#this is a fucking made up galaxy why do her political ideals have to be a simplified version of real life pacifism

[maulfucker]

happy to be getting Understanders on my satine post :]

[pluckyredhead]

So the Bill Willingham Steph post crossed my dash again and got me wondering... if you're a writer, what IS the best way to respond to fans (singular or group) that publicly call out your writing at a con? Obviously you shouldn't wish violence on them but since it's not like you can un-write the story, do you ignore them? Change the subject? Argue back?

I mean, I can't pretend to know the BEST way to handle a volatile question in a public space, when saying nothing is not an option.

But I also want to challenge the idea that fans were "calling out [Willingham's] writing," because that wasn't what they were doing. Sure, plenty of people said he was a hack online. But at cons, what they were asking was "Why doesn't Steph have a memorial case?"

I always hammer that point home because it's so astonishing to me now. We didn't want them to bring Steph back from the dead. We just wanted them to memorialize her fairly. We were asking for crumbs, and it infuriated Willingham and DC Editorial. To the point that when they did bring Steph back by revealing Leslie Thompson had faked Steph's death, Tim goes "So that's why she didn't have a memorial case!" They would rather have her alive than give a bunch of (mostly) female fans the tiny bit of fairness they had been asking for. It's just mind-boggling to me now how little we were willing to settle for and how angry it still made DC.

Anyway, the decision to kill Steph was editorially mandated, and the decision not to give her a case was also editorially mandated - neither of those were Willingham's decision to make. (The other objection fans had, the sexualized depiction of Black Mask torturing Steph, was also not Willingham's fault - that was artist Jon Proctor.) Now, obviously Willingham couldn't just say "Not my fault, ask DC" because throwing his employer under the bus would not have been good for his career. But DC also shouldn't have hung him out to dry.

I think ideally with any controversial storyline, the publisher should have a discussion with the creators about the best way to handle questions so that everyone is on the same page. But what happens instead is that creators (underpaid freelancers who are almost all in precarious financial circumstances) bear the full brunt of any anger, blame, or harassment, and the publishers (massive corporations*) get to ignore it.

Of course, in Willingham's case, he was not harassed, but asked a polite question ("Why doesn't Steph have a memorial case?") that he probably could have easily said was up to DC without getting in trouble. But instead he chose to publicly fantasize about committing violence against real women, because he was annoyed. So that's DEFINITELY not the answer.

So in conclusion: in general publishers should step up more, in specific Willingham is a fucking douche.

-

*When I say "massive corporations" I'm talking specifically about DC and Marvel, who are owned by Warner Bros and Disney respectively. Image is not a massive corporation. Also, DC Comics and Marvel Comics are in tricky positions because they are actually small, weirdly ramshackle legacy publishers who in a lot of ways still operate like they did when Marvel had two (2) actual employees, Stan Lee and his secretary Flo Steinberg. They operate on tiny margins, everyone who works there is criminally underpaid, their HR is a fucking joke... So like, none of this excuses editors for repeatedly not supporting their creators during times of controversy (THE FUCKING MOCKINGBIRD COVER, Chelsea Cain is a TERF but that shit was ridiculous), but I think it's also important to remember that when we're talking about the people editing these books on a monthly basis, we're not talking about Bog Iger or David Zaslav - we're talking about someone living in NYC or Burbank working 60 hour weeks on a $45K salary so that Disney has enough IP to make Guardians of the Galaxy 9 or whatever. It's complicated.

[valleyfthdolls]

Here’s my take on the Mario movie

- Fuck Chris Pratt and his shitty fucking Mario voice and fuck Illumination and Nintendo for giving the role to him- I’ve never heard someone play Mario THAT badly- and fuck everyone in charge of casting for just giving Charles Martinet a cameo when he deserved center stage

- Peach shouldn’t be a Strong Female Character. It’s great to see her stepping up as a political leader in a time of danger and potential war and destruction for her kingdom, good for her, and good on them for making her an actual princess (queen?) and leader of a kingdom and not just a pathetic woman who needs a big strong man to save her. But she also shouldn’t be the token girlboss. She’s a princess and she should maintain a “royal” presence and ideally her soft-spoken voice and kind personality. The solution to “all girl characters are prissy damsels in distress” shouldn’t be “all female characters are Strong Independent Women Who Don’t Need A Man.”

- None of the jokes were funny

- Why don’t the fucking toads sound like toads. They’re sucking all the whimsy out of Mario.

- Except Jack Black. Jack Black is slaying as Bowser.

- The proportions of the character models look AWFUL in most of the shots. Why do they look like that? The game models look fine. Couldn’t they make them look the same at least?

- It feels like they’re pulling an inverse Sonic movie with Mario and Luigi being from a different world. It could be interesting but I’m not yet sure what that accomplishes.

- Bowser is gonna be the highlight of the movie

- If they wanna make the characters’ voices less exaggerated what they’re doing now is not the way to go about it. Have Mario and Luigi use actual Italian accents and shit instead of whatever that is. Make the toads still sound gravelly and froggy, but a bit easier on the ears. Give Peach a softer and less “serious woman character” voice. Don’t settle for zero effort generic bullshit.

- I really hope Peach doesn’t start and end this movie as a serious untouchable girlboss for the #feminism. I want her to be an actual character. Female characters need actual personalities and so many movie studios just switched from one cookie cutter to the next when criticized for the misogyny in their depictions of women. I want her to be the Peach we know, who looks after her kingdom in times of doubt until she’s abducted (see the toads with spears in Galaxy), who has a taste for beauty and femininity, who can fare on her own as a leader but of course needs help when she’s fucking kidnapped, who loves her kingdom and her people and loves Mario for protecting it, even if she’s not romantically interested in him, who invites him over for cake and vacations because the care he shows her and her kingdom means that much to her. Peach is the kind of person who would find a spider in her room, gently scoop it up and take it outside, chatting with it all the while and asking it “what are you doing in here? Do you need to get back outside?” She’s not a generic progressive movie female, she’s a sweet woman who wants herself, her kingdom, and her loved ones to thrive.

- If Peach does get kidnapped I think she and Mario should form a plan to get her out together, not a typical face-off but a secret rescue mission, which ends up going wrong leading to Mario needing to face Bowser.

- If Bowser x Luigi isn’t canon I’m rioting that dumb fucking scene from that trailer for this shitty movie made me ship them and if it’s all for naught I’m killing a bitch

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Supernal Threat.”

Sorry it took me so long to write this this morning, but I hope you all enjoy it anyway :) I wanted to do a little worldbuilding and work on the development of my universe. 

The hub: it sat halfway between Andromeda and the Milky way, a massive station built around a structural ring. Each Ring housed a section of the station, which had been specifically built for the needs of one alien species over another. Each of these sections had attached housing food, docking bays, and contact locations with important tradesmen all held under strict atmospheric conditions. The only place where the sections were connected to join freely was at the center ring, and the council chamber: a large ball suspended at the center of the ring by way of specialized tunnels branching form each section, and leading into a massive meeting chamber.

Construction on the hub had begun almost as soon as the humans had joined the GA some five to six years earlier. While Rundi were the oldest space faring species, their planet was hardly the ideal location for interspecies meetings.

Then again, no planet was exactly perfect, that logic having led to the construction of the station, which was built to house a perfect environment for each and every visiting species.

Just outside the perimeter of the Hub, a massive set of glowing rings rotated slowly in place, on occasion the ring would glow bright white blue, and a ship would suddenly appear inside its outermost ring, only to come curving off into space and down to where it would dock at the hub.

This was another one of the great inventions being constructed around the galaxy: a stationary warp ring, which could be used in place of an on-ship warp drive. The only downside was that ships who used it could only move in preset patterns around known locations while ships with an onboard warp core could explore at their leisure.

However this was hardly the concern of small civilian transports or large shipping freighters, who generally tended to move only between known planetary locations. Either way, the sudden implementation of the warp rings was changing the galaxy rapidly, and now everything seemed closer than ever.

It was almost Ironic that this was all thanks to the Kree/burg collusion and their attempt to get rid of Commander, now admiral vir, by shooting him into an unknown warp tunnel which they had generated using a ring of their own ship probes. Ever since scientists had been reverse engineering the technology until this moment, when warp rings were first being  implemented at all the major hubs.

From a window, on the far side of the ring, a young military intelligence analyst was standing nervously before a viewing window staring out at the rotating warp ring and watching quietly as small ships emerged from it’s rings like polen. She held a sheaf of documents in one hand, and all around her important government and military officials were filtering into the tunnel behind her and up to the council chambers.

Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, and her stomach hurt as her intestines twisted themselves into complicated and painful knotts.

She was a simple threat analyst with the newly burgeoning Department of Intergalactic Security (DIS) and she had not expected to be brought in front of the Galactic Assembly today to speak on her work. Yes, she was head of the department’s threat analysis team, but she hardly expected herself to be important enough to be called to do what she was doing.

She almost wondered if her boss had called her into speak to cover her own ass if something were to go wrong and the report wasn’t satisfactory.

She hardly noticed the footsteps behind her or the shadow which had fallen over her face, so engrossed was she in her thoughts and nerves. It wasn’t until a few minutes later when she turned her head and caught sight out of the corner of her eye.

She froze, almost dropping her papers into a heap on the floor, but managing to catch them last minute. A man stood next to her the glowing white blue of the warp ring lighting up the front of his face and sending light dancing down his cheekbones and through his messy blond hair. 

She would have known his face anywhere, from the front of UNSC recruitment posters, the inside of history textbooks, magazines, newspapers, movie posters, and… in one case, a deck of playing cards where he had been the Jack.

Behind him a group of officers was huddled in a tight circle, broken only by his absence as it seemed he had left the conversation to gaze out at space as she was doing.

And unfortunately, he noticed her scrutiny.

She tried to look away, but it was hardly discrete and made it look like she had some sort of awkward neck spasm.

She blushed wishing she could hide behind a curtain of her hair, but the military bun she wore was unforgiving.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and caught him looking at her, her blush grew brighter.

“You know the last time I saw one of those, I was being launched halfway across the universe in a crumbling space ship.”

His voice was pleasantly smooth and calm but friendly as if he was just about to break into peels of laughter. When she turned her head to look at him still feeling awkward, the expression he gave her was one of polite amusement.

“S-sorry for staring sir-”

He smiled, “I can hardly blame you. I am nothing if not amazingly interesting.” The way he said it made it pretty clear he was only joking, and she broke out into a small smile of her own.

Her hands tightened around her sheaf of papers her mind brought back to an image she had stashed in her notes. He knew pretty damn well that that was true and not just a joke, “I think we both know you’re not entirely joking…. If you don’t mind me saying, sir.”

He shrugged, “Sometimes I forget that my life tends to be a little more interesting than most people’s.” he held out a hand, “Adam Vir, but I guessed you already knew that.” She took his hand, finding that his grip was strong and firm, but not too strong as to crush her hand.

“Lydia Deckler, sir.” He had turned his head to face her now, and she was a little more than surprised to find that he did, in fact, wear an eyepatch as all the rumors suggested. Some people said it was more of an aesthetic choice, while others said it had something to do with his -- supposed mechanical eye-- which tended to overwhelm the user after prolonged use, and of course there were the cynics who considered his use of an eyepatch the cry of attention from a man with so plungingly low self esteem he would do anything to make himself more interesting.

He didn’t seem like the latter, but she couldn’t be sure.

She wanted to ask but thought it might be rude.

The silence had gone on to long, and as she looked into his face, his one remaining eye, she felt a strange sensation, as if he already knew what she was thinking. His pupil seemed to open up, reflecting back at her the entire universe behind the station boundaries. She almost felt as if she would fall in, teetering on her heels.

There was a sudden thud against the window, and she turned and screamed.

Sheaves of paper dropped from her hands and went spilling out over the floor as the massive black eyes leered at her from the window before a curtain of billowing white ribbon.

The entier room had gone silent.

At the window the strange alien face broke into something approximating a grin.

“Conn!”

It was the Admiral’s voice, and she turned wide eyed at him, heart pounding as he marched up to the window.”

“Conn what the fuck was that!”

The face leered at him from outside, and now that her heart rate was going down, she recognized it as a starborn. She blinked in surprise, she had only ever seen pictures of them. Behind them, the entire room had turned to stare at them, and she blushed hard scrambling on all fours to pick up her papers.

Admiral Vir had gone quiet, and while he didn’t talk, he gesticulated wildly with his hands as the starborn pouted and occasionally made rude gestures at him in response.

Incredible.

She knew starborn communicated telepathically, but as far as she knew Admiral vir was the only person who could communicate back to them. Eventually the starborn made one final rude gesture and floated away from the station and down out of sight.

Admiral vir turned from the window grimacing, and bent to help her with her papers, “I am so sorry about that, he’s a bit of a problem child.” He glanced up at her and, looking sheepish he said, “And all three are probably correct.”

She looked up at him frowning with confusion, “Sorry, what?”

“All three, of their theories about why I wear an eyepatch.”

It took her a moment to register what he was talking about, and when he did her eyes widened, “Can you read minds!”

He frowned, “No, but Conn can.” he held up a hand, “Don’t worry, he didn’t mention anything else to me other than the eyepatch thing, and yes I like wearing it because I think it makes me look cool, I wear it because sometimes the mechanical eye becomes too much, and there is probably a modicum of truth about the self esteem thing, though I like to think i've mostly worked that one out.” he stood and handed her back her papers, “I hope that answers your question.”

She blushed again, and hated herself for it, “Sorry sir.”

“I’m sorry for intruding on your thoughts.”

“Amidral!” The two of them turned at the voice, and she shrunk back as she recognized Admiral Kelly,a and the fleet Commander as they stepped up, “Meeting starts in five minutes, we should be going.” 

He inclined his head and turned to her with a nod before disappearing up the tunnel with them.

She found herself suddenly very glad that the starborn hadn’t showed up when she was thinking about the movie poster hanging on her wall.

With that thought now firmly and embarrassingly fixed in her head, she hurried forward across the floor and up the tunnel into the meeting chamber, which was mostly dark, but held large pod-like seats to contain each of the delegations. Some of the seats were covered by a protected, and enclosed glass bubble while the rest of the delegations allowed the bubbles to be open to the air.

The room was alive with the chatter of a hundred or more alien delegates speaking in alien tongues.

She saw Drev, and Vrul and Rundi and Celzex: those of whom were sitting WITH the human delegation mostly clustered around Admiral Vir as he spoke with them.

Thanks to Admiral Vir, threat analytics had shown that the Celzex: despite their planetary destruction capabilities, were of the least threat to the human civilizations due to their fierce loyalty to the friendship he had worked so hard to build with them.

Those same threat analytics showed that their weakest ally within the GA was actually the Bran…. For similar but opposite reasons.

The man had really only become good at alien diplomacy within the last three years, and their first encounter hadn’t exactly gone according to plan.

She stepped across the polished black floor of the large, dark room, and took a nervous seat below the Rundi section , where the other speakers were sitting. If they were nervous, they didn’t show it, most of them sitting straight backed and blank faced, while the alien speakers were hard to suss out when it came to their own facial expressions.

One of the speakers, a short blue Drev wearing pearly white armor, looked almost bored as she spun a spear idly around in one hand.

The Drev saint, she hadn’t expected to see her at the meeting, though she supposed she should have considered she was also the weapons specialist on Admiral Vir’s ship. Her promotion to sainthood had caused a real stur in the galactic community as it sent huge ripples through Drev cultural traditions, which in turn, sparked a change in their foreign policy.

There was also the question of how hierarchy was supposed to work on the Admiral’s ship as he was technically a clan Sentinel but saints were generally positioned above Sentinels in clan hierarchy. Some worried the Drev would use this as a way to take over command of the human run UNSC Omen, though that didn’t seem to have happened.

She was probably here to speak today about how Drev and interspecies relations would reflect the new doctrine.

She had a copy in her sheaf of papers.

As a threat analyst, it was her job to determine what changes in the galaxy were good for humans and which ones were bad. She imagined that this would be good for humanity and the other GA members as a whole as the new doctrine was a little more lax on the Drev themselves.

She sat in her seat nervously as the meeting began with the Rundi chairwoman greeting them all and welcoming them to the meeting. A few words were said about the new meeting hall, and a couple of new faces were introduced to the assembly. Some general business was conducted, and then it was time for the speakers.

There were a few trade and economic reports from the Tesraki, and a very long winded speech from some foreign policy maker on space waste disposal off of ship, which had half of the gallery asleep in the first five minutes, a gallery that picked up as soon as the Drev saint stepped onto the floor, and gave a short but impassioned speech about the changes she expected to make on behalf of drev relations everywhere.

It was then her turn, and she felt her knees shaking slightly as she got to her feet and made it to the front of the room.

“Assembly members please welcome the human Director of threat analysis within the department of intergalactic security of the UNSC.”

