#you are not different nothing about you makes you incapable of atrocities

[hindahoney]

If a "new" form of antisemitism ever surprises you, you don't know enough about antisemitism. I can promise you that every single form of antisemitism, both from the left and the right, all share at the very least several centuries (if not millenia) of history. It's all the same stereotypes repackaged to appeal to whoever the target audience is and dressed up in modern terms to reflect whatever values they're trying to sell you.

Pagan antisemitism is the same as Christian antisemitism. Christian antisemitism is the same as Muslim antisemitism. Muslim antisemitism is the same as new age antisemitism. New age antisemitism is the same as Nazi antisemitism.

It is all the same, it hasn't changed in over three thousand years. You need to educate yourself on the origins of antisemitism or you won't know something is antisemitic unless it's someone screaming "Death to the Jews." If you fail to recognize the antisemitism in front of you that is dressed up in language you agree with, you will fall for it.

[veetyuh]

CW: non-graphic mentions of CSAM, graphic descriptions of the mental health effects of viewing it, and rambling about antis in relation to it. If you've heard my shpiel on this, sorry in advance.

I used to do content moderation so I have seen way too much actually vile shit. CSAM included. And it is difficult to describe the gravity of what seeing that does to a normal person. But here's my best shot at what it did to me, anyway.

Imagine you're given a video from some nondescript, totally blank (firstname_numbers) account, and when you open it, you can't quite process what's happening on screen. It's not blurry or dark or otherwise obscured. It's very clear, but your brain won't allow you to accept it for a solid 30 seconds. Then, there's horror that sinks into your bones and makes your stomach turn. There's some sort of primal, lizard-brain fury mixed in — and perhaps you even fantasize over retaliating with things you didn't fancy yourself capable of. There's soul-crushing sorrow as you recall there's nothing you can do to help stop this, and all you can do is bear witness to this atrocity, then pathetically report it after the fact. The video automatically unmutes. The sounds are the worst part. If you've ever seen the brick video, this audio is similar in that it haunts you forever. It's overwhelming. You cycle between these emotions so quickly that they blend into each other, and become greater than the sum of their parts. It's a nuclear bomb set off inside your skull. You want to cry, punch a wall, and throw up. You do none of those things because you are too stunned to function. And then suddenly, there's numbness. Like a switch has turned off all the feelings in your brain. All of the unspeakable things you were feeling are gone in an instant.

Maybe you're a tougher nut to crack. Maybe the switch doesn't flip for you on the first video. So you let those emotions ride out until they've physically exhausted you. You pace and you marinate in the aftermath, feeling like you need to vent but knowing you can't. You can't even summarize what you saw without painting a picture so disturbing that it'll fuck up whoever is kind enough to listen to you. All you can do is turn to a loved one, explain that you saw something earth-shatteringly upsetting, and hope they can distract you. Maybe they express sympathy and give their best effort. Maybe you give your own best effort. Maybe you drink or use substances to get away from it, but it still festers in the back of your mind the entire time.

But that switch will flip for you, eventually. And when it does, it'll have you shitting bricks. It's like a hurricane stopping, only for you to realize you're in the eye. One moment you're feeling physically ill from the strength of your own negative emotions — the next, you can't feel anything. Your head feels different. Clearer, more room for thought. But then you move on to the next video, and the fresh horrors do nothing to you. And that's when the gravity of emotional dissociation sinks in. You can't feel anything. You could cut a man's throat and it would feel the same as tying your shoe. You have tapped into something that feels ancient. It's like you've regressed into a lower evolutionary life form incapable of emotion. Below cavemen. Humans aren't meant to experience something like this. It's the cold, unthinking indifference of a creature which could eat its own young without blinking.

But you use it for good. You use it to function when you otherwise can't, and overcome the task at hand. And it helps you tremendously as a content moderator. Eventually, you get so good at it that you can turn your emotions off at will, and do it before you even view your first video of the day.

It does not help you once you're done. While the metaphorical emotion switch can be turned off at will, turning it back on is a chore. It usually takes a while to wear off. Maybe an hour or two once you're done. But the more you do it, the harder it is to break out of it.

Imagine going back to your normal life while you're stuck in that mindset. You try to watch TV or play video games and none of it brings you any joy — like the worst, most suffocating depression. Except it isn't depression, and you have the will, the energy, and the definite need for something to take your mind off what you've seen, but nothing changes that listless straightjacket your brain is stuck in. There should be dread and panic taking root, because the accompanying thoughts are there. Is this your new normal? Will you ever feel anything again? But there is neither dread nor panic, because your body won't allow you to feel them. Not even chemical alteration gets it back on track, and it's only after you've nursed away the hangover the next morning that you can kindle a tiny spark of emotion, again. And through the searing headache, you wonder if fighting the good fight is truly worth the possibility of being stuck without feelings forever.

All of this to say, repeated CSAM exposure is anthrax. It makes you sick in ways you didn't even know were possible, and if you survive it, the experience will follow you forever. You're also not going to talk about it in public. Even vague descriptions of it are enough to seriously traumatize those who encounter it. It feels like a public safety hazard to talk about. Trigger warnings are not enough. A proper description would warrant a fucking consent form. That's something your therapist has to coax out of you like you're a Vietnam vet with war trauma.

What you DON'T do is repost it. Even if it's to argue or express anger/disgust. You don't scroll the tags looking for it, either. No one in their right fucking mind treats actual CSAM the way antis treat "cp" and that's what infuriates me the most about them. They water down the term the same way kids water down "gaslighting."

Drawings of fictional characters are not CSAM. If you can describe it publicly, if you can repost or respond to it and use it for rage bait, then it isn't CSAM. The people who do this are, very obviously, not experiencing any of the trauma which is involved with viewing real CSAM. They are acting on disgust impulses, and then they have the audacity to imply that their discomfort is tantamount to experiencing some of the most traumatizing material a person can view.

It isn't CSAM. They know that it isn't CSAM. Every sane, socialized human adult knows that it isn't CSAM and I'm exhausted with acting like it isn't incredibly offensive to call it that.

[crowroboros]

Two Mentally ill Men in Games that I like

I'm drafting up a post about Moebius, Ouroboros, Alpha and their role in shaping Aionios and how they tie into the messages and themes of the Xenoblade series but I'm taking a break from that because I just can't look past how similar Consul N and Leo's arcs are.

MASSIVE Echo (Leo's Route) and Xenoblade 3 spoilers. I mean absolutely earth-shattering spoilers. You have been warned.

Also this is being written on the spot and in one sitting and while I'm sleep deprived so it might be messy and a bit incoherent to anyone but me. Maybe I'll touch it up a bit in the future. This is also long as hell.

TLDR; N and Leo:

Are both obsessed with their romantic partner

Are both mentally beaten down and manipulated by their circumstances which slowly strengthens their obsession and makes them spiral further

Are both possessive of their romantic partner to the point of manipulation and control to keep them by their side

Both commit atrocities in the name of their obsession (To be fair to Leo, Consul N is MUCH MUCH worse in this regard) Both reach their breaking point towards the end of their game

Both indirectly kill their romantic partner/love interest

Are both incapable of moving on when their relationship ends, leaving them stuck in the past.

Are both a major part of a game all about "going in circles", "cycles", and the human condition

Both perpetuate the aforementioned cycle

Both put on a front of being stable and collected to hide intense shame, regret, and turmoil going on within them.

Leo and Noah are two shades of the same color so to speak. Now let me be clear, Mio and Chase are nothing alike and their roles in Noah's and Leo's respective obsession with them are very very different. Chase directly had a role by texting and sexting Leo while drunk, continually fueling Leo's hope that the pair would get back together. Mio on the other hand, alongside Noah, was forcibly reincarnated again and again by Moebius. They kept meeting, falling in love, and having their lives ripped away from them by war. Mio's involvement begins and ends with her just trying to survive like everyone else.

Noah, in all these past lives, seems to be the last of the pair to die. And even thought the memories of each life were wiped upon rebirth, those memories and their complimentary feelings still lay dormant deep within him. Hundreds of memories and feelings stacked up deep within his subconscious.

Each time Noah loses Mio is more painful than the last and it culminates when the pair, in a new incarnation, lose the hope to fight against Moebius and ending the war; instead deciding to go into hiding. They have a son, Ghondor, together and hope to live out the rest of their lives in peace. Alas Mio again dies, this time from her Term Marker reaching the end. And Noah is absolutely distraught. It only gets worse with Noah's death a year or two later, for he is brought before Moebius Z and forced to witness all of his past lives; Every time he and Mio met, fell in love, fought by each other's side with the Lost Numbers...only to get killed again and again.

Noah in this moment is forced to realize that he exists in an inescapable cycle, and becomes despaired of ever ending it. Z, seeing Noah at his lowest, offers him the option to live out eternity with Mio. Noah, if he is to take the offer, will get immortality, power, and he'll even bring back Mio to live alongside him; All he has to do is become Moebius, and completely destroy the inhabitants of The City. And to Noah — having just relived the pain and suffering of hundreds of past lives and being told that nothing he does can change the world — accepts. After all, why wouldn't he? If nothing he does matters in the end, if Moebius will keep the inhabitants of Aionios stuck in this cycle of bloodshed for all eternity, then why can't he at least live out that eternity with the one he loves?

When Noah becomes Consul N and destroys The City as well as killing most of its inhabitants — including his and Mio's now adult son Ghondor — Z does keep his promise, bringing Mio back as Moebius M. But she's absolutely horrified by his actions, lashing out at him and pushing him away. Noah at this point already regrets his actions, never having truly agreed with Z on the goals of Moebius. He's disgusted and ashamed of himself over what he had just done, and it's only made worse by Mio's response. But instead of repenting or accepting that what he is doing is horrific, he puts on a front. He buries his regret deep and pretends to believe in a cause that he never truly could get behind. He spends the next thousand years carrying on as the very thing he and Mio were so desperate to destroy and internally it's killing him. N becomes despondent and hateful, relying on Mio's existence to keep himself happy all while he presents himself outwardly as stoic and collected, pretending to be content with his choice. On the other hand, Mio openly hates the life she has now been forced into — taking lives and perpetuation the cycle of war that grips Aionios to fuel her own existence — and she too falls into a depression.

On the Echo side of things, this is equivalent to the prank Chase and Jenna pulled on Leo as well as the three years that Chase and Leo kept having a long distance "on-again-off-again" thing going on. Pretending that Chase was cheating on Leo, the breaking of Chase's phone, Chase never directly saying that the pair have broken up — only saying that he's going to Pueblo — and then limiting contact for the following three years to just drunken sexts doesn't offer Leo any real closure on the relationship. Leo has based so much of his own happiness on the idea of his relationship with Chase and the bond they had together, and now he's desperate to have that back, even going as far as to continue to wear the anchor bracelet that he and Chase wore to symbolize their relationship all these years later.

Just like N deludes himself into thinking that what he is doing as Moebius is what is good for himself, Mio, and the people of Aionios, Leo is deluding himself with the false hope of rekindling his relationship with Chase. They're both holding on to their own desire for a relationship long dead and are ruining themselves in the process. Both are perpetuating the cycle that holds their respective worlds captive: Consul N with the Endless Now and the war between Keves and Agnus, and Leo (albeit on a much smaller scale) with the inability to grow and change.

Both Aionios and Echo are locations that get their identity from their stagnation and decay. Aionios has been in an endless war since its creation with the collision between the universes of Bionis/Mechonis and Alrest, slowly getting chipped away at by the Annihilation Events. Echo was once a thriving town that over the years has failed to keep up with the changing world and now sits in a state of decline with only ~50 residents by the time of Echo VN.

And in this state of eternity, both Leo and Noah are given the opportunity to embrace change and to accept that nothing will be the same forever. For Leo it's when Chase leaves Echo, and for Noah it's when Mio dies in the last natural reincarnation. But both of them are too afraid of what it means to move on and let go. So instead, both cling to what's familiar and end up back at square one.

This refusal to move on isn't just detrimental for Leo and N alone, but it is detrimental for everyone around them. Aionios and its war persists for at least another millennium at the hands of N, resulting in the prolonged suffering of the people of Keves and Agnus. While Leo's obsession over Chase results in the manifestation of The Embrace, which stalks people such as Duke and Dale and drives them to some level of paranoia. And it all reaches the breaking point when it gets the person they love most — the object of their obsession — killed.

To briefly provide context before this next section; Sometime across the thousands of years between when Consul N and M came into existence and the main game of Xenoblade 3, N and M's repressed hope and ideals of a better world manifested as separate entities all of their own as the pair sunk deeper into despair and self-loathing. (Origin is essentially a Conduit emulator and there is a bunch of Xenoblade lore that makes this already long post even longer so just know that under certain conditions and with access to certain things, one's willpower can cause physical change or manifest as a physical entity.) These newly formed entities are the protagonists of Xenoblade 3; Noah and Mio. Functionally, it is the same as the cycle of reincarnation that all inhabitants of Aionios experience except with the caveat that the originals are still alive. From here on out, the Noah and Mio who became Moebius will be referred to as N and M, while the protagonists of Xenoblade 3 will be called Noah and Mio.

When the protagonists get absolutely fucked up when fighting against Consul N, Consul M sees potential within the group and spots an out. She is presented with a second chance to hopefully put an end to the world's suffering. M ends up revealing everything to Mio; The memories of their past lives, what Consul N did and his reasons, and ultimately what M wants from this: To die. The two switch places, with Mio taking M's place and M taking Mio's.

M, masquerading as Mio, spends a month in prison where she and the rest of Ouroboros are psychologically tormented and taunted by Consul N. Whereas M saw Ouroboros as a second chance, N sees the group as a threat to the familiar. A threat to the eternity he gained with M. To him, M is his property to hold close. So he spends that month breaking down the group's hope, putting them in the same place he was moments before he was given the offer to become Moebius. He wants them to fall victim to the same cycle he has.

And when that month is up, M dies in Mio's place at the Homecoming. She dissolves into light and her soul is set free from the reach of Moebius and the cycle of reincarnation. She has escaped the cycle and embraced an unknown future in the form of Mio.

And when N realizes who just died, he crumbles. For much of the final act of Xenoblade 3, N is inconsolable. He sits alone within Origin, not speaking or moving from his place in the Amphitheater. He knows that everything he has done up to this point had just been erased, for M is now gone. He is forced out of the past he lived in and is thrust into the future alone. But rather than admit that, he only dives deeper into the mask he wears, pretending that it isn't him clinging to the past that led to her demise but instead the changing world brought about by Ouroboros.

Over in Echo when Chase, Jenna, and TJ return for spring break it is Leo who takes action and gets the entire group back together. After all, this is exactly the opportunity he had been waiting for! He can get the group back together after three years and try his hand at getting Chase back as well! Over the course of Leo's route, the wolf gets increasingly more aggressive and protective of Chase and by the end of his route, he's outright threatening anyone he views as potentially taking Chase away from him again; using his size and gun to intimidate them.

In Leo's bad ending, this culminates when Chase once again leaves the status of his and Leo's relationship ambiguous. When trying to jump on a train to escape Echo, Leo grabs and pulls Chase off the caboose. This causes Chase's legs to swing under the rails and for both of his legs to be severed at his calves.

It's here that N and Leo begin to differ, at least in this ending of Leo's route. Whereas N was in full control of what he was doing, Leo is undoubtedly influenced in part by the hysteria over Echo. Leo's obsession, possessiveness, overprotectiveness, and his aggression is all him, however it is likely that as the hysteria takes hold of the town, these traits are exasperated by the supernatural. It's why N falls into a near comatose state out of grief, and Leo loses grip on his own sense of reality, failing to grasp the gravity of Chase's injuries. Leo takes Chase to his house and bandages his wounds thinking it'll be enough. Chase slowly bleeds out and eventually dies, though Leo doesn't seem to be able to grasp this. In fact, Leo's actions and behavior after Chase loses his legs could be seen as analogous for when N decided to become Moebius. It is when Leo fully resigns himself to Echo, thrusting himself and Chase into reliving their past together. Literally in Chase's case, as he flashes back to various memories of his and Leo's relationship as he dies.

Despite the difference, thematically N and Leo's situation here is the same. They both refused to step forward into the future and the center of their greatest desire died because of it. For N, it was the possibility of a future without M. If Moebius was stopped and Origin rebooted to allow for the safe reconstruction of Bionis/Mechonis and Alrest, there is a chance that he'd never see M again. There's a chance that the rebooting of Origin's systems won't even work and the two worlds will cease to be. And for him, that possibility is too much to bear for he bases his entire sense of self around M and his relationship with her.

With Leo, when he asks Chase if the otter will stay with him after they escape Echo, he needs a concrete answer. The past three years has had Leo in a sea of uncertainty in regards to his relationship status with Chase, and as Leo says himself "seeing you leave on that train was too much."

For Leo, getting on that train meant leaving all that he and Chase went through in Echo behind for a future that neither of them can predict. He's terrified of what that could mean; Maybe they'll work out, maybe they won't. Maybe they'll be friends, maybe they'll never talk again. Why take that risk when the two can stay in Echo? Echo, just like Aionios, is stagnant and decaying; things stay the same and end up right where they began. Stuck in a cycle.

But Leo's good ending follows a different path. Here, Chase directly and unquestionably cuts things off with Leo. Chase forces Leo to move on by giving him a hard answer, making sure that the wolf simply cannot continue to hold onto the idea of their relationship rekindling.

