#making this made me realize that the most emotional death in star wars for me was kanan

[skyshipper]

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

[mxlfoydraco]

hi hi! i saw your drarry recs and i love a lot of them! if you dont mind, can you recommend some of your fav drarry angst fanfictions with good endings? something emotional because im in a mood for that hahah. i went through the angst tagged ones and most of them aren't.. heart wrenching enough..? thank you in advance btw ^^

I have a Angst with a Happy Ending list, I'll add more here!

Close Behind by @oflights (134k)

To rescue Draco from the Underworld, Harry has to look forward. Unfortunately, Draco has to look back.

you’ve got the antidote for me by Kandakicksass (20k)

When Harry Potter unintentionally severs their soulbond before it can fully form, Draco Malfoy resigns himself to a slow death and decides not to burden Harry with a soulmate he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want.

The Beauty of Thestrals and Other Unseen Things by @writcraft (63k)

Harry has terrific friends, an amazing girlfriend and his job as Head Auror enables him to work on challenging cases and Ministry reform. He just wishes he could work out why he’s been so out of sorts. When Draco Malfoy is arrested for gross indecency, Harry’s comfortable life begins to unravel. He’s forced to decide if it’s worth risking everything for love in a world where following his heart is a criminal offence.

Nor All That Glisters by @sweet-s0rr0w (110k)

Lonely and frustrated on house arrest, with no prospects for the future, Draco begins brewing Felix Felicis in an attempt to improve his lot. Just in the short term, of course. He isn’t a total idiot.

But before long he finds himself with a thriving business, a nice flat, some actual (albeit irritatingly Gryffindor) friends, and a very satisfying sex life. What’s more, no-one is hexing him in the street. And Harry Potter is single, and gorgeous, and giving Draco decidedly interested looks.

Stop taking the Felix? You must be joking…

If Memory Serves by @dictacontrion (30k)

Maybe Draco wants to forget. Maybe it’s wrong to make him remember.

The Stars Have Courage by @fantalfart (85k)

Draco waited five long years to watch his husband wake up from a coma. He’s not ready to meet a Harry with no memory of anything that happened after he died at The Battle of Hogwarts, twelve years ago.

Telling the Bees by @cibeewastaken (31k)

Scorpius’ body was found in Hogwarts one early morning.

It'll Come Back by @vukovich (15k)

Draco Malfoy wakes up in the Thickey ward not remembering anything except that the Auror in front of him is his husband. But he's not. A tale of owning up to who you used to be.

Everything That Happens is From Now On by @thusspoketrish (42k)

After surviving a brutal assault, Draco tries to navigate the tumultuous waters of his mind and embrace a bit of love and trust in his life. After all, the smallest steps forward can begin to heal the most fractured of souls.

Us, in Lieu by @tepre (29k)

Teddy needs help and Harry needs funding. Draco sits in the other room and plays the piano.

you, a violent desire by @alpha-exodus (47k)

The Amortentia was an accident—but only the first time.

He Comes Like a Thunderstorm by @korlaena (140k)

Draco is doing his best to balance the life he wants to live and the life he’s forced to live. He’s nearing the tail-end of a long, post-war probation when Harry Potter crashes back into his life with all the grace of a charging Erumpent, breaking through his carefully constructed rules and routine. Caught up in a whirlwind of sex and lust, Potter unwittingly shows Draco that his life as an Incubus doesn’t have to be as lonely and unfulfilling as he thought, but how long can it last?

An Emerald In The Sky by @corvuscrowned (6k)

The hardest part about shagging an Unspeakable is that they’re not allowed to speak of anything. All Draco knows is that Harry works in Time. Harry works in Time, and while he’s out there in all of that time, it is as unforgiving to him as it is to anyone. Somewhere along the way, Draco realizes he's been thinking in lines, when he should have been thinking in circles.

Nobody's Ever Died Of A Broken Heart by Frayach (10k)

Harry staggers under a burden of grief, trying both to remember and to forget

There are only two good facts about Harry and Draco's disastrous marriage: it had been relatively short, and they had managed to produce a very lovely child. However, if they don't work together, they just might lose him.

Palace of Eternity by @gracerene (27k)

It had been twelve years, five months, and six days since the last time Harry had laid eyes upon Draco.

Loverboys by @corvuscrowned (84k)

As post-war violence and tensions rise, it seems as if there’s no hope to unify the wizarding world. Except, maybe, a manufactured relationship between resident Saviour Harry Potter and known purveyor of the Dark Arts Draco Malfoy. (The fact that they detest each other is beside the point.) But as Draco’s unrelenting mind games begin to wear him down, Harry has to remind himself that it’s all fake. The relationship is fake. The affection is fake. The pet names, the romance — even the engagement photos are fake. But there’s something in Draco’s kiss that might just be real.

Black Holes and Revelations by @femmequixotic (38k)

What was meant to be an unexpected one-off in the loo of a Camden bar turns into something rather different, much to Harry and Draco's surprise.

Tell Me a Secret by alexmeg (86k)

In which the bond is rooted in their emotions, everything goes even more wrong, and Harry is certain that he and Draco could never feel what the curse wants them to feel for each other. Until Harry does.

Now My Neck Is Open Wide (begging for a fist around it) by LadySlytherin (75k)

Six months post-war, Harry meets Grayson Wenke, a famousv Quidditch player. Harry believes he's found the love of his life, and a Happily Ever After ending suitable for the storybooks. When Grayson slowly goes from Prince Charming to a monster behind closed doors, Harry finds himself trapped, and alone, and fearing for his life. When Harry realizes he's pregnant, the opportunity for escape - and a real Happily Ever After - presents itself as none other than Draco Malfoy. The only question is if Harry is brave enough to take a chance, and strong enough to heal.

The Crane Lord of Gringotts by @vukovich (31k)

Harry is fine. Being an Auror is fine. Living with Ginny is fine. It's all fine. But it used to be a lot better.

Vis-à-Vis-à-Vis by @vukovich (49k)

Harry's assignment was simple. Close out Draco Malfoy's missing persons case so he can be declared dead. But who's making withdrawals from Malfoy's vaults? How is a death omen-turned-Unspeakable involved? Is an organization known as the Moirai to blame? Harry brushes it off until he can't. Until The Prophet is flooded with sightings of dead people. Until Robards throws himself on his sword. Until Ron turns on his own family. Until Harry scarcely trusts his own reflection in the mirror and trusts the stranger in his bed even less. Until all that stands between war and peace is Harry, a name plate, a stadium of murderers, and Draco Malfoy. God save the Ministry.

In His Nature by create_serenity (20k)

Harry agreed to have sex with Draco once a month in order to keep him alive, what he didn’t agree to was Draco popping up all over the place and disrupting his life in more ways than one.

Blood and Fire by @lqtraintracks (44k)

Harry has spent the last twelve years in Romania, not returning to England as often as he knows he should. It's complicated. But when Ginny asks him to be her best man and help her plan her wedding, he can't say no. Having a reckoning with his choices, with himself, won't be easy. To say nothing of seeing Draco again.

9 ½ Days by @magpiefngrl (69k)

After the events at the Manor, Harry and Draco find themselves stranded in the countryside with a broken wand and Death Eaters on their tail. This is the story of an uneasy truce, featuring faerie forests, seaside caves, Romani camps, kind old ladies, and a shared bed in an attic.

Or how two boys fell in love in the midst of a bloody coup.

Consequences of Redemption by bobbirose (120k)

When Draco makes an impromptu decision to rescue Harry Potter from Malfoy Manor, the two find themselves completely alone and facing the looming climax of the war against Voldemort. Harry must start from the beginning with Draco--and starting over has more consequences than either of them anticipated.

Both Hands by @sweet-s0rr0w (10k)

It’s been over a decade since Draco packed up his belongings and left, and Harry’s doing just fine. Really, he is. So when he spots the For Sale sign outside their old flat, he doesn’t think twice about arranging a viewing. Curiosity is only natural, right? And what harm can come from a quick trip down memory lane?

[itsphoenix0724]

Through the Pass (Cassian x Reader)

Summary: On a quiet night in with his mate Cassian recounts his past lover. A fierce, bold-hearted Valkyrie who perished during the war.

Warning: angst, does not have a happy ending, death

Word Count: 2.1k

A/N: Hello all! I'm sorry I haven't put out anything in a while. Work has been kicking my ass. This is unedited, but I wanted to put something out to get back in the groove of writing. I wrote this based on chapter 44 in acosf when Cassian talks about Tanwyn. I tried to make this as canon accurate as possible, but we weren't given many details on the young bat boys, so it was a tad challenging. It's my first time writing for Cas so I hope you enjoy! As always constructive criticism is welcome!

“Tell me about her,” it’s a quiet whisper against the shell of his ear. Cassian senses no jealousy in his mate’s tone-just a simple curiosity. He doesn’t like to go back there and doesn’t like to relive what he views as one of his most significant failures. “Please,” Nesta urges. His eyes are drawn to the fire and he thinks of that war camp. He knocks back the finger of whiskey he poured for himself, but concedes, he knows your story deserves to be told. The rush of emotions makes him drag Nesta just a little closer.

“It was a long time ago,” Cassian rumbled, “I was young. Just a lackey the camp leader liked to drag around.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

War was always an ugly thing, but it was a thing Cassian happened to be very good at.

Not that the camp leaders gave him enough respect to join the war meetings anyway. He found himself missing his brothers, and missing the warm home the Lady of the court provided for them. He wasn’t a child anymore though, he was now at the generals' mercy.

The rough summer heat beat down on his back, and he could feel his sweat soaking through his leathers. He knew something was happening today, all of the males in the camp were on edge.  

He quickly realized why when the battalion of females appeared in the camp. 

They radiated power.

They all wore leathers similar to his own, but they also wore silver gleaming chest plates engraved with two wings surrounding an eight-pointed star. Cassian’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. If the Valkyries were here then something important is happening. He felt his stomach twist in disgust when he saw the way the other Illyrian males were sneering at the women. However, the females did not falter, most sneering right back at the brutes or not giving them the time of day. 

That was when he saw their general. 

She was jaw-dropping, hair braided into a crown with a piece of white ribbon, and a strong silver sword strapped along the length of her back. She nodded at him in greeting before disappearing into his camp leader's tent. 

He felt the tips of his cheeks twinge red before his supervisor snapped at him to get back to work. 

Cassian didn’t interact with the Valkyries much after that. They had set up a camp about a mile from the Illyrians. The only glimpses of the women he got were during his daily run around the border. They rose with the sun and did stretches that he had never seen before. While the Illyrians focused more on strength training, doing the bare minimum stretches to keep muscles from tearing, the Valkyries focused more on flexibility and grounding techniques. He was even more surprised when he saw their general doing the morning warm-ups with the rest of the battalion. You were completing the warm-ups along with taking a break to mildly correct some of the others in their form. He had never seen such a thing, he barely saw his camp leader step out of the tent, let alone help newer soldiers with their form. He tried to watch and copy the movements, but he quickly realized his balance could use some work. After struggling for a while he made his way back to the camp. 

Cassian fell into a rhythm. He woke early and did his normal run until he reached the Valkyrie campsite where he would attempt to replicate the stretches and workouts from a distance. 

It wasn’t until later when he was practicing the stretches alone on the bank of a lake that he met you for the first time. The moon was high and the sky was covered in a blanket of stars that allowed him enough light to see clearly. 

“What are you doing?” the sound of your voice snapped him out of the trance he had been in, poorly imitating the Valkyrie warm-up routine. You had seen him watching you in the mornings a few times and assumed he was just like all the other Illyrian males at the camp. 

They didn’t respect you but they sure liked to stare. 

If you had realized he was trying to learn you probably would’ve helped. You decide you’d help him out anyway-by the looks of his form during a sun salutation he’d need all the help he can get. The male stared at you, mouth opening and closing trying to find some words, a pink flush dusting his cheeks. 

“I was just trying to stretch.” Cassian averted his eyes from your form leaning against the boulder, casually observing his piss-poor attempt to replicate what he’s sure must come easy to you by now. 

“I can help you if you’d like.” It’s a small offer, but this seems like a generally nice male. You’ve been tracking his eyes and they haven’t strayed from your face once. Plus it helped that you thought he was kind of cute. Clearly, he was powerful, the seven red stones decorating him were clue enough for that. However, for some reason, he hasn’t risen in rank. Probably some dumb Illyrian jealousy. If he’s stronger than the camp leader the old asshole would never let him surpass the rank of foot soldier. 

