which got a bit of a late start. After beginning as a young wunderkind animator at Disney in the early ’80s, Bird was fired after raising his concerns that the company was half-assing it, instead of trying to protect its rich legacy.

Bird spent much of the ’80s bouncing from project to project — he worked on, among other things, a Garfield TV special and the Amazing Stories episode “Family Dog” (his directorial debut) — until in the early ’90s, he landed a job as the animation supervisor on a new TV show named The Simpsons, a job that made his career and allowed him to direct Iron Giant. When that movie flopped, he was brought to Pixar thanks to a college friendship with John Lasseter (who has recently been pushed out of the company after accusations of sexual misconduct).

But his directorial debut still didn’t arrive until he was in his early 40s. And while that’s not exactly unprecedented, it is at least a little unusual in an industry where someone with the evident talent of Bird likely would have proceeded through the ranks of a major animation company and directed his first film somewhere in his 30s.

Bird’s self-admitted demanding nature likely make him difficult to work with — something that surely contributed to his difficulty getting a film made, despite numerous almost-realized projects, like an animated adaptation of the comic The Spirit. (Bird was also probably hurt by his certainty that “animated film” and “kids film” shouldn’t be synonymous, even though animated films aimed at adults have always been difficult sells in Hollywood.) It makes sense that Bird’s frequent musings on the shackling of genius might be a political, but it’s just as possible this is an artistic idea, based on the struggles he had getting his career to take off. (My friend David Sims has had similar thoughts at the Atlantic.)

So, yes, we could read Bird’s filmography as a celebration of Ayn Rand and of climbing very tall buildings. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t also read it in the context of the career of a director who felt stymied at every turn for almost 20 years, before he unexpectedly became one of the most successful directors of his generation almost out of nowhere.

Even then, we’d be missing something big.

The Iron Giant paints a very different picture of how those with great talents should behave. Warner Brothers

One of the things that makes that early motel-room scene in Incredibles 2 so potent is the fact that there’s no clear right answer to the issues that Bird raises via his characters. Nor is there a right answer in a later scene in which Helen Parr (Elastigirl) talks with a new friend about whether the ability to create something great or the ability to sell it to the mass public is more important to the world. Nor in the frequent arguments about whether breaking unjust laws is the right thing to do, even if society requires people to be law-abiding to function.

It’s impossible for any animated movie to truly be “timely” because they’re produced on such a long timeframe. But Incredibles 2 feels eerily tapped in to the political debates we’re having around the globe right now. If you have massive amounts of power and feel like the world is circling the tubes, is your primary duty to society or to the self? Or your family? Or all of the above? Brad Bird doesn’t know this answer, so the movie doesn’t either.

This is a common thread across his filmography. All of his movies grapple with objectivist themes, to be sure, but they also don’t conclude that doing what’s best for the self is what’s best for everybody. The closest thing to an answer Bird ever provides is “Do what’s right, and what’s right is what benefits the most people.”

In short, his movies always posit that the exceptional should be allowed to express their talents to the best of their abilities — but only insofar as they can benefit society at large.

What’s interesting is how often Bird’s most openly objectivist moments and story ideas are presented as bad things. That collection of geniuses making up Tomorrowland, for instance, invents a machine meant to bring doom to our world, while the famous line about being special or super from Incredibles is actually spoken twice — the first time by a child and the second time by the movie’s villain. Helen is the closest thing the Incredibles franchise has to a moral conscience, and she’s always the one on the side of the idea that “everyone is special.” We just have different talents.

Ratatouille might be the best developed expression of this idea among Bird’s films. His portrayal of a restaurant as a collection of people who do very specific jobs to the best of their abilities, all adding up to a kind of symphony, is very much like filmmaking, with the film’s hero, Remy the rat, standing in as a director. The movie’s villains are those who would stand in the way of Remy realizing his full talents — but you can also read that as being against prejudice, as a celebration of the idea that anyone can cook and great art can come from someone you’d never expect (like a young and hungry would-be animator from Montana, not exactly a hotbed of Hollywood talent).

It’s telling that Ratatouille’s great chef is a rodent and not the gangly human who discovers he’s the son of a great, dead chef. Talent isn’t always predictable, following along conduits you’d expect. But when you find it, it’s best to encourage it but also make sure it’s tempered with kindness, as it is in Ratatouille, a movie where even the restaurant’s waitstaff is briefly but memorably celebrated.

All of which brings us back to The Iron Giant, a movie rarely discussed in conversations about Bird’s interest in exceptionalism. If any Bird creation is exceptional, it’s a giant metal man who eats railroads and can become a literal death weapon, but the arc of the film is about the giant trending away from that which makes him exceptional and would harm others, and toward what about him is exceptional that could benefit others. It’s a movie about a really amazing walking gun who decides, instead, to become Superman.

Superman’s a fitting icon to consider as a way to understand Bird’s ultimate philosophies. Yeah, he could kill all of us with a flick of his fingernail, but he doesn’t. So could the superheroes of Incredibles 2, but they make the choice not to.

That’s why Incredibles 2 stands so beautifully as Bird’s most fully engaged wrestling with all of these ideas. It never offers easy answers because there aren’t any. The question of how we build a society that benefits everybody and gives them the same rights as everybody else, while still allowing people as much freedom as possible to exercise the talents and abilities unique to them, isn’t one that can be answered easily. It’s arguably the work of democracy itself, and it will never be finalized, as long as human beings strive for a better world. Thus, those of us who are exceptional, be they people or rodents or whole countries, are only as exceptional as they are good.

While it’s not always easy to determine the right course of action, determining what’s good almost never is. It’s what takes you away from celebrating the self and back toward figuring out how that self can fit into the community of others, how your own exceptionalism can become a part of the great symphony of life.

Original Source -> Why Incredibles director Brad Bird gets compared to Ayn Rand — and why he shouldn’t be

via The Conservative Brief

[jansegers]

Simple English Word List

SIMPLE1540 : a simple English wikipedia word list based on the XML export of all articles related to the nine major groups: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science and retaining all word forms appearing 7 times or more in this corpus. The total number of words in this corpus is well over the 100.000 words. a A.D. ability able about above absence abstinence abstract academic academy accent accept access accord account across act action active activity actual actually ad add addition adherent adjective adult advance advice affect after again against age agnostic agnosticism ago agree agreement agriculture air alcohol all allow ally almost alone along alphabet also although always amateur amendment among amount an analysis ancient and angel animal annals anonymous another answer anthropomorphism any anyone anything aphasia appear apple apply approach archaeology architecture area argue argument around arrange art article artificial artist ask aspect associate association astronomy at atheism atheist atomic attack attempt attribute audience author authority available average avoid award away B.C. baby back background backpack bad bah balance band baptism base basic basis battle BCE be bear beautiful beauty because 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China, March and May made this list because china, march and may are on it and I didn't want to decide in favor of the common noun or the proper noun; all other proper nouns have been omitted (even the ten other months that met the criterium of appearing more then 6 times). #SimpleWikipedia #SimpleEnglish #wordlist #English #words #level1540 #Inli #nimi #selo1540