And what does Leo do in response? Nothing. As Chase and the others flee on the train, Leo stands and stares; Dejected.

In this ending, Chase lives. However it is more similar to M's death in terms of what it does to Leo and the overall narrative. Just as M's death did for N, Chase's rejection forced Leo from the perfect eternity he tried so desperately to craft for the two of them. Leo is forced to move on without Chase, and it crushes him. In his despair and grief, he is left alone by the side of the tracks in the dark.

Two years later, Chase returns to Echo with Kudzu to formally say goodbye to the town and Leo. In these two years, Leo has undergone a lot of change. He too is leaving Echo, moving back in with his parents, and he's no longer wearing the anchor bracelet. In these past two years, Leo ahs come to terms with the fact that he and Chase are over.

Leo has managed to escape the cycle and has come to accept the future that awaits him. He's no longer wearing that anchor bracelet; which not only symbolized Leo and Chase's bond, but also the way it tied Leo down. it symbolizes the way the weight of what the past meant for him kept Leo from moving forward and embracing the changing world around him.

And his route ends with the pair parting ways.

Through both leaving Echo and moving on from Chase, Leo is stepping into an unpredictable and uncertain future. He doesn't know what will happen or whether he'll ever see Chase again, but he's content with that. In a town where all you can do is go in circles, he has managed to get free of that burden and forge his own path in life.

Over in Aionios, Ouroboros make their way within Origin and confront N. When they find the Consul, he's no longer sulking alone, but standing ready for a fight. Now that M is gone, now that all he has sacrificed for hundreds upon hundreds of years has been for nothing, he feels empty.

It doesn't matter what happens to N anymore, he just wants to make others feel the same pain and suffering he's feeling. This is comparable to the two years Leo spent dealing with Chase's absence post-Echo. Rather than wallowing alone however, N is taking out his sorrow and guilt on Ouroboros. He's lashing out, as he knows that his eternity is gone.

Ouroboros and Consul N fight, and after a long battle N is defeated again. It is here that N and Ouroboros — in particular Noah and Mio — have a heart-to-heart with him, serving as his inner conscious in a manner similar to that of self-reflection. The pair get N to realize that he fucked up, and nothing he does will bring M back nor will it make everything he has done right. But importantly, they empathize with him, understanding his reasons and how hard it was for him to keep up that act. They convince him to not allow the past to define him and to instead atone for his actions and move forward. And their words, as well as M's, finally get through to him.

N and Noah fuse together, giving N a chance not to redeem himself, but to atone and move forward with his life. He joins Ouroboros to destroy the last remaining Moebius, Moebius Z, and to set the world free from stagnation.

Moebius and Ouroboros, the symbols themselves, are two sides of the same coin. Both are cycles, seemingly endless paths looping in on themselves. But whereas a Moebius strip ends where it started, and Ouroboros ends one loop with the birth of something new. Moebius is an endless cycle of stagnation. Ouroboros is the endless cycle of change and rebirth.

Ouroboros goes on to destroy Moebius Z, the collective unconscious given physical form by the dense collection of fear and anxiety over the fate of their worlds that the respective people of Bionis and Alrest within Origin's systems felt as their universes threatened the other with oblivion.

As Origin reboots and Aionios falls apart, Ouroboros separate as they're dragged along with their respective universe. N has done it. He, similar to Leo, has managed to move on from eternity. he has allowed Aionios to be destroyed and has stepped into an uncertain tomorrow. From here, no one knows what will happen. Maybe Origin will fail and both universes cease to be. Maybe everything will go to plan and the worlds no longer are at risk of destroying each other. If it does succeed and the universes safely merge together again, there's a chance that Noah, Mio, and the rest of Ouroboros won't be alive to see it, thus never meeting each other again.

But they're content with that.

Consul N from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Leo Alvarez from Echo Project's Echo VN are both complex and interesting characters that explore the human desire to cling to what's familiar and reject painful or unsatisfactory change. And through them, we see how staying in the past can be harmful not just to the self, but to those around you. Through these two characters, Monolithsoft and the Echo Project team tell the audience that it's okay to be afraid of how things might turn out, that it's okay to want to stay close to what's familiar. But if you resist change, if you do everything in your power to keep yourself in an endless now, that you'll do nothing but cause harm. So look forward to tomorrow, for it is a bundle of possibilities. And just

Walk on.

[boredmezzosoprano]

Okayyy… So I’ve recently become ultra obsessed with Naoki Urasawa's Monster (it’s sooo good). The trope pages for it however are really giving me a migraine🤦🏼‍♀️ simply because they labelled Johan Liebert as a Complete Monster!! If you look on the wiki list for CM in Anime/Manga - HE'S THE PAGE IMAGE🤯 Ahem, he’s a monster for sure but most certainly a Tragic Monster or what is called a Woobie Destroyer of Worlds - there’s a difference! A Woobie Destroyer of Worlds has a reason for why they are what they are, oftentimes something traumatic in their childhood - Johan had several severely messed up things happen to him from the time he was born‼️ Also a CM is incapable of loving another human being: JOHAN WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR ANNA!! Listen, I’m not trying to justify his actions but I don’t think it’s accurate to describe the character as being born pure evil when there’s plenty of textual information that refute that claim! Plus how can they call Johan a Complete Monster but not these characters:

Petr Čapek

He is complicit in Franz Bonaparta's atrocities, likely taking part in the experiments at the Red Rose Mansion. He also helped Bonaparta kidnap Anna from her home and threatened her.

He killed a family, including two children, on Bonaparta's orders.

After re-establishing himself in Germany, he psychologically tortured a new group of innocent children, driving them to violence and suicide, causing the suicide of Milan's son, and showed no remorse for it even though they were childhood friends.

He had contempt for Turkish people, trying to expel them from their homes.

He murdered the five leaders of the resistance against him.

He masterminded a plan to burn down the Turkish quarter, which could have caused massive loss of life.

He attempts to convince Johan to be the Neo-Nazis' leader in a grand plot to begin World War 3 and wipe out all non-Aryan races in the world.

He repeatedly tried to have Johan's sister kidnapped so he could use her as a hostage.

He showed no apparent remorse when his childhood friend Milan was gunned down in an attempt to assassinate him.

He ordered Eva Heinemann killed when she had served her purpose, and then had Martin killed for failing to do this.

He showed no concern for the murders committed by Johan, claiming that they were his will.

He murdered his driver in a fit of paranoia.

He gave up Bonaparta's whereabouts in order to save his own life.

Compared to Franz Bonaparta, who made a serious attempt to atone for his own crimes, Capek shows very little remorse.

The Baby

He is established to be a Neo-Nazi and a racist politician, even owning a neighborhood filled with people like him.

The Baby plans to use Nina in order to get her brother's attention.

Despite appearing affable towards Nina, it is nothing but a facade in his manipulation towards her.

He arrogantly believes that Johan supports and agrees with his racist views without understanding that he is a nihilist who doesn't care about those beliefs as he looks down on all humans equally.

He runs over Tenma with his car and is disappointed that he did not die from the impact and then later kidnaps him.

Like the organization, he wants to convert Johan to his racist ideology and make him the new leader of Germany under the organization's control.

He tries to purge the Turkish community by burning down a neighborhood filled with them. This is really bad as this would qualify as an attempted genocide since he strongly hates the Turks.

While at that, he enjoys the destruction of other minorities that he causes.

The Baby tortures Tenma just because he's Asian.

Even when Tenma told him that Johan hates all humans equally, he continued to beat him anyway.

He attempts to kill Dieter, who is a kid that Tenma saved from Hartman and expresses gleefulness during the action.

He threatened to kill Martin if he failed his job.

Throughout the story, he shows no remorse for his actions.

UPDATE: Johan was recently removed from the Pure Evil wiki 😃

[max1461]

Come on, “settler” is just a nice, academic way of saying “vermin” or “cockroaches.” Just because a term was only invented relatively recently and has mostly been cloaked in scholarly obfuscation doesn’t mean it’s any different from the other ways of calling for mass murder.

I got pretty frustrated here, and I'm hesitant about even posting this. I might take it down. But I think it contains true statements amidst the frustration, so I'll leave it up for a bit and see if anon responds. Idk.

It seems like you've sent me this in response to my reblogging this post, is that accurate? I don't want to be uncharitable, but the discussion had died down, and then within minutes of my reblogging that, you sent this anon. Hopefully I'm not attributing motives to you that you don't have, I really don't want to be unfair. It could just be coincidental, so please if I'm not correct let me know.

If I am reading the situation accurately, than I really have little else to say to you at this but... man, that's really immature.

I've responded in depth to your other asks. I've pointed out that American Indians couldn't possibly commit a genocide against white people even if they wanted to. Recently I talked about political sanity checks, and "the anti-colonial movement in the US will lead to genocide of settlers" fails every one of them. I've talk about how almost any policy that addresses the crippling poverty indigenous people face, much less expands indigenous sovereignty in even small ways, is fairly far left of the Overton window in this country. I've talked about how the US and its predecessors maintained actual genocidal policies towards native people for over 400 years, up until well after World War 2, within living memory, and has done essentially nothing to repair the damage done.

Movements like Land Back are guilty, I think, of various rhetorical sins—of eschewing concrete policy discussion for emotionally loaded injunctions against settlers, in a game of academic posturing towards "radicalism". If you are a fantastically unempathetic person completely incapable of charity, and you happen to be a white American, I can understand how this might make you go "oh no, they want to genocide me!" But look. You're a fucking adult. You know that they can't, and that they aren't ever going to be able to, and I don't believe that you're actually worried for your safety. I think that's nonsense. And if you are a fucking adult, I think you can probably suck it up, forgive people who are victims of genocide within living memory and have no political ability to harm you a bit of nasty rhetoric, and ask "what can we do to even try to rectify this situation, to remedy the horrific atrocities that have been done?".

Worst of all is that that post didn't even mention the term "settlers" or "settler colonialism". It simply talked in direct terms about the unprecedented poverty that American Indians face.

Look, I'm ambivalent about chewing you out so harshly here, because I responded to your anon (I think you're the same anon!) some time ago saying that I valued hearing your objections to my ideas, I valued the dissenting voice, and that's still true. But I've addressed this idea, backwards and forwards, and cop-disliker was even able to present me with a case where your safety concerns look more sensible (the decolonization of French Algeria). But surely you can recognize that the situation in the US is completely incomparable to that, materially and demographically. And so at this point you're not really expressing arguments against anything particular I've written, but (if I'm reading this situation correctly, which... look, maybe I'm not and I'm just being the asshole here) vague fearmongering in response to a discussion of the extreme poverty that a certain group is facing.

I don't like to tell people to get a thicker skin. I want to listen to every person's concerns about everything. But if you hear "Native Americans have a life expectancy comparable to people in Togo, one of the poorest countries on earth, while they live in one of the richest" and your first thought is to drum up faux safety concerns about the completely politically impossible event of an extermination of "settlers" in America... man, you need to get a thicker skin. Politics is about more than rhetoric, it's about people's lives. And the people who's lives are actually in danger here is, to put it bluntly, fucking obvious.

[jiminsproof]

tag game ✨️

I was tagged by @wistfulocean to share top 10 of my blorbos. 💗 Thank you Heather. 🥰 I haven't really talked about my fictional faves on this blog, so here goes the first 10 characters that came to my mind with some RANTS:

Lan Xichen (The Untamed)

HE WAS WRITTEN FOR ME. FOR ME. The eldest just a tad bit gay and traumatised sibling which copes by trying to be a good person and taking care of everyone and especially his little brother? 😭 And meanwhile the universe is testing how much betrayal, grief and heartbreak he can take before he yeets himself into seclusion and hopefully not off the rooftop??? I WOULD DIE FOR HIM. Also choosing between him and Wuxian was very UNFAIR!!! 😡

Yoon Se-ri (Crash Landing On You)

MY ULTIMATE TRAUMA MADE ME COPE BY BEING A WORKAHOLIC CHARACTER. I love her to bits, and especially her big heart that just comes more and more to the surface as you continue to watch the series. 🥰 Also both her capability of judging people's character and her forgiveness!! The only straight person ever. And... possibly... the only straight person on this list....

Basil Hallward (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

A whole lot gay and in love with a homicidal asshole? (I still love you Dorian though). A poor baby that has done nothing wrong ever but still blamed himself for everything? An artist? How can I not love him? His 'it was not intended as a compliment, it was a confession' echoes in my mind every now and then, CHILLS just thinking about that scene.

Pa (Bad Buddy/Magic of Zero)

The only person to own a braincell in her family. 💗 (Sorry Pat I still love you though). Very relatable in refusing to deal with other's people bullshit but also somehow always finding herself in the middle of the same or slightly different bullshit?? Also I love another queer icon and Bad Buddy is exactly the subversion of all the BL toxic tropes WHICH I WILL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT. NOT TO MENTION THE INKPA SPIN-OFF 🥲🥲🥲🥲

also A SAVAGE

Wen Kexing (Word of Honor)

All the atrocities he committed are a part of him and I've decided they're funny 🥰 I love both of WoH soulmates equally tbh but his character development and how he went from seeking revenge to fighting for his man only AND ULTIMATELY ALMOST SACRIFICING HIS LIFE FOR HIM I- 🥲 IT'S ABOUT OVERCOMING YOUR TRAUMA IT'S ABOUT DECIDING TO TELL ANOTHER STORY WITH YOUR LIFE IT'S ABOUT FOCUSING ON LOVE NOT ON HATRED BITCH. One of the best written characters I've ever seen. Oh and very gay obviously?

Margot Verger (Hannibal)

IT'S ABOUT KILLING YOUR ABUSER WITH THE POWER OF LESBIANISM. I really love her for how withstanding years of terrible treatment didn't make her incapable of telling right from wrong, her determination, and sense of humour. HILARIOUS. HER SENSE OF HUMOUR IS SO DRY. Not to mention her love story with Alana is possibly the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing depiction of a wlw relationship in Western television!!!!! You can't prove me wrong bye

Pete (Kinnporsche)

Pete is one of the most relatable characters I've EVER seen in television (possibly like THE character for me but I'll give it some time), and his meltdown in the latter part of the series was honestly... wow... I cried for hours after watching ep 13 but it was also weirdly healing. He has a Shakespeare tattoo. He masks his own internal turmoil by being a sunshine and taking care of others. He said fuck dichotomy of evil. I stan an icon. Oh of course he's very gay too

Eve Polastri (Killing Eve)

IT'S ABOUT THE INVERSED HERO TROPE IT'S ABOUT DISCOVERING YOUR WORST INSTINCTS BY SEEING THEM MIRRORED IN SOMEONE ELSE AND FINALLY IT'S ABOUT ACCEPTING THEM AS A VALID AND VERY IMPORTANT PART OF YOU. I hated the ending of KE as any other folk (burying the gays.... showstopping....... spectacular......) but Eve's journey especially in the two first seasons was GREAT. Also, Phobe Waller-Bridge would never do this to me

and now onto some blasts from the past, my first two favourite characters ever were:

Anakin Skywalker & Padmé Amidala (Star Wars)

I was 6 when I became a SW fan and those two have always had my heart! SURE LIKE I KNOW THE PREQUELS ARE NOT ✨️FLAWLESS✨️BUT TRY WATCHING ROTS WITHOUT CRYING. YOU CAN'T. I could probably write an essay on why I love those two but let's keep it at: I love characters that are doomed from the start <3

can you tell i write essays about analysing media and my major means i look for symbolism everywhere haha?

no pressure tagging some of my favourite people, i hope you're having a lovely day 🥰: @singingtillthemorn, @kimchokejin, @ki-limepie, @aprylynn, @seoksao, @joon-rkive, @rintual. 💗

[theartoflovingthomashunt]

Rate My Professor

Masterlists: [All Thomas Hunt x Alex Spencer]  [Hollywood U]

Pairing: Thomas Hunt x Alex [F!OC] Book: Hollywood U Rating: general Word Count: ~600 Prompt: @choicesfebruary2022challenge : Chance A/N: @songsaboutgirls asked "what do you think thomas’s rating is on rate my professor?"

Synopsis: Hunt discovers Rate My Professor.

Hear what some students had to say:

Professor Hunt might be brilliant but that brilliance is lost in his ego. He knows the subject, but not how to teach. He's a tough grader. It's impossible to get an A.

Professor Hunt turned the 8 AM class into a time to rant about everything wrong with modern cinema. He constantly berated students for expressing opinions different from his own. He holds little respect for successful directors of the day such as Michael Bay.

Professor Hunt may be rough around the edges, but he knows his stuff. His work speaks for itself. If you want warm and fluffy find another prof. If you want to learn the ins and outs of film, take this class. Give him a chance.

No doubt the worst teacher at HWU. No one in class ever had an idea what he was talking about. He's extremely arrogant and seems incapable of smiling. Took all the joy out of film critique.

Alex's private rating:

"Hmmm... what to say about Professor Hunt?" Alex's head dipped to the side as her lips twisted in consideration. She leaned forward, her fingers flirting with his tie. "Well, he's very handsome. Intelligent. Sophisticated. Pretentious about his scotch. Has great hair. He likes to pretend he's a grumpy, pompous film snub, but really he wants the best for his students. He knows the industry is hard, and he's just preparing them for it. He's a good, decent, respectable man." Her fingers threaded softly through his hair. "He's the best of men, whether he wants to believe it or not."