She cleared her throat awkwardly, setting her pages down  on the small presentation table as she began.

“Ladies, Gentlemen and esteemed others of the Galactic Assembly, I have been asked today to compile and present our gathered intelligence on what my departments agree to be the greatest threats facing the interests of the GA at this time.” She began working on economic threats, social threats, and a couple of mentions of small militia groups and anarchists popping up around GA territory. They were just passing comments as it seemed there was more infighting going on than there was cooperation between the groups.

She discussed a few general topics about policies she thought needed more shoring up, before getting to one of her latest points.

“In the past months we have been compiling and analysing all the information Admiral Vir brought home with him in regards to the alien civilization nicknamed the Omnidroid. As of yet we have only determined that their civilization contains multiple sentient alien life forms capable of space travel, and have formed some sort of economy not dissimilar to our own.  With Explorations of the technology described by Admiral vir, we have no reason to believe that they have power output or technological capabilities higher than our own. We still have no idea where their location is, and find it likely that they are at some distance from us. Still we known they have weapons capabilities, and are likely to communicate on levels, as of yet, unknown to us. However without further analysis, our work has been sparse, and based only on conjecture.” 

The room shifted a little as she supplied sketched images of the aliens based on the descriptions the Admiral was able to give. Her heart had slowed a little in this time, but began to speed up again as she came to the real point of her presentation.

“But I have really been asked here today to give you all a threat assessment about what my department has labeled as Supernal Threats” there was a shift in the crowd, “These threats are categorized as being of unknown origin or power output. In all cases they are sentient, and in most cases their motivations are completely unknown. We have ranked these threats on a sliding scale of power to hostility.” She motioned to the board, “Our first Supernal threat comes in the form of the starborn hive queens.” She flipped through a few images, “These images were captured by footage taken from Admiral Vir’s space suit over a year and a half ago.” 

There was a muttering around the room as the image showed a large white, humanoid figure towering high into the overhead  of the camera.

“Based on mathematical analysis of these images, we are willing to base the size of the creature  at almost ten stories tall, a size only possible by way of little to no gravitational input. She is seen as having high hostility but relatively low power. This does not by any means mean she is not dangerous In fact she is capable of, somehow, telepathically crushing the life out of species she deems as “silent” or those species who are able to keep secrets. There is only one starborn known not to be hostile, and he has no further information to give. It is advised that she is approached with extreme caution.”

She flipped through a few more pictures of the massive celestial shape before flicking on to another image.

This one had no scale for reference and showed a massive curling shape glowing white blue against the blackness of space, “Our second Supernal Threat is the Leviathan, his and her power levels are relatively unknown  though they are capable of creating self contained warp tunnels. For a living creature to generate the kind of power it would take to fold the universe is…. unfathomable . We have no idea what other kind of powers this creature has, but we have judged the power output of this creature to be high while their hostility level is marked as relatively low. According to his own report, Admiral Vir says that the creature saved him from Omnidroid airspace and warped them both back to the Burg homeworld on the tail end of the war. Again the ability to warp itself and another object with it would require vast amounts of energy though, as of now, we have no real idea where it is coming from. Based on  the pictures we have seen, it is difficult to determine the dimensions of the creature, though experts estimate the leviathan to be nearly a mile long from nose to tail and wingtip to wingtip, while his mate is nearly one twentieth of that size.”

She took another deep breath and glanced quickly up att the human delegation box where Admiral Vir was sitting, “The last, and most recent threat is shrouded in the greatest unknowns. The UNSC has opened these classified documents to the rest of the GA as a gesture of good will, and concern for what this may mean. This last threat is a creature known only as Deus and has been mentioned slowly come into mention on multiple occasions by multiple sources. Generally his name is the only thing that is mentioned , and mostly only in context with humans.  Strangely enough the other Supernal threats have been involved with nearly all mentions of his name mentioned at one point by an infected starborn, and a second time by the Leviathan, who also communicates telepathically . The power levels of Deus is unknown, though it seems he has both telepathic and  telekinetic abilities. He has once been known to use some sort of astral projections, and he can…. Inhabit the bodies of humans.”

There was a murmuring around the council chamber.

“This is the one and only image we were able to capture of Deus.”

She flipped on the holo projection and the room grew to sudden dull roar.

In the image, Admiral Vir stood on cold hard metal surrounded by a nimbus of glowering white light. He had both arms held out, and his eyes glowed blue white, all around him stone was being turned into ash.

“This image was taken on the tail end of one of our operations at an unknown alien archeological site where inscriptions were found carved into the metal. Admiral Vir and a few other marines report the ability to read the unknown inscription, while others were unable. The inscription read “And with knowledge they did pass away andl pillars of stone were left by them and light came before them and the host surrounded them until they were brought up and none were left save pillars of stone, Woah be unto those who find this stone and read.” She paused as the room grew silent, “Literary analysis of the stones before they were destroyed determined that their closest linguistic relative….. Were human writing found in northern africa and southern parts of the middle east. A few scholars have noted a couple of lexical similarities to Hebrew, and Greek, both ancient human languages used in the writing and development of religious  documents, though that relationship is only of passing interest.”

There was quiet around the room.

“Admiral Vir reports no memory from this incident, though it is remarkable to point out that while Deus was in charge, he was able to survive a full fifteen minutes on the face of a hostile planet with high concentration of CO2 and other deadly chemicals in the atmosphere. The radiation alone should have killed him in under five, and the chemicals should have burned his lungs in under ten. Even so he came out with only minor injuries and a week of anti radiation therapy after Deus left and he spent an additional half a minute exposed on the planet’s surface.”

She looked around at the delegation, “As of now, we know neither the power levels or the hostility of Deus. It seems that, as of now he is relatively neutral, but has been meddling in our galactic affairs. Any reports of his name or sightings of him should be immediately reported to the DIS.”

She stepped back as the crowd began to murmur and overhead the image of Deus stared down at him his borrowed hands outstretched, and glowing with power.”

She glanced upward at the box where Admiral Vir stood, and shivered slightly, remembering the look in his eyes earlier when they had met.

She knew it was just her imagination, but the thought was still strange and all too unnerving.

She had no doubt that Deus was their biggest current threat.

[threadsketchier]

So I saw the prequels prior to the Originals and it always bothered me how Luke got dumped on a death planet of Tatooine considering the state of that environment and shot that when down in the previous films while Leia got a life of privilege. I was hoping Bail would argue against splitting the twins. I obviously knew why it had to go that route because it had to align and follow up with the Originals. I guess it came off that Luke wasn’t really wanted...?

I already wrote a ficlet somewhat addressing this misconception.

Also, frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of rehashing the same issue - why do people keep assuming that the Larses don’t matter and don’t have a right to be in Luke’s life just because they live on Space Australia?  Why do their feelings not count just because they’re low-to-middle-class moisture farmers who don’t live in a palace on Space Switzerland-Utopia?  Why the fuck do people assume that Luke wasn’t wanted just because the Organas have a personal preference that was obviously previously established before shit hit the fans and they wanted a daughter and Bail, as a senator and Viceroy - essentially co-leader of his planet - is a fucking rational guy who understands the necessity of making hard decisions dictated by logic over emotions?

The twins weren’t just “split up because that’s how the movies have to go,” it does make internal sense within the narrative that it was safer to hide them in vastly separate locations to prevent both of them from being discovered at the same time and thus lost together, or for their latent Force bond to make them a psychic target if they grew up together and established it, acting like a beacon for Vader and Palpatine and any minions of theirs.  It sucks, it’s painful, it has awkward consequences for them later on when Leia’s a bit too loose with her lips, but that’s why these movies have a tragic backstory.  It has to suck real hard before it gets better.

Does it seem crazy that Leia wound up raised in such a screamingly obvious position as daughter of a then-Imperial Senator and princess of a highly prominent Core world being trained to follow in her biological mother’s footsteps and become a senator herself, thus occupying a very exposed role in the Empire, right under the Emperor’s and Vader’s noses?  Yeah.  But also remember that the Superman/Clark Kent illusion can actually work in real life.  Assumption is a powerful thing.  Your average Joe Citizen would assume that someone as otherworldly as Superman, an alien with the ability to fly, strength to bench-press skyscrapers and jumbo jets, heat vision, and other amazing things, would never stoop to living as a normal, humble, inconvenienced human being.  It’s not merely the hiding behind a pair of glasses and hunching over a little with a nerdy tone and habits - it’s the entire idea that a Clark Kent could even exist in the same person of Superman.  They don’t understand that he was raised as a human and actually desires this life, and doesn’t feel the need to lock himself away permanently in his dope Fortress of Solitude and never interact with the very people he wants to save and protect.

Vader was lied to by Palpatine about the nature of Padmé’s death, but there was no disputing that she actually died.  In his crushing despair, Vader accepted with heaps of self-flagellation that his child was dead.  He didn’t even know he had two children.  In his mind, whenever he saw Leia - surely they were in each other’s circles at least at a distance before Rogue One and ANH - even if she reminded him of Padmé six ways from Sunday, he would not assume she was his daughter, because as far as he was concerned his child was dead.  The OT establishes that latent Force-sensitivity also does not automatically make two related Force-sensitives consciously aware of each other until they mutually know one another as being related and Force-sensitive, so not even torturing Leia revealed this to him.

But I’m going off on a tangent.  Let’s break this down:

Tatooine is nothing but a source of anguish for Anakin and his personal loathing for the place made it ideal as a hiding place.  And no, I’m not just haha joking about sand.  He was a slave there and buried his mother there after slaughtering an entire village of natives he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t have.  It holds nothing but misery and failure for him.

Yes, Tatooine is abso-fucking-lutely a galactic cesspit.  It’s ruled by the most vile mob boss in the galaxy, is rife with nasty wildlife that’s out to kill you, and is haunted by the troubles brought about by strife between colonizers and the native population.  It is indisputably a dangerous place.  But it wasn’t Tatooine that killed the Larses.  It was the Empire.  Just because they look like Soft Folks™ doesn’t mean they were - Owen and Beru knew how to take care of themselves, and they certainly knew how to take care of a child in this environment.  They survived to middle age just fine, and would’ve kept going if it wasn’t for those fucking stormtroopers.  Just because they didn’t live a life of luxury also doesn’t mean they were dirt poor either.  When we meet Luke in ANH, he’s a healthy young lad who still has the privilege to fuck off with his buddies around his farm duties.  Life may be tough but it’s not squalor and deprivation for him.

But honestly, even if they WERE dirt poor, they’re still Luke’s family, and they very obviously loved him.  I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to restate it, but I will: Owen and Beru loved Shmi, and upon hearing that Anakin died and left behind a baby son, why wouldn’t they be moved and compelled to take Luke in, and why wouldn’t they deserve to have the chance to raise him in their memory?  Even though they’d be sad that Luke was orphaned, they might even see this as a blessing to be able to raise Shmi’s grandson and Anakin’s son.

As much as he bitched about chores as a teenager, Luke learned damn valuable skills growing up on a Tatooine moisture farm that, coupled with the Force, saved everybody’s asses at the Battle of Yavin, and went on to make him an ideal squadron leader.  Wealth and privilege are not always the best foundation, or at least certainly not the automatic one, for a person to learn good character either.

The Organas are human too.  Faced with a difficult choice, they decided to take this poignant opportunity to fulfill a dream they’d been deferring for some time.  Sometimes parents wish for a specific child, and that’s their prerogative (except IRL they don’t actually get to pick, they get whatever kid they gestate).  If they’d taken Luke and let Obi-Wan take Leia, we’d be having the same argument about Leia growing up on Tatooine.  There was no inequality in this decision.  Bail and Breha wanted a daughter, there was a daughter present among the twins, so they chose her.  This does not mean they valued Luke any less.  Since the twins couldn’t be raised together for their own safety, it might as well have come down to a coin toss.  Bail isn’t evil for exercising a shred of his personal emotions and desires in a situation where he otherwise knew he’d have to restrain himself.  Also, he’d be smart enough to respect the fact that both children had actual family elsewhere in the galaxy and wouldn’t think any less of the Larses just because they live on Tatooine.  The only way his decision would be careless or heinous was if he knew Luke was being taken to people who were abusive or so destitute they couldn’t even care for themselves, much less a third person, and he did nothing about it - but we know this is not that situation.

How do you feel about non-wealthy people living in harsh places here on Earth raising their children?  Would you expect all the rich people in the world to go take those children away from them and adopt them just so they could grow up “privileged” instead?  Think about how that sounds for a moment or two.

Honestly, if Bail had tried to argue about taking both twins because he felt taking Luke to his legal family on Tatooine was “cruel” or “neglectful” because of the planet’s “risky environment and poverty,” I’d hope either Obi-Wan or Yoda would have enough sense to smack him upside the head for being so thoughtless as to insult these people for being seemingly beneath him.

There is more to life than money and power/prestige, and Leia’s upbringing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  She was no pampered, air-headed royal spending her days sitting idle being hand-fed space grapes while her “poor” brother ate sand cookies.  She had to undergo intensive academic, political, and physical training from young childhood in order to prepare her to become a covert Rebel agent while she was still a teenager, as if being a child senator wasn’t already stressful and demanding enough.  Sure, she never lacked for anything, but that is an incredible amount of responsibility to saddle on someone who wasn’t even an adult yet (like her bio mother).  Luke was blessed with far more freedom and peace in his childhood than his sister.  And him living on Tatooine with his father’s surname wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Leia existing within the heart of the Empire while actively engaging in Rebel activities that could have cost her her life, even without getting into the whole “daughter of Anakin Skywalker” business.

Also, just because we joke about Tatooine being Space Australia doesn’t mean every single day of Luke’s childhood was THAT eventful.  It was more likely 80% dull farm life and 20% mayhem, and that 20% would be mostly Luke’s fault for being a crazy nut like his parents and getting himself into trouble he could have avoided in most cases.  In other words, growing up there might not have been nearly as “deadly” as we make it out to be.

[kalinara]

So @singledarkshade​ and @theadrogna​ came up with a fun challenge.  We each picked seven television shows/movies and were given a cast of one actor from each show to use in a hypothetical “dream show”.

My cast: Anya Chalotra (the Witcher), Elizabeth Gracen (Highlander), Reggie Lee (Grimm), Xenia Seeberg (Lexx), Danai Gurira (Walking Dead), Geraint Wyn Davies (Forever Knight), and Robert Vaughn (Man from UNCLE).

-- My show --

The year is 3299.  Humanity has long expanded into the stars, with the hope of founding new, ideal societies.  Humans being humans, they failed.  The Coalition of Allied Planets was founded in the spirit of that old dream, and now it has grown and spread across the galaxy, bringing peace, prosperity and civilization, by certain definitions of those words.

I hereby present: Fall of the Coalition: Rebels Rising.

Characters and Episodes below the cut

Characters:

Corporal Alisha Padwal (Anya Chalotra):  Corporal Padwal had once been a promising career officer in the Coalition Corps, until a superior’s blunder led to the loss of a decisive battle.  Alisha managed to survive the resulting cover-up, but her future prospects didn’t.   Now she’s a guard on a prison transport ship, where she’ll likely live out the rest of her days, until everything changes.

Petra Nikolas (Elizabeth Gracen): If you read the Coalition Press, Petra Nikolas is the most dangerous woman in the galaxy.  A second generation idealist, Petra has been using her name, wealth and reputation to secretly amass a group of rebels, all of whom have suffered under the Coalition’s “enlightened” rule.  She’s captured now, but not for long.  She has a plan.

Marton Reyes (Reggie Lee): A brilliant doctor, all Marton Reyes ever wanted to do was save lives.  Unfortunately, the Coalition had a better idea of the best way to utilize his brilliant mind.  For years, Reyes took part in horrifying experiments, all supposedly intended to eventually improve human lives.  Reyes has his doubts.  One day, he couldn’t take it anymore.  He was captured immediately, but at least a few lives were saved.  Haunted by his past, Reyes finds prison almost a relief, since he can’t be made to hurt anyone anymore.

Jana Brandt (Xenia Seeberg): “Thug”, “Bully” these are nice labels compared to what the Coalition calls Jana Brandt.  They call her “undesirable”: a violent recidivist who has been resistant to every attempt at therapeutic reconditioning.  The Coalition considers itself too humane to kill someone like Brandt outright, but they certainly wouldn’t mind it if she just happened to meet with an unfortunate fate on the prison planet, Xyron.  Of course, they have to get her there first.

Kauli Ka Vedar/Princess Kandake of Karash (Danai Gurira):  Fifteen years ago, the Coalition brought civilization to the planet of Karash, quite against the Karashi will.  They’ll learn better, of course.  Regrettably, most of the ruling family died.  Even more regrettably, a few survived, scattered to the edges of Coalition space.