He considered your offer for a moment before nodding, and you motioned for him to get back into the form he had previously been in. 

“You Illyrians are always so focused on being as big and bulky as possible you neglect fundamentals of strength.” You’re circling him like a predator would its prey before you knock all 6 feet of him over with a small push to the stomach. His cheeks flush as he looks up at you. You’re smiling at him as you offer him a hand and he accepts it rising to his full height above you. “The first thing you need to start with is up here,” you tap a finger against Cassian’s skull and he sends you a winning smile. 

“Teach me then general. Please.” He thinks that you look beautiful, the white ribbon winding in your hair like a stolen beam of moonlight. The shadows accentuate the strong cords of hard-earned muscle. You stick your hand out again and introduce yourself. He smiles at you again in turn and tells you his name as well. 

“Okay, Cassian. I’ll teach you.” 

That was how Cassian found himself on the shore of that lake every day after sunset. The two of you trained and laughed. His favorite times were when the two of you sparred. All snarls and bared teeth. Rolling in the mud fighting to put someone on their back. It was during one of these sparring sessions that you and Cas shared your first kiss. It was one of the rare instances he had won, your form successfully pinned below him and covered in lakeside mud. Your lips had been his reward. 

You had tasted like a summer rainstorm. So much strength, but your body was still soft under his calloused hands. You were so patient with him and your soldiers, but he had seen you ruthlessly knock down other Illyrians for insulting your status as a Valkyrie. Like the sun shining while it was raining, you were his perfect paradox. 

That was how he spent the rest of the sweltering heat of the summer in Illyria. Training, swimming, and losing yourselves in each other. Cassian had greatly improved in training. He had mastered the Valkyrie sun salutation and had moved on to some more complicated balancing and stretching exercises. It was almost an even match whenever the two of you sparred. Cassian had been getting his ass handed to him less and less these days. 

As fall started rolling in, the perfect bubble you two had built started crumbling. He knew something was wrong when he found you staring at the last summer sunset with a numb look in your eye. He had sat down with you, hand encasing yours, and waited for you to be ready to speak. Your voice was broken as you finally uttered five words into the setting sun. 

“He’s sending us to die.” Cassian’s heart sank to his knees as he watched the silver line your eyes. 

“What are you talking about?” His voice was calm, but he was praying to the Mother that he had heard you wrong. He knew deep down he hadn’t because he had never seen you falter. You always seemed to be unbreakable, and yet there you were crumbling before his eyes. Cassian had to fight to beat down the urge to tear the camp to shreds, but he wrapped you up in his arms. Your shaking form further solidified the nasty fear curdling in his stomach.

“The king has ordered the entire force of the Valkyrie to march the pass in the Gollian Mountains. It’s a suicide mission. I’m going to die Cas, I have to lead my girls to die,” The cracks in your voice mirror the cracks in his heart at your words. The hopelessness as you stared numbly at the water rocked Cassian to his core. 

“There has to be some way we can stop this. Would your king really sacrifice the entire force of the Valkyries in one battle?” The logic didn’t make any sense. The Valkyries had been such a valuable asset in the war efforts. He would talk to the camp leaders tomorrow. He would fly all the way to your king's castle and demand to know what the hell he was thinking. 

“We swore an oath,” you pulled up your sleeve to show the mark of an eight-pointed star and two wings. The same symbol branded into your army’s chest plates. “When the king gives an order we must obey. I already told my battalion we probably won’t be coming back. I refuse to let them go into this blind. We’ll go down with honor at least.” The resignation in your voice delivered the final blow to his already aching heart.

He spent the rest of the night holding you, reassuring you that you didn’t fail your soldiers, that this happening wasn’t your fault, and then he made love to you under the stars for the first and last time. 

When Cassian returned to the Illyrian camp he stormed straight into his war leader's tent and demanded to know what the hell he was thinking. He demanded that the Illyrains fly with the Valkyrie, with their combined forces the scales of the battle would easily tip in their favor. The warlord had done nothing but sneer and turn Cassian away, and when he had flipped his desk over he had been punched in the mouth so hard he cracked a tooth. Still, Cassian had insisted that he was going with the Valkyrie. The camp leader had wanted to let him die but apparently, the High Lord had given a specific order to keep him alive. Instead, he was beaten and chained to a wagon at the border of the camp. 

He fought, screamed, and wailed until the morning. His wrists and ankles were bloody and one leg of the wagon had broken under the weight of his struggle. As he stared into the rising sun he knew that you were gone. No birds sang or creatures moved about the woods in the morning. 

He could feel the loss in the deafening silence of dawn. 

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

“When they finally unchained me it took the healer two full weeks to heal my vocal cords. I had torn them to shreds.”

Cassian was finally back in his body, at the House with his mate, and not back in the woods. He never returned to that lake or the pass where he knew you died. The land between the mountains had remained barren ever since. 

“I’m happy that we get to honor her now.” The quiet rage in Nesta’s voice at the injustice makes him thank the cauldron for giving him her, even if they had a rocky start. She drags a hand over her swelling stomach. The babe is almost here and he couldn’t be more thrilled to become a father. “If it’s a girl I think we should name her after her. For one of the strongest women in our history.” 

The suggestion makes tears well up in Cassian's eyes, and he almost feels like the clap of thunder he hears outside is you expressing your approval of the idea. He laughs a wet laugh into the crown of his mate’s head, pressing a kiss into her hair. 

“I think that’s a great idea Nes.”

[the-bad-batch-baroness]

Let's talk more about Mayday.

I was going through my second watch of the Bad Batch season 2, and The Outpost really stuck out to me, but not because of Crosshair. Don't get me wrong, the character development that man went through was *chef's kiss*, but it was Mayday's story that got to me.

We know very little about Mayday and his squadron. We don't even know what his CT number was, or the names of his full squad, but there are a few things we can infer about him and his men.

(spoilers for S2 E12 under the cut)

As we all know, keeping an entire clone squadron alive through the Clone Wars was next to impossible. Season after season, we watched good clones die from all sorts of squadrons and for all types of reasons (RIP Fives).

Without any outside information, it can be inferred that Commander Mayday was able to keep his entire squad alive throughout the Clone Wars. Meaning Mayday was a great leader and cared about his men, as well as the mission.

However, that all changed when he and his men were stationed on the godforsaken planet Barton IV. In the first few minutes of meeting Mayday, we see the helmets of his fallen squad memebrs memoralized on display, as well as his last two men still alive.

The Clone Wars lasted for about 3 years. They survived together for 3 years. Then, in the short time frame of just 1 year, he lost his entire squad. All of them. Just gone. Blown-up, shot, eaten, or frostbit, they died somehow, and for what?

Imagine what Mayday must have felt as his squad slowly got picked off one by one. They were just like all the other squads in the Clone Wars. They had names and personalities. They had likes and dislikes. They probably made fun of each other and laughed. They may have even cried. They were brothers.

The most heartbreaking part was when Mayday finally knew what his men gave their lives for. Gear. And not even clone trooper gear, but storm trooper gear. They battled the planets elements in literal rags, all the while dying to protect gear they could have been using. Even the music was heartbreaking.

The amount of internal twisting in his gut when he realized must have been excruciating. Clones don't show a lot of emotion. They are soldiers, after all. However, they're also human. I don't care how rough, tough, or gruff you are, you'll feel something watching a comrade die in action.

And that brings me to the avalanche scene. Everyone really focuses on Crosshair's part in this, and the correlation to their previous conversation about "dead weight", but Mayday threw a gut punch. It's one line. But it carries so much weight.

"Go, I won't make it."

This man, who has lost his entire squadron and failed the mission, has completely resigned to his fate. He's ready to die. He's ready to leave this world behind because everything he fought for is gone. He has no squad to go back to, and the empire doesn't take in strays.

At that point, death was his best option. Honestly, that is where this whole scene hits differently. Because it happens in real life with real soldiers. They fight, lose their buddies, and come back to a society that tosses them aside like garbage. They too feel that their best option is death, and they run to it.

Truly heartbreaking.

I don't know anything about the Star Wars afterlife or the lore behind their deities or "maker", but this is what I envision after Mayday dies.

Maker: Welcome, Mayday.

Mayday: Is this death?

Maker: It is.

Mayday: Are... my men here?

Maker: Yes, they are.

Mayday: Can I see them?

Maker: That depends.

Mayday: On what?

Maker: On your judgement.

Mayday: Judgememt?

Maker: Yes. You must be judged. Please tell me why I should let you pass on.

Mayday: I... there's not much I tell. I lost my squad. They followed me... and died. Their deaths are on my shoulders. I also... failed my mission. I guess I have no reason.

Maker: Perhaps. But were you a good soldier?

Mayday: I... I'd like to think so.

Maker: Commander Mayday. You followed your orders and served your men well. They gladly laid down their lives under your command. Each one spoke highly of your leadership.

Mayday: They did?

Maker: Yes.

Mayday: They were good men.

Maker: As are you. I will now pass my judgment upon you. I judge you as a good soldier and grant you access to paradise. Enter and join your brothers in peace.

Mayday: I am truly grateful.

*doors of heaven open*

*standing on the other side is his squad*

Squad: Commander! What took you so long? You're late! We've been bored without you! Come join us! Hexx and Veetch beat you here! Our squad is back together again!

Mayday: Hey boys.

*group hug*

[smokeybrandreviews]

Incorrect

Pardon this deluge of Star Wars content but Ahsoka has me reeling. Episode five really recontextualized so much about the Clone Wars (and the prequels, themselves), it’s incredibly difficult not to reexamine my previous perceptions of that part of the mythos. The realization that the Jedi Order effectively sent children to their deaths, that they gave actual teenagers command of entire clone units, is absolutely horrifying to properly understand. Sure, when it’s a cartoon, it’s all in good fun. But seeing all that carnage in live action, teenage Ahsoka standing there next to Hayden’s Anakin? That was a lot. The realization that Ahsoka Tano, one of the most powerful Jedi, trained by THE most powerful Jedi, is little more than a weapon to be used for some Republic trade dispute, is so goddamn bleak, I can’t stand it. Coming to terms with the sheer brutality thrust upon Tano, and every other Padawan at the time, is something which has skewed the very morality of the Jedi for me. I can’t see these cats as the “good guys” anymore. How can they be? The Jedi Council committed war crimes! Like, they’re no better than the Sith in that regard and that’s so weird to say out loud. I grew up with the OG trilogy so, for me, there was a stark delineation between Jedi and Sith. Luke and Obi-Wan were Jedi. Upstanding, wise, and compassionate. Good guys. Vader and Palpatine were Sith; Straight up space fascists with anger problems and a mean-streak that could destroy planets. Bad guys. There was a quaint black and white to the dynamic of the galaxy far, far, away. After that episode of Ahsoka, the child soldier thing paints the Jedi just as atrocious. Sending children to die strictly for Republic interests, is the worst kind of imperialism. It’s staggering to me that more people don’t see that. If the Jedi judged sending children to war morally correct, how can you trust that judgment? How can you not question every choice they ever made? Hoe can you not question their treatment of Anakin?

Anakin mentioned to Ahsoka that he was trained to be a peacekeeper but was he really? I mean, Obi-wan probably did his best to bring the kid up properly but let’s be honest; That was a losing fight. Qui-Gon plucked Anakin from a planet where he spent the first eleven years of his life as a proper slave. No one knows what little Annie endured during that time. Tatooine was a hellscape of violence and depravity, ruled over by the Hutts. This crime family had free range on that planet, a fact the Republic turned a blind eye toward until they needed an alliance against the Trade Federation. How f*cked up is that? Anakin wanted off of that world so bad, he wanted to be free, and he believed from the bottom of his heart, that the Jedi would deliver he and his mother from bondage. But, when Jedi actually show up, it’s not as liberators but as middlemen. F*cking negotiators on behalf of the government, trying to cut a deal with the crime boss who allowed the cruelty of slavery to ensnare Anakin. On a whim, he catches Qui-Gon's interest and they take Anakin. Alone. They left his mother in bondage and at the mercy of that debauched world. They don't even send anyone for her because that's not the Jedi way. Emotional attachments lead to the Dark Side, so sayeth the wise and moral Jedi Code.