He leaned into her touch, letting the warmth of her palm cradle his cheek.

"You didn't have to say that."

Her thumb gingerly caressed his cheek. "Don't think about these ratings. They mean nothing."

"I know." He shook his head. "I've faced criticism all my life. It's part of the job. This path isn't easy. They need to understand that."

"They do, or they will. You have to give them time," she consoled. "One day, maybe years from now, they'll see. They'll understand. And they'll thank you for it."

His brow rose. "You really think that?"

She chewed her lip, her face scrunching as she tried to hide. Hesitantly she replied, "Not really."

"Good." His lips pressed into a sly grin.

"Wait—what?" Her eyes widened in confusion.

"I don't want them to thank me. I simply want them to do better, to find their passion, and create something worth remembering."

"Then, why were you pouting?"

"I do not pout."

"Why did you look so grim?"

"That's just my face."

"Thomas!"

He scrolled to the bottom to one final review. "Came for the underwear model, got some tweed-wearing old guy. #catfish? Seriously, I thought this guy was supposed to be some rich and sexy model/actor. Call me when you hire a stylist and maybe hit the gym (no way he's hiding abs under that sweater vest). 0/10 for style. 0/10 for personality. Thank you, next."

Alex failed to suppress her growing giggle.

"It's not funny."

"You're right," she attempted to compose herself. "Sorry."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, shaking his head in disappointment.

"If it makes any difference, I love your tweed jacket. You look very distinguished."

"How does one go about deleting a review on here. I would like to report this atrocity." His hand grabbed the mouse as he searched the website.

"Don't you dare!" She quickly pushed his hand away.

"Alex, it's absurd."

"It is, but maybe this can be a good thing too."

"How so?"

"It'll help weed out anyone who takes your class hoping to hook up with a hot and sexy professor. Now you'll have people who want to be there for your expertise, not for something superficial." She raised her brow as he considered her words. "I make sense, don't I?"

"Fine. It can stay."

"Good." Alex pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Besides, I don't want anyone trying to tempt you away from me."

He guided her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. "Do you think that could happen?"

"I hope not."

"I know not." He tenderly caressed her back. "You're one of a kind, Alex— a once in a lifetime find. I have no intention of letting you go."

"Good." She nodded, resting her forehead against his. "This is exactly where I want to be." Her lips brushed softly over his, savoring the moment between them, knowing that no matter where this journey took them, together is where they belonged.

[spookyheaad]

Haphephobia talk

BIG TRIGGER WARNING: brief mentions of rape/coercion, mentions of suicidal ideation, self harm, physical and mental abuse, as well as dehumanization. This one is kinda heavy.

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Hi again! Currently horizontal on my couch because I have full body aches from the second covid shot and my head is killing me, but I expected this to happen as it’s normal for the second vaccine to knock you out for a day or two.

Anyway, I had a realization earlier that I write both Gild Tesoro of “One Piece”, as well as Death from “Darksiders” with Haphephobia - which is “a fear of touching or being touched”. While I write them with this phobia, it manifests within them differently, and I figured I would share some differences, and headcanons for both characters (it’s been so long since I’ve talked about my sassy depressed Nephilim husband; I miss you, Death ❤️❤️). Also with Death, I ship him with an OC I created, named Zemira. I don’t think I’ve shared a lot about her on tumblr, but I’ll be making a whole post about her another time; just know I’ll be mentioning her occasionally.

So I’ll be talking about Death’s haphephobia first, it’s a little more heavy (deadass trigger warning here for the brief mentions of rape. Skip this part if you need to):

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So I must start out with the obligatory mentioning of that accursed chapter from The Abomination Vault:

Death and War have to seek out Lilith and gain information from her. Death is viciously adamant for War to stay outside & away from that woman, but war protests and wishes to come in with him. Death, nearly resorting to beating his brother into submission, demands him to stay outside, and War finally relents.

When the eldest Horseman goes in to see Lilith, one of the first things she says to him is something along the lines of “this isn’t a social call, is it?”. I truly forget what else is mentioned, but there are a few times where Lilith tries to mention things of a (supposed) sexual nature towards Death, and he abruptly and angrily cuts her off. The one thing I remember Lilith saying to Death was her saying that Death was always a “sensitive boy” which makes my stomach fucking churn.

What is heavily implied in this scene, to me, is that Death and Lilith at some point in the past, had sexual encounters with one another that Death is very much extremely embarrassed and ashamed of, and with Lilith’s ability to seduce any being regardless if they want to partake or not, it’s safe to say that Death could have possibly been coerced into said sexual activity. Lilith’s ability to seduce is described almost like a date-rape drug to me, it causes people to fall under some kind of spell or go into a trance; what is a big uh-oh to me is when Death describes that War would be weak to Lilith’s wiles, or her tricks. So she is definitely capable of coercing people in any way to get what she wants. Also fucking keep in mind that Lilith refers to Death as her SON, which adds a whole new level of “what the fuck” to that situation; it’s just icky.

I feel that Death, because of this run in (or run-ins) with Lilith, developed a massive fear of being touched, which is backed up in canon in Darksiders 2. He does not allow anyone to physically touch him under any circumstance; when Death arrived in the Makers’ realm, Eideard touched his chest where the amulet pieces are embedded. Death recoils quickly and with a venomous growl, states: “Don’t touch me!”

Then of course when he goes to visit Lilith, she touches his chest as well, and he physically pushes her hand away from his body. She also refers to herself as Death’s mother, and Death angrily states: “You are not my mother!” Also from the moment Death sets foot in Lilith’s domain, he is not thrilled to be there, and acts very different towards her; more defensive, more on guard it seems.

So this headcanon stems from all of that; he will not let anyone touch him, it’s just that severe. Where my OC comes in, I actually have a story on AO3 titled “Haphephobia” and it shows how Death & Zemira try to get past this aversion to touch, so 1.) Zemira can give him affection and 2.) Death can allow himself to be loved. I’ll link it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860320/chapters/73476759

Death cannot even bring himself to hold her hand in the very beginning. So Zemira started there, holding his hand, physical closeness, and very slowly, started working to larger forms of touch. Obviously this gave Death massive amounts of anxiety, so this is why the process is extremely slow. It makes it even more important to go slow because Death tries to hide any weak emotions, so the physical and mental stress he puts himself under is tenfold.

I think that’s all for Death. His Haphephobia is extremely severe, from the specific traumas he has experienced, possibly being forced into sexual activity with his god damn “”mother””, as well as hiding his sensitivity and kindness (my headcanons for why he does that is a whole other post waiting to be written) and just not believing he is deserving of such love and care.

Ok, now for Tesoro (specific Trigger warnings here for mentions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, physical/mental abuse)

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So I just recently realized that I wrote Tesoro with symptoms of Haphephobia; also compared to Death, it isn’t as severe or debilitating, but no less harmful to the person going through it.

For Tesoro I think it was sparked by a mix of guilt and insecurity, obviously as well as his past abuse from both his mother and the Celestial Dragons. But in Film Gold it’s obvious that he doesn’t have an issue with being touched, I’m referencing the scene with the pool girls. I think in canon, he’s on high alert when someone goes to touch him, especially if it’s someone he is not familiar with, or does not like. It’s more of an automatic thing that he learned to suppress over time, especially because he absolutely craves attention and affection, and his fear of touch gets in the way of that.

So in a way, he did learn how to work through it, but it wasn’t proper or healthy, and because of that it’s still there in the back of his mind. I also believe that he doesn’t like people pinning him by the wrists/hands/arms or holding him down in any way, or being bound (sexual or non sexual, he does not like it). It triggers severe panic and flashbacks, so, it’s a big no.

In terms of if he were to be around Stella, it becomes heightened. It’s not that he’s afraid of her; he knows her well. He is afraid for her sake, that he would hurt her in some way simply by allowing her to touch him. All through his life, Tesoro was made to feel like he wasn’t worth the space he took up in his existence. His mother did not love him, the one person that could have given him some form of gentle gesture. She instead hurt him, screamed at him, made him feel worthless. Then we all know about the celestial dragons; they didn’t even see Tesoro as a human, and that mixed with the beatings from both the celestial dragons and his mother, he is weary to allow others to get close.

After Stella died, In his heart of hearts Tesoro genuinely thought that he was unloveable, mainly because of his mother. The one woman who brought him into this world didn’t care about his dreams or his well-being, so then how can anyone else? Then, when he found the single person that cared about him, she was whisked away from him without a second thought. Tesoro feels doomed to observe yet never experience the love and kindness that the world had to offer.

That mixed with Haphephobia makes him very cautious of others, and in the case of Stella, vehemently afraid. He loves her, and she loves him in return; Tesoro knows this full well, (we’re headed to the “if Stella survived” AU) after they reunite he is so afraid to touch her and it’s painful to him when she touches his body. It’s another source of frustration and anger because he knows that he is still in love with her, but his own body is trying to push her away. He would tear open his body for the apprehension to leave, to finally feel the comfort he yearned for within Stella’s embrace. No more fear, no more being brought to tears because he felt he didn’t deserve her kindness, no more guilt.

Both he & Death feel unloveable but for different reasons:

Death feels unloveable because of the atrocities he has committed, specifically the Nephilim Genocide & the creation of the Grand Abominations. He feels knee-crushing amounts of guilt for taking part in such events, and he puts up a facade of being an uncaring monster, when he is very much the opposite. He has kindness to give, yet is afraid to show it because of that idea that he is to be seen as nothing but an attack dog for the Charred Council. But this is also the same Nephilim who was so tired of making things that took life, and chose to make something that gave life instead, and gifted said item to his sister, Fury. This is the same Nephilim who took his own life to prove that his youngest brother War did not start the apocalypse. He cares so deeply, has insurmountable love to give, yet feels incapable of doing so.

Tesoro thinks he is unloveable because the world conditioned him to view himself as such. The extreme abuse he suffered told him that he is trash; an afterthought whose only use is as a punching bag or a wasted body to rend flesh from. Ants had more worth in this world than he, and Tesoro knew it. All it took was Stella, one person, for him to see that he is worthy of such a thing, that nothing that went on in their pasts was his fault, and that he does deserve to be given gentle touches, soft reassuring hugs, feather-light kisses, and that he is able to be loved.

[thelivebookproject]

Talking Books With @stefito0o!

[What is this and how can I participate?]

Important note: I haven’t changed or edited any of the answers. I’ve only formatted the book titles so they were clearer, but nothing else. Because I’m incapable of shutting up, my comments are between brackets and in italics, so you can distinguish them clearly.

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[Image description: a square titled “Know the blogger”. Name & pronouns: Stefaniya, she/her; country: Bulgaria (currently living in the UK); three adjectives to describe her: kind, friendly & loyal /end]

1. What's one book in your course of study (or about your speciality) that you'd warn others against reading?

I don't like warning people against reading any book. I strongly believe that every book has something to teach us. Even if it's dealing with themes we don't like or beliefs we are against, we should try and approach it critically but not judging without knowing all the facts. A good example I think is Mein Kampf of Adolf Hitler. I'm totally against the Nazis and everything they've done but I know that his book has lot's to teach us. It can teach us what ideas can be harmful, how they can seem good but in the wrong minds they turn into atrocities against the humanity. 

I studied Cultural Anthropology at the university and even though I'm not working anything related to it it definitely widened my world view and all the professors I've met, all the places I visited on different projects, all the books I read made me the person I am today.

  2. Last book-related gift you got?

I think the last ones were for my birthday last year. I got a soft toy Hedwig and a Ravenclaw watch. Anyone who knows me knows that I'll be happy with anything Harry Potter related, owl related or just books related. These last gifts were from colleagues. I love my workmates!

3. Do you subscribe to any boxes, such as Book of the Month?

No, I don't. I am a bit of a picky reader. Knowing there are too many books and too little time I'm careful what I chose to read. I'm mainly reading the genres I know I love and even in them there might be books that I might not enjoy. Sometimes I think that keeps me away from good books I could discover but again too little time 🤷🏻‍♀️ So I don't subscribe to any boxes, I've thought about it before, but I'm just afraid I'll get books I won't like and they'll just sit on my bookshelf.

[It happens to me too! I’m also a control freak so not being able to choose which books I want, or being able to choose but not really “feeling” anything doesn’t really appeal to me. I like being able to choose myself at the rythm I want!]

4. Which book best describes the way you approach life?

Two books come to my mind. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. They both teach us important lesson. In a world where you can be anything be kind. A couple of quotes I like from them:

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince

"The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practise compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone's back - not even seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouth do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man's pain will hurt us all. One man's joy will make everyone smile." The Forty Rules of Love

With that said don't think I'm a saint. But I do try to be kind and compassionate most of the time.

5. Are you interested in writers as people (i.e. what they like, what they think, how their dog is called) or do you just care about their writing?

Not really, no. No, actually I like watching interviews with authors, one coming to mind now is Elif Shafak. I love listening to her speaking about Turkey. There was a TED talk a few years ago that I loved.

But apart from that I don't really read about their lives. That's for contemporary writers though. Sometimes I'm fascinated by the life's stories of some authors like Agatha Christie which is my all time favourite author, or J. R. R. Tolkien. Having studied a lot of history at the university I'm always looking back in time. Maybe that's why my favourite genre is historical fiction. I love reading about the lives of people 'before' which was the cultural aspect of my studies.

Free space!

Following on from the last question I just finished reading The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys and I loved it! As usually lots of research behind her work. I think historical fiction is such an important genre. It's the perfect read. People who want to read just fiction enjoy it, and people who like learning new facts about history can have a glimpse of history and then continue with their own research about it.

[Oooooh it’s on my TBR!!! I’m a bit wary because the Spanish Civil War is still a big deal in so many ways in my country, but I’ve heard really good things about it and really liked Salt to the Sea so I’m trusting the author to do a good job!]

You can follow her at @stefito0o​ and on her Goodreads.

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Thanks, Stefaniya! This was nice.

Next interview: Saturday, 5th of June

[opbackgrounds]

Oooh can you do a post on the tenryubito?

So I feel like this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I pity the Celestial Dragons. 

That isn’t to say that they aren’t all (mostly) abhorrently evil megalomaniacs with  an institutionally enforced god complex who treat the torture of human(oids) with the same blasé disregard as a kid pulling the wings off of a fly, but there’s a part of me that just finds them pathetic. The Celesital Dragons are a group of people who have the world as their silver platter, yet are so small-minded and infantile they literally trap themselves in a tiny bubbles because they’re too scared to breathe the same air as the so-called lesser races.

There was a time when I didn’t think much of the Celestial Dragons because I thought that Oda’s exaggerated storytelling had gone one step too far. They were too cartoonishly evil to be believable—nothing but a bunch of mustache-twirling villains too ridiculous to be taken seriously—and though I found Luffy punching one in the face very cathartic I wasn’t terribly invested in the World Nobility as a worldbuilding element. 

But if there’s something I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older, it’s that there is a depressingly-large number of cartoonishly evil people who through no merit of their own find themselves wielding enormous amounts of power, and the Celestial Dragons are more realistic than I ever thought possible. 

The Dragons are One Piece’s exploration of the idea that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Eight hundred years is a ridiculously long time to be in control of a single territory, let alone an organization as massive as the World Government. To put it in perspective a little, eight hundred years ago was when the Magna Carta was signed. Even real-world dynasties tend to have major fluctuations in power over the course of generations, but It seems that the World Government—and by extension the Celestial Dragons—have for eight centuries kept an iron hold over what they consider theirs. 

Which just happens to be everything. 

The actual origins of the CD tie into series lore and will probably play a big part in Robin learning about the True History, but I fall in the camp that believes that they originated on the moon because 1) they’re the Celestial Dragons 2) there’s gotta be some significance to Enel’s cover story, and 3) Oda clearly modeled their hairstyles and clothing off of the King and Queen of the Moon from the movie The Adventures of Baron Muchausen

Which, if true, makes them a foreign imperialistic force that used military might and a totalitarian regime that specializes in censorship and terror in order to turn the One Piece world into a giant colony while presenting itself as an egalitarian, unifying coalition where no single ruler is fit to sit on the Empty Throne. 

And to think, there are some people who don’t think One Piece is political.

What’s really fascinating is that most of the rank and file Celestial Dragons don’t seem to realize their own history. Their traditional enemy has become a bedtime story used to scare children, and they’re too preoccupied in their petty games and pleasures to even notice that they’re not really the most powerful people in the world. It’s like their freedom to commit atrocities is the world’s worst example of bread and circuses, because as long as their attention is held by the shiny new slave or fixated on bringing in another tribute then they can’t use their immense power to actually do anything, and for the most part they’re too stupid to realize they’re being used. 

Granted, I’m doing a lot of guesswork here, but we don’t really know where Im and his giant pointy crown fits into all this, or how aware the average Celestial Dragon is of his existence. Is he a world noble? Are the Elder Stars? I personally don’t think the latter are, but is it possible that there’s an even more secret and exclusive group within one of the most secretive and exclusive groups on the planet? And what in the world does the straw hat locked in a freezer have to do with any of it? Was that the treasure Doflamingo used to blackmail the Celestial Dragons into submission, and if so, who did he parlay with during his negotiations? Because I can’t see idiots like Saint Charlos or Mysogard before his character development giving two shits about any of it. Was it CP0, and if so, how much do they understand about the man who sits on the Empty Throne?

