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#i got attached to a ship that nobody else ships i am going to die.
pixxyofice · 3 years
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I haven't taken any pictures of my other drawings of Skara with the crew, but i did draw this and I think its nice enough
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skyeet-the-writer · 4 years
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okay i’m not sure if you are taking like open requests but corpse and reader are dating and nobody really knows but like the fans ship it and stuff, and they are playing among us with jack, felix, rae ect,, and someone invites somebody and it’s reader ex boyfriend and corpse notices that she’s acting really quiet and he texts her like “baby are you okay??” and she tells him that’s her toxic ex and during an emergency meeting, her ex suspects her and when she defends herself he says something along the lines of “don’t believe her she’s a fucking liar, she’s been one since the day i first met her” and everyone is like ??? but corpse flips out on him and just snaps telling him to leave his girlfriend alone which breaks his cover so everyone knows about you guys and just like really mad corpse and having to help him calm down and you get up from your seat to see him in his streaming room and just sit on his lap and he’s like “fuck that guy it’s okay baby we can just play minecraft or something” lmaooo 🥺🥺🥺 sorry i know that was so specific but the thought makes me so soft i would actually cry if you wrote this
This Is A Shout Out To My Ex
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here’s my first request guys! so sorry they’re taking so long. i’m trying to get these done before i do anything else. hope you guys enjoy! x,
corpse x female!reader
summary: while paying a game with her friends, y/n’s toxic ex joins the game. when he calls her a liar, corpse snaps and defends his girlfriend
word count: ~4.4k
warnings: mentions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, near-death experiences, swearing, some angst but it has a super fluffy end!
Living with your boyfriend is, obviously, amazing in every way. You see each other all the time, you get to cuddle almost all the time, and you get to see his handsome face every morning.
Probably, the only downside is the fact that living together makes it nearly impossible to hide the fact that you’re dating.
But, somehow, you’ve managed to keep it a secret from you rabid fans for the past four months. You literally have no idea how because you’re pretty sure you accidentally got a glimpse of Corpse walking by while you were doing a vlog.
Miraculously, no one noticed it. Then again, none of your fans knew what he looked like, so there’s a plus. There were one or two comments asking who the person in the back was, but you lied and said it was a friend. Technically, you weren’t wrong.
And so you’ve been trying to keep your relationship with Corpse on the DL to avoid any stress or anxiety his way. You could deal with it, you’ve been doing Youtube for years and could handle almost anything. Corpse, bless his heart, might not be able to.
One morning, you’re awoken by some slight tugging on your hair. You crack your eyes open but the bright light makes you whine and close them again. There’s a soft laugh behind you and you roll over onto your back, scooting over closer to him. You stretch your legs and grin, still keeping your eyes closed. 
“Did you sleep at all?” you ask in a quiet voice, your head resting on your lover’s chest.
“No,” he answers in his deep voice and you feel him play with your hair. “Anxiety, insomnia, the usual shit.”
You hum and open your eyes slowly, deciding to brave the light. You blink up at Corpse who is staring at the ceiling. “What were you thinking about?” Your own voice is a bit scratchy and rough. 
He looks down at you and you take notice of how bloodshot his eyes are and the bags under his eyes. “How pretty you are when you sleep.” He grins.
“You watched me when I slept?” you ask and playfully narrow your eyes at him. “You creep.”
He laughs and you turn around onto your side, your back facing him. “Baby, no, I didn’t mean it that way.”
You smile. “You’re so creepy, Corpse.”
He doesn’t say anything but you hear him sit up in bed. You begin to ask what he’s doing but then he lifts up the back of your shirt to press a few kisses to your back. “You’re still here, though. With me.”
“Hm. Yeah.” You turn around and he gazes at you. “Because I love you.”
His eyes light up in the way that they always do when you tell him those three, simple words. You love seeing them light up that way and you grin. “I love you, too.” He leans in for a quick kiss.
“What time is it?” you ask when you pull away.
Corpse reaches over to his side of the bed and turns his phone on. “Noon.”
“Noon?” you shout and sit up so quickly you get a head rush. “We were supposed to be playing Among Us with Sean, Pewds, Toast, Rae, and them.”
“Oh. Yeah.” You turn and see him with his hands covering his face.
You walk over to him and kneel next to him. “Babe? What’s up?”
He just groans and you frown. He doesn’t feel good. 
You push his hair from his forehead. “I can tell them that you’re not feeling up for it. They all know you, they’d understand.”
He shakes his head and runs his hands down his face before they rest on his chest. “No. No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine.” He gives you a smile.
You kiss his cheek. “Okay, then, babe. C’mon, we’re gonna be late.” You grab his hands and tug him up until he’s in a sitting position. He pulls you in for another kiss but you lean away.
“You have morning breath,” you tell him when he gives you his sad eyes. “Brush your teeth and then I’ll kiss you.”
That seems to get him out of bed and into the bathroom while you change clothes. You change out of your sweatpants and t-shirt and into jeans and a shirt. He walks out of the bathroom yawning and you walk past him to go to the bathroom.
I wish he’d sleep, you think to yourself while brushing your teeth. After brushing your teeth, you wash your face and do a little bit of makeup so you don’t look like you just rolled out of bed even though you did.
Corpse walks into the bathroom as you’re finishing your makeup and has a mug of coffee for you. You’re the only one in the house who drinks coffee since he can’t, so you always find it so sweet that he makes it for you.
“You made me coffee?” you ask and he nods. You take it from him and give him a peck. “Thank you, love.” 
You take a sip and grab your phone from your nightstand and shove it into your pocket. You walk out of the bedroom the two of you share and into the kitchen to check on your cat. 
Before you met him, Corpse had never really wanted a pet. He said that they die and he doesn’t want to deal with that, which you understand. But after the two of you had been dating for three months and you had been living with him for a month and a half, you begged him to let you get a cat. You knew he couldn’t say no to you. 
“Where’s Inky?” you call out to your boyfriend after not finding your cat in the living room or the kitchen. 
“In here,” he calls back and you follow his voice. Corpse is sitting in his chair getting ready to stream. You spot a black cat sitting on his table, licking at his hand. Corpse laughs and pets the animal on the head. “Stop licking me, girl. Your tongue feels weird.”
You smile and walk over to him, picking the cat up. “Come on, Inky, let’s leave dad to do his job, yeah?”
The young cat meows up at you and stares into your soul with her green eyes. You lock her gaze and have a staring contest. You lose, however, and blink away. 
“Why is your cat so weird?” you ask, placing the cat back down and watch her run away. 
“Probably gets it from her mom,” Corpse mumbles and you hear a smile. 
You scoff and smack his hand away gently when he reaches out to you. “Fine, you don’t get a kiss before the stream.”
“No, wait!” he shouts and grabs your hand, pulling you towards him. “I was kidding, baby.”
You smile at him and cup his cheek. “I know.” You lean down and give him a long, deep kiss. You feel him smile against your lips and you pull away. He gives you a smile.
“I love you,” he mutters, brushing some hair away from your face. 
“I love you more.” You grab his hand and press a kiss against his knuckles. You take a step back. “I’ll see you in the Discord chat, babe.”
“Okay. Also, don’t close the door all the way!” he calls to you and you look back at him, your hand on the doorknob. 
“Why?” you ask, leaning on the doorframe. 
He takes a second to respond. “Because I want Inky to come in here later.”
You laugh but smile. “Okay, fine.” You walk away from the door and across the hall into your own recording room. 
Your room is a lot different than your boyfriend’s. His room is dark and doesn’t have a lot in it. Yours, on the other hand, probably has too much stuff. Most of it is gifts from fans like stuffed animals and other knickknacks. Your desk, monitors, and lights take up a lot of the already limited space. You turn both your ring lights on after closing the door and turn on the LED lights you have attached to the ceiling. You switch them to the f/c setting and put the remote next to your coffee mug. You sit down in your black and white gaming chair and set everything up after putting on your headset. 
You join the Among Us game after beginning your stream and then the Discord call. You seem to join before Corpse because you can’t see him in the call. 
“You’ve finally decided to join us, y/n!” Felix exclaims and you smile. 
“Am I late?” you ask, taking another drink of your coffee. 
“No,” Sean replies. “I mean, we played a couple of rounds to pass the time, but nothing interesting happened.”
You nod and glance at who all is in the chat. It seems to be you, Felix, Toast, Charlie, Rae, Sean, later Corpse, and someone else who’s tag sounds familiar. 
“Oh! I invited someone new!” says Rae. “He’s a friend from college. y/n, this is Dallas.”
“Hey, y/n.”
Your eyes widen and your blood goes cold at the sound of his voice. You know him. You used to date him. In highschool before you moved away. You remember how toxic he was. He would always blow you off when you wanted to hang out and when you did hang out, he always played video games and never talked to you. 
“Hi, Dallas,” you stutter out. “Uh, hey, didn’t you and I go to highschool together?”
You can practically hear his smirk. “Yeah. We did.”
“I didn’t know you two went to school together,” Rae says happily. 
“Yep,” Dallas says. “We were friends, too.”
You want to throw up.
Suddenly, your loving and not toxic boyfriend joins the call and your spirits lift. 
“Corpse!” you exclaim, almost letting another word slip out. 
“You’re here,” says Rae. “Good noon!”
“Yeah, I’m not a morning person,” he says and you just now notice how deep his voice is. “I just woke up.”
“Oh my god,” Felix says. 
“Jesus,” says Charlie, dragging out the ‘u’.
“You just woke up?” asks Toast. 
He’s a liar, he didn’t sleep at all, you think but keep your mouth shut and laugh. 
“It’s like a forty-hertz voice,” Sean says. 
“It sounds like short wave radio,” Charlie adds. 
You laugh. “You sound like spoken brown note.”
Corpse laughs. “This is me when I wake up, that’s what...” He cuts himself off and laughs again.
“I’m scared,” says Dallas. 
“I didn’t know it could get any lower!” exclaims Sean. 
“I didn’t know you could hit puberty twice.” Felix laughs. 
After some more laughter, Corpse is introduced to Dallas. 
“Hey, man,” Corpse says. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too,” Dallas replies. 
“Can we start the game now?” Sean asks when everyone is in the waiting room. You take a sip of your coffee while Rae starts the game. 
You mute yourself as your role is revealed and let out a sigh of relief. “Crewmate. Good, this makes this less stressful.” You go into the hallway, following Felix and Sean to go do wires. You clear the two of them and you three go up to admin. “Okay, so for those of you wondering about my reaction to Dallas joining the stream is that he’s my ex. Uh, we dating in highschool and broke up around the end of senior year. So this is pretty awkward for me.” You break away from Sean and Felix to go do a task in the greenhouse. 
You leave out the part about Dallas where he was borderline abusive. You remember him shouting at you for asking for the littlest of things to him gaslighting you and guilt-tripping you into going skinny dipping with him. 
Maybe that’s why you love Corpse so much. He’s the opposite of Dallas. He’s sweet and he’s caring. He’s never once raised his voice at you unless you were beating him in a game. Even then you both knew he wasn’t serious. And he had never once pressured you to do something you didn’t want to do. 
You’re brought out of your thoughts when someone reports Rae’s dead body. You unmute yourself and take another drink of your coffee. 
“I found her in decontamination,” Dallas says. “I opened the door and she was right there.”
“I was down by storage doing wires,” you tell them, putting your mug down. “And I was with Felix and Jack for the beginning and I’m pretty sure they’re cleared. So it has to be either you, Toast, or Corpse. Or Charlie.”
“You almost forgot about me,” he says and you laugh. 
“We never vote on seven, right?” Toast says. 
“Not if no one is sus, no,” Corpse answers. 
“I’m skipping,” says Sean. 
You nod and skip voting. “Same here.”
Everyone skips voting and you continue on. You do the rest of your wiring tasks and go out to the balcony where you notice Corpse standing out there. You smile and walk up to him and make your characters’ “eye” parts touch. “Look, Corpse. We’re touching eyeballs.”
You can just barely make out his laugh from the room across from yours and you grin before doing to do your task. You glance at your chat while you run to the reactor with Corpse. “How have you guys been doing? Hope you’re having a good day. Don’t forget to drink some water and eat something.” You smile at the camera and enter decontamination with Corpse and Toast. 
When you enter reactor, Corpse and Toast each go to do it and you head to the sorting in the lab when suddenly a body is reported. 
You decide to be quiet and drink from your coffee while everyone else discusses what happened. You zone out a little when Dallas talks and your mind flashes back to memories you’ve been trying to forget. 
“Wait, who are we voting?” you ask when you suddenly snap back to reality. 
“Felix,” Sean answers. “He vented right in front of me.”
You nod and vote for Felix and he gets ejected. 
pEWds was ejected 
1 imposter remains
You mute yourself once more and continue to do your tasks and stick with Corpse as much as you can. Your chat notices this and begins to blow up with the ship name they have for the two of you. You laugh at the chat as you scan yourself. “Why are you guys freaking out about Corpse and me? We’re literally just walking.”
Another body is reported and this time it’s Toast’s. You know who the imposter is. You unmute yourself and quickly say, “It’s fucking Dallas, it’s a self-report.”
“What?” Dallas exclaims and you immediately sense the hint of anger in his tone. He used to get so mad during video games and it seems like nothing has changed in the past few years. “How’s it me? It could be Charlie.”
“Charlie is dead, too,” Sean says. 
“Yep. And I know both Corpse and Sean are cleared because I was with Sean for a long time and I just watched Corpse get scanned.”
Dallas scoffs. “Well, shit, you got me there.”
After Dallas is ejected, the crewmates win and you all start another round. You suddenly don’t feel like talking too much anymore and do your stream in mostly silence. Just Dallas being there and in the same call as you is making you anxious and bringing up memories you don’t want to remember. 
Your chat asks you about this and you ignore it as you continue to do your tasks as a crewmate. Your phone buzzes in your pocket and you pull it out, looking at who it is. 
corpse 🖤
are you okay? you’re being really quiet
y/n
yeah, ig. just that dallas is my ex. toxic ex too
corpse 🖤
want me to kill him for you? im imposter
You smile and shake your head. “Oh, Corpse,” you whisper to yourself. 
y/n
no dont kill him lol
You put your phone back down on the table and look back at the game. 
You don’t pay too much attention to the game until the fourth round after you and Rae lost as the imposters. You’re a crewmate once again and you’re peacefully doing your tasks when suddenly something lays on your bare feet. 
“What the?” You look down at your feet and see a little dark fuzzball on your feet. “Inky, get off my feet, baby.” You move your feet and pick her up. You hold her in your arms like a baby the way she likes and rub her belly. “Okay, go see your dad.” Inky jumps out of your arms and you watch her leave your recording room. 
You turn back to your task and continue to do them without any interruptions. You notice, however, that Dallas has been following you for most of the round. You’re starting to get a little nervous and you run into the cafeteria to get away from him when he calls an emergency meeting.
You unmute yourself and Dallas says, “I think it’s y/n. I’m pretty sure she’s faking tasks.”
“Except I’m not,” you tell him. “You’re the one following me around, too, Dallas. What’s up with that, huh?”
“I’ve been following you because you’re acting sus.”
You glare at Dallas’s character on the screen, heat rushing to your face. “I’m literally doing my tasks, I know you saw me do the card swipe--”
“Don’t listen to her,” Dallas says and he sounds far too confident. “She’s a fucking liar. She has been since the first day I met her.”
By now your face is completely red from anger and you gasp. “Excuse me?”
“What are you talking about?” Sean asks. “I’ve known y/n for a long time, she’s never told a lie so long as I’ve known her.”
“That’s because she’s too good at it,” Dallas says in a snarky tone and you’ve never wanted to punch a screen more in your life. “Her and me used to date in highschool but I broke up with her because she lied to me about everything.”
“That’s not fucking true!” you shout and you can hear blood rushing to your ears. “I was the one who broke up with you after you gaslighted me about not hanging out with you enough when in reality you were always hanging out with your stupid football friends!”
“She’s lying--”
“The fuck are you saying about my girl?” Corpse demands. 
The chat goes silent for a moment. Corpse just called you his girl. You look at your live chat and it’s exploding with “i knew it”s and lots of keyboard smashing.
“Your girl?” Dallas asks after a moment.
“Yes. My girl. As in my girlfriend.” He sounds so possessive and it’s kind of hot to you. “Why are you calling her a liar?”
Dallas stumbles on his words. “B--because she is one.”
“Right. And how long have you known her?”
“I knew her in highschool--“
“Nevermind, I literally don’t care,” Corpse interrupts him. “I’ve been living with her for the past five months and she’s never lied to me about anything.”
Dallas is quiet for once. Everyone is. No one is really even breathing but your heartbeat is rattling your brain and blood is rushing through your ears.
“I don’t wanna play anymore,” you whisper. You swallow thickly and glance at your chat. Luckily, they’re all defending you and yelling at Dallas. You turn back to the screen. “Dallas, I’m not the imposter. And stop making stupid ass accusations.”
“I--“
“Kick him,” says Felix and you can tell he sounds mad.
“No wait--“ Dallas begins to say.
“No!” Rae interrupts. “I knew there was something off about you.”
“You don’t get to come in here and talk shit about our friend,” Jack says.
“I was kidding,” Dallas tries to explain.
But then something inside you snaps. You forgot how much you hate Dallas. How he always turned the blame on you when he did something wrong. How you almost lost all of your friends because he convinced them that you were a bad person.
At first, you thought he had changed. You thought that he had actually grown up. Turns out that people don’t change.
“Like you were kidding when you almost got me kicked out of the house because you made me go out with you to go drinking?” you ask. “Or how you played a stupid trick on me when I was driving us to school and I almost fucking crashed the car and nearly killed us?”
“Jesus.” You can hear him roll his eyes. “You’re still on about that? It was April Fool’s, you should have expected it—“
“I shouldn’t have expected shit!” you yell and it comes out raw. The memory flashes in your mind and you cringe. “That wasn’t funny, Dallas! You weren’t funny! I fucking hated my life in high school. I was already stressed out because I thought I wasn’t smart enough and you being my boyfriend and ignoring me and manipulating me didn’t help.
“So fuck you. Fuck you for everything you did to me when we were teenagers. Fuck you for making me think that you changed and were actually nice and then ripping that away from me. But you know what? Thanks. Thanks for being my ex because you made me what I am today and you’re the reason I moved to California and met the love of my life.”
You suck a deep breath in and wipe at the tears that had fallen. You put your hand on your camera. “Speaking of which, I need a hug from him. Bye, guys.”
You stop streaming and disconnect from everything. You turn your computer off, unplug your headset, and turn your lights off. You sit in your chair trying not to cry in the dark.
Corpse, your mind says and you open your eyes. You really want a hug. His hugs are the best. You take your headset off and walk out of your recording room. Before you walk into Corpse’s recording room, you head to the living room and grab a fluffy gray blanket and wrap it around yourself.