Kauli Ka Vedar is a hacker and a thief, but that wasn’t what she always was.  She survives by keeping her head low, and staying the fuck away from flashy rebel heroics.  She doesn’t like the Coalition any more than they do, but it’s not just her own life on the line if they figure out who she is.  Right now, the Coalition thinks they’ve got a petty thief.  Kauli intends to keep it that way.

Governor Geof Drystan (Geraint Wyn Davies): The Planetary Governor of Xyron, Geof Drystan is basically lord and master of all he surveys.  Generally corrupt and petty, he nonetheless has a soft spot for young people that he thinks have been mistreated by the system.  At least the ones that he thinks he can manipulate.  He’s the reason that Alisha has a job at all. 

XS 367/”Alan Nikolas”  (Robert Vaughn):  Thirty years ago, a politician named Alan Nikolas led a movement to reform the Coalition into the democratic ideal that it was always meant to be.  A brilliant speaker, the idealistic Nikolas inspired people across the political strata, until assassination put an end to his dream.   The Coalition made sure that no one would follow in his steps.

XS 367 is a prison ship AI.  Its programming is formidable but limited.  It is complex enough to manage every aspect of the day to day running of the prison ship, inside and out, but carefully limited to prevent any sort of manifestation of independent thought or personality.  At least until Petra Nikolas comes onboard, bearing the personality matrix of her long dead father.

XS 367 knows he’s a ship.  He knows he’s not really a long dead politician.  But he also knows that his daughter is on board, and he intends to do whatever he can to help her.  His way failed.  Maybe hers will succeed.

(Every appearance of Alan Nikolas, whether it’s a flashback, or an image on a computer screen is in black and white).

Episodes:

Episode 1 “Alisha”:  Alisha Padwal is a new guard of the XS 367 prison ship.  It’s state of the art, with an AI that runs everything, meaning that Alisha and her new partner, Davvyd, are blatantly superfluous.  Alisha uses the time to try to learn about the prisoners, their crimes, and their fates.  She is disturbed by the harsh, disproportionate sentences.  Davvyd, on the other hand, is brutal, taking out his frustration on the prisoners, particularly Jana Brandt.  Meanwhile, Petra plants the personality matrix into the AI, and the prisoners break free and take over the ship.  Davvyd is stabbed during the commotion, though Jana insists that it was an accident.  Alisha is taken prisoner, but she’s not without recourse as she is able to call Governor Drystan via a secret communicator.

Flashback: the episode contains flashbacks of Alisha’s fall from grace, her court martial and Governor Drystan’s interference, and him giving her the communicator in case everything goes wrong.

Episode 2 “Petra”:  Petra Nikolas has now taken over the prison ship XS 367, now the “Alan Nikolas”.  Her efforts to recruit her fellow prisoners to her cause is meeting some unexpected resistance.  Marton is a militant pacifist, who refuses to cause harm to anyone.  Kauli doesn’t want to get involved.  Jana is on board, but her violent tendencies make Petra doubt the wisdom of recruiting her.  She finally has some luck with Alisha, who, while loyal to the Coalition, also has many doubts about their methods.

Meanwhile, the “Alan Nikolas” is on the run from the Coalition.  Petra takes them to an old hideout to obtain fuel and supplies, but is double crossed.  The others reluctantly sign on with her, realizing there’s nowhere else to go.  Alisha does too, but only upon secret approval from Governor Drystan.

Flashback: Petra’s childhood, watching her father’s eloquent public speeches.  His assassination and the subsequent smearing of his name.  Petra’s own rise, using her money and education to reach out to disenfranchised people, and her arrest for dissidence.  Her forces are still out there though, she just has to get the Alan Nikolas to them.

Episode 3 “Marton”:  The next supply stop goes about as well as the first.  Coalition forces have been waiting in ambush.  Petra, Alisha, and Jana get away, but Kauli and Marton are left behind.  Kauli is injured, and Marton has to act to save her and himself.  Meanwhile, Jana advocates just leaving them, while Petra refuses, winning Alisha’s respect and making her very uneasy about her role as a spy.  When the crew is reunited, Alisha is about to tell Drystan that she no longer believes in his mission, but Jana catches her in the act.

Flashback: This is Marton’s backstory episode, so we’ll see him as a brilliant doctor forced into work for the Coalition.  We’ll see them threaten his family and friends, to the point of deadly consequences when he tries to refuse.  Finally we’ll see him snap, as he’s forced to conduct dangerous operations on prisoners and take on his vow of pacifism.

Episode 4 “Jana”: Alisha has been caught as a spy.  Jana wants to kill her, but Petra says that they’re better than that.  They basically put Alisha on trial, letting her explain why she should get to live.  Jana is disgusted when Marton and Kauli vote to allow Alisha to stay, and attempts to mutiny.  Sadly, she is shot by “Alan”, the XS-367 itself, who is trying to protect his daughter and her crew.  Marton places Jana’s body in cryogenic suspension with the hope that one day they might be able to save her.  Meanwhile, Petra asks Alisha to keep communicating with Drystan, to see if he can be turned to their side.

Flashback: Jana’s backstory episode, as a kid from the Xyron undercity.  Her flashbacks will make it very obvious that while she does have genuine issues with rage (and some blackout episodes of violence), there has never been any real attempt to help her beyond clumsy “reconditioning”.  We also see more of her confrontation with Davvyd, and his death.  Though we don’t actually see her stab him.

Episode 5 “Kauli”:  The crew end up stumbling across another Karashi survivor, Kauli’s sister, Berenice, who is being blackmailed by a local crime boss.  Kauli has to decide whether to trust Petra, who she sees as an ivory tower rebel who has no idea what risks she’s asking of more vulnerable people, and Alisha, who until recently, was an actual spy.  Ultimately, Kauli masterminds a trap for the crime boss, freeing her sister, and makes tentative contact with the rest of her family.  We learn that the Karashi have been planning their own form of rebellion, in a more subtle and cautious way, they’re not yet willing to ally with Petra, but they’ll be keeping an eye on her.

Meanwhile, Marton and “Alan” undergo an experimental procedure that allow them to speak to a comatose Jana and try to wake her.

Flashback: Kauli’s backstory episode, showing the fall of Karesh, and Kauli’s struggle to survive as a young refugee, including a situation very like Berenice.

Episode 6 “Drystan”:  Alisha, reluctantly, arranges a meeting between Drystan and Petra, when the former expresses his own dissatisfaction with the Coalition’s practices.  The crew believe it’s a trap, but Petra believes that they might be able to turn his trap back onto him, and possibly free the prisoners of Xyron, many of whom are rebels just like Petra.

Marton, Kauli and Jana infiltrate the prison staff to try to recruit and ready the prisoners, while “Alan” and Alisha plan to disrupt Drystan’s communications, so that he can’t spring his trap.

Finally, at the meeting, Drystan tries to spring his trap.  Petra gets the upperhand, and manages to negotiate a deal with him to free the prisoners.  Then Alisha springs her trap and stabs Drystan before he can comply with Petra’s demands.  She reveals that while she respects Petra, she thinks that her rebellion is flawed and destructive.  The only way to truly bring down the Coalition is from the top.  Alisha reveals that her technological sabotage gave her the command codes to the entire planet and has erased the XS 367’s personality.  It is loyal to her now.  (Though it still wears Alan Nikolas’s face).

In the prison, Kauli, Marton and Jana manage to escape and vow to find a way to come back and free Petra and Alan.

Flashback: This episode has no flashbacks.  All of the action takes place completely in the present day.

Thus ends season 1.

A projection for season 2: “Fall of the Coalition: Rebels Strike”:

Season 2 will take place where Season 1 left off.  Alisha is now the big bad, so to speak, defending her claim to Xyron and using that to start masterminding her rise to the top of the Coalition ranks.  She intends to use Petra as a means to bring her rebellion under heel, and attempts to capture Kauli to do the same.

The crew will rescue Petra and steal the XS 367.  Using the same experimental communication method that saved her, Jana and Marton communicate with the XS 367, which has now broken free from its programming in its own right and convince it to help them.  The XS 367 continues to use Alan Nikolas’s face, but now it’s in bright 1960s style technicolor.

Eventually, Alisha’s plans go awry as she faces the people at the very top of the Coalition, and she reaches out to Petra to join forces.  But is this another double cross?

[cassatine]

In the spirit of avoiding behemoth threads, finishing with Chapter Two of Queen’s Shadow in a new post. Things got long. 

Starting with a mea culpa, because I done fucked up when I said “It’s also not specified whether she intends to free the slaves she’d buy”, it is in fact there! I even quoted it (”I can use the assets I have to free what people I can”) so very much my bad. I felt a bit bad over my ungenerous reading, but it kinda balances out because I was also too generous in assuming Padmé’s personal crusade was against Slavery, The Institution, rather than slavery on Tatooine, specifically.

It’s one of the bits that made me go ‘why oh why,’ not because I think it doesn’t fit with Padmé’s character, but because to me it reads like... in TPM she was surprised to find there were slaves on Tatooine: "I can't believe there's still slavery in the galaxy. The Republic's anti-slavery laws -”. And it is a bit weird: as a politician and then a head of state she’s supposed to have a decent grasp on the actual state of the galaxy at that point, not to be naive enough to be surprised by the state of the Outer Rim or to to think slavery doesn’t exist at all in the galaxy. Irony of irony, the Nemoidians are actually listed on the wookiee as practicing it around TPM, deliberately stunting the growth of some of their young to make them into labour drones the Trade Federation... brings into the Senate.

(Seems there’s another slavery-in-civilized-space example with Czerka Arms in Master & Apprentice, which I haven’t read, but as far as I’m concerned two examples are enough to point to the fact that slavery was far from being a Tatooine or even Outer Rim only issue before Padmé was elected.) 

In Queen’s Shadow we’re four years later after she first witnessed slavery does exist (even if only by happenstance; if there’d been no forced landing on Tatooine who knows when she’d have realized) and she’s still at ‘slavery’s only a problem on Tatooine’. 

It’s not just that, though. It’s that it’s four years after her planet was invaded and the Senate proved to be useless (at one point in TPM she straight up says the Republic is broken) and she still believes it is - “I know how the Senate works”. Not that she doesn’t have reasons to believe it; there was the invasion itself, and as we learn it’s Republic courts that handle Nute Gunray’s trials. Trials plural, we lean from Palpatine: the third, he says, just “ended in a hung jury. Not the best outcome, obviously, but not the worst, either, given the strength of the Trade Federation’s legal team. The Republic lawyers must regroup, but they are already planning their next moves.”

We are all extremely surprised! This kind of thing is why Padmé doesn’t trust the Senate with the question of Tatooine slavery in the first place, after all. And I’m not saying it’s not an accurate assessment, because it is, but her plan boils down to 'hey democratic institutions are fucked but I’m rich so trickle-down economics it is. let’s do us some charity baby.’

Okay that was a little mean. The point is Padmé has reasons to see the Senate as useless, and she does. And we, the audience, know any push for reform would be useless too - we know how it all ends already, we know that the Senate is paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia, full of corruption, and we know Palpatine’s there to stack the deck against any meaningful internal attempt at reform. 

Padmé doesn’t! Well, she knows about the bureaucratic inertia and the corruption. She’s supposed to be an idealist, and she’s a politician; fixing the actual institutions should be the first thing she looks to. Sure, even without Padmé knowing how much the deck is stacked against that fix happening, it would probably look like an impossible task, but I’m pretty sure Padmé’s never been afraid of impossible tasks. And the Republic she believes in is the one she invokes when she says it stands against slavery; the one that’s supposed to mediate between members to avoid things like invasions. TPM showed her wrong on both counts, and instead of choosing to fix it the Idealist Politician Way (doomed crusade) she went with private intervention for slavery on Tatooine and slapped some cannons on Naboo.

Yeah that happened, I haven’t gotten to it yet but I looked up a few EKJ interviews and at some point before the book starts Padmé had planetary defenses installed, and apparently that was part of the platform her successor ran on too. So much for Naboo’s pacifism - an easier position to maintain when the Republic can actually be trusted to make sure invasion and the like are prevented, I suppose. 

One thing I keep coming back to wrt Tatooine is "I can’t bring official political change, given the state of most Outer Rim planets”. Because if she knows the state these planets are in, shouldn’t she have an idea of why. One of the major factors is Republic politics?? Quoting the wookie again, on Tarkin deets this time, for an example:

Several years before the Clone Wars, those in the Outer Rim eventually came to believe themselves victims of economic and social injustices, as Judicials were often withheld in intervening in Outer Rim affairs after many far-flung worlds refused to provide the Core with profitable deals. (x)

(Softly, but with feeling:) That’s corruption. It’s part of the context that allows slavery to flourish, and that’s the kind of things that’s, huh, hard to change without some politicking. It’s not a Hutt problem, or a backward planet problem. It’s a Republic problem. (Then again, if Padmé doesn’t think of slavery outside the bounds of one planet, then she doesn’t have to consider it in terms of a systemic issue at the galactic scale.)

All in all, we’re four years after TPM and Padmé’s trust in the Republic’s institutions’ ability to function is somewhere close to zero; it makes sense that she never considered leaving it despite that. What reasons does Naboo have to stay, if the Republic doesn’t work? That they don’t like the Separatists? That one of their own is Chancellor? That even with that one invasion they still have it better with the Republic than without? Padmé still calls to the Republic’s ideals because she believes in them, and I do think that’s part of why its decay is hard for her to face, but if she could put how much she cares for the slaves on Tatooine on the side for four years because of her Naboo’s needs first policy, maybe that policy played a role in Naboo’s NoLeave position too. 

I’m not saying Naboo should have left, or that Padmé’s in an easy position, watching the Republic fall apart with little power to change things - sure she has more influence than some Joe Random but even as Queen of Naboo it’s not like she can snap her fingers and fix the Republic, or slavery, or economic exploitation of the Outer Rim. She was a local ruler, not exactly Queen of the galaxy, and moreover those are systemic issues, they don’t have quick, easy fixes. 

It’s still weird that Padmé just... only looks to Naboo. I know I just said she’s a local ruler, so looking to Naboo is her job, and her planet did have to recover from an invasion. But once she realizes the Republic is broken, it’s also part of her job to think of the consequences for Naboo if the Republic stays broken, which should motivate her to try all she can not to let that happen (the consequences are not good). And realize that in the long-term, slapping canons on her planet while doing shit-all to fix the actual underlying systemic issues makes her part of the problem. In-universe, the invasion of Naboo isn’t a small event: if corporate entities like the Trade Federation can go after Mid Rim planets instead of stopping at exploiting the Outer Rim like everyone else, and still keep the seats they shouldn’t even have in the Republic and make their trials for invasion drag on for years (and it’s Nute Gunray’s trial, not the Trade Federation’s), it’s bad news for a lot of planets. And if every rich, ~civilized~ Republic member does it like Naboo, and no one does jack shit to fucking reform the Republic, then they’re basically saying it’s every planet for themselves and letting free run to predatory corporations like the Trade Federation, and it all goes even downer from there, because why wouldn’t some use the opportunity to finally get their hands on that moon or that asteroid or whatever else. Etc. Padmé doesn’t know there’s an Empire just waiting, so if she thinks the Republic is broken she should be worrying about the breakdown of its institutions

(Also, the fact that Padmé slapped cannons on Naboo and then went on to campaign against the creation of a Republic army is kind of ironic, because one of the selling points for that army probably was protecting those planets that can’t do it like Naboo.)

For all the ranting - everything checks out with how I see Padmé; it’s not that she doesn’t mean well, but Naboo’s privilege planet without even accounting with the Naboo fuckery and Palpatine mentored her. She has blind spots and she’s very good at not looking at what she doesn’t want to see. 

What it doesn’t check out with is the framing. I’m supposed to think Padmé’s brilliant. I checked!!

E.K. Johnston: I think a lot of what Padmé does in the movies goes on inside her head. So her brilliance and her political acumen, you don’t necessarily see it play out in the movies. Because she’s so smart, she doesn’t explain what she’s doing. Getting to kind of get inside her head a little bit, and write from the perspective of inside her head, you sort of see how smart and how talented and how deeply compassionate she is. In a dress that weighs 80 billion pounds or in a suit for sneaking around or whatever, she has it covered because she knows herself and she knows her friends so well. (x) 

Look if you want me to buy political acumen and brilliance and whatever, then maybe that’s what you should portray. I’m not even done grumbling, because the next (and last) noteworthy bit is between Padmé and Sabé - who didn’t know about the scheme, Padmé didn’t share it with anyone before Palpatine asked.

“I don’t have enough capital to free them all,” Padmé said, still avoiding the word buy.

“Then we’ll find out what they want on Tatooine and sell it to them in trade,” Sabé said.

“‘We’?” Padmé said, her heart in her mouth.