What I’m trying to say here, is that there’s a whole lot we don’t know. 

What isn’t guesswork is how little the Celestial Dragons understand about the real world, and this is where I go back to feeling sorry for them. Even the best-intentioned noble we’ve seen so far (Homing) has no idea of what it is to be “human”. 

This mansion is just...comfortable. It’s a downgrade. It’s how Homing thinks normal people live, and he thinks he can just plop his family out in the real world and live a quiet, normal life without blowback from a population that has suffered terribly at the Celestial Dragons hands. His ignorance and naivety, while well-intentioned, is staggering.

Because remember, slavery is technically illegal within the World Government.  Only criminals and people from nations not affiliated can be taken to auction. What initially seems like a kindness turns out to be sending pigs to the slaughter, because what nation wouldn’t react the way this one did once they found out the truth?

Because what the WG (and by extension the CD) have done is punish nations who don’t kowtow to their power in order to fulfill the demand for slaves. Even the bit about criminals is terrifying when this is a world where for some it’s a crime to even be born, to say nothing about the Celestial Dragon’s refusal to obey their own laws if it means they can get what they want, when they want it. 

The whole Homing situation puts a different spin on Doflamingo’s speech during the Marineford War. People who have only known peace can’t understand those who have only known war, and that lack of understanding is what ultimately led to his undoing. 

That’s not to say that the Celestial Dragons are incapable of change on an individual level. One Piece is, ultimately, a very optimistic series, so while I was initially surprised that Saint Mysogard returned during the Reverie chapters as a good guy, upon later reflection it made sense with the points Oda was trying to make during the Fishman Island arc—that if different groups can try to understand one another, they can get along. 

But it took an extraordinary event in almost being killed by his own former slaves and an extraordinary diplomat in Queen Otohime to change the mind of one (1) Celestial Dragon, and it doesn’t look like Saint Mysogard has been able to bring anyone else around to his point of view in the 10 years since he realized he was, in fact, human. And when feel like you’re due everything because you’re a god, why would you want to lower yourself to the position of a lessor being?

 The Celestial Dragons are trained from birth to think of other human(oid) beings as less than animals, where sadism and torture aren’t only encouraged, but celebrated. The system has corrupted to the point where there’s no incentive to change and no oversight to prevent the abuse of power, and with the ability to call the admirals on anyone who pisses them off the average person has no hope of fighting back. It’s difficult to guess how noble the progenitors of the current Celestial Dragons were, but judging by what we know of the Void Century we can guess not very. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine them starting out as the mustache-twirling villains as we see in the current day. The only difference between the Nefertitis and the other kings was one man’s choice to stay with his people. In an alternate universe Vivi could have been a Celestial Dragon.

Now there’s an AU idea.

At the end of the day, the Celestial Dragons play an important role within the One Piece universe, but they are not, by themselves, important to Luffy. He hates their guts and enjoys punching them in the face, but he’s a pirate, not a Revolutionary. The future for One Piece is delightfully opaque, and it’s hard for me to see how the Natural Enemy of God ends up tearing the system to the ground. Will the Straw Hats end up going to space? I don’t know, but there are a lot of people who think it’s at least a possibility.

I personally find them at their most interesting when they’re playing the part of the outside influencer. The Celestial Dragons have only been the direct opponents to the Straw Hats a handful of times, but they’ve played a direct role in the lives of so many other characters—both heroic and villainous—that without them the series could not exist as it currently does. 

And that’s the power of good worldbuilding. I don’t need Luffy to face off against Im to be satisfied with the series. In fact, he was brought in so late that I’ll be a little disappointed if he ends up as the final boss fight. I’m okay with the Revolutionary Army storming Mariejois off-screen, because while those are important players and major chess pieces, that’s never been where Luffy’s focus has been. He’s the man who’s going to become the Pirate King, and until the Celestial Dragons somehow get in the way of that dream he’s not going to bother with them. This lack of focus allows the inherent darkness of the Celestial Dragons not to overshadow the more lighthearted, whimsical aspects of the series. They explore certain themes that are important to One Piece, but the story doesn’t dwell in the mire, and I think it’s all the stronger for it. . 

[writefightandflightclub]

Violent Delights: Chapter 6

Pairing: First Order!Poe x reader

Author’s note: This is different to the other chapters, but I hope you like it! I’ll probably fix typos tomorrow. I’m impatient.

Summary: This definitely answers that KEY QUESTION I left hanging at the end of Chapter 5! If you’re new to this story, there are MAJOR SPOILERS under the cut, so please do read the other chapters first (series masterlist here). Even if you’ve been following, you may want to recap Chapter 5 first! 

Song inspo: Oh, in my ears / My blood is just roaring / When he's the only one I've ever wanted / I suppose that's just the way it is / Just to think this could be / The last time I hold you, hold you / Ever again / Oh, I don't think I'll ever sleep till / Morning. (Nicole Aitken, The Way It Is)

Warnings: 18+ only, dark fic. This is nowhere near as dark as the preceding chapters but still some warnings: OOC!Poe, FO!Poe, Violence inc: injuries! shooting! Explicit language. Mentions of: torture / sex / death / poison! Let me know if I missed any others.

Taglist: @aussiefangirlwolfy, @localashe, @fictionalcharactersownme, @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass, @itsamedeemoney, @woakiees​​ @tintinwrites​@jyn-z-solo​ @spaghetti-666​ @kittyofalltrades​ @planetpoes (TAGLIST OPEN- let me know if you wish to be added / removed)

Word Count: 6K. Yikes.

GIF by @solorenskywalker​

It hurts you. Somehow, it hurts you.

And yet, you are solidified in place, no wound observable.

The moment slows almost to a halt as you register the shot.

Dameron is hit.

The blast hits first. Then, shock, pain, and anger strike all at once, eddying between you and the Commander like the swell of a vicious storm, the air charged and practically humming. At first, his rage at this insulting wound sunk into his flesh is so vital that an immediate hope blooms in your chest; how can he be fatally hurt if he seems so alive? Then; something alien surfaces in his eyes. Something which looks a lot like fear. He delivers an agonised moan, already sounding hollowed out, and your fleeting hope wanes with him.

He unfists his hands from your clothing as he moves to clutch his shoulder in agony. He is cleaved from you and you are split in two, in every figurative way possible. You are ruptured by the blast like a fault line snaking beneath an ocean. This boiling rage is subdued only by the heavy, cooling sea of grief with threatens to depress you down on to your knees. You are torn, the desire to erupt in retaliation on behalf of your “enemy” in stark opposition to your need to sink with your lover. You want to fall to the floor with him. To your knees. To hold him. No question. But if you try and help him, Barret might shoot you too.

The indecision burns you.

It hurts you, this shot.

But it hurts Dameron more.

The commander groans, creaks beneath the weight of this pain. It presses down on him and his body curls in on itself as he creeps further towards a colourless exit, the knives in his eyes blunted. There is no vivid, crimson tide of blood to warn you of death incoming. Not this time. This is death pouncing from the long grass like a whip crack. The predator no-one saw coming.

The commander’s face contorts in a rendition of agony, his face almost beautiful with it. But this is not the kind of pain he has made his friend. This is pain without pleasure. And, since you can’t reach out to him, pain without comfort.

The cruellest pain of all.

“No. No. No.” you repeat -almost inaudibly- as Dameron sinks to his knees. You feel like he’s sinking into the depths of a cold, dark sea. Sinking out of reach.

His dark, tempestuous eyes are directed up at you, teeth gritted, lips sucked thin as agony grips him. On his knees like this, he could easily appear like a beast defeated; defanged and declawed. But there is some fight left in his eyes yet. Enough for him to try and spur you into action. “Time to go, Rebel. You fly, he guns, understand?”

You don’t understand. How can you comprehend leaving him like this?

His voice is shot with gravel, full of holes, but it still speaks its way into the depths of you. “Now. Go!, he insists, his voice winding its way around your bones and pulling you into motion, as if he holds the reins in the palm of his hand. As if he can bend you to his will, even now.

He has been dragging you to him all this time and now he urges you to leave, as if he’s unaware of the strength it will take to release yourself from his orbit; from his gravity. But staying isn’t helping him. In fact, it’s worse than that, you’re a danger to him every second you’re still on this ship. You know too much. He needs you gone from his sky.

You obey reluctantly, giving him the smallest of nods, letting your trembling fingertips drag ever so gently, subtly along his jaw as you turn towards the TIE. You move with strings still on you, dragging you back to him and making each step feel like you are wading through mud.

Progressing towards the craft, you are vaguely aware of Barret barking at you, calling you in to the interior of the fighter. You clamber up the ladder and into the tight cockpit just as Troopers swarm into the hangar, the blaster shots bouncing off the ship’s exterior. Your shaking hands hover above the ignition controls, ready to punch it. Instead, you wait. You wait until you are assured that the Troopers have made their way over to the vicinity of the Commander. You wait until the last possible second.

With a final glance through the transparisteel windshield, you look down at his now stilled form on the ground below you. His crown of pitch-dark curls and his uniform-clad body splayed out -helpless- over the cold floor. You don’t know if it was a killing shot. Without a crimson tide of blood, you can’t tell if Dameron’s still alive. But you do know that you have to go, regardless. With a sharp growl of regret, of anguish, you boost the ship out of the swiftly closing gap in the hangar doors. Just in the nick of time.

And so, you fly.

You fly with a pounding heart, blood raging in your ears. You fly, so enraged with your passenger that you are tempted to crash the ship just to make him pay. But there is nothing around you. No ground, no sky. Nothing to cling on to. Just a loss. An emptiness. Just space. You fly away from him, like a satellite released from its orbit. Equally lost and purposeless in the endless dark. 

From out of the darkness, the thought of the Resistance base should be calling out to you right now like a beacon. A beacon inviting you home, now that you are finally free. But you’ve never before had to escape somewhere you wanted to be and return to somewhere you were no longer sure you belonged. The thought of retuning to base with Barret suddenly seems incomprehensible. And so, when you’re clear of the fleet, you don’t know what else to do except keep flying. No destination in mind, except away.

Flying. Simply flying away, is all you try to focus on. But all you can think about is turning the blasted ship back around. Flying toward him. Following those strings the commander has tied on to you which extend across space, drawing you back to him.

But you know that’s untenable. You fly, and it’s likely a good thing that the Order is in chaos, that the chain of command is interrupted. Otherwise, you’re not sure how -or if- you’d manage to lose the pursuing fleet. Not in your current state of fury. Not with Barret’s meagre attempt at gunning, through intermittent groans of pain.

Somehow, you shake them regardless. As the remaining TIEs abandon pursuit, you hear Barret breathe a sigh of relief from the gunner position behind you. The reminder of Barret’s presence is enough to make your hands tighten so hard on the controls that your fingernails dig crescents into your palms. To make your chest tighten.

Then: “They track these things. Did you disable the tracker?” he asks you.

You are loathe to acknowledge him. Even so, you fiddle with the dash until you’re satisfied that the Order can no longer trace you. You cut the strings leading back to him and you feel that you’ve just cut a lifeline. That suddenly you’re lost to liminal space, in-between anywhere and anyone you’ve ever considered home. Still ruptured in two. The feeling sets a hollowness in the pit of you, like you are a ripe fruit which has been scooped out by a cool spoon.

“Affirmative. Plotting a course to base.” You confirm in monotone, all emotion scrubbed from your voice.

“I can’t believe I got such a lucky shot at that bastard.” Barret continues, his voice sickeningly jovial and full of relief.

You feel like you might throw-up.

“Don’t speak. Save your strength.” You say curtly, inordinately thankful that you are back-to-back in the TIE. At least you don’t have to look at him. At least he can’t look at you – can’t get a read on the emotions you would be incapable of obscuring right now.

Still, as you programme your course you feel like his eyes are roving over you, all the same. You feel like he’s poking around inside you, wondering what’s wrong with you. You can imagine the gears in his brain working in an attempt to figure out why your reactions seem off, to unearth whatever happened to you on that ship. Whatever tortures you may have been subjected to. You can imagine him retrospectively register the bite marks on your neck, the cuts to your hands. The blood on your face and clothing. You practically feel his thought process creep over you in the cockpit like a cold chill.

“What happened to you?” Barret asks then, ever so softly, his voice heavy with the implication of imagined atrocities.

“It’s not my blood. It’s Hux’s. I killed him.” You say, hoping to deflect from exactly what happened to you on that ship.  

Barret hoots with laughter, and the sound jarrs you. You hear his hand slapping against his thigh in celebration. “Wow, we really fucked the Order over today, partner. Hux and Dameron dead!” Barret reaches behind him to squeeze your shoulder and you flinch away as if you are afraid of his touch; as if you don’t deserve it; as if he disgusts you. Perhaps all of those things.

“You don’t know that Dameron’s dead.” You bite off without thinking, molten tears of rage threatening at the corner of your eyes. The break in your voice is giving too much away. Emotion floods the cracks in your words like tributaries joining the churn of an unstoppable river. You can’t choke back the sob which follows.

Barret’s voice softens so much that you want to wring his neck to choke the pity out of it. “Did Dameron... hurt you?”. That’s why he thinks you’re crying, then? Because you can’t be certain that the commander’s dead, and surely you must want him dead for the terrible, unspeakable things he enacted upon you?

The truth might be even more unspeakable. The truth that you’re a traitor. The truth that you’d sell your soul to have the commander do those things to you all over again. To have him fuck you and hurt you and hold you. The truth that, yes, he did hurt you, buy you liked it. Barret doesn’t understand that you’re wretched with a crushing and unexpected grief at the thought that it may never happen again. Not since Barret did what you should have had the sense to do all that time ago. Not since Barret shot the commander.

You hope Barret doesn’t notice the course of the ship waver as your hands slip on the controls. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The close air of the TIE is suddenly thick with a loaded silence as the ship shudders back along its trajectory. As you regain control of yourself and the craft.

Barret, however, does not relent for long. “Do you think when we get back to base we’ll be welcomed as heroes?” The question simply makes your stomach turn. You refuse to pluck at the question while it hangs there, ripe, and so it becomes a rotten thing in the air between you. You feel that chill creep over you again, as if Barret is reaching inside of you, panning for your secrets. No escape within the confines of this ship.

You think back to the last time you were confined with Barret. It seems so long ago that you hunkered in that stakeout room, tracking that shipment and thirsting hard for the commander. The commander who had consumed you with just one bite. Now, mere days later, your partner seems like a stranger and your enemy seems like your lover. You indulged your appetite for that tempting, delicious darkness; you were willingly suckered into Dameron’s honeyed trap. And now that you have been given a taste, you should feel sated. But the truth is you would gladly open your mouth and drink more of that darkness down. You’d drink it until you were spoiled and loathsome with it.

The most disconcerting aspect of these tumultuous events is how little you know yourself. What you are capable of. What you crave and how far you will wade in to the darkness to get it. You know these are your mistakes, your weaknesses to atone for. You know that despite what you’re feeling now, Barret doesn’t deserve your hate. A part of you still knows that. Knows that, objectively, he’s simply a good guy who shot a bad man. That objectively, you should still be on his side. You know you owe it to him to take him home. At the very least.

An older, softer part of you resurfaces as you hear Barret grunting behind you with a fresh wave of pain. It’s likely that the initial burst of adrenaline is wearing off and he is beginning to suffer.  

“You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be ok. My stomach is hurting like a bitch, though.”

In all the chaos, you’d given little thought to the extent of his injuries, until now. So, next, you ask a question you’re not sure you truly want an answer to. “What happened to you, Barret?”

There is a beat. He replies in a small voice. “The kinda stuff our training tried to prepare us to resist.” His answer is vague but loaded. That’s enough. That’s enough to understand what they’d subjected him to. Guilt flares in the pit of you, knowing that while he was being tortured, you were indulging your darker whims. Knowing how much you were enjoying yourself while he suffered. Enjoying yourself at his expense, when you could have been trying to get him out of there.

So, you still can feel guilt, then? You still know that, on some level, it was wrong. Maybe there is something of the Rebel left in you, somewhere. Buried under the landslide of darkness. But you know there is little chance of that part of you clawing itself out when your next thought is of the commander. When your whole body clenches around the memory of him, clings on to it. You think of how he can torture you in an entirely different way, until you’re begging for mercy. A part of you feels you’d raze everything you ever loved to the ground for a chance to beg him again.

Still, you’re curious. You’re curious whether your commander was involved in Barret’s torture. Perhaps so that you can weigh precisely how much you should loathe yourself. “Troopers, or one of the higher-ups?” you ask, trying to keep your voice level, void of feeling.

“Troopers mainly. Some droids, doctors…” Barret trails off, remembering. “Though, it’s funny, really. Dameron came to my room this morning. Told me -don’t worry- it would all be over for me today. Guess the joke’s on him. The bastard.” Barret’s voice sounds darker, more malicious than you’ve ever heard it.

“He came to your room? This morning?” Something about that doesn’t sit quite right with you, leaves you uneasy. Dameron doesn’t do anything much unless there’s something in it for him, you’re learning. Maybe the games he has been playing aren’t quite over yet. Is it wrong to relish that thought?