You don’t even bother to knock on the door and just walk in. His room is still dark and it appears like he’s angry. You can tell by the way his voice is deeper and how he looks like he’s shaking.
But when you tap on his shoulder, he looks up at you with wide eyes. “Babe.”
You sniffle and he pushes away from his desk. You shake your head and pull his arms up above his head and settle yourself on his lap, your legs on either side of him, and wrap your arms around his neck.
“Baby,” he whispers and you lean your cheek on his shoulder. “Just fuck off, Dallas.”
Your eyes squeeze shut and you shift up a little, pushing your nose into his neck. He smells nice. “Stop talking to them.”
“What?” he looks down at you and asks what you’re doing when you take his headset off. You unplug them, thereby disconnecting him from the stream. “y/n, what are you doing?”
“I want to cuddle with you,” you mutter and bury your face into his neck.
You feel him wrap his arms around your back and he pulls you up, leaning his head on your shoulder. “Okay, baby. We can cuddle.”
The two of you sit like that for what feels like a long time. You hear Corpse’s phone buzz, but the two of you ignore it. He kisses the side of your head and you smile.
You sigh deeply as he tightens his hold against you. “Fuck that guy, baby. It’s okay.” He moves his shoulder and you look up at him. “Wanna go play Minecraft?”
A grin spreads across your face and you nod. Corpse smiles back and picks you up, bridal style, blanket and all. You squeal and laugh as he carries you to the living room. “Put me down, Corpse!”
“Alright.” He drops you into the couch and turns around to turn the Xbox on.
You huff and push your hair out of your face, keeping the blanket wrapped tight around your body. “I didn’t mean literally drop me, dummy.”
He shrugs and sits next to you, handing you a controller. “Should’ve been more specific, baby.”
You scoff but can’t hide the small smile creeping onto your lips. “Jerk.” You put the controller next to you on the couch and move the blanket so it’s over both of your laps and you lean into his side.
After playing Minecraft for the majority of the afternoon and evening, you finally drag Corpse to bed with you after ordering pizza for dinner.
His arms are wrapped tight around your waist as your back is pressed against his chest. Inky hops up onto the bed and nuzzles your hand until you begin to pet her. She lays down on her belly and you gently pat her.
“Am I really the love of your life?” Corpse asks after a long time of sitting in the quiet darkness
You nod against the pillow. “Yeah. You are.”
You can’t see him, but you know he’s smiling when he kisses the back of your neck.
Your phone on your nightstand lights up and you head Corpse’s phone buzz again as well. You think for just a moment about all of the texts, all of the messages, all of the DMs you’re getting about what happened. For a second, you panic. What if people don’t think that you’re worth to be dating Corpse? What if people are calling you a pussy for how you reacted to Dallas? What if everyone hates you?
But those thoughts immediately go away when Corpse mumbles something in that husky voice of his that makes the butterflies in your tummy come back. “You’re the love of my life, too.”
“Yeah?” you hum, your eyes slipping shut.
“Yeah,” he says and you can tell that he’s getting tired as well. “And I’m gonna marry you someday.”
An involuntary smile spreads across your face and your entire body overheats. You bite your lip in the darkness and whisper,
“And I’m gonna say yes.”
But he’s asleep. His breathing has evened out. He shouldn’t have heard you.
You know he heard you somehow, though, because his arms tighten around your waist. You wiggle backward so that you’re flush against his chest and his head drops down onto the top of your head.
You place your hands over his and close your eyes. Finally, he’s sleeping.
--------------------
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phoenixyfriend · 3 years
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For your suddenly omegaverse au what exactly happened? Like I think obiwan and Anakin hop over from cannon verse to omegaverse but I am unclear on if there already existed obiwan and Anakin in omegaverse. Did they die early or do they just not exist or are they just not force sensitive and therefore not a part of the order? Is there still a sith conspiracy around Anakin?
Context: Original Post, Surrogacy, Worldbuilding, Obi-Mom, Soap Operas
So, from the original post:
There is no preexisting Anakin in the Omegaverse
Obi-Wan and Anakin just straight up don’t exist until they drop headfirst into the council room, already covered in blood.
To clarify: There has never been an Anakin Skywalker in this AU. There has never been an Obi-Wan Kenobi.
They don't know this for sure when they land in the AU, though. All they know is that the Jedi have no record of either of them. They figure, well, maybe they just got lost in the shuffle. Anakin wasn't found until he was nine, after all, and that was only by great coincidence.
The rest of this post has almost no mention of the omegaverse elements, FYI.
Warning: References to the Tusken massacre, explicit sedation and isolation of a mentally unstable individual threatening violence.
I don’t want to make light of institutionalization and involuntary holds, but Anakin is a character with a history of violence talking about repeating such an act, and that’s... a bit of an extreme case.
------
It's not that hard to convince the Temple to let them run a mission that lets them stop by Tatooine or Stewjon. Anakin cares a lot more, so Tatooine it is! Obi-Wan can tell there's something sketchy going on with Anakin's particular anxiety about this, but he rolls with it. Anakin was very specific about the timing for some reasons, and at this point, it's easier to just let it all play through.
They go well after the whole “congrats, you’re omegas... somehow,” thing has happened, a month or so before Geonosis would have happened. Obi-Wan has managed to help the council sabotage and delay the Separatist side of the war enough that they’ve gained... maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. Just a little more time to keep a few more people alive. Nobody’s reached out to Kamino yet, and Jango isn’t staging a failed assassination to draw someone in, either. They’ve bought enough time for Anakin to spend his vacation time checking in on his mom seeing if he exists here, and Obi-Wan can go with him.
They get to Tatooine. They wander about, and Anakin doesn't actually explain where they're going, but takes them straight to where the Lars farm is. Obi-Wan lets Anakin tell him that it was the Force that led him to the right area. Anakin can sense that his mom is in there, and Obi-Wan chalks up the relief from his former padawan to 'she's here and we don't have to look for her.'
Anakin is... panicking. Just a bit. What if he shows up and it turns out this reality's Anakin is off doing something completely unrelated and she realizes he's the wrong person? Or what if she doesn't recognize him and he calls her Mom anyway? What if he fucks up and says something stupid or just starts crying on her? She'll think he's insane.
Obi-Wan... takes over.
Anakin stays hidden, listening. Obi-Wan knocks on the door, and asks if there's a 'Shmi Skywalker' in residence. Someone in town mentioned her. He explains that he has a young friend of about twenty years--they're not sure, exactly, because the friend doesn't know his own birthday, but it's about there--who happens to be a Skywalker, and they're trying to see if they can reconnect him with a parent. They don't have much to go off of other than the surname... the Shmi that lives here wouldn't happen to have ever had any children about that age?
No. She hasn't had any children of her own blood, actually, her only child is her stepson, but she'd be happy to meet this other Skywalker, if he's in the area. It's always nice to find family, and connecting with those that were separated from you is a big deal on Tatooine. She's not going to look a gift bantha in the mouth.
(Cliegg, dear, put down the rifle.)
Obi-Wan promises to let his friend know, bids them goodbye, and goes to find Anakin.
Anakin is having a bit of a breakdown.
As one does.
Anakin insists that they stick around for a bit, that they do what they can to protect the farm, because that's his mom, even if she's not really his mom, and Obi-Wan can tell there's a Lot Going On here. He assumes it's because Anakin's upset his mom doesn't know him, which is a little irrational on account of their two options being "Anakin doesn't exist (and so Shmi doesn't know him)" and "Anakin does exist (but Shmi doesn't know this Anakin, so she still doesn't know him)," but Anakin's not a very rational person.
Obi-Wan thinks tamping down the current crisis is probably a little more important than chastising Anakin's attachment issues, mostly because Anakin's hands are shaking, and he's looking a little wild-eyed, and like. Obi-Wan's not great at dealing with Anakin's many and varied emotions, but he's learned at some point when it's best to just... roll with it Until There's Less Risk of Stab or Sobbing Laughter.
He helps figure out some minor fuckery with the Force to hide the family in the homestead behind them from visitors, and to warn them to hide when someone comes by. It’s not a lot--mostly just meditating and asking the Force for a helping hand--but it’s nice.
Except, well, Anakin keeps fidgeting. He keeps panicking. He has them coming back almost daily for a week, always too scared to talk to his mom but insistent on protecting her, and always looking at the calendar. Obi-Wan wants to get back to the Temple, but whatever the actual hell is going on with Anakin is too big to just ignored.
A specific day comes and goes. Anakin is a mess of jitters and nerves, and finally Obi-Wan asks just the wrong (right?) question, and... they visit Shmi.
Anakin says they can talk later, he just wants to see his mom One Last Time.
(Obi-Wan is getting more and more worried, but he sits through the incredibly awkward meeting between Anakin and his alt-universe mom, watches as Anakin has no idea what to say and almost cries, and Shmi just kind of lets him do that and Beru--a sweet girl, Obi-Wan thinks, and very practical--tells him that this is all very normal for reunited slaves.)
(Obi-Wan wonders if maybe there’s some stuff Anakin never told him about how being a slave affected him.)
(Obi-Wan had thought they’d moved past most of this, but..)
The meeting ends. There’s hugging.
They get back to the ship, and Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin fall apart. Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin cry and scream into a pillow, hyperventilate and nearly punch a hole in the wall as he rages about how it was all for nothing! Obi-Wan gets to watch Anakin break into a million pieces in a way he’s never seen before.
Obi-Wan gets a confession.
Anakin tells him about the Tuskens.
It’s not an easy conversation. It’s not a short conversation, either. Anakin’s full of pain and misery and rising guilt, talks about how he’s been asking himself if it would be easier to keep his mother safe if he just killed them all now, except Obi-Wan would know, and be disappointed, and sure the Chancellor had said that they were little more than rabid animals, but Anakin doesn’t think he can kill the younglings again when his mom is still fine, and--
Obi-Wan sedates him.
He wants to say that he’s not proud of this, but... Anakin isn’t well. Anakin isn’t well in a way that is currently, specifically, revolving around doing extreme violence. Anakin is talking about going out and committing a slaughter as preventative maintenance.
Anakin stays sedated until they get back to the Temple, and he’s put in Force-suppressant cuffs--Obi-Wan quietly tells them to use something that can’t be sliced or taken apart by a droid specialist, and to avoid collars because Anakin was a slave for nearly a decade, and has a lot of traumatic associations--and in an isolated room.
It’s not a cell. Not technically.
He can’t just leave, though.
Obi-Wan hates himself for it, just a little. He doesn’t want to be doing this, not to his padawan, his brother, his son, but... a massacre. Even the younglings, he’d said.
(“He said he didn’t think he could do it again,” Obi-Wan mutters, half to himself and half to the mind healer that asks for his rundown of the situation. “I think he knows it was wrong, but...”)
(But he still did it, of course.)
It’s... better than Obi-Wan feared, but worse than he hoped.
Anakin is emotionally unstable. He has been, for a long time, but he’s usually functional. When the mind healer isn’t directly poking at his worst wounds, Anakin can more or less pass for... not okay, necessarily, but no worse than anyone else in the war had. He can say the right words. He can do a joint meditation. He can talk about philosophy the way a Knight that’s taken all the right classes does.
But part of Anakin still holds to the idea that the Tuskens deserved to die.
“This is my fault,” Obi-Wan whispers, more than once, resting his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. “I should have...”
“He was an adult,” says Mace, who isn’t Mace, not the one that Obi-Wan knows, but a newer friend, one that’s still figuring how to act around him. “Young, but still an adult. He made that choice.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t answer. Things aren’t that simple.
“The timing can’t have been a coincidence,” Obi-Wan mutters to himself, later on, but in the same spot, and the same position.
The Quinlan of this universe shrugs. He knows Obi-Wan better than most, right now. Psychometry’s helpful that way, and sharing Obi-Wan’s heat hadn’t hurt. “Seems likely. You said Sith were involved and setting traps, and a kid like yours, with that much power and trauma... ripe for the molding.”
Obi-Wan whines, and then catches the noise and stuffs it back down, locks it up tight with the other ‘instinct’ things he doesn’t like to think about having. The sound already has Quinlan shifting closer, and the smell is... intended to be comforting, he thinks. Reacting to his own distress, which he’s probably just pumping out right now, because he still doesn’t know how to--
“Can I help?” Quinlan asks, and Obi-Wan lets him.
Someone gets through to Anakin, maybe, or he just lets himself be ground down, or Obi-Wan’s entreaties that he can’t teach Ahsoka until he understands his crimes get through. He won’t be trusted around the clones until the Jedi can trust him to do the right thing, they inform him.
“I wouldn’t hurt the clones.”
“Nobody’s going to believe that until you understand your crimes and truly, actually feel remorse for them.”
There wasn’t a crime, technically. Not in this universe. That tribe is still alive, here, unknowing of the fate they escaped by dint of Anakin talking himself down from committing another slaughter.
(He tells the mind healer it’s because Obi-Wan was there.)
(He might have done it, he says, if he hadn’t thought Obi-Wan would be disappointed in him.)
(He says it like it’s a foregone conclusion, that Obi-Wan’s opinion is worth more than the horror of what he might become.)
“We’re going to keep an eye on anyone talking to Palpatine,” Shaak tells him one day, after Anakin’s been mental instability hold for two weeks. “We don’t know for sure how far the similarities extend from your universe to ours, but given everything else you’ve been right about...”
“That bad?” Obi-Wan asks.
Shaak grimaces, fangs glinting in the light. “I want to believe we’d have never allowed a child into such a position, but I can’t know what political leverage may have been used in your dimension... whatever reason was had to put Skywalker in those rooms, we know the consequences now--”
“What did he do to my padawan?” Obi-Wan demands, because Anakin won’t even tell him that. Anakin hasn’t mentioned Palpatine since they left Tatooine. Not to Obi-Wan.
“Nothing physical,” Shaak manages. “But the lies he told and the suggestions he planted... it’s good they haven’t met again yet in this life. We’ll all be keeping them far apart.”
He wants to take solace in that. “Why do you know before I do?”
“Skywalker values your opinion,” she says. “Only yours. He doesn’t want you more disappointed in him than you already are, so much of what is relayed to the council as a matter of security goes no further, but this was deemed necessary to share. He agreed to it, if you worried we’d broken his confidence.”
Anakin’s therapy would normally be entirely private.
Anakin’s therapy would normally not be in response to confessions of mass slaughter.
He hasn’t asked to be let out, which Obi-Wan hopes is a sign that he realizes at least subconsciously that he was in the wrong. The mind healer says he could have been released under watch by a Master probably a day or two after he arrived, but seems to be drawing some kind of comfort in knowing he couldn’t hurt someone even if he tried.
Obi-Wan is Anakin’s emergency contact. His next of kin. His healthcare proxy. Anakin has a right to privacy, minor as it is in such a situation, and everyone recognizes and treats him as an adult, but... Obi-Wan learns as much from the mind-healer as he would have back when Anakin was actually a child.
“He trusts you to make the right decisions,” the mind healer tells him, careful and unassuming. “He has... a lot of conflicting opinions about many things, including the order, the coming war, the nature of human reproductive dynamics, the Code... but he seems keen on the idea that you are his best reference on morality and ethics.”
Oh, good, more horrifying responsibility.
“He’s better,” the mind healer tells him. “I want to get him out of here before he starts going stir crazy while still relying on the perceived safety as a crutch for his mental health. And he--”
“He’ll be staying with me,” Obi-Wan says, heavy as anything. “I know.”
“Well... there’s a war coming,” the mind healer says. She offers a thin smile when he looks at her. “I don’t want him going out, but it makes him feel useful, gives him a direction for the aggression, and... the Council is adamant that we’ll need him as much as we need you.”
It’s true.
“Did he tell you why everyone called him the Hero With No Fear?”
“No.”
“Ask him.”
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misohelps · 2 years
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(( below you will find ( a bunch of ) sentence starters based on canon dialogue from bioware’s mass effect games. nouns in brackets are mass effect specific. you are welcome to change any nouns, pronouns, etc. to suit any kind of science fiction environment. 
content warning for references to sex, death, guns, violence, existentialism, and extinction of the human species
“ You humans have a saying. An eye for an eye; a life for a life. Well he owes me ten lives and I plan to collect. ” “ Show me yours, tough guy. I’ll bet mine’s bigger . ”  “ Not sure if [ Turian ] heaven is the same as yours but if this whole thing goes sideways and we both end up there . . . Meet me at the bar . ” “ I don’t need luck. I have ammo . ” “ You wouldn't believe the number of times I hear, 'Why is this ship turning around? We're only halfway there!' ” “ Hey! Everyone! This store discriminates against the poor ! ” “ Well, all right. But you still hurt my feelings . ” “ Just once, I'd like to ask someone for help and hear them say, 'Sure, let's go. Right now. No strings attached.'” “ Nothing in the tank imprints told me that humans could be so forceful. You command as though you've earned it . ” “ My enemies threaten galaxies. Everyone on my ship has earned their place . ” “ As this is a high-security vessel, you must relinquish possession of your weapons . ” “ I’ll relinquish one bullet. Where do you want it ? ” “ This ship's going down in flames. I've got the only way out. I'm offering to take you with me. And you're arguing . ” “ Do what you want with your toy ships, but leave my crew out of your political bullshit ! ” “ Man, what I wouldn't give to go planetside. Wading through muck, getting shot in the face. Man, that is the life . ” “ Nobody would give me a mirror. How bad is it ? ” “ Hell, [ name ], you were always ugly. Just slap some facepaint on there, and no one will even notice.” “ You know me. Always like to savor that last shot before popping the heat sink... Wait, that metaphor just went somewhere horrible . ” “ I've never considered cross-species intercourse. And damn, saying it that way doesn't help. Now I feel dirty and clinical . ” “ I want a few moments that are just for us, before we throw ourselves into hell for the good of the galaxy . ” “ I'd never stab you in the back. Warriors like you and me — straight to the face . ” “ The Alliance is all politics. Somebody has to take down the bad people . ” “ Had to be me. Someone else may have gotten it wrong . ” “ Is submission not preferable to extinction ? ” “  You've lost. You know that don't you. Everyone you know and love. Everyone you've ever met. YOU WILL ALL DIE ! ” “  There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it . ” “ Confidence is born of ignorance . ” “  Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished . ” “ You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it . ” “ I am the vanguard of your destruction . ” “ Spectres are not trained but chosen . ” “ There is a reason the Council chose you to be a [ Spectre ]. They saw something special in you. The best of what humanity has to offer. There is something compelling about you, [ name ] . ” “ After time adrift among open stars, among tides of light and to shoals of dust, I will return to where I began . ” “ How do you get ready for something like this ? ” “ You cajole and threaten and make tremendous sacrifice, until the galaxy realizes it has someone worth following . ” “ They want to know what we're made of? I say we show them, on our terms. ” “ Maybe you're right. Maybe we can't win this. But we'll fight you regardless ! ” “  Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters . ” “ Go out there and give them hell. You were born to do this . ”
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oflightfeet · 3 years
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the quintessential wren lightfoot playlist — task #4
blue light - mazzy star / i'm so afraid - fleetwood mac / how to disappear completely - radiohead / afraid of nothing - sharon van etten / swept away - the xx / fade into you - mazzy star / where is her head - the national / last words of a shooting star - mitski / shiver - lucy rose / even if it's a lie - matt maltese / smoke signals - phoebe bridgers / turn out the lights - julien baker / 17 - jade bird / motion picture soundtrack - radiohead / unreflected - mazzy star / nobody - mitski / landill - daughter / my motto - jade bird / close eyes to exit - klangstof / attachment love - blegh / fire - amy may ellis / abbey - mitski / hunger - florence and the machine / white fire - angel olsen / ruins - jade bird / me in 20 years - moses sumney / remain nameless - florence and the machine / child psychology - black box recorder / forwards beckon rebound - adrienne lenker / tummy - tamino / suzanne - hope sandoval and the warm inventions /  hey moon - john maus / silver springs - fleetwood mac
read more for some lyrics. click here to listen.