“Of course we,” Sabé said. “You haven’t tied your own shoelaces in four years. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Just as well that Sabé decides to help out, because I peeked ahead and Padmé’s going to be too busy Senatoring, and just like Queen, Senator is a post that’s completely incompatible with any kind of action on Tatooine apparently, so ofc she’ll drop the matter altogether but in the meantime, she’ll put Sabé on it. 

(If I didn’t already know Padmé was going to drop it, I’d probably have been nicer. But between that and having seen EKJ explain Padmé’s lack of reaction at the AOTC Tusken slaughter and lack of intervention re: the slavery situation... no.)

Anyway! EKJ’s angle is girl power and friendship (and role models), but I’m disappointed there isn’t more on the plan, because it’s not exactly the worst moment to show Padmé’s done her research - and she should have, since she’s supposed to care and to be smart - and that she actually has at least the beginning of an idea of “what they want on Tatooine”. Or that she’s aware that “they” covers a range of people from Jabba, ie local Hutt lords that probably profit from the slave trade in the first place, and I guess would be interested in money, bling (ie status symbols) or ugly deals thanks to her influence and contacts; to the Wattos and moisture farmers who have slaves for their labour - what they’d want is to replace that labour force and come up with a profit since they’re at it, or enough dough (local currency, Watto doesn’t take Republic credits) not to need it in the first place and live better than they do with that labour; to the actual slave traders who’ll mostly be interested in keeping their business going, so again, it’s mostly money they’d want.

And for the other options, discounting political deals with the Hutts because I very much doubt Padmé would go there... I am not particularly good at The Economics, but it does seem likely there are chances that trading “what they want” with Tatooine locals for slaves still involves an exchange of money at some point, so what Sabé’s really offering comes down to adding an intermediary step to the exchange of goods and in no way does that solve the capital issue. Really - what’s Padmé going to offer the Wattos of Tatooine, who don’t even take Republic credits? Not political favours, that’s for sure. Her wardrobe? Tried that one. A week at Lake Cuomo - experience the wonders of civilization, one-time offer?

Water would be an option - worth a lot on Tatooine, so maybe she can drain the lake at her family’s home in the Lake Country, although after that unless the next Queen gives her free reign over the rest of Naboo’s waters we’re back to money. Also that’d fuck over every moisture farmer on the planet, so maybe it’s not the best idea ever. She could use droids to solve the labour issue, maybe she can even get a price if she places a big order - I’m sure the Geonosians would love to help out, I hear they’re good at mass-producing cheap droids. Clones? I don’t remember that she was very vocal about their rights. Most likely it’ll come down to counting coppers - there’s probably plenty of places in the galaxy where a new vaporator is cheaper than on Tatooine. 

But if that kind of maths sounds ugly, it still doesn’t solve the finite capital problem - and if the one thing steeped in practicality Padmé has to say about her plan is ‘I don’t have the money for everyone’ then maybe that’s another reason to reconsider other options.

I’m also gonna point out that Padmé plans to have a massive impact on Tatooine’s labour force without apparently having considered the vacuum that’d create on a planet she knows to be poor and more lawless than not. It’s Hutt territory ffs, who’s going to step in if not them - and Padmé’s strategy not going to hurt them. It’s not that Tatooine’s economic model is good in any way, but if you just waltz in, take an axe to it and waltz back to fucking Lake Cuomo and your silk sheets, what’s going to replace is probably either more of the same, or worse.

In a similar but why vein, she says of the people she intends to free that she’ll “find them new homes, if they wish it” and I guess it’s supposed to sound good except if you think about it we’re talking about people who have nothing. Anakin and Shmi’s hovel isn’t *their*, it’s Watto’s; Anakin’s pod was only his because it was built out of junk (and because Watto has a modicum of decency somewhere inside). Freeing people is all well and good, but if you’re not actually giving them the tools to do so then you’re not really giving people a new start in life.

All this is why without actual systemic change what Padmé’s planning here is just plain fucked up: she’ll be injecting her assets into the very system she wants to go against, and do zero against the conditions that allow slavery to continue. Buying people, even to free them, is going to do shit against the institution of slavery itself, and if Padmé’s political acumen is supposed to be worth writing home about, then maybe she should show some awareness that she’s pulling some First World bullshit.

Previous notes: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2.a 

[tippitv]

TippiTV recap: SPN 15.01 “Back and to the Future”

First a quick note on the format of this recap: I'm dealing with some neck/back/shoulder pain so I'm not going to make a bunch of captioned screen shots and diagrams and other visual aids like I usually do. That stuff, while hugely fun to do, is time-consuming even under ideal conditions. I will instead attempt to provide you with mental images of graphics I would have made.

Now, let's get on with things.

Welcome to the 15th and final season of Supernatural, everyone! If the show were a person we could give it a Quinceañera.

[Graphic: The Impala in a beautiful taffeta gown and tiara and like... satin mudflaps instead of gloves.]

It's been 5140 days since the show premiered. That's 123,360 hours. Our solar system travels around the center of the galaxy at 490,000 miles per hour. This means we have moved through 6.04464e10 miles of space since this show premiered. I don't even know what that means. Once numbers start getting letters in them, I'm lost. But it's got to be nearly as many miles as are on the Impala's odometer.

[graphic of our solar system and the Chevy Impala zooming through space together, perhaps in friendly competition]

The road so far: Man, I do not remember a lot of this. Relevant to this episode is God throwing a hissy fit, killing Jack, and releasing all the souls and/or demons from Hell.

Currently: Jack's eyeless corpse is lying around as corpses are wont to do. The surviving members of Team Free Will are fighting a lot of freshly risen dead bodies that were possessed by the released souls. If it were me just out of Hell, I wouldn't waste time in a rotted corpse. I'd just fuck off as quickly as possible and possess someone who's eating a deep-dish cheese pizza.

The risen dead are polite enough to mostly attack the Winchesters one or two at a time, so they get to grab Jack's corpse and run into a mausoleum for shelter. Okay I understand why the souls can't get through the iron doors but what's stopping the disembodied ones from just going through a window? Or through a stone wall, for that matter?

Sam asks Castiel if he can bring Jack back but he sounds like he already knows the answer. A mid-level angel without all his original powers isn't gonna be able to undo what God's done unless the plot requires it.

[Graphic of Sam's incredibly sad face as he says or thinks "maybe the plot will require it later?"]

Everyone tries to figure out what they're going to do next. Dean snarkily wonders if they're going to starve to death. I mean, no, because the ambulatory corpses will break in before long. Failing that, they'd die of thirst unless Castiel has like a TARDIS bladder that holds Dasani, and then they could eat Jack. Mmm nephilim jerky....

Proving my point for me, a resident of the mausoleum or perhaps a neighbor tries to bust through some of the loose stones just as Sam starts chipping away at them in search of an escape route. Castiel smashes its head with a big rock, causing the ghost to flee? I guess? Whatever it is looks like a glowy skeleton and ghosts usually look like their living selves for the most part.

"What the hell are we gonna do now?" Sam asks.

Ol' Eyeless Jack pops up and says in a friendly tone of voice, "Hello!" Nobody's super shocked by this turn of events.

[Graphic of Jo and Ellen saying "nobody stays dead on this show except us"]

It's just Jack's bod with a demon in it, though. Was he the one that looked like a glowy skeleton? Whatever. He happens upon some budget sunglasses on the floor nearby. No seriously they're sunglasses to save the budget because it wouldn't be cheap or timely to have to CGI empty eyes for the whole episode.

He introduces himself. "My name is Belvegar." The fuck? That sounds like a horrible portmanteau for shipping Mr. Belvedere with Garfield the cat.

[Graphic of Buckleming: "We'd write that!"]

I suppose I should check IMDB to see how that's spelled...

BELPHEGOR???

Oh okay apparently Belph is a prince of hell and "Lord of the Gap," which is like half a step up from being Lord of Old Navy. I'm looking this up on regular Wikipedia not Supernatural Wiki so the show didn't just make him up. It says here he seduces people by suggesting inventions that will make them wealthy. One time I came up with an idea for pills that would turn people's urine into toilet cleaner. I was going to call it Vita-Wiz. And that's why I've never been able to seduce anyone with my inventions.

Anyway Castiel shoves Belph up against a wall, as is customary on this show, and demands he leave Jack's bod. But Belph says he has some mojo that will get rid of all the hellish souls and demons currently trying to get into the mausoleum. Much like how Vita-Wiz gets rid of hard water stains and leaves your toilet with a minty fresh scent!

[Graphic: a colorfully jaunty ad for Vita-Wiz with Sam's endorsement a la the "Changing Channels" Herpexia ad. "I've got powerfully clean urine."]

Belph knows all about the Winchesters but is slightly surprised this latest fuckery is God's fault. He makes himself out to be a low-level demon so either he's lying or the show's not going with the prince of hell backstory. Judging by his delivery and mannerisms he thinks he's auditioning to be in Goodfellas: The High School Years.

[Graphic: High School Musical promo poster but make it mobster]

He goes on to say that, like the Winchesters, he wants all the souls back in Hell where they belong and he can get back to torturing them. "I like my job!" Unrelatable. He can't fix the main shitsplosion that's going on but says he can get them all out of the cemetery safely.

Using some "graveyard dirt" from the floor and angel blood from Convenienstiel, he works a little spell that turns all the risen dead back into just... dead. Unoccupied corpses litter the ground by the dozens. Man, what a mess. You know who isn't gonna like their job in the morning? The groundskeeper.

Also, that sure is a useful spell. I wonder if it will ever come up again...

"Where are all the ghosts?" Dean wonders.

Cut to two teenage girls somewhere else acting like teenage girls Dabb has seen in Troom Troom videos. One of the girls sees herself as a ghost in the mirror and claws her face clean off. Man, that ghost's wig is terrible. Is she Bloody Mary? I don't remember her wig being this bad. I can't believe they couldn't afford a better one even with the Budget Sunglasses.

Back to Three Men and a Belphy. Riding home in the Impala, Sam checks the news. So far, no mention of any kind of worldwide Ghostpocalypse. It seems like you're mostly safe in this universe as long as you don't live in middle America. Belph suggests they may be able to contain the ghosts before things get too out of hand and he just happens to know the right magic.

"Imagine a salt circle a mile wide," he says. Castiel points out that Harlan, Kansas is less than a mile from the cemetery so Dean hatches a plan to get everyone out so as to not trap them inside with the ghosts and demons. Is it gonna be a lame plan that would never work in reality?

But first they stop for a wrecked car on the side of the road. There's blood on the inside of the windshield but no body. "This look familiar to you?" Dean asks Sam. It looks like a lot of wrecks where someone got wanged on the head and wandered off in a daze, but they figure it's the Woman in White. "If she's back then they're all back," Dean goes on. "Every last one that we ever killed."

Okay shout out to everyone who answered my post where I asked if ghosts used to be obliterated rather than going to Hell. The consensus seems to be that the Winchesters didn't really know one way or the other early on and were guessing.

Cut to a woman running through a house with her young daughter in her arms. The aftermath of a destroyed birthday party can be seen. How late in the day were they throwing this kid's party?? To make a long story short, the ghost of John Wayne Gacy is chasing them. I'll just reiterate my hatred of this character, not because Gacy is a serial killer obv, but because it lacks internal logic! Why is he dressed like a clown?? He wasn't executed in his old clown outfit!

Suddenly it's daytime. It's like Bugs all over again. Sam, in a jacket with an FBI decal on it approaches what must be the dumbassiest dumbass sheriff in three states. He convinces the sheriff to evacuate the whole town because of a benzene leak and the sheriff just... takes his word for it. Like, he's never heard of a benzene pipeline in his hometown but doop de doop this handsome giraffe in a cheap jacket said to evacuate so it must be true!

Also why isn't the sheriff down at the cemetery?? Someone would've called that in by now! You know what I don't really care.

Meanwhile, Dean is in the car and tells Castiel to take Belph to go get supplies for the spell. Cas says he can't do it, he can't even bear to look at him. And Dean! Rolls! His! Eyes! Like, Jack's the closest thing Cas will probably ever have to a child. He was with Kelly through her pregnancy. It's only been like eight hours since the kid died horrifically. Don't roll your dang eyes!

Cas leaves and Dean puts the Equalizer gun in the glove compartment along with a copy of The Complete Works of Anton Chekhov.

Belph notices that everyone walking down the street is good-looking. Yeah, that's casting agencies for ya. He says back in his ancient penis-worshiping days, people were uglier. Belph appears to be an equal-opportunity ogler. He turns to Dean. "I mean look at you. You're gorgeous!"

[Graphic: Belphegor replacing his penis-shaped rock altar with that Skittles poster of Jensen Ackles.]

"So who was he anyway?" Belph asks, referring to his meatsuit. "He was our kid, kinda," Dean says. The show manages to resist making a Gay Dads joke that I feel like it would've given into in an earlier season. So, yay progress I guess?

Sam and Castiel split up to check every house for ghosts. That seems super time-consuming. How many Reapers are left besides Billie? I feel like they should get one on the horn unless they're all dead. Anyway, Cas's house is where the Troom Troom girls were killed. The ghost's wig looks even worse in daylight. Do they get their wigs from the Hobby Lobby doll crafting aisle or something?

Sam's house, meanwhile, is where John Wayne Ghosty went on a sartorially illogical rampage. Somehow the mother and daughter are still alive. Dumbass ghosts can't see behind a shelving unit, I guess. The instant Sam gets them safely down, Ass-Clown immediately slices him across the belly. Castiel shows up to blast the ghost with rock salt.

Meanwhile, Belph is fanboying over Dean's torturing skills. Gasp! The show remembered Dean was in Hell. It'd be nice if they were consistent about it but whatever. Belph casually mentions that all the doors in Hell opened and Dean realizes this means the cage, too.

[Graphic: That dancing gif of the actor who played Adam that says "Still in Hell" but now it says "Maybe not in Hell."]

Castiel heals Sam's wound and the fabric of his jacket! The mother and daughter are still standing there seeing all this. Cas is like, "Whatevs, I'm an angel of the Lord & Taylor." The mom is pretty flabbergasted, and even more so when Sam mentions the wound he sustained after shooting God. Castiel can't heal that one, though, because it's probably gonna be a recurring plot point judging by the flash of Evil Sam we see.

The sheriff is making a final sweep through town when he happens upon the Woman in White. The sun looks to be setting, which means it's probably been 16 hours since all the souls and demons escaped, but they're still basically within a mile of the cemetery? Even I, burdened with an easily exhausted flesh body with shitty joints could have gotten farther than that.

Anyway, Belph needs a fresh human heart for his spell so it's pretty handy of the sheriff to die! That way none of the mains need to do the morally objectionable thing of murdering someone.

Dean senses a sudden drop in temperature. "Winnie the Pooh, right now!"

WHAT THE FUUUUCK??

Hold on. I'm watching this at 1.2x speed. Let me rewatch it at 1x.

Okay he says "we need to move, right now."  My apologies to Mr. Pooh for thinking you could ever be a part of this.

[Graphic: Winnie the Pooh chipper as anything. "I CRAVE THE BLEAK ABIDING COMFORT OF DEATH AND HUNNY."]

At the same time, Sam and Castiel are walking the two survivors through town. The little girl pauses at a badly placed fish pond because she sees a woman in it. Is it Bloody Mary? What's she doing in a pond? Seriously though putting a pond right on the street corner is just asking for trouble even without spectral shenannigans. How many people have driven over the curb and right into that thing?

Okay I gotta stop getting hung up on landscaping issues. Even if they are HIGHLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND NONSENSICAL.

Dean is attacked by the Woman in White. Ass Clown goes after Sam and the others, and is soon joined by... a tall ghost and... Lizzie Borden? Sam accidentally shoots Cas full of rock salt when Lizzie vanishes, which is pretty funny although move ya pretty self out of the way, Cas. When she pops up behind him, she tries to choke him with the ax handle. It reminds me of that lesser known poem about Miss Borden.

Lizzie Borden had an ax Gave her mother 40 whacks Tried to choke the angel Cas 'Cause axing would've been too fast

In the ensuing fisticuffs, everyone has time to throw punches while Belph performs the spell. All he does is put the heart on a little pile of salt and chant some Latin. Is like the thing Ruby 1.0 did with that poor virgin girl's heart a million years ago?

Oh sweet Jeebus the sight of these ghosts chasing everyone on foot is... bad and funny. Y'all are ghosts! You can just blip in and out of wherever you want to go! One of the only upsides to being dead has got to be not having to do cardio anymore and here you are running the hundred yard dash like it's 6th grade PE class. They come screeching to a halt where the spell has created an invisible boundary. This might be worse than Hell.

[Graphic: Parisian street mimes trying to escape an invisible box]

But wait... Why wasn't Belphegor affected by this spell? Did he write in an exception clause? Or is it only for ghosts and not demons?