“He visited a couple of times. To mindfuck me, from what I can gather. Yesterday he tried to make me swallow some horrible lies about you. To make me think I was alone, I guess- to get some intel out of me. Today… well, he brought me my daily rations and told me it was all over. Well, fuck him, he’s dead.”

Panic flutters in your stomach. You try to remain steady on the flight controls, to calm your breathing. You know Barret doesn’t fully appreciate the implications of his words. Of the commander’s actions. But you might.

You have two burning questions you need answers to.

The first: How much did Dameron tell Barret?

The second: What did he feed him?

Your mind pores over any detail of Barret you can remember from the escape to establish which question is most pressing. You hark back to the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the glassiness of his infuriatingly concerned eyes. The way he was clutching at his stomach. More than being injured; Barret looked ill.

Realisation strikes you, and if you didn’t feel guilty before, you sure as hell do now. You can’t be sure, of course. But somehow you know. You’d bet that the commander had fed Barret some juicy, ripe, red fruit.

Bile rises in your throat, but you force yourself to gloss over your voice with a kind tone. To paint your face with a soft, reassuring smile. “Why don’t you try and get some rest, huh? You’ve been through it.” Your passenger hums, considering your proposition. “If I divert the power from the interior electrics into the thrusters, I can get us back to base a little faster than expected. If you don’t mind flying in the dark?”

Flying in the dark is all you’ve been doing ever since the commander hit your life and turned it upside down, like a hurricane. Ans it turns out you’re still caught in his wake. You can’t tell if you’re soaring or if you’re about to crash and burn.

“Yeah.” Barret reaches a hand around to squeeze your arm again and it is like a hand rising out of a grave. His hand is cold. You resist the urge to flinch away, despite the chill it sends down your spine. “Oh, and, partner? Thank you for rescuing me.”

You bite your lips between your teeth. You’re not sure if that statement could possibly be further from the truth of what happened. Hadn’t you doomed him, right from the start? From that first bite the commander took of you? A throwaway “You don’t need to thank me.” is all you can muster.

Barret curls himself in his chair and you are grateful to fly on in silence. Now that the affront of him is over, you suddenly realise how tense you are, how the emotions wracking you are beginning to take their toll. You can’t explain how it was more comforting to be in the arms of your enemy than trapped in the confines of this ship with someone you’d let down so badly. You owe it to Barret to try and make part of this right.

Don’t you?

An alternative option niggles at you, hiding somewhere beyond protocol, beyond the rules and conventions and obligations. Then you think that, perhaps, it’s a good thing for Barret that you can’t be sure if Dameron’s dead, after all. Because if you knew that he was, you don’t think you could find the compassion or strength to try to bring your partner home. You think you might seek retribution, in the end.

Regardless, you fly. You try and allow the darkness of the cockpit to swallow you. As if Barret is not sitting there, as if Dameron never marked you. You try and push it all down, but the commander did mark you. He’s branded you as his. He’d told you “don’t forget you’re mine”, and now his words are wrapped around your bones. His words will be buried with you. And every time you try and escape, your thoughts orbit back to him. His mouth swallowing your hot core, his hands delivering delicious tortures, his cock pumping into you. Most of all: those dark eyes, like shadowed planets you would kill to be marooned on again.

Left to the dark and the dark alone, your thoughts are consumed by him. That is, until you reach your destination, and swing your craft around in the air to bring her in for touch down. Until you approach base and spot that something isn’t right. Until you see the thick pillars of smoke billowing into the air.

“No. No. No.” You plead to no-one in particular, your protestations and erratic flying drawing Barret abruptly from his sleep.

You land harshly on the runway, avoiding blast holes and charred ground, and scramble hurriedly from the ship. Your feet relentlessly pound the tarmac until you’re in the centre of it all, scanning the scene around you with eyes wide.

No-one comes running to greet you or shoot at you. No-one is left. You look around you, surveying for damages. Surveying for bodies, you realise. That the X-wings and larger crafts are gone from the hangar provides some immediate comfort. Signs of a likely evacuation. Then, your eyes pick out the remains of familiar munitions, the tell-tale shell of a downed and lightly smoking TIE fighter.

The strike was committed by the Order. While you were taken. You shake your head in disbelief. It can’t possibly be a coincidence -not after everything that has happened. That means the Order somehow found out the location of the base while you were captive… but you hadn’t…

Oh. Oh.

You put the pieces together and turn back to Barret in disbelief. He has now come to stand several paces from you on the runway. Laughably, you know you must look betrayed when your eyes meet his. In one hand he grips a blaster and the other hand waves around defensively. No, he doesn’t look well. Now that you’re truly seeing him, he doesn’t look well at all. A sheen of sweat covers Barret’s face, his eyes red-rimmed, tears seeding at the corners. He instantly recognises the accusation in your eyes, in your stance.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” he professes, voice trembling. “I wasn’t strong enough. I hoped we’d make it back before the Order could put the intel to use. Or that we’d disrupted their plans. That maybe no-one would need to know.”.

“You sold the base out?” you spit with utter disgust, looking Barret over like he’s scum.  

Apparently, neither of you were returning to base as heroes after all.

He meets your question with silence, which says it all.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” You are yelling now. “You let the Resistance down! You betrayed them!”

You’re so angry that it feels like your blood is boiling beneath your skin. Your breath is ragged, your thoughts swirling. You feel darkness crowding at the edges of you. You feel like you are sucking it up through your fingertips, draining your surroundings of it. Feeling it course through you, like the hum of static before a storm. Barret betrayed the Resistance. He did this. And you’re so angry that you can’t see straight.

You are devoid of any sympathy or empathy for him. You’re so angry at him, of course, because you’re angry at yourself. If you can berate him for being a traitor you will take it, if it makes what you did seem to pale into insignificance.

Instinctually, although you are stood some distance away, you lift your arm as if you could simply reach out and choke Barret. Make him pay for his weakness. Your arm extended towards him, you have the desperate urge to just close your grip and crush. “I wish I could just…”

You are as shocked as Barret when he physically clasps his throat and starts wheezing, his eyes wide and afraid. It shocks you enough for you to drop your arm and physically step back from him. You shrink back from the look he’s giving you as he processes what just happened, raising his blaster arm unsteadily toward you. He looks at you questioningly. He looks at you as if he’s looking at a stranger.

All you can do is look back at him. You look Barret dead in the eyes, and you must reveal just too much. Because, if it’s possible, Barret pales even further, his eyes swimming with disbelief.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not the only one who let down the Resistance, am I?” His voice is so thick with disgust that you can’t bring yourself to keep looking at him. To keep facing what you did.

“The things Dameron told me yesterday. They’re true.”

“What?” you say weakly, a pitiful attempt to backtrack, but you already know it’s futile. You’ve been found out. And you might be a traitor but you’re not a liar.

“You fucked the enemy.” Barret spits. “While I was being tortured in that cell. You could have stopped this.” He yells, gesturing around to the scene of devastation which envelops you. And, in his anger he overdoes it - ends up clutching his stomach in evident pain.

There is nothing you can say. No protestation you can muster. You had been angry and ashamed at yourself, but when confronted with it, you find a small, absurd part of you which is proud of it. Which has no desire to deny it. To apologise for it. Barret may have caved in to weakness, but you found power on that ship. Whilst he may dish out judgement, with the commander you had found understanding. Affinity.

Barret’s blaster wavered with the fresh burst of pain but now he has it pointed back at you, trained intently on you. “I didn’t want to believe Dameron. I didn’t at first.”, he bites off, chewing on his words. “But I promised him that if it was true, I’d kill you both myself. I picked your bastard boyfriend off earlier- so I guess I just need to make good on the other half of my promise, eh, traitor?”

You’re getting sick of this righteous bastard already. Hadn’t he been weak? Hadn’t he caved too? Maybe all rebels were simply hypocrites.Maybe the Order were on to something.

Then, of all the things you should say or ask right now, the next question out of your mouth is entirely self-indulgent. “What did he say?” you ask slowly, stringing out your words. In no rush. You have all the time in the world. Unlike your partner.

“What?!” Barret replies in utter confusion.

“What did he say when you promised to kill me? Because given that he poisoned you I don’t think he was too happy with you about something.” You know it’s wrong, that it’s too cruel, but you can’t help that your eyes flash with a perverse kind of satisfaction as you watch the realisation play over Barret’s face.

Is that why? Is that why the commander has poisoned your fellow rebel? To protect you? Because he threatened you? Oh, how a part of you hopes that’s true.

His blaster arm wavers again, and Barret is so weak of body and wrapped up in turmoil that you are able to walk towards him and take the blaster easily, gently from his hand. You look into his eyes, your voice steely, suddenly not feeling worthless or ashamed at all. Not anymore. Maybe you were cut out for these games, after all. “You don’t look so hot, Barret. So maybe we agree that we both made some mistakes on that ship, yes?” Barret considers your words carefully and then nods, and it acts as a meanwhile truce of sorts. You keep your tone impartial. “I’d suggest that if you want me to help you, you should take a seat. Before you drop. I’ll see if there’s anything left of the med bay.”

“You’re going to help me?” Barret looks at you in confusion.

“Yes, I’m going to help you. I’m not a monster.”

The way he looks at you in response signals that he thinks otherwise. You huff out a breath, perturbed by the condemnation. And so, for the second time that day, you aren’t able to offer comfort to someone in need. Instead, you sling Barret’s blaster on to your belt and jog towards the med bay. Barret’s only hope is that there are some shots left which haven’t been blown-up or cleared-out.

You move as fast as you’re able, gathering whatever supplies you can, but by the time you return, Barret is lying still on the runway.

You are too late.

Barret is the third body you’ve had lying at your feet that day. Three enemies, in the end. One of whom was a lover, and one of whom was a friend.

Despite what Barret had done, you feel no satisfaction in his fate. You sigh deeply and turn your head into your shoulder. You don’t look. You try not to look. All you can do is drag him into the hangar and cover him over, paying final respects to the fallen Resistance member.

Now, you are truly alone.

Feeling somewhat numb, you wander around base, confirming there are no signs of life left at all. Passing collapsed buildings, smoking craters, and remnants of devastation. You act on autopilot, and before you know where you’re walking to, you’ve reached the canteen, picking up some remaining rations and stuffing your face. Then, before you realise it, you’ve meandered across base and stand at the spot where your quarters should be.

All that’s left is a shell.

Suddenly, it’s as if you dropped the bombs yourself. As if you’ve intentionally obliterated everything you used to know and used to be beyond all recognition. You pick through the rubble, try to leaf through the ashes, but nothing at all remains. Still nothing to cling on to.

In your wandering, your quest for solace of some kind, the next place you find yourself is General Leia’s room. Hers remains intact. You find it empty, but her presence is there in all the tiny details. The uniform hanging up by the small closet, the table covered in datapads and holo equipment. Her comb and tumbler of water on the nightstand.

You dearly hope that she’s safe.

Being as quiet as possible, as if she’s sleeping there and you might disturb her, you perch yourself on the edge of her bed, grabbing her blanket and tugging it around your shoulders. You let yourself dwell on all the ways you’ve let her down, the ways you may yet break her heart, and you will the grief to hit you. But it doesn’t. You feel like you should be primed to lie down and cry, letting sobs wrack you. But there’s nothing. Only numbness. Perhaps, deep down, you feel you don’t deserve Leia’s comfort. Perhaps, deep down, you’re not truly sorry. Perhaps you are still too ruptured to start healing. Perhaps all of these things.

At least, sitting still allows the exhaustion to hit you. Still, you don’t feel like you could sleep. You feel restless. A lost celestial object with no course and no orbit. A dark, unlit moon. So, you continue your wandering, digging out some fresh clothes and taking a shower, the cool water sluicing Hux’s blood away. It circles down the drain in a crimson vortex. You redress and rewrap Leia’s blanket around your shoulders.

Without knowing where exactly you’re headed next, you find your feet gravitating towards the TIE fighter, which you half-landed and half-crashed into the tarmac.

Of course.

It’s the closest you can be to him right now.

You clamber inside, the snug cockpit encasing you. And then, finally, the rush of feelings hits you. You remember the Troopers swarming around his still form and it’s as if a vice clamps down on your chest. You imagine the chaos on the ship, the discovery of General Hux, washed up on that crimson tide of blood. You remember how it felt to kill him, and then to have the commander exalt you and kiss you and rail into you. You picture how it should have gone; General Dameron sitting coolly, smugly on the bridge. Taking Hux’s place, knowing exactly what he’d done. What you’d done. Sitting there as calm and devastating as the eye of a storm.

You screw your eyes shut tight against the thought you know will follow.

Is he alive?

And, as you close your eyes, various thoughts and faces eddy through the blackness, coming and receding like waves. As you focus in on each of them, in turn, it is as if you are slipping into a current, or a hyper stream; as if you can follow the tide which might lead you to them. One thought begins to jump out at you, tugging at you like a riptide, causing your mind to drift towards it.

Leia?

You reach out with your mind, searching for her energy. You can’t explain it, but you feel that maybe you can establish where they’ve evacuated to.

At least you think that’s where your heart is reaching out to. But wait; it’s not Leia. It’s something connected, but something darker.

Kylo.

Your eyes shoot open in fright and you startle in your seat. For a moment, it’s as if you have linked to him, as if his face is blinking in front of you. He looks just as surprised as you feel. You recoil in terror. For a good while, you sit motionless in the cold shell of the TIE, as if Kylo is a creature hunting you and any small movement might allow him to pounce. You don’t know how long you sit there, heart racing, and your fingernails digging into your knees threatening to draw blood.

You just touched something so deeply dark. Something frightening. Something you are not quite ready to face.

You don’t know how much time passes, but you sit there, practically frozen, until a blue light begins to blink on the dashboard of the TIE. Your curiosity overriding your fear, you press the button. It’s a holo, patching through.

A cool, rich voice resounds through the cockpit of the TIE.

“It’s General Dameron here.”

Your relief is palpable – a fluttering in your chest. A smile which begins in the pit of you and blooms through your whole body. You hold your breath until you’re sure you can believe what you’re seeing. Your eyes pore over the holo, trying to establish where he is, how he is. He looks as though he may be patched up and lying in a med bay.

“Maybe you thought you could run or hide from me, Rebel, but Kylo -the space bloodhound- tells me he found you.” He looks off to the side of him. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you, Supreme Leader?”

His voice is still full of holes, shot through with gravel. But he’s alive. You’re sure you can see the hint of a shark smile spread over his features. He dips his head slightly towards the camera droid at that moment, lowering his voice just a touch, his eyes narrowing. Unconsciously you lean in toward the transmission. “So, Killer. As you know, Hux is dead, and you’re responsible.” He leans in even further and even through the holo his intense eyes bore into you. “But I’m very much alive. So, I just needed you to know...” he exhales a breath and bites his bottom lip as if his next thought amuses him. “...that I’m gonna be coming for you.”

Whether his statement is a threat or a promise, you can’t be sure. However, you know that the games are far from over. Whilst tomorrow you may need to figure out your next move, for now, you finally feel like you could cry and you could sleep.

You lean back in the pilot’s chair and allow yourself a deep, relieving breath. And yet again, you can’t hold back your own resplendent shark smile.

You press the button to reverse the transmission before sending a message back to General Dameron.

“Bring it on, General Dameron. I’m ready for you.”

He’s alive.

It’s not over yet.

As much as you would like to run back to him, you know now, more than ever, that you have to return home to the Resistance - to see if it’s still where your heart is. Or whether you have any heart left at all. Then, if you happen to discover that your heart does belong to the darkness after all, at least you know the darkness is coming for you. And at least then, you will truly know that you are ready for it.

You lean back in the seat and close your eyes, allowing your relief to wrap around you -like a blanket- as the darkness holds you and rocks you to sleep.

To be continued (Chapter SEVEN coming soon!)

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[maulsscream]

(gif by obimauls)

HOPE Maul x Ahsoka

First of all, I’m so sorry for using that gif. Second of,  don’t know what this is. It was supposed to be a Hurt/Comfort fic but then it... became this and lost its purpose. All I can say is that I can write everything you want but I could never bring myself to retcon “Running away again, Lady Tano?”.

SUMMARY Rated G - 2,007 words

There is a gap. A moment in which neither of them know what to say, but they know what to do. The fate of the galaxy is on their shoulders.

                                 -----------------------------------

Ahsoka had sent Maul to his death. She could never have brought herself to inflict the kind of atrocities Maul was unleashing upon the clones. They had been her friends, all of them. By not providing the former Sith with a weapon, she had hoped to even the fight if only a little. Still her conscience didn’t feel clear. She felt sullied by the implications of the chaos she had asked for.

As she made her way down the hallways with caution, she clearly understood just how much she had doomed her troopers. It was what Maul had been raised to do after all. He was an unrelenting killing machine on a mission. If the scene in front of her was to draw any conclusion, it was that it had been a slaughter. The clones had stood no chance against him. They had been decimated.

She walked across dismembered bodies, a feeling of darkness overtaking her. She had been witness to the horrors of war. She had been victim to it. This was different. This reeked of carnage and destruction. There was no necessary evil in what she saw.

The people she had called friends minutes ago were laying dead on the floor, limbs scattered across the hallway. She was thankful that their helmets were still on. It was hard enough having to deal with their betrayal, even if she knew how blameless they were, she didn’t want to add insult to injury by having to take their death in one by one. They were casualties of war nothing more, she reminded herself.