BLUE LIGHT by MAZZY STAR: There's a ship / That sails by my window There's a ship that sails on by / There's a world under it / I think I see it / Sailing away / I think it's sailing / Miles crashing me by / Crashing me by / Crashing me by  
This is the song Wren chose to describe themselves; it really speaks to that feeling of not really belonging, not even really being alive that they’re often caught up in. As if life is a wave crashing them by.   
I’M SO AFRAID by FLEETWOOD MAC: I been alone / All the years / So many ways to count the tears / I never change / I never will / I'm so afraid the way I feel /  Days when the rain and the sun are gone / Black as night / Agony's torn at my heart too long / So afraid / Slip and I fall and I die   
A bit dramatic, but this song speaks to Wren deeply. Also, Fleetwood Mac.   
LAST WORDS OF A SHOOTING STAR by MITSKI: I always wanted to die clean and pretty / But I'd be too busy on working days / So I am relieved that the turbulence wasn't forecasted / I couldn't have changed anyways / I am relieved that I'd left my room tidy / Goodbye    
In this song Mitski sings as if she’s in a plane crashing. Wren would react similarly, think about how nice it is that they’ve left their room tidy for the ones they leave behind, reflect on their life with a sadness.   
TURN OUT THE LIGHTS by JULIEN BAKER: There's a hole in the drywall still not fixed / I just haven't gotten around to it / And besides, I'm starting to get used to the gaps [...] I can't tell the difference when I'm all alone / Is it real or a dream, which is worse? / Can you help me? / I just wanted to go to sleep / When I turn out the lights / There's no one left / Between myself and me    
That feeling when you come home and suddenly there’s nothing to distract you of who you are and how you feel and god. This song fucks me up, and it does the same to Wren.   
17 by JADE BIRD:  I say less than I should / I say more than I mean / I would try if I could, but I'm all I can be / If I had more I would change the cover, you see / I have walls that have stood / Before you ever loved me   
Wren vs. the endless struggle of trying to connect to people when they’ve trapped themselves behind their walls.   
MY MOTTO by JADE BIRD:  And that's my motto / Don't let 'em near enough / To let me down / All this love ever does is / Break me now   
Once again: Wren vs. the endless struggle of trying to connect to people.   
FIRE by AMY MAY ELLIS:  Today, my mind is working in a peculiar way / Today, I'm doubting every single word I say / Today, so please excuse my silence / So please excuse my silence, so please excuse me [...]  But I’ve got fire / Got far more fire   
Wren may be a MESS, but they do have fire, and drive, and potential. It’s not all sad, depressing shit.   
ABBEY by MITSKI: I am hungry / I have been hungry / I was born hungry   
Famine gang square up! This entire song is Wren. Makes me cry.   
HUNGER by FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE: I thought that love was a kind of emptiness / And at least I understood then, the hunger I felt / And I didn't have to call it loneliness / We all have a hunger   
Love as an emptiness. Goes feral. (Famine gang square up!)   
FORWARDS BECKON REBOUND by ADRIANNE LENKER: Mystery of lack / Stabbing stars through my back / Forwards, beckon, rebound [...] Show me pictures that hang in your house / Pictures that hang in your mouth / Candescent insects / Crosses and fishnecks   
A lot of Vibes in this song. Show me pictures that hang in your house: Wren would ask this.    
HEY MOON by JOHN MAUS: Hey moon, it's just you and me tonight / Everyone else is asleep / Hey moon, if I was to fall / I won't fall so deep / Though I doubt I'm gonna / You can wake me up if you wanna / I would hate for you to hang there all alone / The whole night through   
A song for the moon? Yeah. Wren. Wren would stay awake so the moon isn’t alone.
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roccinan · 3 years
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1/? simply because you have the most galaxy brain thoughts ever,,, what do you think would've happened if they waited until s5 to reveal sergio and andrés were (half)brothers?
i do know that when my fam started watching lcdp at first i was so put off. like i watched ep 1 and the prof creeped me out. ""berlin"" creeped me out. e v e r y o n e creeped me out. and i was cringing so hard becz of the short lived romance angle with alison parker. i literally did not watch s1 at all xcept for like sneak peeks. highlights being the scene where berlin discovers monica is alive and does his dramatic door by door thing? that was so SUSPENSEFUL even tho i had no idea what was going on. DOMINGO DE RESURECCION remains forever iconic.
2/? And OF COURSE the group bella ciao dance when they hit earth (hahah i thought the banda were actually like a "found family where they all love each other LOL") i am a SUCKER for found family. but anyhoo when i properly got intrigued was s2 when tokyo was kicked out (the music from that scene is still my favourite) it's just so dramatic..!! why am i telling u all this again? right, i haven't slept a wink and it's nearly 7 am pls forgive me if these rambles make no sense. i have a point with this.. i'm going somewhere
RIGHT. so when the fam actually rewound the ep cz i wanted to know WHY berlin did that (didn't fully realise how batsht crazy he can be), the russian roulette scene played. and pedro's acting. MAN. and like just that ep they made a point of showing us these flashbacks where sergio and andrés hug....
Hi anon! Thanks for stopping by- sorry took me a while to get back to you, will do my best to answer this string of messages (got all 4 parts)! Glad you like my thoughts XD
Firstly, I believe Andres/Sergio would be the biggest LCDP ship if the writers were evil enough to wait until s5 to reveal that they’re brothers asdfasdf. They’re already the two most popular male characters anyway. 
It’d be especially crazy because it’s not like they tell the actors these things beforehand either. So that means there’d probably be a Serdres vs Berlermo vs Serquel fight every 5 minutes. I mean, even if not everyone agrees on everything in the lcdp fandom, it’s the most “peaceful” one I’ve ever been in because no character really gets in the way of any other ship (like even with helermo and berlermo there’s no true conflict since Andres is dead). But with Serdres in the mix?? CATASTROPHE. Everyone out here writing essays about how much of a bastard/bitch/homewrecker/motherfucker that Andres or Sergio or Martin or Raquel is. Never a moment’s peace!! so basically, a regular fandom lmao.
Then when we find out they’re brothers, it goes from catastrophe to Apocalypse. Suddenly serquel and berlermo have the upper hand. Everyone would double down and harass the crew/cast into whatever’s going on.  Plot-wise, everything is the same though, just without Andres calling Sergio “hermanito.” Fandom however, would be a minefield! And I’m glad that’s not the case because I’d probably be an unfortunate serdres shippers XD No joke, my mother and I thought they were a couple in S1. So bullet dodged!
Secondly: haha, everyone creeped me out in S1 too, especially Berlin, I hated him, but thinking back, I think I mostly hated the fact that I didn’t hate him as much as I should have. I’ve made peace with it now but oh boy, was he a controversial figure in my head. I actually like the professor on sight though! IDK why, maybe because I thought his plans were cool or because of Alvaro’s delivery. I was afraid of an Alison Parker romance thing too- like, I do feel like she had a storyline that got dropped, but that part was quite cringey and overall unnecessary to the plot. Same with Ariadna, which was even cringier and even Less necessary to the plot. 
Domingo de resurrecion was iconic though yes! And even with all that said, I genuinely enjoyed parts 1 and 2 because it was so different from anything else I’d seen. Not content wise, but maybe tonally? IDK, they were just really bold with a lot of things, like being objectively unafraid of having the protagonists (plural because all of them did LMAO) do objectively shitty things. Really kept me in suspense from beginning to end! 
I’m usually a big fan of found families too! The funny thing is, then banda never struck me as a “family” until season 3. In 1 and 2, I was wondering what felt different about this show; then it hit me that these people remained colleagues to the end. Like, they backstabbed each other (repeatedly) and everyone was quite selfish, and only the bonds that were already there stuck. They were the opposite of a found family LOL But I think by S3, they went down the found family route and I didn’t mind because it makes quite a lot of sense for them to feel that bond after the Mint heist and almost dying/living together (and having witnessed 3 deaths together on the team). But I still doubt Berlin and Palermo were ever really part of this found family, with good reason XD
LOL the scene where Tokyo got kicked out is also among my favorites!! It was so funny and dramatic, and it was like, wow we can go anywhere with this now! Don’t worry- your rambles and thoughts are always welcome :D
I’m rolling over how you watched the Tokyo expulsion scene before the Russian Roulette scene haha. Also yes, PEDRO. Berlin may have been “controversial” to me at first, but I became Pedro’s fan from day one! Also the Hug is probably what made me like Berlin (despite my determination to hate him rip) in the first place. 
3/? ... and like now that i think about it... tokyo had real guts huh. like she KNEW berlin was close enough to el prof to know his name (fhshshs imagine if she'd heard andrés saying 'hermanito' it's unrealistic that she didn't TBH. i mean obviously they decided to make them brothers only towards the end but like in canon universe. how tf did andrés de 'i raised my bby brother since he was 12 and i'd actually die for him and his stupidly brilliant plans' fonollosa go 5 months without slipping up once and calling sergio hermanito. or like,,, i like to imagine sergio kinda gave him lots of leeway(?) sergio's a lil oblivious too but like i'm sure half of it is.. that's my dumbass older bro shut up i'm not being partial you all have city names .. andr-berlin, pass the salt. like OOF. + sergio also knew his big bro was dYiNG so like. i'm sure they were sneaking in some quality time (i hope they did 😭 gosh imagine if sergio really did not ever consider the possibility of andrés dying in the heist so he'd tell himself he needs to perfect the plan now & anyway he'll have enough time to spend w/ his brother post heist in philippines. and then ... that happened :/
Tokyo has guts in place of braincells you bet that she’d do something like this, consequences be damned XD I also think it’s unrealistic for Andres not to slip up, but I have a feeling nobody besides Tokyo really tried to spy on them in private. I headcanon that Andres instead slips up and does things like ruffle Sergio’s hair or adjust his tie when other people are around. I also think Tokyo was convinced that they were a gay couple when she saw them hug XD And if Sergio never went on to tell the banda that Berlin was his brother, everyone would be giving Palermo such awkward looks after Nairobi accused him of being in love with Berlin LMAO. 
I agree! I also imagine Sergio giving Andres leeway because he’s just so used to interacting with his brother that way haha. So either he’d go out of his way to ignore Berlin in front of everyone else or IDK, borderline telepathically communicate with him. Not even “pass the salt” has to leave his mouth- Berlin just puts salt into his food and cuts it up for him, in front of everyone who’s just staring like O.O
I actually do think Sergio never considered the possibility of Andres dying in the heist because he was just that confident in his own plan. Plus, Andres was probably the one person he expected to survive. And a lot of it has to do with Sergio’s attachment to him + Andres’ own habit of downplaying any illness/injury over the years, which I think is safe to believe canon. He was really in no condition to be in the heist, let alone lead it. Just the fact that he needs to take those injections is a big sign that he shouldn’t be there, but Sergio didn’t catch it because he’s human and blinded by faith :’) So yeah, I think Sergio was planning to spend proper time with Andres in Palawan and at Toledo, they just settled for those little moments by the fireplace. 
4/? what always also just GETS me in the feels is that el prof was shown to be this in control creepily calm dude who is miles ahead of everyone. + in the 1st Toledo class itself we see how detached,, like how impersonal he is, how professional - choosing frickin CITY NAMES?! no 'personal relationships' ? (after recruiting his older brother, a father son pair, and war cousins... oh sergio 😂 he's such a frickin nerd and i love him) but like the earlier seasons really emphasised how robotic and down right COLD he can be. it still sometimes bothers me that he put the button in the car. he lead the police to his own damn brother, his blood, who took care of him and adopted him and was terminally ill and like - UGH i try to rationalise that sergio is that cold and unbothered. or that he has strict morals. but it still bothers me becz that button really sort of tipped andres' already unstable sanity. like andrés tells denver someth like you've robbed my future and after that he just seems so much more suicidal and accepting that he can't get out of the mint alive - WHY SERGIO WHY. I KNOW THAT AT THAT POINT YOU BASICALLY DIDN'T KNOW ANDRÉS WAS GOING TO BE YOUR BROTHER YET BECZ IT WASN'T WRITTEN IN THE SCRIPT BUT WHYYYYY
That’s so funny to me too LMAO No personal relationships, then he recruits these guys. Sergio, hello?? Also can’t forget how he just recruited his own girfrleind in the second heist too. Buddy! Love this nerd.
I don’t think that cold aspect of Sergio went away in later seasons either; he just had more opportunity to show a more open side of himself + without Andres, he had to metaphorically leave his comfort zone without a safety net. But in earlier seasons, he really did seem heartless at times XD Then again, we can argue that the same goes for Andres.
To be fair, I didn’t feel sorry for Andres over the button thing lol, but once the brothers reveal happened and all of Alvaro/Pedro’s headcanons came out and we know everything Andres did for Sergio, it makes what Sergio did REALLY harsh. We really just have to explain it through Sergio’s strict morals and him believing this to be the best non-fatal punishment for Andres, who at that point had convinced him he killed a hostage. And because he knew the television interview was coming up, maybe Sergio assumed Andres would use it to “clear” his name anyway. And empathy isn’t one of Sergio’s strong suits either, so through that lens, I can rationalize it.
Also it was lowkey funny to me how Andres was there like DENVER MUST DIE until he found out Sergio put the button there, then he was like “oh hermanito, you and your practical jokes <3″
Still, like you said, Andres and Sergio weren’t brothers yet at this point. They were probably supposed to be lovers lmao and had a dysfunctional Hannibal Lecter x Will thing going on. But because they made #hermanos canon, that button moment just feels very out of place now, especially given how much the two genuinely love each other.
Guess we could also say that Sergio’s just generally kinda bratty with Andres XD Like, he knows no matter what, Andres would forgive him anything. That’s how I see it anyway! 
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big1ron · 4 years
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The Venator “Resolute” had jumped right into a separatist trap. Somehow a virus infecting the main computer has scrambled the hyperspace jump coordinates, and now the companies on board were outnumbered and without reinforcements, deep in separatist space. A few last, desperate SOSs to nobody, and the ship was quickly overwhelmed with fire. The Resolute was going down. But not before each of the escape pods could be jettisoned.
————- Chapter Five: Waiting. -————
- I think this one may be short aswell, sorry for the wait I’ve just not been doing amazing. But it’s here! Sorry. -
“Sir, we’re receiving a transition from a separatist base somewhere near the Vinda system. Should we patch it though?”
“Vinda? That’s certainly strange. Patch it though, but don’t respond. Make sure they can’t trace us.”
The radio crackles to life, and there is a significant amount of static and interference, but the message can be made out. “Haha! Yes! Great! If you’re receiving this, this is ARC-5555 “Fives” of the five-oh-first. We’ve been shot down, though most of the escape pods launched. There should be a coordinates package sent with this transmission. And- Wait hardcase what are you doing....” the message pauses, something that sounds like a response in the background. “No! Don’t do that! Hey, stop!” Another pause “I literally AM the boss of you!” A longer pause this time “no, what does that have anything to do with anything at all.” A slight shorter pause, “no, that’s stupid! You’re literally not even making any sense.” “ NO, NO you’re just wrong. I do not have time for this. You’re just wrong. Now I’m trying to get us off this planet so shut up please.” He sighs. “Sending the coordinates now.” The transmission ends.
Obiwan snickers. “Well that certainly wasn’t droids. Forward that message, and the attached files to general koon please, Cody.”
“Yes sir” man is Cody glad the 212th doesn’t usually behave like that. He doesn’t envy Rex, but those troopers sure are entertaining. He’s definitely going to tease Rex about this later.
Wolffe received the translation and chuckled to himself. The 501st sure was something else. “General, we’ve been looking in the wrong place! They’re way off course.”
Plo koon nodded and pressed a button on his comm link. “All units return to carriers. Set our course for the Vinda system!” The general gave the orders, and the 501st was finally looking at a rescue.
“Hey master, I found a road!” Ahsoka had been dragging her bike in the low power ‘hover’ mode while they had been searching for a refuelling stop.
“Great job snips. Now which direction do you want to take?”
“Hmmm left.”
“Yeah I was thinking right too. Alright, let’s go.”
“You’re impossible sky guy.”
“Wait, with all due respect sir, this is a separatist planet. Won’t this path take us right into a separatist base of some kind?” Rex cuts in.
“What’s the matter captain? Afraid of a little action? Besides, these are separatist issue bikes, a separatist base is exactly what we need.” So General skywalker leads the group leftwards down the path, dragging his bike behind beside him.
Soon enough, they spot the refuelling station that the road leads to. The three of them dive to the tree line, even though any droids should have surely heard or seen them by now. There are two wrecked speeder bikes by the refuelling station and a few destroyed droids littered about. Rex dares leave their cover enter the small base down the main road.
“Looks like a few of the boys have already been here.”
“Or are still here. Look!” Anakin points to the window of the small command outlet tower, and though it’s shaded glass, Rex can make out the back of a troopers head and shoulders, no doubt leaning against the terminal inside. “Ahsoka and I will refuel the speeders. You go check it out.”
Anakin and ahsoka moved the destroyed speeders out of the way with the force before moving their own to the station, while Rex cautiously entered the command outlet. He paused in the small corridor between the main communications room (probably a droid charging outlet) and listed in before entering, just out of personal curiosity more than anything.
“Oh my godssss-“
“-no no, no no listen to me-“
“-no how did you even get that conclusion!? How does ‘cereal is a salad’ equate to ‘general grievous should be classified as a sauce?!’ And why do you think those two things true?!”
“Just LISTEN to me! Ok? Because general grievous has his organs in a sack right? And those organs are in a liquid, right? It’s like a sauce. And his robot suit is just a really fancy jar because it keeps it contained and-“
“GENERAL GRIEVOUS IS NOT A SAUCE”
“SHUT UP AND LET ME EXPLAIN! Listen! You’ve never even seen him. And the droids, they’re all controlled by chips right? And- hey wait the cereal is a salad thing was a completely different topic! But milk is like the dressing you put on the salad, cause it’s optional and-“
“HOW IS GENERAL GRIEVOUS A SAUCE”
As much as rex really does want to hear how hardcase ends up explaining this one, he doesn’t want to keep the general waiting much longer and he doesn’t want one of them to end up maimed over cyborg sauces. He enters the room and immediately a blaster bolt whizzes right by his ear.