They fly to Courasant on the promise Anakin will become a Jedi, himself, probably in hopes of gaining enough power to free his still enslaved mother, only to be dismissed as too old by the Council. Because he was too old for the indoctrination. Those first eleven years of a Jedi’s “training” are for severing the emotional bonds which make you human. It’s for “teaching” you how to suppress your emotions because, again, according to the Jedi, emotions are bad. Anakin, already wildly powerful in the Force, couldn’t be brainwashed into a Jedi zombie because that ship had chronologically sailed. He knew his mother. He was very attached to her. He was quietly crushing on Padme. It was far too late to install those mental blocks of control. But, Qui-Gon being Qui-Gon, opted to train Annie anyway. Until he was murdered by a Sith Lord the Council refused to acknowledge as real. So it fell on Obi-Wan to do the job, even though there was a very strong chance that the eleven year old Anakin was just as powerful as he was. Kid was set in his ways and probably wildly traumatized from a life of bondage. Doesn’t help that, during a crucial time in his adolescent life, a f*cking cold war started and Anakin spent his teenage years “peace keeping” throughout the galaxy at the behest of the Republic; Not at all the enforcers for a government so corrupt, an entire Sith Lord had risen through its ranks like it was nothing.

A decade of this sh*t later and Anakin gets promoted to Jedi Knight out of reluctant desperation, forgoing the actual trials necessary to test the mettle of his character, because the cold war he grew up in got real hot, real fast. So now he’s one of the preeminent muscle men of the Republic and, arguably, their best weapon to boot. The Council recognizes this and instead of getting him the, you know, counseling needed to deal with that life long trauma, they saddled Anakin with a Padawan who is just as precocious as he was. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Ahsoka was good for Anakin. She forced him to mature and become more than just “The Chosen One.” Dude had to set an example for his kid sister and he did just that. But then she walked away from all of that Jedi nonsense, disillusioned and conflicted, much like her Master. He tried to get her to stay, pleading with her on behalf of the Council, but if we’re being honest, that was just Anakin trying to convince himself that Ahsoka wasn’t right to leave. That was Anakin trying to convince himself to stay in the Order. That Dooku wasn’t right. That Palpatine wasn’t right. The brainwashing didn’t take. He was too old. The trials were skipped. He wasn’t tested. Anakin Skywalker, the slave plucked from the Syndicate planet, Tatooine, thrust into the world of space wizards, political espionage, backdoor dealings, and war, at the age of eleven. Expected to be some grand savior of a cosmic unknown, never fully trusted or accepted by his peers. He was rejected by his heroes, had his father figured killed by a maniac, and then became a glorified goon for a Republic that had no qualms with sending people to die over trade tariffs. And you wonder why he fell.

We didn't get to seem eleven year old Anakin on missions. We didn't get to see teenage Anakin slaughtering across the galaxy in the name of keeping the Republic's definition of peace. There isn't a movie for that. But I did see a teenage Ahsoka, standing next to her adult Master, in the middle of an active battlefield and that f*cked me up. She was a child. A teenager, sure, but a child nonetheless. And Anakin was even younger than that! Seriously, let's not mince words here, Anakin Skywalker has been in the field with Obi-Wan Kenobi since he was probably twelve or thirteen years old. It's canon that Anakin is one of the best duelists in history. You don't get that food from practice. You get that good practically, out of necessity. That's how Ahsoka became as skilled as she did and Anakin is even moreso. If the two mirror each other, as they very obviously do, that means Sky Guy was just as honed and sharpened to be a soldier, as Tano was. Only Anakin was honest about it to his Padawan where as Obi-Wan, and the greater Jedi Order, were not. They sold Anakin a lie, preyed on his youth and immaturity, ignore his pain and vulnerability, then went full shocked Pikachu when he turned up to slaughter all of the Younglings. Like, What the f*ck did you expect to happen? You turned the most powerful Jedi to ever live, a slave for the first decade of his life, and instead of showing this kid compassion and patience, you thrust him into a cold war as an enforcer for ideals he can't possibly understand. You let his mom die, tell him he can't love his wife, and chase away his little sister even after proving her innocence. Anakin had a choice, of course. We all do. But, if we're being honest, from his perspective, knowing the life he has led, how is the Jedi Council any better than Palpatine's Galactic Empire? What;s the difference between a absolutist regime who sends children to the front lines of war “in the name of peace”and an intergalactic fascists state?

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: The Matrix

There really wasn't any doubt in my mind over what movie I was going to cover next in my Film Friday series. I did briefly consider a number of movies, but there was really only one I could go for if I was honest with myself. When asked the dreaded question of what my favorite movie is, I often ask, as a clarifying question if they mean favorite as in the one I enjoy the most, the one I think is the most skillfully made, or the most important to me as a person. If the answer is the latter, I invariably say it is today's movie: The Matrix.

So, what is it that makes this movie so important to me? Part of it is no doubt that it came out when I was young, and fate saw to it that I managed to see this R-rated piece of heady hyperviolence a few years before I was perhaps supposed to. It was given an age rating of 15 in my country, and I first saw it as a pre-teen.

The movie blew my mind back then, there's no two ways about it. The late 90's punky rave/cyber aesthetics and the soft-focus worn-out humanity of the postapocalyptic real world, the absolutely mind-bending action scenes of hand-to-hand and gunplay combat, and special effects that defined the entire following generation of action movies. The Matrix had it all, and it was also one of the first movies I had seen that made me think.

I've always been a ruminator, prone to pondering and thoughts that may charitably be described as philosophical, and The Matrix gave me a reference point and language to talk about it to my peers. Yeah, sure, most of my classmates didn't give a single hoot about the difference between what is perceived as real and what is real, but through the tale of Thomas Anderson awakening to the falseness of his reality as his hacker alias Neo, I had an in to talk about some of that stuff. The Matrix wasn't quite the phenomenon in my neck of the woods as I'm told it was elsewhere, so my inability to care about team sports was still a major albatross around my neck of course.

Now, if The Matrix was merely important to me as a child, that would fail to account for the sheer importance this movie has to me, even to this day. A further slice of the pie can be accounted for if I were to take my nascent crushes on Keanu Reeves, it would take more than a decade to realize the nature of this, and Carrie-Anne Moss, the nature of which became apparent to me considerably earlier. There is, however, more.

The part of me that's more of a nerd about technical filmmaking stuff than emotional impact when it comes to movies wants to take this moment to talk about the pacing and structure of The Matrix. Put plainly, this is just about the perfect Hero's Journey flick. People come back to Star Wars Episode IV, but for my money it doesn't have beans on The Matrix. Neo's journey maps just about perfectly onto the threshold-crossing, helpers and mentors, challenges and temptations, death and rebirth, transformation and attonement, the entire package. While following essentially Hollywood's favorite story recipe perfectly might not seem like a great achievement, The Matrix is really the strongest argument for using the formula to lend the story profoundly mythological feel.

It is no accident, I suspect, that reading into the christian symbolism of The Matrix became such a popular topic in the aughts that it, at least according to several anecdotes, was banned in many film litteracy classes mostly because the teachers and professors were sick of reading about it. I will, however, say that the most salient reading to me is the queer one.

In short, the readings of the film has tipped somewhat from the "Kung Fu Jesus"-read that was popular in the 00's to being viewed more as a trans allegory, in part thanks to both of it's directors coming out as openly trans since its release. There certainly is much to recommend this reading, the focus on found family and self-chosen names, the antagonist's purposeful use of Neo's given name, what we would today be calling deadnaming, and so on. The ambigiously gendered character Switch was reportedly also intended to have a different gender in the matrix and out of it, as their "Residual Self Image" did not match their physical body, sadly this turned out to be too spicy for late 90's Warner Broothers and so that idea was cut.

I do agree that a lot of the parts that make The Matrix stand out in my mind can be read as inspired by the lived experiences of its writer/directors The Wachowskis. I would, however, argue that a slightly wider reading as a story of queer awakening might describe the movie more accurately than a strictly trans story, but do keep in mind I say that as a cis bi guy, so it only stands to reason that the themes of queerness would resonate more with me.

With that awareness of my own biases achknowledged though, there is something deeply queer about Neo's awakening into the real world. As Thomas Anderson, he is driven to self-destructive acts by a resounding feeling of wrongness with the world he knows. Thomas is searching, both in the fringes of what he percieves of the physical world, and the open frontier of the internet, for answers that can soothe his worries.

What answer eventually finds him changes his entire reality. As Neo, he lives a life that is more dangerous and more separated from what he used to call the real world than ever before, but it is, in a fundamental sense, real. Meaningful relationship can happen there. There's room for tenderness, for jokes, for genuine cameraderie with others who are in his situation or something very close to it. This all reminds me an awful lot of the 1990 Clive Barker film Nightbreed in this regard. Neo doesn't take to it right away, his social senses, like his eyes and muscles, are weak because he has never actually used them before, but everyone who's there with him has been through it and thus understands. Well, everyone except one asshole, but stories do need antagonists after all.

I feel like I've given this movie only the most cursory of discussions since I haven't even gotten around to discussing the movie's wuxia-inspired fight scenes, its take on fate and properchy, or the complicated legacy of a movie about outcasts fighting the system by employing truly staggering levels of violence on other people who aren't real people on the level of our heroes and as such are acceptable targets. Especially the last point feels like it needs some elaboration in an age that has made "our opponents aren't as human as we are" a popular dogwhistle when calling for violence as a political tool. Maybe I'll get to writing some on that one of these days, but for now I gotta stop putting every thought I've had about The Matrix in the last 15+ years into this post or I'll never get to the end of it.

So, with that in mind, if you haven't seen The Matrix yet, or haven't seen it in a while, give it a go. It's good, and probably gayer than you expect and/or remember.

[ladysparklefarts]

A Song of Second Chances chapter 1

Summary: Lora has a trying evening on the day she dies. So many emotions. So much confusion. She thinks she might have a plan. Despite what she knows, she really doesn’t know.

warnings: implied death, panic attacks, lots of confusion, I almost wanna say Lora is a warning altogether but I’ll let ya’ll make that decision. 

A/N: There will be a possibility in later chapters that Lora will reference fics and fanart that I/she has seen here on tumblr so if anybody recognizes those references and wants to comment with the original artist/author’s name that would be awesome!

The day had finished quickly, and I was more than ready to be on my way out. Once I had my things gathered, I made my way to the bus stop that was, thankfully, close to where I worked. Every step I took seemed to make the migraine that had been threatening me all day worse, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving until I reached the bench at the bus stop. Collapsing onto the bench I sighed wishing the day would move just a bit faster. I had places to be after all. I had VIP tickets to a local science fiction convention and had the perfect Jedi cosplay ready and in my duffel bag next to me. All I needed to do was make it to the hotel where the event was being held the day after. After a while, I glanced down the street and saw the bus approaching. I slid the strap of my duffel bag over my shoulder before quickly standing up to dig for my wallet. That was a mistake. All the blood suddenly rushed to my head.

“What... the... fu-” I blacked out suddenly, collapsing into the darkness not knowing what was what.

Everything felt serene, amoral even, as I drifted through what seemed like an endless void where light and dark merged, to where if one disappeared the other would as well. Whispers echoed through me as loud as screams, and though the words were muddled, I knew what they were saying. Wisdom, the truths of a million lifetimes, both contradicting and confirming everything I had ever known. Suddenly, in an instant that felt like an eternity, though I would never know, it was over.  

“Fuck,” I finished my sentence unaware that my surroundings had changed. Landing painfully on the ground, rather than the bench I had previously been seated on, I cursed. A few passersby glanced at me offended at my language. I staggered to my feet and rubbed my bruised rear. I glanced around me, nearly panicking at the sudden change in surroundings. Taking a shaky deep breath, refusing to let myself hyperventilate, I stared around, taking in the brightly colored neon signs. They were all in a language I swore I could recognize but comprehension eluded me. Scanning the crowd of people, my breath caught in my throat. There were more than just humans in that crowd and to add to my panic my senses seemed heightened. I could sense things I never thought I would ever be able to. A small Twi’lek child was crying nearly two city blocks away, and I couldn’t tell how I knew. I quickly ducked into a nearby alley to compose myself. With each step into the quieter alleyway, I felt a tug in the opposite direction, an incessant need to go in that way. I tried to shake it off, but it only seemed to grow in strength. I seated myself on a crate and concentrated on my breathing, hoping it would quell the rising panic attack.