She reached another corridor and halted. Rex was right behind her as he always had been, making sure they were covered on all sides. He didn’t trust the renegade to not kill everyone, Rex and Ahsoka included.

“Maul?”

Her voice ringed in his ears. She sounded surprised to find him slumped over a wall but still standing. He was aware of what her words had truly meant when they had parted ways. She wanted him dead, just as much as the rest of them. Whether he survived the battalion of clones was none of her concerns. She had needed him to clear the way for her escape and he had done exactly as she had ordered. Perhaps he was hoping for her to see his value as an ally so that they could survive this. Clearly they couldn’t do it alone.

Maul sank down to his knees on the floor as Ahsoka rushed to his side, kneeling down as well. She could see he was wounded. The injury wouldn’t be fatal and knowing Maul he could recover from it. He had recovered from behind cut in half. This was merely a blaster shot to the chest. Still, if they didn’t bring him to the med bay, he would have been picked off by clones easily. Right now, he was their only chance to escape alive.

“Can you walk?”, Ahsoka asked.

There was no concern or care in her voice. Maul scoffed, causing him to go into a coughing fit. Out of pure spite, the former Sith tried to stand but quickly fell into her arms. Could he walk? Ridiculous... Pain was simply a state of mind that he didn’t even register anymore.

“I’m fine.”, Maul hissed.

He wasn’t. As Ahsoka took hold of his side she could feel a warm wetness dripping down through her fingers. There was no doubt in it, he was bleeding. Upon further inspection she saw that a piece of metal had lodge itself in between Maul’s ribs. The cut seemed to run deep enough to make him hack up blood again.

“Rex, make sure the way to the medbay is clear.”, Ahsoka instructed.

Maul glared down at her. He didn’t need to be coddled like a child. Especially not by someone who didn’t care if he lived or died unless he was useful in doing either. Why was she trying to save him when he was clearly a lost cause? He would only slow her down. One of them had to survive and it was not going to be him. He had resigned himself to his faith.

“You have to go. Now.”, Maul groaned.

“I’m not leaving you.”

So she had changed her mind. Ahsoka was aware that Maul was her ticket out off of that ship. She needed someone to hold off the clones while her and Rex jumped on an escape pod. And Maul had just proven himself to be a more than valuable meat shield, if nothing else.

Ahsoka tossed Maul’s arm across her shoulder. He was ridiculously heavy and massive, something she hadn’t accounted for. If they were to make it back in time, they’d need to hurry. She could tell he was trying his best not to be a burden and was carrying most of his own weight while holding his bleeding side. It was a true testament to his strength. With the injuries he had sustained, Ahsoka wondered how the Sith was still conscious enough to talk. Let alone do it while making sense.

“Don’t waste your time. You and I both know I will only slow down your escape. You need to hurry.”

After all she had said to him, Maul was still trying to help her. This time felt different. He had nothing to gain by telling her to abandon him there and flee. It wasn’t his style to be selfless. Perhaps what they had felt in the Force had given him a change of heart.

Ahsoka didn’t even reply to whatever rambling were coming out of his mouth, too busy focusing on dragging herself back to the medbay where the trio of droids still were. With the help of Rex, she loaded the Zabrak onto the table. One astromech guarded the door while two others were running diagnostics.

Maul grabbed her hand tightly as she moved to set up his surgery. Kriff knew what she was going to find out about his anatomy and all the modifications he had suffered over the years. But this wasn’t what concerned the former Sith. There was a beat were they stared at each other.

“Lady Tano, a favour please.”

She cast a glance to Rex who got the hint. This was a private conversation. The trooped took a few paces towards the door, his back turned to them. Ahsoka leaned in closer to Maul who had a resigned look in his eyes. There was no doubt about it, he had seen death before. It didn’t scare him. She wondered if anything in his life had ever truly frightened him.

“I’m going to do my best to fix your injuries so that we can--”

“In case you don’t...”, Maul interrupted.

He could tell the former Padawan was talking to reassure herself rather than him. She had a wild look in her eyes, panic settling in. She was scrambling to hold to the old world she knew where she needed to save everyone. This had never been Maul’s reality. Death was inevitable and welcomed if the time was right and enemy was worthy. But to a Jedi, the lack of control and certainty created a void where she couldn’t even trust the Force to guide her.

“Destroy the ship. There can be no trail left for him to follow.”

His grip on her hand tightened and Ahsoka brought her other hand to hold his. It was a strange act of comfort but she simply couldn’t help herself. He was a being in pain and against her own judgement and instincts, he deserved a chance... maybe. He had proved himself to be useful and even when he had had no reason to follow her orders, he had done as he was told. If anything were to happen to Rex, Maul would be her only reliable ally on that ship. She knew she couldn’t lose that.

She also knew that Maul wasn’t talking about the trooper in the room. If she was to be hunted down after her escape, it would be by Darth Sidious and his new army. The only mention of that name had terrorised the former Sith down in the tunnels of Mandalore. Only he knew what he was truly capable of.

Maul didn’t let go of her hand throughout the procedure. It wasn’t so much for comfort as it was for assurance that she wouldn’t terminate him on the spot. He could feel her energy through the Force linked them together. It was an unspoken understanding. They could guess each other’s intentions and how desperately they wanted to survive. Maul reached out to her and it took Ahsoka a moment to decide wether she wanted to respond to his call or not. Yes.

He rose from the table with a snarl, stretching his side. Ahsoka stepped back and observed. She had concerns about teaming up with someone like Maul and it read on her face. But what choice did she have? She was incapable of ploughing through squads of clones as he had, it wasn’t her style. They’d have to rely on each other.

“Lead the way.”, he said as his hand extended towards Rex and the corridor before them. 

None of them had a good feeling about heading back out there. Who knew how many clones were still out there, hunting them down? Were they planning an ambush? The way to the escape pods wasn’t an entirely straight line and they would have to trust each other not to get slaughtered.

They made their way through quietly and rather unbothered by any troopers. Maul and Ahsoka exchanged looks. Something was up. As they reached the hangar, it all made sense.

Blaster shots were coming at them reluctantly, barely giving them a chance to strategise about their best option. Maul had his back to Ahsoka’s while Rex was flanking them. They deflected as much as possible but it was clear that they were outgunned and outmatched. The clones had had time to set up their ambush. Ahsoka felt glad that she had her back turned and didn’t have to witness whatever Maul was doing to the them. She could only hear shouts and bones being crushed underneath their armours as their bodies got tossed against the walls of the hangar. Maul grunted as he took another blaster bolt to the shoulder, only enhancing the anger and speed with which he fought. Ahsoka could feel his presence in the force, shrouded with darkness. He was almost having fun.

“This way!”

She shouted and the three of them broke from the troopers swarming them. They weaved through shots fired in every direction as they reached the other side of the docking bay. The escape pods were right there, two of them still locked into their compartments. They were so close!

Maul was sealed the doors behind them, clenching his fist and causing the metal to bend on itself. It wouldn’t hold them off for long. He could already hear them trying to break down the door. Maul turned around slowly to observe Ahsoka who was scrambling to unlock the pods.

Her hands were shaking, her aura unsettled. She stopped as if she’d been hit by a freighter. She was drowning in her own panic while Maul had never been so calm in his life. There was no longer rage and anger in his eyes when they locked with her. He knew what he had to do.

“May the Force be with you, Ahsoka Tano.”

His arm rose and before she had time to shout at him to stop, Maul had force-pushed her into the pod. The door blasted open in a flash of light and dust.

The last thing she saw as she tripped into an escape pod and onto Rex was Maul looking back over his shoulder at her, his hands outstretched in front of him while pushing back an onslaught of clones.

Ahsoka remembered his words. They swirled in her head. She owed him as much for saving their lives.

Destroy the ship.

[the-fallen-blue]

To be clear, I don't hold DS9 as the best of Star Trek or think all its deconstructing woked, but from what I remember, the "easy to be saint in paradise" is more about criticizing the arrogance and borderline xenophobia of Gene's vision, or at least aspects of it and (which DS9 did as a whole) contrivences that kept it unchallenged. If nothing else, IMO it's a fair game to show that a society as dedicated to peace and avoidance of armed conflict would leave some people feeling unfought for.

“It’s easy to be a saint in paradise” is in fact in reference to the Maquis, and Starfleet’s treatment thereof. The official judgement of the Federation is that the Maquis are terrorists (a matter of perspective), a threat to the peace with the Cardassians (potentially, but certainly not more so than the Cardassians themselves), and deserters and thieves (absolutely fact; a majority of Maquis are active duty Starfleet who walked off the job with Starfleet weapons, ships and intel). Thus the Starfleet policy toward Maquis is pursuit, capture, or destruction without quarter.

Sisko cheerfully enforces this policy - he literally committed a war crime in order to catch his former security officer, so he’s obviously on board with “stop the Maquis” as a concept - but he also takes a moment to be judgey about it when the issue first comes up. The people at Starfleet headquarters, he implies with the quote, are arrogant, ignorant, and cold. The Maquis had their homes traded away right underneath them by the Federation, traded to the very enemy who was attacking them in the first place. Even worse, the Feds didn’t even really make an effort in the war - consensus among the sort of fans who Figure Out Things Like That is that if they’d tried at all, Starfleet would have crushed the Cardassians and lost nothing. And now the Federation attacks its own betrayed citizens for fighting back? Sisko, and apparently the show, want us to consider that perhaps the Liberal Elite in their Ivory Towers pushing Peace and Reconciliation with the Bad Guys even to the point of punishing the former Good Guys to maintain it are showing a disgusting lack of 1) compassion for the people they’re supposed to be prioritizing, who suffer the consequences of their decisions and 2) understanding of how the Real World works, because they’ve never lived in it.

Unfortunately, this is patent fucking nonsense.

Consider:

Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime?

Really?

Even though the Japanese were the aggressor? Even though they committed absolute atrocities against American citizens in the Pacific territories? Even though Truman’s literal job description was “protect American lives and American interests,” meaning he owed his soldiers a strategy that risked their lives as little as possible and ended the war as quickly as possible, and owed the Japanese absolutely nothing? If you’re still out here saying “yes,” congratulations, you’re what Gene’s humanity is supposed to be all about. Someone who remembers that the enemy is still people too, and you have a moral obligation to use exactly necessary force and not a single Newton more. To value their lives, society and culture equal to your own.

If the Federation negotiated peace with the Cardassians even from a position of power, it was because they deemed the potential loss of combined Federation and Cardassian life to be of greater significance than the (easily substituted in a post-scarcity society) homestead rights of Federation citizens on those contested worlds. They chose life over land, even enemy life over their own land. This is the decision we want them to make. We want them to be the people who would not have dropped a nuke on Japan. We want future humanity to be in a place where we consider the Maquis to be in the wrong for choosing bloody war to avoid giving up property.

But the thing is…. how the fuck do we get there, because humans do not, humans cannot make that decision. Humans get emotionally invested in things. Humans get angry and scared and humans are wildly fucking tribal and we make self-serving and short-sighted decisions in order to protect the things that are ours whenever we feel threatened. Poverty creates crime because when people are scared for their survival they don’t care about the rules, strange cultures interacting generates bigotry because new things are frightening, and power breeds sociopathy because losing that power frames itself to the human brain as a loss of identity and safety. And Gene’s humans are not actually different from the real ones. They didn’t develop telepathy like Betazoids to make them physically incapable of forgetting that the enemy is a person. They haven’t altered their own brain chemistry through ritualized philosophy like the Vulcans. They are still giant bags of reactivity, violence and malice. So. What do?

Well the really funny thing is that the answer to this question is within DS-9 itself. One of fandom’s other favorite lines from the series is Quark musing on the nature of humanity:

Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.

WELL JUST FUCKING INVERSE THAT, GENIUS!

DS-9 is fascinated by the idea that humans are Not As Good As You Thought, Gene, but it seems to persistently overlook the fact that he understood that completely, and that’s why the Federation exists. That’s why they have the free holosuites and free food and Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. It is easy to be a saint in Paradise, and the Federation wants to be saints, so they put the people who make the decisions in Paradise. Hell, they try to put everyone in Paradise, because it lets us not be massive shits to each other even without telepathy or Logic™. The whole origin story of Trek humans is that they went through a decade or so of Mad Max hell and went “holy fuck never again, what do we do to make ourselves stop being assholes,” and utopian socialist paradise is what they came up with.

Sisko seems to think that not getting on board with the Maquis’ decision to fight for their homes is a sign of blindness and elitism on the part of his bosses, because those bosses aren’t facing the tribulation of losing their own homes. But in fact, that very tribulation means that the Maquis are the blind ones - they can’t be objective or adhere to the principles they normally value, because their lizard brain has knocked all the way down Maslow’s hierarchy to “YOU NO TAKE CANDLE,” while the guys back home on Earth, explicitly because they’re not involved, can act from the top of the pyramid with compassion for all involved parties.

Now, you can disagree with this moral perspective, certainly. You can say that leaders have a greater responsibility to their people than to the enemy and that protecting homes is worth lives and that the Federation should be secretly supporting the Maquis (like the Cardassians are supporting their own “renegades” attacking Federation colonies, something the series really should have spent more time on), and you wouldn’t be wrong. These are matters of perspective, not absolute truth. But that isn’t the argument Sisko is making. He’s arguing that the froofy safe Feds just don’t ~get~ it, which is a shockingly limited understanding of the history and principles of Trek Earth’s culture for a Starfleet captain.

[professional-danish]

A Response to The Last of Us Part II Ending (Obvious Spoilers)

I’ve been seeing a lot of people who didn’t like the game say that they understand the ending perfectly, they already know revenge is bad, they didn’t need Naughty Dog to tell them this, etc etc but...for most of them, you’re still really not getting it.

This game is not about revenge at all, and it’s really not even about Abby, although she does teach us some important lessons. This game is still entirely about Joel and Ellie, and it is completely based on the premise of forgiveness. But not for Abby!! Ellie DOES NOT forgive Abby, and she never will. No one, in my opinion, would or even could forgive the brutal murder of their loved one, and it’s a haunting, human problem that plagues not only every protagonist of The Last of Us, but our own reality. There is something within our nature that simply cannot stomach it. We see it in the pain and anger of Joel when he loses Sarah, we see it in Abby when she loses her father, and we see it in Ellie, not only when she loses Joel, but when Joel reveals that he sacrificed the world at her expense. 

Let’s take a look at the ending again, specifically the final fight. I’ve seen so many people upset at the fact that it all seems to be for nothing, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The ending of this story is everything, and for me, it’s what makes the game, and the entirety of what comes before it cannot be understood without the very last cutscene of Joel and Ellie’s final conversation. This is where all the anger, the bitterness, the brutality, and the pain stems from. 

“I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that,” Ellie says, as Joel tells her he would pick to save her and doom the world again and again, no matter the circumstances, “but I would like to try.” 

Ellie never gets this chance to work through her issues with Joel, and that’s why his death festers within her so painfully. Abby takes that from her, and it is so grievous a crime that Ellie becomes fixed in place, incapable of moving on from it. She sees the loss all around her, a wound that demands to be healed and yet cannot be stitched by any tools she knows of or has, and so she is forced on this quest to heal herself by destroying the surface issue and refusing to acknowledge the root.  

She’s going to kill Abby, and that will take away the pain. 

Of course, we know this isn’t true, and Naughty Dog shows us this early on by thrusting us into Abby’s shoes. Murdering Joel has brought her no relief or satisfaction. The people she loves are further away from her than ever (and soon to be dead), and have been forced there as a consequence of her unshakeable need for revenge. And furthermore, she’s still living in the same hell, where she constantly returns via flashbacks to find her father dead on the floor of the hospital. Killing Joel has not eased that pain, nor healed her emotional wounds. The only thing that has changed is that Abby has no purpose any longer, and no attachments, much in the same way we find Joel in the first game. He’s just going through the motions, trying to survive, empty and in pain. Only when he finds Ellie does he begin to regain his humanity, and the same is said for Abby, who only begins to come back to life and heal from what happened when she meets and helps Lev and Yara. You see, the story of The Last of Us Part One is retold in this sequel, though through a much narrower platform, with Abby standing in for Joel, Yara for Tess, and Lev for Ellie. And at the very end, Ellie, and by extension the player, seems to recognize this. 

When we reach the final fight, both women have committed numerous atrocities, and both have lost parts of themselves and the most important people in their lives to their vengeance. When they meet on the water, Ellie is fully prepared to end Abby’s life, something that the player fully accepts, which is another interesting beat, because a lot of complaints about Abby killing Joel stem from the fact that Joel saves Abby’s life. Abby has now also overpowered and spared Ellie twice, and yet most players still can’t seem to see through the thick fog of anger that clouds around Abby and her actions. Again, Abby is not “one of us” the way Ellie and Joel are, so I do understand it, but I think the irony is worth mentioning. 

When it comes time for the final kill, Ellie can’t. Why? She’s got Abby under that water, and Lev is far too incapacitated to help. Everything she’s been heading towards, everything she needs to fix herself and what has happened is literally right between her hands (or what’s left of them). So why can’t she do it? Is she too weak? 

No. Joel comes flooding through in a brief, single second snap of the night of their last conversation, and in that moment, Ellie achieves catharsis. When the scene progresses forward, into that final conversation, we as the player finally understand. This hasn’t been about Ellie hating Abby. This hasn’t been about Abby at all. While Abby acts as the inciting incident, this game and journey has always been about Joel. 