“You missed. Also, you almost shot me.”
“Rex! You found us!” Fives holstered his blaster and practically jumped up out of the chair he was leaning back in
“See? Both plans worked out. We took the base and we found rex.” Hardcase stopped pacing.
“At ease” Rex said sarcastically, as neither of them had actually gone to attention. Not that he really minded, but still. “It’s good to see you two. And nice work taking the post. Did you get a signal out?”
“Yes, I think so. We made a connection with a republic flagship, but the communication was one way. If the officers were doing their job right, we can assume help is on the way.”
“That’s great then. ...may I ask if there was another trooper in the pod with you?”
Hardcase and Fives hung their heads and looked to the floor. Hardcase rocked back on his heels and began fidgeting with his hands. “It was Tup sir... we lost him. Got separated.”
“Oh. I see.” Tup was an independent enough trooper, Rex had hope that he would survive alone. But if he didn’t turn up soon he would no doubt be left behind. “Well, I’ll tell the generals. We’ll stay here until rescue arrives. As you were.”
“Why do you get to decide which direction we go?” Asked echo to jesse, who was at the head of the group still with dogma on his back.
“Because I’m the highest rank here, so I’m in charge.”
“But we have the exact same rank. And I’ve been an ARC trooper longer.”
“Yeah but I’ve been with the 501st longer. And I’m older”
“Yeah well I’m Rex’s favourite so I should be in charge.”
“YOU’RE not his favourite! I don’t think he has favourites. And if he did it would probably be Hardcase.”
“Hardcase?! Hardcase isn’t even an ARC trooper. And i got into ARC training way before you did, while being in the 501st for a way shorter time. Rex clearly likes me best, or at least better than you.”
“Well he’s left me in charge multiple times while he’s gone. Even when you and Fives are available. So he trusts me to lead more responsibly obviously.“
“Will you two just cut it out?” Interjects Coric at the same time as Kix’s “just shut up already!”
Echo stuck out his leg and tripped Kix, not to be denied this victory. Jesse dropped Dogma and put himself between his favourite vod and Echo. But before things could even start Coric shoved them both apart
“If you two can’t stop fighting about who’s in charge, then we’ll go by seniority and that would be me. So you two stop annoying each other and behave! Echo, there’s no reason for you to be so mean to Kix, Jesse consider Dogma a bit more will you? And if all four of you can’t just get along I swear to kark I will MAKE you! Do I make myself clear?!”
“Yes coric.” Echo and Jesse mumble.
Tup slowly opened his eyes. He must have passed out at some point during that nightmare. He had lost time, and he had no idea where he was or what direction he was facing. Right, he was headed towards the rising sun, but what time was it? He grabbed a nearby tree and used it to pull himself up. His head spun for a few seconds, but other than a mild headache the fruit seemed to have no lasting side effects. His chest plate was hanging half off and he was missing various other armour pieces. His hair was a mess. Full of knots and leaves. And his blaster was gone. Whatever. He was still alive and even if he was going to be left behind for the rest of his life, he wasn’t dead. This was all Fives and Hardcase’s fault. And when he saw them again he would let them know it.
He took a minute to fix himself up best he could, but he still looked like a wreck and his other armour pieces were nowhere in sight. He felt unsafe without his blaster, so he settled with a reasonably sized stick he found (somewhere around 5ft long) to replace it. Yes, he was 1000% going to die here, but he pressed on anyways.
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How Luscious Lies
Fandom: Dickinson Rating: T Word Count: 1331
Summary: Lavinia interrupts Emily's introspection for a late-night chat. Contemplating infidelity? #relatable
“Emily,” a voice hissed.
Emily’s head swirled with the smoke and fumes that were the toxic effluence of her creative efforts. The spirits sought her; her talent reached for her from an intangible plane, smothering and harassing her higher senses while resuscitating her passion. The words moved within her with the very abandon of a lover. Her prostration continued.
“Let the voices come,” she murmured, eyes roving the ceiling. “I am so, so close to becoming truly lost.”
Lost in the way Mr. Olmsted had meant. Lost within the process, not separated from it as though blocked by taxus baccata. The poisonous hedges of her mind had been razed—paths cleared, branches stripped—and though the clouds were thick and heady, the ground was fertile. Her poems were ready to be sown and ripe to be plucked in the same instant. Clearly, this was why her fantasy of Mr. Bowles had been so real, such a convincing fever directed her brain.
“Emily.”
“I’m ready,” she swore. “I have paper here in my hand.”
Her heart raced.
“Hey, Emily.”
Emily deflated. With her head hanging over the edge of the bed, she watched her sister enter the room upside-down.
“You still awake? I saw the light of your candle under the door,” Lavinia explained.
“Yes,” Emily grunted. “Why are you still up? I thought you would’ve gone to bed hours ago, since you couldn’t go to Sue’s salon.”
“Oh, um, yeah, I did go to bed…”
“Midnight snack?” Emily guessed.
“You know it,” Lavinia enthused, then sobered, stepping into the bedroom and shutting the door behind her. “I mean, no, I just wanted to hear about the party.”
Emily clambered upright to sit on the bed with her legs tucked to the side. About to answer, she paused and narrowed her eyes at her sister.
“You don’t normally sleep with your hair covered.”
Lavinia whisked the lace from the top of her head and hid it behind her back, clutched in both hands.
“Whoops, no, I still don’t,” she said. “But hey, does it make you think of a Spanish mantilla at all? Like, maybe if I got some black lace instead?”
“A mantilla?”
“Yeah, they’re totally having a moment right now. I think Jane has something to do with it. Rich widows with their dead husbands and all the black lace they want. Lucky,” Lavinia grumbled, plopping down on the edge of the bed next to Emily and smoothing her own white lace in her lap. She shrugged. “Anyway, how was Sue’s thing?”
“Not… what I was expecting. It’s left me with a lot to think about.” She offered her sister a sheepish smile.
“Like what?” Lavinia dropped her elbows to her knees and cupped her face in her hands, waiting.
Emily sighed, contemplating how much to reveal. How no one takes me seriously as a poet, she considered saying. How, even if I do succeed, many people seem likely to attribute that success to a presumed intimate attachment to Mr. Bowles.
“Infidelity,” she found herself saying. She touched her chest, then slid her hand to her throat, testing the solidity of her recent illusion. The way her phantom editor had removed her necklace hung on her more palpably than the necklace itself had.
“Totally,” her sister gushed. “That was on my mind tonight too.”
Emily smiled at the chance of being understood.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Ship was reading The Scarlet Letter and one thing just led to another and I found myself mounting… um…” Lavinia’s voice choked off and Emily frowned at her, concerned, but her sister resumed with a reassuring flutter of her hand. “I found myself mounting an analysis of the text. You know, to really get into Hester Prynne’s character.”
“That sounds… stimulating,” Emily decided. Maybe she should’ve embraced the Dickinson way and stayed in with her family tonight. True, she may have had regrets about missing her chance to be shown off as a soon-to-be-published poet, but it certainly would have made for a less complicated evening. “For something that takes two people, affairs are so one-sided. The aftermath, I mean.”
“That is so true. They always blame the woman and it’s like, nobody even mentions if she had a good time. It’s just about scorning her and shaming her and treating her like a freak just because she wanted something.”
“Exactly! Aren’t women allowed to want anything?!” Emily exclaimed.
“Not in books written by men.”
“Men don’t want to accept that love can make women interesting. It inspires us. Sometimes it’s all we have,” she finished softly, thinking of all the poems she’d had Maggie carry over to the Evergreens, all addressed to Sue, some blatantly about Sue, if they found their way into the hands of an attentive reader.
“Or the not being in love,” Lavinia muttered, drawing Emily’s attention from memories full of the sound of paper squares shuffling together in a basket.
“What was that?”
“Not being in love,” her sister said. She raised her chin defiantly. “A woman might not even want to fall in love. Can’t she just have fun and see where things go? Maybe I don’t wanna novels-and-chill like an old married lady. Maybe I just wanna make out a lot and not wake up with a guy in my bed taking up the space that’s reserved for my cat.”
“…Right.”
“And if the guy says he feels used, I think that’s just the misdiagnosis of a woman finally getting something out of the relationship.”
Emily nodded emphatically, boarding her sister’s train of thought at this station. She badly wanted the world to read her words and know that she was the one who had written them. She also wanted to respect Mary Bowles. And yet, with this evening’s fantasizing, Emily had realized how comfortable she was with a fictional alternative. If everyone assumed she was getting into Mr. Bowles’s paper because he had gotten into her bed, what was the harm in indulging? In her mind only, of course, though her heart still beat faster remembering her editor was spending the night at her brother’s house next door.
This might be the only way, ever. To always be someone who loved or lusted and was not taken seriously in return. She had loved Sue before Austin did and would love her all her life. How could that be disloyal? Or her fascination with Mr. Bowles, spurred on by the excitement of seeing her words printed in The Springfield Republican? Surely that demonstrated a fervent devotion to her craft? A desire adjacent to the accomplishment of one of her dreams? Real infidelity, Emily thought, could only be enacted against oneself. Anything else was simply… living.
Lavinia flopped onto her back.
“I don’t know how Ship can say he feels used when he literally wants to marry me so I can be his live-in servant.”
“His wife?”
“That’s what I said.”
Emily sighed for herself and her sister. She turned her head to look down at her.
“Do you wanna hear more about the salon?”
“God yes. What did Sue wear? Did anybody try to suck up to you? Were there any famous people there? Have our horrible cousins dug any massive holes around their property? If you tell me one of the guests fell into a hole and I wasn’t there to see that, I may actually die.”
Breathing deeply, Emily set aside her pages and prepared a different recitation. Slowly, she unfolded the event to her sister in words. While Lavinia listened, she sat up to take down Emily’s hair and unfasten the back of her dress. Emily had looked the part for the salon—many people had said as much—but it was just a role, a disguise, not quite an infidelity, though something that had definitely provoked her innermost uncertainties and made her feel watched in every room, at every moment.
Her sister hmmed and awwed and Emily dictated the evening. She told it almost faithfully.
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I think Peter has a great development in FFH, and one that people sadly go through in the real world: struggling with grief but realizing life goes on. You suggested you analyze Peter’s grief in FFH and I would love that, emotional as it is, it’s inspiring for people going through the same thing. Please do it! Thanks
Hi!
I was going to do the Happy one first but I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while, so I’m going to start with this analysis. Hope you guys don’t mind. Also, I’m sure they were more asks about the FFH one and I’m sorry if I didn’t include yours in the list but my inbox is a mess right now, so I apologize. 
As an expert-master of grief that I am lol I think I really can read Peter pretty well in this movie, one of the reasons I was avoiding this analysis was because it’s too painful for me hahaha, it hits close to home. 
Now, let’s track this down. Peter is just a kid but this kid has been through so much, it’s painful. Peter lost his parents and was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, then he, unfortunately, had to see his father figure; Ben Parker, die in front of him and the result of that gave him a sense of responsibility for the rest of his life: 
‘When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.‘
He's always walking around with a ton of traumatic and painful memories. 
Let’s be honest, he believes he ‘killed’ his own uncle, that it was because of him that Ben is dead. It happened because of him from his perspective. So it’s natural for this boy to pass through a long process of grief but here’s the catch, Peter never does. Peter always avoids tragedy until it piles up to the point of unbearable. Peter bears with his responsibility and holds himself accountable for things that are not even his fault but this kid is not capable of processing grief the way it’s supposed to be. I think he wasn’t completely healed of his grief from Ben’s death when he met Tony but as the time passed and he saw another opportunity of having that amazing experience of having another male parental figure, he relented. And now I bet he regrets it.
I kinda wish FFH went into more detail with this so certain fans would understand why having Tony was a good thing for Peter. As he got to know Tony, he started to let him in. He saw him as a father figure and relied on him just like any other teenager would with their parents. Peter was starting to process of healing with Tony. One of the things I love the most about their relationship is that they helped each other grow. Tony learned and experienced something new when he met Peter and Peter started to let another figure into his life. 
Many of you don’t like this but this kid did want Tony’s approval. He confirmed this himself:
In all the weirdness and outside-of-himselfness that went along with becoming Spider-Man, that one conversation with Mr. Stark had made Peter feel . . . okay. Normal, even. Something he never thought he'd feel again. Peter knew he should feel all these things without needing Mr. Stark's approval. That your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man didn't need the approval of multibillionaire, Super Hero philanthropists to help out the people on his block. But, right now? Peter wanted Mr. Stark to approve of him more than anything.
And this translates into the movie so well, Tony made Peter feel normal, made him feel understood and that he didn’t need to do this alone. Peter always feels like he’s the only one that can do things. He feels alone. 
He looked from the ship to the other kids on the bus to see if anyone else saw it. Nothing. Just him. As usual.
He even described Ned as ‘blissfully ignorant of any imminent danger.’
So after getting used to just him and May, after meeting Tony, after getting used to being Spider-Man, Peter creates a sense of stability and normalcy that helps him heal and continue with his life at a semi-normal pace. In Endgame, he loses that stability all over again. When you lose something that is essentially keeping you together, you start using coping mechanisms to fill in the spots that you consider empty. The ones that are going to break you. Peter doesn’t feel ready to handle all of that pain at once so he starts avoiding the issue. 
Peter not only lost Tony, but he also lost his life and remembers fighting in a big war where he got attacked multiple times by an alien army and the mad titan that killed him, Tony and half of the universe. Nobody is ready to deal with that kind of trauma. Nobody. 
FFH tells us that it’s been 8 months since The Blip. 8 months Peter’s been avoiding things related to Tony and everything related to Titan in general. He doesn't want to feel the weight of all-consuming grief because one minute he had everything and the next, that disappeared, his semi-normalcy was broken up by waves of tragedy.
Notice how in HOCO he was desperately seeking the superhero big-league adventures; wanting to be part of the Avengers, fighting crime on a bigger scale, fighting villains and more, then in FFH, he was desperately seeking the normal life experiences; romance, field trips, school events, etc. 
And I think everyone around him can feel that coming from him so they make sure to reassure him all the time and he gratefully accepts any kind of reassuring comfort he can get from anyone: 
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There are so many hugs in this movie, I can’t keep track of all of them. I was surprised Peter didn’t hug Mr. Delmar too, I think he even hugged his teacher on one occasion lmao
I think we all know who was the last person Peter hugged before all of this:
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It’s really sad when he’s trying his hardest to avoid all of his trauma and nothing seems to work for him. He avoids Fury’s calls, tells May he really needs a break and that he really needs the trip, everything to get as far away as possible from New York.
Anything that saves him from thinking about this:
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First, look at him. He’s in a room full of drawings dedicated to Tony Stark and the kid is talking about a plan on how to woo a girl, even Ned is wondering what is going on. Then he advises him to not do any of that.
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Then, on the plane, he has to actually listen to his teacher talk about funerals and his only entertainment from the rest of the trip is:
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Then he arrives and they get attacked by a gigantic monster. And Peter fights this monster. He hears his classmates discuss this and he hears them call Mysterio a combination of Iron Man and Thor. Notice how after this, instead of calling someone for help or find out where did that monster comes from, he just starts talking about his plan all over again, like nothing happened. Anything related to Tony is a big nope for him.
Unfortunately for Peter:
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He’s everywhere. Peter is starting to realize he can’t escape Tony anymore. He told Happy that he sees his face everywhere he goes, this is not only confirmation that Peter’s been trying to avoid it but that he can’t no longer pretend Tony’s not there. 
On every occasion someone brought up Tony, Peter couldn’t handle it. He either breaks down or has a panic attack. 
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He quickly gets attached to someone else and even tells Beck that it’s nice to have someone to talk to about the superhero world, who used to do that with him? Tony. Peter deeply misses him but he’s not willing to accept the fact that he’s gone, he’s just pushing and pushing that reality away from him. Beck is a great manipulator and he can see that Peter doesn’t want to be reminded of this so he pushes Peter back on the topic: ‘It's a hard path. You see things, you do things... Make choices. People look up to you... Even if you win a battle sometimes, they die.’
He even MAKES Peter see Tony everywhere, he’s using Tony’s death against him. He’s taking advantage of the fact that the poor kid can’t handle his father figure’s death: 
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You know he’s the villain and you what he’s trying to do, but the fact that even he can see what Peter’s trying to do is really sad. He later tells Peter this: ‘ I tried to help you walk away. Now you're making me do this…’ and proceeds to show him Tony’s grave, Iron Man’s zombie suit and tells him what Peter’s been thinking this whole time: ‘If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive’
He’s dealing with two things at the same time: grief and trauma. His grief won’t let him breathe and his trauma is not letting him forget. It’s back and forth. If he lets any of these things in, then he knows he’s done for sure. Everything is going to come back in. 
Let's check the boxes:
Peter doesn’t want to remember or touch anything related to Tony.
He doesn’t want to deal with his own trauma/PTSD.
He doesn’t want to carry Tony’s legacy. He feels like he’s not ready and feels like he’s never going to be ready for that.
He’s desperately trying to live his life even if he feels like he’s breaking apart every 5 minutes.
This kid needs help lmao
There are occasions where he spaces out, gets angry, looks like he’s about to choke, etc.
These are the symptoms of someone who’s dealing with PTSD.
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When you’re dealing with trauma, you feel the need to shield yourself from everything that might hurt or trigger you. In some parts of the movie, I felt like Peter wasn’t even there. Just think about it. He disappeared and he felt himself disappear before anyone else did. He lost his sense of reality for a couple of seconds but it was enough, life took too much from him in just those seconds. For him, it was 5 minutes but in reality, he lost 5 years. On top of that, you can tell he feels guilty for Tony’s death as well even if its not his fault. 
This is the part that haunts me:
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And this is the one that heals me: 
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Let’s be clear, this movie is about Peter learning how to be his own superhero and learning that it’s ok if he doesn’t meet other’s expectations. But this kid still needs to process grief, he still needs to work on his traumas, he needs to get some help. He doesn’t just heal after defeating the villain and that’s it. Hopefully, we’ll see that in the next movie.
Ok, off-topic but I swear, when Beck said Peter looked stupid with Tony’s glasses, I was about to throw some serious hands lmaooo
Thnx♥
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Will You Have Me?- A Logicality One-Shot
words: 1396
characters: logan, patton; mentions of remus, roman, janus, and virgil
universe: human au
pairing: romantic logicality, mentions of platonic dlampr
warnings: kissing mention, otherwise just fluff on fluff on fluff
author’s note: this is probably the closest thing to a little shop of horrors-sanders sides crossover fic i’ll ever write. it’s very self-indulgent, as little shop of horrors is my all-time favorite movie and musical, and i’ve always compared little ship (seymour/audrey) to logicality. this definitely won’t be the last little shop-related logicality fic i’ll ever write, as i’ve certainly had ideas for a little shop of horrors au involving the glasses gays. in the meantime, though, i hope y’all like the story!