“Just breathe Lora. You’ll be all right,” I told myself, repeating it over and over. Once I had managed to calm myself enough, I began to take stock of what I knew. I knew I was somehow in the Star Wars universe. What planet I was on? I couldn’t tell right off. It could be one of many. And there was that tug, the heightened sense of awareness that had replaced the near-constant ringing I had in my ears most of my life. After a moment of thought and realizing that I wouldn’t get any sort of answers just sitting there I rose to my feet and made my way back to the main path where I had started. Something told me that following that tug would somehow answer many of the questions burning in me but first I wanted to discern what planet I was on at least. I glanced around me for a second looking for some hint before the realization dawned on me.

“If what I'm feeling is what I think it is...” I was force sensitive. It suddenly made sense. My mind raced as I noted all the things I would be able to potentially achieve, the abilities that used to seem so impossible suddenly only a matter of attempting them. I turned my gaze to the sky, the indescribable joy coursing through me in a pulse that I could almost see shimmering in the air around me. A balcony jutting from one of the many skyscrapers caught my eye and an image flashed across my mind. Without thinking I crouched, feeling each muscle tense in preparation. I reached towards the edge of the balcony, outstretching my hand, and suddenly felt the railing despite not being near it. I leaped up, the feeling of the railing guiding me as I pulled myself through the air. My foot caught on the rail as I tumbled onto the balcony and felt the breath get knocked from my lungs as I landed. I wheezed as I tried to force air back into my lungs. The wheezing turned to laughter as I lay there. If only my family could see me now. My family. All the people I loved and wasn’t sure I would ever see again. My laughter froze in my throat as the agonizing reality hit knocking the air from me again. I choked as I rolled onto my side, clutching at myself in anguish.

“Mom... Dad...” was all I could manage, too stricken to manage anything more. I curled into a ball around my duffel bag and let the tears flow as I grieved. Every fiber of my being was in agony, my heart aching in a way I hadn’t felt before. My family was all I had ever known, and I wasn’t sure I could handle life without them. I buried my face into my duffel bag and screamed, the material thankfully muffling the heart-wrenching sound. The act was somehow cathartic and though my throat was raw from it, I felt a sense of relief, as if it pushed some of the grief to the surface to dissipate. I hiccupped, still sobbing, refusing to let myself succumb to the numbness I knew would overtake me if I didn’t let myself feel.

By the time the tears subsided, night had fallen. I pushed myself into a sitting position and glanced towards the ever-stronger pull I still felt only to suck in a sharp breath. The building I could see in the distance was all too familiar. I stood, my legs still a bit wobbly from the jump.

“The Jedi Temple,” I breathed out quietly. Taking slow steps, I made my way to the edge of the balcony and looked down. That proved a bad idea. My fear of heights took over and I took a couple of steps back. Turning my head up I instead studied the stars.  

“Well, if this is what needs to happen for me to get to where I need to be, then so be it,” I said digging the heel of my hand into my eye to dry a few tears that hadn’t quite fallen yet. Putting all the faith I had in the force I took off running, launching myself off the balcony. As I plummeted through the air, my eyes trained squarely on the rising ground, I willed myself to slow down. When I finally hit the ground in a kneeling position, I whimpered. There were a few gasps from around me as strangers leaped out of the way.

“That is hard on the knees. Ow,” I stood up feeling the ache in my legs. Thankfully it was nowhere near as bad as it could be, and I was able to hobble off in the direction of the Jedi temple. I let the force pull me along and as I turned corners and found my way to my destination, I formulated a plan for what I wanted to do since I was here. I could be a Jedi, though the many restrictive rules were very unappealing. I enjoyed my freedom of choice too much. I grumbled as I contemplated my options. They were numerous but it all depended on one simple factor. When was I?  

“I don’t see any stormtroopers, but that doesn’t mean anything,” I muttered with a cursory glance around. Almost as soon as I was thoroughly lost in my thoughts, I found myself in front of the Jedi temple and froze staring up at the looming building in awe. As I took in the sight of the temple, an all too familiar voice drew me from my revelry with a start.

“Lost, you seem,” the voice said, making me jump. As I jerked my head in the direction of the voice, my mouth fell open seeing who stood before me.  

“Master Yoda,” a low wheezing squeal rumbled from my throat as I gawked at the small green creature standing a short distance away, a perplexed expression on his aged face.

“Know me, you do,” his sentence was a statement as well as a question.  

“A story, I sense from you. Come, tell me in private, you can,” he gestured as he spoke, indicating I should follow him as he turned and shuffled towards the temple. My voice was frozen in my starstruck haze, so I nodded dumbly and strolled after him.  

“Sensed you, I did,” he said as if he could sense my rising confusion. “A shift in the Force, I felt. Felt your strength in the force, but recognize you, I did not. Hoped you would come, and I did. Much to learn, I feel there is, from you.”

“I’m sorry, what?” was all I could respond with.

“Your name, let us start with,” I could feel something swarming around us, all centered around the master Jedi leading me through the temple. It felt like a gentle urging, a curiosity dying to be sated. And something, a nudge from the back of my mind, told me to trust him. So, I did.  

“Lora... my name is Lora Ross,” I took a deep breath, after I spoke, and realized that I’d been holding my breath.  

“And you’re right, I do have a story. But I seriously doubt it’s very believable,” I spoke softly, my eyes darting side to side. Even speaking quietly my voice echoed through the columns.  

“If true it is, believe you, I will,” Yoda stated. His ears wobbled as he nodded, emphasizing his point.  

“Thank you, Master,” I felt some relief, but some anxiety still clawed at my mind, though I pushed it to the side.  

“In this meditation chamber, privacy we will have,” Yoda motioned to an open door which I stepped through. He followed and the door slid shut, locking with a hiss. He hopped onto one of the meditation platforms and sat down. Dropping my duffel bag by the door I slid onto the seat across from him and tucked my feet under me. I took a deep breath and met his eyes with my own. He nodded for me to start.

“As I'm sure you can figure I’m not from this galaxy, or this universe even. I have no idea how I got here but I feel I might have died in my world,” I trailed off as I thought about it, how did I manage to come here?  

“I’m from a universe where this entire galaxy and its people and its happenings are entirely fictional. The people on my planet haven’t had any known contact with other planets and as it is we’re still technologically underwhelming,” Yoda tilted his head, and I could feel what I thought was confusion rolling off of him. I couldn’t blame him. I was confusing myself trying to explain this. I coughed, clearing my throat, before speaking again.  

“This galaxy exists in a series of beloved stories that I grew up on. I spent a lot of time when I was younger, pretending I was a Jedi on some mission to save the galaxy,” the memories flashing through my mind made me smile. Yoda also seemed to see bits of them and chuckled, sensing my childhood nostalgia.  

“You’re a legendary figure not just here, but also where I'm from. I do have one question, and it's only to place when in the timeline I was put into the story. Where is Master Qui-gon Jinn?” When I asked the question Yoda bowed his head sadly.  

“Master Qui-gon, gone he is, these last six years,” he said. I nodded.  

“Thank you, his passing was hard for a lot of people in both of our worlds,” my voice was almost a whisper as I gave my condolences. Yoda bobbed his head in thanks before gesturing for me to continue.  

“My knowledge of this universe spans about the next fifty or so years. Almost every major event, though there are some things I don’t know,” I said, Yoda’s eyes widening at that.  

“Enlighten me, can you?” He asks. I shake my head.

“Forgive me master but I'd rather not say, a lot happens, and I don’t want any of your decisions to be made rashly, through fear,” I said. Yoda sits straighter and nods.  

“Perhaps meditate on it we can and what you feel comfortable with, show me,” he says crossing his hands in his lap. I let out a sigh of relief and nodded. Making myself comfortable I steady my breathing. Meditation came easily to me, so I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of Yoda’s signature across from me. Soon enough my senses were more than just my own as he gently probed what I was offering him.  

Pain, and suffering all across the galaxy.

Millions of voices crying out in pain, followed by horrifying silence.  

The sickly smell of burnt flesh, blood, and sulfur.

The sound of haunting mechanical breathing.  

Newborns wailing.  

The darkness engulfing everything it can reach.

“Enough that is. Shown me, what needs to be seen, you have,” Yoda’s voice brought me back to the present with a start. I could feel the sweat pouring from me, and my breathing was ragged. Those feelings had affected me more just then than they had my entire life. I brought my gaze up to him. He had his head in his hands, his small shoulders shaking with emotion.  

“Master...” I reached my hand out to him. He looked up at me.  

“Convene the council, tomorrow I will. Together, perhaps, a solution we can find,” he took my outstretched hand.  

“Maybe Master, if you were to place me with a Jedi close to the problem, I could use what I know to change the outcome. I may not know much about the minor details, but I might be able to influence the wider picture,” I said, my voice shaking a bit. Yoda pursed his lips in thought. He nodded.  

“Your knowledge, a great asset, it may be. Which Jedi, have you in mind?” He asked. I took a breath. The answer was obvious.

“Master Kenobi. He’s an influential figure throughout the entire timeline, his wisdom will be of great help, if you were to allow me to take on this endeavor,” I spoke carefully, not wanting to reveal too much. Yoda seemed to sense my reluctance and nodded.  

“Approve this, I will. A savior to the galaxy, you might be,” My back stiffened at his words. Was I ready to take on this level of responsibility? I sighed. I would have to be.  

“Master, I should also warn you, I might cause a lot of Jedi to question a lot within the order. I don’t want to cause an upheaval,” I said, staring intently at him.  

“I am acting purely out of selfishness, in my opinion. There are a lot of people who have unhappy endings and I want to change that. I want the people I looked up to as a kid to have the happy endings I always felt they deserved,” I continued as he squeezed my hand, admiration flashing in his eyes.

“Selfish, perhaps to you, but selfless as well. The desire to change an unhappy ending, honor in that there is, for more than you alone, but also those whose stories you wish to improve,” he said, a warm, knowing smile spreading across his face. I felt my eyes widen at his words.

“As for upheaval, just what the order needs, it might be. Stagnant, the order has become,” Yoda continued, pulling his hand back to his lap, his eyes clouding over with sadness, his smile disappearing.

“Arrogant, we have become. Even the oldest, most experienced Jedi, vain we are,” I folded my hands in my lap as he spoke. I could tell he was including himself, and it made my chest tighten.

“Opened my eyes, you have, to the need for change,” he wiped his hand across his brow.

“Where to start, the question is,” he looked me in the eyes as if searching for an answer. I shook my head.  

“That's one question I, unfortunately, can’t answer,” I said, hanging my head slightly. Yoda sighed and clambered off his platform. He made his way to one of the windows and waving his hand the blinds opened. I stood and made my way next to him. We stood there for a short time, staring out at the city. I yawned suddenly realizing how exhausting the conversation had been.  

“Tired you must be, show you to your temporary chambers I will,” Yoda said turning from the window.  

“A padawan’s chambers they will be, for now,” he said, glancing up at me as another yawn wracked through my body.  

“As long as there’s a bed I won’t complain,” I responded in a joking tone. He chuckled as I scooped my bag up from beside the door.  

“A bed there will be,” he stated with a laugh as if the seriousness of the earlier talks hadn't happened. I smiled down at him, the need for sleep weighing on me rather suddenly. He led me through the door again and through the corridors to the opposite end of the temple.  

“Master, if you don’t mind me asking, would I be able to train? Perhaps hone my abilities to be able to better aid others?” I ask the haze of exhaustion slowly creeping up on me. Yoda nodded.  

“Arrange that we can, perhaps my padawan you could be,” he said glancing up at me with a humored expression. I smirked.

“Perhaps. It would be an honor to learn from you,” I stumbled over my words as another yawn broke through me.  

“But if assigned to Master Kenobi, you are, learn from him you can,” Yoda stated, as we entered an elevator that started rising after the door shut.  

“Doesn’t he already have a padawan though? Wouldn’t it be a distraction to have to teach two students?” I ask, pushing my exhaustion aside. Yoda was silent for a moment.  

“Learn from you as well, the padawan can. As much a master with two students, as a padawan with two masters,” he said with a knowing glance at me. I sucked in a breath.  