The Good Guys plus Belph bring the mom and daughter to the high school down the road where all the evacuees are sheltering. With no sheriff to coordinate things, isn't it all just gonna... fall to pieces now? How are they gonna convince everyone to stay away from their homes? What if someone needs their prescriptions? ("Oh no my Herpexia!") They can't get rid of the ghosts as long as Hell isn't in business anymore, right? This is a mess. Dean seems to know it.

Dang why are Castiel and Dean on such icy terms? Why do I not remember last season?

Now that they have a five second breather before the shit hits the fan, Dean wants to see Sam's godly bullet wound. It looks a little crusty but not too bad except... "There's no exit wound," Dean notes. He gives it a swipe with some alcohol which will surely kill whatever supernatural E. coli is in there.

"So when Chuck said this was the end I guess this is what he meant," Sam says. Yes being trapped in a high school with my neighbors seems like end times to me, too. Tonally, things seemed a lot more dire in All Hell Breaks Loose 2.

Dean's feeling a bit embittered about discovering they didn't have as much free will as they'd thought, that everything was part of Chuck's personal lab experiment. "What did it all mean?" he wonders. "It meant a lot," Sam says. "We still saved people."

But what even are people, man? I'm going to have an existential crisis and I can't drink as much as Dean because I have that "Asian flush" gene thing. One drink and I turn super red and hot and queasy and then I pass out.

Sam thinks God has fucked off to who knows where because he hasn't seen the promos for episode 2 yet. "He gets bored and starts another story." Ah yes like me and my WiPs. Relatable. Overall, Sam is feeling much more optimistic. "Once we win this, God is gone... and it's just us. We're free."

Dean catches his optimism cooties. "I like those odds," he says of fighting billions of evil souls. You know what that means? We got work to do. Quick intercut of Baby Winchesters with Middle-Aged Winchesters saying the same thing and closing the trunk of the Impala.

[Graphic: Impala with the solar system again. This time the Impala is pulling ahead. "ONE MORE TIME AROUND, SONS O' BITCHES"]

So there we are at the first episode of the final season. Reblog or reply with what you thought of the episode and thanks for reading!

One final note:

You can read more about my writing and general life situation and GoFundMe here: https://tippitv.tumblr.com/post/188224749207/supernatural-final-season-recaps-and-assorted

If you enjoyed the recap and are able, please visit my virtual tip jar: paypal.me/TippiBlevins or https://ko-fi.com/A4017DA

Henry Hound and I could use the financial help!

See you next week.

[takerfoxx]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Season 4, Episode 13, First Impressions!

“Don’t…do it.”

Well, haha, okay, things are fucked!

Right, right, okay. So, lots to cover, but the long and skinny of it, nearly everyone we know kinda lost big time.

Glimmer lost. Her plan to reactivate the Heart of Etheria backfired as predicted. The truth of the weapon horrified her, and now she is the “honored guest” AKA captive of none other than Horde Prime himself, with her hated enemy Catra to thank for her continued existence.

Hordak lost. All of his attempts to conquer Etheria in order to impress Big Brother were ultimately for naught, because as it turns out, Horde Prime don’t give two shits about any of that! All Hordak managed to do was just give himself individuality, which Horde Prime finds gross and casually obliterates, re-assimilating Hordak into the collective. I mean, it turns out that Hordak was a name he gave himself! He wasn’t supposed to be a powerful and worthy servant of Horde Prime, he was just supposed to be another cog in the machine! Hell, at one point he even didn’t want to go back, specifically when he was with Entrapta! Oh, my heart.

Adora lost. Yes, she managed to overcome Light Hope’s control and stop the superweapon, thereby saving both Etheria and the galaxy at large, she also had to destroy the sword in order to do so and annihilate Light Hope, cutting off her connection to She-Ra and rendering herself powerless. Yeah, I know she’s still She-Ra and will figure out how to use her power without the sword, but consider how much of a blow that must have been. The sword was must have felt like the thing that made her special, and Light Hope really was her mentor. And now it’s all gone, and she’s (from her viewpoint) just Adora now, with her friends still in danger and Horde Prime now in control.

Also, can I just take a second to point out how awesome that bit about Light Hope’s internal struggle was, with her snapping back and forth between Mara’s Light Hope and the current one? That whole “Don’t…do it” thing with her tone changing was genius, and actually got me misty-eyed.

Catra...sort’ve lost, but also didn’t. On the one hand, her complete and utter breakdown was finally completed. Hordak learned of her deception and straight -up tried to kill her, thereby rendering all of her plans that she desperately put so much of her hopes of validation into completely moot. And sure, she did manage to defeat Hordak in single combat (and oh man, that fight was incredible!) because that’s what she does, but in the end, she was left with nothing! No Horde, no allies, no conquest, and all of her friends were gone, either by having left her for her enemies and/or having been driven away. And then who should show up to further drive in the knife than the person with the most talent at breaking people down?

Double Trouble’s scene with Catra was magnificent, pure cinematic gold. They used all of their vast knowledge of everyone that Catra felt betrayed by or had driven away to hit her again and again, laying bare all the lies she had been telling herself and showing her for the terrible person she had become. And yeah, I had seen that picture of them as Adora pressing Catra’s hand to their cheek and thought that it was a legitimate reunion, but the truth was just so much worse.

However, it’s telling that the person they saved for last wasn’t Adora, wasn’t Hordak, wasn’t Shadow Weaver, or Entrapta. It was Scorpia, the one person who accepted Catra unconditionally, didn’t leave her due to a conflict of ideals, wasn’t trying to use and manipulate her, or had been backstabbed by her in a moment of panic. Scorpia left because she could no longer be around Catra, because Catra was abusing her like she had been abused by others. It was the final proof that Catra had become everything she hated.

And she just takes it.

She doesn’t protest, doesn’t deny, doesn’t attack DT even though she probably could have. She just cowers and lets it happen. Because it’s exactly what she needed to hear.

DT gets away and technically is one of the few characters to end this season by getting ahead, but while I’m sure they certainly enjoyed their performance of breaking Catra down, I can’t help but feel that it was in part benevolent. As if in, DT genuinely was fond of their little kitten and laid out some harsh truths for her own good. Doesn’t mean they didn’t enjoy every second of it though, being the neutral agent of chaos that they are.

God, that scene was so good.

However, having the full weight of that realization come crashing down on her turned out to be good for Catra, painful as it must have been. Because it snaps her out of her breakdown and gets her back on her game, and thanks to a bit of quick thinking and a silver tongue she manages to save Glimmer, Etheria, and (I assume, time will tell) get into a position of power with Horde Prime.

And you know what? I’m calling it now; this is the start of her redemption arc. I honestly think that her reasons for saving Glimmer were benevolent, and she’s going to try to help her former nemesis. Also, I’ve mentioned how Glimmer and Catra are foils for one another before, but any ever notice that Catra has one black sleeve on her right arm and Glimmer has one white sleeve on her left. ENEMY BONDING AHOY!

In regards to Horde Prime, I love that everyone was predicting him to be like this big, hulking monstrosity, like Hordak on steroids or something. Instead, while he is bigger, it’s not by much, and his design is actually more androgynous, with a very muted color scheme, all whites and pale greens. And yet…it really works for me. It kinda drives in his fixation with order and perfection. And I love how he’s unfailingly polite and gracious while committing atrocities, only to snap at the sight of Hordak’s “imperfection.” I wouldn’t say he’s terrifying like a giant berserker would be, but he is incredibly intimidating. I am very much on board with seeing more of him.

But then, it could also be his uncanny resemblance to another favorite villain of mine...

Look, I’m just saying, the similarities are there.

Scorpia getting juiced up on the Black Garnet was fucking incredible. I love how giddy she was with her new powers, but also remaining true to herself, even apologizing when she hit Catra’s henchmen too hard. And even with the things the way they are, she still asked Glimmer not to hurt Catra, and her first instinct when everything went to shit was to seek out Frosta and Perfuma to help them, even though she barely knew them (that’s my girl!). Oh, I hope the Runestones are still working so Scorpia can keep her powers, and I love that she’s a full-fledged princess now. Though I do wonder: what happened with that Fire Princess that supposedly got corrupted? Is that graphic novel canon? If so, what happened to her Runestone, and why wasn’t it included during the power up?

And one final note: good on Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio for finally deciding that they’ve had enough and splitting.

Y’know, I really do love this show. It just makes me happy. I love these characters, I love their personalities, I love their relationships with one another, I love their world, I just really love this show. And while I do not want it to continue past its planned end-point, I am going to miss it when it’s gone.

End. Scene.

[daturanerium]

i’m finally all caught up with @thepenumbrapodcast​ ‘s juno steel stories! here are my discordant thoughts on the story and the characters.

(i did this with the magnus archives season one, too! check it out here.)

SPOILERS FOR JUNO STEEL from s1e1 to s3ep2

general plot stuff:

this show. THIS SHOW. is written so well. the characterization is top-notch. the characters are fleshed out and interesting and engaging and they all grow and change and are affected by people and environments and time and events. they’re not static in the slightest.

i haven’t come across a story that deals with depression and suicidal idealization so well. i’m thoroughly impressed with how the writers both portrayed them and how well they have (so far) portrayed the healing process. wowowow.

THE LGBT REPRESENTATION IS OFF THE CHARTS. QUEERS LISTEN TO THIS SHOW. they have a nonbinary politician?? mlm romance and kiss in the first episode???? main character is nb with he/him pronouns??? SO MANY BADASS SAPPHIC SPY/MAFIA COUPLES.....IT TUGS AT MY HEART. the big strong guy is asexual??? i could go on for days but spoilers! just know that genuinely, you will not be disappointed.

this show has two main focuses/themes: trust and the future. it’s been so fantastic to see how juno and the other characters view both themes and how they changed themselves and/or others while encountering those themes in their everyday life.

ramses o’flaherty and the entire plotline that came with him was absolutely top-notch. it blew me away. ramses is a true complicated character, a grey area that makes you question everything you believe in. the storyline tackles politics, morals, and values while keeping it exciting and entertaining. it’s definitely one of my favorite storylines ever.

the writers are truly incredible. i’m really in awe. they inspire me!  i wish i had the energy right now to give them the praise essay that they deserve but i’m really tired and i want to get this posted. someday!

the worldbuilding is the perfect balance between two extremes that a lot of scifi authors really struggle with. juno explains how a (sort of) functioning mars city works in a way that feels natural and easy to understand, and the world he describes is both familiar and fascinating. although the environment is different, the audience is all too familiar with corruption and capitalism and classism. they keep the world relatable while giving it some really new and funky details (do i want a cat with six eyes and a stinger? of course! do i want to step outside for more than five hours and get radiation poisoning? that’s up for interpretation). they also chose a great route in making this story take place in the aftermath of (what seems to be) a galactic war instead of taking the traditional Save The World, End The War scifi route. it’s refreshing, and again, relatable (especially to me: i was born after 9/11 and have lived through the entirety of the war in afghanistan so the underlining feeling that hyperion city has that Something is Going To Go Wrong....i feel that).

there is so much more i want to say but this has been sitting in my drafts for weeks and i want to get it posted!

tl;dr: juno steel is really a fantastic work of art. it’s engaging and relatable and teaches valuable lessons about healing, trusting, and moving on in ways i have never seen another piece of media do so successfully. please give it a listen if you have a chance!

some character/character arc thoughts under the cut :)

juno:

god so dumb. just so fucking stupid. i love him.

i’m going to be honest. s1 and the beginning of s2 Juno was really hard for me to listen to. the way he treated others obviously was, to put it lightly, not the best (the monitor incident with rita comes to mind; i really hated that). it almost got repetitive, and since i’m already not a big fan of the depressed-asshole trope i was kind of hanging by a thread by the time ramses came around.

god am i glad i stuck around. his character growth and maturity within the second half of season two and the beginning of season three has been so satisfying! it hasn’t been perfect, but that’s part of the reason why it’s so good--it’s realistic and believable. he’s realized where his faults lie and is making a physical and mental effort to better himself. he’s even doing it verbally, explaining to people he trusts (rita) that he’s trying to be better and then actually acting on it. too often we see the depressed-asshole say the “i’m trying to be better!” line but don’t see any actions following it that signify that effort--that was my fear going into this. but that’s really, truly not the case here, and it’s such a breath of fresh air. plus, in-canon-wise, i’m so happy for juno he’s come so far!

okay nonbinary king i see you

GET THIS LADY A CAT PLEASE.

that moment during the end of s2 when he found that baby rabbit in the sewers.....god.

juno appreciate rita challenge (accepted!)

his voice......is so soothing. except when he yells but he’s better now we’ve established that

i LOVE how as soon as he figures out that he likes you he sticks to you like glue. that’s super funny and cute and also fits him perfectly

miss dahlia rose if you’re out there.....

his complicated relationship with ramses was so fascinating and important. i loved listening to that storyline.

juno: “there’s no way in hell i’m doing this, fuck off” juno, five minutes later: [is doing it]

that’s pretty much the beginning plot of every episode lol ur so valid juno we love u

he’s ability to make the dumbest decisions continues to astound me. he likes to talk about how mick is always getting himself in trouble but god juno you’re really not one to talk

the fact that, in a world that literally runs on tech, he has no idea how a coms works. that’s so fucking funny. if you ignore the backstory that comes behind it.

did juno ever tell alessandra that he made it out of the desert alive or is she just out there in hyperion city somewhere mourning him with her wife?

i already sort of wrote on juno’s backstory but it’s so good. so good.

he’s so fucking soft. he loves so much!!!! and that scares him!!!! but he’s working on it!!!!!

rita:

is she the love of my life or do i just relate heavily to her? who knows

actually no we’re gonna talk about this

rita penumbrapodcast, queen of adhd. queen of oversharing. queen of tangents. queen of love. queen of excitement. queen of caring for her friends more than herself. queen of incredible intelligence shown in an unconventional way. queen of being underappreciated.

s1 and the beginning of s2 really stung me because i’ve been in rita’s positon--used as a punching bag by someone i care deeply about because it’s better me than someone else, because i’m willing to sacrifice my own health and safety for the sake of giving them an outlet. we put it under the guise of “helping”, but we don’t realize until later that it’s really not; we’re just letting them get away with hurting themselves and hurting us. the monitor incident comes to mind again. i actually had to pause and take a step away after hearing juno yell and the glass break--although my abusive friendships thankfully never got violent, that kind of unbridled anger was all too familiar and i was begging out loud for her to leave. she handles it like a champ, and i honestly can’t say whether or not that’s a good or bad thing: good because she knows he doesn’t mean it or bad because she’s used to it? because it’s later revealed that juno’s treated her poorly from the first day they met. i was really worried that their relationship was going to end up being static, “depressed-asshole bullies quirky female sidekick and she never fights back because she loves him” trope. but, thankfully, they’re not!

towards the end of s2 and the beginning of s3 we didn’t just see growth in juno, we saw growth in rita. she confronts juno through a thetabot down in the sewers, calling him out on his self-destructive tendencies and his habit of doing important things without anyone else’s help (in this case, disappearing for weeks without telling her where he was). she points out that maybe the only way for him to appreciate her is for her to do the same thing--disappear for weeks, forcing him to realize just how much he needs her. thankfully, this is after juno’s Big Realization, and he sincerely apologizes for his treatment of her and assures her that he’s trying to be better. (and, side note, but that apology was a good one. a really good one. he verbally acknowledges his many mistakes, including the one rita specifically mentioned, acknowledges that he does not deserve her forgiveness, tells her what he’s trying to do to be better, and then apologizes and asks for her help. that’s good. take notes, people.) later that season, she takes initiative for what seems to be the first time, coming up with a solid, well-thought-out plan, enacting it on her own, and saving both an entire city and her boss. you could probably hear my cheers from wherever you are on earth, because they were there and they were loud! rita saving the day mixed with juno breaking through the mind control with his overwhelming love and appreciation for her.....god. good stuff.

rita buying juno’s office as a surprise for him.......i Will cry

literally she’s just so wonderful i love her so much

every time she talks i’m like [one billion heart emojis mixed with like forty crying emojis]

RITA SPINOFF WHEN. i come from the critical role community so yall know for a fact i’ll back it on kickstarter

once her and juno’s relationship reaches a healthy balance (and they’re already well on their way which i’m so happy about!) they’re going to be so good together. so powerful. the Ultimate cheery vs broody relationship (although juno is less broody at this point and more....gentle asshole. we love growth). they were unstoppable before, but now? god help the galaxy lol

the fact that rita can just casually hack into literally any system in the galaxy is so.......impressive? hot? yeah.

please get this woman a girlfriend and a cat

rita x franny xoxo

RITA BACKSTORY WHEN. PLEASE KEVIN AND SOPHIE PLEASE AS A RITA STAN I AM POLITELY BEGGING YOU.

rita is now in space, which is an interesting development. i just.....”rita in space” is not something i would have ever guessed at a week ago

wait oh my god.