Patton had loved Little Shop of Horrors since he had first seen the movie, in his freshman year of high school. Everything about it appealed to him— the plot, the characters, the music, and everything in between. He was especially attached to the main character. Seymour Krelborn was smart and kind-hearted, but not the best at dealing with his emotions— much like a certain boy Patton knew.
For his sixteenth birthday, he had invited all of his friends— Remus, Roman, Logan, Janus, and Virgil— to his house for a movie-night themed sleepover. Naturally, the movie they watched was Little Shop.  Roman was the only one of them who had seen the film, so it was the first time the other four had seen it. They all ended up liking it, but the one who had enjoyed it the most was Logan.
Logan had never been a fan of musicals. He claimed them to be ridiculous and unrealistic— much to Roman’s dismay. Yet Little Shop of Horrors felt different. It didn’t feel like a musical, even though it was. (In fact, the movie was based on a musical by the same name.) It was instead a new world, a story to dissect and analyze and— though he didn’t like to admit it— enjoy. (Not to mention the fact that the character Audrey wasn’t too different from the person who had introduced him to the movie in the first place.) No matter how unrealistic the premise of an enormous man-eating plant alien was, Logan ended up growing a great interest in it.
Patton and Logan began to bond over Little Shop. Of course, it wasn’t all they ever talked about, but sharing a common interest caused the two of them to grow closer.
As the two of them grew and matured, so did their feelings toward each other. It had taken a while for them to realize it, but Logan and Patton had fallen for one another, and they had fallen hard. After some time— much too long, according to their friends— the two of them finally admitted their feelings for one another. Roman often compared the two to Seymour and Audrey, the protagonist and love interest of Little Shop, and they couldn’t help but agree.
Little Shop played a surprisingly large role in their relationship. On the twenty-third day of every month— since the events of the movie started on September 23rd according to the prologue— the two of them would make popcorn, put on onesies, and watch the movie. Nobody else was allowed to bother them unless it was an absolute emergency, and the others respected that. It might seem repetitive, watching the same film so many times, but it allowed them to spend quality time together as they watched their favorite movie. They would often sing along with the musicit— Logan always played Seymour while Patton played Audrey, and they switched off on the other characters. Once, for their anniversary, Logan had gotten tickets for them to see the musical version— on the twenty-third of that month, of course. (Patton had ended up sobbing, not having expected the ending to differ so much from that of the movie. Logan thought it was more realistic, but he too had shed a few tears.) Little Shop had become an important part of Logan and Patton’s relationship. Without it, they may not have fallen in love in the first place.
In fact, it had given Logan an idea.
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It’s alright. You can do this. Logan stared at his reflection in the mirror, taking deep breaths. Everything is already written for you. The difficult part is already done.
The bathroom door opened. Patton was standing in the doorway, clad in the owl onesie that he only wore on their special movie nights. “Lo-Lo? You ready to start the movie?”
Logan turned away from the mirror, went over to Patton, and took his hand. “Whenever you are,” he replied, earning a beaming smile from his partner. The two of them made their way to the couch. Logan went into the kitchen, as he always did, to make the popcorn, while Patton set up the movie. Within a few minutes, everything was ready.
As far as Patton knew, this was a normal movie night. The movie was the same as it had always been, and he and Logan were quoting along as they always did. He did pick up a sort of oddness in Logan’s behavior, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why that was. Maybe it was the fact that he kept sticking one hand in his pocket, or the way he bounced his leg quicker than he normally did, but he seemed significantly more antsy than usual.
Meanwhile, Logan’s mind was racing, anxiety and logic warring inside him. What-ifs battled with that-won’t-happens as he struggled to focus on what was before him. He knew the film well enough to quote along with little effort, so that part wasn’t a problem. Everything was working so far.
Finally, finally, it was time. Patton’s eyes were on the screen, oblivious to Logan’s growing nervousness as he recited Seymour’s distressed monologue in near-exact synchronization with the character on screen.
“What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? I never should’a started, but I did, and now if I don’t feed it, it’ll die. And I’ll lose her, I’ll lose everything.”
“Seymour?” Patton and Audrey prompted at the same time. “Who’re ya talkin’ to?”
“Hmm? Uh, nobody.”
“You’re actin’ funny… It wasn’t nice to chase those people out. Those men said… Seymour Krelborn’s Gardening Tips is sure to be a very big TV show.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I feel terrible.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. They’re comin’ back tomorrow, and they’ll bring you a great big check.”
“They are?”
“I wish you were enjoying your success.”
“You said they’re comin’ back with money?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That means we can afford to get outta here, couldn’t we?” Logan felt as if his heart was going to beat out of his chest as he quietly and carefully got up from his seat and knelt down, reaching into his pocket.
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s it. After tomorrow, we can leave here, together.”
“Togetha’...?”
Logan’s voice shook as he removed the small box from his pocket and opened it with his other hand. “If you’ll have me… Patton, will you have me?”
Patton looked over at Logan in surprise, as he never got the lines wrong, and certainly never altered them to contain Patton’s name instead of Audrey’s. His jaw dropped, only barely managing to murmur the next line.
Logan was on one knee before him, holding a small open box containing a silver ring with a sky-colored stone.
“Marry me, Patton.”
He knew that his words weren’t the words traditionally spoken by those hoping to marry their partners, but they were the same words used by Seymour in the film— only, of course, with “Audrey” instead of “Patton”.
“Oh, Logan, this is so sudden,” Patton gasped. It wasn’t, of course, but Logan knew that. He was simply responding the same way Audrey did.
“Well, will you?” Logan’s heart was pounding so hard that he was sure Patton could hear it. As long as it had been, as much as he cared for his beloved partner, there was still a small voice inside telling him the worst, that Patton was going to say no, that this idea had been ridiculous, that he should have stuck to a more traditional method of proposal.
But Patton’s expression held no negative emotions. Instead, his eyes shone with joy like a pair of tiny stars as he responded, in perfect synchrony with Audrey.
“Sure.”
Patton threw his arms around Logan, nearly knocking him over. Logan hugged him back, much less wildly, resting his chin on top of Patton’s head. The two were so lost in the moment that, for once, they didn’t even quote along with the rest of the scene.
The two of them spent the last fifteen minutes of the film in each other’s arms, stealing kisses as they held one another close. Soon enough the film ended, and Logan couldn’t help but smile as he watched Seymour and Audrey begin their new life together.
After all, Patton was the Audrey to Logan’s Seymour, and tonight was the first step toward their own somewhere green.
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talktoten · 3 years
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Anonymous asked: can you talk about the Doctor’s PTSD? 
This one’s been sitting in my drafts for a while because I had to wait until I had the right headspace to talk about it. PTSD is a really difficult thing to deal with and it’s not something that anyone is immune to - it can occur after any traumatic event, and it can manifest in a variety of ways, and almost always it makes the sufferer’s life significantly more difficult to live. (At the time I wrote this post) I have (had) never personally experienced PTSD and I don’t pretend that I know everything about it; I’m learning more about it as I go and it’s not one of those fun things you tack onto your character’s “about me” list. I am not using it in that way - it’s not something that’s fun to take advantage of at times, and ignore at other times. It’s a persistent, ongoing problem which effects most facets of a person’s life, and in saying the (tenth) Doctor suffers PTSD I’m intentionally pulling him into that: the fact that he suffers from it is an ongoing part of his life, and it is something that affects him literally on the day-to-day.
That said, the Doctor isn’t the sort of character ‘prone’ to PTSD. Because he’s a part of a family-friendly television show, a lot of the time he will take a lot of things without so much as a second glance - he’s fine with a lot of things that would be perfectly legitimate reasons for constant and ongoing nightmares for anyone in a five mile radius. It’s important to note that this is a life the Doctor chose, being surrounded by this death and destruction - when he stole the TARDIS and ran away, and chose to get involved in people’s problems, and chose to try to fix things … he chose this life. This is something that he actively, constantly decides that he wants to do. There’s no actual obligation for him to do any of the things that he does; he could just be a space tourist. He would not be the first to turn a blind eye to suffering, death or pain, out of fear that he might not be able to stop it - out of fear that he might have to see it, before he can. But he chooses to actively seek it out, and he chooses to involve himself, and he chooses to try to resolve these horrible, awful things, and if he did not love his life he would not be living it. The Doctor’s an adrenaline junkie. He loves this stuff. Sometimes he’s scared of himself because he doesn’t know where he’d be without the monsters under the bed and things that go bump in the night. Generally speaking, it is not really something that he thinks on too much; especially with distractions. He has to be able to bounce back from things. He bounces back from a lot.
Usually, the Doctor’s PTSD is limited, at best. Usually his PTSD manifests as nightmares (repeats of the Time War. He can’t do anything about these; they are so bad he jerks awake almost 90% of the time, and he has to sleep regularly because he can’t binge sleep anymore. If you catch him sleeping peacefully, don’t wake him unless you absolutely have to), self-blame, recklessness and self-destructive behaviour (in pursuit of an adrenaline high - he gets lower so the highs have to get higher, and what better way to stimulate that adrenaline than by recklessness?), and self imposed limits on relationships with and to the rest of the world. Among these, the only persistent symptom of PTSD that he can’t get rid of even at his healthiest, throughout his entire run, are the nightmares. The rest are examples of his behaviour when he’s left unchecked by the outside world, left to his own devices - when Rose leaves, he is reckless enough that he would have literally gotten himself killed had Donna not been there to stop him; when Donna leaves, he withdraws from reality and blames himself for people getting hurt to the extent he refuses to engage with anyone else, some self-imposed punishment; we even see him reckless not only with people’s lives, but with their deaths, when Captain Adelaide has to kill herself to protect the timeline (and he knows that’s what he’s forcing her into - blames himself for it: “I got worse… I got clever. Tricked people into taking their own.”). It manifests when there are not people to guide him away from it, to tell him that he is wrong; that it is not his fault, and he needs to stop pretending that it is. The Doctor’s friends are so deeply, genuinely good for him. He shines, with them on board. I don’t think any of them appreciate what they do for him quite as much as he does - I don’t think any of them really know it, because they have not seen him when they’re not around. It’s not a healthy way to live and he was working towards that conclusion himself, I think - the tenth Doctor, at least, was either going to get himself killed or he was going to have to decide that it was just time to start doing something differently, because this way of living? It was not working. I’ve written on this before - read it here.
(As a spoiler, he got himself killed.) The Doctor also likes to avoid certain reminders of his time in the Time War. He hates being called a soldier - he will directly tell people they are wrong. He does not touch guns; he hates guns. He hates how he issues orders in high-stress situations (he does it accidentally, and catches himself too late; it is so natural for him to drop into that, and it makes him feel sick) and he hates how people turn to him like he is the authority, no matter where he goes or what he does there. He hates perhaps most of all the way people look over and ask where he served, like there’s some camaraderie to be built out of war; like servicemen are meant to all befriend each other, communities of killers, because blood is thicker than water and they all have blood on their hands. Like there’s anything that comes out of a war besides corpses. PTSD is horrible. Worse, he is attached to it - the Doctor doesn’t want to forget. He doesn’t want to stop having those memories - he doesn’t want to stop remembering their last words, or what they looked like, or who they were. He is attached to the knowledge of who these people were, because he is the only one who remembers them - if he stops then nobody will know to mourn them, and their lives just won’t mean anything at all, just like that. He remembers names for a reason. They don’t vanish like people do. He doesn’t want to let go of that. Doesn’t want to let go of them. That he is feeling these things is proof that they mattered, and they did matter - so he will keep feeling them. If he can’t save them then he can do this for them, because he owes them something. He can’t just watch them die and move on, like they weren’t important. Everyone’s important. The Doctor won’t act like they aren’t, just for his own convenience. PTSD is horrible, and so is mourning millions of people, and your life, and your culture, and your planet. And not just that, but every other person you can’t save while you hasten along this life path you’ve picked out for yourself and actively continue to walk past the people who can’t or don’t keep up. There’s a lot to be said for what the Doctor copes with, and how desperate he can get to not let anything like that happen ever again. How desperate he can get in the right circumstances - how vibrantly he does not want to lose anyone else. He’s a brilliant man, and he deserves so much, and he ends up with nothing. He ends up alone. He ends up dying in his ship facing a boring blank wall and no stars and no life and no laughter and no love. He ends cold. He ends afraid. He ends, not finished yet. And he doesn’t end happy. God, I love this stupid man. He’s such an idiot. He could have been so much more. It’s not fair.
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introvertguide · 4 years
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High Noon (1952); AFI #27
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Our next film up for review is the not-so-standard western, High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and took home four trophies for Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Music, and Best Song. Westerns at the time were generally focused on the flawless hero who everybody loves and the citizens that band together to fight the bad guy. The good guys were all good and the bad guys were all bad. This is not the case with current film and it was one of the few Westerns nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing (although these were the awards that the movie did not win). It is a genre film that completely went against type. I really want to continue but I realize that now is the time to go through the plot, so let us first give the warning...
SPOILER ALERT!!! I AM GOING TO SPOIL THE WHOLE MOVIE AND IT IS WELL WORTH SEEING SO DON’T READ FURTHER UNTIL YOU WATCH ON YOUR OWN!!! IT IS ONLY 85 MINUTES LONG SO GIVE IT A CHANCE!!! IT IS VERY WORTH YOUR TIME TO SEE WITHOUT IT BEING SPOILED!!!!
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Remember that the film has a run time of 85 minutes and this is the amount of time that passes in the movie. With this in mind, there will be no “meanwhile” or “while that was happening...” in this review. Everything is shown that matters and assume that time is passing for everyone in town whether or not they are on screen.
Three men meet outside Hadleyville, a small town in the New Mexico Territory, are gathered and ride over to the train station to wait for a train. The scene switches to the retirement and wedding of Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), newly married to Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), as he kisses his bride and turns in his badge and gun. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw whom Kane sent to jail, has been released and will arrive on the noon train. Miller's gang—his younger brother Ben (Sheb Wooley), Jack Colby (Lee Van Cleef), and Jim Pierce (Robert Wilke)—are the three men awaiting his arrival at the train station. It is not directly stated by the three men, but it is clear that Miller intends to exact revenge since Kane put him in jail previously. A glance at the clock shows it is 10:45. This is especially a problem since the new marshal won’t arrive until the next day and Kane doesn’t want to leave the town with no protection.
Amy is a devout Quaker and pacifist so the solution is simple—leave town before Miller arrives. They actually start out in their buggy, but Kane turns around and takes them both back to the jailhouse because Kane insists on facing Miller and his men. "They're making me run", he tells her. "I've never run from anybody before." At this point, it is assumed that Kane will get his deputies and form a posse to face Miller. He is the beloved retiring lawman and the town had banded together before to put the man in jail in the first place. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum saying she is leaving on the noon train whether he joins her or not. Kane says he has to stay so they basically split up literally minutes after being married by the Justice of the Peace. 
Kane finds one man that immediately volunteers and then goes to the deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges). Pell won’t help unless Kane puts in a good word and actually quits because he believes that Kane didn’t promote him to Marshall because of some old grudge over a woman. Kane denies even knowing about the relationship and Pell turns in his star and quits. Another person that Kane thought would help is Judge Percy Mettrick (Otto Kruger), who he finds packing up to get out of town because he doesn’t believe he will survive. The judge is the one who actually sentenced Miller, and believes the outlaw will want him dead.
Further dialogue reveals that Will Kane had stolen the lover of Frank Miller, a Mexican women named Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), and this was what prompted Miller to go wild and convinced the town to have him arrested. Kane is no longer with Ramirez and was not aware that she had been sleeping with the deputy. All together, it seems like Kane is not that great of a guy and that Miller has a legitimate grudge with him. The whole town knows this and some of them want Miller to kill Kane, so nobody will help him and he is again encouraged to leave. One friend named Sam Fuller hides in his house and has his wife cover for him. The old marshal is played by freaking Lon Chaney and he won’t help because he notes that members of law enforcement die and nobody really cares. Nobody at the church will help and even the one guy who volunteered backs out because he realizes it will be a slaughter. The only person who openly offers to help is a young boy, but Kane rejects that help and tells the boy to go home.
All this happens and is taking up the time before the noon train. Helen realizes that one of the men she loved will die and the lack of town support upsets her. Amy goes up to meet Helen and the two decide that they will go on the noon train together. Ramirez says she would stay with Kane and not abandon him, but Amy tells her own story of tragedy (she watched her father and brother die in a shoot out). 
Deputy Pell again expresses his anger at not being named the new marshal and so he corners Kane in the horse stables and demands that he be made made the marshal and Kane ride out of town. Their conversation becomes an argument, and then a fist fight. Kane finally knocks his former deputy senseless. Forlorn, Kane returns to his office to write out his will as the clock hits high noon.
Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) arrives on the noon train and his group of men are waiting for him with a gun belt. Helen and Amy get on the train as the outlaws ride into town. There is a very famous overhead shot which shows Kane all alone in the streets with a genuine look of fear, assuming that all of his friends have deserted him and he is about to die. The gang walks into town and starts shooting at Kane, which Amy hears from the train and she decides to go back and help. Kane is able to gun down Ben Miller and Colby but is wounded and hides in the stable. He escapes by hanging on to a fleeing horse but is again cornered by the outlaws at the jailhouse. Amy runs into town and takes a gun from one of the bodies and hides. She is able to sneak up and shoot Pierce from behind. Frank Miller sees this and takes her hostage to call out Kane. The marshal comes out and Amy scratches at Miller to let her go and Kane gets the opportunity to gun down Frank Miller.
Kane helps his bride to her feet and they embrace. As the townspeople emerge and cluster around him, Kane throws his marshal's star in the dirt, glares at the crowd, and departs with Amy on their wagon.
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I keep harping on about how this was not like any standard western of the time and I should probably explain more clearly now that the plot is known. Movies at the time focused on the American marshal as a pseudo superhero. They were honest and always on the side of good, they could ride horses and outshoot any outlaw, everybody loved them except bad guys, and women swooned in their wake. They also tended to be ruggedly handsome, tough as nails, and fearless. The antagonist, on the other hand, was completely wrong and had bad moral character. These bad guys mistreated women, disobeyed the law on purpose, stole, robbed, cheated, and had ugly scars. They traveled in groups in an attempt to intimidate people, but they were no match for the single good guy. But this movie changed everything.
An old marshal who just retired to marry a much younger woman sticks around town to fight a man whom he convicted to die. This villain had an issue with the old marshal because the lawman had stolen his woman. The deputy won’t stand with the retired marshal after being passed over for the job opening and many of the town members won’t help because they think the marshal should leave and let the new marshal deal with the problem. The marshal is scared and alone when he takes on the villains and it is his young bride who actually comes to his aid while he cowers in the jailhouse. At the end, the marshal throws his star on the ground and leaves without saying anything else. 