“Just what Skywalker needs, it might be. Learn peace, from you he can,” he continued as the elevator door slid open. My heart thumped in my chest anxiously. Yoda led me to an inconspicuous door that slid open.

“An unusual balance I sense in you. Made peace with your darkness, accepted it, you have,” he explained, gesturing to the open door. I nodded, suddenly understanding what he was saying.

“Come for you, in the morning, I will. With the council, we will meet,” he said waving me through the door.  

“Until then, rest well,” I nodded, thanking him. He smiled at me as the door slid shut. I dropped my bag as I replayed everything that had happened over again in my head. I had died and was brought back to life in another universe, which I just happened to be familiar with.  

“I’ve been isekai’d into Star Wars, and Yoda, the Jedi Grandmaster, thinks I can make things better,” I said as I sat on the edge of the small bed. I kicked off my boots.  

“He trusts me. Shit, I wouldn’t trust me,” I peeled off my jacket and flung it in a heap onto the side table. As I did so, my cell phone fell from one of the pockets, hitting the floor with a thud. I stared at it for a moment, suddenly regretting quitting smoking. After everything that had happened, I felt I needed a cigarette. I shook my head free of the thought and snatched my phone from the floor.  

“Well, this is going to be useless now,” I tapped the button on the side bringing it to life. I blinked as the light from the screen nearly blinded me in the dark room. Scrolling through the endless applications I realized that, somehow, I still had service.  

“I’m not going to question that. Might come in handy,” I tapped the button on the side again, shutting the phone off and setting it on the side table. I knew the rules. The moment I question it is the moment it would stop working. I flopped back onto the bed. It was surprisingly soft, despite how thin the mattress was. Sprawling out, I pulled the blanket up to my chin, before cursing and flinging the blanket back off me. I sat up and looked over at my bag.  

“I might as well try. I’ve already figured out how to force jump. Telekinesis probably won't be as hard,” I held my hand out, imagining the bag lifting through the air to me. Almost just as I pictured, though not near as gracefully, the bag lifted from the floor and hovered for a moment before wobbling its way to my waiting hand. Grasping the strap, I set it in my lap and unzipped it, digging for something specific. When I found what I was looking for I yanked it free of its confines and hugged it close. I never could sleep very well without the small stuffed puppy I've had since I was three. It was dingy and worn, but still soft and after setting my bag on the floor I curled up around it, inhaling the soothing scent of what used to be home. Sliding the blanket back up around me I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.

“You turned her against me?!”

“You have done that yourself.”

“Obi-Wan... there... is good in him. I know there is... still...”

[dreaminginsteadofsleeping42]

I was tagged by @girlbosscrawley (hi, liz!) to share 10 movies that I love. I can rant a bit, so I will challenge myself to sum up why I chose these movies in one (1) sentence. We’ll see how it goes.

Pride and Prejudice (2005): perfect comfort film because it takes an indisputable fact - men are morons - BUT mixes it with the ultimate fantasy of said men not only realizing their moronic status, but taking active steps to acknowledge and remedy their ills.

Little Women (2019): I left the theatre almost in tears after seeing this  because it was the first time I felt like I had seen myself - the entirety of myself - onscreen.

Beauty and the Beast (2017): I went to see this in theatres five times so I could get high on popcorn and the cathartic release of watching all the servants die miserable deaths, then - poof! they’re alive again and everyone lives happily ever after SO you get to cry like a baby with no consequences.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994): I watched this one recently - just over Christmas vacation - and my sister and I were just dying laughing the whole time at the sheer delight of 90s era Hugh Grant running around London in a state of unorganized adorable panic.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002): Listen: I have a stormy, storied relationship with the star war, but nothing will ever match the impact the alleged “cringe” romance of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala had on my pre-teen self and it still SLAPS.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993): My aunt introduced me to this one while I was staying with her last year, and I was absolutely fascinated, not only by the fact that Tom Hanks was not always an old man, and in fact, once considered Hot, but how despite the leads barely interacting throughout the film, when they meet at the end, the magic and romance and the sense of a happy ending is undeniable and just pooling off the screen and making you, the viewer, feel all fuzzy inside. This is no longer just one sentence, but I have to say, it made no damn sense, but it was magical.

Frozen (2013): It was a game-changer for a reason, I do not care if this is cringe, Frozen (2013) slaps and I was obsessed with it for most of my teenage years and I proudly walked into Theatre Royal Drurry Lane and took my seat surrounded by five-year-olds to watch the musical version in London last November.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009): The slapping soundtrack, the warm brown autumnal colour palate, the Pacific Northwest setting, the depression, the slow-burn, the yearning, the conflict, the angst, the love triangle, the offensively topless Robert Pattinson: this movie has it all: argue with the wall.

My Policeman (2022): I watched this instead of going out for fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day for I was sick (probably with covid, but I digress) and I felt that it was true, intelligent cinema that tricked my emotions and made me completely rethink everything after a Twist Was Revealed, which is what Art should do, methinks.

Sleeping Beauty (1959): The animation style, the score...I would watch this every day when I was four years old and I still maintain that I had taste.

Edit: I was so proud of myself for remembering not only ten movies, but ten movies I enjoyed, I forgot to tag anyone so 1) oops and 2) @sophisticatedswifts @thievesandtraitors @flixls @taylaswift @chiara-swiftiedreamer13 @cmc-things

[aegisgrey]

I need to scream about the Kenobi show and well what else is tumblr for.

I’m not happy lads. Long post and spoiler warning.

I’m really not sure why I kept watching it. I think it’s because I felt a sense of obligation to see this one out because like, I don’t know I guess this felt like a last chance for Disney Star Wars for me. Book of Boba Fett was a wildly mixed bag of weird mostly for the worse of the overall storyline we seem to be getting, but more to the point doing a show about the time Kenobi is hanging out on tatooine felt like such a blatant, souless cash grab of a show concept, I guess I just wanted to see if they actually had inspiration for a character study.

They did not.

Ok, let’s just get started with the things this show does well so I can maintain a nuance of fairness before I fire the death star into this thing.

The Leia stuff is good. The Leia Obi-wan stuff is good. Does it in any way inform my overall view of the main saga films and characters in the same way Rogue One managed to do? Absolutely not. It’s cute it’s fluffy and it’s fun. The child actor for Leia does a remarkable job considering her age and Leia gets a lot of the best lines. It does nothing to develop the characters meaningfully, it doesn’t really attempt to. It’s there to make you go aw and it works.

Reva is an interesting idea played by a compelling actress. Moses Ingram carries on the proud tradition of phenomenal star wars actors attempting to breath life into garbage dialog and characterization, and when she’s given literally anything to work with, the character feels like they are from a different, better show. She is not given much to work with.

OK here we go. I’m gonna go through my points starting with the most basic problems that feed into the nuances of why this show makes me want to drive down to burbank and stage a coup.

1. The writing is bad.

It’s really, really bad. It’s embarrassingly bad. It’s Rise of Skywalker bad at points. This script feels like a low effort fan fic someone made casually on a friday afternoon.

What do I mean by that? Well let’s break it down into a few sections so I can talk about the core issues here.

a) The plot makes no goddamn sense.

The wheels that have to spin here to simultaneously bring you all those sweet sweet cameos and character interactions you pay your D+ subscription to see are kicking up so much mud, you can no longer even see what you paid for. One of the biggest issues is that this series has absolutely no choice except to end more or less exactly where it begins. Nothing can happen in this plot and we the audience know that. Star Wars is huge. This show could have been about anything. But instead it’s centered around the skywalker twins and Obi wan and Darth vader and the grand inquisitor NONE OF THESE PEOPLE CAN DIE AND ANY VIEWER KNOWS THAT.

This story is built on the idea that Obi-Wan has trauma from Vader’s fall and that’s blocking him off from the force. While I buy the trauma fine the idea that it cuts him off from the force actively contradicts any other version of the character from this time period we have ever seen. In fact Obi-Wan is canonically (this is DISNEY CANON I’m not using legends) at his strongest after Vader falls in large part because he’s closed himself off so completely from his emotions that he’s lethally focused and driven. This is the same man who will one-shot Maul shortly after the events of the series, and beat Vader in the climactic event of the prequel trilogy.

I realize this might sound like I’m just some anime nerd complaining about power scaling but that’s really not my issue, star wars has perpetually had bizarre power scaling that makes very little sense this isn’t new. My issue is that they essentially invented this version of Obi-Wan. We have nothing to show us why exactly it got so bad on Tatooine and the series DOES NOT SHOW US. 

Later on, he overcomes this and once again we are given incredibly little information as to WHY he is suddenly better out side of the power of love and friendship which is a WILD interpretation of Obi-Wan as a character. See above. This show seems to think Obi-Wan is this like, nice polite loving figure who’s never done anything wrong in his life and not THE LITERAL REASON THAT DARTH VADER EXISTS AT ALL.

And THAT is what this show fundamentally misses in it’s very premise, right out the gate before it ever starts. This show thinks Obi-Wan is Right and Good and has Feelings about how he failed Vader, and that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material this is desperately riding a unicycle while juggling around.  Obi-Wan is a Flawed Mentor who doesn’t understand that he played a huge role in Vader’s fall. He is not a Good Person. Luke is a Good Person and he actively does not do what Obi-wan told him to do and that LITERALLY SAVES THE GALAXY AND THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT. This show had the chance to dive into the depths of a deeply troubled and flawed space wizard and it turned him into a fluffy marshmellow. Obi-wan in every other incarnation we have including the literal children’s cartoon is a hypocritical, conniving, scheming, preachy, arrogant, and even narcissistic dude and he’s literally one of my favorite characters in any media BECAUSE OF THESE FLAWS. I’m not saying Obi-wan is always a bastard he’s not at all and a portrayal of him as a purely bad dude would be just as wrong but you can’t just wipe away all the things that make Obi-Wan a flawed Jedi or the story just does not work.

b) The Fake Out Deaths

This show has an obscene amount of this. I would be offended by how many fake out deaths there are if I didn’t already know that all the characters survive. The fact that I do makes it nearly unbearable. The worst example of this is the grand inquisitor who literally serves no purpose in this show and could have been removed entirely and nothing would have changed. Reva is a close second because while her final appearances do a lot to help the character it’s frankly absurd that she’s survived Vader like 3 times at this point and manages to carry a child across the desert with a hole in her spine. The violence in this show is bizzare and doesn’t add up and continually contradicts itself. There’s not much more to say about this but if the writers are expecting me to feel tension because obi wan might have died under all those rocks I don’t know what the hell they think I’ve been watching all these years. They kill off exactly two named characters in this show. Both are characters we have never seen before. One is literally only named so he can be killed off (Rip my man Wade you were my favorite character) and this is treated with weight in the shows narrative. We spend more time mourning Wade than Wade gets on camera screentime.

c) The dialogue

It’s a spiritual successor to the prequels I don’t know what I expected but this feels more like Rise of Skywalker than prequels. A lot the interactions are bizzare. Reva gets such rotten lines I genuinely feel so bad for the actress who’s clearly working this as best she can. Some of the stuff in her leia interrogation is somehow palpatine has returned levels of cringe. Her arc is genuinely interesting it’s just horrendously served by her actual lines. Vader has either great lines or terrible ones no in between and they are actively worse around Reva because of the weird plot armor around her character that tbh doesn’t need to be there because you could have just written things so that she doesn’t fuck up around vader and then not die so much.

So yeah pretty much everything this show does on it’s own doesn’t work very well outside of just having Obi-wan and Leia be cute. I’ll balance that by saying that when they do good Vader lines they do REALLY good Vader lines, I’ll give them that. Obi-Wan gets absolutely no new material to work with outside the Leia stuff that’s good even if Ewan is great as always. In fact he has surprisingly few actual lines period, considering the show is named after him. I’m serious look for places where he’s not talking about someone else but reflecting what he’s actually doing and feeling and going through. For a show that’s ostensibly a character study there is very little study of his character.