Ellie, while loving him, hated him for his actions, his weakness, his selfishness. Joel strips not only a cure from the world, but Ellie from her sense of self. Ellie wanted to die in that hospital. No one can say different. She was prepared for her life, and for all of the people she had lost—Riley, Tess, Henry and Sam, Marlene⁠—to mean something. Ellie can’t bear the guilt that that meaning has been permanently stripped away because Joel can’t bear to be without her. When Joel takes that decision away from her, she loses her guiding light, and all sight of herself, and what is important. All around her people continue to suffer and die, and she knows deep down she could have prevented it, but Joel robbed her of that choice. 

She can’t stomach it. 

But she loves Joel, and while she hates what he did, she understands him, and understands, to some extent, his actions, much like we do as observers of both stories. She recognizes an inability to change the past, sees Joel for who he is, and asks to start over, to ease this pain she carries. 

In the moment she relives this scene, she knows what she has to do. It hasn’t been about Abby, not this entire time. It’s been about accepting what Joel did, and the consequences of his actions. It’s been about accepting his love for her, and that it drove him to do something horrible, and that she’s in danger of doing something horrible too, of repeating this unforgiving cycle all in the name of what is just, what is right, and what we are supposed to do for the people we love.

But this isn’t right.  

There’s no justice in killing this feeble, starved, broken woman in front of her. There’s no honor in leaving a young boy to die. Ellie refuses to become that catalyst, refuses to further an agenda of hate, fear, violence, and revenge. In that moment, she accepts Joel for who he was and what he did, and she forgives him. She lets Abby up, and she lets her and Lev go, and in the process, frees herself, and closes the wound that has been slowly killing her this entire game. 

So, was it all for nothing? Absolutely not. It’s a painful journey, and it’s an emotional one, but it’s one profoundly reflective of reality, and one that, despite the brutality, is about healing, forgiveness, and love.

In choosing to break the cycle of violence, the game actually ends on an incredible note of hope, at least in my opinion. In keeping Abby alive, she allows for her and Lev to go off and find the Fireflies, as opposed to murdering Abby and creating the potential for Lev to survive and try to enact revenge on Ellie. And while Ellie has been physically maimed by her journey (a direct metaphor for reaping what you sow), she has found herself again and she is at peace with Joel and his actions. Even more than that, she knows that he died knowing she loved him. When she returns to her empty farmhouse, there are certain indicators here that all is not lost. Clean sheets remain behind in case of her return, and Dina’s favorite album lies on top of her guitar, a reminder of their love, and in my mind, a symbol of forgiveness all in itself, and a call to come back home. In a game solely focused on forgiveness, I see no other alternative than Ellie finding her way back to Jackson, and to Dina and her potato, to finally live the life she’s been trying to get back to for so long, since the very day she was bitten. 

You can be angry that they killed Joel. You can be angry that you have to live within Abby’s perspective. You’re supposed to be, and I know that I was. But these are not reasons to call this a bad game, because it isn’t, and if you give it a chance, you can see what this game is trying to say to you through these decisions. It’s done something to me that I’ve never experienced through another piece of media EVER. It’s a dynamic, masterful story set within the very best performance a gaming system can currently offer. It’s painful, emotional, and so very human, and it is currently my all time favorite game, of which the characters and stories it contains will stay with me always. 

Endure and survive...love and forgive. 

[florbelles]

background and personality for miss lyra ❤❤❤❤❤

thank you so much, lovely! sorry this took an eternity and a half xx

PERSONALITY

what’s their alignment?

d&d alignments are not her friend!

having said that, she leans towards neutral or chaotic ( very rarely lawful ); neutral in that she does not attempt to disrupt order for the sake of it and does not prioritize personal freedoms over the general ( what she believes to be ) good, chaotic in that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to meet her goals regardless of legality or acceptability and thinks little of the laws and values of society; she considers herself above the law insofar as she does not respect the law or believes it to be fundamentally flawed, but does not opposite the concept of order on principle ( while, on the contrary, she is an enforcer of order and principles within the context of the project; no one is above the judgement of god, herself included ). her loyalty and unconditional love where she gives it earns her high points in the morality category in traditional d&d quizzes, as does her commitment to her cause ( whether that’s with the project or in her life before, conning or murdering corrupt or vile members of society in retaliation ). practically speaking, though, her methods align her with the evil sector, particularly in regards to the lengths she’s willing to go to; she also gets personal enjoyment out of inflicting suffering on those she deems unworthy, derives pleasure from the atrocities she commits. she is driven by passion more than anything else, and is consumed by rage and loathing, meaning she is never truly neutral; because she gets personal satisfaction from her work as the judge, it can’t be said that she’s acting selflessly in the pure interest of upholding the values of the project, so the merit of her devotion in and of itself isn’t without ambiguity. she believes herself to be a monster, but believes her cause is righteous – it takes evil to know it, judge it, and exterminate it – but she has never once in her life done something #fortheevils or in the interest of promoting ( what she believes to be ) evil for the sake of it; for that reason she’s difficult to categorize based on the traditional understanding of the alignments.

tl; dr: given that she truly is driven by rage & passion and very much wants the world to burn ( at least at a certain critical point in her arc ), and given the depravity she’ll resort to in order to reach her end goals, she’s probably best aligned as chaotic to neutral evil ( though she believes herself to be doing right ).

which one of the 16 personality types do they fit into?

enfp-a; the campaigner.

what are their hobbies and interests? do they have any particular “favorites” (food, books, and so on)?

setting sinners free, anna karenina, fleetwood mac, driving with the windows down, sinner roasts bonfires in the summer & autumn, watching the sun rise.

favorites are answered here ( x ),  activities and interests here ( x )

what are they bad at?

bar games & team sports (anything she can’t cheat at, really).

what kind of things do they dislike/hate?

apathy, willful ignorance, obstinate self-deceit, the song oh john.

do they have any vices/addictions/mental illnesses?

she turns to risky behaviors, inflicting pain on herself ( via the provocation of others/combat ) or others ( whom she feels are deserving ). she has flirted with most forms of substance abuse in the past, but never crossed the line into full chemical dependency with anything but tobacco ( more because of using nothing specific habitually than out of moderation ).

what are their goals and motivations?

to do right even if she was born wrong ( she might be a monster, but she’s a monster for a cause, and surely that means something ); to keep what she has ( her family, john ); to fulfill her purpose as the judge of eden’s gate; to cast out the unworthy; to get her family safely to new eden. after the collapse, she simply wants to lead and protect the only family she has left — the faithful — until the shepherd joseph promised arrives and releases her from her duty.

what are their manners like? any habits?

full rundown on her mannerisms here. extremely extroverted, open body language, usually smoking; draws herself up to her full height even when seated. often holding a cigarette, talks with her hands. very animated, but graceful and deliberate. uses eye contact and physical touch to either intimidate or establish intimacy; disregards personal space for the same reason.

what are they most afraid of?

answered here.

becoming her mother. losing john. losing herself to her wrath, to an extent, but she would rather burn herself alive than become isabela. ( that was always more something that she would go to any lengths to avoid than a fate she truly feared, at least before john’s death and the collapse; that was the first time she was actually tempted to numb herself and embrace oblivion, but she never did ).

BACKGROUND

where were they born? what was their childhood like?

lyra was born in the hamptons, but she spent most of her childhood (that she can remember) on nantucket island; early childhood she spent out ruling it herself, on beaches, frolicking with the summer people, still trying to get her parents’ attention, then, still wanting what she saw other families have; not perfect, perhaps, but something.

what’s their family like?

BIRTH FAMILY

lyra maintains, for the most part, that the problem was never with her parents, but with her; she told joseph at one point that the difference between the rest of them is that they might not have been born monsters, but she was; nothing made her that way. the reality, of course, is different; because of the fact that lyra’s abuse was tied primarily to neglect as a young girl and later the emotional abuse, exploitation and manipulation by her father, she does not feel entitled to the trauma she carries from it matched against some of the horrors she’s witnessed. ( of her father’s business associates and the men she would target later in life, lawrence was never the worst of them, and for that, she considers herself fortunate ). she’s very aware of the fact that she had the best education money could buy ( provided it also got her as far away from them as possible ), that she was not beaten or, truthfully, reprimanded; her father never touched her, but that was a universally true statement — the most physical contact or affection he displayed towards his daughter was a hand on her shoulder at galas, steering her towards an associate she was meant to beguile, or lifting her hair to fasten his latest bribe around her neck.

she never, in her entire life, felt more like a whore, not even when she was fucking men she met along the road to rob them.

her mother, isabela, was not inherently malicious; she was extremely depressed and jaded and, as a result, heavily self-medicated; she did not turn a blind eye to her husband’s affairs, or to the way he slowly made lyra her replacement, but she smothered it with drugs. she did not hate lyra, and never expressed open animosity towards her and that, to lyra, was the worst of it; she would attempt to provoke her often, would scream, fight, threaten, sob, but isabela was unmovable entirely. she was dead to the world.

the opposite of love, to lyra, was never hatred, it was indifference, and isabela was completely indifferent to her.

it’s the only thing lyra could never forgive.

she ran away often throughout her childhood, and as her sixteenth birthday neared, she finally left for good; she ensured she wasn’t found. they disinherited her within the year upon receiving notice from the family of one of her highschool girlfriends that she was visiting them ( an unintentional betrayal, but one that prevented her from making the mistake of contacting anyone from her old life again ). they sent her an official letter forbidding her from contacting them or returning home, swearing her off and stating that they did not recognize her as their daughter ( though, since she was a minor at the time, the only legal aspect was her removal from their will ).

lawrence would tell his colleagues and friends years later that he did what was necessary because he was afraid of her, that he truly believed she had the capacity to kill him for the inheritance. it was a ludicrous claim; for all of his insistence that she was like him, scheming, manipulative, opportunistic, incapable of feeling, all she ever wanted was to be loved and accepted by her family. she did not want to be a monster, she was simply told she was one all her life. she began to believe it, and, ultimately, she chose to become it.

still, she would have forgiven lawrence everything, in the end, if he’d ever cared to ask. she loved her parents, and later she hated them, but she could never be indifferent. she could never be like them. that, perhaps, was why they never loved her.

THE SEEDS

she loves her chosen family desperately. faith is her best friend and the sister she never had, and though their form of enmeshment makes them occasionally toxic, they truly do love each other; jacob is her mentor and trainer in her role as the judge, they’re quite close; joseph she has perhaps the most tumultuous relationship with because of his concerns about her intemperance and the way she and john indulge each other, but she respects him and understands him in a way john does not — she does not personally seek his approval or fear his rejection, so she views him more objectively. later, of course, they’re all that’s left, and while john will always be the person closest to her heart and the most important part of her life, joseph is the second.

she does make overtures to befriend ethan, but she is only an amplifier of his feelings of isolation and resentment towards his father; no matter what he does, the loyalty of both the flock and his father will always lie with lyra, and that is difficult for him to accept. despite joseph leaving new eden in his hands, ethan is under no illusions about the fact that lyra stayed behind to watch him, and her presence undermines him at every turn, regardless of her intent — she is the de facto leader, for reasons he will never fully understand, and he resents her for it.

john is her whole heart. he’s her soulmate. having him, however briefly, makes everything worth it to her in the end; she can’t ever regret it, no matter what it cost her; she tells poppy that “god gave him to me, and for that, i forgive [god] all the rest.”

what factions or organizations are they a part of? What ranks and titles do they hold?

prior to hope county, none; lyra is her own contractor and the center of her own networks.

with the project, lyra serves as the judge; she serves as a sorter, an intel gatherer, a judge of the worthy and unworthy, oversees the realm of the damned; she shows those who are submitted to her judgement their true selves and allows their choices and actions to speak to their character and determine the fate. after all, who is she to judge?

post-collapse, she leads new eden in practice, though not in title, in joseph’s absence.

how do they fit into their “story”?

lyra is the judge of eden’s gate and a seed by marriage. she’s a career serial serial killer and conartist come to hope county seeking refuge after a murder gone wrong; she is a damned woman, and the project is her last resort. she’s the sealbreaker, the lamb, and the wrath of god. in terms of far cry 5 canon, she replaces the deputy as the prophesized hell that followed, though she never has any allegiance but to the project; hers is a cautionary tale in that, in their attempts to avoid the fate joseph foresaw for them, the seeds ultimately bring ruin upon themselves. there’s no junior deputy in her canon; they called in sick the morning of the arrest.

where do they currently live? what’s their place like?

before hope county, lyra was perpetually on the move seeking targets, as her lifestyle demanded; after joining the project, she lives at the seed ranch with her husband.

post-collapse she lives in new eden until the arrival of the highwaymen brings joseph back to oversee it. she retakes prosperity and lives in what’s left of her old home until her death.

how do they eventually die?

she and john get hopped up on rads!bliss on their 70th wedding anniversary and put each other into mutual cardiac arrest. yeah, they fucked to death, what about it. this is the only way either of them ever die. shaggy finds them in a final insult to him.

lyra dies at forty-three — seventeen years later than she’d have liked — after taking a knife between the ribs via her nephew. while that’s the wound that technically does her in, the reality is that it was probably survivable; lyra had been dying for a long time, physically and emotionally broken by the holy war, though she put on a convincing front for the sake of joseph and the flock. she kept herself going until she had done her duty by new eden and fulfilled her purpose, bringing the shepherdess that was promised to the flock; she tells poppy that she’s her sacrifice, and she’s finally free to go back to the grave where she belongs. she does, happily; letting go is a relief.

[mattbrothersscriptwriter]

My Top 20 Films of 2019 - Part Two

I don’t think I’ve had a year where my top ten jostled and shifted as much as this one did - these really are the best of the best and my personal favourites of 2019.

10. Toy Story 4

I think we can all agree that Toy Story 3 was a pretty much perfect conclusion to a perfect trilogy right? About as close as is likely to get, I’m sure. I shared the same trepidation when part four was announced, especially after some underwhelming sequels like Finding Dory and Cars 3 (though I do have a lot of time for Monsters University and Incredibles 2). So maybe it’s because the odds were so stacked against this being good but I thought it was wonderful. A truly existential nightmare of an epilogue that does away with Andy (and mostly kids altogether) to focus on the dreams and desires of the toys themselves - separate from their ‘duties’ as playthings to biological Gods. What is their purpose in life without an owner? Can they be their own person and carve their own path? In the case of breakout new character Forky (Tony Hale), what IS life? Big big questions for a cash grab kids films huh?

The animation is somehow yet another huge leap forward (that opening rainstorm!), Bo Peep’s return is excellently pitched and the series tradition of being unnervingly horrifying is back as well thanks to those creepy ventriloquist dolls! Keanu Reeves continues his ‘Keanuassaince‘ as the hilarious Duke Caboom and this time, hopefully, the ending at least feels finite. This series means so much to me: I think the first movie is possibly the tightest, most perfect script ever written, the third is one of my favourites of the decade and growing up with the franchise (I was 9 when the first came out, 13 for part two, 24 for part three and now 32 for this one), these characters are like old friends so of course it was great to see them again. All this film had to do was be good enough to justify its existence and while there are certainly those out there that don’t believe this one managed it, I think the fact that it went as far as it did showed that Pixar are still capable of pushing boundaries and exploring infinity and beyond when they really put their minds to it.

9. The Nightingale

Hoo boy. Already controversial with talk of mass walkouts (I witnessed a few when this screened at Sundance London), it’s not hard to see why but easy to understand. Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) is a truly fearless filmmaker following up her acclaimed suburban horror movie come grief allegory with a period revenge tale set in the Tasmanian wilderness during British colonial rule in the early 1800s. It’s rare to see the British depicted with the monstrous brutality for which they were known in the distant colonies and this unflinching drama sorely needed an Australian voice behind the camera to do it justice.

The film is front loaded with some genuinely upsetting, nasty scenes of cruel violence but its uncensored brutality and the almost casual nature of its depiction is entirely the point - this was normalised behaviour over there and by treating it so matter of factly, it doesn’t slip into gratuitous ‘movie violence’. It is what it is. And what it is is hard to watch. If anything, as Kent has often stated, it’s still toned down from the actual atrocities that occurred so it’s a delicate balance that I think Kent more than understands. Quoting from an excellent Vanity Fair interview she did about how she directs, Kent said “I think audiences have become very anaesthetised to violence on screen and it’s something I find disturbing... People say ‘these scenes are so shocking and disturbing’. Of course they are. We need to feel that. When we become so removed from violence on screen, this is a very irresponsible thing. So I wanted to put us right within the frame with that person experiencing the loss of everything they hold dear”. 

Aisling Franciosi is next level here as a woman who has her whole life torn from her, leaving her as nothing but a raging husk out for vengeance. It would be so easy to fall into odd couple tropes once she teams up with reluctant native tracker Billy (an equally impressive newcomer, Baykali Ganambarr) but the film continues to stay true to the harsh racism of the era, unafraid to depict our heroine - our point of sympathy - as horrendously racist towards her own ally. Their partnership is not easily solidified but that makes it all the stronger when they star to trust each other. Sam Claflin is also career best here, weaponizing his usual charm into dangerous menace and even after cementing himself as the year’s most evil villain, he can still draw out the humanity in such a broken and corrupt man.