i was sitting here thinking rita has some sort of trust fund/is secretly rich and that’s how she bought juno’s office and kept it afloat, but with the most recent episode’s developments it’s probably equally if not more likely that she either hacked into the nearest bank to give herself the creds needed or hacked the person she was buying it from to make it seem like she had made the payments. i literally adore her whoops

the little rita episodes make me so happy and i hope we get more of them!

tldr: i love her and she deserves the world and more, i’m glad her relationship with juno has changed into something a lot healthier with juno’s Realization mid-season-two, i hope she realizes the hero she already is in season three

peter:

.........oh how the turntables.

peter, season one: juno come with me so we can be together forever and travel the galaxy! i think i love you! juno: aw babe i wish i could but i’m sad and the city needs me :( peter, season three, when handed the opportunity to travel with a healing juno through the galaxy on a silver platter: actually fuck this lol i have One Job and it is to Only Think About My Current Assignment. this is smart and healthy.

this man.....this man right here officer. stole my fucking heart.

i don’t really have an essay for him because we haven’t seen enough of him to really gauge his character development beyond an obsession with debts and his aging. i’m guessing that will change this season though

the debts....what are they

can rita hack in and pay them off

god wouldn’t that be so funny. he spends his entire life trying to pay off these impossible debts and it’s stressing him out to the point where he feels he can’t focus on anything else. and one day he comes to the fam and explains everything and rita’s like “oh shit that’s easy i’ll take care of that right now!!! why didn’t you say something sooner” and hes like “what” and she’s like “yeah!” and he’s like “holy shit” and then he gets married to juno and they live happily ever after the end.

no but real talk

these debts. there’s a lot about them and the way he talks about them that really worries me. i feel like having them be simple money debt would be too easy, so maybe it’s something medical? that would explain both his obsession with his aging and his uncharacteristically excited reaction to the healing mother prime (i think that’s what it was whoops).

he also mentioned someone else before juno, someone that had some pretty strong romantic undertones. maybe they’re sick? but peter doesn’t seem like the type to throw away a relationship like that so quickly, so it doesn’t really match up that he would have someone sick and waiting for him but he’d still go after juno in season one. hmmm.

this one’s a real mystery lads. you think you have something figured out about peter nureyev but it just gives you more questions.

peter is the one mystery juno can’t solve. god, that’s good.

his voice is so good. i don’t remember who his voice actor is but they’re doing a fantastic job thank you!!!!

i actually don’t picture peter like how he’s portrayed in the official art and fanart? i wish i was an artist so i could draw him the way i see him but alas. (i still really like his official design tho!)

listen. you give me a mysterious thief that doesn’t exist and i am Forced to love him. i have a type.

thankfully peter seemed to come around during the most recent episode (s3e2 the man in glass) so i don’t think we’re going to get a repeat of season one. these debts, whatever they are, are definitely going to cause problems. i can’t wait to see what the writers do with this.

(my only fear is that it will end up fitting the “gay character has a sickness parallel to aids and it is incurable” trope. although the writers have so far done a fantastic job of writing queer characters and worlds as well as turning tropes on their heads, so even if it may seem like that’s the case in the beginning, i’ll most likely stick through it to see where they take it. i trust them).

peter i know you’ve never had a family in your life but. im gonna tell you a secret here. found family is cool and good and you’ll like it if you give it a chance.

i love him and as soon as i cut my hair short i’m gonna cosplay him. fashion king

peter nureyev makes me want to fall in love

watching (listening) to juno grow and mature was already fantastic, but to see it through the eyes of someone who respects him, cares for him, and loves him deeply? good lord.

the way peter talks about juno.....yeah.

and peter as an individual....WOW. master thief, yes wow impressive! but his growth is already focusing so much on trust and it’s been written so well. i can’t wait to see how much he continues to grow and learn to trust this season!!!

i would love to see him continue to narrate s3. i think it’s a really strong change of pace and it also puts some extra emphasis on juno’s growth while focusing on peter’s motivations and inner thoughts. i’m genuinely fine either way tho!

tl;dr: i love u emo boy i love u i love u

[knightedrogue]

Prompts! 5 Little things that Leia always does for Han that make Han mushy inside but of course he would rather die than tell her that.

This is a good exercise because I think most of us like to imagine a Han Solo who is the ideal husband, who cooks and is amazing with his children and is the kind of man Leia Organa deserves. I know I fall into that category. So thinking about Han’s needs and how Leia meets them is good for me. I had a lot of fun writing these, so thank you, anon!

1. Leia Organa has on more than one occasion stood up for her husband in front of the galactic press. When they first start appearing together after Endor, the press is a non-entity. The big deal there is the Alliance hierarchy: how they view the relationship, how they pressure her to focus on her work and not her dalliance.

But a few years after settling on Coruscant finds both Han and Leia thrust into the spotlight. A free press is a novelty for their generation and they represent the new blood of a new government. And people also want meaning in the wreckage of war. A young couple’s drama sells holos and if there isn’t actual drama, they’re damn well going to create some.It gets so bad that Leia starts to worry that it will impact their relationship. After all, how many times can one man be accosted coming out of a spaceport? How many times can they accuse him of cheating on her with the holofilm actress of the week? Han is a private person by nature; it was difficult for him to open his boundaries for this life with her in the first place. How long could she expect him to sit still and accept the abuse without fighting back?

Leia decides to do a sit-down interview in their home. She invites a holo reporter of decent repute to a tour of their apartment. Han is instructed to stay away, if she even tells him what she’s doing at all, and he is not consulted about the interview.

And Leia does what Leia does best. She finds that line of self-assuredness and passion and walks it carefully, leading the holo reporter through a sitting room full of holos. She shows them the kitchen, the dining room, the ins and outs of Han and Leia’s physical space. There are tiny details thrown in—this is a bowl stolen from the Alderaanian Winter Palace that Han tracked down and gave me before we lived together; I love this holo of us vacationing on Corellia—and she is magnetic and soft and confident.The immediate reaction is positive. The novelty of Han and Leia’s love story never quite wears off, but the naysayers are silenced for the moment. Leia shows the galaxy stability and support: the last Princess of Alderaan in a healthy, committed domestic partnership and Han is flummoxed by her care. It means everything to him and while he might make a crack about hiring extra security to keep Leia herself in line, he holds her commitment to easing his discomfort tightly to his chest.

2.) That one time she tried to bake a Wookiee celebration cake for Chewie’s son’s Life Day. Han teased her mercilessly because the thing was a culinary travesty, but he is gobsmacked by her thoughtfuless. This is the first time Han really, truly understands that Leia cares about all of him, not just the swashbuckling hero he tried to be. He tells her about Dewlanna that night and while that’s terrifying, it’s edifying, too.

3.) When she’s away for work, doing humanitarian or political business, she always makes sure to call him at a very specific time. Once during the trip to Bespin, he told her that holo calls should never, ever come to someone before their first cup a caf. He meant it as a joke; Leia was always flitting around with her eyes trained on her comm, stress and burden in the line of her shoulders, and Han, ever the opportunist, made the comment to force her to take time for herself.

It didn’t work the way he wanted. Instead of Leia taking time for herself, she made a point to never call him before his first cup of caf. On her holopad is a complicated algorithm that shows her what time of day it is on Coruscant, on Yavin 4, on Corellia, his usual haunts. She updates it regularly with his travels. He finds it hilarious and sweet, though he’d never admit that her habit had come from a joke at her expense.

4.) Leia consults Han about her career. Not the nuances of it; Han is in no position to give advice to the princess and he knows it. But every step of her career has been made with his full agreement. Before her first election after the war, she approached him with resigned nervousness about career choices. Politics was not something one did alone. Politics in this new galaxy was about the family, too. And as awful as the press could be, the media attention would only get crazier once she ran for the highest office in the government.

Secretly he hates her work. He hates that she has to worry so much about perception, that truth is a matter for debate. In his mind Leia is honest and smart and surrounds herself with capable people and that is why she should be elected.

This is probably why he doesn’t get politics. There is one truth in the galaxy for him and that is that Leia Organa is fucking amazing. But he’s not allowed to say that on holo anymore and so he values her talking with him about her next steps. She discusses her emergency appointment when Mon Mothma is poisoned, every election, when she is called into the office again and again. He loves it. It makes him feel important in her life, like she cares for his opinion.

5.) She holds his hand in public. It’s such a small thing and he’s embarrassed by his reaction to it.

But Alderaanians don’t hold hands: it’s a Corellian thing. Corellians were …. Uh, handsy,  with their excessive physical demonstrations of affection. Alderaanians, and particularly the House Organa, kept public displays to a minimum. And hand-holding … not a thing for Leia until him.

The first time he did it was on a mission before Hoth, and she’d nearly decapitated him on the spot. She’d yelled about respecting her space, considering her body her own autonomous entity, things he honestly didn’t understand. Because most cultures fall somewhere between Corellia and Alderaan on this stuff. And he’d seen Leia be affectionate in public before. She’s hugged him after he’d helped blow up a Death Star!

He hadn’t explained it then, just been short and snippy right back to her. But when things started to heat up, when they’d had weeks to talk and explore each other’s bodies, he’d brought it up. He’d been astonished to learn that her anxiety about holding his hand had not been about him at all, but about culture.

So it was with great surprise that he noticed she would occasionally smooth a hand over his arm after Jabba’s, that she’d slip her fingers through his on Bakura, that she would try and calm him down those first few years together with a simple squeeze of her hand. Not an ingrained action: it was something she had to consistently build herself up to do. It made her feel vulnerable in public and she’d sacrifice her own well-being now and again to reassure him.

What a trip that was. She’d grab his hand beneath state dinner tables when the conversation turned nasty. She’d squeeze his hand when they walked their children outside and were ambushed by the media.  She’d lean into his arm and take his hand between hers on the difficult days, the days when the kids were kidnapped or when Luke disappeared into the Outer Rim for whatever reason. When an assassination threat was made. When an enemy rose to power and threatened the life they’d built together.

Not often, mind. She didn’t do it lightly. Leia had her own boundaries and the very first thing he’d learned about her was that those boundaries were set in stone. But when she took his hand, she stepped beyond herself, met him in the middle, bridged a cultural gap and it always left him a little breathless.

What an extraordinary life he had, with a woman like her.  Han might not tell her as often as he should. These things made him melt and he didn’t have the vocabulary for that. So he focused on reciprocating her attention, her care, and somewhere in the middle they found a sustainable happiness that made him grateful and proud.

[theussanvegad]

Character development questions: hard mode.

Special shout-out to @dxctxrii for reblogging this, I figured I’d just go ahead and answer all of them at once.

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

Lorelai has 4 siblings in the 24-36 age range, she is the second oldest child at age 34. She would most likely be closest with her older brother Kyle, who is the executive chef at Indigo.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

Rather strained, and has been since she was 10, being born and raised on the resort planet Risa, her mom tried to push her into the “staff” field on this world. Given Risa’s reputation and culture, that meant a lot of sex work. Her mother disapproved of Lorelai’s dreams of joining Starfleet.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Leto McLaren always tried to do right by his children, even after the divorce. He stayed working for his ex-wife at Indigo resort hotel as a charter deep sea fishing guide to keep an eye on things and make sure Vanessa (the mother) didn’t go too overboard. He was the one who booked Lorelai on the first liner to earth when she passed her academy entrance exams with flying colors.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Wolf 359... she was second officer on the USS Endeavor, the only ship to survive that disaster (badly damaged)... you don’t go through something like that unchanged... and yes, anyone who’s familiar with her service record knows

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Her ring of lucky charms. (A simple old fashioned key ring full of charms, several from her former captains and teachers at the academy... she has one from her siblings and father, and a special one from her second officer LtCdr. Laura Winters.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

Occasionally, most of her dreams are erotic in nature.

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Watching 39 other starships coldly and efficiently destroyed by a single cube, her direct superior dying in her arms on the endeavor, and being assimilated

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

Yes. Target at the practice ranges at Starfleet Academy

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Yes, she went from a life that would have made her a glorified prostitute (albeit a legal one) to a decorated and respected starship captain in Starfleet.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

Usually less.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

The battle of Maxia, where on her first assignment out of the Academy, she was assigned to the USS Stargazer under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. She was a young jr grade Lieutenant, fresh from the Academy, and the ship came under attack from an unknown and unidentified ship, she was forced to take the helm after the helm officer was badly injured.

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

The immediate aftermath of the Barzan gambit, where the task force the USS Anvegad (her ship, and first command) exited the Barzan wormhole on the completely WRONG SIDE OF THE GALAXY! The goal had been a covert insertion into the Gamma Quadrant behind Dominion lines to gather intelligence... the result, six starships scattered across the Delta Quadrant.

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

No

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Faces

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

No, she’s a Federation citizen and a Starfleet Captain in the 24th century... (watch some TNG if you don’t know what that means)

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

For her the two are nearly the same

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

A small powerboard or floater

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

Wisdom. Experience has tempered her, teaching her the value of both, however, wisdom has been shown to produce more long term solutions and results than ambition alone.

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

She’s openly sexual, has no problems flirting or seducing someone if it will help complete a mission, it has when she was dating a fellow lieutenant earlier in her career, she seduced her entire away team out of a very tight spot on a mission and allowed them all to get back to the ship safely... her boyfriend at the time did NOT like it.

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

At this point, she doesn’t care, people either accept her for who she is and what she can do, or they don’t.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

She is more apt to analyze the situation, was something she did the cause or contributing factor? Was there a failure in the chain of command somewhere, did a mechanical fault lead to or contribute to the event. Was the action caused by another, if so did she underestimate them or were they simply better?

What does your character like in other people?

Passion, doesn’t matter what they’re passionate about, but that passion is something that she can identify with and reach common ground.

What does your character dislike in other people?

Deliberate ignorance (not ignorance, when they simply don’t know something,) but the abject refusal to learn from mistakes, refusal to better themselves because of misguided pride.

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

It depends on the person and the situation. Sometimes it’s an instant decision based on instinct, some times it takes time

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

She relies on Natira Kosh, her Chief of security to investigate, to gather evidence, and to narrow down potential suspects before she makes her decision. “Everybody, including myself is a potential suspect until they have been properly cleared by my chief of security.”

How does your character behave around children?

She is polite and friendly, rather comfortable with them

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

She will defend anyone on her crew vigorously, and with passion. She stands her ground, unless doing so would pose an immediate threat to her ship, her crew, Starfleet or the Federation.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

She prefers diplomacy to combat, something that she learned from her first Captain, but will not shy away from or hesitate to use force if it is necessary. In the case of a known hostile, and previous attempts at diplomacy have failed, the decision is instant and immediate.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

Joining Starfleet and seeing the galaxy... obviously that did come true

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

A certain Kazon Maj... seriously FUCK that guy in particular!

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Relaxing in a proper bath, with a glass of wine and an audio book playing.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

Waiting, particularly when she cannot affect the outcome one way or another.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

It depends on who is giving it, and why,

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

She prefers to analyze the results of the failed attempt first to determine why it failed, what effect it actually had, what if anything caused it to fail, and could these be corrected? Then she might try again... if time and the situation permits such a luxury of said analysis. In a battle situation, she’s likely to change tactics and strategy on the fly to adapt

How does your character behave around people they like?

She’s warm, friendly, approachable, courteous and polite.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

In a professional setting, she remains courteous and polite, but with an undertone if cold businesslike professionalism.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

Honor most times

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

Remove the threat... neutralize it, contain it if possible... destroy it if not

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

Fun fact: Risian Feather Monkeys do NOT react well to being tickled. And a young Lorelai had seven stitches to prove it

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Growing up in such an environment herself, she treats them quite well, knowing the difficulties that such jobs entail.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

She feels that she has earned everything she has gotten, through hard work, determination, and ability. If she hadn’t earned her captaincy, she wouldn’t be a Captain.

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Boothby, the grounds keeper at Starfleet Academy, Captain Picard aboard The Stargazer

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

Every person under her command, as far as she’s concerned

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Rather easy in the right situation, and though she doesn’t like to say it without meaning it... she can and has.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

She’s not sure what will happen, but she sees it as a new adventure.

[emperorren]

(6) I guess I'm also not a fan of "Perfect Jedi Goddess Rey for whom Kylo has to crawl on his knees to be worthy of" (I can totally see why ppl like it tho), mainly because at this point, Kylo needs an equal, and not someone he'll always feel inferior too. I think the Throne Room proves that both of them still have some growing up to do in order to not only be together, but also understand each other better, bring out the best in each other, and being able to mature together in a healthy way.

Sorry, forgot to add this last part to the earlier post.