2. Everything that’s good comes from something else.

The level of self plagiarism  this show is genuinely bizarre I don’t even know what to make of it. The Inquisitor fortress and obi-wan vader fight are literally lifted directly out of other media. Jedi Fallen Order has the exact same inquisitor fortress, which is broken into the exact same way, and features the exact same hallway breaking. It’s wild. And frankly, Reva is just second sister done worse. The vader obi-wan fight, arguably the highlight of this show, is also lifted directly from Rebels to the point where VADER’S HELMET BREAKS IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE. It’s genuinely embarrassing and I don’t know how they think people won’t notice this, and more to the point it proves that this show has absolutely nothing new to bring to the table. No new perspective on vader or obi-wan, no new and interesting characters, absolutely nothing we don’t already have in a better version.

3. Oh dear god what happened to Deborah Chow’s direction.

Here’s the thing. Deborah Chow is not a bad director. We know this because her mandalorian episodes are some of the best in the whole show. I was genuinely interested to see what she did with this show. The thing is: This show literally feels like it was directed by a different person.

If I am up to it maybe I will do a full scene breakdown of something from this and something from mando to showcase what I mean but all I need to say for this is that the way this is shot, the way scene’s are set and characters are followed and action is portrayed and environments are built is Terrible. The most egregious examples include: Leia outrunning four adults who are clearly slowling themselves down in full view of the camera, overuse of dark environments at critical moments in the action, Obi-wan hacking a fence while a clear way around the fence is VISIBLE IN THE BACKGROUND. The firepit that vader is suddenly barred by despite him controlling it moments before. The second ship leaving despite him stopping another ship moments before. The trench-coat. My god the trench-coat. The rebel ship with shields that can apparently withstand a star destroyer for hours. It’s immensely sloppy. There are moments where this show looks like a youtube fan project and I really am not exaggerating. Some of these shots shouldn’t have been in any final product a major media company is putting out. The dialogue is all talking heads, the action is shaky cam with no sense of environment or space building. This is the sloppiest cgi and effects work in any star wars media I’m aware of. The direction is just fundamentally terrible in ways I would expect any film maker with Chow’s resume to catch and I have no idea what the hell happened because once again, we KNOW she can do great stuff. I’m flabbergasted. Out of all the flaws of this show, this is the one I find the most inexcusable. I expected the script to be a mess, I was surprised by the self plagiarism, I am shocked and horrified by the poor directing and production on this show. I don’t even know who to blame for it. I sense meddling here but I have no idea what kind or to what degree.

4. The Anti-Clone wars.

The Clone Wars cartoon is much beloved because of all the ways in which it expanded on and breathed life into the characters of the prequel era. I would argue it single-handedly saved Anakin as a character. This show not only makes Obi-Wan a worse character by removing all of the attributes needed for drama and for the events of a New Hope to happen, but actively contradicts everything that happens in the OT. Obi-Wan’s insistence that Luke destroy Vader is now borderline insane considering he let Vader go on purpose this time. The organa’s apparently have obi on speed dial and just forgot to give him a transmitter when he shows up again, completely unnecessarily and wildly out of character. Leia having no reaction to his death in a New Hope is now extremely weird. Vader not realizing Leia is his kid is literally impossible in the events of this show.

Clone Wars gave us much needed character and theme development for the prequel era. This show actively undercuts theming, character arcs, and basic plot structure with wanton abandon.

Final thoughts:

There are any number of individual scenes you can tear apart in this show. I could type pages more material about how awful the directing is alone.

This is technically a review so here’s a score: I’m giving this show five dumpsters full of copies of Jedi Fallen Order and Rebels dvd’s, set on fire by Darth Vader himself so that Obi-Wan can escape to better media.

[smokeybrand]

Incorrect

Pardon this deluge of Star Wars content but Ahsoka has me reeling. Episode five really recontextualized so much about the Clone Wars (and the prequels, themselves), it’s incredibly difficult not to reexamine my previous perceptions of that part of the mythos. The realization that the Jedi Order effectively sent children to their deaths, that they gave actual teenagers command of entire clone units, is absolutely horrifying to properly understand. Sure, when it’s a cartoon, it’s all in good fun. But seeing all that carnage in live action, teenage Ahsoka standing there next to Hayden’s Anakin? That was a lot. The realization that Ahsoka Tano, one of the most powerful Jedi, trained by THE most powerful Jedi, is little more than a weapon to be used for some Republic trade dispute, is so goddamn bleak, I can’t stand it. Coming to terms with the sheer brutality thrust upon Tano, and every other Padawan at the time, is something which has skewed the very morality of the Jedi for me. I can’t see these cats as the “good guys” anymore. How can they be? The Jedi Council committed war crimes! Like, they’re no better than the Sith in that regard and that’s so weird to say out loud. I grew up with the OG trilogy so, for me, there was a stark delineation between Jedi and Sith. Luke and Obi-Wan were Jedi. Upstanding, wise, and compassionate. Good guys. Vader and Palpatine were Sith; Straight up space fascists with anger problems and a mean-streak that could destroy planets. Bad guys. There was a quaint black and white to the dynamic of the galaxy far, far, away. After that episode of Ahsoka, the child soldier thing paints the Jedi just as atrocious. Sending children to die strictly for Republic interests, is the worst kind of imperialism. It’s staggering to me that more people don’t see that. If the Jedi judged sending children to war morally correct, how can you trust that judgment? How can you not question every choice they ever made? Hoe can you not question their treatment of Anakin?

Anakin mentioned to Ahsoka that he was trained to be a peacekeeper but was he really? I mean, Obi-wan probably did his best to bring the kid up properly but let’s be honest; That was a losing fight. Qui-Gon plucked Anakin from a planet where he spent the first eleven years of his life as a proper slave. No one knows what little Annie endured during that time. Tatooine was a hellscape of violence and depravity, ruled over by the Hutts. This crime family had free range on that planet, a fact the Republic turned a blind eye toward until they needed an alliance against the Trade Federation. How f*cked up is that? Anakin wanted off of that world so bad, he wanted to be free, and he believed from the bottom of his heart, that the Jedi would deliver he and his mother from bondage. But, when Jedi actually show up, it’s not as liberators but as middlemen. F*cking negotiators on behalf of the government, trying to cut a deal with the crime boss who allowed the cruelty of slavery to ensnare Anakin. On a whim, he catches Qui-Gon's interest and they take Anakin. Alone. They left his mother in bondage and at the mercy of that debauched world. They don't even send anyone for her because that's not the Jedi way. Emotional attachments lead to the Dark Side, so sayeth the wise and moral Jedi Code.

They fly to Courasant on the promise Anakin will become a Jedi, himself, probably in hopes of gaining enough power to free his still enslaved mother, only to be dismissed as too old by the Council. Because he was too old for the indoctrination. Those first eleven years of a Jedi’s “training” are for severing the emotional bonds which make you human. It’s for “teaching” you how to suppress your emotions because, again, according to the Jedi, emotions are bad. Anakin, already wildly powerful in the Force, couldn’t be brainwashed into a Jedi zombie because that ship had chronologically sailed. He knew his mother. He was very attached to her. He was quietly crushing on Padme. It was far too late to install those mental blocks of control. But, Qui-Gon being Qui-Gon, opted to train Annie anyway. Until he was murdered by a Sith Lord the Council refused to acknowledge as real. So it fell on Obi-Wan to do the job, even though there was a very strong chance that the eleven year old Anakin was just as powerful as he was. Kid was set in his ways and probably wildly traumatized from a life of bondage. Doesn’t help that, during a crucial time in his adolescent life, a f*cking cold war started and Anakin spent his teenage years “peace keeping” throughout the galaxy at the behest of the Republic; Not at all the enforcers for a government so corrupt, an entire Sith Lord had risen through its ranks like it was nothing.

A decade of this sh*t later and Anakin gets promoted to Jedi Knight out of reluctant desperation, forgoing the actual trials necessary to test the mettle of his character, because the cold war he grew up in got real hot, real fast. So now he’s one of the preeminent muscle men of the Republic and, arguably, their best weapon to boot. The Council recognizes this and instead of getting him the, you know, counseling needed to deal with that life long trauma, they saddled Anakin with a Padawan who is just as precocious as he was. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Ahsoka was good for Anakin. She forced him to mature and become more than just “The Chosen One.” Dude had to set an example for his kid sister and he did just that. But then she walked away from all of that Jedi nonsense, disillusioned and conflicted, much like her Master. He tried to get her to stay, pleading with her on behalf of the Council, but if we’re being honest, that was just Anakin trying to convince himself that Ahsoka wasn’t right to leave. That was Anakin trying to convince himself to stay in the Order. That Dooku wasn’t right. That Palpatine wasn’t right. The brainwashing didn’t take. He was too old. The trials were skipped. He wasn’t tested. Anakin Skywalker, the slave plucked from the Syndicate planet, Tatooine, thrust into the world of space wizards, political espionage, backdoor dealings, and war, at the age of eleven. Expected to be some grand savior of a cosmic unknown, never fully trusted or accepted by his peers. He was rejected by his heroes, had his father figured killed by a maniac, and then became a glorified goon for a Republic that had no qualms with sending people to die over trade tariffs. And you wonder why he fell.

We didn't get to seem eleven year old Anakin on missions. We didn't get to see teenage Anakin slaughtering across the galaxy in the name of keeping the Republic's definition of peace. There isn't a movie for that. But I did see a teenage Ahsoka, standing next to her adult Master, in the middle of an active battlefield and that f*cked me up. She was a child. A teenager, sure, but a child nonetheless. And Anakin was even younger than that! Seriously, let's not mince words here, Anakin Skywalker has been in the field with Obi-Wan Kenobi since he was probably twelve or thirteen years old. It's canon that Anakin is one of the best duelists in history. You don't get that food from practice. You get that good practically, out of necessity. That's how Ahsoka became as skilled as she did and Anakin is even moreso. If the two mirror each other, as they very obviously do, that means Sky Guy was just as honed and sharpened to be a soldier, as Tano was. Only Anakin was honest about it to his Padawan where as Obi-Wan, and the greater Jedi Order, were not. They sold Anakin a lie, preyed on his youth and immaturity, ignore his pain and vulnerability, then went full shocked Pikachu when he turned up to slaughter all of the Younglings. Like, What the f*ck did you expect to happen? You turned the most powerful Jedi to ever live, a slave for the first decade of his life, and instead of showing this kid compassion and patience, you thrust him into a cold war as an enforcer for ideals he can't possibly understand. You let his mom die, tell him he can't love his wife, and chase away his little sister even after proving her innocence. Anakin had a choice, of course. We all do. But, if we're being honest, from his perspective, knowing the life he has led, how is the Jedi Council any better than Palpatine's Galactic Empire? What;s the difference between a absolutist regime who sends children to the front lines of war “in the name of peace”and an intergalactic fascists state?

[supersanderman]

Sci-Tech Camps and A Few Fandoms

Oh… welcome back. I’m glad you decided to keep reading, clearly, you tolerated my first post enough to want to keep reading. I hope that you learned something from my first post, either about me, how universal some experiences are, or that learning takes time. If you learned nothing then hopefully this time around will be a little more educational.

So let’s continue the story of how I got to where I am today, and the biggest step was a Jewish Sci Tech camp in the middle of Massachusetts. It for many was a home away from home, and for me it was no different. I had gone there during its first three years of operation, becoming a pioneer camper and loving every step of it. The camp used a boarding school as home base, and they, as John Hammond in Jurrasic Park said, “spared no expense.” It was magical and as a kid I felt like I was in wonderland. Finally a place where I could be a nerd with people who were also Jewish. A place where everyone liked Star Wars and Marvel and Mario. 

Now flash forward to the summer of the second pandemic year of 2021, and I am a jobless soon to be junior in college. I hated my old camp, the toxicity could poision a person a mile away. I was done working for a place that did nothing for me, and made me feel like shit. So I decided to look into jobs at my old camp, a place where I felt at home. I was offered a position on the spot and I was ready to begin a new. And boy did I begin a new.