Gorgeously shot in the Academy ratio, the forest landscape here is oppressive and claustrophobic. Kent also steps back into her horror roots with some mesmerising, skin crawling dream scenes that amplify the woozy nightmarish tone and overbearing sense of dread. Once seen, never forgotten, this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (and that’s fine) but when cinema can affect you on such a visceral level and be this powerful, reflective and honest about our own past, it’s hard to ignore. Stunning.

8. The Irishman

Aka Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus, I did manage to see this one in a cinema before the Netflix drop and absolutely loved it. I’ve watched 85 minute long movies that felt longer than this - Marty’s mastery of pace, energy and knowing when to let things play out in agonising detail is second to none. This epic tale of  the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) really is the cinematic equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, allowing Scorsese to run through a greatest hits victory lap of mobster set pieces, alpha male arguments, a decades spanning life story and one (last?) truly great Joe Pesci performance before simply letting the story... continue... to a natural, depressing and tragic ending, reflecting the emptiness of a life built on violence and crime.

For a film this long, it’s impressive how much the smallest details make the biggest impacts. A stammering phone call from a man emotionally incapable of offering any sort of condolence. The cold refusal of forgiveness from a once loving daughter. A simple mirroring of a bowl of cereal or a door left slightly ajar. These are the parts of life that haunt us all and it’s what we notice the most in a deliberately lengthy biopic that shows how much these things matter when everything else is said and done. The violence explodes in sudden, sharp bursts, often capping off unbearably tense sequences filled with the everyday (a car ride, a conversation about fish, ice cream...) and this contrast between the whizz bang of classic Scorsese and the contemplative nature of Silence era Scorsese is what makes this film feel like such an accomplishment. De Niro is FINALLY back but it’s the memorably against type role for Pesci and an invigorated Al Pacino who steals this one, along with a roll call of fantastic cameos, with perhaps the most screentime given to the wonderfully petty Stephen Graham as Tony Pro, not to mention Anna Paquin’s near silent performance which says more than possibly anyone else. 

Yes, the CG de-aging is misguided at best, distracting at worst (I never really knew how old anyone was meant to be at any given time... which is kinda a problem) but like how you get used to it really quickly when it’s used well, here I kinda got past it being bad in an equally fast amount of time and just went with it. Would it have been a different beast had they cast younger actors to play them in the past? Undoubtedly. But if this gives us over three hours of Hollywood’s finest giving it their all for the last real time together, then that’s a compromise I can live with.

7. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Wow. I was in love with this film from the moving first trailer but then the film itself surpassed all expectations. This is a true indie film success story, with lead actor Jimmie Fails developing the idea with director Joe Talbot for years before Kickstarting a proof of concept and eventually getting into Sundance with short film American Paradise, which led to the backing of this debut feature through Plan B and A24. The deeply personal and poetic drama follows a fictionalised version of Jimmie, trying to buy back an old Victorian town house he claims was built by his grandfather, in an act of rebellion against the increasingly gentrified San Francisco that both he and director Talbot call home.

The film is many things - a story of male friendship, of solidarity within our community, of how our cities can change right from underneath us - it moves to the beat of it’s own drum, with painterly cinematography full of gorgeous autumnal colours and my favourite score of the year from Emile Mosseri. The performances, mostly by newcomers or locals outside of brilliant turns from Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover and Thora Birch, are wonderful and the whole thing is such a beautiful love letter to the city that it makes you ache for a strong sense of place in your own home, even if your relationship with it is fractured or strained. As Jimmie says, “you’re not allowed to hate it unless you love it”.

For me, last year’s Blindspotting (my favourite film of the year) tackled gentrification within California more succinctly but this much more lyrical piece of work ebbs and flows through a number of themes like identity, family, memory and time. It’s a big film living inside a small, personal one and it is not to be overlooked.

6. Little Women

I had neither read the book nor seen any prior adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel so to me, this is by default the definitive telling of this story. If from what I hear, the non linear structure is Greta Gerwig’s addition, then it’s a total slam dunk. It works so well in breaking up the narrative and by jumping from past to present, her screenplay highlights certain moments and decisions with a palpable sense of irony, emotional weight or knowing wink. Getting to see a statement made with sincere conviction and then paid off within seconds, can be both a joy and a surefire recipe for tears. Whether it’s the devastating contrast between scenes centred around Beth’s illness or the juxtaposition of character’s attitudes to one another, it’s a massive triumph. Watching Amy angrily tell Laurie how she’s been in love with him all her life and then cutting back to her childishly making a plaster cast of her foot for him (’to remind him how small her feet are’) is so funny. 

Gerwig and her impeccable cast bring an electric energy to the period setting, capturing the big, messy realities of family life with a mix of overwhelming cross-chatter and the smallest of intimate gestures. It’s a testament to the film that every sister feels fully serviced and represented, from Beth’s quiet strength to Amy’s unforgivable sibling rivalry. Chris Cooper’s turn as a stoic man suffering almost imperceptible grief is a personal heartbreaking favourite. 

The book’s (I’m assuming) most sweeping romantic statements are wonderfully delivered, full of urgent passion and relatable heartache, from Marmie’s (Laura Dern) “I’m angry nearly every day of my life” moment to Jo’s (Saoirse Ronan) painful defiance of feminine attributes not being enough to cure her loneliness. The sheer amount of heart and warmth in this is just remarkable and I can easily see it being a film I return to again and again.

5. Booksmart

2019 has been a banner year for female directors, making their exclusion from some of the early awards conversations all the more damning. From this list alone, we have Lulu Wang, Jennifer Kent and Greta Gerwig. Not to mention Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe (Greener Grass), Sophie Hyde (Animals) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud - watch out for THIS one in 2020, it’s brilliant). Perhaps the most natural transition from in front of to behind the camera has been made by Olivia Wilde, who has created a borderline perfect teen comedy that can make you laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh and everything in-between.

Subverting the (usually male focused) ‘one last party before college’ tropes that fuel the likes of Superbad and it’s many inferior imitators, Booksmart follows two overachievers who, rather than go on a coming of age journey to get some booze or get laid, simply want to indulge in an insane night of teenage freedom after realising that all of the ‘cool kids’ who they assumed were dropouts, also managed to get a place in all of the big universities. It’s a subtly clever remix of an old favourite from the get go but the committed performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein put you firmly in their shoes for the whole ride. 

It’s a genuine blast, with big laughs and a bigger heart, portraying a supportive female friendship that doesn’t rely on hokey contrivances to tear them apart, meaning that when certain repressed feelings do come to the surface, the fallout is heartbreaking. As I stated in a twitter rave after first seeing it back in May, every single character, no matter how much they might appear to be simply representing a stock role or genre trope, gets their moment to be humanised. This is an impeccably cast ensemble of young unknowns who constantly surprise and the script is a marvel - a watertight structure without a beat out of place, callbacks and payoffs to throwaway gags circle back to be hugely important and most of all, the approach taken to sexuality and representation feels so natural. I really think it is destined to be looked back on and represent 2019 the way Heathers does ‘88, Clueless ‘95 or Easy A 2010. A new high benchmark for crowd pleasing, indie comedy - teen or otherwise.

4. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt is one of my favourite actors and one who, despite still being a huge A-lister even after 30 years in the game, never seems to get enough credit for the choices he makes, the movies he stars in and also the range of stories he helps produce through his company, Plan B. 2019 was something of a comeback year for Pitt as an actor with the insanely measured and controlled lead performance seen here in Ad Astra and the more charismatic and chaotic supporting role in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

I love space movies, especially those that are more about broken people blasting themselves into the unknown to search for answers within themselves... which manages to sum up a lot of recent output in this weirdly specific sub-genre. First Man was a devastating look at grief characterised by a man who would rather go to a desolate rock than have to confront what he lost, all while being packaged as a heroic biopic with a stunning score. Gravity and The Martian both find their protagonists forced to rely on their own cunning and ingenuity to survive and Interstellar looked at the lengths we go to for those we love left behind. Smaller, arty character studies like High Life or Moon are also astounding. All of this is to say that Ad Astra takes these concepts and runs with them, challenging Pitt to cross the solar system to talk some sense into his long thought dead father (Tommy Lee Jones). But within all the ‘sad dad’ stuff, there’s another film in here just daring you to try and second guess it - one that kicks things off with a terrifying free fall from space, gives us a Mad Max style buggy chase on the moon and sidesteps into horror for one particular set-piece involving a rabid baboon in zero G! It manages to feel so completely nuts, so episodic in structure, that I understand why a lot of people were turned off - feeling that the overall film was too scattershot to land the drama or too pondering to have any fun with. I get the criticisms but for me, both elements worked in tandem, propelling Pitt on this (assumed) one way journey at a crazy pace whilst sitting back and languishing in the ‘bigger themes’ more associated with a Malik or Kubrick film. Something that Pitt can sell me on in his sleep by this point.

I loved the visuals from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar), loved the imagination and flair of the script from director James Gray and Ethan Gross and loved the score by Max Richter (with Lorne Balfe and Nils Frahm) but most of all, loved Pitt, proving that sometimes a lot less, is a lot more. The sting of hearing the one thing he surely knew (but hoped he wouldn’t) be destined to hear from his absent father, acted almost entirely in his eyes during a third act confrontation, summed up the movie’s brilliance for me - so much so that I can forgive some of the more outlandish ‘Mr Hyde’ moments of this thing’s alter ego... like, say, riding a piece of damaged hull like a surfboard through a meteor debris field! 

3. Avengers: Endgame

It’s no secret that I think Marvel, the MCU in particular, have been going from strength to strength in recent years, slowly but surely taking bigger risks with filmmakers (the bonkers Taika Waititi, the indie darlings of Ryan Coogler, Cate Shortland and Chloe Zhao) whilst also carefully crafting an entertaining, interconnected universe of characters and stories. But what is the point of building up any movie ‘universe’ if you’re not going to pay it off and Endgame is perhaps the strongest conclusion to eleven years of movie sequels that fans could have possibly hoped for.

Going into this thing, the hype was off the charts (and for good reason, with it now being the highest grossing film of all time) but I remember souring on the first entry of this two-parter, Infinity War, during the time between initial release and Endgame’s premiere. That film had a game-changing climax, killing off half the heroes (and indeed the universe’s population) and letting the credits role on the villain having achieved his ultimate goal. It was daring, especially for a mammoth summer blockbuster but obviously, we all knew the deaths would never be permanent, especially with so many already-announced sequels for now ‘dusted’ characters. However, it wasn’t just the feeling that everything would inevitably be alright in the end. For me, the characters themselves felt hugely under-serviced, with arguably the franchise’s main goody two shoes Captain America being little more than a beardy bloke who showed up to fight a little bit. Basically what I’m getting at is that I felt Endgame, perhaps emboldened by the giant runtime, managed to not only address these character slights but ALSO managed to deliver the most action packed, comic booky, ‘bashing your toys together’ final fight as well.

It’s a film of three parts, each pretty much broken up into one hour sections. There’s the genuinely new and interesting initial section following our heroes dealing with the fact that they lost... and it stuck. Thor angrily kills Thanos within the first fifteen minutes but it’s a meaningless action by this point - empty revenge. Cutting to five years later, we get to see how defeat has affected them, for better or worse, trying to come to terms with grief and acceptance. Cap tries to help the everyman, Black Widow is out leading an intergalactic mop up squad and Thor is wallowing in a depressive black hole. It’s a shocking and vibrantly compelling deconstruction of the whole superhero thing and it gives the actors some real meat to chew on, especially Robert Downy Jr here who goes from being utterly broken to fighting within himself to do the right thing despite now having a daughter he doesn’t want to lose too. Part two is the trip down memory lane, fan service-y time heist which is possibly the most fun section of any of these movies, paying tribute to the franchise’s past whilst teetering on a knife’s edge trying to pull off a genuine ‘mission impossible’. And then it explodes into the extended finale which pays everyone off, demonstrates some brilliantly imaginative action and sticks the landing better than it had any right to. In a year which saw the ending of a handful of massive geek properties, from Game of Thrones to Star Wars, it’s a miracle even one of them got it right at all. That Endgame managed to get it SO right is an extraordinary accomplishment and if anything, I think Marvel may have shot themselves in the foot as it’s hard to imagine anything they can give us in the future having the intense emotional weight and momentum of this huge finale.

2. Knives Out

Rian Johnson has been having a ball leaping into genre sandpits and stirring shit up, from his teen spin on noir in Brick to his quirky con man caper with The Brothers Bloom, his time travel thriller Looper and even his approach to the Star Wars mythos in The Last Jedi. Turning his attention to the relatively dead ‘whodunnit’ genre, Knives Out is a perfect example of how to celebrate everything that excites you about a genre whilst weaponizing it’s tropes against your audience’s baggage and preconceptions.

An impeccable cast have the time of their lives here, revelling in playing self obsessed narcissists who scramble to punt the blame around when the family’s patriarch, a successful crime novelist (Christopher Plummer), winds up dead. Of course there’s something fishy going on so Daniel Craig’s brilliantly dry southern detective Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate.There are plenty of standouts here, from Don Johnson’s ignorant alpha wannabe Richard to Michael Shannon’s ferocious eldest son Walt to Chris Evan’s sweater wearing jock Ransom, full of unchecked, white privilege swagger. But the surprise was the wholly sympathetic, meek, vomit prone Marta, played brilliantly by Ana de Armas, cast against her usual type of sultry bombshell (Knock Knock, Blade Runner 2049), to spearhead the biggest shake up of the genre conventions. To go into more detail would begin to tread into spoiler territory but by flipping the audience’s engagement with the detective, we’re suddenly on the receiving end of the scrutiny and the tension derived from this switcheroo is genius and opens up the second act of the story immensely.

The whole thing is so lovingly crafted and the script is one of the tightest I’ve seen in years. The amount of setup and payoff here is staggering and never not hugely satisfying, especially as it heads into it’s final stretch. It really gives you some hope that you could have such a dense, plotty, character driven idea for a story and that it could survive the transition from page to screen intact and for the finished product to work as well as it does. I really hope Johnson returns to tell another Benoit Blanc mystery and judging by the roaring box office success (currently over $200 million worldwide for a non IP original), I certainly believe he will.

1. Eighth Grade

My film of the year is another example of the power of cinema to put us in other people’s shoes and to discover the traits, fears, joys and insecurities that we all share irregardless. It may shock you to learn this but I have never been a 13 year old teenage girl trying to get by in the modern world of social media peer pressure and ‘influencer’ culture whilst crippled with personal anxiety. My school days almost literally could not have looked more different than this (less Instagram, more POGs) and yet, this is a film about struggling with oneself, with loneliness, with wanting more but not knowing how to get it without changing yourself and the careless way we treat those with our best interests at heart in our selfish attempt to impress peers and fit in. That is understandable. That is universal. And as I’m sure I’ve said a bunch of times in this list, movies that present the most specific worldview whilst tapping into universal themes are the ones that inevitably resonate the most.

Youtuber and comedian Bo Burnham has crafted an impeccable debut feature, somehow portraying a generation of teens at least a couple of generations below his own, with such laser focused insight and intimate detail. It’s no accident that this film has often been called a sort of social-horror, with cringe levels off the charts and recognisable trappings of anxiety and depression in every frame. The film’s style services this feeling at every turn, from it’s long takes and nauseous handheld camerawork to the sensory overload in it’s score (take a bow Anna Meredith) and the naturalistic performances from all involved. Burnham struck gold when he found Elsie Fisher, delivering the most painful and effortlessly real portrayal of a tweenager in crisis as Kayla. The way she glances around skittishly, the way she is completely lost in her phone, the way she talks, even the way she breathes all feeds into the illusion - the film is oftentimes less a studio style teen comedy and more a fly on the wall documentary. 

This is a film that could have coasted on being a distant, social media based cousin to more standard fare like Sex Drive or Superbad or even Easy A but it goes much deeper, unafraid to let you lower your guard and suddenly hit you with the most terrifying scene of casually attempted sexual aggression or let you watch this pure, kindhearted girl falter and question herself in ways she shouldn’t even have to worry about. And at it’s core, there is another beautiful father/daughter relationship, with Josh Hamilton stuck on the outside looking in, desperate to help Kayla with every fibre of his being but knowing there are certain things she has to figure out for herself. It absolutely had me and their scene around a backyard campfire is one of the year’s most touching.

This is a truly remarkable film that I think everyone should seek out but I’m especially excited for all the actual teenage girls who will get to watch this and feel seen. This isn’t about the popular kid, it isn’t about the dork who hangs out with his or her own band of misfits. This is about the true loner, that person trying everything to get noticed and still ending up invisible, that person trying to connect through the most disconnected means there is - the internet - and everything that comes with it. Learning that the version of yourself you ‘portray’ on a Youtube channel may act like they have all the answers but if you’re kidding yourself then how do you grow? 

When I saw this in the cinema, I watched a mother take her seat with her two daughters, aged probably at around nine and twelve. Possibly a touch young for this, I thought, and I admit I cringed a bit on their behalf during some very adult trailers but in the end, I’m glad their mum decided they were mature enough to see this because a) they had a total blast and b) life simply IS R rated for the most part, especially during our school years, and those girls being able to see someone like Kayla have her story told on the big screen felt like a huge win. I honestly can’t wait to see what Burnham or Fisher decide to do next. 2019 has absolutely been their year... and it’s been a hell of a year.