I think nobody wants Kylo to crawl. It was a popular concept like, 2-3 years ago, when Reylo shippers used to self flagellate (and flagellate Kylo) much more than we do now, half to deflect anti discourse and half because we really believed the best we could hope for was Rey not *completely* hating his guts by the end. Those days are gone. We know Kylo has his own reasons, because the narrative is showing them—it’s no longer a stretch or “reading too much into it” on our part. But the fact remains that Kylo is a villain and that, in order for this relationship to work, they’ll need to start being on the same page on something other than their mutual desire to be with each other. And I think it’s clear that, while Rey does have some growing up to do, her ethics are in the right place, while Kylo’s aren’t. It’s kind of unrealistic to expect Rey to move away from her heroic morals in the same way Kylo will have to move away from his villainous morals, so I don’t think it’s worth debating whether she should or not. 

The whole “meeting halfway” thing is still possible, especially if you consider that, so far, they’ve essentially tried to abduct each other into their world, and failed. They both need to acknowledge and accept the fact that they might never “have” the other—not in the terms they currently think would be ideal. But Kylo has objectively more things to make up for. Many of those things have nothing to do with Rey per se, but became Rey’s business the moment she started to care for him.

re: your new round of asks:

(Rey discourse anon here) The problem is that for me, it’s really hard to tell whether Rey pulling the lightsaber away from Ben was her being cornered and knowing that what she’ll do will hurt Ben deeply – and for that, all I’m going to say is that, well, no, she literally did not have to do that. Again, it makes sense that she’d react this way, but the issue is that by reacting on impulse, like Luke did so many years ago, just like he played a part in making Kylo Ren,she played a part in making the Supreme Leader. Yelling at him and making her intentions clear was entirely possible, would have resulted in a similar outcome, and she decided not to. Because reasons. (Seriously, what is Ben going to do if she replies “no” out loud, kill her? *eyeroll*) 

I’m not sure why you think yelling at him would have looked better in Kylo’s eyes, or what else Rey could have done to make her intentions clear, other than beg Kylo to stop firing on the Resistance, which she already had, loud and clear. Kylo perfectly understood what she was asking. He chose not to comply. Had his reasons. But chose to discard her plea.

Also, yes, she *literally* had to pull the saber. It’s her only weapon, and the girl needed one if she wanted to get the fuck out of the Supremacy alive. I think y’all forget she was in enemy territory, alone, unarmed, and in desperate need to get to Crait where there would probably be a huge battle within minutes. Yeah, she has the Force… but a lightsaber could help. 

And frankly, no, I don’t think being morally right gives you a right or even merely an excuse to strike right into someone’s trauma.

Rey really did not do that—not on purpose (unlike Kylo, who totally used the parents card i.e. Rey’s own trauma and repressed painful memories to convince her to accept his offer). Note that Rey never actually got to wield the saber against Kylo—all she did was try to snatch it away from him. They could have gone for a clear cut Luke/Rey parallel by having Kylo regain consciousness to see an armed Rey looming over him, conflicted on whether to kill him or not. But they didn’t. This is absolutely important—Rey could have killed Kylo as he was unconscious, but chose not to. And Kylo never got to see her seriously considering to kill him.

Her face could frankly also be interpreted as “you’re not doing as I say, so screw you!”, and since the next scene we see her in is her woo-hoo-ing on the Falcon and then getting reunited with her buddies, there’s no indication she’s really all that heart-broken. Her closing the door on Ben could be seen that way as well (although I obviously think their story isn’t over, of course). Like… I dunno, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for her.

Her face when she’s slowly lifting her hand in the throne room scene doesn’t scream of “screw you!” to me. Neither does the little gasp in the last force bond. But YMMV.

The story could have been set up as “Rey did nothing wrong and Ben better beg on his knees in IX”, but it wasn’t. Because in the end, both Rey and Ben made their own bed, which leads me to be more “GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER YOU IDIOTS”. But this said, I do believe Rey’s heart was at the right place. She was indeed the catalyst that pushed Ben to finally get rid of his abuser. But realistically speaking, what she pulled off could have gone horribly wrong as well.My point is not that following your heart is always bad – but doing that all the time isn’t exactly a good idea either. Heck, Luke’s heart was at the right place when he went to save his friends in ESB, and he got beat up and lost his hand.

It might be not “exactly a good idea” but it’s still better than the alternative. (in Luke’s case, that would have been leaving his friends to die; in Rey’s case, not attempting to do anything for Kylo at all). These heroes tend to have their heroism challenged at the end of the second movie: they learn that sometimes having the best intentions isn’t enough. It’s an important lesson in humility. But not one that teaches them to follow their hearts a little less. See: Luke in RotJ, doubling down on compassion and being ready to risk his life not only to save his friends, but to redeem his father too.

And for Rey, it’s more than being an outsider: she’s the only person who had, like, an actual human reaction to Ben’s situation and actually did something to help.(Well, so did Han, but it was indeed a case of “too little, too late”, even if it definitely had a huge effect on Ben and made him start to realize Snoke was a PoS) But where she also failed is that just like everyone else, she came to Ben with a clear agenda in mind (or you know, an agenda to convince herself she’s totally doing this for the great cause, not because she wants The Beefcake), and with wanting to be the hero so bad she lost sight of what Ben really needs – a friend.I guess one thing that kind of annoys me at this point is that, honestly, who the heck knows what Ben’s motivations are, at this point, because his speech in the Throne Room could be interpreted in many ways. But I won’t lie by saying about it that if it just boils up to “Ra-Ra-First-Order”, I’ll be bored to tears. It’s not even a matter of saying “Ben was right all along” (because he obviously isn’t), you know, just something like“Ben is right when it comes to the endgame, or the intentions, or whatever, but his methods of getting to that are terrible”. What Rey has in mind is “we’ll help the Resistance together and build a new Jedi Order”, while having no clue whether Ben really wants that or not. I mean, he’s probably already not big on the idea because Rey might think the Resistance is great and all, but he knows they won’t be so nice to him, for obvious reasons.And it’s not even a matter of ideological differences or not – heck, maybe even in the old days with Luke, he flat out didn’t want to be a Jedi. Both of them need to find an outcome that they both want – and they’re obviously not at that point yet. 

I don’t disagree with you on this last part, especially on the bolded. (See what I said earlier about meeting halfway.)  But I do have a couple objections:

I don’t think Rey was at all trying to play the hero by coming to the Supremacy. If anything, she hoped Ben could be, so she could be relieved from the burden of being the galaxy’s last hope. And yeah, Ben might be in desperate need of a friend… but so is she, and it’s not exactly easy to be the perfect friend when a war is raging and you’re on opposite sides of the conflict, ykwim? This isn’t a normal situation.

I wouldn’t really count on Kylo’s endgame being shown in a sympathetic or redeeming light. Politically, his ideas (judging from the little we know of them) are a mess. But most importantly, in politics, the “means” count just as much as the “end” does. If your plan to reduce poverty includes, say, mass incarceration and operates on a racist logic, then your plan is bad, no matter how noble your goal is. If Kylo thought the best way to create his “new order” was using a militaristic, despotic war machine whose goal is forcing the galaxy to yield to their dictatorship and raze to the ground any dissenter, then either his idea of a new order isn’t ESPECIALLY democratic in the first place, or he just doesn’t understand politics at all. He can’t simply give up on his means. He needs to give up on his intended endgame as well.

[hydrospanners]

8 AND 18 FOR NIREA

thank u 4 askin and also makin this meme u r gr8. i got a little carried away but not as much as with the recruitment mission. putting stuff under a cut because long. i don’t think i even really answered #18 but honestly it would take twenty years to answer that completely so..... [shrug emoji]

8. Are they romanceable? Why/why not?Rea’s romance is available to characters of every class/gender/race/social standing/background/political affiliation/etc, but it’s a tricky one. She’s the ideal partner if your character is looking for a one night stand or a friend with benefits or even just a casual, uncommitted thing. If you’re looking for feelings and actual romance and partnership, you’d better be ready to work for it.

A physical relationship with Rea is very easy. You can board the bang train to bone town almost immediately after recruiting her provided you aren’t too high on the Darkness scale, keeping slaves, or doing unquestionably evil shit right in front of her. Slavery, cruelty, and unmitigated bloodlust are big turn offs for her. Basically the only turn offs. Outside of that, Rea loves the pleasures of the flesh and will quickly make it clear that she’d love to pleasure yours.

If you refuse, she will never bring it up again. She’ll still flirt--that’s just who she is--but she will never proposition you again. If you change your mind down the road, she’ll absolutely be receptive to anything you initiate but you will have to be the one to initiate and keep initiating for a long time. If you accept, you can have a friends with benefits arrangement for as long as you want. She won’t care if you have another romance happening so long as you never try to be deceptive about what’s going on, with her or your other partner. If they’re cool with it, she may suggest a threesome. She’ll also have other partners of her own and she won’t try to hide that or be subtle about looking for them. She will probably try to bone some of your other companions. She may succeed.

The tricky part, when romancing Rea, is taking the sex and the friendship and making it romance. She isn’t looking for that and is very clear about it and frankly it terrifies her. You’ll have to be close friends (have high approval) before she catches feelings and if you push her for a relationship or a commitment too fast after she realizes she’s caught them she will run. She will straight up just leave your crew. If you push her too hard to trust you or stop seeing other people or, honestly, if you do anything that makes her feel at all like you want to restrict her, she’s leaving. She says she’s not much of a Jedi but she resorts to extreme measures real quick when she thinks she’s at risk of having a feeling.

It’s a careful dance on a very thin line of pushing too much and not pushing enough. She won’t pursue a deeper relationship without urging and interest from you, but if you demand too much she’ll pull back so fast your head will spin.

But if you manage it, if you’re the poor bastard whose heart is set on wooing this disaster of a woman, prepare yourself to be lavished in attention and compliments and anonymous gifts. Most importantly, prepare yourself for a great deal of unwavering faith. She will believe in you hard enough to put the very best mom to shame and you will know she how much she believes in you by the trust she gives to you. There is no part of her that Rea guards more jealously than her trust, but if you walk that line between too much and not enough, if you convince her that it is safe to let herself love you, one day you will wake up to the most suspicious woman in the galaxy unflinchingly giving you every part of herself, no matter how fragile or how sharp. When you say you can handle something, she’ll trust in your judgment and your honesty and she’ll let you. She won’t try to protect you or go around you and she won’t make plans for what happens if you can’t.

It won’t change who she is or how she lives. Rea’s not a woman meant to stay still or live her life on someone else’s schedule. She will be away from you sometimes, following her own path. She’ll want you to follow yours. But you can be sure that a Rea in love is coming back to you just as soon as she can, and she’s doing everything she can to make you feel how loved you are even from 1000 lightyears away. A successful romance with Rea, rocky as it is getting there, is a stable and equal partnership full of respect and trust and laughter and support and sex and fun.

18. If they are recruitable in vanilla story, where are they during KOTFE/TET? What are/were they doing?Where is Rea ever? You certainly don’t know. She never really made a habit, no matter how high your approval or how successful your romance, of telling you what she was planning to do or if she was planning to leave. She never seemed to know herself. Some days you would just wake up to a shift in the air, to a ship that’s too quiet and a ‘back later’ scrawled in lipstick across your droid’s forehead. Sometimes you’d find the smeared outline of her lips on its cheek. Maybe you wondered if that kiss was for you or the droid. Maybe you worried if this would be the time she didn’t come back. Maybe you hoped for it. Maybe, if you were cruel enough to the powerless and the innocent, if you revelled enough in violence and destruction and darkness--Maybe one day you were right. Maybe she stopped coming back.

You wonder about her, when you rise from your carbonite grave. Maybe you ask around. Maybe you miss her, or maybe you worry. Maybe you just need someone you know is on your side.

She isn’t hard to track. Rea has a habit of making an impression wherever she goes and from what you can tell she’s been everywhere in the last five years. That doesn’t make it any easier to find her now. But you shouldn’t have worried about that. You should have remembered: she always turns up eventually. She’s like a bad penny that way.

It happens just like it always does. You wake in your quarters on Odessen, knowing that something has changed. Something has shifted in the air. Then your comm starts screaming and you hear the echo of shouts and the clang of metal from down the hall. Maybe it’s the Force; maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s the wisdom gained from experience. But you know it’s her. You’ve barely had time to finish reading all those messages and she’s already blowing open the gates of your secret base.

Or maybe you have finished them. Maybe you’ve just finished reading them for the fifth, sixth time; maybe you’ve missed her like you’d miss your own limbs (it’s only been a few weeks in your mind but still) and you haven’t been able to put down those stupid nudes since you opened them; she’s such a starsdamned idiot but she’s yours and she’s here--

The point is, whether you wanted it or not, she finds you before you can ever think of finding her. She’s been looking. Waiting in the way that she waits, which doesn’t look like waiting at all. If you ask where she’s been the answer is everywhere. If you ask what she’s been doing, the answer is fighting. It’s the same as it always was. Time hasn’t really changed her life, even if you can look into the cool blue of her eyes and see that it has changed her.

You stop asking questions eventually. If she wants to tell you, she’ll do it on her own time. That’s just how Rea is. Maybe you don’t like it, but you’ve known her long enough to know you can’t change it. She doesn’t ask where you’ve been either. Doesn’t question or accuse. If you know her well, you can guess that she’s figured it out on her own. She always seems to know things you never told her.

Or maybe she doesn’t show up on Odessen, a storm of chaos and confusion and a few brief volleys of blaster fire. Maybe a bleeding heart like hers, no matter how tough she pretended it was, couldn’t keep pace with a life like yours. Maybe you didn’t want it to. Maybe she left before all this happened, before everything went to new levels of shit. Maybe all you have from her when you wake from your sleeping is a threat that leaves you staring a little too deep into shadows. Maybe you keep one eye over your shoulder and maybe you lie awake sometimes, listening for feet in the night. Maybe you can feel her eyes on your back when you have the time to think of anything but magic and possession and war.

You don’t see her, but you do see shadows. Hints. You don’t have the time to wonder if it’s her or your imagination or if she’s just fucking with you somehow. If she has people on Odessen playing on your paranoia. Rea always had a talent for making friends; if she is coming for you, you know she won’t be coming alone. But you haven’t seen her since she jumped ship all those years ago, and you don’t see her now. You know her well enough to know that if she has it her way, you never will. Not if she sees you first.

[mylife-foryours]

gratuitous screencaps & questions for an’dante

1. What is their gender? ... woman-ish?

2. What is their sexuality? Ace-ish, bi-ish. Complicated by a combination of trauma & who she is as a person.

3. Do they have any siblings? How many? Are they older or younger?  Which sibling are they the closest with? No siblings; when she was 3-4 she was... fostered? by her grandparents, and there were a few cousins who lived in the same apartment complex, but she was a very solitary child.

4. What’s their relationship with their parents like? What about other relatives? Her memories of her parents are vague and patchy - her father’s callused hands, her mother’s deep voice singing a Zabraki lullaby. On the other hand, she remembers her grandparents very well. She understands them well enough to know why they left her on the streets of Sobrik, and on good days she can even sort of sympathize - starvation is a hideous way to die. So she isn’t going to, like, hunt them down and murder them, but she has no interest in ever seeing them again, either.

6. What would they give their life for? Orro.

7. Are they in a romantic relationship? With who? How did they meet? She’s in something with Orro. When they first met, Orro had been cornered by a group of offworld thugs, and An’Dante went after them like a feral alley cat. She won more through the element of surprise and nascent Force abilities than anything else, but it was still enough to begin a fast friendship with Orro.

8. What do they believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them? Either she’ll stop existing entirely, or she’ll become a Force ghost. As appealing as it might be to continue to influence the galaxy even after she’s dead, the fact that ghosts can be bound & their entire self made into a battery for someone to tap makes that prospect singularly terrifying. Even when she was a slave, it was only ever her body that could be broken and fucked and drained of blood. Death wasn’t an ideal escape, but it was always there. No such luxury if her ghost is bound. Nonexistence isn’t ideal, but it’s preferable to that.

9. What is their favorite color? Favorite animal? Her favorite color is sunset red, and her favorite animal is a tooka cat, but the one that I associate with her is a snake, both for the obvious reasons and because of the death/rebirth symbolism.

10. What are some of their talents/skills? Rhetoric, blackmail, politics in general. On a more benign note, unearthing/handling delicate artifacts and translating ancient texts in a way that’s both faithful and aesthetically pleasant.

11. If they could make a mark on history, what would they like it to be? Empress of the Sith Empire, Conqueror of the Republic, the Great Liberator of Korriban. (Practically, she understands that she’d be better off as a combination shadow hand & eminence grise, but she’s not above the appeal of shiny titles).

12. How old are they? When is their birthday? She’s nineteen during the Sith Inquisitor prologue, but not exactly sure when her birthday is.

13. What do they do for fun? Watch drama-heavy serial shows (ideally w/ Fene or, later on, Talik’ime) and snark at them.

14. What is their favorite food? How often do they get to eat it? She’ll eat pretty much anything and enjoy it, but she really loves seafood and rare meat.