It actually probably started during staff training. Many of the people there were part of the LGBTQ+ community, and we had a training on what to do with kids who were questioning their identiy and how to make camp a safe space. I, at this point, was also questioning my identity and I knew I definitely wasn’t straight but I also didn’t feel I was queer. I had said if “how queer are you on a scale of 1 to 10” was the question, where 1 was straight and 10 was queer, I’d be a 3 or a 4. Definitely not entirely straight but not fully gay, bi or queer. And that was just fine. And then, as most things go, shit hit the fan and I once again began to question everything. I began to have feelings for a non-binary person named Caden. I soon came to learn that they also had feelings for me. I was filled with so many emotions, and I wasn’t sure where to place all of them. Long story short, we were alone one night, as close to a date at sleep away camp could be, and I hesitated, then I may have trauma dumped. It wasn’t pretty. We both became awkward until the third session where we finally got a chance to talk and we came to a mutual understanding and were back to being friends. But that night solidified everything I was feeling was real, and not just in my head. But that didn’t stop the imposter syndrome from hitting my brain like a truck speeding down the freeway. We would have prideday fridays and I would wear a shirt with a unicorn and a rainbow, but when I wore it, I felt off. Like I was lying to myself. It hurt, but I realized that those feelings were valid. It took some crying, some feeling helpless, some talking to people, but I was able to work through it. 

Other than that emotional journey of epic proportions, I got to run events and activities based on some of my favorite fandoms. My favorite was for an elective we had an activity I ran called something something something dark side, a family guy reference, where the campers had to design a new and improved death star and we would determine a winner based on a number of categories. And with that its time to break two fandoms down. Being at a sci tech camp we love Star Wars and Harry Potter but oh boy do they have issues. Both have been plagued with gross stereotypes. Star Wars in particular has been criticized for its stereotyping. The Gungans, especially Jar Jar Binks, whose speech and looks such as saying “misa and yousa” and having big bulging eyes seem to be stereotyping black people. Additionally, the Neimodians accent, and mannerisms stereotype Asians. The junker Watto is a Jewish stereotype, as he is a greedy alien with a big nose. Star Wars also has a history of having token black character, Lando from the original, Mace Windu from the prequels, and Finn from the sequels, which was called out by Finn actor John Boyega. Plus there’s a random lesbian kiss in the ninth movie, which I personally forgot about which has been criticised for being forced and an example of queerbaiting. 

Harry Potter isn’t much better. Token race and ethnic characters like Cho Chang, Seamus Finnigan, and Dean Thomas/Lee Jordan, the whole goblin banker jewish stereotype, especially being bad in the new hogwarts legacy game, and of course the dumpster fire that is J.K. Rowling’s transphobic twitter. Harry Potter has tried and failed to make things better by adding a trans character to the new video game. It is hard for a lot of people to try and enjoy these fandoms after their eyes are open to just how problematic they are. Some people just decide they are done and will avoid watching star wars and reading harry potter. I personally try and understand that, while not an excuse, the books and movies were mostly made well before this new age of analysis and representation. 

And now more than every, LGBTQ+ people have been trying to mix the fandom with their identity. Fanfics and ships try to make up for the lack of LGBTQ+ representation by making traditionally staright characters gay and lesbian, something I am all for. I am the president of a Harry Potter club at Rutgers and every year we do a charity dance. Last year we donated our funds to the Trans Lifeline as a direct FU to J.K Rowling. It's not impossible to love fandoms and be aware of their flaws. The fandoms can be appreciated while also being scrutinized for their shortcomings, and hating J.K. Rowling with every fiber in your body does not have to equate to disliking Harry Potter. The hope is that these cash cows will do better and create characters who aren’t just stereotypes and tokens, but rather are characters who serve a purpose as well as represent under represented groups. From the looks of Hogwarts Legacy that may be a pipe dream, but we can hope. 

References:

[mudkippey]

It kinda just hit me how Disney wanted all the emotional moments from the first 6 star wars movies in the sequel trilogy but cut out all the buildup needed to make it mean anything.

Take the hosnian system/new republic. All I saw it as was a ripoff of alderaans destruction, except it meant less. Disney even cut the one scene that sort of would have made it have meaning: Leia sends a resistance member to the new republic with proof that the first order was a threat...only for her messenger to be in the crowed of people on hosnian watching the incoming laser. So the whole sense that "the new republic was destroyed before they could help" was lost. But even then, the books have information that would have made the whole destruction have more weight.

It's sort of established in 7, but definitely established in the books, that the new republic doesn't take the first order as a threat, but Leia does. Before all this, senators who secretly want to remake the empire (aka the first order) reveal that she is vaders daughter and act like she's dangerous because of that, basically destroying her credibility. So she leaves and decides fuck it, if the new republic won't listen to me, I'll start my own army.

So the setup is that the powers in the new republic view Leia as vaders warmongering daughter, and view the first order as a nonthreat, and they basically put their heads in the sand. Had the movies even mentioned this, had they shown Leia pleading with the Senate to take her seriously, and then shown those same senators watching starkillers laser and realizing "oh, she was right..." I feel hosnians destruction would not only have more weight, but also be different from Alderaan. Instead of being destroyed for fighting the empire, they were destroyed for dismissing the first order as a threat. Instead we just see the very end of all this, and it is very empty if, like most viewers, you don't read the books.

Another is the destruction of lukes Jedi academy aka order 66 2: Kylo edition. If you're going to make Luke Skywalker, the guy who was a Jedi when being a Jedi was a death sentence, the guy who refused to give up on darth vader, give up being a Jedi and go into exile and refuse to help his sister fight the new iteration of the empire...you damn well should SHOW us what happened, and it better be BAD. Instead we get a flashback to Luke seeing the aftermath, and the whole "Ben thought I was going to kill him so he burned everything down" thing. Order 66 was a big deal in ROTS because we saw it happen, we saw Anakin kill CHILDREN, we saw the once powerful Jedi wiped out. It was an even bigger deal in TCW because viewers really got to know the clones and the Jedi we saw die in ROTS, and then got to see it all over again. But lukes school? We don't see it happening, we don't know anybody who died, we don't even know anything about the school. Order 66 and Anakin's fall wasn't enough to destroy Obi Wan and Yoda and make them want to not train Luke, I don't think what happened was enough to cause Luke to call quits on being a Jedi (I remember someone quoted Mark Hamill saying he doesn't think Luke would have gone into exile either...I think this is just bad writing). Order 66 was a tragedy, and this was a bad plot device. ROTJ left us with the hope that the Jedi would be rebuilt by Luke...only for TFA to destroy the Jedi AGAIN, and for ROS to leave us with the hope that the Jedi would be rebuilt except not by Luke, because he gave up...AND IT'LL HAPPEN FOR REAL THIS TIME. Except now I'm left viewing the Jedi as a dead horse that keeps getting kicked and am not very hopeful at all.

And the final thing is Kylos fall. In the books, it comes out han and leia have an awful work life balance and marriage. Han doesn't know how to deal with a force sensitive kid and later decides to return to smuggling. Kylo thinks this is all HIS fault, fears that his parents would be better off without him. And when they send him to Luke? That fear is practically made reality in his eyes. This entire time snoke is in his mind, saying his fears are true. Luke senses this darkness, and now Kylo feels even worse. The prequels showed us Anakin's fall and why he has so much beef with obi wan. But only watch the sequels and you'll just get that snoke was in kylos head, kylo gave into snoke when he saw Luke pointing a lightsaber at him while he was in bed, and he has a massive grudge against his father. Again, we just see the end result, and most of the tragedy of it all is lost.

TFA was how I got into star wars, in 2015 it had potential. But instead Disney decided to not have the trilogy planned out ahead of times so the directors were too busy trying to "make it work" to put in world building or satisfying character arcs (if I got into how mishandled the characters were I'd be here for a while). And now looking back on TFA, knowing how the trilogy plays out, it really does feel like a lot of it just took stuff from the other movies, poorly. I think I know how my mom felt when the prequels came out because holy fuck.

[darth-schism]

(Per some fun fandom debate that got me thinking):

> Reasons I'm critical of the Jedi

* And reasons I'm not

----------

> Even though it isn't by force. 3 is way too young for a child to fundamentally understand how huge of an undertaking it is to leave their family and become a Jedi.

* A child, who inherently do not have control of their emotions, would be capable of brutally murdering people with a wrong thought, should their power grow unchecked, or if they fall victim to a teacher of the dark side. The stakes in Star Wars are not the same as real life. Dooku headed a galactic wide war on the (obejcviely) wrong side. Vader slew hundreds-thousands. Ren did the same. Palpatine basically did all of it and more. Only Maul claimed a lower body count, and he still went on to head a brutal criminal organization that cut out peoples tongues. Taking incredibly strict measures to stop this from happening makes sense. Yes. It didn't work for Anakin, Dooku, or Kylo Ren, but it did work for thousands of other Jedi in the events that lead up to the plot of the main series.

> The importance to let go of selfish attachment was not communicated well, and was often mistaken (both in and out of film) to be a stance that is against love and affection. Like the nature of taking/safe guarding force sensitives, this is an out dated approach that needs improvement.

* This improvement is taken on by Luke Skywalker, and although the life style is still strict (you can't just casually become a Jedi, or live the life of both a Jedi and a gun slinging mercenary), Luke does his best not to separate family members (even though sometimes it's just unavoidable, like moving across the country for a job). Likewise, he is more in touch with how to better communicate the issues of emotional control, and repression; severing selfish attachments, versus attachments if affection and love. What's more, even though Luke frequently went against Yoda and Kenobi's guidance (where sometimes he was right, and sometimes they were), I feel as though this groundwork was laid because the Jedi showed that they were oddly adaptable, whether the choice was good or not. They allowed Anakin's training despite expressing grievances. They allow Jedi to leave the Order (as seen with Dooku). They involved themselves in a war because civilian deaths were out if control, even when that comprimised their morals. We even see it with how Yoda and Kenobi allow Luke to make some pretty bad choices, even as they tried to convince him otherwise.

> The Jedi are a bit manipulative

* This manipulatoon is different from the sinister intentions of Sith though. It is a manipulation that comes from individual bias, and the attempt to do what is right, without always realizing that one is at fault before the damage is done. The harm is real, there is no denying that. But it is not malicious, and it is worked on to be made right when rightfully addressed.

- Ultimately, the Jedi are full of flaws. But they are the flaws of well meaning individuals. They are flaws that are examined, and improved upon. Sometimes, the flaws are tragically forced upon them (like what Palpatine caused with the Clone Wars). But that is a far cry from an institution of evil, or even one burdened by corruption.

- The Jedi ought to be called out. But not as though they were secret villians. But more so the way Luke exhibits in the original trilogy. And at the end of the day, it's a group of people trying to find the most non-violent way to keep planets from blowing up, versus a group that very much wants to blow up planets.

[thememerman]

Can we just,.,.accept that both Crosshair and Hunter had their reasons for doing what they did?? And honestly neither of them really did anything wrong??

Hunter left Crosshair because he tried to kill them. He didn’t understand anything about the chip, he really thought Crosshair had just lost his mind. And as soon as he learned about it and how to fix it, we immediately jumped to episode 8 where Crosshair tried to incinerate them with a jet engine. He tried to communicate that the chip was affecting him, and Crosshair didn’t care. Hunter couldn’t even get himself or Omega out of that situation unharmed. He had no way to snag Crosshair from his squadron of stormtroopers out for murder. After Bracca, Hunter was focused on getting Omega back because she’s just a kid; she isn’t with the empire, she hasn’t been chasing them down and almost killing them. From Hunter’s POV, the possibility of getting Crosshair to come with them willingly or even at all is looking bleak and even though he knows it’s not Crosshair’s fault, he’s been so overwhelmed with trying to keep the people relying on him safe and right now he doesn’t think Crosshair is relying on him. And honestly, how were they even supposed to know where Crosshair was half the time? He wasn’t on Kamino 24/7 and the Batch isn’t exactly swimming in imperial informants. But that aside, of course he was thinking about Crosshair; Hunter is loyal to a fault and you can just see the emotional pain that flashes across his face whenever Crosshair is mentioned because that’s his little brother and he couldn’t save him and he feels like he failed. Hunter never was and I don’t think ever can be indifferent when it comes to the people he loves. Whether you like it or not, Hunter was trying his best to keep everyone safe and stop running suicide missions because the galaxy was changing and he was trying to change too. He did nothing wrong.

Now Crosshair.