All members of the cast need to be commend on acting against character type because the general sense of fear at what was coming explained the realistic choice of most of the town running away. It is almost comical when all of the villains are dead and the entire town comes pouring into the streets and it is obvious that there were more than enough men to make a posse and easily protect the town. But the only person that came to help when it counted was a female 20-year-old pacifist Quaker. 
It has been noted by directors and film critics that this was not a very strong performance by Grace Kelly, especially when next to veteran Mexican actress Katy Jurado. Alfred Hitchcock later noted that she played a very meek part for such a strong role, but saw something in her (likely her blond hair and good looks) and gave her a much more fitting part when he cast her for Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. 
I could not find the film on any of the subscription services when I was looking to watch it so I had the DVD shipped through Netflix. This is a good way to go because I got to watch some DVD extras and learned that everybody and their dad was attached to the making of this film. The cinematographer was Floyd Crosby, the father of rock/folk singer David Crosby. The Deputy was played by Lloyd Bridges, who had two young children on set, Beau and Jeff Bridges. According to the extras, Beau was actually in the barn loft watching during the fight between Kane and his deputy. The singer of the theme song was country musician Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter. A very rich history of Hollywood royalty in this single movie.
Many of the actors and writers involved in the film were concerned that they were going to get black listed for being part of this production. It was the early 50s and the Red Scare was at its height in the United States. Many actors and screenwriters were being publicly prosecuted for committing acts against America, and any movie that did not actively promote patriotism was in danger of being accused of being communist. It was a bad time for Westerns that were innovative or went against the norm, which partially explains complaints that many films in the genre during the 50s were the same. This film that depicted a lawman sticking to what he believed in and finding all his friends shunning him was interpreted by some as promoting communism or attacking McCarthyism. Director Zinnemann did say he had all this on his mind during the filming and would consider it an allegory for the Hollywood blacklisting, but that was not necessarily the point from the start.
So should this movie be on the AFI 100? Absolutely! It is part of the most American of genres at a focal point in the country’s history, yet flies in the face of all the standards of that genre. Despite this, it still was nominated for a bunch of awards and highly acclaimed by liberal and conservative leaning viewers alike. The movie is full of Old Hollywood greatness as far as the stars and the crew. The AFI list was created for innovative Americana like this. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Just the innovate shots and the use of real time alone makes for a great watch. The story is great and the acting is great. There are few movies on the AFI list with pacing this good and it is a very easy film to watch and enjoy. Highly recommend.
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cheryls-blossomed · 3 years
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while i 100% agree about DP, it's very important to include grant in this as well. he was supporting SB in the beginning as well, doing photoshoots with only DP, posting things with just her and shantel, ignoring both CP and Iris as a character, liking many SB posts, and talking about how much he adored patty and barry together while not once mentioning Iris' mothers death or ANYTHING about her SL in general during s2. yes, DP is trash, but Grant can't be excused just because he suddenly changed
and to follow that, grant is the leading role. his fans are die hard dedicated to him. it was HIS responsibility to defend candice and support her. that video he posted in 2019 defending her wasn't even him, he read it word for word from a comment telling him what to say. i will never ever be able to forget his actions and it's kind of gross just to place all the blame on danielle. they were both in the wrong.
First of all, I was specifically talking about was Danielle weaponizing the racist hatred Candice received, because she wanted to be leading lady. Yes, this is completely on Danielle, because this is something only she did.
With regards to ship-baiting SB, this has to be laid at the feet of the network, of AJK, of Berlanti, of the media, etc. enabling this garbage. Every single one of them are garbage for it, undoubtedly. BUT while Danielle ship-baited SB, this is only a small part of how she tried to erase Candice and Iris and go after the leading lady role. She was actively undercutting Candice both on and off set, and the reason I suspect that anons have brought this up is because of what Candice has been retweeting lately, specifically about white women’s racist behavior towards their Black co-stars. What Danielle was doing is completely separate to the behavior of anyone else, except AJK, because I have no doubt that he was enabling her, let’s be very clear. Danielle weaponized the racist hate Candice received, because she wanted to be leading lady, and she thought she deserved to be. THAT is completely separate from anything else going on, because nobody except Danielle, herself, was purporting that she should be the lead or painting her as such. That was never the case. But Danielle was actively doing everything that she could to side-line Candice in interviews, and she openly discredited her, including when she erased Candice’s co-founding of Shethority completely. 
I’m no fan of Grant’s, personally, and I am critical of him. My opinion of him does not extend much farther than the fact that I think he’s a great actor. But I want to make this absolutely clear before I discuss this further that what Danielle did, specifically, which is ACTIVELY weaponizing the racist hate Candice received but actively undercutting Candice and Iris time and again, because she wanted to be leading lady, is something only Danielle did. Grant messed up big time early on not only because he failed to actively defend Candice from the racist vitriol being directed at her, but also because he failed to support her the way he should have. He, himself, admitted this. But when the show began in 2014, Grant was very adamant in his support of Westallen. He should have been more supportive of Candice and Iris, but he was always tweeting about WA when he used to live-tweet, and he said right from the beginning that Iris is the love of his life. That one photoshoot with Danielle in 2014 was not attached to the show, and yeah it was ugly and the photographer is a racist shit head, but it also happened a few months before the show even began airing. He should not have done it, but it was one photoshoot that had nothing to do with the show. My issue with Grant was never that he wasn’t supportive of Westallen; he made it abundantly clear that he was all about Westallen, and he constantly handled SB questions in season 1 well, by going back to Barry being in love with Iris. Yes, he did like a few dumb tweets, which was in poor taste because of the incredibly ugly implications, but he wasn’t engaging in this shit the way the network, AJK, Berlanti, and WBTV were early on, because creating social media drama is what the CW is all about. This could not have been made more abundantly clear when Grant retweeted Orlando Jones’s heavily pro-WA/ say SB again tweet with Samuel Jackson with the gun from Pulp Fiction, and one of the Flash writers had to post those photos of Grant with Candice, Danielle, and Rick, respectively, because the CW and AJK wanted to do “damage control” (because calling out racists is apparently not allowed). What’s always been the bigger issue with Grant is that he ignored the racist hate Candice received. He absolutely warrants enormous amounts of criticism for the way he did not defend Candice or support her the way he should have, and when he retweeted that ugly season-long review, which was harmful towards Candice, and got called out for it, he apologized and deleted it, which again is demonstrative of how he failed in being a supportive co-star to Candice, because he wasn’t even cognizant enough to make sure to read articles he retweeted, when he ought to have known that there were so many racist reviewers at that time. 
And I agree that in season 2A, him constantly hyping Shantel, which he never did for Candice was frankly shitty. I was in the fandom at that time; I remember that I thought it was extremely wrong of him to once again not post Candice at all, but hype Shantel every chance he got. But Grant didn’t ignore Iris or Westallen. He posted the famous, “Heart to Heart with Bae,” instagram post about the 2x03 WA deleted scene, and he promoted 2x09 with a WA still from the scene in Barry’s lab. He spoke about Iris’s familial arc and teased her stuff with Wally. Again, my issue with Grant has always been his absolute lack of support of Candice and going out of his way not to post Candice. 
Grant admitted, unprovoked, that he screwed up and that he’s apologized to Candice. Idk what change really encompasses here, but I definitely think he’s very sorry for what happened, because it hurt Candice. None of his apologies negate what he did, but I also think all of this is very separate from what Danielle did, and Candice, herself, could not make this any clearer. 
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wintcrdvst · 5 years
Text
𝐃𝐘𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ! under the cut you will find a masterlist of 213 quotes that can be used for otps, brotps and possibly even notps. these were gathered from various sources such as songs and pinterest for personal use, but i figured i might as well share. give a like or reblog if this was useful to you, and enjoy !!
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her lips are like the galaxy’s edge
i’d probably still adore you with your hands around my neck
surrounded by the what if’s and the maybe’s
we’ll be the last ones standing
all that’s left is you and me
you are the light at the end of the road
you are my favorite what if
every single moment will be faded into you
still remember a time when you felt like home
i see the love i have and it is all for you
the only heaven i’ll be sent to is when i’m alone with you
i found god‚ i found him in a lover
he’s off to pay his crimes and he’s got no time for mine
oh baby girl you know we’re gonna be legends
you know the two of us are just young gods
i’m a king and you’re a queen and we will stumble through heaven
if you wanna go to heaven you should fuck me tonight
if i am the waves then you must be the moon
temperatures rising‚ i don’t want to feel
been wondering if your heart’s still open and if so i wanna know what time it shuts
open up next to you and my secrets become your truth
i only love it when you touch me‚ not feel me
tell me that you love me even if it’s fake
whatever our souls are made of‚ his and mine are the same
every moment with you sounds like welcome home
you say my name and it comes out like a dark confession
my love for you is the only thing i’m sure of
the devil kissed my neck and it felt like heaven
it’s our paradise and it’s our warzone
this is what happens when a tornado meets a volcano
i’m running in circles watching you call someone else’s name
all i want is the taste that your lips allow
your eyes hold everything my soul thirsts for
every bit of love that i possess within me, all of it, is just for you
of all the things my hands have held the best by far is you
no other word makes my mouth as tender as your name
my heart is so full of you i can hardly call it my own
my soul will find yours
in a room full of art i’d still stare at you
they know you walk like you’re a god‚ they can’t believe i made you weak
i would kill to be the cold tracing your body and shaking your bones
i was a king under your control
perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then
he knows me‚ every inch of my tar black soul
souls don’t speak‚ yet ours spoke fluently
you are the only place that feels like home
bite my neck and call me angel
we were fire and water‚ love laced with sin
my demons are in love with yours
you were like death and i was like war‚ and where we collided‚ darling‚ i loved you
i have looked at you in millions of ways and i have loved you in each
you gave me peace in a lifetime of war
if you’re gonna be the death of me that’s how i wanna go
my love‚ you are worth it all
she chased away my demons with the stars in her eyes
his hands on my flesh‚ so gentle yet commanding‚ make me want to sin
there’s a light in the crack that’s separating your thighs
swear to god i’m a sinner in a church burnin’ up for you
we fight every night for something‚ when the sun sets we’re both the same
i gave you everything and it’s a beautiful crime
made it through the maze to find my one in a million
maybe i’ll hold my breath and jump right in
i want to reconcile the violence in your heart
i want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart
you may be a sinner but your innocence is mine
she took my heart‚ i think she took my soul
fucked around and got attached to you
you were sent to me from the skies above
give me love and all your hate
i’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
i dare you to let me be your one and only
you have my heart inside of your hand
with the same damn hunger to be touched‚ to be loved‚ to feel anything at all
please don’t forget me and all the things we did
we sin as devils do‚ we love as angels do
hell is just another place i’ll go to keep you warm
how does it feel with my teeth in your heart
do you know what it means to have death know your name
when i see you‚ it feels like coming home
i want to build you an empire that forgets to collapse
i crave you; even in the darkness‚ even in blood
i loved you long before i had the guts to let you know
i always feel at home with her‚ no matter how far away from home we are
death sits in the seat next to me; we make a lovely couple
with his educated eyes and his head between my thighs
i fell in love with the subject of sin
you come in waves
when hell freezes over
i’ll let you drag me through hell if it means you’ll hold my hand
until the end of the world
i know your heart
you and i and no one else
anytime you need a friend i’m gonna be by your side
how wonderful life is with you in the world
i could be yours
i know you used to love me in every way
i loved and i loved and i lost you and it hurts like hell
i wish you were a ship that was guided by the touch of my lips
the two of us went up in smoke
yours are the sweetest eyes i’ve ever seen
let me love the lonely out of you
falling seems so easy
no matter where you go you know you’re not alone
i’ll always be by your side
your eyes are where i’m lost in
i wanna get lost with you
i loved you then and i love you now
haunted by the ghost of you
if you don’t mind me saying so i love you
as long as you say you’re mine
take away all my sin‚ give me a sweet prayer on my lips
i will follow you into the dark
you’re a king and i’m a lionheart
as the world comes to an end i’ll be here to hold your hand
i find shelter in your arms
put your lips close to mine as long as they don’t touch
i swear i thought i dreamed her
maybe i just wanna be yours
the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomorrow day
i want you to want me again
never knew loving could hurt this good
you’re driving me wild
i can be the subject of your dreams
i had fallen in love with you before i knew
like the dawn you broke the dark
when we go crashing down we come back every time
like gods at the dawning of the world
i would know him in death‚ at the end of the world
he is half of my soul like the poets say
i wanna ruin our friendship‚ we should be lovers instead
i don’t wanna be your friend‚ i wanna kiss your neck
your eyes will lead me straight back home
friends shouldn’t kiss me like you do
remember my love for you won’t fade
for your eyes only i will show my heart
just say you won’t let go
i tasted the divine and she left my lips dripping with love
even when the world is against us i’ll keep you warm
my soul will find you each time
thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn’t shake
i’ll be your escape‚ i’ll be your safe place
she was my salvation‚ i was her destruction
we should just kiss like real people do
the world may disapprove but my world is only you
lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
wherever there is you i will be there too
close to you i feel i’m at home
if i die may it be of love and if i love may it be you
if your body was a book i’d read a thousand chapters
i want to love in you and get lost in you only
i want to hide you in my heart and not open it after that
we return to each other in waves
let him be soft and let him be mine
i didn’t know that i was starving until i tasted you
i was with you before we were even born
he was her warmth‚ she was his peace
what a lovely way to burn
if i told you about the darkness inside of me would you still look at me like i’m the sun
kiss me with adventure until i forget my name
as the dust settles around us
maybe we started this fire
touch me only when nobody knows
your love is my poison
i wanna taste the way that you bleed
you are the devil in me
wherever you go you can always come home
you’d be like heaven to touch
you changed everything
you feed this fire and walk away
lately i’ve been craving more
i’ve been cold since you left
make me feel like i am breathing
i’ll fucking digest you one kiss at a time
you wish i was yours and i hope that you’re mine
i met her at church but she could be satan
with one kiss you inspired a fire of devotion
i am the blank page before you
i am the fine idea you crave
don’t know why‚ just know i want you
don’t care why‚ just know i love you
to say that we’re in love is dangerous
i will follow you anywhere
i’d kiss you if it wouldn’t kill me
this isn’t love but it’s more than infatuation
i’m at your will‚ can’t you see what you do to me
if this could kill‚ you can read me my eulogy
three puzzle pieces fit together perfectly
my heart found a home in yours
you make me feel like i am home again
enter a king and a queen
he set fire to the world around him but never let a flame touch her
too busy being yours to fall for somebody new
if love is anything tangible‚ it is his mouth
in the middle of my chaos‚ there was you
all we do is think about the feelings that we hide
he tastes like every dark thought i’ve ever had
heaven is a place on earth with you
i can feel you running through my veins
following my heart will always lead me to you
a sea of rum couldn’t intoxicate me as much as a drop of you
i found the devil‚ i found him in a lover
i hadn’t tasted love until i tasted you
no place like home‚ no place like her
i was made for loving you
there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
if we can’t find heaven i’ll walk through hell with you
i’m drowning in these memories
i found love where it wasn’t supposed to be
fire and ice‚ they go hand in hand
in all chaos there is calculation
two thirds of my soul
us against the world
two heartbeats under me
501 notes · View notes
stetervault · 5 years
Note
hey cywscross! any longfics (like at least 30k+ long) you can recommend? old or new is fine but like something multichaptered (and preferably complete) would be great! thanks!
Wow, 30k, you’re obviously settling in for a fic marathon lol. I can name you some, mostly Steter with a few Stetopher/Steterek:
Under the Songbird’s Wing by mia6363
Captivity easily destroys the will of escape. It can break the fiercest of animal. It can strip the most regal man and woman down to nothing but animal needs.
Captivity can, if met with unwavering determination, shape a person into something unimaginable.
Stiles is sixteen when he’s captured. Stiles’s first thought is, “I won’t die here.”
love me lights out by veterization
Stiles and Peter get snowed in together. (Or: what happens when you accept phone calls from people you haven’t spoken to in over five years.)
come find me by Areiton
“You want me,” he says, stubbornly sure and you consider him.
“Yes,” you agree, because you are not a good man, and you are not accustomed to denying yourself what you want. “And it doesn’t matter because I am saying no.”
You touch his hand, and he jerks, wide eyed as you lean into him, and breath into his ear. “If you still feel this way, come find me in ten years.”
Til Death by Bunnywest
“How long do we have to find him someone?” Stiles asks.“Two weeks,” says Derek, eyebrows pulling down even further. The fierceness of his expression tells Stiles just how concerned he is.“He marries, or he goes to the camps. And you know what your father told us,” Scott reminds her.The camps……aren’t camps.Peter either finds a wife, or he dies.
Rabbit verse by Bunnywest (series, complete)
Peter loves to hunt. Stiles is his (too willing )prey.
as you are by veterization
Stiles runs straight into a tree and suddenly, things are… different. Namely, he’s in a world where Peter Hale is his boyfriend.
Uncle Peter Doesn’t Date by Mellow (SweetCandy) (wip series, but each part so far is complete)
“Oh don’t lie, you love it.” Peter purred and winked at his newest arm candy, who spluttered for a few seconds, before blushing like a 16 year old virgin. Considering how young he looked Laura wouldn’t be surprised if he was actually 16.“Shut up Peter!” Bambi squeaked, still flushing and averting Laura’s eyes. “Well, anyways, I’m,”‘Bambi’.“Stiles. Stiles Stilinski, pleasure to meet you- again.” Stiles smiled sheepishly, obviously nervous.Stiles Stilinski. Definitely a stripper then.
-
Or: Laura was prepared for whatever piece of armcandy her uncle had decided to show up with, what she hadn’t been prepared for was Stiles Stilinski…her uncle’s boyfriend.
Rewriting the future by Synesthetic
Two days before their planned bonding, alpha Derek Hale runs away with his secret beta girlfriend, leaving Stiles heartbroken. With the demands of his omega physiology forcing him to bond with someone before his first heat, Derek’s uncle Peter steps in and offers a solution.
To Save Them All by Goldenpetal13
AU, FutureFic/Re do of Season 1, Something happens, something bad, and Stiles finds a way to go back in time to change the past and save them all, to give them a future. He finds the way back and then swaps places with Scott and he gets bitten by Peter instead. Now he has to change the events that where set in motion after that event and maybe, just maybe they’ll all get to live.
Empathy, Empathy, Put Yourself in the Place of Me by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (series, complete)
Peter was suspicious.
Just generally, as a person. He always assumed his fellow man had impure motives until they proved otherwise, and then he still kept an eye out.
But at this particular moment, he was specifically suspicious of Derek’s new girlfriend.
He’s not the only one.
Bone Deep by ShippersList (28k+ but complete)
A body in the woods, a mate, and a long-awaited revenge.
Peter had no idea how his life would change when he followed the strange pull in his chest.