15. What was something their parents taught them? Not to get too ANGST-HEAVY, but by omission, probably “you’re an unwanted burden, and will be left behind as soon as it’s physically possible”.

16. Are they religious? Sort of - she’s Sith, and takes the code seriously, but her own interpretation of it is pretty heretical.

17. Where were they born? Small farming village on the outskirts of Sobrik.

18. What languages can they speak? Where did they learn these languages? She’s a native speaker of Basic & Zabraki, picked up Huttese and snippets of Mando’a in her early-mid adolescence, and learned Old Sith during her apprenticeship to Lord Volcari. Later on she tries to pick up Chenuch as part of her bid to insinuate her power base into Imperial Intelligence, and expands her knowledge of Mando’a with Fene’s help.

19. What is their occupation? Dark Council member.

20. Do they have any titles? How did they earn them? She blackmailed Darth Vox into promoting her to Dark Lord of the Sith before murdering her and abandoning what was left of her corpse in a decaying orbit around Korriban’s sun. Approximately two years later, she escaped Jedi custody with a fair number of stolen relics and detailed knowledge of Tython’s defenses, earning the name Darth Moriah. She became the leader of the Assassin’s Pyramid after defeating Darth Rictus in a Kaggath, and operated as Empress Acina’s unofficial Hand between the destruction of Ziost and the end of KOTET.

Personality:

21. What is their favorite thing about their personality? Her wit.

22. What is their least favorite thing about their personality? Her sensitivity.

23. Do they get lonely easily? Yes, but she’s relatively good at dealing with it.

24. Do you know their MBTI type? INTJ

25. What is their biggest flaw? God, so many. But probably the worst, ethically and in terms of her relationships, is that she’s cruel.

26. Are they aware of their flaws? Sort of. She knows that she’s cruel, but she thinks that her greatest flaw is that she’s weak-willed and dithers over Doing What Needs To Be Done.

27. What is their biggest strength? Her adaptability.

28. Are they aware of their strengths? Yes - some of her arrogance is bravado, but not all of it.

29. How would they describe their own personality? That would depend entirely on who was asking.

30. When frightened, will they resort to “fight” or “flight”? http://pete-walker.com/codependencyFawnResponse.htm

31. Does this character ever put somebody else’s needs before their own? Who do they do this for? How often do they do this? She’d do just about anything for Orro, including framing & executing her own apprentice for treason, but she’d put a lot on the line for Fene, too. She tries to be sparing with displays like that, though - it’s an expenditure of resources, emotional and otherwise. Cryptarch’s qualm and all that.

32. What is their self esteem like? Not great.

33. What is their biggest fear? How would they react to having to face it? Being enslaved again - no surprises there. She’d go nuclear if faced with that - no concern for collateral damage or her own survival, just fighting her way out with claws and lightning and teeth, or, failing that, putting her own lightsaber to her heart.

34. How easily do they trust others with their secrets? With their life? An’Dante’s secrets stay under lock and fucking key.

35. What is the easiest way to annoy them? In terms of annoyance (rather than blind rage), probably telling her that she’s overreacting to something. 

36. What is their sense of humor like? Give an example of a joke they would find humorous. Dark & ironic, with a particular fondness for wordplay and last-minute twists. Pretty much any of these would have her howling.

37. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? Do they say it without meaning it? Very difficult. She’s said it to.... maybe two people in her life, probably?

38. What do others admire most about their personality? Either her intelligence or her tenacity.

39. What does their happily ever after look like? After winning Orro over to her cause, crushing the Republic hypocrites and their Jedi lackeys, uniting a reformed empire under her rule (with someone else as a figurehead, naturally), freeing the slaves and hanging the masters by their own intestines, I imagine that she’d like to spend her time researching poetry fragments and teaching freed slave children to read.

40. Who do they trust most? Is that trust mutual? She trusts Orro & Orro doesn’t trust her, but Orro is quite trustworthy (& predictable) while she’s decidedly neither.

Physical Profile:

41. What does their laugh sound like? Do they snort when they laugh? How often do they laugh? Quiet and spiteful; if she laughs, it tends to be at people, not with them.

42. What is their favorite thing about their physical appearance? Thanks to her Zabrak mother, she has very sharp, prominent canine teeth, which make her sneer look much more intimidating.

43. What is their least favorite thing about their physical appearance? Probably the brands on her face. But for the same reasons that she doesn’t have any tattoos, she’s not going to get any kind of surgery to remove/cover them up. They’re a reminder.

44. Do they have any scars? If so, what are the stories behind those scars? Per her in-game appearance, she has brands/burn scars on the left side of her face. She also has heavy whip scars on her upper back, a fractal lightning scar that wraps around her torso (result of the one (1) time she mouthed off to Overseer Harkun), and some minor chemical burns from her experiments with poisons and forbidden artifacts.

45. How would they describe their own appearance? She probably wouldn’t, honestly.

46. How easily can they express emotions? How easily can they hide emotions? Hiding her feelings is pretty much second nature. She can express Sith-standard emotions quite well, and quite genuinely - she’s got a lot of anger and fury bottled up, even if it isn’t really directed at heretics - but sadness, fear, and the rest are more difficult.

47.  What’s their pain tolerance like? High.

48. Do they have any tattoos? What are the stories behind those tattoos? No tattoos, and no plans to get any - she’s  played with the idea of getting Sith tattoos to deflect from criticisms of, ahem, heterodoxy, but that would require allowing someone very very close to her face with very very sharp objects, and that’s a hard nope.

49. Do they have any piercings? Nope.

50. How would you describe their style of clothing? How would they describe their style of clothing? Semi-ceremonial light armor with flowy bits & a pronounced inclination towards the dramatic vs. “Robes befitting my station”.

51. What is their height? Weight? 5′3, 210 pounds.

52. What is their body type? Are they muscular, chubby, skinny, etc? Fat, with some core muscle strength.

53. What is their hair color? Eye color? Skin tone? She has warm brown skin and black hair. Her eyes are naturally brown, but intense dark side use shifted them to a molten gold color by the end of Act I. Faded back to brown while she was on Tython (Light Side-suffused environment + force-nullifying cuffs), then went orange/gold again after she escaped. At this point she’s had enough corruption/redemption whiplash that they’re kind of eerie pale grey with red limbal rings.

54. What is their current hairstyle? What have been some of their past hairstyles? Which was their favorite hairstyle? For the first sixteen years of her life, she kept her hair short, both for practicality - she couldn’t wash often, and didn’t want it getting caught in anything - but also so that no one could grab it. Upon being taken as Lord Volcari’s apprentice, she began growing it out. Mostly she left it down, but Fene would sometimes put it up in braids, which was her favorite. After being held captive on Tython, she chopped her hair off to about chin-length, and kept it there until she made Darth. It started coming in white after Ziost, but that was largely a moot point, since by then she had signed on as Acina’s left hand & was wearing a mask and hood. After her final break with the empire, she cut off the few inches that were still dark brown/black, so her endgame haircut is a blunt, chin-length bob.

55. What is their alcohol tolerance like? What kind of drunk are they? How bad are their hangovers? It’s not so much

56. What do they smell like? Why do they smell like this? (Is it the things they’re around or a perfume they wear?) If she smells like anything, it’s mostly old books and tomb-dust. Doesn’t actually smell like blood as often as you would think - she usually kills people via some sort of proxy, and even if she's in a straight-up duel, lightsaber wounds tend to cauterize quickly.

57. How do they feel about sex? Are they a virgin? Doesn’t like sex, not a virgin, the specifics are predictably related.

58. What is their most noticeable physical attribute? Probably her nose; it’s not very noticeable on her in-game model, but I always draw her with a big beaky nose.

59. What does their resting face look like? Do they have RBF? Carefully blank.

60. Describe the way they sleep. Deeply and overlong, now that she doesn’t have to wake at dawn or earlier. It’s one of the few luxuries she can partake of without any guilt.

Environment:

61. Which season is their favorite season? Obligatory “seasons work differently on other planets” stipulation aside, probably autumn.

62. Have they ever been betrayed? How did it affect their ability to trust others? She was baited into an “escape attempt” by one of the overseer’s quislings when she was about thirteen, and never made that mistake again.

63. What is always guaranteed to make them smile? Ironic reversals of fortune.

64. Do they get cold easily? Do they get overheated easily? Gets overheated more easily than she gets cold.

65. What’s their immune system like? Do they get sick often? How do they react to getting sick? Since she’s half-Zabrak, her immune system is hella weak. She hates the vulnerability that comes with being sick, and tends to shut herself up in her compound with enough reading material for several weeks and enough painkillers to wipe out a small army.

66. Where do they live? Do they like it there? She has a compound on Korriban with one of the larger collections of Old Sith epic poetry in Imperial space.

67. Is their bedroom messy? What about their bathroom? Kitchen? Living room? Probably her quarters as a whole have a comfortable level of clutter - there’s some automated cleaning, but she refuses to use cleaning droids, and doesn’t have much time to clean on her own.

68. How did their environment growing up affect their personality? Significantly, but not indelibly.

69. How did the people in their environment growing up affect their personality? The fact that her grandparents wanted nothing to do with her and regarded her as a burden, and

70. How do they feel about animals? Do they have any pets? She likes them well enough, but feels uncomfortable with the idea of owning a living creature - she has some friends among the desert cats around her compound, though.

71. How are they with children? Do they have any? Do they want any? She’s okay with children, if a bit overprotective, but she’s never had any, and even if she physically could (like most half-Zabraks, she’s infertile) pregnancy is a terrifying idea for her. She’d even feel guilty about adopting a kid, since being associated with her would be Absurdly Dangerous - almost none of her rivals would hesitate to go after a child.

72.  Would they rather have stability or comfort? Comfort, largely because she doesn’t really believe that stability exists.

73. Do they prefer the indoors or outdoors? Indoors.

74. What weather is their favorite? Do they like storms? Her favorite weather is dry and slightly chilly, with a bit of a breeze. Enjoys thunderstorms as long as they’re not on Dromund Kaas.

75. If given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen? She’d practice her Old Sith calligraphy.

76. How organized are they? She’s a wee bit paranoid about committing things to paper, so her things are as organized as she can keep them in her head. When she’s doing well, it works fine. When she’s not...

77. What is their most prized possession? Either her saberstaff or the holocron that houses her ghost friend. Probably the saberstaff, since thinking about what’s essentially someone’s phylactery as her possession would probably make her queasy.

78. Who do they consider to be their best friend? Fene.

79. What is their economic situation? Probably pretty good - I imagine that Dark Council members get a hefty salary.

80. Are they a morning person or a night owl? Night owl.

Miscellaneous:

81. Are they bothered by the sight of blood? Sort of, but she’s had lots of time to get used to it.

82. What is their handwriting like? Neat & cursive-adjacent, but she writes with a very heavy hand, since she was almost twenty when she learned how.

83. Can they swim? How well? Do they like to swim? She can Sort Of stay afloat, and enjoys swimming so long as she can keep doing that. Deeper water makes her nervous, though, mostly because she’s spent so much time on Dromund Kaas: deep water is where the fish made entirely of teeth and pincers live.

84. Which deadly sin do they represent best? Fucking hell. Gonna say it’s a three-way tie between Pride, Envy, and Wrath.

85. Do they believe in ghosts? She literally keeps one in her pocket, so yeah.

86. How do they celebrate holidays? How do they celebrate birthdays? Hmmm... as a member of the Dark Council, there are probably certain state holidays that she’s expected to publicly celebrate, but on her own time I imagine that she keeps things low-key.

87. What is something they regret? Stabbing Orro in the back, physically and metaphorically. It’s worth nothing that this is at least partially because she didn’t actually get anything out of it - Jorgan recaptured her in fairly short order. (Part of her hadn’t really... adjusted to the fact that there were other people in Orro’s life by that point)

88. Do they have an accent? Xanthe Elbrick’s performance has grown on me a lot in my billion-odd playthroughs of a female Sith Inquisitor, but in my heart of hearts, An’Dante has a Slavic accent.

89. What is their D&D alignment? Neutral Evil.

90. Are they right or left handed? Left, but she’s trained herself to be ambidextrous.

91. If they were a tweet, what tweet would they be?

92. Describe them as a John Mulaney gif.

[rosezone]

tag game time!

thank you for tagging me @wlweiss !!

Here Are The Rules: answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people

Fool Lineup (i have no idea if this is avas own addition or if the original ask meme had fool lineup from the start. both are good): idk 20 is a lot but i’ll try ! @sheerwillpower @princess-harumaki @ghostguts @ssonoda @textsize @pekonyamas @cherrykakyo @kazooichis @kmnari @ilovekyosukemunakatathemost @softcoded @yuissamidare @fluff-princess @bullethell @starfloat @liqhtboycore @rlightlight @togami-salami @galaxy-gardener @wlwfutaba  aaand did it! no pressure to do this, tho! i just know i love getting tagged in them ^^

the last

1. drink: water ! 2. phone call: my little cousin i think or maybe kaia 3. text message: this gc with my irl friends 4. song you listened to: the poor unfortunate souls remix by china anne mcclain (dont judge, its a banger i promise) 5. time you cried: uhhh two days ago lol 6. dated someone twice: nope! 7. kissed someone and regretted it: yeah /: 8. been cheated on: yeah /: 9. lost someone special: uhh not to death but yes 10. been depressed: stares into the camera office-style 11. gotten drunk and thrown up: never gotten drunk!

3 favorite colours

12. pink 13. purple 14. uhhh black? red? blue?

in the last year have you 15. made new friends: yeah !! 16. fallen out of love: uhh i think so 17. laughed until you cried: yes i cry like everytime i laugh ahah 18. found out someone was talking about you: yeah /: 19. met someone who changed you: yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20. found out who your friends are: uh ig? i think im always doin that tho 21. kissed someone on your Facebook list: ok anytime this list says fb im changing it to instagram which is my irl Social Media of Choice and, no

general 22. how many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: almost all, there’s maybe like 20 out of 600 idk 23. do you have any pets: yes! 24. do you want to change your name: nah 25. what did you do for your last birthday: it was my sweet 16!!! i had a p nice party 26. what time did you wake up: like 12:30 ajogwewag

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: uhh fucking around on my computer idk 28. name something you can’t wait for: college! 29. when was the last time you saw your mom: like 20 mins ago 31. what are you listening to right now: poor unfortunate souls ageawg

32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: yeah

33. something that is getting on your nerves: uhh nothing rn? my tooth hurts ig 34. most visited website: tumblr. 35. hair colour: maroon, i just dyed it !!

36. long or short hair: short but i own extensions so? 37. do you have a crush on someone: kaia, duh

38. what do you like about yourself: im very friendly!

39. piercings: three on each ear 40. blood type: idk bro

41. nickname: irl my friends call me maria to mock me ajgewjo + mai and i remember once bradi called me rose on here so that was cute!  42. relationship status: im gay

43. zodiac: taurus! 44. pronouns: she/her

45. favourite tv show: riverdale probably. im Awful. if su counts then that? 46. tattoos: nope! don’t plan on it either 47. right or left handed: right 48. surgery: i used to have surgeries every week when i was little bc i was Sickly but i dont remember any 50. sport: i played volleyball for like 5 years but its behind me now lol and marching band 51. vacation: uhh pakistan obvi, saudi arabia, dubai, turkey, canada, florida nd i think thats it? 52. pair of trainers: i assume this means like, sneakers so i have two pairs

MORE GENERAL 53. eating: i just ate like...rice-soup its a desi dish lol 54. drinking: nothin!

55. I’m about to: work on my online finance class uugh 56. waiting for: uhh nothing lol this is so Ominous 57. want: chocolate!!! 58. get married: yes!!!!! 59. career: Ideal Life is me being a famous person who does a lot of acting and political commentary lmao but i’d like to be a neurologist/neurosurgeon or anything else to do with medicine and possibly research! i have very broad interest lmao

WHICH IS BETTER 60. hugs or kisses: both! 61. lips or eyes: uhh eyes 62. shorter or taller: taller?

63. older or younger: i like little people more than older ones i think 64. nice arms or nice stomach: arms 65. hookup or relationship: relationship duh 66. troublemaker or hesitant: troublemaker!

HAVE YOU EVER: 67. kissed a stranger: no 68. drank hard liquor: noooooooo 69. lost glasses/contact lenses: no, surprisingly ! 70. turned someone down: yeaaaah 71. sex on the first date: no 73. had your heart broken: yeah ): 74. been arrested: nope 75. cried when someone died: yeah 76. fallen for a friend: i’ve been friends w all the people ive dated 

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 77. yourself: i try to!  78. miracles: yes! 79. love at first sight: also yes! kindaaa 80. santa claus: nah 81. kiss on the first date: yeah bro why not 82. angels: ofc!

OTHER: 84. eye color: brown 85. favorite movie: SO MANY BRO but clueless takes the top spot. honorable mentions are lemonade mouth, silence of the lambs, and legally blonde