To all of you calling him a Nazi and saying that the animators and writers intentionally lightened his skin just to make a racist show of dominance, stop it. He was referring to their genetic enhancements being superior. That’s it. He’s always hated regs because let’s be fair the regs were never exactly good to him either (AFTERMATH). Now let’s just take a look at how the chip works shall we!! We know from Rex and Wrecker that clones know what they’re doing while under control of the chip and they’re powerless to stop themselves. So we know in Aftermath that the chip was strengthened to an insane degree, and Crosshair could still see himself taking head shots on his brothers and trying to murder them and he couldn’t stop no matter how badly he wanted to. He was powerless. And then the Batch left; at this point he probably understands that his brothers had to go. They’d regroup. They’d know this wasn’t his fault and they’d come back.

Months pass. Crosshair doesn’t know about the solemn looks the Batch exchange when he’s mentioned. Crosshair doesn’t know that they can barely get food for themselves. Crosshair doesn’t know that Wrecker has flat out said he misses him. Crosshair doesn’t know how Tech said “it doesn’t appear he’ll be needing it” with a twinge of sadness in his voice while giving Omega his comm. Crosshair doesn’t know how much Hunter hates himself for leaving and that Hunter was always planning on going back to him someday because someday he’d have the perfect plan and he could save everyone this time. How could Crosshair know?

More time passes. Crosshair probably still has his chip on but he’s still in there, watching himself become more and more important to the Empire. No rescue attempts. Not one. How awful does he have to feel?? They went to get Echo out of Skako with no backup and they didn’t even know Echo and they can’t go back for him? And here’s the Empire, giving him power and some semblance of control. Things are changing fast and now he has nobody but himself to adjust with, and besides, he’s always had an egotistical side so maybe being a commander and putting the regs in their place isn’t so bad to him after all. He’s alone. He adapts or he dies, that’s the job and that’s all he has now.

Onto Bracca!! If Crosshair is telling the truth about getting his chip out, I firmly believe it had to have been after the events of Reunion. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise; “if I wanted you dead, you would be” sweetheart giving the order to have them incinerated and starting to walk away really seems like you wanted them dead and then going from ordering Omega to be executed to telling Hunter that if he cares about her he should let her go and be safe away from them??? You can’t tell me that Bracca!Crosshair wouldn’t have dragged Omega back into the training room and killed her right there just to keep them from choosing her over him. So let’s just assume for now that Crosshair wasn’t lied to and his chip is out (I’m still holding onto a scrap of hope to the contrary because A. there’s no scar B. HE’S STILL HOLDING HIS HEAD and C. my boy isn’t making any SENSE he just killed off a bunch of Imperial stormtroopers to convince the Batch to join his Empire that he cares so much about??) it had to have happened after Bracca I said what I said idc. If the chip is out, I’m sure his head is still an absolute foggy mess because lord only knows what cranking those chips up to full strength several times will do to you, but suddenly he’s realizing that he’s still angry with them. He’s still hurt. He’s still very much alone. Maybe they never cared about him at all.

And don’t get me started on any “if he did any of this willingly he is irredeemable” garbage. How many times did Kallus almost kill the Ghost crew?? I’m sorry, was it not Kallus who ordered the Lasat genocide?? Don’t take this the wrong way, I adore Kallus and his redemption arc was one of the most beautiful things about Rebels but the point is if he can do all of those horrible things for the Empire for years and is still allowed a redemption stemming from realizing everything he thought he was fighting for was a fiction, THEN SO IS CROSSHAIR. With that side note out of the way let’s think about how alone and betrayed Crosshair feels by the Batch and let’s realize that after they left Ryloth, after they left him again, what does he want?? He wants them. He doesn’t want to kill them, he doesn’t want them imprisoned and he doesn’t want to make them pay. He wants to fight side by side with them again, he wants his brothers back. And even though he’s so beyond hope that they still care about him, heck he literally said “don’t make the same mistake twice; don’t make me your enemy” he thinks they were enemies and he still cares about them so freaking much that he went through an entire elaborate scheme to get the whole Batch on Kamino and set up the stormtroopers’ deaths to prove his loyalty that they could have if they just gave him some of their loyalty too. “Loyalty means everything to the clones” is starting to get a really bitter taste innit??

The point of this longwinded rant my friends is to beg y’all to stop being so black and white about these two. They’re both human, they both have made mistakes and have regrets, they’re both trying their best to survive in a galaxy flipped upside down. Things played out how they had to and they’re both victims of the real villain of Star Wars, who has always been Palpatine. The fact that there is so much to unpack with these two characters shows how flipping amazing the writers are!! They’re so layered and complex it’s literally like they’re real!! So please. Stop hating on them so freaking loudly. They’re my boys and they both deserve a warm hug and a nap after the season they’ve had

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Okay but I would LOVE to here your heretical opinions on Padame if you ever want to share them or any of your other views on star wars prequel characters. Your character analysises are INCREDIBLE and really fun to read <3

Oh boy, are you sure about that? Well, the ask has been made so here, we, gooooooooooooooo!

Padme’s one of those strange characters who appears as one thing but in actuality is quite different. Because she appears as the first thing, and it’s something people really like, most people accept that at face value and if she’s not always consistent--well, she came from a series of screenplays written by George Lucas.

Padme comes across as a very noble, kind, and courageous character who is also quite politically savvy. At fourteen, against all odds, she saves her planet from invasion when the Senate did nothing, secured herself an ally in the chancellor (nevermind him being secretly Palpatine), and even after relinquishing her title as queen remains a major player in the senate for years and is seen as enough of a threat to warrant several assassination attempts (one so bad she has to be guarded by Jedi and sent home to Naboo for several weeks). 

And I’m not saying she’s not any of these things. Padme is very courageous, is one of those odd politicians who... believes she stands for what she believes in (more on this later), and has a remarkable political career.

However, she’s also romantic to the point of being completely and utterly delusional, self-centered, and frankly a little nuts.

(Yeah, you knew you were waiting for me to say something terrible, WEREN’T YOU?!) Right, so what’s wrong with Padme?

Well, if you look closely at a few of her choices, the ones that never seemed to make much sense, then you can look at her other choices and... Well, it all sort of comes together. 

That’s right, I’m talking about “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”.

Attack of the Clones we have the very lackluster and strange romance of Anakin and Padme.

On Anakin’s end, his infatuation with Padme makes a lot of sense. She was part of the party that rescued him from slavery, she was very kind to him, and was the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life. Ten years later, always having harbored a crush on her memory and keeping it alive through whatever news he hears of her, she’s grown into a very beautiful woman and Anakin is by chance introduced back into her life. I get why Anakin falls head over heels for Padme, I’ll get more into this later and how their relationship has some major issues (aside from the obvious), but I understand why he marries this girl out of nowhere even when it could get him thrown out of the Jedi. (As an aside, since this is more of a Padme post, I think Anakin was spurred on in part also by the death of his mother and his massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Anakin’s life was flipped upside down in a very short amount of time, one of his great emotional ties is suddenly gone, and I think he has this internal crisis that culminates in him deciding to marry Padme. Without this, he and Padme may have become lovers, but I don’t think he’d marry her).

On Padme’s end... it’s a little less clear. Anakin has grown into an attractive young man, yes. Take out all of George Lucas’ dialogue, and maybe Padme finds Anakin very charming. However, Padme secretly marries a Jedi she’s known for three weeks. Now, I’d be a bit more forgiving of this, love is love and we can’t always think rationally, but there’s some other things.

Unlike Anakin, Padme hasn’t been spending the past ten years romanticizing her memory of Anakin Skywalker. When they met in Phantom Menace, Anakin was not only five years younger than her, he was nine-years-old. To fourteen-year-old Padme, Anakin was not then dating material and was instead this poor boy in slavery. Which means while Anakin has build up justifying this rapid romance, Padme really doesn’t. What this means is that her romance with Anakin reads a lot more like a romantic fantasy. Cute dashing bodyguard shows up, saves her life, through contrived circumstances they’re sent back to beautiful Naboo where they spend time together, only cute bodyguard is a Jedi and can’t marry, which makes their love excitingly taboo! 

Everything Padme does, before and after this point, lends itself to this overdeveloped sense of romance. Padme wants to be whisked away, wants to have this secret unsustainable marriage with a man who cannot be married, she’s in love with the idea of being in love. Given how little time she spends with Anakin, how little they really know of each other, I’d say she’s more in love with the idea of Anakin than Anakin Skywalker himself. And this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, or at least not a grievous flaw, however, that’s not all. 

Padme chooses to marry Anakin knowing he murdered an entire village of men, women, and children. She marries him almost immediately after the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Note, she does not learn about this later and have to come to terms with it, she is right there. She is on Tatooine with him and sees him go to do it and then return. 

Padme doesn’t take it... particularly well, that said, she also seems to shove it under the carpet immediately. She, first, marries Anakin within days after this event. She second, never really has a “holy fuck, Anakin” conversation with him. And worst yet, she never confesses to anyone else. Padme is a hypocrite and willing to sacrifice everything she believes in, albeit I believe unwittingly, for her romantic fantasy.

She tells no one about what happened. An entire village was brutally massacred, those who are already poor and oppressed and have no voice, by a man who is supposed to be a protector of all people in the galaxy. I’m sorry, Anakin, but if Padme was who you think she is then she would have to tell the Jedi Order at the very least if not the Republic. Instead, there are no consequences, only Anakin’s descent into guilt and madness as three years pass with it festering in the back of his mind.  Padme does not stand for the poor, for the people, or for justice. She only does so when it does not conflict with her own interests, i.e. her actions regarding the invasion of Naboo. More, I do not believe Padme has the introspection to realize this about herself, she never realizes that not narking on Anakin was very very very bad. Three years pass and she lives the whirlwind romantic fantasy that she and Anakin both want. They’re secret lovers/spouses, meeting up at the oddest hours of the day and... This is three years of this ridiculous affair. Three years to come to terms with the fact that something must change. And then the kicker, Padme gets pregnant, and this is where the extra delusional comes in.

The child should have been a signal of the end. There can be no more secret now. Padme is having a child, presumably out of wedlock, and even if space is very very very different from our society I imagine this would be quite the scandal that could even get her thrown out of the senate. I believe Padme mentions as much to Anakin. More, Anakin is no longer a lover, he is now a father. What’s supposed to happen now? They raise this secret child, instructing them that Anakin is only a father in private, never in public?

Anakin and Padme briefly flirt with the idea of Anakin leaving the order. Anakin even wants to do so, but it... never happens. Now is the time it absolutely should happen. Yes, Anakin’s a big part of the war effort, but he could at least start talking to the Order and they could decide if it’d be a slow or fast exit. 

My theory, Padme’s too in love with the fantasy. Anakin leaving means he’s no longer a Jedi, it means he’ll come to Naboo, be unemployed and be around. Anakin visiting will no longer be this romantic, fraught with the danger of being found out, passionate, short lived event for Padme. It’ll become real life. He’ll be a real, ordinary man, she’ll be a real, ordinary, woman, and that spark of romance will be gone.

I don’t think Padme wants that. 

Which is why, even with the child on the way, we see Anakin and Padme continue to play out this ridiculous secret lovers fantasy. And then, of course, Anakin goes insane off screen.

Padme is told that, once again, Anakin has murdered dozens of children. Of course, this is a terrible thing to be told and she can’t process it. She needs to find Anakin and confront him, but people always criticize Lucas here and feel it’s out of character for Padme to have run to Anakin in sobbing hysterics with no plan of enacting vengence.

Frankly, I think it’s very in character. She did nothing about the Tuskens, remember? I think at the end of the day, the murder of the Jedi children means very little to her. What hurts Padme the most is that the fantasy of Anakin she married is not real. The Anakin she married would never murder the Jedi children, betray the Republic, or do any of what he’s done. And I think Padme only has that strong, iron, will when she knows the world she’s in. With the Trade Federation, her stance was obvious. Her people were being oppressed, butchered, and invaded. In this case, the world she knew no longer exists.

The Republic is gone, perhaps hasn’t existed in thirteen years, as it turns out the senator who had always been her biggest supporter was a Sith Lord. The Jedi are gone, children murdered by Anakin while those in the field are picked off by their own clone soldiers. Padme’s world has fallen apart, and I think that makes it much harder for her to be the girl we saw in Phantom Menace. In time, perhaps, she would have joined the rebellion but... I do think Padme might have also given into despair.

So, yeah, that’s Padme for you.

[lokiondisneyplus]

'Loki' takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"  

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.  

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."  

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.  

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.  

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

Credit: Charlie Gray for EW

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.  

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Owen Wilson as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in 'Loki.'| Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."