Get Off (Me) by KouriArashi
Stiles hates being left behind with Peter while the pack is fighting monsters, because he never knows exactly what Peter will get up to.
Love What is Behind You by KouriArashi
Basically what it says on the label. Hunger Games type fusion. Stiles doing way better than anyone anticipates. Peter finds him intriguing. Ruthless, devious assholes working together to ruin bad guys, as the Steter ship is meant to be.
Whatever Works by KouriArashi (Steter + Sterek)
The problem with having your soulmate’s first words to you tattooed on your arm is knowing your whole life that you’re fated to be with a jerk. It’s enough to make Stiles want to date other people … which is how he winds up dating his soulmate’s nephew.
Call My Name by KouriArashi
After moving to Beacon Hills, Stiles starts having recurring dreams of a man in some kind of prison, who needs his help. Things get so bad that he ends up in Eichen House, where he finds out that the man is real.
Sympathy for the Devil by KouriArashi
Stiles gets a job as a hospital orderly and finds himself becoming strangely attached to the catatonic man on the long-term care ward, and finds out that there’s a lot more to Peter Hale than there seems…
Devil of Mercy by KouriArashi
Peter’s heard people talk about what it felt like when they saw their mate for the first time, from those who actually believe in the mystical bullshit. Like a magnet, like gravity. Peter just feels… sharply curious.
Begging Me To Open Up My Mouth by Green
In a world where the supernatural is known, Peter still has to stick out. He can’t just be a werewolf, he has to be a sub, too. He can handle the stupidity from his classmates, he doesn’t even care about that, but Talia not understanding what he needs because werewolf subs are so rare?
Yeah. That he could do without.
***
Stiles is a Spark, freelance Emissary, and a Dom, in that order. He likes it that way. The freedom of it, the ability to travel and learn. He’s not ready to settle down.
But he maybe considers lingering when someone catches his eye.
Of Werewolves and Tentacles by Guede (Steterek)
Stiles Stilinski and Scott McCall, childhood best friends who were separated, now reunite to get to know each other again. Since Scott’s a werewolf and Stiles is a new graduate of Miskatonic University (which is proving strangely attractive to Peter-Hale-shaped werewolves), they’ve got quite a bit to catch up on.
Bittersweet Creek by Guede
When Stiles finally steps off the westward trail to California, he’s the last of his pack. He starts building a den, but then he finds a dying man next to a burnt-down house and it turns out he’s not really much of a settler, after all.
Cats and Dogs by Guede
Stiles is a were-cat. He likes to lie around in the sun, insists on poking into everything, viciously defends his territory and is always judging you. His best friend is Scott, a werewolf, he’s dating Peter, another werewolf, and he enjoys terrorizing Peter’s nephew Derek.
Oh, and John and Chris are were-cats too. Basically, everybody’s some kind of were and I make a lot of cheap jokes about cat and dog stereotypes.
The Time Travel Grammar Book by Guede
The story that was supposed to be about time-travel, but is really a stealth AU of the first two seasons where Talia’s a struggling single mom, Peter’s the eponymous teen wolf, and Stiles, Scott and Lydia…are time travelers (so that part’s not totally inaccurate).
Open Wounds by Guede
Talia got out of the fire with Peter, but everyone else died. Years later, they’re still struggling with injuries, but they’ve at least settled in with oddball werewolf Stiles. And then other werewolves start showing up. Familiar ones.
Movement in Alpha Major by Guede
Peter Hale, thirty-four, shady but successful human lawyer, knocks on his nephew Derek’s door one night because he’s just been bitten by a werewolf. Somehow, this ends up being a lot more awkward than one would expect.
The Sphinx of Beacon Hills by Guede (Stetopher)
Stiles is a sphinx, and he’s winging his way to visit his buddy Scott when a storm drops him in Beacon Hills, the craziest, crankiest, coldest place ever. And somehow, he ends up with a bunch of werewolves.
Note: Bestiality warning is because the version of sphinx here is lion-shaped from waist down, and I don’t know how else to tag that.
Werewolf How-To by Guede (Steterek)
Being a sex mage with a magical knotting cock (and a profitable land revitalization business, thank you) doesn’t mean that Stiles needs to hook up with werewolves. It just kind of happens that way.
Intemperance by Guede (Stetopherek)
Stiles is the one who gets pulled back to Beacon Hills by a murder.
Sustainable Management by Guede (Steterek)
An alternate universe where werewolves and other supernatural creatures aren’t just integrated, but are so deeply embedded that they’re considered part of the natural ecosystem.
In other words, Stiles and his father work for a U.S. Forest Service that’s way different from the one here, if only because it involves many more secret-agent hijinks.
Strays by DiscontentedWinter (Stetopher)
In a Beacon Hills that’s been destroyed by a war between humans and werewolves, Stiles Stilinski does what he has to in order to survive.
Sanctuary by DiscontentedWinter
The Hale Wolf Sanctuary isn’t just for wolves.
It turns out it’s for Stilinskis as well.
Infinite Space by DiscontentedWinter
Stiles needs Peter’s expertise to help stop the latest threat to Beacon Hills.And, as the pack falls apart around him, he might even need Peter for more than that.
Save Me by DiscontentedWinter
Peter is the Alpha.He’s nobody’s savior.Not his pack’s. Not his town’s. And not that kid’s.But sometimes salvation goes both ways.
You Had Me at Canapes by LadyArinn
Stiles doesn’t mean to sneak into the Hale wedding, and he certainly doesn’t mean to have cliche coat-room sex with the bride’s uncle, but what had happened, happened, and it wasn’t like he could just leave. At least, not until he got to have some of that cake.
Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) by pprfaith (wip series, but main parts are complete)
Stiles is happy with his store, his hobbies, his friends. Peter’s just trying to figure out how to raise his nieces and nephew without fucking them up too badly.
Paths cross.
Sing to Me, Oh so Sweetly by lavenderlotion
“Can I get a story, Mama?” Stiles asked.
“What type of story do you want to hear, darling?” his mama asked, sitting on the edge of his bed and playing with Stiles’ hair. He liked it when she did that.
“I wanna hear about the magic woman!” Stiles demanded, doing his best to keep still.
“You always wanna hear about the magic woman,” Mama told him. “Well, alright. Do you want me to start from the beginning?”
“Well, duh,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes. The beginning was always the best part.
“Once upon a time, there was a young girl with skin as white as the moon and eyes as bright as the sun.”
Breathing You In by lavenderlotion (29k+, 1 chapter, but complete)
“Good morning, kiddo,” his dad said, and the words hurt.
All Stiles wanted to do was step forward and let his dad hug him, allow his father to give him comfort. His father’s hugs had always been all-encompassing, the way he would fold himself around Stiles and hold him as tightly as he could.
Stiles stepped around him, careful not to let foreign skin touch anything that was special to him.
Anything he loved.
Just Don’t Leave Me by lavenderlotion
Stiles had no idea it could happen. Really, he hadn’t. But it did and he had to deal with the fallout, alone. And, and after everything with Scott, and Derek, that was a daunting task. At least, he had his dad, god was he thankful he had his dad, but - but he couldn’t say he didn’t wish he had Peter, too.
Proposing To Strangers by moonstalker24
At the end of a strained relationship, crime novelist Stiles chooses to hide from the world inside a bar with far too many motorcycles outside it for comfort. Here he’ll meet the man of his dreams, eat food and propose marriage, all within the first five minutes.
Peter doesn’t know who this kid is, but he’s cute and looks like he could use a break. So he feeds him. He’s not expecting a marriage proposal, but with what comes after, he doesn’t really mind.
Worn Out Shoes by moonstalker24
When the dead rise, and the world comes to an end, the McCall Pack must learn to live in this new world, or die in the attempt. This is the story of the end, and of the year that follows.
The Choice by moonstalker24
“You will be changed, Goscislaw Genim Stilinski. From your bones you will be changed.”“How.”“That we cannot tell you… That is the price.”
He’s made the deal, now he only has fifteen minutes to make a choice and either save or condemn them all. Fifteen minutes and then Stiles will have to live with the consequences.
Every step of the way by Pirotess666
Hurt, pain, suffering. TORTURE. Peter felt it all while he was in Eichen House.And after he got out? All those memories of what happened there were threatening to drive him insane.The only thing that helped? Being with Stiles.And Stiles just couldn’t stop himself from helping Peter.
Bite Down by EclipseWing (27k+ but complete)
In which Stiles is forced to survive the zombie apocalypse with a sociopathic murdering werewolf for company.
Surviving Peter and the Zombie Apocalypse by Nopennamesleft
Its the end of the world and Stiles has run out of luck. He saves a werewolf from certain death. Will they begin to rely on each other to survive or will the wolf just eat Stiles for a midnight snack?
Do You Like to Hurt? (Then Hurt Me) by taylorpotato
Stiles shows up at Peter’s apartment, drunk and horny. Peter almost does the right thing—before it all deteriorates into a voyeuristic power game and Stiles has a mind-shattering orgasm. Things snowball from there. Takes place after Season Three (with consequent canon divergence).
Out Of The East, Never See The Sun Rise by neglectedtuesday (24k+ but complete)
In the beginning, there are three absolutes.
One. Stiles is a god, forged of starlight and collapsing galaxies and he is eternal.
Two. Peter is human, fragile bone and viscous blood and he is temporary.
Three. Stiles and Peter are in love; love that claws its way inside one’s heart like fish hooks; all encompassing love that is beautiful but dangerous.
Stiles is a god. Peter is human. They love each other.
Three absolutes.
The World That Is Not Ours by Ragga (wip series but first three parts are done)
About a boy and his monster, or a monster and his boy.
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misscrawfords · 4 years
Text
The Rise of Skywalker: Part Two
Read Part One here.
One of the many things I’ve been grappling with over the 2 weeks since TROS came out is the validity and cause of my upset and anger. And it centres round the question: if Reylo had ended differently, if they’d had a happy ending, if Ben Solo had lived, would I still hate the film? Would I still be angry? Or would I forgive and overlook its other myriad flaws? And connected to those central questions is another that pressed upon me, namely: am I angry and upset because it is a bad film on multiple levels that insults its audience and breaks its own mythology in a way that is deeply distressing to female viewers and is fundamentally a poorly written film or do I only feel like that because I am a disappointed shipper? Am I only upset because I have got so attached to my HEA fluffy fanfic that I’ve lost sight of the story that canon is actually telling?
There’s a wider issue contained in these questions that I’ve been asking myself which is that there is a judgement implicit that responding to a film purely as a shipper is a bad thing, that it invalidates my criticism and my feelings if, in fact, I am simply an upset and disappointed shipper who wanted a happy ending. That’s an issue that is definitely worth pursuing but elsewhere.
It’s been two weeks. I’ve read multiple twitter threads, listened to bits of WTForce podcast (it’s very long... and was making me cry...), many reviews of the film, and today I finally started reading Valerie Estelle Frankel’s From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend which is blowing my mind and giving me the confidence to say what I’ve known for a while:
My feeling that TROS is a terrible film on multiple levels - all of them actually - is valid. You may disagree and that’s fine. It’s only an opinion. But it’s my opinion and I stand by it. And, returning to the initial question that has been perplexing me - in fact I cannot separate the way the characters of Rey and Kylo/Ben were treated from the film’s other flaws. If Ben had lived, if Reylo had had a happy ending, if their relationship had played out differently, even if they had both died, yes, I would have been more inclined to forgive the film its many other flaws and misjudgements, but the fact is, if Reylo had been written in a satisfactory way then it would have been a very different film. Reylo is only one - one massive, egregious error - thing that contributes to the mess that this films. It is not the only thing that is enraging and upsetting but it is probably the biggest. I’ll talk about these other things in yet another post, but for now...
Let’s talk about Reylo.
tl;dr: Reylo is canon and the movie still sucked. Here’s a 5000+ word dissertation on why. Maybe don’t read if my opinions on this are going to make you sad/angry.
I’m going to break down my problems with Reylo in this film logically and honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to say anything that hasn’t already been said, but perhaps reading another perspective will help others who feel similarly? I’m guessing it’s going to help me if I write about it. We’ll see.
There are three problems. There’s the problem of the fate of Ben Solo. In a way, that’s the easiest and simplest one to deal with. Death was always on the cards as a possible ending for him. A tragic hero who commits terrible acts is redeemed in death by saving the world. The death of this character is... not a surprise and has always been an ending I worried about because I’m a shipper and I like happy endings over sad ones. And I’ve been very convinced by the meta and arguments of shippers who have argued passionately that Ben had to live. However, arguably the problem is not the death in itself but the circumstances and the context. So I’ll come back to that.
The second problem is that of Rey. Rey’s development (or lack of it) and especially her ending. Yep. This is a big problem. Far bigger IMO than the death of Ben which, while tragic, could have been beautiful and fitting.
Thirdly, is Ben and Rey together. Reylo. Their relationship and the way it plays out and the way, ultimately, all of this breaks the mythology being established in previous films.
So three very interlinked problems.
To summarise. In TROS Kylo regresses to being the Supreme Leader and trying to source dark power. This is not terribly surprising considering the ending of TLJ. Rey also regresses to someone who is training and who does not believe she is worthy of Luke’s lightsaber. This is surprising because Rey has already accepted her destiny and her role as a Jedi at the end of TLJ. There is no reason for her to feel insecure about it a year later in TROS.
Rey and Kylo connect through their Force Bond and fight. Their anger is understandable but these fights continuously rehash exactly the same material as what was covered in TLJ, leaving me feeling, well, not very much. Kylo is trying to tell Rey something about who she is (a question that was resolved in TLJ) and Rey is angry at him because of reasons. 
There are some good parts here. Unlike a lot of people, I really liked the fight at Pasaana. I felt it took something from TLJ and added something else. It was a rehash of the throne room fight over the lightsaber but while that conflict was entirely personal over an object that meant something to them but not the wider population (beyond what it could do as a weapon), the same conflict here was over a transport ship containing real people and Chewie (apparently), a character of importance to both. So what happened is that their inability to reconcile with each other and meet half way is manifested in a completely balanced conflict which has a living cost. Chewie dies! Rey kills someone dear to her - accidentally, sure - but she now has a body count showing how truly destructive her fight with Kylo is. It is a symbol of how necessary it is they work together and find balance. Daisy Ridley’s acting here was great and I felt genuinely shocked. Shocked that Rey plunged so immediately into a kind of darkness that put her on a level with Kylo and shocked that Chewie was killed off so casually without warning or build-up - a real casualty of war and the raised stakes in this film. I thought it was a great way to build on TLJ and extend it.
So you can imagine how I felt when Chewie’s death was retconned.
Pretty similar to how I felt when C-3PO got his memory back.
I will probably talk more about this in Part Three, which is my wider issues with the film, but it’s sort of unavoidable mentioning them here because of course the way the film invalidates serious emotion by showing in so many ways that Death Is Not The End and is consequently meaningless impacts on Reylo and the fact that Ben dies.
Another nice moment was the snatching of the beads through the Force Bond. I mean, Kylo literally stole some fertility-coded beads from Rey’s neck!? Uh, this subtext is rapidly becoming text, as they say. Pasaana was weird though, right? Rey talks to children, is at a festival of life, she is fulfilling her role of becoming a symbolic mother which she started in TLJ and which fits the child Jedi at the end of that film (who was never seen again but we’ll deal with that later) and Kylo receives a gift of a necklace (a feminine symbol) from her immediately afterwards... This is pretty hot and heavy symbolism. Of their union and a future involving children, real or metaphorical.
And Rey learns how to heal with the Force, trying it on a giant worm as practice. This fits with her heroine’s journey - she is not using the lightsaber (a symbol of masculine power) but is using her power to preserve and save, which is feminine power. So far so good. I mean, it’s a shame they are wasting all these Force Bond sessions backtracking on TLJ to the extent that instead of enjoying their interactions, I’m going “Yeah yeah yeah okay but we’ve already done this but better”. But there’s still development so it’s okay and sometimes it’s even kind of hot.
Rey Palpatine. 
Oh dear.
Look, it’s not the thing itself. The union of a Skywalker and a Palpatine, the balance coming from the union of two great families on either side of the Force, is honestly not a bad idea at all. Ben as the Skywalker with a bit of darkness in him balanced by Rey the Palpatine with a bit of light in her. BALANCE. It could be beautiful. 
Unfortunately it isn’t. Rey’s lineage was resolved really well in TLJ. Rey Nobody is a great idea for all the reasons everyone already says - opening up the Force to everyone instead of keeping it as a kind of aristocratic lineage etc. Retconning this is really unnecessary and also sends a terrible message to the audience, especially women, as everyone has already discussed to death. Rey is literally told her power comes from a creepy old man who won’t stay dead instead of something innate within her. Instead of letting the past die, we are digging it up like an overzealous and ignorant 19th century British aristocrat let loose in Egypt with a pick-axe and period-applicable racism. Rey is then told that her parents sold her and abandoned her… to protect her. Another great message. And apparently Luke, Han and Leia all knew this?????? Honestly, I was confused by all this when I was watching the film but from what I’ve read afterwards it seems this is the case and in which case not only does that not make literally any sense at all in terms of what happened in TFA and TLJ but also has pretty awful implications for the OT characters and how they related to Ben. 
As I mentioned, it is also unnecessary for the plot for Rey to be a Palpatine. If Palpatine has to come back (which he doesn’t but okay whatever) then surely it’s enough that Rey is extremely strong in the Force for him to either want to kill her or want to control her? Like, literally that’s what he did to Anakin. Why does she have to be related to him unless the film is making some very unfortunate conclusions about blood. Good blood, bad blood… yeeeaaaaaah, this isn’t great as a message. It could be but that’s not the story the first two films have told. Also does Palpatine want to kill her or control her? Like, I’m genuinely not clear on that. I’m not sure he is. I’m not sure the film is. What is actually going on? Also if Palpatine has been controlling Ben his entire life why the hell didn’t he control Rey? Surely it’s easier to invade and control the mind of his own flesh and blood than that of another random Force child he isn’t related to? Who is surrounded by other powerful Force users? When Rey is all alone? Like if Palpatine is able to build up an insanely massive army that nobody has noticed across the Galaxy while still being kind of dead, surely he can access the mind of Rey on Jakku? Also, how did he manage to impregnate a human woman while being sort of dead and old? On both a mythical level and on the level of a question of taste and plausibility, HOW??? 
THIS PLOT MAKES LITERALLY NO SENSE WHAT IS GOING ON AAAARGGGHHH 
And breathe. 
So anyway, Rey Palpatine. Rey and Kylo fight and Rey kills Kylo. It didn’t really work for me though I’d have to watch again to figure out precisely why. This epic, wet fight just… wasn’t quite as epic as I expected it to be. Maybe it was because Finn was randomly there. Maybe it was because it didn’t have the dialogue from the trailer. Maybe it was because I was just tired of watching them fight and not seeing their relationship progress during the film when it had already progressed beyond this in TLJ. And she kills him like it’s a calculated thing when his guard is down and this whole thing is a mess. Now, it’s coming back to me! The order of events don’t make sense. The characterisation doesn’t make sense. 
Kylo and Rey are fighting. Leia gives her life force to communicate something to her son and dies in the process. I don’t quite understand what she’s doing and why this means she has to die. She’s not force projecting like Luke did. How is this different from in TLJ when she says “Ben” then and he waivers about killing her? She was fine after that! I get that they’re working with what they could for Leia but nevertheless, if you’re going to include it in an actual film, it’s still got to have internal consistency. Not that this film cares. Anyway, Leia dies to make Kylo pause and then Rey kills him which seems very rushed and kind of mean but whatever. Then Rey immediately uses Chekov’s healing to bring him back to life and when she does he’s Ben without a scar. So this is all confusing to me. Did Leia redeam him by saying “Ben”? Did she do anything else that makes sense of her dying? Did Rey killing Kylo bring Ben back? Was it Han’s memory? A combination of all these factors?
But the order strikes me as off. The death of Kylo Ren to allow Ben Solo to live is good. Excellent content. But all that is needed to do this is for Kylo to die – meaningfully (which being randomly stabbed by his lover at the moment when he was changing does not quite feel to me) and be brought back to life – meaningfully. I’m not saying what Rey did wasn’t impressive but I don’t remember being overawed by the music and the cinematography here. This is in many ways, or should be, the turning point in the entire ST: the moment when Ben Solo is reborn. And the exact moment of it happening is uncertain. And does he need the moment with Han’s memory afterwards? I’m not saying it wasn’t very touching to see Han and to have their moment together but it nevertheless didn’t quite gell. Like so many things in this film, it’s a nice moment that is over too quickly and doesn’t quite hang together with coherent plotting and characterisation. The entire sequence is rushed with too much happening – fight, Leia, death, healing, Han, lightsaber, RANDOM FINN etc. etc. And in fact, this moment that should be climactic is then later overshadowed by later Ben healing Rey in the same way, a completely narratalogically meaningless act. But more on that later. 
And I realise that in my hurry to get to this fight, I’ve forgotten Dark!Rey. Dark!Rey, like Rey Palpatine, is an idea that could and should be amazing and, apart from the cool graphics and a moment of gasp for effect, isn’t and fundamentally doesn’t work. Rey is struggling with her inner darkness throughout this film, something that was suggested in both TFA and TLJ, so I’m very much on board with it, and I think it’s important to see women on screen be angry and especially angry in a wild, ugly way. I think Daisy Ridley did a great job with that. But TROS attributed this anger and darkness to Palpatine rather that all the myriad and understandable reasons that Rey had for being angry. Perhaps that could work in some contexts as a metaphorical way of showing her anger but Palpatine is too present physically for that to stick. Instead, her characterisation is given wholesale to her genes and a male influence. This is… not great.
Confronting the dark part of one’s self is vitally important in the heroine’s journey. Only when the heroine has reconciled the dark parts of her psyche can the heroine be whole. TROS has worked out that this important but then hasn’t really known how to execute it. The physical manifestation of Dark!Rey for Light!Rey to fight is hellishly unsubtle and is also over so quick you quickly forget that she’s there. (Again, momentary effect is prioritised over anything that actually makes sense in terms of storytelling.) As a manifestation of Rey’s inner anger, she’s completely pointless. Rey fights her quickly but fighting Dark!Rey doesn’t result in Rey unifiying her dark impulses with her heroic self. She still has dark impulses throughout the film! In fact, she never succeeds in fully reconciling them. If defeating Dark!Rey had been a striking and climactic moment then that would work, but it doesn’t. She continues to fight Kylo straight afterwards and Kylo himself is in some respects (certainly in TLJ) a physical manifestation of what Rey fears and needs in herself. It is Kylo who is truly Rey’s dark double in TFA and TLJ. He tells her what she knows and cannot admit, forcing her to confront that in herself. He attracts her yet repels her. According to what is set up in TFA and TLJ, until Rey can both kill Kylo and reconcile with him, she is not conquering and reconciling with that part of herself. After all, they are two halves of one protagonist. But in TROS Kylo no longer seems to take that role, or not coherently. For example, he delivers information (“Rey, yer a Palpatine lol”) that she doesn’t in fact know. So it doesn’t work. And yet it also doesn’t work that Rey fights Dark!Rey and then immediately goes off and fights Kylo! One of those fights is redundant, perhaps both. If Dark!Rey had been a real character who does stuff, who tempts Kylo, who replaces Rey (Odile/Odette-like) then this would be meaningful. But she doesn’t. I know that some people are arguing that Rey in the subsequent fights is possessed by Dark!Rey but honestly? I did not see that in the film and I just do not think the film is sufficiently coherent to be that subtle about something that is such a major plot point! So she continues to struggle with darkness even after supposedly defeating Dark!Rey which is just nonsense in terms of mythology. She struggles all the way up to her confrontation with Palpatine. 
So let’s get to that. Look, I’m going to be completely honest here: I have no idea what was going on. Palpatine was rigged up on a crane on creepy evil villain life support, there was a giant jam jar filled with pickled Snoke heads, Rey was there, Ben showed up having thrown away one lightsaber but then found another two lightsabers (there were a lot of lightsabers, I couldn’t keep track of which was which and why they were significant), the Knights of Ren were there to do a soundcheck for their upcoming gig IDEK, Finn wasn’t there which made a change and Palpatine wanted Rey to kill him so she would become super powerful until he didn’t want her to kill him. He was tempting her and used the standard threat of “I’m going to destroy the universe unless you take on these super dangerous powers to stop me but if you do then you’ll be evil yourself mwhahaha”. I’m not sure really how that benefits him. Was his end-game plan to build up a massive Sith Empire for his darling granddaughter to rule, ignore her for years in favour of corrupting Ben Solo via some dude called Snoke and then reappear from nowhere in order to die again so she could rule? Because that’s a really, really flawed plan. Like, my cullender is less holey than that plan. I may have got this wrong. But before anyone jumps in to “Well, actually” me, my point is valid: I’m an intelligent viewer who spends plenty of time thinking about SW. If I couldn’t follow the main reveal plan in the climactic film of the ST, then… that is a flaw in the writing and conception. It shouldn’t be that difficult!
 Anyway, back to Rey. She is being tempted yet again (which she shouldn’t be by this point in the film or trilogy) and, briefly (though I’ve mostly given up on hope for this film by this point) I am engaged by her quandery. I think it would be really interested if she takes the power offered and fully embraces her Palpatine heritage – she becomes a Sith in order to save the lives of her friends! Perhaps Dark!Rey was just a warm up to seeing the real Rey transform into Dark!Rey. Then Ben has to save her! As she has saved him from being Kylo Ren, he will save her from being Dark!Rey! Balance. So I think that could be interesting and it raises some interesting moral questions about whether doing something bad for good reasons is ever justifiable. But of course Rey resists! Rey is not allowed to actually do anything bad in this movie! It’s infuriating! Rey is completely good. I think the message the film thinks it’s giving out is that Rey is more than her ancestry – that she is good despite being a Palpatine, that everyone has the power to move beyond their background. Unfortunately, that message was already there when she was Rey Nobody! And the actual message is that Rey is a static, pure character who despite apparently containing darkness is never in any way truly tempted by it or gives into it. Any narrative tension over whether she will succumb or do something interesting is very rapidly dismissed. Just as Chewie’s death is retconned and C-3PO gets his memory back. 
Anyway Ben arrives and they somehow have two lightsabers (???? whatever) and stand and face Palpatine and I think at this point we need to talk about how this is just waaaaay less impressive on every level than them facing Snoke in TLJ. There was tension there and uncertainty and when they fought together it was genuinely breathtaking and surprising. There was no surprise about Ben and Rey facing Palpatine together, but there was a tired feeling of “Oh look, we’ve got to face off against another creepy old man who wants to hold onto power for evil after his time is well over. Oh well, I guess if we have to…” If nothing else, this sums up the Millenial experience very well! Ultimately, not only is Palpatine a confusing final villain, he’s also a boring one. The Chancellor in the PT was interesting on a political level, the Emperor was truly creepy as a foil to Darth Vader in the OT, but this fossil on life-support is neither scary nor original nor even particularly threatening.
That’s the thing with escalating the threats continuously – it becomes meaningless. Making the Boss bigger and badder and threatening the Universe instead of the Galaxy doesn’t make the drama more exciting, it just makes it less believable. It looks very impressive to have the entire sky filled with ships and the threat of Palpatine destroying everything but it’s also ultimately meaningless. A massive threat just means a massive reset button or deus ex force lightning. Superhero movies are very guilty of this terrible storytelling, so is Doctor Who. First London faces an alien threat, then England, then the planet, then the Galaxy, then the Universe… and where do you go from there? The audience doesn’t care about the world at large, they only care about our plucky little heroes and their lives. If Palpatine had said “I have Finn and Poe and if you don’t take on these Sith powers I’m going to murder them” the effect would have been the same, maybe even better because Rey’s dilemma would have been even more personal. Hey, another interesting idea: “I have Ben. Only way to save him is to adopt Sith powers!” Anyway.
So this confrontation is yet another less impressive copy of the throne room scene in TLJ. The lore also gets confusing here. Ben and Rey are tortured which makes no sense because doesn’t Palpatine want Rey alive? Not sure what he’s trying to achieve here except it makes our heroes look powerless. Then Rey takes on the force lightning and does some snazzy special effects to win the war very easily. So easily that you feel no emotion whatsoever at how easily this massive army of ships is instantly wiped out. (Side point, but I’m guessing there were lots of people on those ships and Rey’s just killed them all? And considering we’ve just got an admittedly half-baked but still a plot about the defection of storm troopers, isn’t this just a bit concerning? But Rey can do no wrong and it’s all for the greater good because this is the Light Side of the Force and she is All The Jedi so I guess we’ll just pass over this casual genocide on the part of our heroine.) This seems to kill Rey despite Palpatine telling her to do it to get more power a few minutes earlier. No seriously, isn’t this what happens? I’m so confused. At which point Ben force heals her as she force heals him and whereas she was fine and dandy after doing it, it kills him.
Which… okay. Is a thing that happens. It’s hella inconsistent. And makes no sense. But okay, I mean, okay. I wasn’t even sad. I was just like “…right.” And fortunately the film immediately moves on and completely fails to acknowledge Ben’s existence while triumphant music plays. So that’s a thing.
Remember how I said at the beginning of this meandering dissertation that I was always aware of Ben dying being a possible ending but it was the execution that failed here? Right! Well, the thing is that every time a death happens in the context of a hero’s journey, it’s got to mean something. In a world where people can be resurrected and, uh, SW is very much that world (or it is in TROS), then you can’t just die for no reason! And neither Rey nor Ben’s deaths made sense. Rey absolutely needs an underworld journey as part of her heroine’s journey but her death near the end of the film does not fulfil that criterion. An underworld journey is a way for a heroine to shed part of her behind, to learn something, and to confront herself. The cave scene was Rey’s journey to the underworld. Arguably, the scene on Pasaana where she learned force healing was another type of katabasis. Heck, you can argue that when she finds the lightsaber in TFA it’s a katabasis or when she ships herself to Ben in a coffin it’s another. Like. Rey has lots of metaphorical underworld journeys. But when she dies at the end of TROS she has already reunited with Ben, she has no darkness in her that needs to be purged because she never waivered from the light and when she is brought back she is the same person she was before. Unlike Ben who comes back from the dead literally a different person. So Rey’s death makes no sense either in terms of the magical world and powers in play but also for her heroine’s journey. Maybe she could have collapsed. Maybe the effort should have drained her and Ben of their Force powers – a sacrifice for using powers they shouldn’t have touched. That would have made sense and would have been entirely fitting. But death? Nope.
And Ben’s death consequently makes no sense. Force healing has been established within the very same movie to have no real consequences on the user (also similarly established in The Mandalorian) so Ben’s death makes less sense than anything else in the entire film. The internal logic of the film says that there are no consequences for force healing. And then it kills off someone who does it. Sadness is not the reaction to that; confusion is. And then on a mythological level, Ben shouldn’t die. Kylo has already died. And Ben has been reborn!  I know it’s a meme, but Ben has done nothing wrong. Kylo has been punished for his actions and what is left is Ben. This is very, very clearly spelled out within the film. This makes Ben’s death a senseless tragedy that makes no sense, a final death in a film that has continually shown that death is not real or an ending. Except for Ben Solo. Because… I don’t know? I’ve managed to go 4812 words without mentioning redemption but I guess I can’t avoid it now. I’m actually not a big fan of redemption because it gets all thorny and becomes about morality and specifically Christian morality and I’m just… I’m tired of that. I’m a classicist and stories of classical mythology and classical heroism have nothing to do with redemption and being good and evil and I really see the Skywalkers as a kind of Greek tragedy lineage rather than people who have to be redeemed. I know Vader died changing his mind and killing the Emperor for his son but I don’t see that as redemption. That was a man who had done many awful things making a choice out of love at the very end of his life. And again, Ben saved Rey – this was an act of personal love and had nothing to do with the Galaxy. Redemption seems to be an active, ongoing thing that is about more than the purely personal. Vader wasn’t redeemed and neither was Ben – because he didn’t have a chance. And it all gets confused because, as I keep saying, Kylo Ren died!!!! On a mythical level, that’s all that’s needed! Ben Solo, on a mythic level, has nothing to prove, nothing to atone for, nothing for which he requires redemption. On the level that SW is also a story of politics, if Ben had lived, he would have had to reconcile his past actions as Kylo Ren with his present experience as Ben Solo – and it would have been fair if he had to pay a penalty in the human world. But not the death penalty. Because he has already paid that. Ben succeeds in reconciling and facing off his inner darkness in the way that Rey does not in this film. But he is then punished again and dies needlessly and shockingly in order to save Rey, who also shouldn’t have died.
It’s very unsatisfactory. On a mythic level, it really doesn’t make sense.
And I haven’t even mentioned the whole thing about if they are dyad (lol I keep reading this as dryad and getting a very weird set of mental images) or two halves of a protagonist or soulmates or whatever you want to call it where if one dies the bond just remains as a wound. This is a scenario where Rey and Ben have been very clearly set up as a pair animus/anima hero/heroine who belong together whether that is in life or death. I’ve just been reading about Brunnhild and Siegfried from the Nibelung Ring Saga – they both die at the end when they’ve finally been reunited but they are united in death. It’s sad but their death is inevitable after what’s happened to them and it’s sort of uplifting because they are together. This could definitely have worked for Rey and Ben. And considering death doesn’t stop you appearing multiple times and even doing cool stuff like lifting ships out of the sea, it wouldn’t even have been very sad. The mystical hero/heroine who cannot remain in society once their journey is complete is not uncommon. Look at Frodo going off with the Elves in a metaphor for death at the end of LotR where the more down-to-earth Sam is able to stay and rebuild. It would make total sense for Ben and Rey to be unable to integrate with society at the end of TROS whether that means simply exile or death. So long as they are together.
Anyway, they’re not together which makes the whole thing horribly unbalanced and unnervingly wrong on a profound level. The myth is broken! It simply does. not. work.
But if the ending for Ben and Reylo as a whole was disturbing, false, internally inconsistent and emotionally empty, that’s nothing to the ending Rey gets. Lots of people have already written about this so I’ll try to be brief. Rey has no connection to Tatooine. Rey is not allowed to grieve. Rey regresses to a childhood state, her very definite, spelled out future as a symbolic mother being absolutely aborted. Rey takes as a family name one that she has no personal connection. Rey is left with absent friends and nobody but the ghosts of Luke (who she didn’t like) and Leia to talk to in the role of weirdly incestuous sterile parents. So I guess this is a win for the Luke/Leia shippers?
Okay, I just need to rant a moment. (Yes, this is 5556 words of ranting but you’ve got this far – indulge me?) I’ve seen several takes from people I follow who aren’t Reylos saying that this is a great ending for Rey because she has a family and I’m just like ARE YOU EFFING SERIOUS?????? Are you ACTUALLY trying to tell me that living alone on a barren, desert planet reminiscent of where she lived as a child before she heard the call to adventure, where she was symbolically asleep with nobody but the GHOSTS OF SIBLINGS for company and ABSENT FRIENDS is FINDING A FAMILY???????????? JUST KILL HER ALREADY – she’s ALREADY DEAD!!!!! You want to make me feel Rey at the end even if Ben is dead? Show her surrounded by her found family in the Resistance and show her WORKING WITH CHILDREN?????????????? IT. WOULD. NOT. BE. HARD. TO. DO. THAT. AND. MAKE. IT. UPLIFTING. But this -this is just painful, truly painful and insulting. And don’t give me this crap that she’s not living there, she’s just there temporarily to bury the lightsabers and leave and go back to her friends. WHAT ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. This is the ENDING of a NINE MOVIE SAGA. The ending matters???? And the ending is of Rey alone with the droid she rescued two movies back staring at some binary suns that only matter to the audience and not to her. THE FILM DOES NOT TELL US THAT SHE IS GOING TO LEAVE AND MEET HER FRIENDS. THE FILM DOES NOT TELL US THAT. IT DOES NOT IMPLY THAT. So this is a bloody stupid argument.
Yeah, I cracked. I don’t regret it. This is so infuriating I actually have literally nothing to say about “Rey Skywalker”. Like, whatever. The film’s already done its worse. Just… whatever. Who cares at this point? It’s meaningless. I laughed in despair at the cinema screen and was glad it was over.
 The fact is, according to the heroine’s journey, this isn’t the end of the story. It makes sense that within 24 hours of the film premiering, AO3 was filling up with “fix-it fics” where Rey goes to the World Between Worlds to get Ben back. Because that’s what heroines do. They save their loved ones. They do it patiently and through endurance. And they always succeed. And unlike heroes who go to the underworld to save their wives (cf Orpheus), heroines who go to get their man succeed. This story needs Rey, like Psyche, to go save Ben. She hasn’t finished her heroine’s journey. In fact, she is in many ways back where she started. Her attempts to integrate and confront her darkness have been confused and ultimately meaningless. She has not unified permanently with her lover yet. She has not become either a literal or symbolic mother. There is a stage in the heroine’s journey where she retreats to where she comes from for reflection and growth. That is acceptable. But that is not the ending!!!
And to place this ending of the film, with Rey smiling and saying “Rey Skywalker” as if this means something and some triumphant music over the top alongside what so many viewers feel instinctively, namely that the myth is incomplete and broken, leaves the audience – or at least it left me – feeling cheated and empty and bemused about why it feels so wrong. Ultimately Ben dead and Rey pregnant would make more narrative sense than the sterile and barren and infantilised ending we were given. And that was just about the worst case scenario of bad writing that we ever thought could happen. 
The myth is broken. Good night.
(Tune in soon to the much shorter Part Three where I discuss everything else that isn’t Reylo related that is wrong with this movie.)
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